Daughter of Chaos

Chapters

Basic Training
Foreshadows
Things Begin to Happen
The Beginning of the End.
A Chilled Panic
Discord's Warning
A Chilled Panic: Part 2
"Special Eyes"

Basic Training

...We were gods once, weren't we? The thought was one of the few wisps of sanity left in Eclipse's mind. Slowly, using most of his remaining strength to lift his eagle claw, staring at it as it shriveled before his eyes and his power was falling away. As his rapidly deteriorating body could no longer support it, the claw involuntarily dropped back down to the fatal bed of poison that he had thrown himself into. His eyes shifted to the right, glancing at his once-strong lion's paw. It seemed little more than skin and fur stretched over a skeleton, and even the fur was coming off in large tufts. Patchwork gods... But now, you're trapped in stone, and rightfully so... and I'm going to die. I promised myself I'd never do that... His shivering body was racked with shudders as he fell into a fit of hacking coughs, and a disgusting tar-like substance filled his mouth. Grimacing, he immediately spit it to the side, trying to ignore the taste of rotting fish in his mouth. He could feel his life force slipping away, and it scared him... but as the world began to darken, he spotted something through the canopy of the Everfree forest. A single beam of sunlight broke through the leaves and struck his cheek, creating a small pool of warmth on his face. A vision of a white mare, with her multicolored mane blowing gently in the intangible breeze, filled his mind for a split second, washing away his fear. I found someone worth dying for, Discord... and I hope that it drives you insane that it wasn't you, my brother. Because for you to go insane... It may make you good again.

I hope that your little "Daughter of Chaos" was worth it, Discord... Because she's killed us all.

Even as he felt himself slipping into the darkness, he tried to understand how this could have happened... How Canterlot could have fallen, how his dearest student could have become his greatest enemy, and how he could have freely given up the life that he had held on to so dearly.

It was a beautiful, sunny day in Equestria. After a thousand years of practice, Eclipse knew that Celestia was good at her job, but she seemed to be putting in an extra effort to making this day beautiful.

Probably because it's a Monday. Everypony hates Mondays. He grinned quietly to himself as he took a sip of chocolate milk.

As he walked down the hallway in the Canterlot castle, Eclipse kept the grin on his face. He had a feeling about today. He still hadn't decided if it was a good feeling or a bad one, but it was a feeling! A tension in the air, like a spring that had been pressed down over the course of several days. The tension had been growing for some time, now, but he had kept his feelings to himself.

Being a draconequus, Eclipse had a close tie to the world around him, feeling the flow and ebb of chaotic energy that allowed him to work his magic. He relied more upon the swells of latent chaos around him, seeing as he wasn't nearly as strong as Discord. The thought had occurred to him that this feeling was actually a warning of something dangerous coming, but Eclipse had waved it away. The only being to directly threaten him had been his older brother, Discord, who had become enraged after discovering that Eclipse had allied himself with the Princesses. Eclipse's smile faded as he shuddered at the memory of his first days in the palace.

He had been an extreme introvert, having hidden himself away out of fear for more than a thousand years in the Everfree forest. He had been terrified when Celestia had found him in the garden labyrinth, visiting Discord's statue, but the two of them had slowly come to trust one another. Discord had tried to stop him, even going so far as to use his signature "color drain" to turn Eclipse on the Princesses, but their loving help had returned him to his normal self, and he had returned to the castle. Since then, Equestria had been through a lot, but Eclipse and the Princesses had always stuck together.

"Hey! Eclipse!" A voice called out from down the hall, startling him from his reverie. As he looked down the hall, he spotted a familiar pink unicorn trotting towards him.

"Whipstitch!" He chuckled as the seamstress pony ran to him, somehow not tripping over her long, black hair. "How did you like that last chaos lesson I sent you?"

"What, you mean that challenge to try and sneak past that parasprite guard at the Northern Border?" She gave him a suspicious glare. "You were trying to throw me into all of that drit with the Crystal Empire, weren't you?"

"Oh, you know me!" Eclipse rolled his eyes with a grin. "I never send you somewhere for just ONE reason!"

"Well, I learned a few new tricks!" She gave him a wide grin. "So I think it's time I had an assessment!"

"An assessment? But I just gave you one last week!" Eclipse shook his head. "You passed with flying colors!"

"Are you kidding? You wound up trapping me in a block of ice!"

"Well, you lasted three minutes in the fight!" Eclipse replied with a grin, despite her skepticism. "And three minutes against a grown draconequus is amazing for a single pony!"

As she lowered her horn, however, Eclipse could tell that a sparring match was about to begin. He had chosen to teach Whipstitch because of her unique heritage: a long line of ponies who had lived with chaos their entire lives. When they had met, she had insisted that he teach her how to control and use chaos magic to her own advantage. She bore a shocking resemblance to her ancestor, Threadmane, who had once fought Discord to a standstill, and Eclipse believed that she might one day live up to that legacy, becoming just as, if not more, proficient in chaos than he was.

If Threadmane could go toe-to-toe with Dizzy, then Whips will probably be able to beat me one day... Discord was a lot stronger than I am. But until then, I'm going to enjoy having the upper claw. With a snap of his fingers, Eclipse summoned a large cloud of cotton candy above his head.

"Well, then, show me what you've got!" He opened his arms, making way for her to start her attack.

Whipstitch looked up, firing off a blast of magical energy at the cloud. Eclipse watched as it changed from a cotton candy cloud to a large anvil, and slammed down on top of his head. Rather than the expected clang and sudden stop, the anvil slammed all the way to the floor, and Eclipse disappeared underneath it.

Whipstitch blinked for a moment, trying to understand what had happened to her mentor.

"Psst! Over here!" Eclipse whispered from somewhere behind her. As she spun around, she was greeted by a stained-glass window of the draconequus, reclining on a bed of parasprites and rubbing his head. "That really hurt!" He gave her a stern glare, though it was made ineffective by the fact that he was simply a group of colored shapes.

"You asked for it, didn't you?" Whipstitch rolled her eyes, tapping at the glass. "Now come on! Hiding in there is cheating!"

"No, it isn't!" Eclipse stuck his tongue out childishly. "You wanted a challenge, so I'm giving you one! Make me come out!"

Whipstitch thought for a moment, pondering the problem, then grinned. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a large black marker and uncapped it. With a little magical telekinesis, she brought the marker up above his head and scrawled out a familiar shape: a large boot. Immediately, the object realized itself in the two-dimensional world, floating down and slamming itself into Eclipse's rear end. With a yelp, Eclipse flew forward and out of the window, falling into a heap at her hooves.

"Now, to show you what I learned..." Whipstitch whispered with a smile. She lowered her horn, closing her eyes in concentration. Her black hair snaked out from her body of its own accord, forming a loop around Eclipse as he slowly rose to his feet, rubbing his bottom and cringing.

"Was that really necessary?" He asked as he looked down around him, noticing the obvious trap. He raised his hand, obviously planning on snapping his fingers to teleport away.

Whipstitch grunted with effort and a pillar of black crystal jumped up, growing up out of her hair and jutting itself between his fingers, stopping him. He looked at her in surprise, even as more crystals grew up and around him, and the hair around him turned into a solid black crystal. Within seconds, he was trapped in a crystalline prison, held in place by bars at every angle. Some pointed straight upwards, and others stood crookedly to wedge themselves beneath his arms, legs, and hold him above the ground. A few small branches even held his fingers apart and his wings spread open, stopping him from struggling. Even his tail was forced to jut out at an awkward angle, fully extended, the frills at the end only barely brushing up against the window pane. The crystals were the same deep black as her mane, but they both reflected and refracted the light, creating a dazzling array of colors and lights in the room, with the mismatched chaos god standing in the center of it all, looking in awe at the display of skill.

Whipstitch finally opened her eyes, then began to giggle and clap her hooves with glee. "I saw King Sombra making crystals just grow out of the ground, and I started trying to figure out how to do the same thing! It wasn't easy, but I realized that I could make crystals from my hair! You know, I wasn't really sure that would work! I was worried one of them might go in the wrong direction..."

Eclipse blinked, then gave her an incredulous look. "THE WRONG DIRECTION? You could have stabbed me!" He grunted with effort, straining against the bonds to no avail.

"Well, I didn't, did I?" She grinned smugly at his fruitless efforts. "I can see you in there, so you're not going to be vanishing away when I'm not looking, I've immobilized your claws, so you can't snap your way out, and the crystal slows down the flow of your chaotic magic so that your powers are weakened!" Her grin grew as she gently tapped the tip of his nose. "You're trapped... and I win! Checkmate!"

Eclipse's eyebrows furrowed in frustration, but a bemused grin still lighted his face.

"I'm proud of you, Whipstitch! You've taken what you've learned and applied it well! You're using your perspective to your advantage, you've obviously put both chaotic and harmonic portions of energy into these crystals to fix me in place, and you're even confident enough in yourself to believe that you even trapped a fully-grown draconequus!" He stretched his tail as far as he could, the tufts of white hair on the tip of his purple tail gently brushing against the glass. "But you should never say 'checkmate' unless you're absolutely sure!" Whipstitch glanced at the window, keeping Eclipse in the corner of her eye. She was surprised to see the hairs tickling the nose of another illustration of himself on the window. This one remained static, but the action seemed to be having a noticeable affect on Eclipse, who was beginning to breath heavily and wrinkle his nose in discomfort.

"You see, there's just one... little problem..." He wheezed between words, eyes beginning to water. "You're still a pony, at heart. You need to put aside... the idea... that the world is based upon logical order... and expect... the unexpected!"

Whipstitch jumped forward, pinching her hoof on his nostrils. She didn't know what it was that would have happened when he sneezed, but she had a feeling that he hadn't simply felt like tickling his nose for nothing.

"Let me guess... It was going to be some kind of 'super sneeze' that would shatter the crystals?"

"Well, no..." Eclipse smiled. "I just wanted to get you close enough to do this!" He snapped his head backwards, as if trying to break free from her grip. Whipstitch held on, but stumbled forward as she did so. As she fell, her horn collided with one of the crystals, chipping off a small piece. As she stood up again, a spiderweb of cracks spread out from the single chip, growing with a chorus of pops and cracks until there wasn't a single non-compromised surface.

"Oh, motherbu-"

She was cut off as Eclipse shattered the crystals, rising to his full height. He shook slightly, sending a few last black shards falling to the ground, then looked down at her and smiled.

"My turn..."

Whipstitch took a step back, and was surprised to find her hoof in something wet. She looked down to see a small black puddle where the crystal shards had been. Her eyes darted left and right, confirming her suspicions. All of the crystals were melting into an ink-like liquid and forming a large puddle around her hooves. She jumped to the left, but the puddle moved beneath her, and she simply landed with a small splash. Using her magic, she tried to levitate herself into the air, but the liquid seemed to suck at her hooves like thick mud, keeping her rooted to the ground. She looked at Eclipse, who had his arms folded smugly across his chest. He wasn't smug often, and Whipstitch knew that it couldn't be good news for her that he was now.

"Would you care to try jumping again?" Eclipse asked with a wink, prompting her to roll her eyes.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Well, we always have a choice... you could just surrender!"

"To a puddle? Not a chance!" Whipstitch jumped up again, this time using her levitation spell once she was already in the air. It seemed to work, keeping her aloft at about eye level with her teacher, and she grinned at him in celebration. In that moment, just when she thought that she had outsmarted the strange puddle, Eclipse snapped his fingers. In a sudden surge, the black liquid struck upwards, taking hold of her back hoof and violently yanking her downwards. With a cry of indignation, the unicorn was pulled down and back into the puddle. Somehow, she kept falling, the puddle seemingly having grown somehow deeper, and she vanished from sight.

It was at this point that Celestia came in on the scene, a light smile lighting her face at the familiar face of the draconequus.

"Eclipse! I was wondering if you could help me-"

"Just a minute, Tia!" Eclipse held up a single finger, then reached down and tapped the puddle with his finger. It froze at his touch, forming a crystal mirror on the floor. He picked it up, spun it a few times on the tip of his finger, then turned it to the reverse of the side that he had picked it up from. As Whipstitch fell head-first onto the floor in a heap of hair and pony, Celestia gave him a questioning look that he simply returned with a shrug. Whipstitch began to gently groan as Eclipse snapped his fingers and the mirror disappeared. "Say it, Whips!"

"Uncle..." She muttered, giving him a burning glare from underneath the hair covering her face.

"Hey, you made me break out the big tricks! Be proud of yourself! I'd call that 'ready for the next level of magic!'" Eclipse gave her a wink as he picked the dejected pony up and set her down on her hooves. "I'll send you your first advanced lesson this week! Making it rain assorted beverages!"

Celestia rolled her eyes, not sure whether she should feel amused by or sorry for Whipstitch. She, however, needed his attention for something far more important. Eclipse had seemingly found his place in Equestrian society when it had been discovered that his parasprite creations could be used to protect the borders of the nation, but something strange had been happening, lately. Something that made Celestia worry about the safety of the ponies that she watched over.

"Eclipse, there's something wrong with your parasprites... Captain Armor and several guards from the Northern border are here claiming that something strange has been happening all over the edges of the country..."

"Tia, I told Cadence, the whole 'avoiding the crystal empire' thing is to stop them from messing around with the kingdom's natural magic! It's nothing personal!" He gave Celestia a small pout. "Though I am still mad at her for moving so far away..."

"Eclipse, please! I know that you and Whipstitch have a lot of fun, but I need you to come back to being serious!" Celestia would normally have been happy to see the timid draconequus having a good time, but this wasn't the time for levity. "They're saying that parasprites, entire patrols, are being found dead at the borders!"

Eclipse's smile immediately dropped from his face, and he gave her a cold glare. Celestia almost regretted asking him to become serious, as the transition was sudden and drastic. He had always been very close to his parasprites, claiming that they had helped him to survive in Everfree. Now, when they had taken up the mantle of guarding Equestria's borders under his orders, all ponies were beginning to appreciate them as more than simple pests.

"Show me. Show me right now."

Pennington Inkwell wiped the sweat from his brow as he worked under the glaring sun. He was a long way from Equestria on an archaeological dig, and he was doing his absolute best to enjoy himself in a country that seemed to be comprised almost entirely of sandstone. There were nothing but flat expanses of sandstone for miles around, creating a veritable oven on the entire surface of the earth. He had tried telling himself that a request straight from Eclipse Tumult, himself, was an honor, but all that he had managed to do was generate a large amount of pent-up hatred for the draconequus. He had tried everything that he could think of to make the grueling task of excavating the arid land a pleasant one.

It wasn't working.

"This is so boring!" He tossed aside his pickaxe in frustration. "I swear, when I get back, I'm going to give 'the last draconequus' a piece of my mind! In fact, I have half a mind to give him the whole thing!" He paused for a moment, chuckled at the play on words, then groaned loudly at the horrible humor. "That's it! The sun is soaking through to my brain! I'm just going to shut up..." He took a long drink of disgustingly warm water from a nearby bottle, then picked up the pickaxe. "And get back to work."

Taking his frustration out on the ground, Pennington swung down harder than before, taking a large chunk out of the earth. He tossed it aside with his magic and struck again, grunting with the effort as he dug the pointed end into the groove left behind. In that moment, something changed. Instead of the resolute stubbornness of the sandstone, the pickaxe only met resistance for a moment, and a loud cracking sound was heard as it broke through into the other side of some kind of wall. Immediately, he froze and took in his surroundings.

He was standing in an indentation in the ground that he had chiseled out, himself, most of which was at almost the same depth as this break in the ground. If the hollow space was very large, he knew that the ground could give way at any time. He could be about to take a fall of undetermined length into an area that may or may not have some kind of trap in it, and there were more cracks that formed in the stone beneath his hooves. This was a very bad situation.

If Twilight finds out I got injured on a trip that she specifically told me NOT to take, I'm going to be in some deeper trouble than this... He thought to himself. You know, it's times like this that I wish she was here to help me out... I really need to ask her about self-levitation...

"Over here! I need some help!" He shouted, doing his best not to move. "I think I found something!"

A group of other ponies quickly ran over to him, then stopped when they saw the cracked ground beneath his hooves.

"Okay, Pennington... Just hang tight." A pegasus pony whispered. "We'll get you out of there. Any other unicorns around here?"

A few ponies raised their hooves, and the others parted to let them through.

"'Hang tight,' Sure Shot?" Pennington chuckled lightly, giving his old pegasus friend a glance. "I'm not going to lose my nerve, I've been in worse situations than this!"

"Yeah, but when was the last time you fell for a pitfall trap?" The banter helped Pennington stay calm, despite the fact that the cracks underneath him were growing wider and more numerous. It was definitely a case of standing on thin ice.

"Well, the best traps are the simplest..." Pennington took a moment to ready his own horn in case things went wrong. Using his magic, he took a grasp on the outer edge of the hole, on a piece of stone that he could tell was secure. Only a few seconds later, his instinct proved to be right as he watched one of the unicorn ponies' hooves strike the chunk of rock that he had thrown away only moments before. Time seemed to slow down as the pony fell forward and into his hole in the ground, inch by painful inch. When the pony collided with the ground, there was a huge cracking sound, and the ground gave way completely. Both of them fell.

Instinctively, Pennington poured all of the magical energy that he could muster into his grip on the rock above, solidifying the connection into a physical form: a rope. He had learned the skill of creating solid objects from magic a long time ago, and it had saved his life more times than he could count. They didn't last very long, and Pennington lost a large portion of his energy when he did so, but he still had enough to hold on for dear life, wrapping it around his hoof to secure his hanging position.

The other unicorn plummeted to the floor, landing in a disheveled heap on the floor.

"Are you alright?" Pennington asked, struggling to see his fellow unicorn as his eyes adjusted to the dark room.

"I- I think I'm okay..." The pony slowly stood up, rubbing the back of his head. He looked around, obviously unsure, and started to take a step forward.

"Don't move!" Pennington shouted, stopping him short. "You don't know if there's any kind of trap in here!"

"I don't see anything..." The pony muttered, pulling back his hoof and taking a smaller, more hesitant step. "I think that it's empty in here..."

"I'm telling you, that's what they all say before the trap kills them!" Pennington replied, even as his grip on the rope weakened. He could feel the energy of maintaining the rope seeping out of his body, and he knew that he only had one option: to fall. He took a deep breath, whispered a quick prayer, and cut off the flow of energy into the rope, letting it fade away into mist under his hooves. The moment that he hit the floor, he tucked in his front leg and dropped into a roll, dodging whatever projectiles might have been triggered by the landing. After a single revolution, he was back up on his hooves, ready to jump into the air to dodge another onslaught. The other unicorn simply stared at him as if he were crazy, most likely due to the fact that nothing had happened. He had been dodging air.

"Well, better safe than sorry, I guess..." He muttered, walking past Pennington with a sigh. "Do you know what those are?"

As Pennington looked in the direction that he was pointing in, he saw something that he hadn't noticed, before. Three pedestals jutted out from the wall, each holding a large stone orb. Every orb had an inscription and a symbol carved into the surface. The inscriptions were in an indecipherable jumble of glyphs, but the illustrations were quite clear. One orb held a picture of a broad shield, one was a picture of a long, broad sword, and the third was some kind of crown, standing between and above the two..

"I think we really found something big..." Pennington whispered. Without a word, the other pony stepped up, trying to touch them. "No! No, don't!"

It was too late. There was a loud cracking sound, a flash of light, and the unicorn was laying on the ground, his body blackened and smoldering. A disgusting smell of burning hair and flesh filled the room, and the second before Pennington turned away was plenty of time for him to take in the image of the body. The unicorn had been a dark orange to begin with, but all of the fur on his body and his mane had been scorched to a coal-like black. He looked as if a million volts had run through his body at once, and his mouth was hanging open. A small amount of soot had fallen out when he had hit the ground, which Pennington could only imagine were the remains of his tongue and teeth. His eyes seemed to have disappeared completely, leaving ashy holes in his skull where they had once been staring up at Pennington. Even his cutie mark had been affected, and in the most disturbing way. The pony had originally been a specialist at dating ancient objects, and his cutie mark had been a sundial next to a modern clock. Now, there was only a pale white mark standing out from the black with no trace of his previous identity left. Pennington had seen ponies die before, it was an unfortunate part of investigating the most dangerous, paranormal, and dangerous creatures in Equestria, and he still hated it. He couldn't stand to see a living creature, an identity all its own and unique in every way, being destroyed.

Trying not to gag at both the sickening stench and the body below him, Pennington was about to step away from the dangerous objects, when he had a feeling. He was scared, but something in the room had changed. What had once seemed cold and forbidding was now warm and welcoming. Nothing had changed in the room, but he didn't feel afraid, even in spite of the dead pony laying on the ground before him. The dim room felt cozy and personal, as if it were all his own. He tried to shake it off, but the feeling only grew stronger.

And then he had it. He knew that he shouldn't have had it, but he did. The trigger. The crazy idea. The impulse.

I think these things are alive, or something... If I approach with respect and proper subjection... maybe I can get closer.

Maybe I can touch them...

And, in his mind, the challenge had been issued. There was no backing down, now. Not without losing his self-respect.

Just remember... These things, whatever they are, are trying to make you feel welcome and at peace... When they attack, they attack with open aggression. They want you here.

I can do this...

Foreshadows

Eclipse was surprised to find Celestia leading him to the council room, usually reserved for times of crisis. As the two of them walked inside, Eclipse took a quick note of all of the ponies present. Shining Armor, his old friend, was sitting at the head of the table, looking uncharacteristically grim. Princess Cadence as sitting right next to him, looking over what appeared to be photographs and maps. Next to her, in turn, was a green-coated pegasus in modified Night Guard armor, pointing at different places on the map and retrieving more photographs from a saddlebag. When he came in, Cadence looked up at him, smiled a little as she waved her hoof, then went back to the notes, quietly talking with Shining Armor. Among several nervous-looking guards were the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Pinkie Pie seemed more interested in talking than anypony else, enthusiastically shaking hooves with everyone. Applejack and Rarity were both looking at other photos, Rarity wearing a pair of red glasses in order to see extra detail. Fluttershy was simply sitting quietly, shivering with fear. A photograph was sitting on the table in front of her, obviously having been what scared her. Rainbow Dash wasn't actually in a chair, instead anxiously flying circles around the ceiling. Twilight was sitting with the green pegasus, quietly talking. The two of them obviously knew each other, judging from how they were talking. Eclipse could tell that this was serious, but he still had no idea what was wrong. Luna was sitting at the close end of the table, and motioned for them to sit, as well. She was missing her usual smile, but she still held herself with a royal air. Whatever this was, it had her worried, as well. Celestia sat next to Luna, taking the head of the table, and Eclipse sat next to her, filling the last chair in the triad.

"On the behalf of my sister and I, I would like to thank you all for coming..." Luna spoke up, declaring an end to the muttered conversations. Silence fell like a stone. "It has come to all of our attention that there appears to be a threat at our borders... it has been viciously attacking Eclipse's parasprite guards, and we have good reason to consider it both sentient and of malicious intent. Our goal is to determine what it is and what its motives may be." As a consensus of nods ran throughout the table, the younger Princess looked up at her sister. "We do believe that this thing first appeared outside of Equestria, and has been pacing near our borders for some time. My supporters in the New Lunar Republic seem to have had the first encounter with it." When Celestia nodded her approval, Luna turned back to face the table. "Mister Sure Shot is here representing the NLR and brings all of their information on encounters and sightings. I would like to pass control of the discussion to him for the time being."

The ponies all nodded, and Eclipse nodded with them. Whatever this thing was, it had certainly made everypony morbidly serious. When it comes to the safety of Equestria, Celestia and Luna don't mess around...

He had learned about the two support organizations, the New Lunar Republic and the Solar Empire, shortly after becoming the princesses' personal adviser. While it sounded as if the two organizations would be at odds with one another, one supporting Luna and the other supporting Celestia, the two merely demonstrated a spirit of competition, each trying to outdo the other. Each one supported both princesses, but specialized in meeting the needs of one in particular. There was a lot that went on behind the scenes of Canterlot, Eclipse had discovered, that went unseen to the naked eye,

"Thank you, your highness." Sure Shot stood, seemed to be unsure for a moment, then nodded to himself and took to the air, taking a stack of papers with him. As he floated though the air, he began passing them out to the gathered ponies in packets. "The NLR base in the Plains of Lore seemed to come across this creature's first manifestation, albeit unknowingly. It had seemed to be a group of unrelated events, until now..." As he finally reached them, he gave Celestia, Luna, and Eclipse each a packet of several pages. The first page was a large photograph of a creature that Eclipse recognized from a long time ago, before he came to Equestria. It looked like a gigantic worm, as long as a hoofball field, with a gigantic mouth at one end, lined with fangs.

"The first occurrence was the death of several dune worms. I have seen, myself, how difficult these creatures can be to kill, usually requiring a precise strike to the nerve bundle in their midsection to end their lives... My team, as you know, hunts the monsters for a living, recovering the small bundles of magical energy stored in their bodies for use in magical enhancers at a high profit... However, when we opened these dune worms to look, not only had those magic reserves been drained, leaving the organs holding them shriveled and decayed, but they seemed to have been killed from the inside. As we looked around to try and determine the cause of death, it appeared as if they'd had holes simply drilled into them, coming out from their stomach. You'll find an illustration of the wounds on page two..."

Eclipse turned the page, and was greeted by a transparent sketch of the creature, showing all of its organs and internal body structure. In the center, however, was what appeared to be some kind of nest of spines, jutting out long spikes that stabbed through the creature, stopping just below the skin.

"I can't help but notice two things, Sure Shot..." Twilight finally spoke up, keeping a thoughtful hoof on her chin. "One, that this originated from the main stomach... Whatever it was, it got chewed and swallowed, then attacked... And the other thing is that, if the magical reserves were dried up, then this thing may have been attacking them for the same reason they feed on unicorns: to gather magical energy, and it's being very shifty about it..."

Sure Shot nodded. "That's why we think that we may be dealing with something of amorphous shape and very reliant on magical energy to survive. If you will all look to the next page, you'll find the official report on the matter filed by my crew and I." He cringed a bit as he preemptively turned his own page.

"After that, there were several attacks on nighttime guards, though each seemed to escape with only minor injuries..." You will find a list of the summaries of the incident reports on the next page."

Eclipse turned his page, but couldn't help his eye wandering to the next page, where there was another large photograph. It showed a bright yellow colored earth pony, dressed in Night Guard armor like Sure Shot's. She looked badly beaten, both of her eyes blackened with bruises in her swollen face, her front legs sticking out at awkward angles and bleeding from long cuts. there were more lacerations along her sides, and Eclipse could tell immediately that both of her back legs had been dislocated. Her red mane was caked with blood, which had dried to a dark brown color. Her tail was even missing hair in places, the skin below stained as if she had been burned by acid. There were two deep gashes forming an "X" across her cutie mark on both sides, to the point where they couldn't be made out for what they were.

There was a sound of a loud gasp, and when Eclipse looked in the direction of the sound, it appeared that Twilight knew the pony, because her hoof was covering her mouth.

"This... thing got Quick Strike?" She asked, eyes wide.

"Our combat specialist... was assaulted more thoroughly than the others while on patrol..." Sure Shot gave Twilight an apologetic look. "This is confidential, at her request, to any pony who was not present at the time... She wanted to avoid losing face with those she teaches." He took a moment to shudder when he glanced down at the picture again. "She will be fine, with time. Broken bones heal, thanks to the help of some of our most experienced doctors... But her account of the attack is disturbing, to say the least." He turned the page again. "Her own account is not for the faint of heart, but to summarize, the thing appeared to her as a black fog, nearly indistinguishable in the night. It then proceeded to assault her, and she describes it as taking on several different forms, from a omnipresent mist to a simple black earth pony. Whatever this thing is, it's a shapeshifter."

"It tested her physically, testing the physical limitations of a pony, including what was required to break or even kill one..." He shuddered. "She claims that it only left her alive because it said that it wanted her to live with the trauma... Proving three things. One: that this creature is sentient, two: that it plans to attack other ponies, and is more than likely to kill, and three: that it is sadistic. It enjoys the pain of others."

Eclipse's heart skipped a beat as an old memory came back to mind, and the realization slammed him in the face with all of the force of a freight train. He shook his head, trying to shake off the shock as he looked down at the written account. It was a word-for-word transcription of Quick Strike's words.

It was everywhere at once... It was like, once I stepped into the mist, I had already surrendered... I couldn't do anything. I punched at it, of course, when I realized that it had been the one that had scratched me on my flank, but it didn't work, of course... It was like trying to punch smoke, my hoof went right through it. It laughed... It laughed at me. I tried to run, but I was lifted into the air, instead. It was like some unicorn was holding me up, but... It turned me onto my back, then pulled my legs out so that my stomach was exposed. And then I heard a voice. It sounded like a girl... like the voice of Nightmare Moon herself... It said, "Okay, then... Let's see what makes you tick..." And then... it went into me. It- it was horrible! The smoke, it pried open my mouth, it sank in through my skin... everywhere. It was everywhere. I could feel it inside me, rolling around in my body, turning my stomach, poking at my organs, playing with my bones... And then it seemed to become violent. My body couldn't hold it, couldn't take it any more... It felt like I was going to explode from the inside! I thought that I was going to die! And then, all of a sudden, it came out again, pouring out through my mouth in a giant gust... After that...

"Did she give a name?" Eclipse asked quietly, looking up from the information packet again. "Did she call herself anything?"

Sure Shot, who had been in the middle of a sentence, was cut off at the sudden interruption. It was the first time that Eclipse had actually spoken in the meeting. He had noticed a few odd looks, perhaps because nopony expected a draconequus to sit quietly and listen during a calm, organized meeting. Indeed, he would agree that it was slightly out of character for him, but if this was important to the Princesses, he would be willing to take it seriously... With the exception of a glass of chocolate milk every few minutes, of which he took a nervous gulp before asking again.

"Did she give a name, Sure Shot?"

"Well, no..." He looked around the table from his vantage point in the air. "Unless anypony else saw an instance with a name?"

As a group of murmurs answered in the negative, Eclipse felt his spirits continue to fall. Celestia turned to him, looking worried.

"Do you think that you might know what this is, Eclipse?"

"Not without a name... It could be any number of things." He muttered, trying not to make eye contact. "Anyway, carry on, please."

"Eclipse... if you know anything, it is your duty to speak now." Luna turned to look at him, as well. In fact, the entire table was staring at him, making him slightly uncomfortable.

"I was just wondering, Luna! A name might have helped! You know I've seen a lot of crazy stuff in my time... I lived in a lot of other places before Equestria!" He started to feel as if he were on the defensive, and a cotton candy cloud formed out of nervousness over his head. "Please... Just keep going! I don't have anything to say!"

The ponies all looked at each other, then began to talk again, but Celestia kept staring at him, one eyebrow raised in suspicion.

"Tia, please... It was nothing." He whispered.

She frowned for a moment, then leaned in closer. "I'll want to know what you were thinking, later..."

Eclipse nodded quietly as Sure Shot finished talking.

"Thank you, Sure Shot... We appreciate the information, and the presentation was well-done." Luna nodded as she looked over to Shining Armor. "Captain Armor, I do believe that you have some information for us from the borders?"

"Yes, your highness." As Sure Shot returned to his seat, Shining Armor rose out of his, using his magic to pass a group of photographs to the pony to his left. "As you'll see in these photographs coming around, there have been several attacks at the borders. Border security hasn't been a problem since Eclipse introduced the use of parasprite squadrons to patrol, rather than ponies. However, we have been finding entire squadrons dead... drained in a manner similar to the dune worms' magical reserves. The moment that we try to touch them, they turn into dust and crumble away..."

Eclipse's eyes grew wide, and rather than skipping a beat, his heart felt as if it had stopped completely.

"The first few sightings were all in the same area, on the easternmost point of Equestria, but they've been appearing all over the border, now. We don't quite understand what could be doing this, or why it doesn't come further into the country..." As the pictures came to Eclipse, he took them with a trembling hand. "But the last attack left a message spelled out with the corpses... somehow."

One by one, he shuffled his way through the images, his precious paraspites' dead faces staring out at him, eyes wide open and afraid. Parasprites were a favorite snack of his, true, but the ones that he ate were created without thought, without a thinking mind or a personality, and he would reduce them from a living creature to a dried fruit before consuming them. This was simple cruelty, feasting on creatures that could feel the pain as they were drained by their life force. Finally, he reached the final photograph. He almost couldn't see it because of the tears welling up in his eyes, but the message was spelled out clearly.

Hello, Daddy... I'm coming.

Be ready.

Eclipse blinked a few times, trying to process how this was even possible. It was definitely her. There was no mistaking it, this message was for him. The confirmation spun in his mind, and the room began to spin as well, as he became light-headed from the shock. Suddenly unbalanced, he put a claw on Celestia's shoulder as he tried to steady himself.

"Eclipse, are you alright? Eclipse?" Celestia's question came too late as Eclipse slumped forward, falling into unconsciousness on the table.

Across the world, Pennington finally emerged from the hole in the ground, lifted by several unicorns. He, in turn, was lifting the three large artifacts via magic, spinning the orbs in a small circle around himself. As his hooves touched the ground again, a small purple dragon came running up to him, waving her winged arms in an act just short of panicking. When she reached him, she jumped up and wrapped both arms around his neck in a tight hug.

"Penn! Are you alright?" I heard that there had been some kind of cave-in, and that you were in it! Then, when I tried to get closer, those dumb ponies wouldn't let me! They said that it was 'too dangerous!'" To illustrate, she pointed to the ponies around them, including the unicorns that had just helped him out of the cave.

"I'm fine, Moonstone..." Pennington smiled and gently peeled her off of his neck. "And they were right, it was too dangerous..." He took a moment, turning to the rest of the group.

"Everyone! Nopony is to touch these artifacts in any manner, nor are they to enter that room! Understand? What we are dealing with fried Carbon Date to a black crisp!" Any other conversation amongst the ranks stopped dead. Everyone had been thrown into shock. A few of them looked ready to cry. "Artifacts. Room. Both off limits!" Knowing that he didn't want to be around when ponies started mourning, Pennington lifted Moonstone onto his back, turned his back on the crowd, and walked away. Like it or not, he had to keep face in front of the ponies that he was leading on the expedition.

So, instead, he turned his mind to the artifacts as he walked back to his tent.

"Is he- Is he really dead?" Moonstone whispered as they walked, gently bouncing up and down on his back. "You were only down there a few minutes..."

"It was like he was struck by the world's strongest bolt of lightning..." Pennington stopped the revolution of the orbs around himself, ending with the lightning inscription in front of himself. "They seem to like me, though... In fact, I think that there may have been a reason why I chose that spot to dig..."

Moonstone blinked in confusion. "Penn... I don't know if we're seeing the same things, again..."

Pennington craned his neck to look at his assistant. "Well, what is it? What you're seeing is bound to be helpful, right?"

Moonstone was the youngest in a very old family of dragons, which, like many of her ancestors before her, had allowed her to be born with a gift, a magical ability that she was to hone and grow over time. The gift she had was to see truth, and see things for what they truly were, rather than for what they appeared to be. She could see through lies, secrets, and even, on the rare occasion, see dangerous intent in other ponies. She'd been growing stronger on her adventures with Pennington, and he had learned the hard way that, on many an occasion, ignoring what she saw was a bad idea.

"Well... I know that these are supposed to be those stone orb thingies, but I just realized how close that they look to the Elements of Harmony in their dormant state. You know, like in 'The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide.'"

Pennington nodded, remembering that, before she had been assigned by Luna to be his assistant, Moonstone had worked preserving books in the restricted sections of the Canterlot Archives.

"You're right!" Pennington looked more closely, recalling the book that Twilight had showed him so many times. The orbs did, indeed look like the Elements had. "But there are only six elements, and they never hurt anypony.."

"Yes, but they don't look like that to me, any more..." Moonstone muttered, not taking her eyes off on the orb in front of her. "In fact, when I look at them, it's like I'm watching a movie, and they're the screen..." She stood up on his back and stepped forward, unceremoniously stepping on his head.

"Hey! Moonstone, what are you- hey! Stop!" Before he could react, Moonstone was reaching out for the sphere. Her claws stopped just short of the inscription, but Pennington could see the energy crackling between them, building like static. He stepped back, trying to get Moonstone away from danger, but the orbs moved with them, now hovering under their own power.

There was a tiny spark between Moonstone and the stone, and she suddenly fell backwards, landing on Pennington's back.

"Moonstone! Moonstone, are you okay?"

"I'm fine! I'm fine..." Moonstone muttered, rubbing at her shocked claw. Even as she did, however, her eyes grew wider. "Ummm, Penn? I think that was what I was seeing..."

As Pennington turned around, he saw the the orbs had floated out and away from them, hovering together in a triangle formation. Between the three of them, an image flickered to life. Pennington was transfixed as he watched the scene they played out.

It started with a vision of Canterlot, bright and shining, glittering on every surface, and an all-around beautiful sight. The orb versions of the Elements of Harmony hovered in the sky above, providing a watchful eye over the city. However, as they continued to stare, the image darkened and became cloudy, until the scene had changed from a beautiful day into a foggy, dark night. Clouds of darkness spread across the image, and soon the only part of the image that remained bright was the Elements of Harmony. They began to glow brightly, trying to spread light in the darkness, but they flickered, faded, and finally went dim as the darkness took full control. amidst the darkness, the sun fell. It didn't simply set, though, it fell uncontrollably in blazing flames and smoke. No moon rose, and soon, the entire scene faded to total black. The two of them could hear laughter coming from the darkness, as well. A deep, feminine laugh that reminded Pennington of Nightmare Moon's cackle. Slowly, a new image faded into existence from the darkness... The three orbs standing before them. They simply stood in the darkness, as if unaffected by the evil that had blotted everything out. The three of them began to glow soundlessly, the light building and building between them until it burst outward, banishing the darkness and making Canterlot bright again... Or, at least, what used to be Canterlot. Pennington and Moonstone's breath both caught in their throats as they observed the city in ruin, totally destroyed. Houses had caved in and were on fire, the sky was blood red, and the castle had crumbled, every tower having fallen in on itself, every roof having collapsed in, and the entire thing teetering on the brink of the cliff-side foundation that the entire city had been built upon. Ponies cried in the streets, and the sky was lit by a solar eclipse. Like a camera in a movie, the view suddenly came to the front of the castle, zooming towards the fractured front steps. Pennington and Moonstone watched as they finally began to make out the details of what was lying on them: Luna and Celestia's crumpled bodies, tossed aside like trash, and the Elements of Harmony between them in their current forms: necklaces and a tiara. Every gemstone of the elements was shattered, and the golden frames twisted and gnarled almost beyond recognition. Finally, as the view panned out again, three new objects were floating above Canterlot: a gleaming, iridescent shield of ever-changing colors, a huge broadsword, wider at the tip, seemingly created from the same color-shifting material as the shield, and a crown matching the inscriptions he had seen in the secret room. The three objects together glowed and glimmered with light, scintillating as they illuminated the dark sky, seemingly bringing a strange new dawn.

And then, all at once, the image flickered away, and the three orbs fell to the ground, their energy seemingly spent.

Pennington and Moonstone were frozen in horror at what they had seen. Silently, the dragon tightened her grip on Pennington's neck from behind.

"Penn... That was scary..."

"Moonstone, we need to get to Canterlot... Now."

Things Begin to Happen

"Eclipse? Ecliiiipse?"

"Hold on, Luna... I think that he's waking up."

Eclipse's eyes slowly flickered open, pulling away the darkness of unconsciousness and revealing the two Princesses, anxiously staring down at him. Celestia's face was full of gentle concern, while Luna's grimace showed a mix of worry and frustration.

"Are you alright, Eclipse?" Celestia asked as he slowly sat up on the bed that somepony had obviously laid him in, placing a supportive hoof on his back. "You just fainted in the middle of the security meeting!"

Eclipse lifted his claw to his forehead, massaging his aching temples as he realized that he had been brought to his room in the castle. "I- I'm fine. Just wishing that meeting had been a dream..."

"You didn't miss much. Sure Shot and Shining Armor got into an argument about whether the New Lunar Republic had better guards than the Solar Empire, and things just went downhill from there until he called the meeting 'over.'" Luna gave a small smile. "We really should do something about the competition between those groups... It's unhealthy."

"Yes, but more importantly..." Celestia slowly sat down, her tall figure still keeping her at eye-level on her haunches. "Would you like to explain what happened back there? You gave us all a good scare!"

Eclipse blinked a few times in confusion, his mind racing for an excuse for his actions.

"Well, I... Haven't been sleeping well, lately! Staying up late, tossing and turning, it seems like I can only get any kind of sleep during the day! In fact- it seems like it's almost time for my daily nap!" He pulled one of his arms out from behind his back, glancing at a newly materialized watch. At the skeptical looks from both ponies, he let out a long sigh.

"Okay, I can skip my nap for today, if you two REALLY need me on advisement duty..."

"Eclipse, one of the reasons I stay up so late is because I can practically hear your snoring through the walls. You haven't been having any kind of trouble sleeping." The concern faded from Luna's face, giving way to an unamused frown. "Strike one."

Eclipse's forced smile quickly faded away, as well.

"Alright! Fine... I... think that somepony might have been wearing zap-apple-scented perfume, or something! It might not have been that noticeable to you, but it was overpowering to me! I was trying to be polite, but I just couldn't keep it up for very long!" He gave them another sheepish grin, but the unnerving glares from both Princesses demonstrated that the lie had not convinced either of them.

"Strike two, Eclipse Tumult..." Celestia spoke slowly and deliberately, indicating that she would no longer put up with any more fooling around. "We all know that you run at the slightest whiff of zap apples... They can kill you."

Eclipse took a moment, then nodded. "Fair point, Princess..."

"You may as well tell them, you know!"

Celestia and Luna immediately jumped in surprise, looking around the room, trying to find the source of the voice. After a few seconds, they both looked at Eclipse, who rolled his eyes and jutted his thumb towards the wall. Following his prompt, the two Princesses saw what appeared to be a small mosaic of the draconequus standing between the trees painted on his wall. Eclipse grinned as the two alicorns looked back and forth between him and his two-dimensional counterpart, who simply grinned in return and crossed his arms.

"What? Sometimes, I need expert advice!" Eclipse chuckled as both Princesses rolled their eyes in reply to his egotistical joke. When they weren't looking, he shot the illustration a dirty glance, dragging his finger across his neck to indicate that it needed to shut up.

What? You know I'm right! She's coming whether you tell them or not! And you can't tell me to shut up! I'm the one who's supposed to say the things you won't admit!

"Who?" Celestia and Luna turned away from Eclipse and to the wall, instead, slightly offensive from his perspective. "Who's coming?"

Why, his DAUGHTER, of course! Who did you THINK the note was written to?

Both Princesses' jaws immediately dropped, slowly turning back around to face the "real" Eclipse. The moment of silence that settled over the room was the most awkward that the three of them had ever experienced.

"You- you have a DAUGHTER?" Luna stuttered.

"You're a FATHER? And you never TOLD US?" Celestia's face was beginning to flush at the revelation.

"Look, when he says it THAT way, it sounds like something it isn't..." Eclipse bit his lip in embarrassment, glancing to either side, rather than at Celestia and Luna. "She's only my daughter because I helped CREATE her! Aside from that, I never wanted anything to do with her!" He took a moment to think as both of the Princesses grew even more shocked, their eyes widening and jaws dropping anew. "No! THAT'S not what I meant, either! I mean, she was made by magic, not.. well..."

"The usual way."

"Exactly!"

Luna let out a long sigh of relief, but Celestia still looked concerned. "Eclipse, that still doesn't explain much. Who exactly is she? How did you... make her?"

"Well, if you're looking for a name, she has a few! Eris, 'The Miasma,' Nightmare Moon... Discord liked to call her his 'little Alicorn assassin!'"

Just when it seemed that nothing could have shocked the Princesses further, this bombshell dropped. The two of them looked to one another, trying to comprehend what they had just heard.

"Did he just say... alicorn ASSASSIN?"

"And NIGHTMARE MOON?" Luna added.

When they looked back at Eclipse, he was already gone, a trap door in his bedsheets swinging shut.

"ECLIPSE TUMULT!" Celestia shouted, grabbing at his bedspread to try and follow. Unfortunately, it had already vanished from existence, impossible to recreate without Eclipse, himself. Immediately, she looked back at the illustration on the wall, but it had already disappeared, as well.

Even as she gave up the fruitless efforts, a flash of violet fire flew in through the open skylight, floating downwards and gathering itself in front of Luna's face before metamorphosing into a scroll, which she caught with her magic.

"Pennington, I don't have time for this..." Luna muttered angrily as she tossed the scroll aside with a frustrated grunt. As it rolled onto a nearby desk, however, she saw the word "URGENT" written in red letters of his messy hoofwriting. For a moment, Luna gave the letter an even stronger glare, until the red letters began to turn brown as whatever they were written in fully dried.

"Is that... Blood?" Celestia whispered, breaking the moment of silence.

"Only Pennington Inkwell would do something like that..." Luna rolled her eyes and picked up the scroll, hastily breaking the seal. "He must have forgotten to take red ink with him... Again." After a few seconds, Luna let out a long groan of defeat, reading the beginning of the letter out loud.

"'Dear Princess Luna... It is my belief that Canterlot may be in grave danger.' Oh, how wonderful. More problems."

"They never really stop, do they?"

Eclipse fell a long way, but he had thankfully put a gradient into the the impromptu escape route, allowing him to control his descent. He took a moment to breathe and relax, caught up in a pocket dimension pathway. If he had actually been traveling through real space, he would have broken through at least three floors of the palace, by now.

"Why? Why did he have to say that?" He muttered, slamming his palm against his own forehead. "Of all the things to say, and all the possible ways that he could have said it... He had to get me into trouble! And, I mean, I didn't want to explain it! Especially not to them..." He smacked himself a few more times for good measure. "Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why do I always have to screw everything up for myself?"

As he slid down the seemingly endless slope, he thought that he could hear an unfamiliar noise, but he couldn't quite make it out.

A few seconds later, however, he heard something else quite clearly.

"Hello, Daddy..."

A voice hissed from the darkness, dripping with malice. It was low, but feminine in nature, and unmistakable to the draconequus. "Did you miss me?"

Eclipse felt his heart not only skip a beat, but stop altogether out of fear. After a few seconds, he realized that it was more than just a feeling, and quickly slammed his fist against his chest, prompting the faulty organ to start again.

"Did I scare you, Daddy? I'm SOO sorry..." Still heavy-laden with cynicism, the voice continued.

Eclipse shook his head, snapping his fingers to exit the pocket dimension. To his surprise, though, nothing happened. Confused, he snapped again, and a sudden bolt of electricity shot out from the wall and zapped his lion's paw, bringing his attempts to leave to a painful halt.

"Aren't you happy to see me, TUMULT? The voice sent chills down Eclipse's spine as he realized that he was trapped.

"O-of course, Eris... It's been a while since I had the snot scared out of me..." He muttered his reply, remembering her name as easily as her sadistic streak.

"I see that you still left Daddy Discord all alone... what a shame!" She chuckled, making Eclipse shudder. "I'd hoped to at least have HIM around..."

"Yes, well, I'm afraid that Dizzy had to be put in time-out..." Eclipse swallowed loudly, trying hard to retain his presence of mind. If knew that he could keep the banter with Eris going, he might find a way out. "I can see that you're still up to your old tricks... Your 'fun' at the New Lunar Republic has certainly caused a stir..."

""Fun?" Tumult, that wasn't for recreation! That was simply... sending a message." She paused, then laughed lightly, once again forcing Eclipse to shudder. "Well, it still was pretty fun... You should have heard that pony squeal! She thought that she was SO tough... Until I showed her that against magic, she was still just another earth pony."

"I don't understand one thing, though..." Eclipse raised his injured hand to his chin, seemingly in thought. "Why did you let Quick Strike live? Not to say that I'm not glad that you did, but it's not your style... Letting them get away. If you're about to lose your toy, you make sure no one can have it."

"Oh, Tumult, you haven't changed a bit! Seeing me as some kind of bratty child..." Eris's next words came from right behind Eclipse, as if she had been whispering in his ear.

You didn't get the whole story, I think... She was *powerless,** and that made her afraid. Things happened that night that shattered her to the core... Things that she won't speak of until the day that she dies.* As the voice grew more and more smug and confident in itself, Eclipse began to shake with fear, causing him to slide even faster down the passageway. I wanted her to live with that, Tumult. To remember, that no matter where she went or what she did, in that hour, she was *MINE.** That's the kind of torture that she can't run away from. The kind that I don't even have to be there to inflict... I'm no longer a child, Daddy. I don't just kill things for fun. I discovered that it was far, far better to watch them live... to squirm and writhe within their own little HELL!*

Eclipse was speechless for a moment, eyes screwed shut in fear. Somehow, though, he managed to force out a few words.

"Is- is that why you're here? To torture me?"

Oh, my dear Daddy... Of course not! I'm not even there... I wouldn't have been able to even touch you if you hadn't tried jumping into this place to escape your problems, as you always have. When I said you hadn't changed, I meant it! I knew that you would leap into the embrace of chaos sooner or later, try to use your powers to flee from life... or death. It was almost too easy, really, locking you in here! I'd hoped for a struggle...

But no. I'm not going to torture you...

I'm just going to kill you.

All at once, the entire corridor became deafeningly loud with the sound of grinding machinery, and Eclipse looked down to see a gigantic grouping of gears and buzzing circular saws, all eagerly waiting for him to drop inside.

At this point, Eclipse realized that, unless he managed to get very creative, very fast, he was about to die.

She may have hijacked it, but this is still my creation... If I can just think of something that she doesn't expect, I should be able to break free!

Closing his eyes, Eclipse focused on the word around him, the one that he had summoned by his own desire. There was only one way to get out of that place: to make the place no longer exist. With a sudden surge of effort, he pulled the entire dimension in on himself...

and nothing happened. The grinding, cutting machine only growing closer.

Reaching behind his back, he tried to determine what kind of item he would have to work with. As he retrieved his arm from behind, his lion paw emerged holding an artist's palette and brush. Following instinct, he grabbed the bush and dipped it in the red paint. Swinging the brush around and spreading the red paint over the wall of the tunnel. In only a second, he had painted himself a large, red button with the word "EJECT" written on it.

If she thought of destroying the entire dimension, this has got to be too simple...

NO!

Maybe not!

Eclipse slammed his fist down on the button. A panel opened up in front of him, revealing light again, and a large spring flung him outwards and out of the nightmare.

Whipstitch let out a long sigh as she paced back and forth, still frustrated. It wasn't her loss that bothered her as much as the humiliation that Eclipse had been toying with her until he'd simply gotten tired of playing, and then taken complete control of the situation from her. With a long sigh, she looked up at Discord's statue, still frozen in a pose of shock and horror. Most ponies found it nearly impossible to find the center of the Labyrinth, but even without using her magic, Whipstitch had always been able to find Discord with ease.

"I just don't get it!" She shouted at the statue, stomping her hoof. "I try and try, I've been studying for more than a year, now, and I complete every one of Eclipse's stupid assignments, and I still feel like I'm light-years away from being able to do what I actually WANT to!" She stormed up to the statue, climbing on his limbs until she could look him in his stony eyes. "He still treats me like a child! I mean, do you know what he did the first time I made it rain milk, like you? He laughed at me because it was just white milk! He thought that it was hilarious! Apparently, the two of you were doing that from the cradle..." As the moment of anger subsided and faded into sadness, Whipstitch leaned back, laying in his outstretched arms.

"I mean, it's not that I'm studying chaos to impress anyone... It's just... You always acted so calm, so in control of what was going on around you! Because you were! I don't want to rule the world, I just want to stop turning into a killer monster once a year..." She shuddered as she remembered the "curse" on ponies where she lived. Once a year, a pony from Fairytrail would undergo some kind of physical change, unique to every pony, and Whipstitch's was particularly gruesome, changing into a spider-like monster that, if let free to roam, would devour ponies alive. Her long hair would form a killer's body around her, and her mind would be lost within the hunter's instinct and uncontrollable hunger.

"My ancestors fought you when you first tried to take over Equestria, and the fight left us all wounded, even down through the generations, but I know that, if I can become strong enough, I could fight it! I wouldn't have to worry about hurting anypony, or forcing everyone else to deal with my problems. I know that Eclipse understands that, and he's trying to help me grow... But I feel like I'm moving along at a snail's pace!"

With a long sigh, she rolled out of the statue's arms, landing on her hooves. "I guess I'd better start working on what I'm going to do to practice this 'raining drinks' thing... Maybe I can drizzle myself a good martini!" She chuckled as she looked back up at Discord. She wasn't sure if he could hear her, but she enjoyed the idea of being able to talk to him, whether he could reply or not. Discord had always been an idol, of sorts, for her, and she'd been more than happy to learn from his younger (and less confident, less powerful, and more nerve-racked) brother, despite the obvious difficulties. She liked to think of Discord as her friend, perhaps even more so than Eclipse.

As she stared up at the stone statue, however, something caught her eye. She blinked a couple of times, then moved closer to the statue for inspection, leaning in close. As she continued to stare, Whipstitch's eyes widened, and she took a deep breath, trying to contain the shock.

"Eeeeecliiiipseeee... ECLIPSE!"

Almost on cue, a screaming draconequus seemed to fall out of the sky, landing on the ground in a heap on his stomach. Immediately, he jumped up onto his feet, looking around from side to side, as if expecting to be attacked.

"How did I get- I was supposed to be in- never mind..."

"Well, that was fast!" Whipstitch looked around, as well, trying to find what Eclipse was looking for.

For the first time, Eclipse seemed to notice Whipstitch, somewhat surprised.

"Oh! Hi, Whipstitch... Sorry, I can't really talk right now! I- I- have to go! There's a thing... at the place!" He lifted his claw, as if to snap his fingers, then stopped and began to walk away, choosing to walk, rather than teleport.

"Eclipse! I need your help!" Whipstitch pointed at the statue. "The statue is cracked!"

Immediately, Eclipse froze in mid-step. Slowly, without setting his foot on the ground, Eclipse turned on a dime, pushed by some invisible force. He walked back past Whipstitch, examining Discord, for himself, albeit somewhat distractedly.

"I don't see it, Whips..."

"Right there!" Whipstitch walked up next to him, pointing at the imposing point on the statue. "It's right there!"

Eclipse looked at the point to which she was pointing, a hairline crack on the inner thigh of Discord's goat leg, were a few tiny brown hairs were poking out. He took a moment to stare at Whipstitch, somewhat taken aback.

"And you noticed this... How?"

Whipstitch's face flushed, and she glanced away for a moment. "Well, aren't you going to do something about it?"

Eclipse turned his back, beginning to walk away again, faster this time. "Look, I'm sure you can handle it, Whips! I really have to go! Like, far away! You can expect your lesson to come in time... maybe a little late."

Whipstitch's jaw dropped as Eclipse disappeared in the maze, somehow not caring about the fact that his brother seemed to be escaping from his prison, which even Whipstitch recognized as bad news for Equestria.

"Wha- What am I supposed to do?" She could feel herself beginning to panic, and she tried to think of what she could do to contain the god of chaos without any kind of help. Looking back and forth, she did the only thing she could think of: Whipstitch cast a spell as strongly as she could.

Unfortunately, at this point, what was truly second nature to Whipstitch was chaos, and she wasn't entirely sure what she was doing. In a flash of light, Discord was immediately entrapped... In a gigantic block of lime gelatin.

"Oh, and if Celestia and Luna ask, you never saw me! I've been missing all day!" Eclipse popped his head through one of the shrubbery walls, taking only a moment to glance at her work. With a curious claw, he reached out towards the gelatin, gently poking at it with a claw. With a loud crack of thunder, Eclipse was shocked by a powerful bolt of electricity, falling to the ground in a smoldering stupor.

"That's... a good one.... Whips..." He croaked as his eyes slid shut.

Whipstitch looked between the two brothers, one trapped, and the other unconscious, both somewhat her fault.

"Maybe I'm stronger than I thought..."

The Beginning of the End.

As Eclipse's eyes slowly pulled themselves open, he let out a low groan of pain. His body was sore everywhere, and somepony had moved him into the castle. Stretching with another groan, he rose up onto his feet, only to feel his horns collide with some kind of ceiling. looking around, he noticed a golden dome of energy around him, tinting the room outside yellow.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that Eclipse realized that he was in the throne room.

With Celestia.

Standing just behind the barrier, Celestia looked as if she was in no joking mood, and Luna stood beside her, her expression even more angry-looking.

"Haven't seen this since the day we met, Tia..." Eclipse tapped at the magical barrier, the same one that Celestia and Luna had used to trap him at first so that they could talk to him in safety, without his running away. Had it not been for the two angry alicorns glaring at him, he might have taken time to reminisce about the days when he lived in fear of ponies. Unfortunately, there were more pressing matters.

"Well, we haven't needed to keep you in one place since the day we met." Celestia replied. "You didn't keep any secrets from us until now."

Eclipse looked over at Luna, who remained frighteningly silent.

"I kept plenty of secrets, Celestia. You just never needed to know them." Eclipse shook his head, sitting down on the floor, feeling more secure inside the bubble than he would have outside.

"We DIDN'T need to KNOW?" Luna shouted, stomping her hoof on the ground as she finally lost her temper. "Need I remind you of some of those names you told us? Alicorn Assassin? NIGHTMARE MOON? And you withheld that information from us? From ME, of all ponies?" She stomped her front hooves again, this time together, shaking the ground with the force of the impact and fracturing several of the floor tiles. "And now, I get a letter from MY student telling me that Canterlot is in danger after going on a mission assigned by YOU!"

Eclipse started to stand up, only to find that the ceiling of the dome had lowered. Taking in a long sigh, he looked down.

"I think that you need to start by telling us what you meant about Nightmare Moon." Celestia spoke in low, barely controlled tones. "Now."

Eclipse looked up, then nodded in defeat. "Fine... But you have to remember that this was a long time ago, when Discord and I first came to Equestria!"

Celestia and Luna looked at one another, then back at him, their expressions unchanging.

"I don't know how much you two know about Discord's initial rise to power in Equestria, but he was able to take most of it by sheer magical force. It was a horrible, war-torn time for Equestria. City after city was falling to my brother's power, and I still refused to help him. No matter how hard he fought, though, there was once city that always remained out of his reach, and he eventually became obsessed with taking it."

"It was Fairytrail, wasn't it?"

Every eye in the room turned towards the doors to the hall, where Whipstitch was standing. She walked in confidently, ignoring the stares from the three of them, and came to a seat next to Luna.

"I suppose it wouldn't be any good to ask where you came from?" Luna asked.

"Or what you're doing here during a private meeting?" Celestia continued.

"I came from somewhere else, and I'm currently sitting..." Whipstitch shot them both a sideways glance before her eyes returned to Eclipse. "And I want to know why you sent Pennington without me! I'm YOUR student, aren't I?"

"Well, I asked him to let you come, but he said something about 'what happened in Saddle Arabia' and insisted that he work alone! Eclipse shrugged. "Besides, I think that you've been doing very well here!"

"Eclipse, Whipstitch, as much as I respect the bond between teacher and student, can we get on with the story?"

"Well, you can't tell a story about Fairytrail without me, right?" Whipstitch grinned. "I grew up there!"

Eclipse let out a long sigh under the domed prison. "Whips, I don't think that you're going to like the story I'm about to tell..."

"Oh, come on! I'm sure I've heard worse from Pennington around a campfire!"

"Really, Whipstitch, you're not going to like it-"

"Eclipse Tumult! Continue..." Luna growled.

Casting a disappointed glance at Whipstitch, Eclipse continued.

"Well, he began fighting Fairytrail on a day-to-day basis, trying to siege them. Needless to say, the city was almost completely autonomous within its walls, and doing so was a fruitless effort. Every time that he attacked, Discord was met by the same pony: Fairytrail's guardian-"

"Threadmane!" Whipstitch shouted out the name of her ancestor with pride.

Eclipse chuckled. "Yes, Threadmane, the great protector. She would always be waiting for Discord, and every day, the two of them would fight to a standstill. The ground itself in Fairytrail stops the flow of chaotic energy, and Discord couldn't draw close to the city without giving up most of his power. Even so, he always managed to deal large amounts of damage, either to the city or its residents..." When Whipstitch looked at him in confusion, he let out a long sigh. "Let me guess: Fairytrail's records don't record Discord's power ever breaching the walls?"

"No... They all say that Threadmane kept him at bay, and the city was never harmed!"

"Well, never permanently harmed... While one of us was trying to destroy, the other was working to heal." He winked, though his heart wasn't in the smile behind it. "Bet you never that I was there, did you? When Discord was too busy to care, I would sneak into the city and help them with repair and their medical emergencies. Sure, Threadmane was suspicious of me at first, but when I didn't resist her capturing me, she was shocked enough to give me a chance."

"So... You weren't hiding in the forest the entire time you've been in Equestria?" Celestia asked.

"No, I used to have a friend..." Eclipse glanced at Whipstitch, then looked back up at the ceiling, starting to enjoy being forced to lay in place. "The two of us actually got pretty close. I would tell her about Discord's plans and tactics, and she would let me come into Fairytrail to try and redeem draconequui by helping to repair what my brother had done."

At this point, Whipstitch was actually more invested in the conversation than Luna and Celestia, who seemed to be trying to take in as much information as possible from the two.

"But- But why isn't there any mention of you in the records, then?"

Eclipse seemed to become very depressed at this point, any trace of the previous chuckles and jokes completely gone. "You two look exactly alike, you know... You just have black hair. Hers was white. You even have the same cutie mark..." He drew in another breath, almost as if doing so took any more effort than usual. "But I'm not there because I made a mistake... A horrible mistake that resulted in my losing her as a friend... and the creation of a nightmare unlike any the world has ever seen. Threadmane cursed me bitterly for what I did..."

"What did you do?" Whipstitch whispered, still looking down at him. Painfully slowly, Eclipse turned his head and stared her straight in the eyes. Whipstitch had always been able to identify that he was the younger of the two brothers, and she'd always considered him young by draconequus standards, but in those eyes she could see the pain of a thousand years, frightening her.

"I killed her... and her three best friends."

Discord was taking a longer time than usual getting back from Fairytrail, and I was beginning to worry. If he had lost, he would have just come right back to our small encampment in the forest. If Threadmane had lost... I didn't want to think about it.

"Eclipse! Clipsey, could you lend me a hand?" I was relieved to hear Discord's voice winding out of the trees. Without missing a beat, I promptly popped my eagle claw off of the rest of my arm and threw it in his direction.

"Ow! Oh, ha ha, little brother! We'll see who's laughing when you see what I brought back!" As he finally walked out from the trees, I could see that he had, indeed, done something vastly different from his modus operandi: he was carrying an unconscious pony.

"Discord, what have you done?" I rushed forward, my claw somehow restored in the moment of shock, and quickly began inspecting the pony in his arms. She was unconscious, but not injured. There was no evidence of a concussion or a blow to the head of any kind, and she seemed to be breathing normally. She was a white earth pony with a golden mane accented by blood-red streaks. Her cutie mark showed a twisting wisp of fire, jumping out from her pale flank.

"Relax, pal! She's not going to wake up..." Discord rolled his eyes as he set the pony down on the wide stump that we used for a table in our small camp. "This is our peace offering!"

"Peace offering? To who?"

"To whom, Eclipse." Discord rolled his eyes with a smile. He was acting pretentious again, but it was all in good fun. He always acted that way when he was excited. "To those preposterous ponies, of course! After all of this fighting, I've finally struck a deal!"

I couldn't believe him, at first, giving him the most skeptical of looks that I could muster. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, really!" Discord faked being hurt at my suspicion, a claw flying up to his heart in taking mock offense. "It's going to be hard, but all of the arrangements have been made! This pony," he pointed down at the sleeping mare, "has volunteered to be our saving grace! The leaders of this country have finally agreed that we can live here, but on one condition!"

"And what would that be?" I felt a small flicker of hope in my chest. I had been trying my hardest to convince my brother that we didn't need to rule Equestria, we simply needed to live in it. That a balance could be found had always seemed ridiculous to Discord, but he'd been listening to me more and more, lately.

"These three races founded their country on the virtues of friendship, love and tolerance... But ponies aren't perfect. There's still hate, racism runs rampant, no matter how much legislation is passed to treat all three equally, and the nation is going to rip itself apart again at this rate." He looked down at the unconscious pony, something akin to admiration in his eyes. "Now, Discord is defined as 'a lack of harmony between ponies.' What do you suppose would happen if we took all of the chaos away? Pulled it out of the land and drained it from their hearts? All that would be left would be harmony, correct? A veritable utopia, free of hatred! The ponies would prosper for thousands of years without it, and by the time that it returned, there would be almost no place for it, anymore!" He was getting very excited, gesturing with his hands to try and emphasize his point. "And we'd be their heroes, welcomed with open hooves! They wouldn't care about what we are or what we do, they'd happily accept us!"

I should have realized that what he was saying was too good to be true, but Discord's silver tongue had always been more potent than I gave him credit for.

"And... This pony?"

"She's volunteered to be the conduit and the container for that energy... It's too much for even us to hold within ourselves. She'll be the only pony in the world to understand chaos the way that we do! She wanted to be unconscious for the procedure, however, since it's most likely going to be painful... Like putting a patient under before surgery!" For illustration, he was suddenly dressed up with a mask and pair of latex gloves, playfully snapping them at his wrists.

I took in a deep breath, shaking my head. "Discord, something seems wrong about this..."

"Look, Eclipse... You're just afraid. I understand, but I wouldn't have agreed if I wasn't sure that we could do it! This is going to be a big change, after running for so long... But we're going to have a real home! Isn't that what you always wanted?" His voice was soft and serious, just as comforting as it had been when we chose to run away as children. It hadn't been the betrayal of our parents or seemingly the entire world turning against us that had convinced me to leave my home: it was him. That inexplicable sense of safety that I always felt around him. Looking up into his bright red eyes, I slowly nodded, feeling my worries washing away.

"Great! Because I can't do this without you!" Discord smiled and walked me over to the unconscious pony with a firm hand at my back. "Now, take my hands... and we'll do this together."

I nodded, gripping his hands with mine. We both closed our eyes. "Just focus... Inhale through the nose, out through the mouth. We need to pull all of the chaos in the land to this one point, then funnel it between us."

Everything grew silent as my mind moved out of my body and down into the earth. It was as easy as breathing to call the flow of chaos to my will and draw it in, and a slight twinge as I felt the energy begin to flow outwards into the convergence point between Discord and I. Drawing in all of the chaotic energy from the immediate area, I reached out further, feeling the strain grow over the miles. Still, I refused to give up, drawing in as much of the energy as I could, like a traveler in the desert would hastily drink water. At this point, pain was beginning to build in my body as I was transformed into a simple conduit, providing the focus for more energy than my body could ever hope to contain at once.

"Hang in there, Eclipse!" Discord grunted, obviously in pain, as well. Taking strength from his assurance, I reached out farther and farther, calling out to any wisps of entropy, any ounce of strife that permeated the land. Pain was racking through my body in waves, now, and my teeth were clenched in an effort to remain strong for Discord.

This is our chance. A home, maybe even friends or a family again! If we can suffer through a thousand years of ridicule, we can endure this!

That was when she started screaming. It wasn't a scream of fear, but a scream of agony. Sheer and total agony beyond anything she could have imagined. I remembered Discord saying that she had wanted to be unconscious, but in my current state, to try to use my normal powers to do so would be suicide, as the flow of energy would pop me like a balloon. I only prayed that she would forgive us when it was over.

"We almost have it!" Discord shouted as the wind around us began to howl, rocking the trees and calling the clouds together. There was a brief moment of gut-wrenching strain, and then my entire body relaxed. The vortex of energy had breached the event horizon: the process of drawing in energy was self-sustaining, now. Discord and I were now nothing but a funnel, with the energy spilling through us of its own free will. For the first time since we began, I was finally able to open my eyes again. What I saw was an image that I would hold in awe and reverence for the rest of my life.

The energy was so concentrated, it was beginning to manifest itself physically as a gigantic cloud of black in the sky. The cloud was falling downwards in a frightening tornado, with storm-like winds being pulled into the fray, rising to hurricane speeds and a thundering roar that even drowned out the poor pony's screams. It was as if the powers of Heaven and Hell were coming together to touch the Earth, ravaging anything in their wake. Not a speck of smoke left that stump, and the pony couldn't be seen inside. This continued for several minutes, accompanied by several lighting strikes between the two of use, ripping through the center of the tornado and igniting a momentary flash of fire. The process seemed to speed up exponentially at this point, and the entire cloud sunk down through the column of smoke in a massive crash of thunder. There was a flash of light, an explosion, and Discord and I were sent flying in opposite directions.

Discord was able to catch himself, of course, because he could fly. I, on the other hand, was sent crashing into a tree, where I laid for a moment, dazed and confused. Discord immediately flew back to the results of his work, trying to see what had been created. The smoke, however, was still shifting and settling, blocking out any kind of view of what was inside.

"Did it- Did it work?" I asked, trying to find the will to stand. After a few attempts, I was up on my feet again. Discord hadn't looked so happy in years, chuckling to himself and rubbing the palms of his hands together like a child.

"Oh, it worked, Eclipse! She's just not quite done baking..." He chuckled.

"Over here! It came down over here!" A voice shouted from afar. It was a stallion, obviously calling out to other ponies. Discord was surprised for a moment, pulling a small pocket watch from thin air and checking the time before tossing it away again.

"That was faster than I thought it would be..." He looked from side to side, trying to see if any ponies were already upon us.

"What was faster?" My eyes narrowed as I realized what it was that had been striking me as "off" about the situation. I had been taking Discord's word as the sole evidence of what he claimed was true. "Discord..."

"Okay, so I may not have been 100% truthful with you about the circumstances..." He muttered, still looking down at his creation, as if staring at it would make it finish faster.

"Over here! I found them!" The stallion finally made his appearance, his bright red coat and mane jumping out from the bushes and into our clearing. He was a unicorn, and obviously an angry one. Looking between Eclipse and Discord, he seemed surprised for a moment then shook his head, ceasing to care. "What have you done with her? Tell us where she is, you monsters!"

Discord didn't seem intimidated, even as the unicorn reached up behind his back and began brandishing a large, painful-looking sword.

"DISCORD! What did you DO?" I screamed, feeling the future that he had promised me slipping away.

"Well, I may have borrowed our little volunteer without... 'asking,' per say..."

"Over here! Threadmane, they're over here!" Another unicorn, this one a pink mare with an aqua-colored mane. She nodded to the first pony with a grin. "You weren't thinking of holding back Discord all by yourself, were you, Quill?"

"Not at all, Ixia, my dear!" He replied, not taking his eyes off Discord. "Just waiting for the cavalry! Once Threadmane gets here, we'll have them outnumbered three-to-two! At this point, I don't care much about a fair fight.."

Threadmane? My eyes widened as my heart skipped a beat with fear. "Look, it's not my fault! This is all a big misunderstand-NNG!" I was cut off as the first pony's sword floated to my throat, held in place by magic. I was still too weak to fight, and I knew that Discord was, as well.

"You'd do well to keep that tongue still, unless you're going to tell us where you took our friend..." Quill growled, scowling down at me. With a trembling claw, I pointed at the stump, where the last of the smoke was washing away. What was left behind caused every jaw to drop. What had once been a modest earth pony, lacking any kind of outward beauty beyond that of a typical mare her age, had been replaced with a tall, lithe figure, almost mistakable for a doe at first glance. She was still unmistakably a pony, but unlike any that Eclipse had seen before, being so astoundingly thin and tall. Her hair had been transformed into long, flowing, golden locks, tipped at the ends by blood red. Her ears were pointed and ended in small tufts of fluffy fur, and her tail had been thinned and lengthened, a single white, whip-like appendage, ending in a large tuft of golden hair, once again looking as if the ends of which had been dipped in blood. Her cutie mark had disappeared, leaving her coat completely unblemished.

There was a moment of silence as she rose on her spindly legs, blinking several times with her beautiful, sky-blue eyes. As she stood, the sunlight glinted off of the gold-and-ruby necklace that she was wearing around her neck, along with the matching tiara.

"Ember? Is that you?" Ixia finally choked out, still recovering from the initial shock.

Her name was Ember... I thought to myself, realizing that I had never even bothered to try and discover the information up until now.

She slowly turned her head, turning to look at the pony who had called her name. The two mares locked eyes for a moment. No one moved, and I hardly even dared breathe in the silence.

"Eris, my dear, Daddy needs your help..." Discord spoke quietly, but it was plenty loud enough for everyone present to hear.

"Ember, it's me! Ixia! Remember? Your friend!" The mare refused to give up, shaking her head. "You have to fight him! Whatever kind of spell he has you under, we can hel- AAAUGH!"

I have to wonder how many of us actually saw Eris flick her tail from side to side, but we all saw the effect. A gigantic wall of fire was flung outwards from where her golden hair had cut the air, scorching the grass, obliterating the trees in the line of fire for at least a mile, and instantaneously cremating the pony. In the split second between the flames springing to life and her demise, I still think that I caught a glimpse of the light reflecting off of the wedding ring on her horn.

There was another beat of silence before Quill's sword dropped to the ground with a loud clatter.

"I-Ixia?" He whispered the name in hoarse, disbelieving tones. staggering forward, Quill ignored the flames and rushed to where she had been standing, his hooves raising small clouds of ash and glowing embers. Even as the heat singed at his coat and mane, he didn't seem to care about the heat. When he reached the spot, he fell to the ground, tears already beginning to stream down his face. "Honey... where are you?" Shifting through the soot, he found her still-red-hot ring, the diamond in the center mockingly reflecting the flames around him as he levitated it in the air. "My flower... don't leave me!" As the stallion began to sob, the silence found itself filled, and I was racked with guilt for what I had created. In a single flick of her tail, she had taken a life, destroyed a marriage, and reduced a stallion to a quivering pile of grief... and I had created her.

This... This is a monster!

Suddenly, from behind me, Threadmane finally emerged, already dressed in her full battle armor, constructed of her own silver hair, held in place and solidified through her own unique magic. Her legs were lengthened, somewhat, allowing her greater mobility and agility, and her abdomen and neck were covered in a thick plating. Two extra, lance-like legs extended out from her sides, made completely out of her hair under the same spell. I'd seen the armor a few times before, when she had been fighting Discord, but never this close. She surveyed the scene in a matter of moments, eyes darting back and forth. When she caught sight of Quill sobbing amongst the ashes, it didn't take long for her to realize that Ixia was dead, and she stepped back in shock with a sharp intake of breath.

"Discord! What have you done?" She asked, more out of fear and shock than defiance.

"It's not what I've done!" Discord actually began to laugh at this point, running his claws through Eris's hair. "Did you really think that I came here alone? I've been toying with you, Threadmane! Do you really think that you can stand a chance against the powers of two draconequui, all thrust upon one, single pony, along with the combined chaos of an entire nation?"

When Threadmane turned to look at me, I wished that I were dead. I wished that I could simply roll up into a tiny ball and die. If my powers had been strong enough, I would have just dropped a mountain on myself. It would have been less painful than the look of betrayal in her eyes.

"She was my friend, Eclipse..." She whispered the words, only loud enough for me to hear. The words themselves carried very little power, but the sheer loss of innocence in those words better displayed her shattered trust in me better than a thousand others could. She looked back at Eris, then at me. Her expression had changed to one of pure rage.

"Eris is going to come for you, Threadmane... You won't know when, you won't know where, but she'll be coming!" Discord sang, snapping his fingers. In a flash of light, I was suddenly at his side, even as the tree I had been standing in front of was felled by Threadmane's hair stabbing straight through the trunk and out the other side.

"And I'll be coming for you... Both of you!" Threadmane shouted,, her voice quickly rising to a shrill scream. "I'll get you for this, Tumult! Even if it takes me until the end of my days! I'll-" She was cut off as Discord teleported himself, Eris and I away. Despite having only a near-brush with decapitation thanks to my brother's timely teleport, my pain was nearly unbearable as I was racked with guilt.

My creation was a killer, and she hadn't even alive for more than five minutes.

Eclipse let out another sigh as his story drew to a close. "Discord spent the years that he was in power over the rest of Equestria teaching Eris the various arts of assassination, torture, the like... I spent my days trying to determine how I could destroy her. We discovered that, while her normal body was very unstable, she could possess another creature's body and use it to her own ends, even bonding with it permanently to maintain control." He glanced at Luna. "Even after Discord was defeated, Eris kept up her work of making sure that all the powers of Equestria remain under chaotic control. She possessed you and turned you into Nightmare Moon, Luna. She'd hoped to avenge Discord by killing you both, but when she got a taste of the power that comes from bonding to one as powerful as yourself, she refused to let go, wanting to rule all of Equestria, just as Discord had. You and Celestia have the deepest apologies of my heart..." He turned back to Whipstich, ignoring the fact that his head was now laying in a pool of his own tears on the floor.

"I'm certain that Threadmane had me stricken from any kind of records in Fairytrail, but I kept watch over both her and Quill from afar... Eris killed them later in their lives. She possessed a dragon friend of Quill's in order to kill him with an artifact called the 'Windigo Gauntlet.' She first froze him, then stabbed him in the heart and electrocuted him. It was a death fitting of the hero, to be honest... The raw power put into the blow would have been enough to kill just about any being on the planet. I don't know why Eris chose to be so cruel with it, but that was what she did. It was for the best, seeing that Quill had fallen into a deep depression after what happened. He became like a nomad, never returning to his home again, spending every day and night outside for the rest of his life. I forced myself to listen to his mourning, knowing that it was my fault. He wore Ixia's ring alongside his own, even until the day he died."

"Threadmane never gave up on her vow, always working to hunt down and kill Discord and I. Eris allowed her to live into old age, though to this day, I don't know why... Just as Threadmane was dying, Eris tried to make her young again. The result was horrifying as some parts of her body grew younger, smaller, and weaker, while others withered away in seconds, and her silver hair turned black in her dying moments. I guess that, deep down, the monster still remembered their friendship..."

For the first time since her had begun telling his story, Luna spoke up again. "So... Nightmare Moon wasn't-"

"No, not your fault. Eris awoke something inside of you, then manipulated and possessed you to bring it to its full potential. Your banishment was my fault... That's why I never told you. The guilt of knowing that the pain you both went through was my fault is just too much to bear..." His gaze shifted up towards Celestia, who was remaining near-expressionless.

"That doesn't explain Pennington's letter." She spoke curtly and formally, refusing to look at him. Creating a small opening in the dome, Celestia passed it through to him. There was a moment of silence while he read.

"I could swear I've heard that story before..." Whipstitch whispered, breaking the silence. No one replied to her revelation.

"Celestia, Luna, do you remember what I told you about my homeland?"

The two princesses looked at one another, then back down at Eclipse. "You told us that it was the native land of the Kirins," Luna said. "You said that chaos was what brought life to their land, so a single draconequus would appear, and then when he died, a new one would follow."

"But you and Discord were a fluke, born together." Celestia maintained the same impersonal tone, and Eclipse knew that she had good reason to be angry with him. "You left when they tried to separate the two of you because you were overflowing their lands with chaos, and the nation died in a week."

Eclipse cringed at the last part, but nodded. "I'd hoped and prayed that Eris had been killed by the Elements of Harmony when she and Luna were separated, but I knew that it was very likely that the Elements wouldn't be powerful enough to destroy her.

"Not powerful enough?"

"It's like running over a cockroach with a tank: You can try all you want to crush it, but sometimes the roach will just bunker down and enjoy the ride from inside its shell... So I asked Pennington to spearhead and archaeological dig in the dead lands some time ago... It must have taken him some time to reach them."

"That would explain why his past few reports were detailing creatures from outside of Equestria... But that's no excuse for throwing my student into danger!"

"Well, it seems that he found something powerful, regardless. Something that we might be able to use in conjunction with the Elements in order to destroy Eris once and for all." He passed the paper back through the hold in the dome. "I knew Pennington and Moonstone would be the only ones able to make it there and back without being killed, and able to survive the dangers of the dead land."

"Well, I've sent a chariot and pegasus envoy from the New Lunar Republic to bring them home, so they should be coming back in the next few days..." Luna took the letter back, wishing it away with a simple spell. "I think that we can raise the barrier, now, sister..."

"Oh, don't bother!" Eclipse reached up and grabbed at a small metal tab that had appeared on the inside. With the loud sound of a zipper being undone, he pulled down and created a large opening through which he could climb out. "I'll let myself out."

"Wait, you could have gotten out this whole time?" Celestia was shocked, finally changing her stoic expression.

"Celestia, if I were still the scared little draconequus you found in the gardens, I would have escaped a long time ago. I don't want to leave you and Luna in the dark, I just need to feel ready to admit my guilt! Now, if you have any more questions, I'll be in my room, thinking about what I've done..." With a snap of his fingers and a puff of smoke, he was gone.

The entire interaction seemed to have gone straight over Whipstitch's head, who was still in shock after hearing the story. Something about the entire narrative had struck a deep chord with her, and she felt like something was wrong.

"And this thing that killed Ixia, Quill, and Threadmane... It's coming back?"

"That's what the evidence seems to point to..." Luna replied. "She's coming for Eclipse."

"I need some answers..." Whipstitch shook her head, finally snapping out of her reverie. "If you see Eclipse, your highness, please tell him I've gone back to Fairytrail! There are some ponies I need to talk to!" Without waiting for a response, she bolted to the doors and out of the room, leaving the two sisters alone.

There was a long moment of silence between the two.

"He puts a lot of blame on himself..." Luna muttered. "Too much blame."

"He trusted Discord blindly, he deserves it." Celestia turned away, walking towards the throne at the end of the room.

"Tia! That's cruel!" Luna shook her head. "Would you put the blame on me if I chose to trust you? If what I had hoped and dreamed about for a thousand years were used to trick me into doing something that hurt someone? Eclipse and I were once in the garden together, some time ago. He asked me if it was ever too late for second chances, for apologies! I didn't understand at the time, but I assured him that it was never too late! I think that he may have been talking about why he chose to take Whipstitch under his tutoring: he wants to try and atone for his crimes against Threadmane through her descendant! But there's no proxy for the two of us, no chance to apologize to Quill or Ixia! Our forgiveness is his only chance at solace after all these years!"

"And you expect me to just forgive him in a heartbeat for taking you away from me?" Celestia kept her back to her sister, but Luna could tell from her voice that she was on the verge of tears. "All those years, I blamed myself for mistreating you, and it was his fault?"

Luna took a step back, shocked at her sister's words. "It wasn't his fault, Tia! This 'Eris' creature was the one who did that!"

"Eris was a consequence to his actions. His decision had lasting consequences, and they hurt ponies outside of himself. I'm not blaming the consequences, I'm blaming the one who made the decision!"

Luna shook her head, eyes narrowing at her sister. "So... You're blaming the one you can reach. You can't touch Eris, but Eclipse is right here... Happy to take the blame for what happened. So, now that you can shift the blame off of yourself, you throw it all onto Eclipse. I've always expected better from you, sister. I've already forgiven him, and will shortly be on my way to tell him as much, but I would urge you to remember: Eris must have chosen me over you for a reason. Maybe she needed some insecurity, some pain or wrath to take a hold of, in order to force herself on me. Your actions may have had 'lasting consequences,' too..." Silently, Luna walked from the room, leaving the ruler of the sun to ponder the blame.

The Three Heroes, The Victim, and The Twisted Little Witch

Ember and Threadmane

Quill and Ixia

Eris

The One Who Killed Them All

A Chilled Panic

Whipstitch looked anxiously around the train station, trying to spot her old friend in the crowd. It didn't take long for the first pink unicorn to spot another waving to her in the crowd. Her face lighting up with a cheerful grin, Whipstitch ran forward, using her magic to keep her bags in tow.

"Lily!" The two mares laughed together as they fell into a loving hug. "I'm so glad you could make it! I always hate making this trip alone!"

"Whipstitch!" As the two released one another, Lily gave her a wide smile. "I'm happy to come with you! I've been thinking about taking a day or two off, and this is as good an excuse for myself as any!"

Whipstitch rolled her eyes. "Lily, you shouldn't need an excuse to rest! Seriously, I think that what you need is just to skip town for a week or two! Take a vacation, go on a binge!"

Lily seemed to find this humorous, chuckling to herself as he glanced up at the large clock in the center of the train station. "Come on, the train for Fairytrail leaves in ten minutes. If we want to catch it, we'd better get moving!"

Whipstitch nodded, lifting her array of bags into the air. She had almost a dozen and was carrying them all via magic. Noticing the array of objects floating in the air around her, Lily gave Whipstitch a skeptical look.

"I'll explain later..."

Pennington and Moonstone sat quietly in the chariot, floating high above the countryside as they were pulled back towards Equestria.

"I still don't like that we had to leave the rest of the expedition behind..." Pennington muttered, anxiously looking over the side. After a few moments, he quickly retreated back to the center, shaking his head and taking a deep breath.

Moonstone grinned to herself as she jumped up onto the front piece of the chariot, playfully leaning back and forth. "Problem with heights, Penn?"

"Well, only almost as much as paralysis..." He muttered. "Though it's not the heights so much as falling... and the sudden stop at the end..." He looked past Moonstone at the ponies pulling their transport, a troupe of four bat ponies.

"Well, Luna said that she need us back as soon as possible!" Moonstone flew a quick lap around the chariot before coming to a landing next to Pennington. "And everypony in the expedition will get home just fine!" She cast an uneasy glance at the three sacks that Pennington had put the relics into. "If anything, we're doing them a favor by taking these away..."

Pennington quietly moved towards the back of the chariot, taking another glimpse over the side. "Well, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But I can't tell if these things are going to save Canterlot or destroy it!"

"Well, they didn't destroy you..." Moonstone grinned quietly as the typically-fearless adventurer turned pale and moved back to the safety of the chariot's center. "Maybe they're benign?"

"Neither did the mask of Cha'qued. Instead, it was going to use me to kill dozens of ponies..." He shook his head. "But that vision was just completely confusing... We're taking a big risk by taking them someplace as densely populated as Canterlot."

"Then why don't you drop them off in the Vault in Ponyville?" Moonstone rolled her eyes as he moved to the edge a third time. "And why do you keep doing that if you're afraid of heights?"

"Well, if Canterlot is in danger and these can save it, then we couldn't afford to leave them in Ponyville. If they're going to unleash some kind of destructive force, then Luna, Celestia, and Eclipse are going to be the ones best-suited to stop them..." He continued looking over the side, obviously terrified by the drop.

"As for looking over the side, consider it shock therapy... I'm trying to get over this fear so I can finally do a book signing in Cloudsdale." He gave a light chuckle as he continued staring over the edge. "You know, once you've imagined all the different, horrible ways you could land, you start to stop being so scared..."

"Yeah, like if you broke your neck when you landed and wound up not being able to go find help because you couldn't move!" The devious words had left Moonstone's mouth before she could resist the urge to tease him by combining his two worst fears.

Almost immediately, Pennington skidded backwards from the edge. After several seconds of deep breathing, he glared at Moonstone, who was rolling on the floor with laughter.

"Ah-HA-HA-HA-HA!"

"Moon Moon, I swear..."

"The look on your face!"

"Moonstone, I oughta-"

"I mean, seriously!"

"MOONSTONE!"

"S-sorry, Penn... I couldn't resist!" She finally stood up again, wiping a tear from her eye.

"Yeah, well at this rate, I'm not going to be able to resist cramming my next report to Luna down your throat with my own hoof..." He muttered. "And it'll reflect very poorly on how we've been working together..."

"Aw, come on, Penn! Lighten up!" Moonstone laughed. "You know I was only joking!"

"Mister Inkwell!" One of the guardsponies pulling them called out, grabbing his attention before he could retort to her.

"Yes?"

"We crossed Equestria's borders some time ago, but there's a storm forming up ahead!" As Pennington moved to the front of the carriage to look forward, the guard was proven correct: a large black cloud was forming ahead of them.

"Penn, I don't see any pegasi..." Moonstone squinted in concentration. "Are they just moving on their own?"

"If those are rogue clouds, I've never seen them get that far out of hoof! The weather patrol would have known about it!" Another one of the guards piped up.

"They aren't like any clouds I've seen..." Pennington muttered. "Look at them, they can't seem to hold themselves together! It's more like fog or mist!"

At this point, the black clouds seemed to have joined into a single, huge entity. There was movement within, like writhing tendrils of fog.

"Gentlemen... give this thing a very wide berth." Pennington made a wide, sweeping motion with his hoof. "Let's just leave the storms to the weather ponies, shall we?"

Moonstone looked up at him in confusion. Normally, when placed in a position to make a decision, Pennington would be one of the first to jump into danger in order to investigate something strange.

"Something about that cloud gives me the creeps, Moonstone..." He whispered at the chariot turned away. "It's like I can feel it staring at me, but... it's something more. Something deep. Instinctive, even... It's evil."

Moonstone looked between the pony and the cloud, trying to understand. It was unsettling, to be sure, but didn't seem overly intimidating, as if it could simply be easily blown away in the wind. Deep within the depths of the darkness, however, Moonstone was starting to see some kind of light. As she continued to watch, a light-blue glow began to build in the center of the cloud, clearly silhouetting the wisps and tendrils of black smoke around it.

"Penn... are you seeing-"

"Sir?" One of the guards asked, quickly becoming anxious. "That appears to be some kind of spell!"

"Well, what are you waiting for? Take evasive action!" Pennington shouted, taking a firm hold on the front edge of the chariot. "There's no way you're going to throw me off!"

Nodding together, the four guards began flying in synchronized movements, speeding away from the cloud at a speed almost double what they had been traveling at before. Staring back, Moonstone watched as a bolt of blue light leaped out, flying towards them.

"Look out!" She screamed, pointing at the oncoming attack. The guards reacted without even needing to look, taking a sudden downwards turn.

"AaaaaaaaaAHHHHHHHHH!" Moonstone watched as Pennington's grip tightened and he clung to the chariot. The blast flew directly over their heads, sailing off towards the horizon. As the light passed by them, all present shivered and shuddered as a wave of sub-zero air collided with them.

When the chariot finally stopped falling through the air and leveled out again, Moonstone took a moment to look at Pennington again. He seemed to be locked in place, eyes open wide.

"Penn? Buddy? Are you okay?"

"This is why I don't like roller coasters..." He whispered. "The drops..."

Moonstone would have laughed, but the cloud seemed to be preparing another shot at them. Jumping up, she slapped her claw across his face, drawing his attention.

"Pennington Inkwell! Keep it together! We're not out of the woods, yet!"

After a moment, Pennington finally broke out of his trance, looking down at her. "Right... Right!" Still refusing to let go of his grip, Pennington craned his neck as far around as he could.

"We've got another one!" He shouted. "Six o'clock, coming in at an angle!"

The guards seemed to understand with ease, arcing upwards and to the left as the spell struck the forest beneath them. All of them looked down in horror at the land beneath them was transformed. A huge mass of ice grew up from the ground as trees and foliage were flash-frozen into place, then locked in a miniature glacier. Moonstone could see Pennington gritting his teeth as they rose higher and higher into the air, trying to escape. At this point, the mass of energy seemed to be increasing its rate of fire, with another burst coming every few seconds, and the guards had taken a new path in a spiral formation, moving out and away from the cloud while keeping it in sight. The system seemed to be working, and a pattern of observing, dodging, and settling again seemed to be manifesting itself. Even Pennington seemed to be calming down as the sudden dips up and down began to become more predictable. After several minutes, the onslaught finally drew to a close, and the chariot once again grew calm and slowed its pace.

"I think that it's given up..." Pennington let out a long sigh, releasing his death grip on the metal of the chariot's body. "Gentlecolts, well done! My life is in your debt!"

"Just our job, sir..." One of the guards grinned, turning back to look at Pennington. "But thank you-"

The next moments seemed to happen in slow motion. Moonstone saw the flash of the final attack reflected in the guard's eyes, even before he reacted. As the shock spread across his face, the single pony stopped flying in place. With only one pony stopping in his tracks, the vehicle spun in place, throwing Pennington against the side and bringing all of them face-to-face with the horrifying attack.

What seemed to be a wall of the energy was bearing down on them with dizzying speed. It had been cast in a crescent shape, too tall and too wide to dodge, and the hopelessness of the situation quickly became apparent. Even as Pennington was beginning to rise to his hooves again, Moonstone jumped up, grabbing at his ear and pulling him back down again. Hiding behind the front part of the chariot, the two were saved from immediate freezing, despite the bone-chilling cold that settled in an instant. Half-encased in ice, the chariot and its passengers began plummeting out of the sky, completely out of control. Pennington was screaming deafeningly in her ear as the fell downwards into the forest. With her last conscious thought, Moonstone contemplated the nightmarish scenario that she had jokingly presented to Pennington earlier.

Oh please, don't let me be right!

Moonstone was pleasantly surprised to awake from the darkness, though the throbbing in her head quickly dimmed the relief. Sitting up, Moonstone pulled her eyes open and raised a claw to her aching cranium.

"Good, you're up..." Pennington's voice came from behind her. "Are you alright?"

"Aside from feeling like I took a line drive to the face? I'll live." Moonstone struggled to her feet, turning around to face him. To her surprise, Pennington was dressed in a set of the armor that she had seen on the guards beforehand. He was doing his best to tie the three bags together with the artifacts inside.

"Can you walk?"

Taking a few short steps, Moonstone felt her strength returning, replying with a nod. For perhaps the first time, she noticed that there was no sign of either the battle or their transport. The two of them were simply alone together in the middle of the woods.

"Good, because our way of getting out of here froze and shattered on impact..." He took a deep sigh. "You saved my life again when you pulled me down... Thank you, Moonstone."

Moonstone smiled, a warm satisfaction settling over her. "That's what I'm here for, Penn." Glancing at the dark-purple armor, she scratched at her head. "Did you send the guards to get help?"

"Like I said... Our way out of here froze and shattered. I managed to salvage a set of armor after they thawed out."

"You mean..."

"Yep. They're resting in pieces." Moonstone felt a chill run down her spine as she realized fully that the guards had died protecting them.

"Is- is it our fault?" She whispered.

"No, it isn't. Whoever sent that cloud-thing is the one responsible for their deaths..." Pennington refused to look her in the eye while he spoke, focusing an unnecessary amount of attention on the helmet. With a grunt of effort, misty white energy drifted off of his horn, forming into a curved sword in the air in front of him. With another grunt, he ripped a thick branch off of a nearby tree and began hacking at the tapered end until it came to a sturdy, thick tip. Fixing it into the ground, he took the helmet and jammed it down on top of the branch. The sharp end stabbed through the metal, forming a small hole in the top. At first, Moonstone thought that he was forming some kind of monument to the fallen guards.

"If you thought that it were, would you really let me believe it anyway? Or would you try to spare my conscience?"

The beat of silence between the two answered Moonstone's question.

"Can you send a letter to Luna?" He asked as he pulled the helmet off again and placed it on his own head. The hole that had been formed was more than large enough for his horn to fit through.

"O- of course! I mean, do you have your ink and a scroll?"

Pennington passed her a rolled-up piece of parchment from one of the bags. "My saddlebags are ruined, but I salvaged enough for one letter and wrote it while you were asleep. I'm telling Luna that she should put a quarantine for the weather pegasi on that area of the sky. Judging from the last view I had, I told her we're going to be making our way towards the nearest signs of civilization and will continue to Canterlot from there."

Moonstone nodded with a smile. "So, where are we headed, then?" Pennington wasn't always so grim when they were running head-first into danger, but when survival was on the line, she got to see a more serious side of him few ponies had the chance to. Taking the scroll from his hoof, she tossed it into the air, blowing up from below.

The scroll fell to the ground as nothing happened. There was no fire, and hardly even a puff of smoke.

Confused, Moonstone took a deep breath, taking the typical measures to turn the space in front of her into a temporary inferno. When she blew out, however, only the tiniest violet flame escaped into the air before quickly dying again. Narrowing her eyes, she tried again. And again. No fire emerged from her mouth. Suddenly, their isolation felt much more severe, and a thrill of fear raced through her heart.

"Penn, what's going on? Why can't I breathe fire?" She knew that panicking was the last thing they needed to do, but the crisis was quickly becoming more personal. "I've never not been able to breathe fire!"

"Don't worry, we'll figure a way out of this..." The pony gave her one of his typical carefree grins, trying to comfort her. As he did, however, Moonstone's eyes caught the small movement of his teeth chattering, like they would when a pony had spent too long in the snow. "Whatever that was, I think that it may have just messed with us a little more than it seemed at first."

"Are you... cold?"

Pennington shook his head. "It's just been getting cooler outside. You know how it is, it's later in the year, autumn's setting in, the evenings are getting colder!"

Moonstone shook her head. "Pennington, it's not cold outside..."

"Well, that explains why it feels like mid-winter..." He muttered, picking up the bags and placing them across his back. "It's been getting more and more brisk, and I wanted to blame it on the weather... But neither one of us got out of there unharmed..."

Walking up to her friend, Moonstone placed a gentle claw on his front leg, quickly drawing it away again. "You feel like you just walked out of a freezer! We need to get you warmed up!"

"I'm fine." He shook his head, walking past her. "It's nothing compared to those times I've gone exploring up north! We just have to keep moving, or else it's only going to get worse!"

Moonstone shook her head. "We need to start a fire or something!" I never thought I'd have to actually have to WORK to get a fire started...

"If this is some kind of curse, a simple little campfire isn't going to break it!" Pennington seemed to be losing his temper, snapping at her angrily. Moonstone stepped back. After a few seconds, he took a deep breath. When he spoke again, he still wasn't calm. "We need help, and I'm getting more and more uncomfortable by the second... I don't want to wind up frozen because we decided that we had to try something that didn't work."

"I... guess you're right..." Moonstone ran to catch up to him. "So, where's the nearest source of help? Maybe I could fly ahead and-"

"What, and risk falling to some kind of other unseen side effect when I'm not there to help you?" Pennington scoffed. "Great idea..."

Moonstone raised an eyebrow at his sudden change in attitude. He was definitely in a worse condition than he was letting on, and his attitude was definitely going to be the thing to suffer the most for now. The idea that he made it out of that crash without a scratch isn't likely... I wonder if the armor is covering up any injuries?

"Well, you said yourself that there's nothing that we could do except keep moving, right? I don't want to die out here because we didn't try something that would have worked!"

Rolling his eyes, Pennington let out a long sigh, obviously running low on patience. "Fine... Go. I'm too tired to argue..." He muttered under his breath. "If I've got my directions right, and I usually do, then help is that way." He pointed straight ahead of them. "If you fly in that direction for at least 30 miles, you should come across a city. Thankfully, this isn't Everfree, but there's still no telling what's out there..."

Moonstone nodded, floating up into the air and above the trees with a few flaps of her wings. As she tried supporting her own weight in the air, she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder. She made sure to turn away before she let herself cringe so that Pennington wouldn't see. I can still fly, and Penn's counting on me!

"Moonstone! There are two things you need to do!"

Gathering her composure again, Moonstone turned to face him. When she did, she saw Pennington looking up at her. He didn't seem angry anymore, he looked more sad, perhaps even afraid.

"One: take care of yourself! Make sure you don't kill yourself trying to save me twice in one day!" They both grinned for a moment, but Pennington quickly grew serious again. "And two... Come back soon, okay? ...I'm not quite sure if I'm used to being on my own anymore."

He's going to miss me... Moonstone smiled wider, giving him a thumbs-up. "Don't go saving all of Equestria while I'm gone, okay?"

"Are you kidding? Right now, I'm so frozen, the only thing I could save would be an popsicle stand!"

Moonstone cast a worried glance towards him, but he quickly waved it away.

"Just hurry up, will ya? The only thing that we're burning is daylight! It's a slippery slope once I start telling ice jokes!"

Moonstone rolled her eyes. Pennington was trying to lighten the mood so that she would feel better about leaving him alone in the forest. "Fine, I'm going, already! Tartarus will freeze over before your sense of humor does, won't it?" Before he could reply, she was already gone, soaring over the trees as quickly as she dared with her injury.

"He'll never let himself freeze if he can't have the last word..."

Discord's Warning

Celestia took a long, deep breath. As she so often did, she had chosen to spend time in the Canterlot Gardens while she calmed down and thought things through. Inevitably, she'd wound up back in the Labyrinth, wandering through the walled paths aimlessly. Luna had been right, of course, as little as she had wanted to admit it at the time. After Eclipse's confession, she had gone out to clear her head and get some fresh air, which proved to be harder than she'd anticipated. Being the ultimate authority in Equestria, Celestia had been given a lot of practice in remaining impartial to most matters, but it had taken her a long time to calm down and look at what happened as such. She'd spent the rest of the day and the entire night outside, watching the sun set and the moon rise and set again. When the time had come for her to raise the sun, she did so without a word. During her long hours of pondering, she had completely relived Nightmare Moon's rise, fall, and return in her own memories, re-thinking who played what role and why exactly Luna (or Eris) may have acted the way that she did.

No matter how she looked at it, however, part of the blame still rested on her. Whether it had been Luna's true feelings or Eris's lies, she'd allowed Luna to be ignored and disregarded while she had been treated as a precious treasure Equestria couldn't live without. When she had been forced to fight her own sister, Celestia's pride had been completely eradicated, a fact to which she had attributed as being the reason that the Elements of Harmony had chosen to intervene. But she still hadn't learned her lesson. It took almost a thousand years of guilt, remembering every night when she raised the moon in her sister's place, for her to fully and totally humble herself. She'd eventually almost completely and totally become "Equestria's Princess," losing her identity and outwards appearance in the title. She would turn away anything more than the formal respect needed to retain her image. She worried that her true self would always be prideful, always want the attention, so she repressed it for years on end. Over time, she'd come to accept herself again, but embraced the guilt, as well. But now, Eclipse was claiming that what had happened wasn't entirely her fault... and she'd leaped at the chance to finally be free of the guilt.

But the guilt was still there. Now, she simply had to admit that Luna's descent into madness and the crushing of her spirit had been a group effort with Eris, Discord... and Eclipse. Someone that she had trusted above and beyond almost anyone else in the world. She'd confided in him many times about what had happened with Nightmare Moon, and every time, he'd tried his hardest to console her and remind her that everything had been made right in the end. Now, his insistence that what had happened wasn't her fault made more sense: because it had been his fault, as well, and he took the total blame.

How did he hide the guilt for so long?

When Luna and Eclipse had first met, Luna had locked herself away in her room, insisting that no one, not even Celestia, disturb her. Celestia had thought that Eclipse had said something to upset Luna and confronted him about it. Even after the misunderstood blame was resolved, it had been a moment bordering on Eclipse leaving and never coming back. If they hadn't pursued him themselves, that very well may have been the result.

She and Eclipse had both had one of their siblings turn on them, and each on had been forced to ensure the other's imprisonment. The events surrounding Nightmare Moon had always been something that the two of them could come together on, a turning point in their lives that they could share. Finding out that he'd played such a key role in Luna's banishment had made her feel as if she'd been betrayed again by someone she loved.

"And the thing is, if he hadn't tried to keep it a secret, I might have been a bit more understanding... It wouldn't have come as such a shock!" She muttered, shaking her head.

"Oh, Eclipse always was more for hanging in the shadows and keeping things to himself! But then, after living with him for so long, you ought to know that by now, Celestia!"

The blood in Celestia's veins ran cold as Discord's voice floated out from the maze walls around her. She looked from side to side, trying to find the source.

"Discord! Where are you? How did you escape?"

"You mean you seriously can't tell?" The voice chuckled to himself, seemingly amazed at her "ignorance." "It's been building for a while, now... Chaos is coming to Equestria. Eris is returning, and the air is practically sparking with the energy!" Celestia cringed as several arcs of electricity ripped through the air around her, fading after a few seconds. "It was simple for me to escape once I'd drawn in enough ambient energy! Eclipse has been afraid of you if he didn't let you know about that!"

Celestia looked from side to side once again, still trying to find the draconequus. The last time that Discord had been able to communicate directly with his brother, she and Luna had been forced to sever their magical bonds before he harassed Eclipse into going back into hiding. "You're not going to be able to take Equestria again, Discord! And Eclipse won't help you!"

"Oh, don't worry your sun-dried raisin of a brain about that... I don't intend to do anything!" Discord finally appeared, reclining on one of the topiary walls.

"What?"

"Oh, I can already tell that over the years, Eris has done a LOT of changing!" He chuckled to himself. "I'm not sure how she's different, but she's much stronger, and she's taking her time coming to Canterlot. I can already tell that the best thing for me to do right now would be to simply step aside and watch the fireworks!" He summoned a bag of popcorn and pair of red-and-blue-lensed glasses out of thin air, looking as if he were ready for some kind of movie. He polished the tips of his claws on his chest, inspecting his reflection as he used his other paw to pop a few pieces of popcorn into his mouth. "I'm sure that a few of my brother's old hideouts could be improved to be somewhat livable for now..."

"You mean... you're not going to do anything? No attacks? No warping Equestria?" Celestia found herself suspicious of his words. When he wasn't on the defensive, Discord would rarely have a reason to lie, but she simply couldn't believe that the menace to ponies across the country would simply sit still and do nothing.

"Well, I might make a few pleasure visits to some old haunts of mine..." A flower-patterned shirt was added to his ensemble, giving him the look of a tourist fresh off the road. "But aside from that, it would be nice to see what my little girl can do after all of these years!"

Celestia took a moment, lost in thought. After hearing the story of their early lives from Eclipse, she had wanted to talk to Discord herself.

"From the way your brother described her, it sounds like Eris is going to be out for blood, including his. Aren't you worried about him?"

"Why would I be? He gave up on me, didn't he? In the past year, he's visited me, what, six times?" He scoffed. "He wouldn't help his own brother escape being entrapped in stone! Ever since you and Luna took him in and brainwashed him, he hardly even remembers that I exist!"

Celestia could almost detect an undertone of pain in the draconequus's voice, though he hid it well. Several of the things that Eclipse had told her about Discord came back to her memory.

"Eclipse told me that you weren't always set on self-satisfaction and conquest, Discord... In fact, he told me that you once weren't very different from how I am now: caring, loyal, protective of the ones you love."

Discord stretched lazily, though he removed his glasses to give her a disbelieving stare. "You and I? Alike? Perhaps being in stone preserves the mind, because I'm relatively certain Eclipse is going senile! Conquest? Maybe not during my years in the cradle, but self-gratification? Always."

"Even when the two of you ran away from home? When you protected each other from wraiths and dragons?" Celestia smiled smugly as Discord's surprise became apparent. "And you never had a cradle. The two of you were orphans, taken in by the Kirins."

"Hmmph, looks like somepony did their homework!" Discord grunted, rolling off the side and floating down to the ground. "Did he tell you that I also tried to kill my adopted parents?"

He was trying to intimidate her, but Celestia knew the entire story. "After they betrayed you and ordered the two of you to banish one or the other. You were a distraught child. Anyone would have been upset."

Discord muttered something under his breath as he rose to his feet, though Celestia didn't catch it.

"I was then what I still am now: Discord! The spirit of chaos and disharmony! Something that Eris is going to bring in spades." He seemed almost to be reminding himself of his identity more than Celestia.

"Could you fight her?"

"If I wanted to, I'm certain that I could do whatever I wanted whether Eris was fighting me or not!" He lifted an eyebrow at her. "But I know what you're thinking, Celestia, and no on both counts! I won't help you, and Eclipse won't be any help!" He walked past her, placing a claw on her shoulder.

"As far as draconequui go, Clips has always been a runt: small, weak, and underdeveloped... personally, I blame myself. I did everything for him. He hardly lifted a claw during our life on the run! If you think that he's powerful, he's still like a child compared to me. Eris will crush him with ease." There was a beat of silence between the two of them. "Eclipse will do what he's always done when faced with confrontation: he'll run. He'll survive. Even when you and Luna are both gone. Don't count on him, or you'll end up like me... Trapped and left for dead."

Celestia's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Now, when she was being told that she couldn't trust Eclipse, her indignation made her realize just how much she did still trust him, in spite of what she had learned. "Your tricks won't work on me, Discord! You're not going to fool me into turning on him."

Discord feigned shock at the statement, putting a claw over his heart. "Moi? Try to drive a wedge between my brother and my warden? Perish the thought!" With a snap of his fingers, Discord disappeared.

"But remember, Celestia..."

The daughter of chaos is coming

to consume, to grow and destroy.

I watch everything go from the shadows

and sometimes pester and annoy.

But if the lives of your "family" you wish to save,

the deeds are already done.

There's only one option left for you, now.

My best advice? RUN.

"I always like giving the losing team my support! Keeps the game running longer and builds the chaos and excitement!" His voice was quickly fading into a mere echo of himself. "So good luck to you three... You're going to need it."

Just as quickly as he had appeared, Discord was gone again, this time off to who-knew-where.

"It's not like him to play the Cheshire Cat role. He likes being involved, making sure things get done himself..." A horrifying thought struck Celestia, and she quickly turned around, taking to the air and flying back towards the castle. "What if... What if he doesn't think he can fight Eris, either?" It made sense, in a twisted way. It had nearly killed the both of them to create her, and both he and Eclipse had hinted that she was much stronger than when she was first "born."

We're going to need to keep the Elements of Harmony at the ready... When she reaches the castle, it's going to be our toughest battle, yet!

Whipstitch and Lily sat in seats across from one another on the train, already almost to Fairytrail. Suddenly, a series of chills ran through her body, causing Whipstitch to shudder and turn to the window, looking out into the forest they were passing through.

"What is it?"

"I think... I think something happened. It feels like the winds are picking up..." Whipstitch muttered, trying to understand the sensations running along her senses, like a tingling energy that heightened her awareness of her surroundings.

Lily tilted her head in confusion. "Winds? Whips, we're inside with all the windows closed. What winds?"

"'The winds of change,' Lily. At least, that's what Eclipse calls them in my lessons... They're the flow of chaotic energy through the world." She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. "It feels like somepony's just opened up the flood gates." In her own mind, Whipstitch was working to reach out and see what was happening more clearly. Learning to see and use the natural flow of energy in the world had been one of the first lessons that Eclipse had taught her, but her progress in understanding them had been methodical and sluggish at best.

When she opened her eyes, she smiled as her view of the world warped and tinted into an array of colors. They were still on the train, of course, but she was viewing it on a higher plane. The entire world rippled like cloth in the wind, and living figures were represented by a light-filled outline. What she was interested in, however, quickly made themselves known.

The winds were usually represented by arrays of tiny, neon-white threads that floated through the air, moving back and forth with the currents and waves of energy. Unicorn magic was organized, self-sustaining, and usually stemmed from the user, but even the strongest of chaos beings relied on their magic being able to move and flow on its own. The magic could be generated and manipulated on its own, of course, and Eclipse had demonstrated such a concept to her before, but only he and Discord had seemed capable of doing such. Whipstitch had tried and failed a dozen times, but in the end, she always came back to manipulating the winds to achieve what she desired.

This time, however, rather than the gentle tendrils that she was so used to seeing, Whipstitch reeled with shock to see what seemed to be gigantic arcs of electricity coursing through the air, humming and crackling with energy, putting off tiny flames into the air. It was watching a lightning strike in slow motion, and there were dozens of them in sight, running everywhere. Shaking her head in confusion, Whipstitch started to reach out with her hoof, but paused just short of touching one. Simply touching a thread under normal circumstances would give her a shock, along with a boost in her energy. Touching them now, when they were exponentially stronger, seemed as if it could be asking for trouble.

Eh, heh heh... There you are... A deep, unmistakeable voice emanated out from the winds, echoing loudly. Whipstitch's heart skipped a beat.

"D-Discord?" She whispered the name with almost-holy reverence. "Is that you?"

That was a nice spell you tried using to keep me in stone... It tickled. Still, impressive, considering your poor teacher. Threadmane's progeny certainly doesn't fail to impress. Despite his flattering words, Discord's tone was nonchalant and without much inflection of excitement. Whipstitch felt her face flushing, and she looked down, still surprised beyond words.

What's the matter, there, Whipstitch? SPIDER got your tongue? Immediately, Whipstitch's embarrassment fell away, replaced with indignation at Discord's insinuation of her "little secret."

"H-Hey! How do you know about that?" After a moment's thought, she grinned devilishly as she realized that this was her opportunity to break Eclipse's rule about keeping her infatuation with Discord to herself. "Better question: do you wanna know more?"

It doesn't matter. I'm here to pass on a message. Discord's teasing tone became more somber. Don't. Just don't.

Whipstitch's eyes narrowed. "Don't what? I wasn't doing anything!"

No, no, no! Please, don't tell me that you inherited Eclipse's closed-mindedness along with his wimpiness! Whipstitch could practically see him rolling his eyes at her. That's the message! Don't. Don't act, don't fight, don't do anything. You'll regret it.

"Discord... are you threatening me?" She whispered.

What? No, my dear! The message isn't mine! I'm just the messenger! Granted, it's not bad advice, considering your position, but it's not MINE! There was a beat of silence between the two of them before Whipstitch realized that he was waiting for her to ask the inevitable question.

"Good! I admire you far too much to take a threat seriously! Then who's advice is it, my dear?" Whipstitch grinned.

It's the advice of someone who already killed you once before, Whipstitch... There was another beat as the words hung in the air and Whipstitch's mischievous grin quickly disappeared.

"... Do you mean Eris? She killed Threadmane, and those other ponies! And that was a thousand years ago!"

Now I, for one, would like to have the opportunity to meet you BEFORE you're killed again, and maybe teach you a few tricks that'll run my brother in circles for hours!

"Well... I have a nice little place in Ponyville were we'd be left alone."

So I'd prefer that you and your friends all stay ALIVE. And as much as I hate saying it, you should take my words seriously. There may be plenty of time for FLIRTING later if you survive!

"I'll be counting on it!" Whipstitch's smirk returned.

There was a flash of white light, and Whipstitch was suddenly back in normal reality. The change had obviously been Discord's doing, and the sudden shock took a moment for her to adjust to, blinking several times and shaking her head.

"Are you okay, Whips?" Lily asked. "You were zoned out for a pretty long time! I couldn't get you to respond!"

"I-I'm fine." Whipstitch muttered, rubbing at her temple. "But I think I figured out why chaos is in the air..." Looking from side to side at the other ponies in the car with them, she leaned in close to Lily and whispered.

"Discord's finally back!"

"WHAT?"

Lily, of course, didn't share her enthusiasm.

Luna took a deep breath as she approached Eclipse's door. She'd been easily willing to forgive him when Celestia had blatantly refused to. She blamed it on her small rebellious streak, wanting to be the one to step up when she knew that her sister's actions were wrong. Over the day that had passed however, when she was alone, the full meaning of what he had told her had sunk in more and more deeply. She'd approached the door several times, only to turn away again and again, trying to deal with the swell of emotions. None of them had shown up to have dinner together the previous night, each having their meals delivered to their rooms.

Raising her hoof to knock on the doors, she was surprised to have them silently swing open before she could touch them.

Eclipse was laying on his bed, staring upwards at the skylight in his roof. It look Luna only a moment to realize that he was staring at the sun as it passed overhead. He looked as if he hadn't moved since he'd first returned to his room, sinking deep into the mattress and blankets with an almost deathlike stillness.

Luna wasn't entirely sure how to disturb the silence to ask if she could come in, but he thankfully broke it for her.

"Whatever you're going to do, it's fine... I deserve it. Stab me, zap me with some spell, send me to the moon... Heck, not even the Elements of Harmony would be a fitting punishment for what I did to you. I'm not as strong as Discord, so they'd just dissolve me away, turn me to ash."

"You spent a dozen lifetimes in Everfree to make sure you stayed alive... and you'd throw that life away out of guilt?"

"If it could give any kind of recompense to the pony whom I love like a sister? If it could console one of the only two beautiful goddesses in the world who cared about a lonely, barely-stitched-together conglomeration of animal parts?" He raised his head slightly to look at her. His normally-blue eyes had been burned black by the sunlight, and seemed to stare straight through her.

"Yes. I'd throw it away. I'd go and beg Twilight to use the Elements against me. I'd eat Zap Apples until there was nothing left of me but a pile of black goo. I'd throw myself off the watch tower knowing I can't fly! Yes. I'd give you my life to try and repay the fact that I ruined yours... And then I'd have nothing left to give to apologize to Celestia." After a few seconds of staring between the two, he reached up and removed the burnt eyeballs with a loud pop. Placing them in the drawer of his nightstand, he retrieved two more and pushed them into the empty sockets. "Besides, it would be the easiest way to get rid of this guilt..." He muttered as he sat up again, dangling his goat's hoof and rabbit's foot off the edge of the bed.

"Well, I think that you should know that you're wrong." Luna couldn't resist the tears as she walked to him, climbing up onto the bed and settling next to him. "The easiest way to get rid of it would be for me to forgive you..."

When Eclipse turned to look at her in surprise, she realize that they both had tears streaming down their faces. She smiled for a moment as her emotions overtook her. Looking into his tear-stained eyes, Luna couldn't bring herself to muster anything but pity for the draconequus. They'd both lived with unbearable guilt for a thousand years, and both understood each other on a level most ponies couldn't comprehend. After a few seconds of staring at one another, Luna gently leaned her head against him, letting herself weep as she felt the guilt and the pain finally beginning to lift, and a massive weight on her heart gave way to the sweetest joy and relief she could imagine.

"How could I not forgive you for being tricked by Discord? You were trying to make peace, and your intentions were pure... and we'd never even met until the past year!" She giggled lightly to herself at the absurdity of the fact. "I know who you are, Eclipse Tumult, and you're someone who would rather die than hurt my sister and I! We've been through so much together, and you made our lives so much better by coming here! I couldn't imagine what we would do if you threw yourself away like garbage!" Looking up at him again, she couldn't help but smile. "I never had a brother, but aside from my own sister, you're the closest friend I've ever had! We're family, Eclipse, and family forgives each other, no matter what! If there's one thing I learned from coming back to Equestria after all those years, it's that forgiveness is only limited by the pony giving it!"

"Luna, I... I..." Eclipse was without words, his throat choking shut with emotion.

"Eclipse, whether we're angry or sad or happy together, Celestia and I will love you unconditionally. You may not have realized it, but when you told us the truth and took the blame, you lifted an immeasurable guilt off of my shoulders! Now I know that what happened... the nightmare... it wasn't all my fault! That's something that I thought I'd never have." Wrapping a hoof around his shoulders, she pulled him into an awkward, sideways hug. "Eclipse, I love you, and I forgive you for your part in what happened."

"I'M SORRY!" Eclipse finally broke down completely, grabbing the Princess of the Night in a tight hug and sobbing into her shoulder. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Luna!"

Luna smiled as he finally opened up and gently comforted him, placing her hoof on his back and letting him weep. She and Celestia had always thought of Eclipse as fragile because of his frail figure and timid demeanor, but he'd been holding so much guilt. She wondered just how strong he'd needed to be to live among the two of them without cracking under that guilt until now.

"It's okay, Eclipse. It's okay. There's nothing to be sorry for..." She whispered, letting his shoulder catch her own tears of joy and relief. The two remained in that state together as the sun passed overhead until the water had washed away the pain in both their hearts and there were no more tears to cry.

"It wasn't your fault."

A Chilled Panic: Part 2

***WARNING: Starting with this chapter, this story will contain MAJOR (as in, story-ruining) spoilers for "Happy Adventuring, Twilight!" and "Penn and Stone: Dynamic Duo!" I will make my best concerted efforts to make this chapter "skippable," but spoilers will continue later into the story. Chapters containing such spoilers will be marked with a warning until such a time as they become completely unavoidable.

You have been warned.***

Pennington shuddered as another spasmodic wave of shivers rippled through his body, starting at the base of his skull and moving down and outwards. Stopping his walking for a moment, he took another deep breath through his mouth, calming himself and stopping the involuntary motion.

I'm not going to shiver... I'm not going to shiver! If I shiver, then it means that I admit that I'm cold. If I admit that I'm cold, then it's a slippery slope to caving in to the cold and freezing to death! As he once again summoned up the strength from his body to halt the shivering and begin walking again, he couldn't help but wonder how far he was from civilization, and how far Moonstone had managed to travel by now.

For the first time, a new sensation introduced itself, a sharp pain in the front of his skull, as if someone had taken a hammer and chisel to his forehead. Cringing and stopping again, Pennington exhaled sharply from the pain.

"You have got to be kidding me..." He muttered, reaching up to his horn. When his hoof brushed the surface, his suspicions were confirmed: the surface was ice cold, feeling like a chilled metal, rather than flesh and bone beginning to freeze. The prosthetic is drawing away heat faster than the rest of my body. At this rate, it'll probably start to cause frostbite to what little of my REAL horn remains... He shook his head, regretting what he knew would have to come next.

Thankfully, the cold is probably going to weaken the fastening, so I can probably get it off in one piece and re-attach it later.

As he pulled his sword from its wrappings on his back, he could practically still hear Chrysalis's commanding tone ordering him not to turn his blade on himself. But, when the chips had been down and Twilight's life had been on the line, Pennington had been willing to sacrifice anything to free himself from the queen's control. Soon after, the hive was defeated and Pennington was given a prosthesis, created using Moonstone's blood as a magical catalyst so that he would eventually regain most of his former strength. Since then, his progress in magic had been unbearably slow, but he could at least form some basic objects and levitate others when necessary, like his sword. He'd lost the horn and even needed to replace it several times, but that never made it any easier, especially not now.

Tearing a small branch from a nearby tree and grinding his teeth into it, Pennington gently levitated his sword to his horn, gently rubbing the sharp edge along its length until he found the telltale point where his natural flesh and bone stopped and the numb replacement began. Closing his eyes, he moved the blade's razor-sharp edge along the area until he felt it slip into the smallest of fissures. Bracing himself, Pennington gently began to apply pressure with the sword, cringing as it began to pry the crack open. At this point, Pennington debated whether or not it would be a good idea to gently work it off to minimize the pain, but he could feel another spasm of repressed shivers beginning to build while he was standing still, and he knew that he would be more than likely to make a mistake if he tried to work through it. Biting hard into the branch, he gently worked the sword a few millimeters more into the point where the real horn met the fake, then gave it a sudden twist, prying open the crack and snapping it off. The horn few several feet before hitting the ground, but Pennington didn't notice.

"RRRGH! OH! OOOH! That HURTS!" He grunted around the branch, screwing his eyes shut as a small trickle of blood began running down his face and several spurts of magical energy escaped his horn, flying out into the air like blood from a vein. Shaking his head, Pennington sent droplets of blood spraying across the area. "I'm NEVER going to get used to that!"

After almost a minute of shivering and suppressing screams of pain, Pennington finally took a long, deep breath and opened his eyes.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when his eyes were met by the sight of a small filly standing in front of him, staring as she held his horn in her mouth. The earth-pony filly couldn't have been more than a few years old, and she stared at him with blood-red eyes. After Pennington had recovered from initially being startled, he took a closer look at her, confused about where she had come from. Her coat was colored a light yellow with only the lightest of green tints, accented by a faded blue-and-green mane. Her eyes were the only color that really jumped out, a ruby-red that seemed to look straight through him as she stared.

"You dropped your horn, mister!" She gently placed it at his hooves, smiling brightly. "But don't worry, I've got it! Do you want help putting it back on?"

Again, Pennington found himself startled, this time at how nonchalantly this little filly treated the fact that she had just watched him snap his own horn off.

"That- that's alright..." Pennington stuttered, picking up his horn and slipping it into one of the bags with the stone orbs. "I don't need it right now..." After a moment, he began to shiver violently, most of his energy spent. Pulling in another deep breath, he forced the shivers to subside, though only slightly.

"Are you cold, mister?" She asked, tilting her head in confusion.

After a moment of staring at the strange filly, Pennington nodded, his teeth emitting a light chattering.

"W-where did you come from?" He stuttered.

She simply shrugged, pointing out into the trees. "Somewhere in that direction. Mommy told me that I needed to go and get some herbs, so I just walked out here to look!"

"C-can you take me back to your Mommy? I n-need help..." Pennington's brow furrowed with frustration as he tried to talk through the shivering. Something about the little filly seemed familiar to him, but he couldn't focus enough to put his hoof on it.

"Well, we'll have to walk back to the city..." She looked down for a minute. "And that's really far."

Pennington nodded. "It's- It's just- I need to get warmed up... There's some kind of spell, and I'm slowly freezing to death..."

The filly tilted her head in confusion, walking forward and gently touching her hoof to his chest, feeling how cold he was. The moment that her hoof came into contact with his body, a sudden flood of warmth spread outwards from the point, and Pennington gasped with surprise. The shivering stopped as relief washed over him for a moment, and the frost that seemed to be running in his veins thawed. After only a second, however, she pulled her hoof away again, surprised.

"You are cold! Come on! It's this way!" Without waiting, she took off running into the forest, leaving him behind.

"H-hey! Wait up!" Pennington quickly followed her, but she was already too far ahead for him to see. "How did you do that?" He stumbled through the trees, trying to catch her, but she was already far out of sight. "Wait! Little girl, I don't see you! Where are you?"

He ran in that direction that she had left in until he couldn't run any more. The cold was creeping back into his limbs, and the sun was setting quickly. Sitting down on a fallen log, he shook his head and shrugged off the bags, letting the stone orbs fall to the ground.

"I don't get it... One second she was there, and the next, she was gone... and now I'm alone again."

That's how it all started, didn't it? You, alone in the woods, looking for something you needed? That's how you got your cutie mark... His own voice thought in his mind.

"Great, without Moonstone to talk to, I'm just talking to myself..." He shook his head again, leaning forward and letting out a long sigh.

There's nothing wrong with that. You tend to have some good ideas when you talk to yourself, don't you?

Pennington sat up again, sliding down so that his rear was on the ground and his back leaned up against the log, giving him support as he rested.

"Well, what are we doing, then? I should have been able to find that filly if she really was leading me back to the city! How did she disappear? HOW did she make me warm again? Where is Moonstone?"

Well, you probably lost her because you're ALWAYS winding up alone in the woods, somehow. Spiderstitch, Carnival Cat, ursas and dragons... You always wind up trapped alone in the forest with some kind of horrible danger, and it's always your fault!

"That doesn't explain much... but you're right about what you DID say." Pennington sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. "Somehow, I always manage to strand myself alone... But I can't keep running from this danger... It's time. There's nothing that I can do to stop this spell, and I'm just so exhausted..."

You're freezing out here... Losing to a foe you can't fight. Maybe you can just sleep... Maybe just relax and let it overtake you. You gave in to the changelings, you gave in to Cha'Qued, you cave in to Luna, Lily, and Twilight at a single word... Why not just relax?

"Because I'll freeze to death! I need to get up before I fall asleep..." Opening his eyes again, Pennington shivered and stood up again, reaching down to pick the bags again. When he turned back again, however, he found himself face-to-face with... himself. He stared for a second, blinking in confusion. This doppelganger seemed to have his horn intact, and wasn't shivering the way that he was.

"Either the cold is starting to go to my head, again... or I'm having an out-of-body experience..." He slowly reached out his hoof,nudging the second Pennington in the chest. As he did, the frosty feeling in his hoof intensified, making his leg numb up to his knee before he quickly retreated again.

"Pal, you're in over your head." The second Pennington shook his head sadly. "You're going to wind up just like those guards... the ones whose armor you threw off a few miles back."

"That wasn't my fault. The armor was conducting the chill..." Pennington muttered, taking a hesitant step on his numbed hoof to circumvent his copy. "I had to take it off before I got frostbite, just like my horn."

"Do you think that you're not already like they are? You're a corpse walking! Look at yourself!" His second self easily kept pace with his deteriorating body. "At this point, all you're doing is refusing to 'rest in peace!'"

"I'll rest when I'm dead..." Pennington drew strength from the familiar adage, standing tall as he walked again, though he still needed to look down at where he placed his numb hoof.

His second self pressed his hoof to his forehead in frustration. "Since when was I this naive?"

"Since when was I this realistic?" He replied. "We've never given up, not even in the face of certain death! That's saved our lives! If I didn't know better, I'd say you're not me at all!" When he looked away from his clumsy hooves to glare at the copy, however, his second self was gone.

After blinking in confusion again, Pennington shook his head. Either this forest is haunted, or the cold really IS starting to freeze my brain! As he took his next step, however, Pennington felt himself involuntarily lurch forward as his numb ankle gave way with a sickening crack. He braced himself as he fell to the side with a grunt, immediately taking his weight off of the injured hoof. After a few seconds of sitting there, wondering if his doppelganger had at least been right about trying to rest more, he looked down at the offending limb.

Frozen through and through, his hoof had become brittle and shattered into two pieces. His eyes widened and his heart seemed to stop beating in his chest. with fear as he stared at the disembodied portion of his leg, broken at the ankle. Where the shatter had occurred, there was a purplish-red colored stump of frozen blood and muscle, not even bleeding. lifting up his leg to eye level, he saw another stump, the same color, and already forming frost on the top layer. A fissure had split his leg upwards, as well, a fracture that left a large, black crack running down the center, like a shattered stone.

Even as he stared, however, this new class of freezing cold traveled up his leg, into his shoulder, and through his chest. Pennington's lungs froze in place, unable to move or provide the air to scream as his head began to spin and he limply laid back on the ground. Soon, he felt the icy tendrils settle on his heart, stopping it with ease and freezing it solid.

Pennington's eyes slowly grew dark as his eyeballs froze in his sockets.

And the brain is the last light to go out... He thought quietly to himself, his body legitimately unable to even muster up the necessary reaction to be afraid.

"Hey, mister!" The filly's voice echoed out from the forest.

She's going to find me dead out here... I hope that it isn't too traumatic for her, she seems like a sweet little girl.

"Mister, wake up! Mister, you're gonna freeze if you go to sleep!" Despite her being nowhere in sight, he couldn't help but hear her voice right in his ear, as if shouting into it point-blank to try and rouse him from a deep sleep, rather than death.

It's funny, but now that I'm numb and dead, it DOES feel an awful lot like-

If he had been able to move, Pennington's eyes would have widened with surprise and his frozen heart would have skipped a beat. Instinct took over his thoughts and actions as his attention turned to his "shattered" hoof, trying to pick it up and move it as he mustered all of his strength.

Come on... COME ON!

Pennington's eyes flew open and he drew in a deep breath as his body sprung to life, no longer keeping itself paralyzed in slumber. Without a moment's thought, he sprung up onto his hooves, just as he always did when recovering from an episode of his sleep paralysis.

Or, at least, he would have, had his joints not been so stiff from the cold that he immediately lost his balance and fell flat on his face. After taking a few seconds to realize why such a thing had happened, Pennington struggled much more slowly up onto his hooves, barely keeping his balance with all the weight of the bags, this time. His knees seemed to creak and his shoulders ached as he took a few hesitant steps, the cold having seeped deep into his flesh and invaded any part of his body that was supposed to turn, bend, or tilt. he felt as if his skin was almost to the point of forming a layer of frost below his fur. His teeth chattered loudly in his mouth, now, and he was shivering badly. Despite the fact that it had obviously been a case of passing out involuntarily, he still hated himself for falling asleep.

"I-isn't th-th-this h-how Quill d-d-died?" He muttered, trying to keep his thoughts straight amidst the tired strain on his brain. "F-f-f-frozen? All I n-n-need is a li-li-lightning strike!" He tried to force out a chuckle, but it simply came out as more violent shivering in his exhalation.

On cue, thunder rolled across the sky and a bolt of lightning struck only a few feet in front of him, seemingly avoiding the numerous trees to follow a path straight to the ground. Pennington immediately jumped back as best he could with his half-frozen body and heavy load on his back. As the weight of the stone orbs pulled him downwards, his knees gave way and he cringed as he fell to the ground. He quietly closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to slow his rapidly racing heart. As he laid on the ground and tried to gather his strength, the thought crossed Pennington's mind to leave behind the orbs and retrieve them later.

Whatever it was that attacked us, it was deliberate and malicious. If these artifacts are as powerful as that vision showed me they were, I can't let it find them... That town can't be much farther, right?

"A royal escort? You've certainly gone up in the world since the last time we met, haven't you, Quill?" A sultry female voice crooned out from the darkness of the forest. Pennington's eyes flew open, his head turning towards the direction of the sound. Unfortunately, there wasn't any sign of the being speaking. Despite his seemingly vulnerable position on the ground, Pennington soundlessly placed his hooves each into a more grounded position and tensed his muscles, ready to spring away at the drop of a pin.

Quill? But that means... Pennington's eyes widened for a moment in surprise. She knows who I am and who I was in my previous life... Which means that either she knows a lot of things she shouldn't, or she is very, VERY old.

"Quill? Sorry, lady, but I think you've got the wrong guy! My name is Pennington, Pennington Inkwell..." Trying to put on his outer appearance of nonchalance, he kept his tone light, despite his suspicions that we was talking to his attacker. Even with his full physical capabilities, he doubted he would have been a match for her, and he was extremely weak and cold at the moment.

"Oh you can change your name, your coat, and even convince yourself of the honesty of your new self... But you're the same soul, deep down in your heart." The voice was growing closer and closer as she spoke, slowly and deliberately pacing herself until she sounded like she was just out of sight in the trees to his left. However, her next words were whispered into his ear as if she were only an inch away on his right, catching him off-guard.

"You're still Quill!"

Feeling hot breath on his ear and his heart skipping a beat in fear, Pennington leaped into the air, flying to his left and sprinting in the other direction. It was only a moment, however, before he felt something yank at his back right leg, causing him to trip and fall again, knocking the wind from his lungs and leaving him once again prostrate on the ground, groaning from the blow dealt to his chest by his collision with the forest floor.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, yet! That's supposed to come later!" The voice was just above him, now, and opening his eyes revealed that we was, indeed, staring at a pair of dainty-looking, gold-tipped hooves, one of which lifted itself up off the ground and placed itself on the jagged remains of his horn, pressing downwards and forcing his chin to the ground, keeping him from looking up at her.

"And what's supposed to come right now?" Pennington muttered, knowing fully well she could hear him. "What do you want from me?"

"What do I want? A bit of pleasure. A laugh, a chuckle, a giggle, even? Maybe more..." The voice took on a suggestive tone, making him uncomfortable. "But I'm a big fan of delayed gratification. Delayed 1000 years already, what's the harm in just a few more days? So, if you don't die slowly and painfully out here, I might get that out of you later." Her hoof moved away from his old injury, allowing him to finally look up at his adversary. As his eyes traveled up the near-unnaturally slender legs, past her gold-and-ruby necklace, and along her cloudy-blue eyes, He found himself staring up at a glistening white mare shimmering in the moonlight. Her long, golden mane tapered into red tips and the crown of her brow was christened with a golden tiara, inlaid with multiple rubies. Even her tail was long and elegant, tapered and whip-like except for a large gold-and-red tuft of hair at the end. She was both beautiful and radiated power, and her condescending grin told him that it was as obvious to her as it was to him that she was leagues and light-years his superior. Immediately, he began to reconsider his nervous reaction to her sultry tone when she talked about "pleasure." After that, however, the sensible part of his brain took over again, forcing out the inappropriate thoughts and reminding him that this mare seemed to be omnipotent, claimed to have known him during his days as Quill the Scribe, and obviously wanted him dead. Again.

"What's the matter, Quill?" She leaned down, her muzzle near inches from his as she leaned down, her large, blue eyes creating an almost hypnotic connection between them. "Never been this close to a beautiful mare, before?" For a brief moment, her eyes seemed to glow with a light from within, the sky-blue color casting its light on him.

"Actually... More times than you might guess." Pennington mustered a grin, but his teeth were chattering loudly.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! You must be freezing, and I never even noticed!" Her tone was one of mock concern, and the growing smile on her face showed him that she was enjoying his pain.

"Well, I'm just a little too cool for my own good!" Well, at least she seems to have a sense of humor... Maybe I can play off of that until I can get some kind of advantage? "So... What was that you said about 'dying slowly and painfully?"

The near-unnatural wideness of her smile at this point challenged Pennington's nerve more than any creature he had ever met.

"Oh, going straight to to point, are we? Well, I suppose we could forgo the foreplay and get straight to the main event..." Turning and walking back into the darkness, she disappeared in a black fog. No longer sure of her location, Pennington grunted and rose to his hooves again, looking from side to side to try and spot her.

What you need to understand, Pennington Inkwell, is that I would kill you at any moment. I could tear the skin from your body and make myself a nice business suit out of it. I could sever your brain stem and make you a mindless meat-puppet to dance for my entertainment. When I was a thousand years younger, I enjoyed ripping out a pony's nervous system and tossing it under a millstone while it was still completely operational.

Somehow, despite the chills racking his body, Pennington felt a bead of nervous sweat on his brow.

I'd say I've aged well, however. Being trapped on the moon for a thousand years with an angst-racked princess taught me one very important thing: that while torture of the body brings luscious screams of agony and beauteous writhing as your victims try with all of their might to cling to the few remaining threads of life binding them to this world, it is the scarring of the MIND that brings the greatest satisfaction. You can leave victims of the brutish torture alive, certainly, and watch as their body covers with scars... But the mind simply CANNOT heal like the body does. You can linger and watch them slowly descend into either raving madness or crippling depression. Personally, I love seeing them fall into the knowledge that they are nothing in the world. Mere ants waiting for my hoof to remind them of their place...

Pennington looked from side to side, watching for an attack.

"But I can see it in your eyes... You've been knocked down before, haven't you?"

He cringed as the voice came from the one place that he hadn't thought to check: above his head.

Adventuring 101, Penn! Always look up! He thought to himself, avoiding the temptation to curse under his breath. As he turned his eyes upwards, he caught sight of her again, hanging upside down in the air as if the laws of gravity didn't apply to her. Her mane and tail remained pulled towards her hooves, despite her inversion. Slowly, she floated down to eye-level with him, staring straight into his eyes yet again.

"Someone thought that they put you in your place... You've been told you were nothing before, and you even believed it." She muttered, staring at him with what seemed to be a mix of curiosity and bemusement. Pennington stared straight back into her eyes, now knowing that showing any kind of weakness could warrant a one-way trip to a agony-filled death. As he stared back, however, her glassy eyes seemed to grow, taking up more and more of his field of vision. As his focus sunk deeper and deeper into the black pits at the center of her blue irises, he lost all awareness of the world around him, totally and entirely lost.

"I can see it, now..." She chuckled lightly, her voice barely reaching him. "You think of it as a lifetime ago, but the wound remains fresh. You were about to throw away everything you held dear for her, and she abandoned you... Showed you that you didn't mean more to her than a few easy bits..."

An immense pain sprang up in Pennington's head, forcing him to cry out and fall to the ground. It felt as if somepony had driven a wedge into the front of his skull, splitting it open.

"AAH! GAAH!"

"And then, you met another, and she took you... to the changelings." Despite his screaming, Pennington could hear her voice as clearly as ever. "You forced her away, and she didn't come back for you... Not until they had stripped away who you were and ravaged your body... And then you were theirs, not hers. You lost your choice. You became a slave, in body and mind, to a force against those you loved. Nothing but another worthless soldier, mindlessly bound to your Queen."

"AAAAAAAAAAH!" He could only scream as he felt the piercing pain spread, cracking down the base of his skull and along his muzzle, drawing a line straight down the center of his head, as if the original split had been pulled open and split his brain like a nut being cracked open.

"And then... A cat? A feline of Everfree... Oh, that is rich! She truly put you in your place, didn't she? Or, I should say, she taught you that you're not always going to come out on top..." Eris continued, placing her hoof on the back of his neck. The moment that she touched him, a chill, fiercer than any before, ran through him, stopping his movement and leaving him frozen in place in mid-scream, unable to utter a sound as the pain only mounted, feeling as if his skull were being ripped in two, pulled in opposite directions.

"And then the greatest blow... You discovered that you weren't supposed to be who you had grown up believing you were... That the universe had different plans for you." Her voice whispered to Pennington through the haze of pain and fear, his only company in the abyss of darkness he was now confined to. "You spat in its face, disgracing the hero you were meant to be to save your pride... and discovered that the only reason so many ponies had taken interest in you was because of him, not you... Even your precious Twilight Sparkle knew and refused to tell you... Tut, tut, Penny. You need better taste in women."

There was one final onslaught of pain as it came to an unimaginable peak, and Pennington felt his skull finally tear apart as his head was split wide open, ripping into two hemispheres...

And then every sensation, from the pain to the cold to the overwhelming shame of each of his greatest defeats being relived in her words... simply fell away. The darkness became all-encompassing, and he was now adrift in it, like a corpse thrown into the sea.

"Special Eyes"

Moonstone's breath was coming in ragged gasps as she stopped once again for rest on one of the many treetops. She'd been flying as fast and as hard as she could for hours, but the city she had seen in the distance seemed to be minimally closer. Her arms were screaming with pain whenever she moved them, and she'd been needing to take more and more frequent breaks to catch her breath the last few miles.

Someone or something is making this difficult for me... She thought quietly to herself as she glared out at the infuriatingly distant signs of civilization. There was no way she would be able to get her body to move for at least a few more minutes, so the best course of action was to simply try and get a mental grip on what was going on. This isn't an illusion, it really is that far. If they're trying to stop me, then it's because they want Penn to freeze out there. That means they're our enemy, and probably in league with that black cloud that cursed us... She shook her head as a chill ran down her spine. We can't send any letters, I can't fly faster than their magic seems to be setting me back, again, and somewhere out there, Pennington is turning into a Quill-sicle! What am I supposed to do to help?

"Well, well, well! Why, what a wry and wily little wyvern!" a voice crooned just behind her, as if talking to an infant, "it seems like you've got this all figured out, don't you?"

Immediately, Moonstone leaped forward and away from whatever had sneaked up on her, catching herself with her wings and gliding to the next tree. The moment she felt her claws grip the branch, she spun around to look at who or what had caught her off-guard.

It appeared to be a pony reclining on the tree branch where she had been standing, absentmindedly examining her gold-tipped hoof, then matching it against the color of her hair. The mare had an impeccably white coat and a golden mane that ended in blood-red tips. As her sky-blue eyes turned to Moonstone, however, her entire body seemed to flicker and distort, as if her very existence was dictated by a failing spell. When the flickering stopped, a shimmer ran down her body like the light on the bottom of a large pool of water, and she seemed to be "real" again. Once Moonstone had gotten a good look at her, she began to notice something behind her: a large cloud of black smoke, twisting and turning in place as if being stirred by a nonexistent wind.

Moonstone tried not to let her fear show, but as she realized that she was standing face-to-face with their attacker, her heart began to pound in her chest, slamming against her ribcage in a barely-contained panic.

The mysterious pony raised an eyebrow as her smug grin grew wider, staring at her with what could only be described as a mix of pity and amusement.

"Oh, don't be frightened, little Moon Moon!" she chuckled, laying down on her stomach and resting her chin on her hooves, seemingly held up by the air itself. "As hard as it is for me to choke down my urge to make that beating heart of yours break out through your chest, dance a little jig, and then force itself down your throat..."

Moonstone swallowed loudly, one of her claws reaching up and pressing itself uncomfortably against her chest.

"... I think the winds are blowing in a different direction today."

There was a devilish glint in her eyes, and Moonstone tried her best to take what comfort she could from the statement. She tended to be brave around Pennington, mostly because it was her job to not be afraid of what he was, but when she was alone, she became painfully aware of the fact that she was young, small, and lacked his ability to grin and quip in the face of danger.

As if she could sense Moonstone's reminder of how weak she was, the stranger leaned forward, refusing to obey the laws of gravity. That shimmering light that Moonstone had seen running through her body seemed to collect in her eyes, scintillating for a moment before flashing with the light of the sun, forcing her to blink and look away, shielding her own eyes. When she opened them again, the pony was gone.

That is, she was gone until Moonstone felt a firm hoof take an uncomfortable grip on her shoulder, and weightless strands of gold-and-ruby hair floated into her peripheral vision. Immediately, she froze, paralyzed with fear.

"Do you want to know what I'm going to do to you, little truth-seer?" the sultry voice whispered into her ear. "I'm going to show you something. I'm going to show you death."

From the corners of her eyes, Moonstone could see the black mist gathering around her. Small amounts of it were even brushing up against her face, toying with scales and pressing at her eyes. Even as she screwed her eyelids shut, she could feel a pressure building just behind her eyes, growing with only the smallest of rates.

"I wouldn't shut them, if I were you, or this might get messy..." There was a slight edge to her voice, a threat that hadn't been as serious before.

Moonstone quickly decided that she would prefer to not get what this sadist would define as "messy," so with a deep breath, she forced herself to open her eyes again. When she did, a firm hoof collided with the back of her head, forcing her to stumble forward. With the impact, however, came something much, much worse: the sight of her own eyeballs leaving her skull as the pressure behind them was released. Somehow still able to see without them, Moonstone watched in horror as the mysterious pony caught the falling orbs in her hoof, quietly floating back around from behind her and into sight.

Mortal terror was quickly beginning to overwhelm her capability of thought, and her breathing progressed from hesitant and shallow to hyperventilation in a matter of seconds. Just as she was drawing in breath for an uncontrolled scream, more of the mist entered her mouth, solidifying and blocking the sound in an effective gag.

"Don't worry, I'll put them back where I found them!" The stranger chuckled as she walked into Moonstone's field of vision. "I just thought they needed a good old-fashioned cleaning, is all!" With a low chuckle to herself, Moonstone watched her pucker her lips and suck her cheeks inward. After a moment or two of swirling back and forth, she slowly let her mouth hang open, and a large dribble of spit descended, landing on the lavender eyes she was holding. With near-expert skill, she revolved the two orbs in her hoof, drizzling her drool lazily onto the two of them. After they were both thoroughly drenched, she closed her mouth again with a small smile. After revolving them a few more times to make sure that they were completely covered, she grabbed a large portion of her hair (once again defying gravity by using both of her front hooves at the same time) and dropped the eyeballs into it, seemingly doing so to remove the excess saliva. After a few seconds of vigorously rubbing with both hooves, she looked down into her hair.

"No, no, no! Those are rubies!" she muttered before spitting into it again and beginning the toweling off again. After a few seconds, she tried looking in again. "Griffin hearts? Well, I am hungry..." She seemed to take a moment to ponder simply eating them then and there, but shook her head, repeating the process. This went on for several minutes, with each result being more and more horrifying, until she finally looked back inside and smiled.

"Ah! There we go! Two eyes, good as new!" She seemed almost genuinely cheerful as she reached down into her hair and pulled Moonstone's eyes back out. From what she could "see," Moonstone could tell that they had changed. Her beautiful lavender irises had been tinted to a blood-red. Unable to do anything to stop her, Moonstone cringed as the pony stepped forward, gently placing each eye back into its socket. Considering the violent nature that she had talked about, Moonstone would have been surprised by how gentle the action was. Except, of course, for the fact that, after blinking several times, she realized that she had been moved.

Now, she was standing at the edge of a clearing in the middle of the some forest: and Pennington was laying in the center, collapsed.

"Penn! What happened?" Moonstone went to run forward, but found herself rooted to the spot, unable to move. Pennington didn't hear her, but with a low groan, began trying to stand up, one hoof at a time. As he raised his head, Moonstone gasped with horror.

His face was showing every sign of having been horribly abused. One of his eyes was swollen and blackened while the other appeared to have burst a blood vessel, turning the previously white area red. His face was covered in numerous other cuts and bruises, almost beyond recognition. As he gritted his jaw in pain, Moonstone could see that more than half of his teeth were either missing or broken, as well. His legs were all drenched in blood, as well, as someone or something had opened up his old changeling wounds. He grunted loudly as he finally stood up on his hooves, seemingly barely able to do so. Looking around, he saw no sign of his tormentor, and gave a soft sigh of relief.

As he did, however, there was an ear splitting crack, and Moonstone saw a tree behind him beginning to topple.

"Penn! LOOK OUT!" She screamed, trying to reach out to him, despite her rooted position.

Pennington's head turned as quickly as it could to look around, and seeing the tree, he fell to the side, rolling as best he could out of the way. The tree landed beside him with a thundering crash, and he was quickly buried in the branches.

There was a moment of terrifying silence, and Moonstone wondered if it was possible that he might have still been killed.

After a few seconds, however, there was the sound of faint coughing, and movement from beneath the branches and leaves. Unbearably slowly, the beaten and broken Pennington crawled out, panting heavily and moaning in pain, several large gashes from the impact torn open in his sides, back, and even along the back of his neck. One of his back legs was broken, bending far enough midway between the knee and ankle for Moonstone to see a pointed edge of bone emerging from a bloody tear in his skin.

Seeing that he had survived, regardless of injury, gave Moonstone hope.

Hearing another tree falling ripped it away again.

This time, the attacking foliage was directly in front of Pennington, a old evergreen with a thick trunk. In the moments as it began to fall, Pennington turned to look back at his injured leg, looked up at the tree descending like a guillotine... and closed his eyes.

"PENNINGTON! NO!"

There was another thunderous crash, the sound of every bone in a pony's body being snapped like a twig... and then nothing. All was silent as the grave.

Moonstone stood, trying to understand, trying to process the fact.

He's... dead...

And then came the laughter. The chuckle. The ever-more-familiar giggle of that stranger.

"Oh, don't worry, he won't be dead for long!" She laughed, appearing on top of the trunk of the tree that had killed him. "Where would the fun be if I only killed him once?"

Moonstone's eyes narrowed, and she could feel a fiery wrath beginning to build in her chest. Baring her fangs in a snarl, she turned on the pony, pointing an accusatory claw in her direction. "Who are you? What are you? Why are you doing this?"

"Moi?" She held a hoof up to her chest, seemingly surprised at the questions. "Why, I'm the nightmare! The horror that waits in the dark! The monster under the bed of every child and every grown-up! I'm chaos given life, and the mistress of death! I am everything horrible and evil in this rotten world bundled together and given the sole purpose of gleefully exacting whatever makes herself happy! I am the Alicorn Assassin, created to eradicate from existence anyone and anything that stands in my way! The magnum opus of the draconequui! I am the endless conqueror, never happy until all existence bows and dies for my amusement! And before all of that, before the Elements of Harmony were forged or the alicorns rose to power..." her eyes narrowed threateningly, "I was the killer of Quill, Ixia, and Threadmane: Equestria's first guardians."

There was a brief moment of tense silence, the two staring one another down, though Moonstone's steely gaze had reverted back to one of wide-eyed fright. After that, however, she put a thoughtful hoof to her chin.

"I'm also occasionally known as 'The Lord of the Dance.'"

Moonstone shook her head in disbelief. "But- But Quill was killed by Scorch! His dragon companion!"

"And who did you think drove Scorch insane?" She raised a single suspicious eyebrow, as if daring Moonstone to answer the question. "It certainly didn't happen on his own!"

"And Ixia..." Moonstone's brow furrowed in thought as she tried to remember the history she'd been taught during her days in Canterlot. "...was killed in battle with Discord!"

"Discord was there, yes..." she yawned, daintily pressing her hoof against her mouth. "But I remember quite clearly, killing her was the first thing I did when I was born. Vaporized her on sight, I believe! It's almost funny to look back on, I didn't know much self-restraint back then." She giggled lightly to herself, as if remembering a joke. "Oh, and the look on Quill's face was priceless!"

"And Threadmane... She died of old age, didn't she?"

The stranger's smile grew again. "Is that what the official records say?"

Moonstone wanted to try to back away, but her feet were still rooted to the spot.

Rolling her eyes, the pony hopped down from the stump, knocking aside the fallen tree to reveal Pennington's crushed remains. Moonstone cringed and turned away, trying not to look at the mangled corpse.

"Now, then, shall I tell you the rules of our game?" She muttered, looking almost disappointed at the remains, a small fireball appearing in one of her hooves and dropping down onto the bloody mess. "Because you should probably be going, soon."

"You may not realize it, but what you're seeing right now is all contained within Pennington's mind. What I killed is his perception of himself, which means from his perspective, he just died. Even if his body is alive." She smiled. "It's more fun this way because I can pull his deaths from his own memories and fears, even the ones that he suppresses, and the pain never gets duller over time! And I'm going to kill him over and over again. It'll be quite fun for me..." She walked back to Moonstone, and as she did, their setting seemed to fade away like an illusion, leaving them both back where they had started. "And every once in a while, I'm going to show you and your 'special eyes' one of those deaths!" With a sweeping motion of her hoof, she pointed back to the city she had been trying to reach. "But don't forget that poor Penn's little body is still going to freeze, so you need to get help quickly!" She grinned evilly at this moment, making what most would consider a beautiful face contort into something disturbing. "But here's the catch: if you walk, I'll kill him at a leisurely pace. If you run, I'll kill him twice as fast. If you fly..." She chuckled, putting a hoof beneath Moonstone's chin to force her to look into her sky-blue eyes. "I'll kill him ten times as much. Time means nothing in a pony's mind, so there's no assurance that just because I'm going faster, it won't be drawn-out and painful..."

Moonstone shook her head. "But- I can't get there before he freezes if I don't fly!"

"Then fly fast!" She chuckled.

"And when you get there, tell them Eris sent you, and that she won't be far behind..."

"Fairytrail is in another few stops..." Whipstitch muttered, staring out the window. "It feels like we've been on this train for months..."

Lily couldn't help but chuckle. It had been no surprise to her when Whipstitch and Pennington had become fast friends after the seamstress had moved to Ponyville. Both were impatient, impulsive, and knew themselves well enough to understand the other.

"Lily, there is something I should warn you about..." Whipstitch sighed as she sat back, turning her gaze towards the ceiling. "Remember when I bought your old place from you in Ponyville?"

"Well, of course I do! That's how I was able to afford to set up a business in Canterlot!" Lily laughed. "If it weren't for you, I'd probably still be stuck there!"

A small smile tugged at Whipstitch's lips. "Yeah, you had big dreams... Well, do you remember how I paid you? Did it seem odd?"

Lily's brow furrowed. "Well, you gave me the full price I was asking for..."

"In bits. Up front. Right?" Whipstitch sighed, as if what she was saying was coming out as easily as pulling teeth.

"I was so happy, I have to admit, it didn't really seem that important at the time, but that is weird... I wondered how you got all that money after I was gone, but I didn't want to ask."

"Well, that was the last of the money that my family gave me when I decided to leave Fairytrail..."

Lily felt her jaw drop. "They gave you enough money for a house?"

"Well, to them, it wasn't much. My grandmother thought I'd just come running back again after a while, anyway." She shook her head, sitting up and looking Lily in the eye again. "What you should know is that you're going to have to brace yourself... Fairytrail kinda makes a big deal out of Threadmane's bloodline... And so does the rest of my family. Sometimes it's just unbearable..."

Lily sighed, sitting back. "So, are you some kind of celebrity or something?"

Whipstitch rolled her eyes, looking back out the window. "You'll see..."