The Stars Will Aid Their Escape

Chapters

Two Years Later
Cutie Mark Cultists
The Ponyville Horror
CMC Rubberneckers
Trixie, Locoarborist
Flashback One : Rumours & Lies
Royal Prerogatives
The Neighcronomicon
Singer of Strange Songs
The Thing That Howled in Twilight
Culpability
Command Performance
Ensemble Cast
Façades
Twisting the Knife
Poor Unfortunate Souls
Finishing Moves
The Goat of a Thousand Young
Gods and Monsters
Coda
Chapter 1
Familial Bonds

Two Years Later

"Behold, ponies, the New, Improved, Great and Powerful Trixie!"

Rainbow Dash snorted. "Here we go..."

Applejack sighed and nodded. "Sure looks like she ain't learned a darn thing. I knew she was going to be trouble agin, the moment I saw her on the road. Didn't even have the good manners to say hello to Mac an' me."

There were only a handful of ponies watching. For one thing, most of Ponyville still considered her at least partly responsible for the Ursa incident. And her boasting looked to be as insufferable as last time. For the third...

"Why'd she go and set up way out here, anyhow?”

Trixie had put up her stage in an empty field near the Apple's farm, backing onto the forest.

"Well, you'd hardly expect the Mayor would let her set up in the town square again, or use the stage out by the school, after last time.” Murmured Rarity “Even if it was those two colts who were really responsible, she was terribly rude to poor Twilight."

"Where is Twi anyway? You'd a thought she'd be here, in case Trixie turns up with another Ursa Minor. Or an Ursa Major. Or an Ursa Super-Major. Is that even a thing? That'd be awesome"

"Saw her down at the library - said she was too busy ta come. Got a bee in her bonnet about the eclipse, or some such."

Rarity sighed sympathetically "She works herself far too hard. I told her 'Darling, the festival is two days away, I'm sure you can take one evening off. And it's not like the Princesses can't do without you - they have arranged them before.'"

One of the other ponies shushed her. Trixie had already started her show, and they had to admit it was a bit different to last time. Less fireworks, more eldritch glows, and some impressive-sounding patter. She'd even changed her basic tricks. Assuming the bunch of flowers was supposed to burst into blue flame after she created it.

"Whoa! Cool!"

Applejack was paying more attention to Trixie herself. "Is it just me, Rarity, or is that pony looking a mite unwell?"

"No... I think you're right Jacqueline - she might have turned my mane green, but I hate to see a pony who isn't taking care of herself."

Trixie certainly wasn't looking her best. Her replacement hat and cloak were ragged, and her mane and tail a tangled mess. Even with her new tricks, the audience was starting to fidget and snigger. Oddly, she didn't seem to mind. Or notice.

"And for her next trick! The Great and Powerful Trixie challenges a certain mare! Twilight Sparkle! Come forward!"

"Eh? What's she up to now? She better not be trying to make Twi look bad - she ain't even here."

Trixie's gaze scanned across the audience.

"So the loser Twilight Sparkle does not even dare show her face? Very clever of her. She might once have vanquished an Ursa Minor, but the Great and Powerful Trixie can cast magic beyond anything that librarian can imagine!"

Rainbow Dash had had enough, and flew forward to prod the unicorn's chest. "Hey! Watch what you're saying, show-off. Twi kicked your flank last time!" This close, Dash could see just how unwell she was - pupils shrunken, and a sheen of sweat lathering on her flank - but right now was too busy defending her friend to care.

Trixie smirked. "And could your precious unicorn make the Everfree Forest walk all the way into town?"

Applejack laughed. "Hon, if you can make trees walk around, then we can sure use you on the farm."

Rarity frowned “Don’t laugh at the poor mare, Applejack, she looks like she’s about to fall over. Are you sure you’re feeling entirely well, Trixie?”

The blue unicorn started to snicker, and drew herself up to full height, even though she was swaying on her hooves. “Watch and marvel as the Great and Powerful Trixie commands the very trees to walk!” Her horn lit up, and she started to shout.
“Cf'ayak'vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgtmm! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! B-R’nam Dnsnn!...”

AJ and Rarity exchanged a glance. “What’s all that supposed to be, d’ya reckon? Sounds likes she’s trying to talk through a mouthful of pinecones.”

“The poor dear clearly needs help. Rainbow, could you go fetch Doctor Horse and Nurse Redheart tell them to bring a few orderlies...”

The ground shook.

The audience looked around in puzzlement. There hadn’t been any earth tremors around Ponyville in decades, and there was the strangest sort of creaking and tearing noise back within the looming bulk of the Everfree. The breeze shifted, and something came with it. The foulest and most gut-wrenching stench any of the ponies had ever experienced. Rarity turned a little green.

“Ew!” spat Rainbow Dash. “Where’s that coming from?”

In the woods, there was a crash as a tree trunk splintered, and something... somethings... crashed heavily towards the edge of the trees. The rest of the audience started to shift a little nervously. That became a stampede when Trixie’s walking trees emerged into the open.

They had trunks, it was true. And the writhing, jointless limbs above certainly branched. But trees don’t have hooves. Or groaning, croaking mouths in deep, dripping splits in their bark. Each of them was taller than the tallest house in Ponyville.

Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash stared in slack-jawed horror, as the rest of the crowd vanished in a cloud of dust back towards Ponyville, and Trixie kept on chanting. “...gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath!”

AJ opened and closed her mouth, and after her third attempt, found the words she was looking for.

“This ain’t good.”

Cutie Mark Cultists

The things twitched and writhed as they waded through the undergrowth, trampling the fence-line into splinters, gelid black flesh flowing into new shapes as limbs formed and reformed, and the dozens of gaping mouths croaked and hooted. Thick greenish slime dripped from each orifice, bubbling as the foully unnatural creatures closed in, hooves digging deep into the earth under their massive weight. Trixie had finished her chanting, and was putting all of her attention on the trio of ponies pressed against each other in front of the stage.

“See? The Great and Powerful Trixie told you she could make trees walk.”

“Tri... Trixie dear...” stammered Rarity “maybe you should come away... come away from... from your trees?”

Trixie just laughed. “Let’s see your librarian do better than this!” The things were almost within reach of the stage now.

Applejack nudged Rarity, urgently. “She ain’t listening, hon. And we gotta shift our tails, right now.”

The nearest creature lashed out, snatching at Rainbow Dash. She flinched, wings beating frantically as the tentacle swept past her, and she pushed hard at her friend. “We are out of here! Move it, Rarity!”

They fled. Behind them, Trixie stopped laughing, but they didn’t turn around to look.

At least the things didn’t seem to be very fast – there was no sign of pursuit, and they let their initial frantic dash slow to a sustainable gallop. The edge of Sweet Apple Acres rolled by on their left, with the open ground on their right, both barely illuminated by the starlight. The waning moon had long since been lowered by the Night Princess, the better to show off her work on the evening’s constellations and auroras.

Dash was flying alongside the other two, backwards, peering towards the distant lantern light around Trixie’s stage. It seemed brighter than it should be, as if the stage was on fire. Occasionally, something would pass between her and the blaze, and she shuddered a little, inside.

Applejack still had enough breath left over for talking. “We gotta go get Twilight! Maybe she can, magic them back into the Forest or summint.”

“Was Trixie crazy!? How’d she get them to come out in the first place, anyway?”

“I don’t think I want ta know, Dash – Rarity, you go tell Twilight to meet us at the town hall, we’ve gotta get a warning to the Mayor. Everyponies probably out on tha streets already, judging by last time. Dash, you get over to Fluttershy’s and tell her we might be needing some of her special monster-wrangling know-how, real soon.”

“Hey, sis! Where y’all going so fast?”

Applejack skidded to a halt. Her little sister was propped up against the fence, with her two friends. Sweetie Belle was holding a butterfly net in her teeth, and Scootaloo was perched on top of the fencepost with a lantern around her neck. “Hi, Rainbow Dash!”

“Apple Bloom?”

“What’s going on? You shoulda seen all them ponies come running past, you’da thought a manticore was after ‘em!”

“’Ey ‘arity! ‘e’re ‘orrctin’ ‘ilk uffs!”

“Sweetie Belle! Thank Celestia we saw you! Trixie’s show... things!”

“Trixie? The Great and Powerful Trixie? Is there another Ursa? Or the same Ursa? Or Two Ursas?”

“Apple Bloom, you listen, and you listen good! You three get back to the house, get Granny down ta the apple cellar, and you stay there, ya hear? Tell your brother to get into town as quick as he can, and ta go around the long way iffen there’s anything out this side of the farm!”

The three fillies stared. “Aw, but Sis...”

“Right this minute, you hear?”

“Guys... I think those things are moving...” Dash was popping up and down above the tree tops, trying to make out black tree-like shapes against the black Everfree Forest. “And all the lanterns have gone out.”

“What things, Rainbow Dash?”

“I told you three to move it!”

“Aw, alright, we’re moving, we’re moving..”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders turned to stomp dejectedly back through the trees. “It ain’t fair!”

“Everytime something interesting is happening everypony tells us to stay out of the way. Even Rainbow Dash!”

“’e ‘innt ‘’nvn gnet-” Sweetie spat out the butterfly net. “I didn’t even get to see the Ursa last time! Just because Rarity said I had to be in bed... why do THEY get to have all the fun?”

“That,” murmured a voice they didn’t recognise “is a very good question.”

“Eek!” Scootaloo dropped the lantern, which promptly went out.

“Scootaloo! Now look what you’ve done.”

“It wasn’t my fault! I was surprised, that’s all.”

“Who’s there, anyway?”

“You may call me Herald. Allow me.” There was a noise in the dark, and a whoosh of flame, and they saw him. His mask was lit from underneath by the re-lit lantern, the contours stark, and the eye-sockets empty and black.

“AHHHHH!” screamed the three fillies.

Herald chuckled. “Not Eeee-ahhh? But nevermind. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

Apple Bloom looked up from the huddle “Sorry mister. We didn’t see you there. What are you doing out here anyhow?” she added, suspiciously.

“I bet I know!” exclaimed Sweetie Belle, pushing her way out of the pile. “You were here to announce Trixie’s show, weren’t you? That’s what heralds do! Announcements and... proclamations... and stuff.”

“Something like that.” agreed the black-coated stranger, in his deep and quiet tone.

“Is that why you’re wearing a mask? Were you part of the show too?” Scootaloo interjected “Could you tell us why everypony was running away? Rainbow Dash and Applejack and Rarity wouldn’t say.”

“I could tell you, but don’t you have some chore to do?”

“Yeah... but if we go do it we wouldn’t be able to come back....”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

“I dunno” said the disgruntled filly. “We miss all the good stuff.”

“I expect they want to keep you out of harm’s way. Were they in a very great hurry?”

“Yessss” said Sweetie Belle. “My sister musta been really busy. She didn’t even ask what we were doing out here after dark.”
“Is that a fact? So, what are you three doing out here after dark?”

The three Cutie Mark Crusaders exchanged a guilty glance. “Sweetie Belle got in trouble...” confessed Scootaloo.

“Again.” added Apple Bloom.

“Hey! That’s not fair Apple Bloom! You get in lots of trouble too! Just because I wanted to make some new Cutie Mark Crusader capes and used up all of Rarity’s gold silk –“

“Again.” added Apple Bloom.

Sweetie squeaked in outrage “I was the one that wanted to make it up to her and get more silk!”

Scootaloo continued “But Sweetie Belle didn’t want to get the silk from spiders -”

“Eww!” said the unicorn

“ – even though I know a great place for spiders, so we asked Twilight where you can get silk from without spiders and she said something about silk moths -”

“So we’re out here catching moths.” Apple Bloom held up a bottle, which was empty.

“- and once we’re got some moths will find out how to make silk from them. And then we’ll get our Cutie Marks!”

The three leaped in the air and clapped their hooves together. “Cutie Mark Crusader Silk Farmers YAY!”

Herald watched this display with wry amusement, as far as they could tell. “Fascinating. I expect you’ll be wanting to go back to the farmhouse now, however?”

The three slumped. “Aw, yeah.”

“It’s not that we don’t wanna, mister...”

“But if we do then we won’t get to find out what’s going on until tomorrow –“

“... and we won’t get to catch any moths...”

“And Granny said she’d tan our hides til we’re dead, if she caught us out of bed again.”

Herald nodded. “I see. Do you think your sister would object to you coming into town, to see what was going on, if there was somepony to escort you?”

Apple Bloom cheered up “Yeah! I’m sure that’s what she really meant!”

“Well then.” continued Herald “Since I’m going that way myself, and I’m sure three enterprising fillies like yourselves will be able to get back here after all the excitement is over, without your big sister finding out, I’m sure I can walk you, oh, at least as far the edge of town. You might even be able to find a place to watch from. Somewhere tall, perhaps?”

“I know!” exclaimed the orange pegasus “How about the windmill! You can see all the way across Ponyville from up there!”

“Yes” said Herald. “That sounds... ideal.”

The Ponyville Horror

Dash stuck her head up over the edge of the wall. The tree-thing was still busily destroying the town hall, and didn't seem to notice her, or the small herd of other ponies hiding in the garden. But then, it didn't have any eyes. Applejack yanked her back into cover anyway.

"Can't Twilight put it to sleep or something?"

"Now why in tarnation are you asking me?"

"You're the one that sings lullabies to apple trees!"

"I don't know if you noticed, hon, but that ain't no apple tree!”

Another pony pushed through the press behind them. “A.J.? Dash? What’s going on? We came as soon as could, Rarity said something abou- EEEEIIYAAAA!!!! What is THAT?!”

“We ain’t got no idea, sugercube, we was kinda hoping you could tell us.”

“Where’s Fluttershy? She knows more about animals than I do. If it is an animal.”

“Over there.” Dash pointed a hoof back into the crowd, where three ponies were trying to wake up the yellow pegasus. “Took one look at it and passed out.”

The three mares ducked further behind the wall - the thing had paused in its orgy of destruction, plucking the structural timbers out of the building and breaking them to fragments with its black and rubbery limbs. Rainbow winced - they'd been the hardest part of the last rebuilding effort, and the thing had snapped them like twigs.

Applejack was the next to speak, after a considerable pause. “I ain’t blaming her none, R.D. I was thinking Big Mac and me might be able to rope it up and drag it outta town, but he ain’t shown up yet. Where is that dang stallion when ya need him? Besides, that’s one big critter, anyhow. Looks like this one’s up to you, Twi.”

"I.... I've never read about anything like it... maybe it has a chapter in 'The Equestrian Field Guide To Carnivorous Monsters'? Do you know what it eats? "

"Nope, and I ain't getting close enough to find out, neither."

Spike peered out from behind Twilight. "Where did it come from, anyway? Out of the Everfree?"

"Ha!” snorted Dash, bitterly “You bet - after Trixie called them out."

"What?!" shouted Twilight "What was she thinking? And how'd she do it? I don't know of any monster-summoning spells, nopony would be silly enough to make one."

"Keep it down Twi, it might hear you. And don't ask me, either, you're the expert on that kinda thing. Question is, what are we gonna do about them?"

Twilight and her assistant were appalled. "Them? There's more than one!?"

"Sure! This one and the other dozen that were back stomping Trixie's stage. At least, I hope they're still back there. This one came into town about two minutes after we did. At least nopony fainted in the street this time - they moved almost as fast as I do! Well, nopony but Fluttershy."

"Has it hurt anypony? And where's Trixie?" asked the unicorn. "If she knows how to make them to show up, maybe she knows how to make them go away?"

Applejack and Rainbow Dash exchanged a glance. “Twi... dunno how to put this... but I don’t think she got moving quick as we did.”

Twilight looked sick to the stomach.

"But they ain’t got nopony else. Leastways, not yet. Chewed up a few buildings with those arm things, out by the school, though. I'm pretty sure we got everypony out in time. Hightailed it over here to tell folk to shift their flanks, the moment we saw it coming. They did too – ran around like frightened chickens then stood back aways and watched, like they usually do."

The thing finished its obliteration of the town hall. Twilight felt a pang of sorrow at the debris, especially the wonderful banners Rarity had designed for the eclipse banquet. Even if she was going to be at the main festivities in Canterlot, Twilight had wanted the residents of Ponyville to enjoy the best possible day, and it hurt more than she had imagined possible to see the symbols of Celestia and Luna trampled and stained under the thing's oozing hooves.

"Right. Spike! Go back to the library, and send a letter to the Princess - ask her to send as many of the unicorn guards here as she can send, any pegasi too, and tell her that there at least a dozen of these giant walking tree things to deal with, and they might already have hurt a pony. I'll need the royal library to check for anything on summoning antisocial vegetation, too. And things that sort of look like trees. Or if there’s such a thing as cephalopods with hooves. Then I need you and Rarity to pull out every book on monsters and spellcraft I have."

"On it, Twilight!"

"What are you going to do?" asked Rainbow. "I think that tree-thing is deciding what to eat next."

"I'm going to try and contain this one with a force bubble. It should work, but I'll have to be really close, and I won't be able to maintain more than one bubble at a time. If it does work, I should be able to carry it somewhere where it can't climb out in a hurry. Ghastly Gorge, maybe. Where's Pinkie?"

"Right here, Twilight!" As usual, she seemed to appear out of nowhere. "Do you want me to make it laugh?"

"Eek! How do you keep doing that? Anyway ... I'm sorry, Pinkie, but it doesn't look like it has much of a sense of humour. I want you three to keep it distracted, especially if it looks like it is going to hurt somepony. Any other pegasi need to go out to the farms and every other building outside town, and warn everypony to stay inside or down in their cellars. Take lanterns if you can find them. Everypony else? I need you all to move back to the edge of town. I don't want anypony hurt if this doesn't work. But come and tell us straight away if you see any more of the things coming."

The crowd nodded, still frightened, but relieved that somepony was taking charge. They even stopped moaning “The horror! The horror!”

Twilight set her hooves, and nodded in determination.

"Let's go!"

One pony had stayed behind - Fluttershy, who had finally come around but was still trembling at the sight and sound and stench of the entity.

"What... what about me Twilight? I can ask it if it could please go away by itself..."

Twilight, Applejack and Rainbow Dash looked dubious. Pinkie on the other hand, looked enthusiastic. "Go on, Twi! Her special talent worked on that manticore, and the dragon, and Cerberus, AND that Vermicious Knid last Tuesday, even if the only word it knew was 'Scram!'"

"Well... it can't hurt I suppose..."

"I'm more worried it might hurt you, Flutters! At least the other things sort of had an excuse for being so cranky. This thing came out of the forest and started trashing things for no reason at all! "

"I know, Rainbow, but I ought to try. I mean, wouldn't we all feel awful it we hurt it, and it was just lost?"

The creature had fallen silent, the vertical mouths in its trunk opening and closing, its tentacles toying with the shattered remains of the building, and the decorations so painstakingly prepared. It was as though it was listening. Or waiting for something.

"Well, okay. But if it makes one funny move I'll buck it right in the face! If it had one."

Fluttershy crept out into the square. The creature's flesh quivered, clenched and unclenched. She still couldn't tell if it was a plant, an animal, or something else. Her friends watched closely, ready to snatch her to safety at the first sign of trouble.

"Um... hello?" Fluttershy could tell that there was something there, some channel of communication, but it seemed different, disturbingly different, to the level of empathy she had with the animals in her care. "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but would you mind going back to the forest? I'm afraid you're scaring the other ponies, but I'm sure they'd be happy for... you.... and... your ... friends... to... visit?"

She could feel the thing looking at her, despite the lack of eyes, could feel the attention it gave her. But it wasn't hunger driving it, or greed, or confusion. There was purpose, implacable and unspeakable ... it reared, and brought up four of its larger limbs to crush the pegasus into the ground.

"FLUTTERSHY!" screamed Twilight. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were already moving - the farmer turning to kick flowerpots across the square and into the thing's 'face', Dash a cyan blur as she snatched her friend out danger, and deposited her back with Twilight and Pinkie.

Pinkie looked shocked. "You're right, Twilight - I don't think it was joking."

"Dash! Look out!" yelled the unicorn, as the thing howled and hooted and croaked, lurching up as its limbs lengthened and gained bulk, flesh flowing into extra muscle. It lashed out at the pegasus with one tentacles, and at Applejack with the other. Both avoided the swipe, with difficulty.

Dash dived under the blow, circled up and around the thing, and shouted to attract its attention away from Twilight and Fluttershy.

"Hey! Stinky! Up here!"

It twisted, somehow, all the way around, its maws drooling and bubbling, and reached up for her. The branches of its limbs were long, but thankfully not long enough. Behind it, Twilight was pushing the traumatised Fluttershy back into an alley. "Stay here! It's too dangerous!"

Pinkie had somehow reached the upper balcony of a building two doors down, and was waving at the thing. "Yoohoo! Mister Monster! I've got a present for you!" It howled, deep and wet and blood-curdling, and trampled Roseluck's awarding-winning garden flat with the earth as it lurched towards her.

"Party Cannon!"

The detonation of Pinkie's impossible party tool was almost deafening at such short range. Unfortunately, it was also almost totally ineffective. At least the now confetti-spattered monster was fully preoccupied with demolishing the house in its search for the pink earth pony. Twilight felt momentary guilt, but at least it was damaging property, not ponies. She tiphoofed forward, trying to swallow her terror and concentrate on the barrier spell she needed, and still keep an eye on the evil bulk of the thing as it loomed above her. This would be so much easier if I could cast a basic negative curvature on the layers, she thought. But that would put her inside the shell with the beast. Out of the corner of one eye, she could see Applejack roping one of its tentacles to a fencepost, delaying it just long enough for Dash to move a small thundercloud to within striking distance, and Pinkie to skip merrily between its legs and tangle them up in bunting.

Twilight gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and formulated the spell. This was much harder than a barrier to keep out three fillies. Much harder than enclosing even multiple inert masses. Almost as exhausting as the spell her brother used to protect the city of Canterlot, but there, at least, he could be inside the sphere, and it would maintain itself without his constant attention on the mathematics.

Her horn started to glow, brighter and brighter, throwing off brilliant sparks as she got into her element, tapped her potential and pictured the spell in her mind. The thing had noticed her now, she could hear it turning, felt the slime dripping on her coat and cringed, as her friends redoubled their efforts.

She cast the spell.

The sudden silence was what struck her first - the pink shell of magical force was rigid enough to mute the creature's outraged howls. It still pushed and drooled against the barrier, flabby mouths sucking obscenely against the inside of the barrier, hooves slipping as they tried to trample her into red ruin. She gritted her teeth - this was proving even more difficult than the Ursa, or the fragments of the dam. The former had been sedated and mostly insubstantial - the latter heavy, but inert.

"Stand... back... Everypony!"

She felt out for the mass of the thing, felt the bulk of it in her mind, recoiled at first from the sickeningly unnatural feel of it, even through telekinesis, but gripped it and started to push. Feedback pushed her hooves deep into the loam, but the bubble and its horrific contents pulled free of the ground, and she gasped, sweating, and leveled it out roughly two stories up.

A.J. paused to recover her hat. "Nice work, Twilight. Think you can get it over to the gorge?"

Twilight nodded, too conscious of the effort she was maintaining, to risk speaking aloud. She levitated the bubble directly towards the gorge, staggering after it, like some awful re-imagining of a foal chasing a balloon. Pinkie tilted her head and regarded it, biting her tongue.

"You know, I think that meanie monster doesn't even deserve a party. But you do, Twilight!"

"Hey! We did stuff too, Pinkie!" objected the pegasus.

"I know that Dashie - I'm giving Twili moral support."

"Please... everypony be quiet.... have... to... concentrate!”

“Oh... sorry... we oughta go see how Flutters is doing. She looked a bit upset.” Pinkie and Rainbow left.

Twilight had managed to move the captured creature almost two blocks before the next distraction.

“Twilight! Twilight Sparkle!” A panicked pony was running down the length of Stirrup Street, and more were close behind.

“Hold your horses, Junebug!” said Applejack, as she cut in front and slowed he stampede to a halt. “Can’t you see she’s concentrating? What’s wrong, anyhow?”

“You said to come tell you if we saw more of the things – and we have! There’s a dozen and they’re coming into town right now!”

Twilight fumbled her hold on the bubble. It landed on the Quill and Sofa store, completely crushing the roof and most of the contents. Fortunately for everypony, the bubble itself flickered but did not go out, even as the tree-thing redoubled its efforts to break free.

Applejack regarded the wreckage sadly. “Well, no use crying over spilt milk. But I reckon Davenport is going to be mighty peeved. So, all you ponies get out of the way in time?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to say! There’s a pony with them!”

CMC Rubberneckers

"Did you see that? That was a triple somersault and spin! Dash is awesome!" Scootaloo was so excited her wings were buzzing.

The view wasn't perfect - the night was too dark to see very well - but the windows of the surviving buildings cast enough light to get glimpses here and there. The brilliant flash as Rainbow bucked a lightning bolt out of her cloud and into the creature was especially satisfying, as it illuminated the battle for one perfect instant.

"Sure is, Scootaloo! You see my sister rope that thing up to the fountain?" she turned to the stallion, and proudly continued "Applejack's the best rodeo mare this side of Hoofington."

Herald nodded, although his attention was fixed with curious intensity on the scene below.

"Can you see Rarity anywhere?" asked Sweetie Belle. She was as proud of her sister as Apple Bloom was of hers, but it looked as though she was in for a disappointment.

"Sorry, Sweetie Belle, I ain't seen your sister anywhere. Maybe she's helping everypony else?"

Sweetie looked crestfallen. She turned her own attention to Herald. His coat made him next to invisible against the midnight sky, and his cutie mark was even harder to make out. She couldn't even tell what it was. Everytime she looked at it seemed to be something different, and trying to nail it down was given her a headache.

Pink and purple light flared across the rooftops. A luminous bubble had formed around the monster, and a few seconds later, the entire thing was hovering awkwardly at about eye-level for the fillies, from their vantage point in the mill. "That musta been Twilight! She's the smartest pony I know."

"Aw, I was hoping Dash would zap it another lightning bolt."

Sweetie Belle watched the display for another minute, and then turned back to Herald.

"Excuse me, Mister Herald? If you don't mind me asking? How did you get your cutie mark? Shouldn't it be a banner or scroll or something if making proclamations is your special talent?"

That got the other fillies’ attention, as well. Scootaloo peered at the masked stallion's coat. "Yeah, what's a... squiggle... got to do with announcing stuff?" She rubbed her eyes. "Ow."

"You shouldn't try to read in the dark, child, you'll strain your eyes." Herald shifted his position, and turned his gaze on the Crusaders. He was still wearing the mask, but his posture seemed oddly satisfied. "Under any other circumstances, I would be delighted to tell you exactly how to get a mark like this one, but I fear I must disappoint you." Their faces fell. "But I'm sure you'll find Act Two of the little performance below adequately entertaining. I know I will." He pointed towards the nearest bridge, which was visibly bending under the weight of more of the monsters.

The three fillies craned over the balcony. Suddenly, they weren't so confident about their heroines' chances.

"I... I dunno. Can Rainbow Dash zap twelve of them at once?"

There was a distant crash.

"I think Twilight Sparkle just dropped the first one on a house, girls..."

Apple Bloom bit her lip. "Maybe we shoulda gone got my brother and stayed at the house like mah sister said." she turned to Herald. "Sorry, mister. We gotta go."

"Oh, don't apologise. But I fear you won't be going anywhere. After all, I wouldn't have got you up here if I intended that you wander off again."

The three stared at him, and his now increasingly creepy smiling white mask.

"What... what do you mean, mister?" quavered the red-headed filly as they backed against the rail.

"What I mean, little ponies, is that you three will assist me in the destruction of everything you know."

Light blazed in the holes of his face.

Trixie, Locoarborist

The yellow pegasus was weeping, uncontrollably, as Rainbow Dash and Pinkie tried to comfort her.

"Hey, Flutters. It's not so bad - you can't expect your talent to work every time."

"You don't .... you don't understand Dash."

Pinkie was unusually subdued, eyes terribly serious as she nuzzled soothingly against her friend's mane.

"What don't we understand, Fluttershy? You don't have to be sorry that the rest of us had to fight it, no meanie monster is going to get the better of the Mane Six. We'll look after it, AND look after you, OK?"

"That's ... that's not it, Pinkie. I could tell it knew what I was saying... it knew I didn't want to hurt it. But it didn't care! It didn't care at all!"

Fluttershy broke down, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Dashie exchanged a glance with the pink Earth Pony. Neither of them were quite as empathic as Fluttershy, but both were sensitive to the feelings of their friend, even if they didn't quite understand her reaction.

"Do you want us to stay with you, Flutterbutter? Twilight's got that one all under control now, and you heard her, we'll have unicorns and pegasi coming out of our ears as soon as they can get here from Canterlot. We'll get all those tree-things back into the Forest in two shakes of my tail."

Fluttershy's tears slowed, and she returned Pinkie's nuzzle gratefully. "Thank... thank-you. Maybe we could go to Twilight's? Rarity and Spike might need my help, if I can't help Twilight and the rest of you with the monsters..."

Pinkie started to shiver, and her ear and tail twitched. "Uh-oh."

"Pinkie? What's up?"

The stench of the tree-thing, fading slowly now Twilight Sparkle had it encased in a bubble of magic, was back, stronger than ever. Worse, much worse, than Froggy Bottom Hollow after the Hydra had stirred it up.

Rainbow Dash flew up to above the rooftop. "Oh, horsefeathers. Pinkie, Fluttershy, we got dash - the rest of those things have just shown up."

Fluttershy looked horrified, and Pinkie pensive. "I'm not sure I can reload the party cannon that fast, Dashie."

“Doesn't matter. We have to tell Twi-"

There was a crash somewhere behind them.

"I think she just found out."

Dash bit her lip. "OK, here's the plan - Fluttershy, you go to the library, and tell Spike to send an update to Princess Celestia. Pinkie! You and I are going back to help Twi and A.J., maybe we can herd them all into one spot and Twi can gift-wrap them int- oh, horseapples, what is SHE doing there?"

***

"What's this?" smirked Trixie. "Is the librarian so stunned by the Great and Powerful Trixie's awesome stage presence that she cannot even speak?" Twilight Sparkle was trembling, from the effort of containing one of the creatures, and still keep an eye on the dozen more that had followed her into the intersection. "Or is the Princess' number one student realising she's no match for the real magical talent in Equestria?"

Applejack stood between the two unicorns, ready to defend her friend if the creatures attacked. So far, they had remained silent and weirdly attentive behind the showmare.

"What are you talking about, showpony? It's your dang critter that smashed up the town - you'll be lucky if the Mayor don't just lock you up and throw away the key."

The threat washed over the blue unicorn without even ruffling her hair. It was debatable whether she even noticed Applejack's presence. "We would have thought the clever little librarian could deal with one little walking tree, if she was so good against Ursa Minors, and draconequii, and changelings."

Twilight's attention was somewhat occupied, which may explain why it took this long for her to notice Trixie's saddlebag, and the large book protruding from the top. Of course she couldn't comment, and for the time being even Applejack was stunned into silence by Trixie's outrageous twisting of the facts.

"Unless" the blue unicorn continued "the librarian is a fraud, who never really dealt with any of those other things, but pretended to just to impress the other ponies..."

Applejack exploded. "Now you listen here, you good-for-nothing show-off, I don't know what you think you're doing but if you don't turn around and git, there's gonna be a bucket of tar and feathers with your name on it real soon, you got me?"

Trixie noticed her, now, and sniffed disdainfully. The tree-things certainly did as well, and lunged forward. A cyan blur snatched Applejack off the ground, moments before the Earth pony was seized, and Rainbow Dash swept up and around to keep her friend away from danger.

Twilight's head was splitting with the pain of maintaining the shell, but the creature inside it was berserk in its efforts to break free, and the barrier was rippling unpleasantly. Pinkie popped up next to her. "Hey, Twili. Howdy, Trixie. I don't suppose your could ask your cranky-pants monsters to stop smashing up our town? It's making everypony pretty unhappy, and we were all looking forward to the Eclipse party too."

Trixie looked confused, briefly. "We do not know what you are talking about. The Great and Powerful Trixie does not command monsters, she commands trees to walk. Are you blind, you offensively pink pony?"

The four ponies stared at her, and the hideously unnatural things surrounding her. Twilight lost her grip on the magic, and the creature burst free, thrashing about in the wreckage of the Quill and Sofa store. Applejack understood first. "Oh, Trixie, you poor thing..."

"What? Why are you all looking at the Great and Powerful Trixie like that? Why aren't you applauding the greatest pony in all of Equestria? Are you jealous of her success? Is that it?"

Twilight keep looking from Trixie to her 'trees', and desperately tried to think of a spell that could cage a dozen monsters at once. They were far too numerous and too spread out for anything obvious, and if any attacked she'd need to teleport herself and her friends to safety.

Rainbow Dash could get her friends out of the way, she was sure – she’d already done it twice in the last ten minutes, after all - but if the monsters spread out she couldn't be everywhere, and there were still hundreds of others ponies watching from the edges of Ponyville...

Applejack pitied the delusional unicorn, but that didn't mean she was going to let her friends and her town be injured by the things that she'd called out of the Everfree. Maybe if she roped up Trixie, and dragged her out of town, the things might follow...

Pinkie Pie, on the other hand, was trying think of the best way to humour a mad pony. The last time Twilight had gone insane she'd created a closed time loop and an ontological paradox and that pony with the hourglass cutie mark had come around and complained about Blinovitch Limitation Effects. And Trixie didn't even have any friends to help her into a black skintight catsuit! Unless the monsters were also into latex... she giggled at the mental image.

"What? You think the Great and Powerful Trixie is funny?!" snapped the mad mare. "She will see if you're still laughing after her magic crushes all of your homes and livelihoods!" She looked up at the nearest protean monster, as it drooled and twitched and scraped at the ground with its huge hooves. "You! Tree! Go and smash every single house in Ponyville. The rest of you help. The Great and Powerful Trixie is going to make these mares laugh on the other side of their faces."

Pinkie tilted her head. "It's only got this side, Trixie."

Twilight hissed at her friend. "Pinkie! Stop making it worse!"

Trixie had levitated the book out of her saddlebag, and spread it out before her, pallid in the glow from her horn. The creatures were already lurching away, reaching out to tear the town down to the ground. "As for you, Twilight Loser let's see how you cope with, hmmm... Dread Curse of Azathoth. That looks like fun. N’th scurial m’na Yood sushai..." Dull blue light began to crawl around her, snaking into an airborne sigil above her head.

Dash and Applejack braced themselves, one to distract the creatures, the other to charge Trixie and hogtie her before she could say another word. Pinkie pricked up her ears.

"Incoming!" She yelped, and dived to the ground.

The sky split open with a flash of lightning. Violet light flared across the town, and an icy wind swept back their manes.

Luna, the alicorn of Night, had appeared fifty feet above the town, eyes blazing. Two of her bat-winged Nightguard braced her, teleported in with the Princess. She took in the scene - the frightened ponies, the monsters, the destroyed buildings, the triumphant Trixie, the book, and the sigil.

She roared, the Royal Canterlot Voice enough to shake even Trixie out of her self-absorption.

"BEATRICE LULAMOON! WHAT HAST THOU DONE?!"

Flashback One : Rumours & Lies

Trixie ground her teeth, silently, as the meal in front of her went untouched, and the ponies at the table behind her went on and on and on about TWILIGHT. BUCKING. SPARKLE.

"... and then the changelings were swept out of the city. They say it was Shining Armour and Princess Cadenza, but I'm pretty sure it was Celestia's student. After all, she's the bearer of the Element of Magic. They probably didn't want to embarrass the groom, seeing how he was supposed to keep that sort of invasion out in the first place."

"Isn't he Twilight Sparkle's brother anyway?"

"Well, of course. No wonder he could do that spell then, ability just runs in that family."

"I heard she made an entire adult dragon appear and vanish again on her entrance exam to the School for Gifted Unicorns. Her entrance exam, can you believe it?"

"Fancy."

Trixie pushed her table away and stood up, and stamped towards the cafe gate.

"Ma'am?" asked the waiter "Is there a problem?"

"Yes. The quality of your customers."

Twilight Sparkle, Twilight Sparkle, Twilight Sparkle. Even as far away as Appleloosa, the moment anybody started talking about magic, she could practically guarantee someone would bring up the purple unicorn. She'd even heard some of her audience mutter that Trixie was 'almost as good as that Twilight Sparkle'.

The other unicorn avoided publicity, she had never sought a reward for whatever it was she had done to Discord, she was the protégée of Celestia herself but seemed happy to be a village librarian... it defied belief. Wasn't Trixie a better mage? Better stage presence, better dress sense, prettier? Why wasn't she the toast of Equestria?

She returned to her caravan. It had taken her more than a year to replace the one destroyed in Ponyville, and she'd never been able to replace the mementos and personal effects. If only she'd never gone to that bucking town-

"A penny for your thoughts?"

Trixie recoiled, and then regained her poise. It was Herald, leaning against the side of the caravan, his mask, as before, a pale shape against the evening. She was starting to become annoyed with the affectation.

"The Great and Powerful Trixie will share her thoughts when she feels like it, and not before. And what are you doing here, anyway? Trixie does not require an assistant, yet." In fact, she couldn't afford one. Not that she'd ever admit it.

"I was wondering when you were going to use the book I gave you. It's been almost two years, after all."

Trixie fumed. "Your book is useless. The handwriting is next to illegible, it goes on and on about things like stars and 'conjunctions' and other things that have no interest to her, and where it does describe magic, whoever wrote it boasts about how they have discovered spells anypony can use. The Great and Powerful Trixie cannot abide boasting.”

Herald had a slight choking fit.

"Don't mind me, please, go on. Have you used any of the spells in your act?"

"Of course Trixie has not - the Great and Powerful Trixie has no desire to make a foal of herself in front of her adoring audience, gibbering words like fthghn or Yeb. And what use is magic that anypony can use? Trixie prides herself on her mastery of unicorn magic. And if anypony can use it, yet haven't you used it?" she added, suspiciously. "If this has been some ploy to make a foal of Trixie, it won't work."

"Make you look foalish? Of course not. I'm hurt that you think I'm only here to turn you into a laughing stock. As for not using the book myself, I fear the limelight wouldn't suit me. And where else could I find a pony that would attract as much attention as yourself, O Great and Powerful One?"

Trixie was mollified. "Naturally. The Great and Powerful Trixie may allow you to share billing on her posters, if you continue to be properly appreciative of her talents. In small letters, down the bottom."

"I'm overwhelmed. But if you're worried about the new magic, you could always just keep the book to yourself. After all, only you and I know about it. And we can always rehearse the spells beforehand - perhaps some of them would be worth the impact on the audience, even if you have to say such implausible words?"

"Rehearse them? You would assist me? The Great and Powerful Trixie has... some time on her hooves right now." True enough - yet another small town had seemed unreceptive to her talents, and she'd been forced to cut her tour short.

"Excellent! Might I suggest the one on page 147? There's a circle of standing stones in the woods near here - that should give us privacy and a suitable backdrop.

***

Trixie backed against the altar stone, shaking with terror. The things that had emerged from the forest as she had intoned the spell were monstrous beyond belief - nightmares of flowing flesh, and amorphous features, and branching, writhing limbs.

"What.... what are they?!" she shrieked.

Herald looked up at the creatures, utterly unmoved.

"Is something the matter, Trixie? They're trees. You've made the forest walk - well done."

"Trees?! Trees?! Trees?!" The things hooted and croaked, and knelt, spreading out their tentacles on the ground before Herald and the pony. Her mind snapped. "Trees. Of course they're trees. The Great and Powerful Trixie meant to make trees walk."

"Of course you did. And see how obedient they are?" continued Herald, nodding at the things that knelt and drooled and twitched in blasphemous obeisance around him. "I think this new trick will really impress your adoring public, when you show it off."

He smiled down at the wild-eyed mare.

"Can you think of anywhere for the premiere?”

Royal Prerogatives

Trixie stopped her recitation. The shape in air above her curdled and collapsed, vanishing into itself with a deathly sigh. "What I've done? What I'VE done?"

The tree-creatures, of course, hadn't stopped. They, and the one Twilight had captured, completely ignored the ponies now, as they obeyed their order to destroy the town. Luna narrowed her eyes, and without a word her Nightguard took up flanking position. Twilight and Applejack were both trying to shout explanations, but Pinkie and Rainbow Dash guessed what was about to happen and pulled both of them flat.

The sky closed over with storm clouds, instantly. Lightning flashed from cloud-top to cloud-top, exactly like the wrath of an angry god, and lanced down at the monsters. They recoiled, as the bolts spat and flared around their hooves, and they fell back into the courtyard, and the electricity danced across the ground.

"Tell your creatures to stay where they are, Beatrice Lulamoon, if thou can. Thou are already in very serious trouble."

Trixie looked outraged, radiating sheer ego despite her tangled mane and the small stick stuck in her ear. "Why are you blaming me? Trixie is the one who had her home and business destroyed by a giant monster. Why aren't you accusing the fraud Twilight Sparkle?"

Rainbow Dash was grudgingly impressed. "Wow. Projecting, much?"

Luna narrowed her eyes. "The mare Twilight Sparkle is beloved of the Court - beware lest you defame her further. Do you deny the use of magick to call up and control these abominations?"

Trixie looked around her. "What abominations? They're just trees."

Luna looked shocked. The things dribbled slime, and formed and reformed their black and viscid limbs, and muttered to themselves in croaking, glutinous voices. She turned to Twilight, Applejack, Dash and Pinkie. "Loyal subjects, please answer me truthfully - is the mare Beatrice ill of mind?"

Applejack nodded "Princess, she's more loco than the Friendship Express."

Luna looked thoughtful, then turned back to the crazed unicorn. "You may be given leniency, Beatrice Lulamoon, if you surrender yourself into Our care, and order your beasts to return from whence they came."

Trixie didn't seem to notice, and hadn't ceased her self-obsessed monologue.

"... so of course Princess Celestia will make Trixie her student and Trixie will be the Great and Powerful Bearer of the Element of Magic, and Twilight Loser will have to apologise and go live in a hut like Trixie did..."

Luna stepped closer, and the creatures surged forward. She wheeled and reared up, stamping her silver-shod hooves into the ground, and lowering her horn. Her Nightguard moved to protect her, but she had already called down more lightning, and driven the creatures back once again. She snorted, and ordered her escort stallions to watch, but to approach neither beasts nor showmare. That, at least, seemed to restore the stand-off.

Luna turned back to the other mares, and relaxed. The furious glow in her eyes faded, and she lowered her head to nuzzle Twilight affectionately. "It is good to see you once more, Twilight Sparkle. We are sorry we did not arrive sooner."

The purple unicorn smiled, as she and her friends crowded around the alicorn, and greeted her with genuine warmth. The younger of the royal sisters was still uncertain around her subjects, and still recovering from a thousand years of insane solitary confinement as Nightmare Moon, but it was obvious to the four that she was as committed to the well-being of her subjects as Celestia. Besides, her use of the Royal ‘We’ was somehow endearing, compared to Trixie’s Third Person posturing.

"It's alright, Princess. I'm just glad you could get here before anypony was hurt.”

“Then nopony has been injured by the creatures? We had feared the worst.”

“No, your Highness – we had been afraid they’d hurt Trixie, but see for yourself. Plus, I had messages sent to all the farms to tell everypony to stay indoors. Is Princess Celestia coming as well?"

Luna smile flickered. "I fear not, Twilight Sparkle. She sent word to us as soon as she received your letter, and she has dispatched the unicorns and pegasi you requested, but she herself has opened the archives in search of the nature of the creatures you described. We were... disturbed... by your description of the beasts."

Applejack tilted her head "Does that mean you know what they are, Princess? I mean, the Apples have been living out here for four generations, and I ain't ever heard of anything like these critters coming out of the Everfree."

Rainbow Dash butted in. "Maybe they got out of Tartarus? Is that it?"

Luna's expression switched to pensive. "Perhaps, Rainbow Dash. But my sister and I fear they come from... somewhere else. We... that is... I became aware of something new in my night, six evenings past. It... reminds us of something we saw a very long time ago. When my sister heard that these things had attacked you, we feared greatly for your safety."

Twilight's brow furrowed. "But if they're not from the Everfree or Tartarus, where else could they have come from? Someone would have seen them, if they came from anywhere else. They don't look like they can fly, or burrow."

Luna turned attention back to the creatures and the still talking showmare.

"I do not know. But we intend to find out. Tell me - how does the mare Beatrice control them?"

Twilight bit her lip. "She just told them what to do, I think. Applejack? Rainbow? What did she do to make them come out of the Forest?"

Rainbow shrugged. "Just said a bunch of words like she'd been kicked in the mouth and was still spitting out teeth. Sounded a bit like what she was reading from that book of hers."

Luna's eyes narrowed again. Trixie had apparently forgotten about the book, and it lay face down on the turf. From this angle, and even in this light, they could make out a faint pattern embossed into the cover. It looked like a castle tower, behind a quill.

"We have seen that mark before... Twilight Sparkle! Stand beside me! Mistress Applejack, Mistress Pie, Mistress Dash! Stand well back. Guards! If the creatures attack you are to defend Mistress Sparkle!" She looked down at the young scholar. "We require you to bring that book to us - I will guard against any attack on you as you do."

Twilight looked uncertain, then nodded. "Whatever you say, Princess." She set her hooves and charged up her telekinesis.
Trixie stopped ranting when the book was lifted up by Twilight's violet glow. "Hey! You can't have that, it's mine!" Her eyes blazed and her nostrils flared. "You give that back, you bitch!"

The monsters surged forward, flowing almost fluidly, sprouting howling mouths as they rushed to assist their demented mistress. The two winged stallions flew in between Twilight and the creatures, kicking forward with cold iron horseshoes, as their ruler flicked a holding spell at Trixie and the lawn reared up and immobilised her mud-stained hooves. Trixie spat more obscenities, and her horn lit up in retaliation...

****

.
Herald watched the drama unfold with interest. Behind him, the three fillies were still and silent. "Only one alicorn, and four of your Bearers? Workable, perhaps, but not ideal. We shall continue with the original plan, I think." He watched more intently, as Twilight and the Night Princess attempted to steal the book.

"Naughty, naughty, Luna. Didn't anyone tell you it’s wrong to take things that don't belong to you?" He waved a hoof before him.

****

Trixie vanished.

The Neighcronomicon

Trixie vanished. So did the book. The flash of teleportation was dazzlingly bright, and the stink of ozone almost overwhelmed the reek of the creatures. Pinkie Pie blinked in surprise. "Where'd she go? Did you teleport her off to magic pony hospital, Princess?"

Luna looked as startled as Twilight. "No... that was not magic of our devising, Pinkamena Pie. "

Twilight stamped a hoof. "That's not fair! It took me years to get that good at apportation! How'd she learn how to do it that well?"

Rainbow looked around. "Well, she missed one - look out!"

The final abomination seemed to recover from the shock of losing its mistress, and attempted to take out its frustration on the alicorn and pony. Fortunately, with the four Bearers, two Nightguard, and an alicorn to contend with, it was mere moments until it was magically pinned in place and howling in impotent rage. Luna's own barrier was advanced enough to maintain without her constant attention, although the deep blue glow seemed as cold as interstellar space. The creature pooled itself at the center of the sphere, sullenly bubbling, flesh flowing from one shape to another as it probed against the walls of its magical cage.

"Stormwall! Downburst! Circle Ponyville one league out. She cannot have travelled far. When you find her, maintain your distance and send Stormwall back to inform me." The two night-stallions nodded fiercely, saluted, and took off to patrol with a flap of membranous wings. She turned to the ponies, which now included those who had begun to creep back into town as soon as the screaming had stopped. The other residents bowed before the Princess, then turned to the sad task of picking through the wreckage.

Twilight was almost in tears - not only had she failed to protect the town, but all her careful preparations for the upcoming eclipse celebration – and the town hall - had been destroyed. Pinkie sympathized, one foreleg over the unicorn's shoulder. "It’s okay, Twilight - we can always have the party outside. And it's not like Ponyville hasn't been wrecked by monsters before!"

Twilight Sparkle looked up at the alicorn, eyes watering. "I'm sorry, Princess. I wanted everything to be perfect for your eclipse, and now it's all been ruined. And I couldn't stop Trixie's creatures from destroying all those homes."

Luna's heart almost broke, to see the lavender unicorn so miserable - Twilight had been so kind to her in the past, saving her from her madness as the Mare in the Moon, and later when she was still adjusting to society after her long banishment - that Twilight thought she had failed was almost too much to bear. She was not the beloved mentor her sister was, but she reached out to brush the tear from the other mare's cheek. "Twilight Sparkle - nopony thinks you have failed. Everypony knows you have worked so hard for the well-being of all of Equestria, and that you would never shirk your duty. Do any of the ponies here look like they blame you? You have put yourself in danger on their behalf so many times, and they love and admire you for it." She nuzzled Twilight's mane. "And fret not about the eclipse. My sister and I will make sure this celebration will be remembered for another thousand years, regardless of the action of some mad mare, and you will stand beside us in Canterlot as our beloved friend when it takes place."

"Thank-you, Princess" breathed the unicorn, and looked up at the alicorn with slightly happier eyes.

Applejack seethed. "Trixie is doing to have heck to pay when we catch up her. Her dang monsters have gone and wrecked a good half-dozen livelihoods."

Luna's reply was deadly serious "The danger she poses may be worse then you realise, Mistress Applejack. Twilight Sparkle - may we use your library to discuss the situation? There are things I must tell you and the other Bearers, where they will not alarm the other ponies."

"Um, yes, that should be alright, your majesty - Rarity and Fluttershy should already be there." She paused, and blushed "It might be a bit messy..."

Luna smiled, and bent down to nuzzle the pony's ear affectionately. "Twilight Sparkle, thou art our sister's faithful student, and thou art our friend - how messy would your library have to be to startle us?”

***

"I don't know how she can live with all this ... clutter" moaned Rarity. Spike had already had to sweep one stack of books off of the couch, so Rarity had had room to collapse after her dash to the Library.

"Oh, it's not so bad, Rarity" replied Fluttershy gently "Twilight has been very busy preparing for the eclipse banquet, and you know she likes everything be perfect."

Rarity nodded, reluctantly. "I suppose so, Fluttershy dear - but how can she ever find the book she needs in all this?"

This provoked a slightly bitter laugh from Spike, before he got control of himself. "Um, more tea, Rarity?"

"No thank you, Spike, but it was very thoughtful of you to offer. I should be helping you two finding all those books Twilight wanted."

"I hope they're all alright out there..." murmured the pegasus, as she hung by a window and peered into the darkness alongside Twilight’s owl.

"Who?" hooted Owloysius.

“Twilight a- gah! He gets me every time!” answered Spike. Fluttershy managed a little giggle.

“I’m fairly sure that was Princess Luna earlier.” theorized Rarity. “They must have everything is under control now.”

Fluttershy nodded, still a little uncertain “I just hope that nopony has been hurt... that creature that came into town first seemed to be really... mean.”

Spike tried to cheer her up “Well, maybe the rest of them are nicer?”

The two mares exchanged a dubious glance “I hope so, Spike sweety, but I’m certain I don’t want any of them around here. Ugh, that smell!”

“Woo!” hooted Owloysius.

“Oh! Rarity, Spike! It’s Applejack and everypony, they’re all alright! And the Princess is with them!”

The other four bearers were subdued, exhausted, and resolute, when they entered the library, and the Night Princess barely noticed the clutter of books after she ducked to follow them inside. Her expression was distant, as she debated how best to explain her suspicions to the ponies.

"Did you stop those awful things? We could hear all the commotion even from back here."

Twilight shook her head. "Sort of. The Princess did most of the work, really, but Trixie apported away at the last minute."

"At least she took most of her tree-critters with her." added Applejack, darkly, still planning the kind of welcome party Trixie would get if she turned up again.

"Oh. Well, I know you did your best - you wouldn't have left the rest of us in any danger, Twilight." murmured Fluttershy, and earned a grateful nuzzle from her friend.

Luna tapped her hoof. "I wish I could say you were safe now, Fluttershy. But if the book Beatrice possessed is what I now fear, she may unleash more than tree creatures upon Equestria. We must find her."

"What's the matter Princess?" asked Dash, as she circled the room "What kind of damage can a book do?"

Luna's answer was solemn "If it was written by whom I suspect, then thousands of ponies may die. Or worse."

The six Bearers and Spike stared, appalled. Even Owlysius forwent his usual "Who?"

"Thou.... thousands?" stammered Fluttershy.

"Killed?! What kind of book are we talking about here, Princess?" shouted Applejack.

Luna held up a hoof. "I am not certain. All I know is the mark on the cover, and my suspicions about the magic the mare Beatrice used. I cannot even say if it is the author I fear - I had believed all his research lost in the... disaster. But if it is the work of Ivory Tower, and Ivory Tower's work is what summoned those creatures to Ponyville, than no-one in Equestria is safe until Beatrice is captured."

Twilight looked stunned.

"But... but... I've never heard of anypony called Ivory Tower. When did he do this research?"

Luna looked out the window, at the distant silver stars. "Long ago. Very long ago. After Celestia and I defeated Discord, and we strove to rebuild an Equestria free of his tyranny. My sister encouraged the unicorn to explore a theory he had discovered... but we thought he had been killed by something he disturbed. I... suspect... he may have had a larger role in the disaster, now. Many ponies were killed. Far too many. Even now, it chills my blood to think of it."

“What... what are we gonna do, Princess? I know Trixie’s a pain in the patootie, but I can’t believe she’d want to kill thousands of ponies..”

“She may not mean to, Mistress Applejack. I do not believe Ivory Tower ever did, either. Nonetheless...” she turned to Spike. “May I requisition your service, dragon? I must inform my sister of this discovery. I fear she will be... upset.”

“Oh, of course, Princess! I’ll get some more parchment!” the little dragon hurried off to search the stacks.

There was an urgent knock at the door. One of the pegasi Twilight had dispatched to warn the surrounding farms, had arrived, and her brow was furrowed with deep concern. “Hey, is... oh! Princess!” She managed a quick mid-air bow. “Uh – “

Twilight recognized the expression “Cloudkicker? Is something wrong? Was there a problem out at one of the farms?”

“Uh, yeah. I was just out at Sweet Apple Acres – “

Next to her, Applejack and Rarity suddenly tensed.

“ – and Big Macintosh was already out looking for Apple Bloom and her friends. You got any idea where they are? He was really worried when I told him about the tree things... why are you looking at me like that? Did I say something wrong?”

Applejack and Rarity’s expressions changed to stricken. Dash look confused, until she realized the implications.

Fluttershy looked around at her friends, and understood. “Oh no....”

Singer of Strange Songs

Pinkie Pie was having the time of her life - true, there were a dozen hideous monsters loose in the countryside, the CMC were missing, and a number of ponies were now homeless, but she was in her element reassuring them, helping them see the brighter side of things, and best of all, meeting new ponies. Most of the Ponyvillians, and the Royal Guards that had finally arrived from Canterlot, were preoccupied with the search for the three fillies, or Trixie and her unspeakable minions, or standing guard around the remaining beast until it could be taken back to Canterlot to be studied and hopefully returned to wherever Trixie had found it, but there was still the joy of meeting new ponies to fill her heart with gladness.

One such opportunity presented itself at the windmill. A strangely masked stallion was standing outside, looking up at the building and toying with a jam jar. “Eeeeee! New pony! Hello,welcometoPonyville! I’msureyou’regoingtoreallylikeithere, I’mgoingtohavetostartplanningawelcomepartyforyourightaway!”

“And hello to you, Miss Pie. I’m surprised it took you so long to find me. You’re quite right, I’m sure I’ll find Ponyville very entertaining.”

“Oh, you know who I am, that’s all spooky and mysterious, like your mask. I like masks. And hats and fancy dress costumes and Nightmare Night. Oooh! And PARTIES! I LOVE parties! Do you like parties, Mr. Mysterious Pony?”

“Miss Pie, where I come from is a place of never-ending music and dancing. And laughter. I make sure there’s a lot of laughter.”

“Really? Nopony is better at making ponies laugh than me – it’s what a Pinkie is here to do! What kind of music? Polka? Pop? Piano? Post-industrial? We’re got lots of musician-ponies in Ponyville.”

“Flute, mostly. Perhaps you’d like to come and visit, sometime.”

“That would be super-dooper-awesome! But I can’t today, I have to go see some ponies about some stuff. Somepony has gone completely oatmeal and we all want to help her out and stop her calling up big scary monsters from out of the infinite black reaches of space and time. Big scary monsters are scary. Are you here to help with the big scary monsters? I bet you are, Mr. Mysterious Pony!”

"Your insight is phenomenal, Miss Pie. I am indeed to help with the monsters. Or, rather, I'll be offering what assistance I can, after I find one Twilight Sparkle." He waved a hoof at the building. "But there’s no-one in?"

"Oh, did some silly pony tell you she lived in the windmill? Twilight lives in the library tree! I could show you over there if you like, and tell you all about Ponyville on the way! We're going to be BPFFs, I'm sure!"

"That won't be necessary, Miss Pie. There seems to be a lot going on in the town today, and your special skills are needed elsewhere, I'm sure.”

“I can’t wait to tell Twilight, she’ll be so happy that a Mysterious Pony is here to help!”

“Actually, Miss Pie, I’d rather you didn’t. You wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, would you?”

“Noooo... I bet Twilight will love her surprise!”

“I accept your bet. And I’m sure you and I will have a lot to talk about afterwards. Please, carry on with your errand – don’t let me detain you.”

“Waitaminute... what are you betting? Cupcakes? Are you betting she’ll like the surprise, or not li- hey, where’d you go, Mr. Mysterious Pony?”

***

Twilight stared at the pile of books and old maps across the desk and floor. Her magic shuffled them in a blur, and her attention flicked from one to the other, until she gritted her teeth in frustration. "This doesn't make any sense!"

"Ahem."

Twilight wheeled about. A masked pony was standing at the doorway of the library, watching her. "May I come in?"

"I'm sorry, but this is a really bad time, we've got a bit of an emergency on, but if you come back tomorrow I'm sure we'll have the library open again-"

"Perhaps I can help? Call me Herald."

"Herald? Does that mean Princess Celestia is coming? That's great! Did you bring any books from the royal library? Why are you wearing a mask, anyway? Are you from some kind of anonymous librarian order, or something?"

"Is that important right now? Perhaps you should tell me what you've learned so far."

"Oh, right." Twilight pulled another book out of the pile, and opened to one of the appendices. "We couldn't just stop Trixie when those things are with her, so it occurred to me that if we can figure out what she's trying to do then we can stop it without having to put anypony in danger. I thought I could identify the magic she was using, but I can't even tell what language she was speaking! Unicorn magic shouldn't even need verbal components! I can’t find anything on Ivory Tower, do you know who he is? And what kind of name is Azathoth, anyway?”

“One of the titles of the seething Chaos from which all worlds ultimately derive, Miss Sparkle, but please continue.”

“It is? You’ll have to show me where you read that!” Twilight turned to the two pets that shared the library. Owlysius and Peewee were staring at the newcomer, the phoenix given high little shrieks and the owl hooting in alarm. “What’s up with those two?”

Herald shrugged and glanced at the animals. “Be silent.” The birds cringed, and Owlysius fled into the night. “As you were saying?”

“Um... that was weird. Anyway, if I had some of the books from the royal library, maybe I could find some kind of weird pony magic that matches, but the only thing here that sounds anything like it is something somepony mentioned from Unaussprechlichen Colten, and that was just an old mare's tale."

"Really? What did they say?"

Twilight growled again, looking through the stack for a monograph on pre-alicornian astrological folklore.

"They said it was same language used in the Ponykotic Manuscripts, but THIS pony says it's all a lot of horseapples - err, pardon the language..." She blushed. Herald shrugged it off. She went on. "Even if the Ponykotic Manuscripts were in an early pony language then there's no way to translate it now, let alone know how anypony was supposed to pronounce it..."

"But what did it actually say?" He was closer now. Twilight found it a little creepy, actually. And she'd never met a pony with a coat colour that dark. The smile of the mask was odd, too... she shook her head to dislodge the doubts. Princess Celestia wouldn't have sent anypony she didn't trust.

"I don’t know. Well, the original translator says he knows, but the consensus is he was just making it up, anyway. Just old mythology about the stars and a few things they claimed were spoken spells, really. That's why I have a copy, you see? I wish I didn't have to stay here and help coordinate the search for Trixie and the girls - if I could just get to Canterlot and look up the original texts!"

"Yes, I understand. But go on."

"Something about the End Times - the greater cycle of the stars, and some... return of the Old Ones? Oh, and that all history will end when they come again, announced by their Messenger as the stars move to rightness. It's really silly. Everypony knows the Princesses are the only ponies that move stars."

The other's stillness was making Twilight's hackles twitch. The mask’s expression made it seem as though he knew all this already, and was just humouring her. And that was a really weird cutie mark... "Did this Messenger have any other names?"

"Oh, lots of names, or at least this unicorn claims he did. The Crawling Chaos - I wondered if that was another name for Discord, but the dates are wrong if the translation is even half-way accurate - the Faceless One, the Haunter of the Dark, the Herald... of... the... Outer... Gods..."

She turned, slowly, eyes widening in horror.

Herald smiled, very slightly. "I knew you were the dangerous one."

He took off the mask.

The Thing That Howled in Twilight

Somepony was screaming. It was making hard to hear the other voices. "Hold her down! Pinkie, hold her leg before she hurts herself!"

The screaming was entirely right, the correct and only possible response to reality. The other voices were just distractions. "What happened? What's wrong with her?"

The other voices should just go away. It would be awful if they knew the cause of screaming, and added their voices to the universal chorus. "I don't know! Owlysius came and said Twilight was in terrible danger, and I found her like this!"

The screaming just went on and one and on. "Where's Nurse Redheart? We need to sedate her or something!"

The things she'd been shown. Of course there was screaming. Anypony would scream if they'd seen the Ghooric Zone, heard the solar wind moan through the empty cities under Fomalhaut, or learned the unspeakable truth about sea ponies... "Ow! She bit me!"

She felt magic, cool and serene wash over her. It didn't stop the screaming. "Poni- what has happened? What is wrong with Twilight Sparkle?"

"We don't know! She won't stop screaming!"

She felt something gently touch her mind."Sleep. Rest."

Luna looked down at the lavender pony on the floor before her. Twilight's eyes were still open, but she'd stopped screaming. Her limbs twitched, as if trying to cover her eyes, and she was still grimacing, and grinding her teeth. It was one of the most horrible things Luna had ever seen - but not as horrible as seeing her sister Celestia, Sol Invicta, Alicorn of Day, the eternal and perfect, reduced to a similar state. Celestia, at least, had overcome her fear within minutes. From what Luna had glimpsed in Twilight's mind, the unicorn might find it much, much harder to find her way back to sanity. She looked at the others - the other Bearers, and Spike, and Owlysius and Peewee, all crowded around their friend.

Twilight’s assistant was holding her hoof; the skin around his eye already bruising under the scales where she had blindly kicked him. He looked up the alicorn, eyes fearful only for the unicorn’s wellbeing, his own pain ignored. “I don’t know what happened, Princess! I wasn’t there to help her!”

Luna sagged with exhaustion. Three long-distance apportations in a hour, the battle with the tree-creatures, raising the moon twice in one night... there were limits to her power. “Spike... please... We must think.” Twilight would have to be transported to Canterlot – whatever had happened, she was clearly not safe in Ponyville. And since there was no way she could allow her sister to act alone against the threat she suspected – “Ponies. Mistresses Applejack, Rarity, Pinkamena, Dash, and Fluttershy. We must ask thou come to Canterlot. As soon as transport can be arranged, you must join us there. I will take Twilight Sparkle myself.” The dark alicorn looked down at their shocked faces, and felt a deep pang of guilt. She could guess the pain of their divided loyalties. “We know thou wish to continue thou search for thou sisters and friends, and the madmare Beatrice, but we cannot endanger the Bearers any further. Please, believe us when we say we wish it were not so. The Elements of Harmony may be required, and thou art vital to the defence of our realm.”

The six ponies, and the others, looked utterly stricken. Luna’s logic was obvious, but still... Spike's eyes were haunted. "Prin... Princess? Is Twilight going to be OK?"

Luna didn’t know. She didn’t know. “We will do our best. There are ponies in Canterlot who can help her, we are sure. But thou must tell us. Did the mare Trixie do this?”

Dash bit her lip. “We dunno Princess – we tried to follow those hoofprints, but Winona wouldn’t go anywhere near them, and those tree-monsters churned up the road like you wouldn’t believe anyway. We ran into A.J. and Rarity coming the other way, so we all came back here to regroup, and found Twi like this.”

Fluttershy looked at the owl beside her, who was hooting his distress again. “Owlysius says it wasn’t a mare, that they were wearing a mask. Um, that it wasn’t a pony? I don’t understand... what kind of cutie mark did they have, Owlys- oh... I’m sorry, Princess Luna, Owlysius must be very upset too, he’s not given me very clear descriptions... please don’t be cross at him, I’m sure he’s trying his best.”

Pinkie’s ears pricked up, and her hair wilted. “A masked pony?” she stammered. “I saw a masked pony, he said he was going to surprise Twili.”

The alicorn’s mane shimmered in the moonlight, the embedded stars trembling with her agitation. “Where, Mistress Pinkamena? Where did you see this pony?”

Rarity spoke up, voice devoid of emotion, her expression fixed. “I saw him near the windmill – but there wasn’t anypony with him.”

“Right! If some stallion’s done this to Twi I’m going to show him what I can do!” snapped Dash, and zoomed off towards the windmill.

“Rainbow Dash, wait!”

“ConSARN that mare. We don’t even know when he was there yet. Sorry, Princesss, we gotta get after her – wait, Twilight? You trying to say something there, girl?”

Twilight’s lips were moving, but her voice was even fainter than Fluttershy’s. The pegasus cradling her head leaned down to try and listen. “Don’t. Don’t let him show me.”

“Show... show you what, Twilight?” She looked up at the alicorn in confusion. Luna could only crease her brow in concern, as she weighed the risks of pursuing Dash, and leaving the others here undefended.

Pinkie was staring at the white unicorn. “When did you see him, Rarity? I sent him over here as soon as I met him.”

"Pardon me, Pinkie? Met who?"

"The masked pony. You said you met him near the windmill."

Rarity's confusion grew, and Luna looked from one to the other with mounting dread. "I did? How very strange, I'm pretty sure I'd remember meeting anybody like that, especially if I thought they'd hurt poor Twilight. I mean... wouldn't I? Why are you looking at me like that?"

***

"I must admit it makes a refreshing change to meet a stallion who cares about how he looks as much you do, Mister Herald."
Herald nodded, his mask never removed, despite Rarity's attempts to persuade him otherwise. "Thank-you, madam. I take appearances very seriously."

"And such a wonderful coat colour! There's so many ways I can complement it with my designs!"

"Indeed. I find that black goes with most things. Eventually."

"Well, I'm sure these robes will be just spectacular! Pardon me for asking, but are they - and that stylish mask of yours - for the eclipse ceremony?"

Herald nodded, as Rarity fused around him making the final adjustments. "Correct. But they won't be shown off to the public until the proper moment."

"Oh, naturally - knowing when to make your entrance is all part of the show!"

"Quite. Now, regarding payment...." he reached into the polygonal case he had had with him, when Rarity first found him in the Boutique. "Will this suffice?"

The gem blazed with colour, seeming brighter than the lights of the room, as it rested against the blackness of his hoof.

Rarity, of course, loved it immediately. "Oh, that's simply fabulous! What is it, I've never seen a gemstone quite like it!"

"I'm not sure how to describe it to you, but I can assure you that you'll never find another in Equestria like it."

"Well, this will more than cover the cost of your outfit, please, make yourself comfortable why I get you your change."

"That won't be necessary, please, keep any excess. But I was wondering - could I ask a small favour?"

"Oh, anything for such a charming gentlepony!"

Herald grinned, triumphantly. "I was hoping you'd say that."

***

Luna whirled and her wings snapped at the air. "We... I must stop Mistress Dash - stay here. If you see this stallion again do not look into his eyes."

The four Bearers stared at each other. "What's she mean? Is Discord loose again?" asked Spike.

Fluttershy's wings clamped shut, and she shrunk down to huddle against Twilight. "Oh no.... I hope not. That would be awful." she squeaked.

Applejack looked around. "No... I reckon we'd be seeing more signs of Chaos iffen it was him agin. But if it's not Discord, who the hay is it?"

***

Herald waited on the balcony of the windmill, enjoying the view of ponies dashing to and fro and picking through the wreckage for anything salvageable. A glow of magic off to the right was the Spellguard transporting the captured Dark Young to the railway station, for transport to Canterlot where it could be contained and studied. He chuckled at the conceit. On the balcony rail in front of him three tiny lights swirled in a jam jar, and shied away from the touch of his hoof on the glass.

He glanced up at the pre-dawn sky. A furious blue pegasus was headed straight towards him."Right on cue, Miss Dash." he murmured, and spoke a Word. Black light billowed up around the building, and contracted into a spherical shell. He picked up the jam jar, and stepped inside.

Dash broke hard, wings clawing at the air until she came to a halt a hair's breadth from the barrier. It looked a bit like Twilight's shield barrier, and a tentative poke proved it felt much the same. She'd seen somepony go inside, and when she cocked an ear against it she could hear a familiar voice chanting nonsense syllables.

"Trixie!" she snarled. These barriers might be tough, but she'd see how well they stood up to a Sonic Rainboom. Dash shouted at all the nearest Ponyvillians to back well off, turned in mid-air and took off for altitude.

Luna arrived moments later. The residents of the town were already taken cover behind houses, but the presence of the barrier and the absence of the pegasus was more important.

"Citizen! Where is the mare Rainbow Dash?"

"Up there, your highness! You'd better get behind cover, I've seen what she can do to old barns!"

Luna looked up - far above the evening's cloud parted in a perfect circle, a brilliant arrowpoint of electricity and condensation coming towards Ponyville at just under the speed of sound.

"Dash! No! Stop!" screamed Luna, as she felt magic move nearby.

The barrier vanished, a fraction of a heartbeat before Rainbow struck. The blast of sound and light shattered every remaining window in Ponyville, as it rolled across the town and half-blinded the inhabitants. A towering mushroom cloud of every colour roiled up into the night sky, as the building shattered, beams splintered, and it collapsed in upon itself, mechanisms and grindstones crashing to the earth inside the wreckage.

There was no sign of Trixie and Herald, when the ponies searched the ruins.

There were three smaller bodies.

Culpability

"I'm sorry! I mean it, Applejack! I'm so sorry!"

The farmare wouldn't even turn around. "Rainbow... I... I don't even want to look at you right now."

Dash turned to the other ponies, face twisted in anguish. "You guys understand, don't you? I wouldn't hurt Scoots and Applebloom and Sweetie for anything. For anything!"

Fluttershy was crying, silently. Pinkie was still, shoulders sunken, as she leaned against Fluttershy in support, and watched Dash. Rarity looked for a moment as if she wanted to say something, then shook her head and turned back to the little form on the bed before her. Dash sobbed, once, and fled, wings churning to get her as far from the Canterlot Infirmary as they could take her. Faster and faster, until the wind whipped her tears away as quickly as they formed.

There was silence in the room, for a little while. Fluttershy spoke up, eventually. "Do... do you think I should go after her? Rainbow didn't know the fillies were in there... and she should be here for Scootaloo..."

Applejack said nothing. Rarity looked up from Sweetie’s bedside, eyes empty, but nodded, once. Pinkie hugged Fluttershy, and the pegasus fluttered off to try and bring the other pony back. Pinkie moved up closer to the beds. She'd already brought get-well cards and balloons for the fillies, but they lay limp as the young ponies themselves.

"So Doc. What's the verdict? They gonna be OK or not?" Applejack's tone was full of false energy, but her eyes stared at the wall.

Doctor Bayo shuffled his hooves, and looked apologetic. "The princess got them here as soon as possible, of course, but they were very badly hurt. They were incredibly lucky none of them were underneath the heavier parts of the building, frankly. Fractures, concussions, internal bleeding... we've done all we can for now." He shrugged, and looked sympathetic. "I wish I could be more confident, Applejack, but I wouldn't want to lie to you."

Applejack nodded, once, but said nothing, and didn't move from the side of the bed, where she kept her hoof on that of her little sister.

"Is the Princess OK?" asked Pinkie. "Celestia said she was resting, when we got here."

Bayo nodded, slightly. "She collapsed just after she'd apported in with your fillies. She shouldn't have tried so many long distance teleports in one night, especially this time of the month. But of course, if she hadn't..."

"We'll have to tell her how grateful we are." said the orange mare, flatly.

"The biggest problem was finding a bed her size. We don't often have alicorns in here. Not in, oh, centuries I should think." He looked down at the three patients. "I'm a bit more worried about the way they don't respond. I'd have expected them to have started moving a little, by now. Don't get me wrong! Complete rest is exactly what they need... but I don't like how still they are."

Pinkie slumped onto an empty chair and toyed vaguely with the things she'd purchased in the Infirmary gift shop, her pink hair flat and covering half her face. One of the gifts was a little blue plush pegasus. She looked down at the still and silent Scootaloo, and fumbled her grip on the plushie. She choked a bit, staring at it on the floor, "I'm... I'm going to check on Spike and Twilight. Are you girls going to be OK?"

Rarity nodded. Applejack didn't seem to hear.

Pinkie's slow progress to the other ward ended in a long, high room, with bright windows overlooking the Canterlot Falls, and the two-thousand-foot drop into the valley below. The ornamental lake built to shape the falls gleamed like silver in the sun, and the gardens outside rustled gentle and fragrant in the breezes. Both Princesses sat on the rugs beside Twilight's bed. The unicorn had been strapped down - after the last dose of sedative magic had worn off she'd almost thrown herself out the window in her frenzy. Spike, eyes dark with bruising and exhaustion, sat on the bed beside her, stroking her mane. He looked up, nodded acknowledgments to the earth pony, and resumed his silent vigil.

Princess Celestia looked up as Pinkie neared the bed. She too, looked tired, a faintness to her luminosity, a dullness to her ethereal mane and tail. She'd been up all night, co-ordinating the search for Trixie and through the archives, as her sister recovered from her overuse of magic. And recovering from her own mental trauma. "Pinkamena? How are your friends? Do they wish me to come to them again?"

Pinkie shook her head. "I think they just want to be alone with the fillies for a little while, your majesty. Sorry. Fluttershy and Rainbow went off somewhere. She knows how badly she messed up, I think."

Celestia looked pained. "She will be protected, regardless. Rainbow fell into a clever trap. She couldn't have known Rarity had been controlled to lure you into it."

Pinkie nodded. "Thought that was it." she murmured dully. "Post-hypnotic suggestion, right? I guess we were lucky Trixie didn't manage to get more of us."

Luna nodded. "We still don't understand why the mare Beatrice would do these things. Even if she was disturbed of mind, her imagined vendetta was with Twilight Sparkle. We cannot understand why she and her associate would harm the rest of you, or innocent fillies."

Celestia sighed with sorrow. "I begin to fear you were correct, my sister. Somepony has found Ivory Tower's research, and is using it to attack the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. They may not even realise the danger they pose to all Equestria."

Pinkie started to sniffle, then cry, tears streaming down her cheeks as the Princesses and the dragon stared, shocked. Celestia came to her feet first, moved to the weeping Bearer of Laughter, and nuzzled her against her side, sheltered her under her wing, protected her like a mare with foal until Pinkie's tears finished soaking into her warm, pearlescent flank. "Hush. Hush, Pinkamena Diane Pie. I am here, and I will keep my little ponies safe with my last breath."

Pinkie's tears slowed "It's my fault, Princess. I was the one that sent him to the library. If I hadn't... if I hadn't..."

"Then they would have found another way. Our enemy is cunning, but the six of you are here now, and we will not leave you unprotected."

Twilight's brother entered the ward. He'd come as soon as word had reached him, and had been ordering the search for Trixie, Herald, and the creatures ever since. "How is she?"

Luna shook her head. "No change, Shining Armor. We have attempted what we can, but such magicks are terrible and subtle. She will recover in due course, or she will not. I cannot hasten her return without risking great harm to her mind."

Armor sagged. He lowered a stack of notes onto the bedside table. "Reports are in from the Whitetail Woods. No sign of Trixie, her creatures, or the stallion. I've got teams checking the lakes and rivers, in case those things can breathe underwater. Pegasus Team Four have Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy under observation, but I've told them not to intervene unless they look like they're leaving the security zone."

"Thank-you, Shining Armor. We will send word to you immediately, if there is any improvement in thy sister's condition."

The unicorn stallion hesitated "There's one more thing - are you going to cancel the Eclipse?"

Luna and Celestia exchanged a glance. "We should - if there are going to further attempts upon the Bearers, then we should limit visitors to Canterlot."

Armor nodded, unhappily. "Especially after what happened last time there was a security scare."

Pinkie looked up, her hair threatening to wilt again. "Can... cancel a party?"

"NO!"

The ponies turned to stare at a furious Spike.

"Don't you dare cancel the eclipse, don't you dare! Twilight was so excited when you announced you'd be working together on it, she was so happy I could, I could...." his anger choked off his words. He took three deeps breaths. "She was so happy to see you working together on an eclipse, the first time in 1030 years, she could barely speak. Twilight worked so hard looking up old eclipse traditions, and she almost exploded with JOY when you wrote to say she could be with you both tomorrow... so... don't you DARE cancel it just because some sick stallion thinks he can hurt my... hurt Twilight, and get away with it!"

He turned back to the lavender unicorn, and muttered, more softly. "I'll stay with her the whole time. So don't you dare."

Celestia nuzzled Spike's shoulder, very gently. He flinched for a moment, then relaxed a little and squeezed Twilight's hoof with his claws. "I apologise, Spike. We had not considered your feelings on the matter. And you are correct - my student has awaited our eclipse with heart-warming anticipation, it would be wrong to not celebrate the day, if there was no reason to cancel it. Shining Armor - Luna and I will be with the Bearers at all times, from now until the madmare and her associate are captured. Do you think this will be sufficient?"

Armor considered, and nodded. "We'll have that creature you caught under guard here, soon. I can reassign the escorts to city defense when they get here. Just to be sure."

Celestia looked to Spike. A single tear was tracking down the purple scales of his cheek, where the bruising hadn't made them puff out. "... thank-you, Princess Celestia."

Pinkie hugged him gently, and Twilight's brother nodded in silent understanding to the dragon, then turned to go. "I better get back to the search. Don't worry, your majesties - she can't get near the palace with us on guard."

***

A flash of magic erupted deep in the woods near Canterlot.

" - show you who the greatest pony in Equestria i-OW."

Trixie landed heavily in the undergrowth. Around her, trees exploded with trunk-splintering detonations, and boulders shattered, as the Dark Young were extruded back into reality with complete disregard for anything that might have been there first.

Trixie spat out a mouthful of leaves, and glared around her. It was broad daylight, now, and this certainly wasn't Ponyville.
"Coward! You can't get rid of me that easily, fraud! Trixie will show you, and not even the Princesses could deny how Great and Powerful I am!"

She stomped around, snorting, then collected her singed hat, and tried to get her bearings. The creatures squatted silently, watching her with their eyeless bulk. The Canterhorn loomed into the afternoon sky and she could see the polished marble of Canterlot gleaming just around the edge.

"Hmmph. Miles from Ponyville. Well, those bumpkins won't be rid of Trixie THAT easily. I'll be back there even if Trixie has to walk all night." She found the book, added it to her saddlebag, and set off back towards the village.

Her trees blocked her way, and moved to frustrate her when she tried to go around. "Stupid tree!" she screamed, and kicked it. "Trixie wishes to go that way and you have to do everything she says!"

They didn't move. Slime dripped from her hoof. "Stupid thing! Trixie will turn you into matchsticks!" She tried to levitate one out of the way, but it didn't budge. She panted in exhaustion. "Trixie has changed her mind. She will take the scenic route."
She trotted off in the other direction, towards the capital. After some twenty minutes, the creatures flowing silently behind her, she perked up. "In fact, the Great and Powerful Trixie will not go to Ponyville at all! She will go straight to Princess Celestia, and show her her magic directly! Then all the ponies will admit they were wrong about Twilight Sparkle, and that Trixie should be Archmage. Ha!"

The Dark Young seemed to relax at those words, slumping into more fluid configurations, and muttered darkly in their bleak and eldritch tongue...

***

Fluttershy perched silently on a cloud that eddied behind the Canterhorn. She could see the guardponies watching her from the peak far below, and from behind other clouds, but she didn't mind. Instead, her attention was devoted to the hummock of vapour nearby, where Rainbow had long since sobbed her way to silence.

At least she'd stopped screaming at Fluttershy to leave her alone.

"I suppose you hate me too, now." came a muffled voice from inside the cloud.

"No, of course I don't hate you, Rainbow." she answered gently

"WELL WHY DON'T YOU?!? YOU SHOULD! I'm the one that didn't listen to Luna, I'm the one that went after Trixie and that other pony alone, I'm the one... I'm the one..." She started to weep again, sobbing into the cloud stuff, and Fluttershy edged a little closer.

"Rainbow."

"And now Scoots and the fillies are maybe gonna DIE and two of my best friends won't even look at me because it's their sisters and it's MY FAULT."

"Rainbow."

"They're gonna die and it's my fault and not even the Princesses will want to look at me-"

"Rainbow!"

The cyan pegasus looked up, her pink eyes red from crying. Fluttershy had moved close enough to touch her shoulder, where her wings were still flapping jerkily, randomly, every time she remembered the sight of the three little bodies in the wreckage, and she just wanted to fly, to get away, to flee the guilt and the expressions on her friend's faces.

"We don't hate you, Rainbow. You're still our friend. Just because you did something that... didn't end well... doesn't mean you did it on purpose. Luna didn't have you locked up when she got here, did she?" Fluttershy shuffled closer, and gently nuzzled her friend's ear. "Not even Applejack and Rarity hate you - they're ... upset... now. It might take a while before they want to talk to you again, but they don't hate you. Rarity was the one who agreed I should come find you! Would she do that if she really thought you were responsible? Scootaloo should find you there when she wakes up. And we need you too, Rainbow - you're still the Bearer of Loyalty, aren't you? How bad would you feel if you turned your back on your friends now, when we need you so much?"

Rainbow Dash sniffled, and wiped her muzzle on her foreleg. "Thank... thank-you Flutters. I... I don't wanna go back right now. Can we stay here a while?"

Fluttershy nodded, and settled down on the cloud beside her friend, gently touching flanks. Before them, behind the hills, the sun sank slowly towards darkness.

***

The intensive care ward was quiet, apart from the muffled noise of guardponies patrolling the corridor outside, or the whisper of them flying past the window. The breathing of the three fillies was so shallow as to be inaudible, even this close. Applejack and Rarity barely moved, as they sat and watched their sisters, so still, so quiet, under the bandages and splints.
"Rarity." The earth pony's voice seemed harsh, over-loud, in the silence.

She looked up. "Yes, Applejack?" When she'd found Sweetie Belle in the wreckage, she hadn't fainted. She hadn't screamed. Simple shock had rendered her speechless, even as the other ponies rushed in to aid, and Luna had gathered the three fillies with her magic and vanished once more to Canterlot. There were still bloodstains on her white hooves, where she had held her little sister until Nurse Redhead had gently pried her loose.

Applejack didn't look over at her friend. Just continued her statement. "I don't blame Rainbow. I don't."

Rarity nodded. She understood her friends well enough for that. But Applejack had still flinched away from the pegasus as they had cleared the debris, still refused to meet her eye, still refused to speak with her for the entire flying chariot ride to Canterlot, even as Dash's desperate guilt had built and grown.

"Iffen I'd taken the girls with us, if I'd gone with 'em to the farmhouse, if I hadn't been running around like a blue-assed fly all dang night... If I'd just grabbed Rainbow's tail!"

Rarity had her own burden - she, after all, had been set up as part of the trap.

"I know who's to blame, Rarity. I don't care who that stallion is, or what that book’s about."

Nopony was there for Scootaloo. She lay alone and silent on the third bed, both eyes covered, wings bound, limbs splinted.
"They hurt my family, Rarity. Nopony messes with the Apple family. Nopony. If Trixie hadn't come back to Ponyville my little sister - Sweetie and Scootaloo too - would be A-OK."

Rarity understood, even if she didn't entirely agree. But Applejack went on.

"And if I see that showmare again, I think I'm gonna kill her."

Command Performance

Herald was waiting for her, when she climbed out of the last ditch and, still seething with rage, made it to the Canterlot Road. The tree-things held back, out of line of sight of any traffic, while Trixie glared at the black stallion.

"A fine morning, isn't it?" he said. He was wearing sunset-red robes, intricately embroidered with curious symbols picked out in golden thread. Trixie's own garments were torn, mud-stained, and in general looked as if she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards.

"A fine morning? Do we look like we have been having a fine morning? Trixie spent half the night in a ditch. How would you like that?"

"A comfortable ditch, I hope?"

Trixie exploded - the smile on the mask made it impossible to judge his sincerity. "The Great and Powerful Trixie will not stand for such mockery!"

Herald bowed "My apologies, magnificent mare of magic. You're quite right, you don't deserve to spend your time in a ditch - I'm sure everypony would rather see you in very different quarters."

Trixie sniffed. "Indeed. What are you doing here, anyway?" She peered suspiciously at his outfit. "You had better not be trying to upstage Trixie, she is the star of this show."

"Merely acting as your publicity agent, Trixie - I'm delighted to say that thanks to me, your face is on posters from here to Manehattan." He chuckled. "Herald by name, herald by nature."

Trixie was momentarily taken aback. "You did that for me?"

"Of course. As I've said before, you deserve all the attention you can get. Why else would I have gone to all the trouble of getting you this?"

He picked up a bundle of cloth - inside was one of the most magnificent cloaks and hats Trixie had ever seen - radiant with gemstones and embroidery.

"It... it's beautiful!"

"Eye-catching, certainly. I had it specially made. Do you think it will make a good impression on the Royal Court?"

Trixie shook her head to clear it, and nodded decisively. "You have done very well. You may accompany me to the capital." She changed into the resplendent outfit and set off, head held high, as Herald gestured to the Dark Young, who oozed forward and followed close upon his heels.

Herald silently enjoyed the stroll for the first half hour, occasionally glancing up at the sun and moon already peeking above the mountains, and chuckling as passing squads of pegasi would divert towards them, and mill about in confusion. The few ponies they met coming from the capital somehow failed to notice the procession of ponies and monsters, although the sound of choking and disgust behind them, as they discovered the slime they were walking in, did eventually get Trixie's attention. She turned to glare at them.

"Don't mind them, Trixie - we wouldn't want to be late meeting the Princess, after all."

Trixie considered the point, and continued. "Of course not - the sooner the Great and Powerful Trixie is recognised, the sooner the loser Twilight Sparkle can be exposed as a fraud."

Herald gave a little laugh. "I think we can be certain you'll be recognised."

***

The two Guardponies on the East Gate took their duties seriously - even with the extra traffic coming into town for the Eclipse, they checked every cart, carriage, and pedestrian for anypony resembling the fugitives. At least there was no chance those tree things could sneak into Canterlot. Even the crystal mines had been sealed, and teams of ponies were doing their best to remain unobtrusive as they searched the town.

"Why would they come here anyway? If they've got any sense Trixie and that stallion'll be halfway to the Griffin Lands by now."

"I dunno - if she was crazy enough to attack the Night Princess..."

"...yeah. And those poor fillies. They'll be lucky if Celestia just sends them to the moon."

"Ha! They'll be lucky if Celestia gets to them first! Did you see Shining Armor yesterday?"

"No, but I can guess. Well, at least we'll get a good view of the eclipse from here." he replied, jerking his chin towards the objects brightly shining over the town. "Think it'll be good?"

"Better be - the weather committee spent a week arguing about the best way to arrange the clouds."

"It's nice that the Princesses are working together on this. It's been, wha- OOF! Hey! Quit shoving!"

"What are you talking about? I didn't touch yo- Gah! What is that SMELL!?"

They stared down at the cobbles. A morass of giant, slimy, stinking hoofprints ran up the middle of the road, and into the Palace grounds.

"I... I think we'd better tell somepony about this."

"I think you're right."

Ensemble Cast

The alicorns glowed with beauty and grace as they stood regal and supreme on the dais in the palace gardens. Behind them, banners waved in the gentle breeze, showing the sisters and the sun and moon, stylised, and overlapping, dancing, coming together to create a scene of beauty. The crowds milled in excitement - the dawn had been impressive enough, with Sun and Moon rising above the mountains simultaneously, the sisters choreographed magic perfectly framed by the design of the garden and decorations, and the hard work of the pegasi. Now the celestial bodies were moving together, gliding to cross paths in the sky, and the preliminary entertainments could be enjoyed by the public as they waited for the big moment.

But there was still an air of unease behind the festivities. Perhaps it was the royal guard, Dayguard and Nightguard both, standing at more than ceremonial attention. Or the presence of all six Bearers on the dais behind the sisters - some of the ponies had very clear memories of the last few times all six had been in Canterlot at once, and sincerely hoped that their unexpected presence was an innocent surprise. Or perhaps it was the way Twilight Sparkle slumped in her wheelchair, drooling and staring, the blanket over her lap concealing the restraints. Or the expressions on the other five Bearers, and on the little dragon pushing Twilight's chair, and the way the one with the hat avoided meeting the eyes of the cyan pegasus.

Shining Armor shuffled into the space behind the dais, and coughed politely. "Report from the archives, your majesties."
"Did they find anything, captain?" murmured Celestia, without taking her gaze off the crowd. The breeze sweeping off the ornamental lake and rim of the Canterlot Falls swept her mane into a shimmering dawn panorama, contrasting pleasingly with the colours of the morning sky behind her..

The unicorn hesitated. "I'm afraid not. They've checked three times, but if anything significant by Ivory Tower was ever in the stacks, then it was misfiled decades ago. Certainly nopony has opened the chambers it should have been in, in at least that long."

Celestia sighed, very gently. "I was afraid of that. My little ponies did their best to rediscover his avenues of research, that I could prevent the same mistake in future, but he left so little to go on. Whatever he had learned, we were sure his knowledge died with him."

Luna looked very serious, even as her exhaustion made the stars in her mane flicker. Behind her, the moon was the thinnest of crescents, but still perfectly visible thanks to her magic. "Then we must capture the madmare Trixie and her associate, and determine how they know Ivory Tower's work, and who else they have told. And the bestiaries? What have you learned about the monsters?"

"Nothing, Princess Luna. Nothing resembling them has ever been reported from the Everfree, as far as the archivists can tell. I'm still waiting for replies from the Griffin and Dragon lands, in case they know anything. As for the one you captured... the Spellguard are almost sure it's intelligent, but it keeps trying to kill anypony who goes near enough to try a communication spell. I've had to triple the ponies guarding it - it already broke out of the railyard once."

Fluttershy gasped,

"Oh, don't worry! We got it back under control before it got far. We just hadn't anticipated it being THAT strong. But we still have plenty of ponies to watch the rest of Canterlot too. And, ah, you've got those." He dipped his horn towards Spike, and the case tucked into the back of Twilight's chair. Spike looked back, deadly serious and responsible, and nodded. "So..." And here, Armor's voice took on a trace of pleading. "How's Twili?"

Celestia turned to look down at him, sympathetically. "She is aware of her surroundings, at least. But we will keep her sedated for now. Talk to her if you wish - there is still a chance she can hear and understand you."

The white unicorn, smiled, weakly. "Well, that's something. I'll let Mom and Dad know, when I go off duty."

"Armor - you have already been awake for more than a day. You know you could go off duty at any time."

"No, I can't, Princess. I really can't."

One of the pegasi guards flew in, at speed, and came to a halt alongside. "Captain Armor? We got a problem - a big problem."

***

Trixie was annoyed again by the time she and her trees had pushed their way past the last gate, and into the open gardens near the falls. "Trixie thought you were her publicity agent - the ponies aren't even looking at her!"

Herald shrugged "Perhaps they're shy? Or too distracted by the eclipse?" Overhead the Sun and Moon were minutes away from touching.

Trixie fumed. "This is your fault - if you had arranged Trixie's audience on any other day, then everypony would be free to bask in my magnificence."

Herald tut-tutted. "You're thinking about this all wrong, Beatrice. The eclipse just means you'll have to produce an even better spectacle. And what better time to show off your prowess than when all these extra ponies - and both alicorns! - are in town? But I do recommend a variation on your usual fireworks. How about the Red Sign? That one should make quite an impression."

She hesitated, and checked the book - the sketch in the facing page did look spectacular... and the text promised it would stun all observers... They were almost at the edge of the crowd now - behind them there were shouts, and retching noises, and Herald noted the reaction of the distant alicorns, perched atop the dais. "But either way, now is your chance. I'll be just over there - you do your best to really impress."

Trixie huffed. "The Great and Powerful Trixie always does her best. The Great and Powerful Trixie is MAGNIFICENT!" She threw back her gemstone-encrusted cloak. "Ladies and Gentlecolts! Feast your eyes upon the Great and Powerful TRIXIE!"

Now every eye was upon her.

***

"They're invisible?!" hissed Rarity.

"That explains how they got away from Ponyville, I guess." muttered Pinkie. She looked worried.

"My little ponies - you are not safe here, if Trixie and her beasts can conceal themselves from our gaze - we must move you to a more secure location."

Applejack was staring across the crowd, and her voice was full of dangerous resolution. "Princess, that ain't gonna be a problem."

In many respects, it was like a curtain being pulled away from a stage. One moment, they weren't there, and the next Trixie was posing triumphantly, braced by a dozen black, protean monstrosities. "Guards! Seize that mare!" shouted Celestia over the screams, as she and her sister took flight to battle against the creatures. Armor tried to put up a shield spell around the six Bearers, but was knocked to the ground by the crowd of earth ponies and unicorns rushing to get away as far as their hooves could take them.

Rarity gasped. "Oh, what IS she wearing? Are those really rhinestones?" She facehoofed.

"Rarity, hon, you're my best friend an' all, but now ain't the time. I got business with that showmare." Applejack pushed her way through the ponies, and leaped down into the crowd of panicky townsfolk.

"Jacqueline, no!"

***

Trixie was a bit concerned by the audience reaction - she hadn't expected them to gallop away screaming. She hadn’t even surprised them with walking trees yet. "B...Behold my mastery of the magical arts!" At least the Princesses were coming over for a closer look. Luna had seen her in Ponyville, she must have told her elder sibling about her grievance with Twilight Sparkle and that wretched village. Her eyes narrowed. She'd spotted a familiar pony seated on the dais. No wonder the audience weren't in awe, if Twilight Sparkle had been here spreading vicious rumours.

Well, she'd put on a show that would knock their horseshoes off!

She flung a hoof out dramatically, and declaimed the syllables of the Red Sign. From the detonation of magic that washed over her, and the crimson glow that illuminated her from somewhere above her head, it seemed to work. She was too professional to look up and check, of course. The audience seemed impressed, as well - half of the Royal Guard were on the ground shielding their eyes. Even the alicorns had stopped dead in mid air. Ha! Let Twilight Loser top that!

"For my first trick... hey!" she hissed "Where are you going?! That wasn't your cue!"

The eyeless Dark Young pushed past her and headed for the crowd.

***

"Ow! What the buck is that?!" Yelped Rainbow Dash, as she covered her eyes with her hooves and fell out of the air and into the garden. The crimson symbol burning in the air above Trixie was impossible to describe - simply looking at it sent a stabbing pain and unreasoning terror deep into her brain. There were armed pegasi on the ground nearby, swearing inventively. Something was shaking the ground - the tread of Trixie's monsters, as they marched towards the mob of ponies jammed into the nearest gate. Their slack and croaking mouths drooled and slobbered, and their tentacles extended to seize the screaming mares, stallion, and foals.

"No! Nononono!" a different fear filled her - a horror shared by the Princesses it seemed, as they and those guards who had managed to avert their eyes rushed to protect the citizens. Dash launched herself into the melee - there was no way she would see another pony hurt because of Trixie's magic.

Fluttershy, Pinkie and Spike were cowering behind Twilight's wheelchair. Every glimpse of the Sign - even reflections of it in the windows of the palace, was sparking unreasoning terror and pain.

"Spike! Get the Elements ready!" shouted Pinkie. He fumbled at the case, almost spilling the jewels onto the ground. They'd managed to turn their friend away from the showmare, but she was still moaning gibberish and struggling against her bonds.

Rarity was struggling too - Armor was trying to drag her down behind the dais, but she was keeping her eyes squeezed shut and shouting. "We have to stop her!"

"I know! But the Spellguard will be here in seconds, if they ca-"

"Not Trixie! Applejack!"

***

Luna and Celestia were lost in the swirling combat. It had been so very long since they had gone to battle together, and it was frightening how easily the reflex came back. Every time one of the beasts lunged forward, they would move to block them, stop them from reaching the ponies, and retaliate with their own magic and stamping hooves. Their legs were already black with ichor, but the creatures were horribly resilient, shrugging off stunbolts and recovering in seconds even from the spears their guards drove deep into the abominations. But their numbers pressed hard, and the Red Sign made it so difficult - a unicorn attempting to seize a creature with telekinesis would glimpse it out of the corner of his eye and collapse, twitching and grinding their teeth. A pegasus would spasm in mid-air, and then they would need protection as well. Every time she had one of the monsters pinned, another would try and slip past her. Celestia fought a growing horror - if they did not deal with this threat now, she might be forced to call down her greater powers... no. That would not happen. Never happen again.

She shouted over the roars of the things, and the screams of her ponies. "Rainbow Dash! Get a cloud! Block that symbol!" The mare looked up, dropped the foal she'd rescued to safety behind a low wall, and took off into the sky at close to the speed of sound.

***

Applejack ground her teeth. She was still half-blind from her glimpse of the crimson symbol, and pain pounded behind her eyes. She kept her head down, staring at the turf between her hooves, then reached up to pull her hat forward, pushing the brim down low over her eyes. "You ain't getting away this time, you-" she began, then hunkered down as one of the tree-creatures was blasted off its hooves by Luna, only to hoot and reform and launch itself back into the fray. She lifted her field of view carefully, no higher than the edges of the garden, and scanned around, until she caught a glimpse of blue, and gaudy fake gemstones. "Gotcha."

Trixie stamped her hooves as she pursued her minions across the garden, raising her voice to try and be heard over the commotion.

"Stop it! You're ruining everything!" she raged, as the crowds screamed in terror and the Princesses flung potent battle magick into the combat, and the guards charged and lunged with spears and lances. "What is wrong with you all! You're supposed to be paying attention to Trixie!"

Somebody snarled nearby. "YOU."

Trixie turned. It was an orange earth pony, with a hat and tied-back hair. She looked vaguely familiar. Hadn't she been in Ponyville? "Oh, what do you want, the Great and Powerful Trixie is busy, you may ask for my au-"

Applejack kicked her in the face.

***

Rainbow Dash pushed the small clouds together, until she had a mass large enough to completely cover the glowing symbol. She moved to the far side, using the towers of Canterlot to judge her course without risking a glimpse of the sigil. Her heart was in her mouth - around her, pegasi rushing to assist would come into view of the symbol, go into convulsions, and fall from the sky. She hoped they landed in the lake at the bottom of the Canterlot Falls, or the pegasi still below the rim of the palace would catch them, or they'd recover soon enough to break their fall.

She braced her hooves against the cloud and started to push, as fast as she dared. Too fast and the cloudmass would break up - too slow and the symbol would continue to cripple the defenders, and ponies would be killed. The edge of the falls, then the garden, appeared below her. The crimson light of the symbol made the banners of the Alicorns seem bloody, and the unconscious ponies worse, but she was nearly in position. Her cloud was already lit from within with a hellish glow, but that, at least, had no effect on her mind.

She gave the cloud one last shove, and the feeling of relief was palpable. Within seconds the tide of battle was turning, and she looked around for her friends, and the ponies responsible for the attack.

***

"Let go a me, let go a me, ya hear! You know what she did, she deserves it!" Rarity and Pinkie had their forelegs around Applejack, and were trying in vain to drag her away from Trixie's prone form. The latter were already bloody, where the farmare had begun stamping the showmare to death.

"Jackie, don't, please!" screamed Pinkie.

Applejack pulled free, raging "You saw what she did to tha fillies! You saw what she did to mah little sista! She has this coming!" She reared up, to bring both hooves down on Trixie's skull.

***

Fluttershy was screaming as well, trying to get the Princesses' attention. Armor had frantically added his efforts to the defence of the crowd, throwing up barrier magic between the tree-things and the ponies, but the creatures were hideously, unnaturally strong. She crept closer, weeping with fear as ponies shrieked around her. She had to find Rainbow, had to get the Element of Loyalty to her so the six of them could try something, anything, against these unspeakable creatures. Rarity and Pinkie were trying to stop Applejack.

But everypony was ignoring her.

She pressed herself back against a hedge, as two Nightguard lunged past her to drive iron spears into one of the bellowing abominations. She felt sick to her stomach at the violence, the noise, the stench.

Somepony stepped between her and the scarlet sigil.

"Good morning, Fluttershy." said Herald. "It's time you and I had a little chat."

Façades

The masked stallion looked down at the cowering pegasus, and around him melee raged. He didn’t even look to step aside, as the combatants flowed around him like a storm-tossed ocean.
“Leave.... leave me alone.” she quavered. Herald’s ears pricked up in surprise.

“Leave you alone? Now why in Equestria would I do that? A pegasus could get hurt with all this foofaraw going on.” He glanced over at the combat, where one of the Royal Hussars had just been smashed from the air by a flailing tentacle, and lay screaming in the wreckage of a refreshment stand with a broken spine. “Indeed, one might say that getting ponies hurt was the point of it all.”

“You... you made all this? You’re responsible?”

“Oh, well done, Fluttershy! And thank-you for noticing.”

“You... you...” Fluttershy’s eyes narrowed, and her sides heaved. “You HURT TWILIGHT? YOU HURT THE FILLIES?! YOU HURT ALL THESE PONIES, THAT HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING TO HARM YOU?!?” Her wings were beating furiously now, and her muzzle an inch away from Herald’s as she turned the full force of her rage on the stallion. “HOW DARE YOU?!? HOW DARE YOU?!?”

Herald gazed back, impassively, the empty eyesockets of his mask meeting Fluttershy’s narrowed eyes, without flinching. “Are you quite done? If we’re going to have a staring contest, I suspect I’d win. Especially if I took off the mask - just ask your unicorn friend.” Fluttershy jerked back, her fury collapsing back into fear. “Besides, as fascinating as your talent for cowing monsters is, it only works if your target is actually capable of remorse. Sorry.”

“What do you want?”

“Of you? Not much - a little chat, for one thing.”

Flutershy’s head whirled, confusion added to the terror.

“A... chat?”

“I did say that, didn’t I? Oh, get up, girl, if I wanted to hurt you, you’d already be dead. But if you hang around here much longer, you’re liable to be accidentally trampled. After all, nopony can see us, until I decide to let them, or your Princesses are a little less distracted.” He held out a hoof. “Don’t forget your friend’s Element – I’m sure she’ll be wanting that soon enough.”

Fluttershy’s mind derailed. She reached up to take Herald’s hoof – and jerked her hoof back at the shock that ran up her leg and into her body. She collapsed, whimpering.

Herald leant in, solicitously. “Are you feeling alright, Fluttershy? Here, let me get you something to drink.” He moved off to the wreckage of the refreshment stand, kicking the screaming Hussar out of the way, and fished through the debris. “Juice box? No? Very well.”

He joined her against the hedge, and watched the carnage indulgently for a view moments, as the Princesses waged war, and the ponies strived, and the Dark Young rampaged. Overhead, the Sun and Moon were on the verge of touching. “So, as I was saying. You fascinate me, Fluttershy. You’re such a wonderful bundle of contradictions. You’re the Bearer of Kindness, but your kindness barely conceals your true nature. You’re the mare most easily provoked to rage, for one thing. And you have such a knack for cruelty!”

The mare whimpered.

“And don’t try to tell me any guff about how it was the influence of Discord either. Even allowing for his changes to your personalities, you were the only one that actually excelled at the inversion.”

“We... we beat Discord...” Fluttershy squeaked. “We can beat you too.”

“Discord was a talented amateur, Fluttershy. He brought Chaos. I bring Reality.”

He chuckled, lightly. “Speaking of which – you’re the only pony I’ve seen with a realistic understanding of the world. Dragons are dangerous, and yet you are the only one to acknowledge this simple fact. Many of your animals are carnivores, and despite the knowledge that even insects are sentient in your world, you provide them with prey. Your show of kindness is as much a façade as, well -” he looked down at himself “This.”

He moved, brushed dust from his robes. “But it seems your Princesses finally have the upper hand – I’d imagined it would take longer than that, but not to worry. I’m sure you want to rejoin your friends. And look! One of them is about to become a murderer.”

***

Applejack brought her hooves down. All she could see was Apple Bloom, Apple Bloom in the ruins, surrounded by the shattered timbers and the broken millstone. And Trixie was responsible. She’d brought those monsters. She’d brought that stallion. She’d pay for what she did.

Her hooves connected.

Her visioned cleared. It was a still blue pony under her hooves. A blue pegasus. Rainbow’s face and foreleg were bleeding, where she’d thrown herself between her friend and the showmare. She looked up at her friend, pleading, blood running freely from the gash. “Don’t do it, A.J.! Don’t!”

“Git out a mah way, Rainbow! She’s gotta die! She’s gotta die for what she did!” Rarity and Pinkie were screaming for help.

“A.J. don’t, think of Apple Bloom!” wept Rainbow Dash.

Applejack wailed, and shoved Rainbow onto her back, hitting Rainbow’s chest over and over, as Rainbow did nothing to fend her off. “I am! That’s all I’m thinking about. I think about her all tha time!”

“So do I A.J. So do I! And... and if they die... I don’t want you to be a killer too, Applejack!” Rainbow’s bloody tears flowed freely down her face.

Applejack froze. Then she too began to weep, and collapsed onto her friend. They wept together, faces against each other’s shoulder, holding one another as Rarity and Pinkie tried to staunch Trixie’s bleeding, and the Spellguard could finally teleport in to turn the battle.

***

With the Red Sign covered and fading, reinforcements could finally come in to help, without falling victim to the malign magic. The crowds of ponies could escape; the Dark Young forced back against the Palace Wall; and help rendered to the appalling number of ponies hurt, often grievously, in the battle. As the eclipse began, ignored, high above, it looked like the scene of a massacre. Celestia was more angry than she had been in hundreds of years. The roar of the Canterlot Falls matched the roar of blood in her ears. She strode over towards the five Bearers, where they had huddled together near where the medics were strapping Trixie into a stretcher. Luna was standing with one hoof on Trixie’s book, and Shining Armor had called in every spare guard and volunteer to stand guard around the oozing, battered tree-things.

“Can the mare speak?”

Bayo paused “Yes, your majesty, but I’ll have to lift the sedation. Are you sure you-“

“Do it.”

The showmare stirred. The one intact eye blinked, slowly, turned in its socket and tried to focus. “Ow... the Great and Powerful Trixie’s face hurts...”

"Beatrice Lulamoon!” snapped the alicorn. “I will ask you one time only. The balance of your mind is disturbed but your actions have endangered my little ponies, and I am finding it difficult to forgive you - tell us, and tell us now - how did you come by that book? Where is your associate, the masked stallion?"

Pinkie was sitting, holding Rainbow and Applejack. Spike was mopping Twilight’s brow, as the mare stared into thin air and muttered the same nonsense syllables over and over. Rarity was still shaking. “Has... has anypony seen Fluttershy?

"The answer to three questions is right here!" Celestia and Luna wheeled, and Guards and Hussars reacted slowly in their exhaustion. Herald appeared from the crowd, the expression on his mask clearly one of contemptuous amusement in the strangely deepening eclipse light. Behind him, Fluttershy ended her desperate attempts to make some pony register her presence, and flew weeping to her other friends. "I congratulate you - you have managed to capture my pawn and block my other pieces."

"Guards! Seize that pony!"

The rest of the ponies fell back, as the stallions of the royal guard advanced, spears and horns lowered. Celestia and Luna's fury was barely contained, as they beheld the one responsible for Twilight's state, the grievous injuries to Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom, and the destruction in Ponyville and Canterlot.

"Herald, or whoever you are - if you desire any leniency whatsoever, you will surrender, immediately!"

"Whoever, your majesty? I advise you to look again."

Celestia blinked, studied the smug stallion more closely - and recoiled. "Stand back! Do not approach it! Get everypony out of the garden, now!"

"Very wise, your Solar Highness - if they attacked me, I might be forced to protect myself."

Luna looked from one to the other. "Sister?" She silently enquired.

"Bind it, Luna! Your strongest wards!"

The younger alicorn remained confused. "It? What is he?"

"Look beyond the mask, sister! Bind it now!"

Luna looked - and spat her loathing at what she recognized within.

"Ah." said Nyarlathotep. "You DO remember."

Twisting the Knife

The entity was unfolding more and more of its bulk over the dig site - chaoplasm churning as it sprouted fractal chelicerae, tearing open reality piece by piece. Most of the ponies in the nearby villages were already hopelessly insane, minds consumed the moment they tried to comprehend the shape eating into their world. It spread like a cancer in reality, metastasising across the sky as its claws worked the rift wider and wider.

"Sister? What is it? Has it escaped from Tartarus?"

The two alicorns were already armed for battle, as they dived towards the creature, the scream of air past their wings not enough to drown out the endless shrieking song of Nyarlathotep.

"We do not know, little sister. But we know this - it is nothing that belongs in our reality. Prepare yourself - with the Elements of Harmony we shall seal it away or banish it, just as we did with Discord."

They ended their rush and their wings beat heavily, as they turned their attention inward to wake the six gemstones they wore. The physical manifestations of the powers they had used to save their little ponies from the spirit of Chaos. They could feel the currents building, energy blazing out of their eyes and from the gems as they assessed the wound in reality, and the creature creating it, and chose their way to restore balance. The power rose towards its peak - and Luna was snatched out of the sky by the branching, rugose claws of the thing.

"SISTER!" cried the elder alicorn, as her connection with the Elements was broken and the creature bit and nipped and peeled away the layers of her sister's magical protection. Luna's eyes rolled in panic, as she was subsumed into the mass of the thing, and as she slashed left and right with the blue-black blade of magic that sprang from her horn. Her wing was twisted, nearly broken, by one of the entity's claws, and she screamed and bucked out, hooves blasting the thing's substance into shattered ice.

"Luna! Flee! Go as far as you can!" called the Sun Princess, as she fended off more of the thing's limbs with blades of fire. But there were more of the jointed limbs every moment, and she could glimpse the shapes waiting beyond the rift, waiting to ooze in and feed. Luna looked up, trusting her sister utterly, but loathe to leave her alone against the invader, without the combined Elements to fight it.

"GO!"

Luna fled, teleporting away in a flare of magic, and reappeared high over the plains, crying out at the agony of her injured wing. Even from here she could see the size of the thing, looming higher and higher into the dawn sky, and the blinding flashes of magic as Celestia tried to drive it back.

It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough. The thing would tear open the world, and feast on the ponies in her care. Celestia wept, knowing what she would have to do, if she was to save anything. She closed her eyes, as the wall of claws and jaws and ravenous fissures closed in, and she reached into the heart of her talent, and willed it to obey.

Celestia called down the Sun.

***

Magic flared into existence around the thing that called itself Herald – twin layers of the alicorns' magic, folded against each other, reinforcing each other, tempering each other to contain the horror within. Their horns blazed with the effort. The entity didn’t seem to care.

“How many of your little pets died in the fireball, your Solar Highness, as you boiled the valley down to bedrock? I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention. Of course, a mere thermonuclear explosion couldn’t kill me – nothing can – but it was rather inconvenient. I had to retreat and find another way into your domain. But it could have been worse...”

“How, monster?” hissed Luna. “My sister wept for every pony that died that day. Do you have any idea how badly you hurt her? It was a mercy that you manifested in a region so remote.”

Nyarlathotep nodded his agreement. “Indeed. I have a very good idea. Imagine if Ivory Tower had returned to Canterlot before he summoned me? How many of your subjects would have survived? A few hundred? A thousand, at best? I'm confident you will not react that way again, Celestia. Even if you could keep the fireball controlled, you would vaporise the mountain. Cloudsdale and Ponyville would be utterly obliterated by the heat flash alone. Every pony for hundreds of miles would be killed. Small wonder you are so reluctant to use your talents to their full extent - you don’t want to kill your little ponies.”

“Prin.. Princess? What’s he talking about?” Applejack looked sickened, her friends horrified beyond speech at ‘Herald’s’ words, and worse, Celestia’s frozen reaction. Spike stood protectively between Twilight and the monster, claws flexing with his rage, as the unicorn stared and mumbled, stared and mumbled.

Celestia stared as well, pupils shrunk to pinpoints. Her memories of the day perfectly preserved, perfectly horrible. Stumbling through the burnt and blasted villages, screaming her grief at the sky as the ponies she had failed to protect lay black and smoking around her. It was a wonder she had ever regained her sanity. Without Luna's care, she might never have.

"I'm talking about what happened last time I entered your realm, Miss Applejack. You should be grateful I did not attempt the same... flamboyant... entrance. If I did, your Princess might retaliate, and having all of central Equestria reduced to radioactive slag is a nuisance for everypony."

Fluttershy's eyes, still red from her distress, narrowed in loathing. "We still have the Elements of Harmony - they worked on Luna when she was Nightmare Moon. And they worked on Discord. They'll work on you! Won't they, girls?"

The black god spared her a condescending glance. "You know, it might even be amusing to see what results. Six broken ponies versus ME? But I am not an idiot, and I will kill you out of hand if you try."

"ENOUGH!" Celestia's eyes were shining white with power and anger, and her horn glowed with a furious incandescence. "We have you bound now, and you cannot hurt our little ponies further."

Nyarlathotep chuckled, sceptically. "Really, your Highness? You know I'll just have to test such a claim." He turned to the six ponies. "So, how are the fillies?"

Applejack spat. "Still alive, no thanks to you.... you ... swaybacked varmint."

"Still alive? That IS interesting. Would you like them to stay that way?"

Shining Armor and six other guard ponies held Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Spike down, before they could fling themselves at him.

Nyarlathotep turned back to the alicorns. "One point to me, I think." He reached into his robes, and withdrew a small glass jar. "But before any of you do anything rash... I was quite serious. Do you want them to stay alive?" He held the jar up. The dancing lights inside swirled away from his hoof, bright enough against it in the deepening eclipselight. "Can you guess what these are, Celestia? Luna?"

Luna looked, and for a moment her entire aspect changed, as she fought to contain her rage. "You... you would do that... to a child?" The inner barrier wavered, ice crystals blossoming across the lawn around the black stallion's hooves.

"Luna! Control yourself! He is attempting to break your concentration!"

"And doing a good job of it, too. But don't think I'd limit myself to children, your Lunar majesty. Pony souls are quite pretty, aren't they? Perhaps I'll keep them as a paperweight. Much more interesting than some boring old moths, anyway."

The barriers quivered. The Bearers and those guards and Hussars still left in the garden looked on in horror as the implications sank in. Applejack and her friends turned to the wounded Trixie with venom in their eyes. “You... you’re lucky I don’t want to kill you anymore, showmare. Hurting little fillies.”

Trixie looked confused, despite her injuries. “What are you talking about...” she mumbled through clinical shock and sedation. “Trixie saw no foals...”

"Indeed she did not, little ponies – but it was simple enough to make you think she was involved.” The stallion’s voice changed to a very different one. “’Look at me, I’m an obnoxious showmare whose ego can barely fit through the palace gates’.” He laughed at the expressions of the ponies’ faces. “So - your move, Celestia. Would you care to drop the barrier and retrieve the souls of those adorable fillies? Or shall I take them with me when you cast me out of your world? There’s only three of them – surely that is an acceptable price?"

Celestia balked, again. The pony-thing balanced the jam-jar on a hoof, and started to juggle. On the fourth circuit he missed the catch.

"NO!" screamed half the ponies present.

Herald caught the jar with magic, an inch above the frozen ground. "Oops, butterfingers." He chuckled at the distraught onlookers. "Stalemate, I think."

Pinkie shrieked. “What is wrong with you? How can anypony be that cruel?”

"You think I'm cruel, Miss Pie? I'm insulted! You and I have so much in common, after all - we are both very fond of practical jokes. Invisible ink, party buzzers, nuclear technology, monkey's paws, religion... is there really that much difference? And I'm the very soul of laughter! I take one look at the universe, where the Great Powers are utterly mindless, where the allegedly sentient races - even those less fortunate than your own - are tragically, fatally naive, and where every single living thing squirms desperately into the future, staving off oblivion by devouring all around them ... and I find that hilarious. So tell me, Pinkamena Diane Pie - Why. Aren't. You. Laughing?"

Celestia's chest heaved. "Shining... Shining Armor. Take the Bearers and... that book... to the Archives. Have whoever you can spare search it for magick that might cast out this.... monster."

They turned back, at a noise from the barriers. Herald was leaning on a hoof against the wards, enjoying the rising shriek of boiling ice. In seconds his hoof burst into flame, and he regarded the fire with interest for a few moments before shaking it out. He looked up at the nauseated onlookers.

“The book, little ponies? You're welcome to it. Poor Ivory Tower. He was a gifted scholar, and he honestly thought he was helping ponykind. A magic that any pony could use, whether they were unicorn, pegasus or earth pony? That would indeed be a great boon to pony unity. No doubt you thought the same, Princess Celestia, when you encouraged him in his pursuit. A few hints here and there, scraps of knowledge, and expeditions to forgotten cities half buried in time... he truly believed he was on the verge of a great thaumaturgical breakthrough - verbal magic that would work for anyone. Alas, instead, he got me.

"I took his notes with me, of course – why would I let such a masterpiece go to waste? And bound it in his skin – it’s the way he would have wanted to go. Admittedly, he was completely insane by then.”

He turned back to the alicorns. “So, Celestia, how have you been since I saw you last? I must congratulate you on your social engineering skills – in all of Equestria, I could not find a single pony sociopathic enough to be a good cultist.” Herald chuckled, slightly. “But there are always other ways into a world. All I required was a pony talented enough in magic – and Trixie here is talented -” The blue unicorn basked in the praise, even as she was carted away on her stretcher. “But one so self-centred, so conceited, that despite her professional understanding of misdirection, sleight-of-hand, and illusion, she’d still ignore her own instincts of self-preservation if suitably flattered.”

“Wait, are we still talking about the Great and Powerful Trixie?”

Shining Armor pushed the six ponies and their dragon friend towards the gates – his own expression was twisted. Behind them, the few guards remaining to stand watch over the Dark Young were gazing at Nyarlathotep with murderous hate. Any one of them would have tried to kill him, given the chance. The false stallion was an unspeakable abomination in pony form, and there was nothing they would have liked better than to destroy him. But they held their place – they were the Royal Guard, and they would die to protect Equestria and their kin, but their monarchs’ orders were clear.

Celestia glared at the bound entity. Above, half the Sun was obscured, as the Moon slowly overtook Celestia’s orb. “I know what you are, creature. I know what you were attempting that terrible day. I know what you are and I will cast you from my world regardless of what it costs me.”

"I fear, your majesty, that I will not cooperate. Were you and your sister the only gods, I would obey, and gladly, but there are other gods. And it is their desire to return."

Luna exchanged a glance with her sister. “What do you want, monster? What do you demand from us in return for your freedom?”

“What do I want? What I want is immaterial – my masters’ whim is to feed, and I am moved to obey. Your world is rich in bright and shining souls for the infovores, and plentiful biomass for those who prefer their meals less rarefied.”

Celestia’s gaze might have incinerated a lesser being on the spot. “Then we are glad we apprehended you before you could harm the Bearers further. Whatever your plan was, we have captured you and your beasts, and the book.”

Nyarlathotep’s masked head dipped. “So it would appear. But I wouldn’t have had any chance of success, if your little pets weren’t so tragically naive. You’ve certainly done a good job at insulating your ponies from reality. Or from inconvenient truths. How many centuries did it take you to bury the facts about your sister's treachery, until she became little more than a story for foals? Small wonder the Elements of Harmony rejected you, after such dishonesty. And your sister's disloyalty. But do you really think she deserved a thousand years of solitary confinement on the Moon, just because she was lonely?”

The barrier wavered again, until the alicorns regained self-control. “You.... cannot provoke me that way, monster. I did everything I could to bring my sister back from her madness.”

"Oh, I entirely agree, your highness. Your grooming of Twilight Sparkle was a work of sheer artistry! Tell me, did it take long to craft her into a tool to free your sister? Generations at least - establishing Ponyville so close to the Everfree and the castle ruins, assigning Sun Celebration duties to the very ponies that would become Bearers. Even ensuring that one obscure book was available in her library! Encouraging her love of the night sky was a master stroke - how else to ensure Nightmare Moon didn't simply obliterate her. I imagine you even suggested the name to the lucky parents - what else but Twilight joins Night to Day?"

“FILTH! LIAR!” snarled Luna, eyes flashing. “Twilight Sparkle and her friends SAVED me, and I am glad to share the world with my sister once again!”

Nyarlathotep looked at the elder alicorn. “The only difference between you and I, Princess, is that I don’t expect my victims to be grateful.”

***

The ponies moved into the Palace. Bayo checked on Trixie, wondering whether he should risk renewing her sedation. The Bearers stared at each other – every one of Herald’s claims had been like a knife to the gut, placed with an assassin’s precision. “What are we going to do? What if he was right about us... about us not being able to use the Elements?”

Pinkie’s hair was dead flat. Her mind was completely failing to parse the horror of the fillies being soulbound. Her consciousness fled from the very concept. Rarity had to steer her along, and Rarity herself was near to collapse. If ponies prayed, she would be praying to the Princesses that they could save her sister’s hostage essence.

“I dunno Flutters... there better be something in this book or I’m going to make that stallion eat it.” Rainbow looked across to Spike and Armor. “How’s Twi? We might need her soon. For the Elements.”

Spike mopped Twilight’s brow. “I dunno, Rainbow... I think she’s trying to say something.” He leaned in close. “What’s that, Twilight?”

“... stars... stars are right... “

Rarity exchanged a sorrowful glance with her friends, and touched Twilight’s arm. “I know dear... I’m sorry that stallion ruined the eclipse too.”

“... no.. dununnerstan... stars are right...”

The ponies and the dragon exchanged a confused look. “Anypony know what she’s talking about? It must be important to her if she’s making this much sense.” asked Shining Armor.

Twilight tried to grab her brother’s hoof, her eyes rolling with her madness. “Stars. Symbols. All symbols. It’s all symbols.”

Pinkies hair stood on end, and she started to shake, trembling violently from head to tail. “Whoa! Whoawhoawhoa! Doozy coming! A really big doozy!”

“Oh, what the hay could be happening now, to make this day any worse? Pinkie, if you’re wrong about this..”

“Symbols! Syzygy!”

“It’s really big, A.J.! And it’s back in the garden!”

***

Nyarlathotep looked up at the sky, as the last few glimpses of sun were vanishing. “I do have two questions for you, your majesties. One about my creatures, and one about your precious ponies...”

***

Rainbow stared out the window. “But what else can happen? The Princesses are both there and they’ve got everything under control, don’t they?” It was getting very dark, and a chill wind was blowing across the lake as the eclipse approached its climax. Already the Sun was down to a razor-thin crescent

***

“Did you know that Dark Young can cast spells?”

***

“... all symbols! Sun blotted out, Moon at her ebb...”

“I dunno Dashie but it feels really really bad!”

***

“And why why why... did you assume I was after them?

***

Twilight sat straight up, and screamed “The Princesses will be WEAKEST!”

***

Celestia and Luna turned in horrorstruck realisation to their captive...

The last brilliant point of sunlight vanished...

The Herald’s mask stretched into a ghastly grin of triumph, and spoke a Word of Power..
.
TOTALITY.

Poor Unfortunate Souls

"I enjoyed our game, your Celestial Highness. But I admit the most satisfying way to defeat a chessmaster is to not let her realise she's one of the pieces."

The Herald of the Outer Gods stepped forward, the barriers around him collapsing without a sound. Before him, where the alicorns had stood, were two rips in the fabric of reality. Glimpses from within of eyes, and white-hot fury, and ice-cold rage, and other things less easy to comprehend, flickered and twisted. "You should be more careful with your mythology, your majesty. An insane goddess banished for an age, and returns to the world during a significant astronomical event? It may have helped you rescue your sister, but that sort of pattern will be noticed."

The Spellguard moved to attack him, but even as they did the Dark Young croaked syllables impossible for pony throats, and a wall of force sprung up between the ponies and Nyarlathotep. Then they reached forward to feed. No longer holding back, it took them seconds to subdue the trapped unicorns, and the ponies screamed and convulsed as the creatures began to drain them of magic and life. With other mouths, the Dark Young bayed a paean to the blackened sky above, where a burning ring of fire marked the frozen eclipse.

He turned, the mask flowing like wax into an expression of benign interest as the five relatively sane Bearers, Shining Armor, and Spike ran back into the garden, skidding to a halt as they saw what he had done.

“Princess! Luna! Something’s going t- oh.. oh by the Herd.”

“What... oh sweet Celestia. What are they doing?!” Shining Armor swayed, coat lathered with sweat, eyes wide with utter gut-wrenching fear as he saw the Dark Young and the fate of the Spellguard and volunteers.

“They’re calling home to Mother, Mister Armor. And when She arrives, She will remake Equestria into something more suitable for the Outer Gods. But cheer up, little ponies – your goddesses will break free soon enough. Perhaps even soon enough to save a few hundred of you from apocalypse. And if you’re very lucky, your world might still be capable of supporting protoplasmic life when the Outer Gods are finished with it.”

He looked up at the sky. The corona of the sun was starting to change, dripping with indescribable colours as the Dark Young bade Shub-Niggurath enter the world. Screams rose from around the city. No doubt ponies and other species across the continent were staring up in supernatural fear already. He looked down, robes rustling, and gleaming blackly in what remained of the light.

"I feel the strangest compulsion for a big musical number." said Nyarlathotep. "Forgive me if I don't indulge. Now... what to do with you Bearers...”

Armor and Spike pushed in front of the mares “Keep away! Put one hoof nearer and I’ll-”

"Or you'll what, Mister Armor? I can see it on you - your willingness to lay down your life to protect the ponies in your care. But if you attack me, Mr. Armor, you will simply die. On the other hoof, if you hurry you might save the lives of some of the stallions under your command."

The unicorn's expression was torn, and his gaze kept flicking from the mares to the Herald of the Outer Gods, to the scene behind the barrier. Herald sighed. “Very well. I give my word as an utterly amoral deity of your worst nightmares that I will do your associates here no injury while you’re gone. Now, run along before I lose my patience.”

Armor moved, running up to the barrier between himself and the horrors on the far side. His head flicked left and right, his horn glowing as he tried to find some weakness in the wall. If he had other unicorns to assist.. but, of course, all the Spellguard not hurt in the earlier battle, or still surrounding the captured Dark Young in the railyard, were already on the other side, being sucked dry. He groaned in distress at his impossible dilemma, then galloped for the gates – if he could find enough trained unicorns in time....

Herald smiled indulgently at the others. "I enjoy a good hero - they're so predictable. One little nudge and off they run towards the screaming."

The five mares and the dragon backed away. "What have you done to the Princesses, you bucking son-of-a-bitch!?"

"I told them the truth, Applejack. You, of all ponies, should have no problem with that. It certainly surprised them, when they really needed to concentrate on the wards."

Pinkie's eyes were crazed, as they stared into the two ragged holes in the world. "They're Outside. The Princesses are Outside."

"Quite right, Miss Pie. You are the pony most aware of the walls around the world, after all, even if you ignore them. I've put them in a minor-enough dimensional oubliette, but as you can see it's keeping them contained for now. Appropriate, don't you think? They would have very much liked to do something analogous to me. Feel free to say hello, they're perfectly aware of everything happening out here." He gave them a little wave, and the holes rippled with eyes, and wheels within wheels, and helpless fury.

Rarity eyes flashed as fear gave way to fury. "You did all that... to Sweetie and the fillies... to Twilight... to all of us... to ME... just so you could... you could..."

"Destroy everything you know? That's exactly what I told the fillies, right before I cored them like apples." Now Applejack's rage was stoked, and the two friends were moving forward, pulses thundering, as the abomination mocked their distress.

"You might not remember our conversation, Rarity, but I did tell you I place great value on appearances and timing. Using Miss Lulamoon as a stalking horse, having you all running around after her, having Canterlot split its military reserves between the hunt for Trixie, or containing the Dark Young they thought they’d caught, and lining what remains of the Spellguard up as snack food... it was all to have the Princesses together, and distracted, at the very moment they would be most vulnerable."

"Did you know you were the most unpredictable part of my plan, Miss Pie? It could all have gone so very awry, had you popped up at some inconvenient moment, or your Pinkie Sense given you some premonition. I had to move quite carefully, to ensure the Princesses still believed Trixie to be the one in charge." He chuckled happily, and strolled towards the edge of the lake. "Terribly amusing, isn't it?"

Fluttershy breath rasped in her throat, her lungs burned, she wanted to scream her outrage, her denial of Nyarlathotep's words, her abhorrence of the calculated sadism of his plan...but she still strived to find some handle for her talent, some spark of compassion in the Messenger of the Outer Gods. "But... you don't have to be so cruel. You could have... hurt me when you had me alone. You could have done anything. Isn't that... proof you don't really want to hurt us?"

Nyarlathotep fixed her with a withering glare, the vast black entity behind his eyes twitching in amused contempt. "Of course I didn’t want you dead, you stupid foal. I wanted Celestia scared, not berserk. The alicorns' colourful pets - so bright and cheerful. And completely ignorant of the utter bleakness of reality. But should some hint arise that your 'special talent' is meaningless, unappreciated, pointless in the wider universe... why, half of you just snap. You broke at the Gala, when the animals wouldn’t be friends with you. You, Pinkie, when you thought your parties were no longer appreciated. Twilight’s and her obsession with organisation... even alicorns aren’t immune. Luna, of course, when she dwelt too long on the fact that ponies aren’t nocturnal... and even the Sun Princess – try to imagine how she felt when she not only failed to nurture you, but killed her precious ponies in her attempt to kill me."

Herald’s mask grinned, showing serrated teeth behind the bone-white lips. “And it makes you so easy to manipulate. Discord may have amused himself by altering your personalities, but how much more satisfying to destroy you as you are? Attack Twilight with knowledge, you, Applejack, through your family, Pinkie and Rarity via your oh-so-helpful natures. Fluttershy, of course, was especially vulnerable. But you, Miss Dash... using your loyalty and sonic rainboom to break four of you at once? That was a masterpiece.”

The ponies and the dragon threw themselves at him, blind with hate. He watched them impassively, mask smiling, and slapped the six from the air with a twitch of his hoof.

He snorted. "Go ahead, try that again. I'm a god, you moronic little animals." The Herald stepped between the groaning bodies to look down at Rainbow Dash. "So, how did it feel knowing that it was your loyalty and recklessness that broke four of you? That thanks to you, three fillies were as good as dead, that your friends couldn't stand the sight of you, that it was your fault?" He turned and walked out along the parapet of the lake, where the Canterlot Falls tumbled past endlessly into the void, and looked out over Equestria. "And now your world is mine to play with. I really should be thanking you."

Nyarlathotep turned back to the six, as they pushed themselves to their feet and Rarity spat out a tooth. "Perhaps you'd like to try the Elements next? Fluttershy left your necklace over there near the bloodstains, and I'm sure Twilight Sparkle can't be far away. I'll be right here."

Dash lurched into the air, and dragged herself towards the Element of Loyalty. The Herald of the Outer Gods went on. "I've been controlling you like a dog on a leash, Miss Dash. Oh, and one more thing..." She slipped the jewel around her neck, spat blood from her muzzle, and turned. Herald held the souls of the Cutie Mark Crusaders out over the abyss, and let go.

"Fetch."

Finishing Moves

Twilight shook her head, and strained against the restraints. Helpless. Helpless. Looking into Herald's unmasked face, paralysed with terror as the Outer God had gleefully poured his knowledge in her mind. Every fact poison, every truth bleak and undeniable.

Princess. Got to help the Princess.

“How many of your little pets died in the fireball, your Solar Highness, as you boiled the valley down to bedrock?"

Oh, those poor ponies... poor Princess... hold her, comfort her mentor, just as she and all her kind had been comforted and nurtured by the Alicorn of Day. Oh, the fillies. The fillies. Other times, other worlds, he showed me, other people, things like people, offering up their children to him. Appease him with their lives. He didn't need it. Can't die. Amused him.

"... a mere thermonuclear explosion couldn’t kill me ... nothing can .... I had to retreat and find another way into your domain..."

She remembered other visions, other forms Nyarlathotep had worn as he strode laughing through dying worlds... Can't think. Oh. Oh no. The stars will aid her escape. Stars. Eclipse. Their escape. They wait. They're waiting, waiting for the time, the season, history will end. Read it. He knows I read it. Dangerous. Have to warn them. Weeping with fear, remembering an ocean of faces, an ocean of slime, babbling nonsense... So slow. Thinking, so slow. Feels like drowning. Drowning in slime, remembering that vision, long ago, ponies long dead, an ocean of oozing slime... Princess, have to warn you, have to warn my friends, but your magic making me so slow! Planned this? Planned everything. Make me mad and stupid, so I couldn't warn them? Oh. Everything. Everything he says. Making us all mad and stupid, angry and stupid. Victims. Won't be victim. Won't let my friends be victims.

Spike between me and the monster... so brave. My Number One Assistant, so brave.

Fighting through madness, fighting through sedation, my friends, my brother, stumbling over the words. “The Princesses will be WEAKEST!”

Too late, too late, he's beaten us. I can hear the screaming, he's won. Falling back into darkness. Madness is a mercy now.
TWILIGHT.

Madness, I can hear Princess Luna, it hurts so much that I let them down. Just give up, close my eyes, hope I won’t have to hear what happens to my friends...

TWILIGHT. CAN THOU HEAR US?

Princess, I’m sorry, I’ve let you down, let everypony down.

THANK THE STARS, SHE CAN HEAR US.

Princess? Celestia? Luna? I can’t see you. Remembering everything... lessons from Celestia, pressed against her flank, under her wing, on cold nights under the sky as you told me about the stars... Luna, so lonely, so lonely, and I’m going to lose all my friends, oh Princess....

TWILIGHT SPARKLE, WE ARE TRAPPED. WE NEED YOUR HELP. WE CANNOT STOP THE HERALD FROM HERE.

I can’t, I can’t, he showed me what he is please don’t make me think about him please Princess

TWILIGHT SPARKLE. THIS WILL DISTRESS YOU, AND WE ARE VERY SORRY. YOU SAVED US FROM NIGHTMARE... NOW...

WAKE UP

***

Shining Armor galloped down the Eastern Colonnade, frightened ponies staring into the sky and the half-seen shapes that seemed to press against it. On both sides the walls of the Palace loomed pallid in the darkness, and above the towers wailed with a freezing wind leaking down from the stars. Behind there was the screams of his stallions as the tree-things fed upon their lives. Ahead, there was battle.

A score of unicorns were trying to hold back the last of the Dark Young. Obviously it had broken free of the railyard, and had flowed and swarmed up the nearly sheer cliff face as it made to join its unspeakable kin. One the pegasus officers keeping civilians out of the way saw him coming, and turned to shout, as the unicorns tried and failed to hold the monster back, or stun it with magic, and avoid its own.

“Armor! What the hay is going on? Why hasn’t the sun come back yet?”

“They got the Princesses! I need every unicorn I can get! Even civvies, if they passed their final year magic exams. Spread the word!”

“But what about this thing? We can’t just let it run riot!”

Armor narrowed his eyes, and looked at the monster, then up. He braced himself, and his horn lit up with the magic of telekinesis.

A twelve-ton marble statue of Commander Pansy fell on the Dark Young from four stories up.

“Right!” shouted Armor, ignoring the expressions on the ponies splashed with the black and stinking ichor. “You heard me! Every unicorn I can get! Meet me at the garden gates! MOVE IT!”

***

Three of the ponies rushed the parapet, stared down as the tumbling glass vanished into the darkness and the falling water. Two did more. “Dash!” screamed Rarity. “Catch me!” and leaped over the stonework into the abyss.

“Rarity!” shrieked Fluttershy, as her friend dropped from view. Dash gave an incoherent scream of her own, and burst after her, a blur of motion.

Spike was still struggling to his feet, head still spinning from Herald’s blow. He saw Rarity leap, and his heart thumped against the inside of his chest. Felt like it was choking him. Like something huge, struggling to break free, as he turned on the black abomination that was gazing down into the darkness and the noise, and saying something he had no desire to comprehend.

“Well, that saves time. So, which of you wants to be next?”

Pinkie didn’t move. Applejack pushed past her, saying something a nice mare really shouldn’t say. The thoughts were whirling, spinning like symbols on a fruit machine.

We can’t stop him. We need all the Elements to even try. He said he’d hurt us if we tried.

The Princesses could make him go away. Celestia made him go away, last time. But the Princesses aren’t here.

But if they were here and they tried to stop him it would be really really really bad.

Herald was turning towards her, mask furrowing....

Her eyes went wide.

Celestia can make him go away. But they can’t do it here. But they’re not here.

Her hair rebounded, her mind fizzing, her thoughts lined up with a jackpot ka-ching!

He moved a hoof, pushing Fluttershy out of the way; the eyes of his mask lighting up like the Friendship Express at the other end of a tunnel...

She reached across to Spike, grabbed him and held him up between herself and the Messenger of the Outer Gods.

“Spike!” she cried.

“POST HIM!”

The Goat of a Thousand Young

Pinkie wrapped Spike in a bearhug, and squeezed. The young dragon's rage, stoked by the danger to his friends, his hoard of family, burst out as a gout of glittering green fire, splashed across Herald's blazing bone-white visage, down his body, and on across ten feet of lawn.

Fluttershy and Applejack cringed, shielding their eyes from the blaze, then stared at the space where the Messenger had stood. Applejack turned to Spike and Pinkie. "You do that?"

Spike looked stunned, and Pinkie beamed over his shoulder. "Uh, I think so, Applejack."

The farmer staggered a bit, as the adrenaline wore off. "Warn a pony next time." Then she flung herself forward and hugged her two friends in a crushing embrace.

Fluttershy was staring up at the sky. "Pink... Pinkie? Applejack? What's happening to the stars?"

***

The Herald stood, looking out into reality. From here, the shining souls of the ponies were perfectly visible, as was the brilliant blaze of the Elements, and the lingering damage from Discord's reign even after all these millennia.

"Hmm. This is a nuisance. I must do something really memorable to those two."

He turned around.

"Ah."

***

Rarity dropped into darkness, the only sound the roar of the cataract and the air past her ears. It seemed strange how the water beside her appeared to hang in mid-air, as they fell together. She'd have, oh, fifteen seconds until they both hit the rocks at the bottom. Rainbow Dash talked about this sort of thing often enough. A two-thousand foot drop, and ... thirteen seconds now? She held her arms and legs out behind her, mane and tail whipping back, the falling sheet of water starting to roll backwards as she overtook it.

She ignored everything else. Her attention fixed entirely on the water and the darkness below. Somewhere...

Ten seconds. Something grabbed her shoulders, knocked the wind out of her, and she started to decelerate, hard.

"Dash, faster! Go faster!"

"Wha-"

"Faster! Now!"

Seconds wasted. Faster, though, catching up, the water breaking up into spray, soaking Dash's wings, making her clumsy... THERE! A tiny glimmer of light in the darkness, tumbling, over and over...

Rarity reached out with her magic.

Three seconds.

The jar held in a luminous glow...

Two seconds.

Dash peeling away, trying to turn from the rocks...

One second.

The cloud of spray, the roar of blood in her ears so much louder than the waterfall...

Zero.

***

Twilight screamed. Everything came back, back with a vengeance, as the sedation was removed. She wailed, kicked out, sobbed and bit her tongue as everything Herald had shown her piled up in her mind. Her chest heaved, and she tasted blood before she could find any kind of self-control. She opened her eyes. Anything she could see here couldn't be worse than what she saw when she closed them. As it was, there was only a window, a corridor, a unicorn she didn't recognise, and Trixie. And the screaming of the ponies being sucked dry outside. The stallion was staring at her, and stepped forward, murmuring something about sedatives.

"No! Don't! Please!" She flinched when he reached down to check her pulse. "You have to untie me, the Princesses need my help!"

Bayo looked dubious, until he glanced back out the window, and threw himself back against the opposite wall. "In my considered medical opinion, Miss Sparkle, I can't see that letting you loose could possibly make this day any worse." He undid the buckles, and smiled oddly. "Now, I'm going to flee for my life."

It was still hard to differentiate between the screaming in her head and the screaming outside. Her own throat felt rough and hoarse. She felt something on her head, and reached up to touch the Element of Magic, finding the diadem perched crooked across her brow. She straightened it, and tried to get up. She stumbled, as she tried to walk over to Trixie, then forced herself to stand. She prodded the blue unicorn with a hoof. "Wake up." Inside her head, Luna was repeating her warning, over and over.

Trixie stirred, her unbandaged eye focusing, with difficulty, on Twilight and the gleaming Element. She attempted a sneer. "The Great and Powerful Trixie thinks you have a stupid hat."

Twilight resisted a momentary impulse to find a pillow to hold over the showmare's face. "Trixie, this isn't the time. Everypony is going to die -" closing her eyes and shaking as she remembered the deaths the monstrous entity had shown her "- they'll die if we don’t stop Herald. He was using you to get at the Princesses, can't you understand? I know you're not stupid!"

Trixie still managed to look outraged. "Trixie is not stupid, nor is she anypony's tool! She is the greatest magician in all Equestria, no mere distraction!"

"Distraction." Twilight stared at the wall. Of course. She propped herself up on the windowsill, trembling, and risked a glance out the window. She could see the tree-things, feeding and baying at the sky. She could see Herald... Spike... Applejack, Pinkie and Fluttershy. "It's ALL distraction. Everything he's said, all those... he's trying to keep everypony's attention on HIM!" She saw Pinkie and Spike's moment of triumph, heard Luna’s voice and warning cut off mid-word, and felt a glimmer of hope stir in her breast. She tried to run out into the garden. If Luna was right, it wasn't over yet. The Dark Mother was still coming to remake the world in Her image.

***

Far overhead, the stars were winking out, one by one.

"But... we got him, didn't we?" pleaded Spike.

Fluttershy tried to reassure him. "You did, sweety, we saw you... you were so brave. He's off wherever he sent Luna and Celestia. He has to be." They stared into the rifts. The things on the other side were different now, churning violently, and painful to look upon.

Three dozen unicorns and armed pegasi stormed the garden. "Get him!" bellowed Shining Armor, at the front of the rush, a curve of magical force held up before him and the other ponies. They were halfway across the lawn before the charge faltered, and they came to an uneven halt. "Uh... girls? Where is he?"

"We got him, Armor. Or I think we did."

Armor sagged with relief, then turned back to his stallions. "Right, every unicorn, front and center!"

"What? Why?"

"Because we still have to stop THEM!" shouted Armor back, and pointed at the chanting Dark Young and the guardponies they were sucking empty of life.

The herd stared at the scene behind the barrier. Three of the ponies threw up. One fainted. "Can we? Can we even get in there?"

Armor nodded fiercely, and jerked his head back towards the emblem on his flank. "See that? I know barrier magic. If that barrier wasn't magic-permeable, they couldn't be doing THAT." he finished, throwing his head up at the altered sky.

"Wait... that's why you wanted every unicorn that knew ... you want us to... you're out of your mind! There's only, what, ten of us that capable, we'd be stomped flat the mom-"

Twilight Sparkle ran, staggered, half fell into the garden. "Everypony, please! They're summoning... summoning the Black Goat, she's almost here!"

The ponies stared. "Twi! You're OK!" cried Pinkie, and threw her forelegs around her.

"No I'm not... I'm really not. But my brother's right, we have to stop them chanting."

"What about the Elements, that's why you six -"

"Four. Start counting better, mister." said Applejack, and grimaced at Twilight's stricken expression. "They might be OK, sugarcube, but I’m guessing we can't wait. What ya mean to do, Armor? Those tree things are pretty dang tough."

Twilight gave a twisted smile. "I bet I know. And I can make it work."

***

Outside Equestria, gods battled. All pretence dropped, every weapon brought to bear. Celestia and her sister striking as one, not holding back, with magicks unused since they had driven the hordes of Tartarus back and sealed the gates behind them. Nyarlathotep retaliating, his own mastery of eldritch energies foiled only by the teamwork of the alicorns. The walls of the world trembled.

***

Dash dragged herself out of the lake, and attempted to shake herself dry. “Ow. Buck, that stung. Rares, you OK?”

Nearby, the unicorn floated on her back, eyes closed, breathing lightly and clutching the jar to her chest. “Yes, Rainbow. Thank you. You saved the fillies.”

Dash averted her eyes. “Yeah. Well. I really hope so. We better get back up there, I want to see how well that little-” She looked up at Canterlot, high overhead. “Oh, buck me. Oh BUCK ME.”

Mouths were opening across the sky.

Gods and Monsters

Mayor Mare leaned over to one of her assistants, as the Ponyville residents started to murmur uneasily. Even without Pinkie and Twilight to arrange the replacement celebrations, despite the damage to the town and the shock of the injuries to the fillies, their attempt at an Eclipse Banquet hadn't been that bad. The Cakes had even managed to get all the desserts made without half being ‘taste-tested’ by Pinkamena.

"I don't suppose the eclipse is supposed to be doing that, is it?"

"I dont think so, Mayor - according to Twilight it was only supposed to last a few minutes. And she didn't say anything about those colours, or the stars going out."

"Oh. What sort of colour would you call that, anyway?"

"I could always as- oh! Mayor! Look!" He was pointing towards the Canterhorn. Something like a huge black cloud, dwarfing the mountain, was forming over the capital.

***

She had been called, and She had answered. Her spawn croaked their adoration, and mindlessly She crawled out of the gulfs of Yaddith to accept their offering. Her tendrils brushed the world, dissolving the sky, and She drooled in brainless anticipation of the lives She vaguely sensed below. Her juices would rain down across the planet, mutagenic and unspeakable, and nothing would remain. Her substance pressed against reality. She hungered, and Her Young strove to open space and time completely for Her gaping, oozing bulk.

***

"What is that!?" screamed Rarity, after she opened her eyes and seen the billion-ton bulk of the Dark Mother materialising two miles overhead.

Rainbow Dash's wings spasmed, as she fought the contrary instincts to flee, and to stay and protect her friends. Loyalty won.

"We got to get back up there!"

"Near that thing?!"

"We've got to help the girls!"

"Ah. Since you put it like that..."

***

“I take it back - you’re BOTH out of your minds.” said the other guard stallion. “You’d have to be completely nuts to even think of doing that deliberate...“ He noticed the expressions on the mares and Shining Armor. “Alright, shutting up now.”

“Everypony into position.” murmured Armor, and the unicorns lined up, muzzles nearly pressed against the oily magical barrier. The monsters inside twitched and stirred, and four shifted oddly as they became suspicious of some threat, but their croaking never faltered, only became louder and more urgent. The victims they clutched still twitched and spasmed, but had long ago fallen silent. “Rest of you, back.” Twilight trembled, remembering the sounds, the smell of a scene from somewhere else, where hairless bipeds had sacrificed things far too like ponies, to creatures just like these. There were screams across Canterlot. Or inside her head. But she knew. She knew what was coming.

Fluttershy was staring up, and gave a tiny squeak of mortal terror, like a mouse seized in the claws of an owl. Spike was hyperventilating, eyes huge, puffs of flame shooting from his mouth and nostrils where he sat paralysed with fear of the thing filling the skyey void, and his claws dug into the paving stones. Applejack followed their gaze, and sat down, hard. “Oh, sweet Nelly... Twi.. Twilight! Armor! You better hurry up there.” Twilight didn’t look up. She remembered what Shub-Niggurath had looked like, when summoned into sane realities. Five of the Hussars broke and fled, fleeing blindly, simple animal terror moving them to flee, to fly, to vainly seek some place to avoid that awful vision in the sky.

Armor was staring, as well, until Twilight shouted. “Eyes down! Now! It has to be now!”

He trembled, half-choking, and gave the order. “On the count of three... One... Two...”

The unicorns closed their eyes, and their horns lit up. Pinkie’s ears flopped.

“THREE!”

The unicorns vanished. And the Dark Young exploded.

***

The Herald was falling back from the alicorns, his form smoking with conceptual injuries, his reserves of power drained faster than he could replenish by every attack he fended off. Neither would be recognizable to the ponies in the world behind him. Their forms blazed with potency, their strikes enough to shatter countries, their beams of force stabbing at his core. He felt the worlds tremble, and the rifts quiver. He still had energy for what passed for words.

“Your Majesties... you are beginning to frustrate me...”

***

Scraps of the Dark Young twitched and flopped across most of the garden. Twilight and the unicorn stallions stood knee-deep in the oozing black remains, residual teleportation magic leaving the alien substance smoking and charred. Overhead, the thousand maws of the Dark Mother moaned once and vanished with a ground-shaking peal of thunder that shattered windows across most of Canterlot. The stars returned, no longer obscured by her smoking bulk.

The ponies slumped, exhausted by their efforts, and their terror. Some of the unicorns had glimpsed the full size and form of Shub-Niggurath as they had traversed the space between spaces, and those unfortunates were curled in foetal positions, holding themselves as they gibbered. Even the luckier ones were having problems, since they're just deliberately teleported into another living creature.

“If you don’t mind,” said the argumentative guard, as gobbets of half-cooked alien flesh and ichor dribbled down his forehead “I’m going to be sick now.” He threw up noisily into the mess, which at least added a touch of colour.

Applejack was tending to the hysterical Fluttershy, even as her own flesh crawled at the memory of the thing that had nearly broken into the world. Spike was still half-stunned, and slumped against similarly catatonic ponies. Pinkie hugged Twilight tight, despite the ghastly slime and chunks. “I knew you’d come back to save everypony, Twilight. You’re the smartest mare I know.”

Twilight shook her head. “I couldn’t have done anything without you and Spike getting rid of Herald like that. Sending him to Celestia? That was the smart thing.”

Pinkie smiled. “I’m not clever like you, Twilight – I just think quickly sometimes.” She gave her friend a little nuzzle. “Uh, oogh! Monster guts don’t taste very good, do they?”

Armor climbed out of the pile, stomping on a still-twitching organ until it stopped. Twilight noticed his aversion to looking up into the sky, and the slightly mad way his eyes were rolling under the hair plastered to his brow. At least he was maintaining a semblance of control. “Got.. got to hand it to you Sis, your idea worked much better than just trying to take the fight to them. Right! Start setting these things on fire, I don’t want them getting up again. You two mares OK?” Fluttershy and Applejack nodded uncertainly, after a pause. “Get all the injured to the infirmary, we still have to save the Princesses.” He gave a slightly deranged chuckle. Whatever was happening behind the rifts was painful to look at. Nothing was recognizable anymore. A smell like lightning or sea ice seemed to gust from the rifts, and the lawn around them was twisting and shrivelling strangely.

His sister shook her head. He was glad of the distraction. “We might not need to. And it might be a really crazy idea to go in there after them.”

Pinkie tilted her head “Since when has that ever stopped us, Twili?”

Twilight shuddered, and looked down at her hooves, then composed herself. “Applejack, did anything Herald said seem like a lie to you?”

Applejack paused. “Uh, you mean actual lies, or things we didn’t want to hear? I don’t think so, Twilight. Apart from that thing he told Armor about not hurting us. But he said he might defend himself if anypony attacked him, too. I dunno, hon – he might just have been a dang convincing lying snake.”

Fluttershy looked up, hurt, from where she was huddled beside Spike. “Actually, Applejack, most of the snakes I know-“

“Not now, Fluttershy.” interjected Twilight “I thought so. If he’d actually lied in front of you, then you might have caught him out in something.” she shuddered, remembering everything he’d said and shown her... if it was all true...

“Oh, I get you! He said the Princesses would find a way out themselves, didn’t he?”

“Did he? That’s good! But I meant about the Princesses being able to cast him out, if we could get the fillies’ souls back off him first. Er... where’s the bottle?”

Applejack exchanged a horrified glance with Fluttershy, Pinkie and Spike, and the four rushed back over to the parapet – just as Rainbow Dash and Rarity cleared it at near-Rainboom speed, then braked hard. Armor glanced up, expression deadpan. "Hey, Rainbow Dash. You missed all the fun." then slumped back and stared into the sky, marveling at his new appreciation for unobscured constellations.

Fluttershy helped Rarity down, and brushed noses with Dash, “Rarity! Dashie! You got the fillies... souls? Then? They’re not hurt?”

“Hard to tell, dear, but the bottle’s still intact. Left it safe down below, just in case. Rainbow was fast enough to catch up, before any of us reached the bottom. NOT an experience I want to repeat in a hurry, I can tell you. Does anypony have a towel?”

“I got us back up here as soon as I could. We were going to try and surprise that stallion from behind. Where is he? Ah... what was all that with the sky? And how’d you do... that... to the tree things?

Twilight considered the second question, and shuddered. “Rainbow... you don’t want to know. You really don’t want to know.” Her friends were shocked at the mix of expressions that ran over her face, and Rarity immediately moved to support her.

“Well, come sit down, Twilight, you look dreadful. I’ll try and find you some towels. And possibly a scrubbing brush.”

"Yes. A sit down. A good sit down.... that'd be good for all of us." Twilight sat down, hard, and automatically reached out to hug her assistant hard to her chest. "Thank you Spike. You looked after me, didn't you? What happened to your eye?"

Spike reached a claw up to touch the hoofprint bruise. "Nothing, Twilight. It's nothing." He said, and buried his face in the unicorn's mane.

They looked nervously at the trembling rifts, as traumatised ponies set the remnants of the Dark Young ablaze behind them. "So... did Herald say how long it would take for the Princesses to break free?”

***

Nyarlathotep flung a limb out between himself and the Sisters. They danced backwards, his ichor virulently caustic even to them, and the Outer God pressed home his momentary advantage. He hissed his intentions, and the alicorns screamed in distress as they realised there was nothing they could do to prevent it.

***

The ponies couldn’t judge how long it had been. The Sun and Moon were still frozen high above, locked in shadow. With the panic of events wearing off, there was only aching exhaustion and support as they leaned against each other, feeling their muscles burn and their minds scrabble for some remnant of sanity in a damaged world. Twilight whimpered slightly, as she felt Herald’s knowledge washing over the edges of her mind once more.

Pinkie looked around at her friends, concerned by their thousand-yard stares, and the way they flinched at unexpected touches. “So.... I don’t suppose anypony wants to play a game of I Spy?”

Rarity looked over, and gently let her down. “Not right now, dear. Maybe later.”

Pinkie looked crestfallen, and toyed with her Element, and flicked a hoof at a pebble from the garden. Then yelped, and looked down at her knee. “Ow! Pinchy Knee! Pinchy Knee! Something scary is going to happen!”

Rainbow lost her temper. “Pinkie, that is IT. Your Pinkie Sense is broken. Everything that’s happened and your knee is going off now? What could possibly be scarier than that thing in the sky, and all those tree things, and whatever Herald did to the Princesses?”

The holes in the air clenched. Then flashed so brightly the plants around them burst into flame. Something moved in the brightness, something pushing out, disorting the shapes in the air. Fluttershy had watched a stick-insect molt once, the limbs pressed together as it shrugged its way out and into a new and larger body. Stick-insects didn’t wear bone-white masks, perched insanely atop a tangle of impossibly long, hundred-jointed limbs.

Rainbow Dash stared up at the thing, as it pulled more limbs free of the rift. “Pinkie?”

“Yes, Dashie?”

“I owe you a cupcake.”

Applejack shoved Twilight to her feet, shouting something about the Elements. All she could hear was Luna’s voice in her mind, screaming a warning, over and over, too late, too late. Spike wouldn’t be able to stop him again. The horrors that Herald could inflict when he was playful were nothing on those that he could inflict when he was angry, and her friends had surely angered him. Doom. This was Doom. She looked around herself. One last look. Would she get to see her friends one last time before they were annihilated? They were looking back at her. Trusting, Oh so trusting, and it almost broke her heart.

So. said another voice. It has come to this. I warned you what would happen if you tried to use the Elements on me, didn’t I? The words were poison, acid poured into her mind. She closed her eyes, frozen with terror, too scared to move, or act, or think, a prey animal cowering before the most lethal predator of prehistory. Meat. A mindless beast.

Something touched her shoulder. She wailed, imagining it one of Herald’s limbs reaching down to unspool the flesh from her bones. But it was a hoof, and she heard Fluttershy’s voice in her ear. “Don’t be scared, Twilight.”

“Yeah, Twi. We’re always here for you.”

“Ain’t that the truth, sugarcube.”

She opened her eyes, stared to her left, Rarity smiling, prepared to risk her life to save the fillies’ souls, prepared to give anything to save her friends and her race. And Pinkie, irrepressible, bouncing back even after the Herald’s attempts to break her. She gasped, inhaled, lungs burning as she breathed in, and looked up into Herald’s fractured mask. What was there to be afraid of, that it hadn’t already shown her? And if he killed them, what of that? She couldn’t think of a better end, a better way to die, than alongside her friends, defending her people and her world, even at such a cost, even if they failed.

Her Element BLAZED.

***

Across Canterlot, ponies were lured from their hiding places by the light. The rainbow brilliance, filling every corner of the city, spreading out across the valley, reflected off every lake and river and pond, redoubled and redoubled again as the ponies looked to its source and saw the nova-brightness at its heart, brighter than the Sun but somehow safe to set their eyes upon.

There was another shape there, briefly. One that twisted in the light for a moment, before it was burned away and forgotten like a painful dream.

After that, the return of the Sisters, and the return of Time and Sunlight, was almost an anticlimax.

Coda

Twilight was sitting at the back of the room, staring across at the three beds and the huddle of her friends. It was still hard to think, but at least it was the noise of the crowded wards around them, instead of the screaming in her head. She felt warmth wash over her, and started, realising that the Sun Princess was standing beside her, gently trying to get her attention. Celestia's expression was ... strained. There was a deep pain somewhere behind those serene, immortal eyes.

"Twilight Sparkle? You asked to speak to me?"

Twilight looked up at her mentor, pleading. "Please, Princess. Please make it go away. Just take it out if my head."

Celestia's expression flickered to one of anguish, and she bent her neck down to draw her student against her. "Twilight... I wish I could. My ponies, my sister and I owe you and your friends more than I can ever repay, and there are magicks that could cut out the memories of these days - but I cannot. I dare not."

Twilight's eyes filled with tears, and she shuddered. "Why, Princess? He made me see things... things I don't..."

Celestia enfolded her in her wings. "Twilight. We have questioned Beatrice Lulamoon. She met the Herald two years ago."

Twilight stared up, tried to speak, choked. "Two years? He was here that long?"

"Perhaps. And we have no idea what he was doing all that time."

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to look into the alicorn's sorrowful gaze. "Oh. That's why you can't let me forget. We can't trust Ivory Tower's book either, can we? Since Herald had it first. So everything he put in my head..."

Celestia nodded, very slightly. "... may be the only knowledge we have of his methods and intentions, and of the things he served."

Twilight sobbed, once. "I understand." She looked over at her friends. "Then I suppose we have to go through with this now."

Celestia nuzzled her student's mane, and helped her to her hooves. "Yes. You saw spells like this used ... elsewhere?"

The lavender pony nodded, and looked sick. "Yes. These things... that lived there used it on their own people. To keep them around to question. Or just to hurt. If the... souls... escape they try to return wherever they were taken from. Even, even if the body is already, already dead. And then they'd get up. And try and hurt the first one back. The Herald would have done that, after he thought he'd won. Just to see how we'd react." She swayed on her feet, remembering the tower and the rows of broken bottles and the shambling biped things clawing their way up the spiral stairs.

"Then we are truly fortunate that the fillies survived Herald's trap."

Twilight's breath heaved in her chest. Celestia moved to touch her. "I am sorry, Twilight Sparkle. I should not have said that and made you imagine the alternative."

Her friends looked up from beside the fillies' beds. Applejack looked utterly exhausted, bags under her eyes, and even Rarity looked dull and lifeless. Rainbow glanced up, then went back to holding Scootaloo's hoof with her own.

Fluttershy looked deeply pensive, as Celestia opened the magically locked chest between the beds, and extracted the humble, ordinary jam jar the Herald had used to house the fillies' essence. Pinkie's smile faltered. The little lights inside pressed against the glass, trying to move closer to the alicorn.

"You sure this is going to work, Princess? Twilight?" murmured the orange mare.

"Not certain, Applejack. But I must weigh the risk of attempting this now, against whatever risks arise from leaving the fillies in their current state. Doctor Bayo assures me the fillies are as healthy as we could hope for, but the final decision is yours and your families’. Or, in Scootaloo's case..."

"Yeah. Well. Let's do it. I can't stand to see them like this anymore. Granny and Mac agree."

Rarity nodded. "Mother and Father arrived this morning. Missed all the excitement, thankfully."

Rainbow Dash looked stricken. "But what about Scoots, she -"

Celestia shushed the pegasus, gently. "Her guardian has already agreed. I would not proceed without the agreement of all involved."

The ponies stepped back, and Celestia moved the beds closer together, her expression one of deep concern as she stood over the three bandaged, splinted fillies, and silently, smoothly, opened the jar. The ponies held their breath, and chewed their lips. The little sparks, one white, one yellow, one orange, hesitated at the lip of the jar, as if afraid to leave its confines, then launched themselves, flowed into the air, danced around each other and moved towards the alicorn. She whispered, brow furrowed. "Not me, my little ponies... your bodies wait for you." The orange light dipped in the air, hovered briefly over the still form of Scootaloo, and was drawn into her with her next shallow breath. Something changed, then, difficult to describe, but the little pegasus no longer seemed... empty. The other little lights followed suit, and the ponies cried a little, in relief, when the girls moved slightly in their sleep.

Scootaloo stirred, and reached up to clumsily touch the bandages over her eyes. "Ow... A.B? Sweetie? You guys?"

Dash raced forward to touch the fillie's foreleg. "Hey sprout. You're safe, we got you."

"Rainbow Dash?" Scootaloo tried to sit up, and whimpered. "That really hurt... what happened? Where are Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle? I had the weirdest dream..."

The other ponies pressed in, with the exception of Fluttershy and Celestia. The pegasus looked up at the alicorn, and tried to find words. "Princess?"

"Yes, Fluttershy?"

"Herald... he said I wasn't really kind, that I was ... faking. Do... you think he was right?"

Celestia looked down at the meek yellow pony, and smiled. "Fluttershy - you are still the Bearer of Kindness. That you and your friends were able to drive the Messenger back into the Outer Dark proves as much."

"Oh. I don't want anypony to think he was right. I try really hard not to be mean, to anypony."

"I couldn't find a single pony, in all of Equestria, sociopathic enough to be a good cultist."

"And the Element judged you kind. You stopped him before he could hurt any of you."

Fluttershy looked down. "He said he'd hurt us if we tried."

"If I wanted to hurt you, you'd already be dead."

Celestia's expression flickered, but she nodded. "Yes, he did. But he was wounded, and perhaps he hoped to cow you all, as he recovered his energy."

"He can't come back, can he? He hurt so many ponies, even if he didn't ... hurt... us."

He moved a hoof, pushing Fluttershy out of the way; the eyes of his mask lighting up...

Celestia's expression changed to grief. "I know, Fluttershy. So many of our Gaurdsponies and Hussars were very badly hurt, or injured in their minds, and even those ponies without full knowledge of today..." She sighed, very sadly. "That it happened at all has damaged the trust our little ponies have in my sister and I. But Luna is warding the thin places he used when meeting Beatrice. He cannot enter there again, and we will be prepared against him if he tries."

"There is always another way into a world."

Fluttershy looked up at the Alicorn of Day, and managed a little smile. "And I'll still have my friends, won't I? He can't hurt us again if we stick together."

the shock, running up her foreleg, and into her body

And in her womb, a heart began to beat.

Chapter 1

The GREAT and POWERFUL Trixie was, clearly, the most talented unicorn in Equestria, and just as clearly, the philistinism of rustic ponies like the ones she had rightly thrown off behind her, was no fault of hers. She was, after all, Great and Powerful. She was also lost.

The night was increasingly dark, as the moon sunk behind the mountains, and at some point the road had become a track, and the track a trail, and the trees were growing ever more thick and close around her, but even if her caravan hadn’t been crushed to fragments there was no way in hay she would deign to go back and give those amateurs the satisfaction of witnessing her Greatness, ever again.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is unconcerned by such trivia! No doubt there is some village ahead where ponies will appreciate my sheer. Magical. Talent!”

She snorted. Although ... still having her cloak and wizarding hat would have been nice...

The blue unicorn trotted on, never stopping in her monologue, even as the trees crowded in so close that their branches met overhead, occluding every star, and she had to call up a feeble magical glow to even see where she put her hooves.
The trail was now so faint her pace was reduced to little more than a walk.

Something moved in the undergrowth. Her ears pricked up, and she drew herself up into a suitably proud pose.

“Show yourself! I heard you! Come forth and bask in the glory that is the Great and Powerful Trixie!” The pool of light around her was barely enough to illume the edges of the trail. It didn’t need to be. Two eyes, the phosphorescent yellow of jack o’ lantern mushrooms, pupilless and awful, rose above the sickly shoulder-high weeds that hemmed the path.

The timber wolf stepped forward.

Trixie almost bolted. The creature’s knotted flesh creaked horribly as it circled around her, studying her, as if puzzled that such a morsel would wander alone into its domain. She rallied, and stamped her hooves against the path, pushing forward with her magic, shoving the beast back with the force of it. It snarled, like a saw cutting timber, and snapped impotently against the telekinetic barrier.

“Ha! No mere beast can best the Great and Power-“

Another timber wolf joined the first.

She fled. They pursued, their howls like a storm tearing through a forest, their sharp and peg-like teeth hungry for the nutrients in her flesh, hungry to tear and to kill, that they could quicken from the soil soaked with her blood, grow strong when she was little more than bone. They snapped at her hooves, with jaws to splinter limbs.

Dead wood gouged her flank, the darkness ahead total, and the timber wolves were so close now she could feel them pacing her, one to either side, as she galloped in blind panic and tumbled suddenly into empty air.

She didn’t even have time to scream.

***

There was light, when she awoke. Firelight, weak and flickering. The ground under her flank was icy cold, and sandy, and above and around her she could make up the shape of huge rough stone blocks, each many times the height of a pony. She trembled, involuntarily, when she heard the frustrated snarls of the timber wolves, and glimpsed their yellow eyes as they circled around the stones, refusing to come any closer than the very edge of the firelight.

There was another pony in the pit with her, on the other side of the feeble flames. She hadn’t even known he was there, until he moved and spoke. His coat was so dark as to be almost invisible against the blackness behind him. His voice was deep, and soft, and resonated oddly in the mask he wore – a bone-white mask, almost theatrical, that fitted tight over the muzzle below, and showed nothing of his eyes.

“Decided to join me in the land of the living, I see.”

She scrambled to her hooves. It wouldn’t do to seem out of control of the situation, after all.

“Don’t be afraid of the timber wolves” continued the stranger “you’re safe from them here. They’ll lose interest in you soon enough.”

Trixie managed to look outraged. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is afraid of nothing!”

The masked pony somehow achieved an expression of mild interest. “Really? My most sincere apologies, Great and Powerful Trixie. From here it looked exactly like you were galloping for your life.” He interrupted her splutters of outrage and continued “Perhaps you could tell me how one as Great and Powerful as yourself came to be enjoying a trot through the Everfree Forest in the middle of the night?”

She snorted in contempt. “And why should Trixie tell anything to a pony who has yet to give his name? Or wears such a ridiculous mask?”

The mask seemed to twitch in the flickering firelight, the smile momentarily wider.

“Again, my apologies, Great and Powerful Trixie. You may call me Herald. And the mask is for protection. I could always remove it, if you prefer.”

Some tiny part of her mind was screaming. DON’T. DON’T LET HIM TAKE OFF THE MASK. DON’T.

She sniffed, and lifted her muzzle away disdainfully. “The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t care what you do. Trixie would not even be here if not for the petty and jealous ponies that refuse to appreciate her enormous talent.”

“How terribly, terribly unfair. Please, tell me more...”

***

“... and thus a mere fluke allowed a village librarian to embarrass the Great and Powerful Trixie before her legion of adoring fans. No doubt she is gloating over her stolen glory even as we speak!” the mare concluded, with a dramatic sweep of her hoof.

“How awful.” murmured Herald, mildly. “But of course she beat you.”

Trixie was struck silent by the insult. Her pride boiled up, and she readied a retort that would show this peasant –

“She IS the personal student of the Sun Princess, after all.” he continued.

The unicorn was again struck dumb, this time by a rising horror. She’d endangered the star pupil of one of the Princesses – if the royal court decided to hold her responsible for the damage to Ponyville –

“So of course she had certain advantages a pony of your talent never needed.”

“ – wait, what?”

“She had access to the royal library, after all. All those tomes from the restricted wing. No wonder she could achieve a minor success before the other ponies. You never needed such help, did you?”

Trixie straightened up, unbreakable confidence filling her voice once more. “Of course not – the GREAT and POWERFUL Trixie has more than enough sheer magnificence to ever need that.”

Herald nodded approvingly. “What you need is a book of magic she could never have read. One the royal library has never held. And as it so happens...” he turned to his side, and turned back with a heavy tome in his hooves, one that almost reeked of age and gravitas. The cover and bindings were heavy, creaking from disuse, as the mare took it from Herald’s hooves, and opened it to peer at the contents – star charts, complex geometrical figures, and scrawled hoofwriting barely legible in the glow from her horn.

“You’ll find that book quite enlightening, I think. A very powerful pony spent his life on it. It has secrets older than Nightmare Moon, and older than the three pony nations.”

“Trixie demands to know why you would let her have such a book! And what is this cover made from... It’s not... leather, is it?”

“Leather? As in cow hide? Not at all. And I’ll let you use it because I’m sure you’ll put it to good use. Think of me as ... someone who recognises showmareship, and can understand your anger. Anyway... I think you’ll be able to leave now. The timber wolves are long gone. There’s a road just down the slope, that way. If you turn left you should reach the next town in time for breakfast.”

Trixie nodded to the other pony, and rose to leave, closing the book and carrying it with her telekinesis. “The Great and Powerful Trixie will remember your entirely justified appreciation. Once we’ve shown everypony who the real mistress of magic in all of Equestria is, we may even allow you to be our personal assistant.”

Herald chuckled with a dry humour “Believe me, Great and Powerful Trixie, I look forward to seeing everything to achieve with that book, and I eagerly await the day I see you again. I’m sure the other ponies won’t know what hit them.”

Trixie trotted away, scrabbling up the rough steps between the stones. Herald watched until the glow around the book had long faded from sight, and passed a hoof through the dancing flames before him. They vanished utterly, shrinking back into the burning bones with a shriek. The only illumination came from the eyes of the timber wolves, as they slunk between the stones to grovel before him, and lick fawningly at his hooves.

And in that sick light, the mask smiled.

Familial Bonds

"But... we told them to go back to your farmhouse, Applejack. We told them!" Rarity's voice was rising to a shriek.

Applejack was just as worried, her hooves dancing on the floorboards of the library "Hold on to your britches, Rarity - I know we did, but we don't know if anything happened to them yet." her expression darkened "But if anything has I'll kick that showmare from here to Manehattan."

Luna looked down at the two ponies. "Applejack? Rarity? Hast something happened to your sisters and their pegasus friend?" She remembered the three filly flowerbearers from the royal wedding - the inseparable trio who had asked her how she'd got her cutie mark, before Applejack and Rarity had lured them back to the party.

Dash was already heading for the door. "It better not have!"

Luna shouted after her. "Hold! I can see clearly in the dark! I will assist you! Twilight, thou art exhausted. Wait here - if you have word from our Nightguard or sister, have it sent after us. Spike, write to Celestia - tell her somepony may have found Ivory Tower's book. Applejack, Rarity, please do not panic. Trixie did not order her creatures to attack anypony when she was in Ponyville. The foals may be safe, but elsewhere."

"I sure hope so, Princess. If those three are out trying to get a Monster-Hunting Cutie Mark again I'm gonna hang them by the ankles from the highest tree in Sweet Apple Acres."

Fluttershy bit her lip. "Is there anything you want the rest of us to do, Princess Luna?" she squeaked. "I could help you look, maybe..."

Luna looked down at her compassionately. "Thank-you, but you can help us here, Bearer."

Spike dispatched the parchment in a blaze of fire. "We can ask everypony if they've seen them, can't we, Princess? Maybe you could raise the moon, and give us some light so we could help with the search?" he pleaded, as fearful for Sweetie Belle's safety as he would be for her older sister.

Luna smiled. "Yes. To both, little dragon. Your concern does you great credit."

"These ponies are family, Princess Luna." a little spark of protective fury gleaming in his young eyes. On his fireproof perch in the kitchen, his pet phoenix nestling stirred, and blinked at the crowd.

Twilight hugged him. "Thank-you, Spike. I'm very proud of you. Fluttershy, Pinkie, could you help him ask everypony if they've seen the fillies anywhere tonight? They might have followed Rarity and the others into town. If any of the other pegasi come back, ask them to help search around the Apple farm.”

***

Big Macintosh and the Apple family's farmdog Winona were traversing the orchards again, calling and barking respectively. Overhead, pegasi were zig-zagging back and forth with lanterns, peering down between the trees and shouting to each other. Back at the farmhouse, Granny Smith waited by the bell, to draw everypony's attention if the fillies came back by themselves. They was a moment of surprise when the crescent moon suddenly rose, and lurched to a halt high above the horizon, but the extra light helped, and Princess Luna herself arrived moments later.

"This is where we saw them, Princess." said Rainbow Dash. "If they went back to the farmhouse like A.J. said then they should have gone that way. You checked their clubhouse, Mac? Any sign of them there?"

"Eyup. 'n Nope."

Luna nodded. The road stank, the gravel churned up by the hooves of the tree-things as they had passed by towards Ponyville. Any possible smaller hoofprints were lost in the mess. "Then we must try and follow them from here. Can your canine assist us, stallion Macintosh?"

Macintosh and the collie exchanged a glance. "Eyup. Reckon so, Princess." Winona sniffed at the ground, well away from the stench clinging to the road. She yipped, and zig-zagged back and forth between the trees, until she was sure she'd found the fillies' trail. There was only the one, which implied the Cutie Mark Crusaders were retracing their own steps, and Luna illuminated the shadows with a softly silver glow from her horn.

The search party followed close behind the dog, peering at the ground for fresh footprints. At least the nauseating odour left by the tree-creatures didn't permeate this deep into the orchard, and there was only the sweet smell of the apples, and the crispness of gathering dew. Winona suddenly yelped and jumped back, hackles raised. "What's the matter, girl?" asked Macintosh, already raising his lantern and peering suspiciously between the trees. Luna and the ponies cast their own gaze about, as the collie hid behind Macintosh, and whined.

Luna's gaze fell upon the grass at their feet. "Here. Thou see? The fillies paused here, then left ... towards the road again."

Dash ground her teeth "What were they thinking! A.J. is going to be so cross with them when we find them. I'd have thought Scoots'd be more responsible than this anyway. She's got me as an example, after all." she finished, proudly. Macintosh raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

The alicorn studied the hoofprints in the soft earth. "There was another pony here. Smaller than you, Macintosh. They went in the same direction as Apple Bloom and her friends. Towards Ponyville."

"I knew it! When I catch that showmare I'm so gonna buck her into next week!"

Winona whined, as she watched the princess prod at the earth. Luna's brow furrowed. "There is something... eldritch here. Uncanny. It feels as though something has ... cloaked itself in my night. Can you feel it?"

Macintosh and Rainbow Dash looked blank. "We see. Perhaps thou are not as sensitive to magic as ourself. We shall fetch -" Luna's head shot up, and she looked towards Canterlot.

"Princess?" inquired Macintosh.

"My sister. She is in distress."

Rainbow Dash's own head reared up to look. From this distance the city lights on the Canterhorn were tiny glimmers, barely brighter than the stars. "You can tell that from here?"

Luna's nodded, curtly, and looked torn "She is our sister... I must... I must go to her aid."

Dash and Macintosh exchanged a glance. Both of them fully understood the bonds of loyalty and family. "You better go, Princess. We'll hold the fort here." Dash snapped off a salute.

Luna smiled gratefully, concentrated, and vanished in a flash of midnight blue magic. Dash turned in mid-air, and turned to Macintosh and the other pegasi. "You heard the Princess! Trixie was here with the girls! So we gotta find her, and when we do I bags first kick!"

***

The alicorn of Night reappeared in the Celestial tower of Canterlot, the city below sleeping peacefully, oblivious so far of the horror visited upon Ponyville. Perhaps some wondered at the exodus of troops towards the town, but most were fast asleep, resting peacefully in the cradle of her Night, gentle dreams quieting their daylight worries. Luna hoped that she was wrong, and that nothing need disturb those dreams – but who there that a god can pray to?

“Sister? ‘Tia?” She could feel her sister’s presence, nearby, but felt no answer. Somewhere below in the archives, she could hear unicorns shout at each other as they unlocked the oldest cabinets, and coughed in the dust they disturbed. “Sister? Where art thou?”

She nosed open Celestia’s door. Celestia’s chambers were already half-filled with the ancient records she had demanded. The fireplace still burned warmly, the Day Princess’ phoenix dozing in the flames, but the alicorn herself...

“Oh, sister...” Luna rushed forward, horseshoes ringing in the marble. Celestia was crumpled on the floor, the latest missive from Ponyville forgotten on the rug. Her gaze was fixed at the wall, her pupils shrunken, and she was shaking. Luna threw her forelegs and wings around her elder sister, cradled her, supported her, and comforted her. “Please. Please ‘Tia. We may be mistaken. It may not be Ivory Tower’s work. He may have had nothing to do with the creature. How could his work have survived? You will not have to act as you once did, we swear it....”