[Celestia's POV]

The day had been going fairly well so far. Though there was little time to think about the Overlord himself lately, there was more than enough time to see the results of his presence on the world stage.

Due to his abnormally low taxes regarding things entering and leaving his country, trade was booming to the south and inadvertently spreading wealth to all the surrounding countries. Where as before there were only small frontier outposts, there were now booming trade towns, places where rare and exotic items were being traded from places like Zebraka in the south, to the Griffon kingdoms in the east and even some items from the dragon lands to the west. As we were the first to start trade with them we had some of the best deals, making Equestria all the more prosperous.

It sure seemed that everyone was happy to take advantage of the new trade routes, especially those of... ill repute. From what she had heard, there were essentially no bans on what could and could not be sold or bought by anyone leading to more than a few... shall we say... unhealthy products being put into circulation. In fact, the only thing that came to mind as an example of something banned from sale and ownership were the strict laws against slavery, which I approved of. Oh, and gems, for some reason, the Overlord was very interested in buying as many gems as he could...

One of the most surprising, and slightly worrying, allowances that the Domain gave to its citizens was the ability to safely study and practice necromancy, and many other dark arts that were forbidden in most of the civilized world. Though it was somewhat reassuring that in order to do so one needed a licence and they were watched near constantly, "for the safety of the other citizens, of course," or so the Overlord had said.

In fact there were surprisingly few laws overall, with only basic things being illegal like murder, theft and rape. Other than that there were almost no rules other than what each community decided for themselves. From what I had heard there were some rather odd ones too, like one village that had made it mandatory for all citizens to eat pie on Thursdays. Not the weirdest thing I've ever heard of, but still pretty far up there.

The effect that all of this had on Equestria itself was becoming plainer by the day, in more ways than one would expect. The prices on certain goods that had previously been difficult to find had dropped to almost nothing, ruining several high fairing businesses and spawning several dozen new ones.

Technological, magical and medical progress was on the rise as experiments that would be illegal here were done with only a consent form and some small government observation over there, cures for painful diseases thought incurable were already being made, new theories on magic that challenged everything we thought we knew and newer, cleaner ways of powering various mechanical items, such as trains, that were used daily.

"This is possibly the best thing to happen to Equestria since the Griffon Kingdoms decided to declare peace and ally with us."

I sighed heavily as I reached my quarters, one of my guards asking me, "Another hard day, your Majesty?"

"Sometimes I wonder if the nobles are trying to kill me by annoying me to death, I mean how am I supposed to keep a defunct company from going under, force ponies to buy their goods?"

"Perhaps you could let Princ-" the other guard started before I cut him off.

"While I love the fact that my guards care about me so much, again, I must state that I will not be taking a vacation. I would just spend the whole time worrying about whether or not the nobles had burned everything to the ground while I was gone."

The guards just smiled, nodded and uttered a "Yes, Princess." before returning to their statue-like guard stance.

I entered my rooms, a rather impressive if overly ornate set of royal amenities. So many memories in these rooms... some good and some... less so. I shook my head to clear my head and went over to my desk to hopefully finish some paperwork before I had to sleep. It always amused me how, even though my sister and I were by all accounts immortal, we still got cranky if we didn't sleep every day.

"Uhh... I hate paperwork..."

After about two, three hours of drifting in between attentively reading the nobles requests, (and rejecting a majority of them, I mean really, That? With... With a rubber chicken?) and skimming requests from common ponies, farmers, craftsponies and the like, (Making more protected natural parks did sound nice!) when I felt some of my wards light up. The fact that they didn't stop whoever had set them off meant that it could only be one of two ponies, and I was more than happy to greet either of them.

Twilight teleported into the center of the room, seemingly in a bit of a mood if the state of her mane and coat were any indication. It wasn't the first time I had seen her like this and it almost certainly wouldn't be the last, and yet every time she always had the same reaction of shame. Like she thought she had somehow disappointed me by having a mini brake-down in front of me, as though she could ever really disappoint me... she had already done so much for me and besides, it wasn't like I hadn't watched her grow up and already knew all of her quirks.

"Princess, I need to talk to you, it's very important! It's about Nobody! Uh, I mean, the Overlord Nobody, not just nobody nobody, see-" Twilight all but yelled while trying to do her best Pinkie Pie impression.

"Twilight! Deep breaths, calm down, then tell me what you need to talk to me about, okay?" I interrupted her. While seeing how far she could have gotten on one breath would have been funny, this actually did sound somewhat serious.

Twilight looked a little sheepish before sitting down and doing as I had asked, calming down and even taking the time to smooth her mane down a little.

"Now, begin." I said when she looked up at me to confirm she was calm enough to speak.

"Okay, so, you know how the Overlord didn't want me to go in his lab when we were visiting?" she began, tapping her hooves together.

"Oh, Twilight, you didn't..." I thought with some sadness.

"Well, I may have... kinda... gone in anyway?" she said as she cringed away before saying in a rush, "But see, the thing is I found something!"

"Let's hope the Overlord is forgiving of 'accidental' theft of research."

"While I am upset at your actions, we were guests in his home, he asked you for one thing, privacy, and you violated that, I will ask; what did you find, Twilight?"

"At first I couldn't make heads or tails of it, but I recently made a breakthrough! It was the formula for a teleportation spell, one strong enough to send you to a different universe! It was actually quite brilliant, you see it contained a two interconnected 'no maintenance' spells that would convert matter into energy, and then convert the energy into it's magical counterpart. That would then fuel both of the previous spells as well as the teleportation spell."

"While that does sound impressive Twilight, I fail to see why you needed to tell me about it in person." I told her, genuinely impressed with the level of complexity the Overlord's spell contained... and perhaps a little unnerved by it, he was, by his own admission, a novice when it came to magic. If he was capable of figuring this out now...

"It's the power requirements of the spell, teleporting to the other side of the planet would cost about the same amount of energy as one of your feathers, but getting to another universe? Like his home universe?! It would literally cost everything, as in all of our universe, all at once!"

At once I felt the heavy weight of existential terror grip me. My ponies, my kingdom, my sister, all could disappear without even a flash to warn me. All so one being could find a way back to...

To family. And comfort. And friends.

I suppose, from that viewpoint, I could somewhat understand.

"We need to stop him before it's too late! I can have the girls here in less than ten minutes, if we get the Elements of Harmony we might be able to seal him away!" Twilight yelled charging up her horn.

"Twilight, stop!" I told, bordering on commanded, her. "I will handle this myself. I want you to not tell anypony about this, not even the other elements, do you understand?"

"B-But-" she stammered.

"Do you understand, Twilight?" I asked, though it was more of a statement than a question.

"Yes." She all but whimpered. Great, and now I feel like I just kicked a small, purple, bookish puppy.

She teleported away before I could say anything else, so I walked over to my balcony. While I couldn't see his tower over the Macintosh hills, I knew I would be there soon. I needed answers, and if necessary...

I needed to protect my ponies once again.

Author's Note

So, what do you all think of the story so far? I love reading comments, even the bad ones, and would like to know your opinion!