Flurrygeddon

Chapters

Mistakes Were Made
Ragnarok-a-bye-baby
The Dread Overlord of Ultimate Evil Arrives

Mistakes Were Made

Luna

This very strange day had only become stranger.

I dove towards the giant hole in the ground that had formed on the periphery of the Crystal Empire. Spiders, larger than any three ponies put together, crawled out as a vast swarm towards the city. Atop each of them sat a single mushroom covered in protective armor. Each of them was a different color beneath their armor, and tentacle-like appendages held onto the reins of the spiders and hoisted spears as they urged their mounts forward.

An invasion then, though the invaders were not anyone I knew of. It seemed that even a being as old as myself still had many things yet to see. A shame so many of those things also presented a danger to the ponies under my protection. If it was not some old foe threatening to conquer Equestria, it was a new one. Whatever the case might be, I could not imagine that these … things were here with noble intentions.

A scream echoed from the streets beneath me, interrupting my ruminations. I tucked my wings to hurry my descent, and quickly came upon a trio of ponies in a market square, surrounded by the invaders and backed up against a fountain. One of the ponies had even been caught in a small web and was half-stuck to the fountain. The Crystal Guard had been working hard to evacuate everypony to safety, but it seemed they had missed a few despite their best efforts. Little surprise, considering the chaos facing the city.

I stopped above the market square, the sky darkening around as I drew upon my magic. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed as I addressed them with the full volume and fury of the Royal Canterlot Voice. “CRETINS! CEASE YOUR INVASION OR FACE MY WRATH! RELEASE MY SUBJECTS, AND RETURN FROM WHENCE YOU CAME, OR I WILL FEAST ON MUSHROOMS FOR MY NEXT MEAL!”

The mushrooms hesitated, not moving any further forward in face of my majesty. I wondered if another such display of power might be needed when one of the mushroom soldiers shrieked something and jabbed its spear in my direction. The spiders all spun to face away from me, and as one, fired a stream of webbing from their thoraxes.

I was already in motion by the time they fired. I transformed into a midnight blue, star-fill cloud and dodged my way through the sticky web. Once I was beyond the immediate threat I returned to my material form. “SO BE IT!”

I went on the attack. The creatures of the night heeded my call, and swarms of bats, rats, and ravens poured into the square, eliciting shrieks from the sapient mushrooms and their spiders quickly found themselves surrounded. Next, I singled out the mushroom who had directed the others, that one likely being an officer or some sort of leader. A lightning bolt shot from my horn and struck the mushroom’s mount, sending large, burned chunks of spider all about the market square.

I fired thrice more, weaving about their retaliatory webbing, and three more of the spider mounts died in explosive fashion. I was almost surprised when the mushrooms turned their mounts around and scattered in all directions, either along the streets or by scaling the walls and roofs of the city as they retreated. Even the mushrooms whose mounts had been slain crawled away from the skirmish as quickly as they could.

For all their numbers and the suddenness of their attack, they seemed to have little stomach for a fight. Or mayhaps it was merely my own presence that had driven them away. I have had that effect on Equestria’s enemies in the past.

I carefully watched their retreat to ensure they were not feinting. No small part of me wished to pursue them, but my goal at that moment was to protect the city’s inhabitants, not chase down and finish off the enemy laying siege to it. Not yet,in any event.

Seeing that mine enemy had been driven off for now, I hovered down to the street to address the ponies whom I had saved. To my mild surprise, the trio were ponies I knew well. “Fair Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Noble Applejack, I trust you are all well?”

Applejack and Rarity bowed before me, and Applejack was the first to speak up. “Better now that yer here. We were in a mighty tight spot before you showed up.”

Rarity nodded in agreement. “Oh yes, even if the help was, um...” She winced as some rats crawled next her hooves and a pair of bats swooped in low near us. “Unexpected, I’ll say.”

“You are most welcome,” I said, willing the creatures of the night to harass the mushrooms in their retreat. They followed after the mushrooms as one, though for some reason Applejack and Rarity frowned at the progression of the swarm. Sometimes I just did not understand my subjects.

“I’d be fine if I could get out of this web!” Rainbow Dash groused, struggling against the webbing that held her in place with the market square fountain. For her efforts, she only became even more entwined in the webbing.

“Be still for one moment and I will free you.” A blue mist flowed out of my horn and froze the offending web solid. Rainbow’s limbs jerked once more and the webbing snapped and broke away, letting her hover in the air.

“Way better.” Rainbow Dash brushed off the remaining web. “I was kicking their butts until this web showed up out of nowhere.”

Applejack frowned at her friend. “Ya mean you weren’t payin’ attention when we were fightin’ them varmints and ya flew right into their web?”

“No, they totally cheated,” Rainbow Dash insisted. “It’s not fair when they outnumber us and use a cheap trick like that.”

Rarity cleared her throat. “Maybe we could worry about the specifics when we’re safely back in the palace? This hardly seems the best place for an argument.”

I readily agreed with Rarity, though I had a couple questions before I sent them to safety. “What brought you to here of all place? You were all in the palace when last I left you.”

“And we’d still be there if Twilight didn’t need us to get something for her,” Rarity answered, gagging as she tried to pull a strand of web from her mane.

Applejack nodded and pulled a vase out of her saddlebags. Made out of green marble, the vase was covered in intricate and complex arcane runes. “Twi sent us to get this out of some dead bigwig crystal pony’s tomb.”

Rainbow Dash grinned fiercely. “Yeah, turns out the place was full of traps and puzzles that we had to beat before we could get that vase thing.” She all but vibrated with excitement as she let out a girlish squeal. “It was just like a Daring Do novel. It was. So. Awesome! You should have been there!”

“I could have done without the spike traps and fire, personally.” Rarity frowned as she looked back at her tail, which had apparently lost its tip to flames. “Ugh, I’m going to need the deluxe special at the spa after all of this.”

They all certainly had the appearance of ponies that had been on an adventure: dirty, bruised, and weary, but at they least seemed whole and healthy. That much was good. “And I take it you were attacked on your way back to the palace?”

“Pretty much,” Applejack confirmed as she put the vase back in her saddlebags. “There was an earthquake, an’ next thing we knew we were being ran down by those big ol’ spiders.”

“It was absolutely dreadful.” Rarity shiver and hunched her shoulders. “I simply detest spiders. The small ones back at home are more than big enough for me. I don’t need to see any big enough to be ridden.”

Rainbow Dash crossed her legs over her chest. “Whatever about the big dumb spiders. We need to get back to Twilight.”

“Indeed you should,” I agreed, “You concentrate on what is to be done next. No doubt Twilight has some use for that vase, and it would be best if you get it to her as soon as possible.” Hopefully whatever plan Twilight had to prevent my great niece from being possessed would work. “Do you require an escort back to the palace, or do you think you can get there on your own?”

“Ah think we’ll be fine,” Applejack said. “At least as long as we don’t have anymore of those spider ridin’ mushrooms or them darned toys to worry about.”

“I will see to these new invaders,” I informed them. “You concentrate on your own mission.” They had always proven capable enough over their many adventures, so I did not worry too much about leaving them to their own devices.

Rarity nodded. “Sounds good to me. Though do be careful.” Her nose wrinkled up in disgust as she glanced at a nearby web. “I’d hate for anything to happen to you, Your Highness.”

I smiled confidently, heartened by her concern for her princess. “Do not worry yourselves. I am more than capable of taking care of myself. Now off with you.” With that, I turned turned to face the hole at the edge of the city and considered how best to proceed.

Rarity and Applejack bowed before moving to leave, but their friend Rainbow Dash was not quite so quick. “But what do you plan on doing?”

I grinned and spread my wings. “I plan on meeting with the leaders of these toadies.”

Shining Armor

I had a sneaking feeling that I had made a terrible decision. I sat in the royal box of the Crystal Colosseum as the doomsday cultists Fluffy Cake and Sunshine Rainbow argued endlessly over theology. Each of them stood at their own podium becoming increasingly blue in the face, and I was relatively sure that the only reason each was still upright was out of spite for the other.

Fluffy Cakes flipped through his papers and cleared his throat. “And if you read the third paragraph of page three hundred and forty-eight of the prophecy of Logbottom the Depressed, you will see that my interpretation of how events will turn out today are correct.”

Sunshine Rainbow slammed a hoof on her podium and her lips peeled back in a fierce scowl. “Logbottom was a idiot who sat around his swamp all day getting high on whatever he could find. Cherryblossom the Morose used far more modern and precise methods which produced farmore accurate results.”

“How dare you insult Logbottom! I’ll make you suffer for that!” Fluffy’s horn lit as he prepared a spell, but I cast a shield dome over him.

“Hey!” I yelled, narrowing my eyes at Fluffy. “What did I say about casting spells or fighting?”

Fluffy grumbled something under his breath as his horn went out. “I was merely shuffling through my papers, is all.”

I swear, Twily’s farmer friend was a con artist compared to this guy. “You can shuffle your papers without threatening Sunshine,” I warned him. He had tried this twice before, and I was really getting sick of this. This whole situation made me think back to the times Mom and Dad had to settle things between me and Twily back when we were kids. It also made me worry about what was to come should Cadey and I ever give Flurry a sibling. Everything about this just added to my already substantial headache.

Starlight stepped up into the booth. “They've been going at this for a while, haven't they?”

“Hours.” I nodded to the guards flanking me to allow Starlight to step closer.

She stepped to the railing of the royal box and listened to ... whatever new tangent the cultist leaders had gone off on. Promises, rewards, prophecies, virtues … the only virtue running through my head right now was the prospect of tossing myself from the highest tower in the Crystal Palace. “Geeze, looks like this bunch are really splitting hairs over dogma.”

I grunted unhappily. “They spent two hours arguing whether my daughter was the apocalypse, or of the apocalypse. I still don’t have a clue what the difference is, though that might just be because it’s gotten to the point that everything is going in one ear and out the other.”

“Something I'm sure you were thrilled about.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” I said. “If I could, I would have whacked them all over the head and dragged them to the nearest prison cell an hour ago.”

Starlight’s eyes fell on the slowly cooling cup besides me. “That would explain the black coffee you're drinking.”

“I need help not falling asleep and pretending I care.” I yawned as I was reminded of my fatigue. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good eight hours of sleep. The lack of sleep was probably the cause of that.

Starlight raised one of her eyebrow. “So I'm going to guess you didn't send for me to get you another cup of caffeine?”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead in what was probably a hopeless attempt to alleviate my headache. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about asking Starlight what I was about to, and Twily probably wasn’t going to be happy with me when she found out what I was getting her student’s help for, but I was running out of options. “I need an expert on cults, and you're the best I have on hoof.”

Starlight smiled, though it seemed forced at the edges—like a private trying to convince his sergeant that he hadn’t screwed up when he most certainly had. “I did run a cult for a while.”

“Exactly.” I wasn’t exactly thrilled with Twily’s latest reform project with Starlight. Especially when she invited the former crazy cult leader who broke the Map of Harmony in some insane scheme to get back at my sister in her own home. That could only generously be called a security risk, and all my protective big brother instincts screamed for me to pack Starlight up into a crate and ship her off far, far away to a penal colony. But, how Starlight was to be dealt with was ultimately Twily’s call, and right now, I needed Starlight’s advice. As it was often said in the Guard, you use the tools you have, not the ones you want.

Starlight rubbed her chin as she looked over the bickering cultists. “So what do you want done with them?”

“Just ... make them stop being crazy and causing problems.” I finished my coffee off, needing as much energy I could get for this conversation. “I’ve got something in the works to deal with these two, but it’s going to take time to arrange and I need to stall them until it’s ready. The problem is that this conclave of theirs is a bubbling cauldron. I’ve already had to break up half a dozen fights just between those two, and their followers aren’t any better. My guards have caught their followers trying to poison each, summoning a monster in one of the restrooms, and generally just getting into hooffights.”

Starlight hummed to herself. “You're probably not going to have much luck with the crazy, but I think there might be a way to stop them from being a problem.”

I could all but hear the wheels turning Starlight’s head. It wasn’t a comforting sensation. “I'm listening.”

Starlight waved to the cultist leaders. “They're already suffering a schism. Why not wedge those differences to create a bigger divide? You might even be able to break this cult up into smaller and more manageable chunks.”

I frowned as I saw a issue with that idea. “Problem if you do that is that instead of just dealing with two dangerous cult groups, we could end up with a dozen that’ll all end up fighting one another. The city’s got enough damage to clean up from already. Spike was pretty crushed over what happened to his statue.” Needless to say, Cadey wouldn’t be happy with me if I let that happen, and I didn’t need my first real eight hours of sleep to be on a couch.

“Hm.” Starlight crossed her arms over her chest in thought. Her lips spread into a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I have an idea! We can introduce a competing belief system that isn't so aimed at ending the world?”

“Dare I ask?” I had a feeling I might be in danger of getting sucked into a bad idea. It was a sensation I knew pretty well. Twily was a genius, but sometimes she was too smart for her own good and every now and again her ideas would cause ... complications.

Starlight let out a frustrated groan and jabbed her hoof at the milling cultists standing around the colosseum floor. “Look, most of these ponies just want to believe in something. They think there’s something missing in their lives, and they want to fill that hole in their lives. They want to belong to something bigger than themselves—to believe in something greater than them. Right now it's some stupid doomsday cult. But I guarantee you that hole in their lives can be fill with something more...” She waved her hoof as she searched for the right word. “Productive, we’ll say.”

Everything she said seemed to make sense, in its own weird way. It at least lined up with everything I knew about cults, though it didn’t make me feel all that much better knowing that this was all something Starlight had exploited in the past—against my own little sister, no less. I buried the temptation to do something untowards to Starlight for taking Twily’s cutie mark and locking her up in a makeshift prison, and instead asked, “What exactly did you have in mind?”

The former cult leader’s smile widened, and I could hear her confidence grow as she spoke. “I can go down there and introduce a competing set of beliefs that can undermine the power base of those two arguing knuckleheads. There’s bound to be ponies in the rank and file I can pull away from them, and from there I can convince them to do something less destructive than trying to bring an end to Equestria.”

“Wait.” My eyes narrowed as I turned my full attention to Starlight. “You're planning to start your own cult?”

Her smile strained. “Well ... yes. But hear me out! I can’t leave this to somepony else, they might mess it up. I mean, do you think any of your soldiers could pull this off? They don’t have the right training or experience. And I am the most qualified to do this. I’ve done all of this before—but now I’m doing it for a good cause.”

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” I asked, feeling dubious about the idea.

Starlight scoffed at me. “How could a coldly calculating cult with an entirely artificial set of beliefs intended to manipulate a bunch of desperate fools be any worse than the one you're currently dealing with?”

I wrapped my arms over my chest and scowled at her. “Considering your history?”

“I'm not starting a serious cult. This isn't anything like the equalized town.” Starlight rolled her eyes, then met my gaze as her tone became much more serious. “Besides, do you want these cultists to use your daughter for their crazy doomsday schemes?”

I clinched my jaw. These madponies using Flurry for anything was about the last thing I was ever going to let happen. “Alright, but be careful not to go overboard. I don’t want to have to explain to Cadey and Twily that I let you do something we’ll all regret.”

This time Starlight’s smile didn’t lose any of its luster. “Trust me, I know exactly what I'm doing. It's why you had me come over, right?”

“This wasn’t what I had in mind.” Now that I thought about it, Twily might get just a little bit mad at me for this. But I was already in a little too deep to just pull out now—not with the limited options I had available right at the minute.

“And this is why you got yourself a professional consultant: I know these things.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Look, I've got this. And my plan has to be better than listening to hours of these ponies arguing.”

“Okay, fine. But I’m gonna keep an eye on you.” As soon as this meeting was over, I was going to tell my guards to do their best to make sure she didn’t get up to anything she shouldn’t... More so than she already was with my permission.

“Good, because you're going to watch a master at at work,” Starlight said, sauntering her way out of the royal box.

I rubbed at my face and said under my breath, “That's what I'm worried about.”

Luna

An invasion of mushroom people was not something I had expected to face this day. The giant spider cavalry only added to the queerness of situation. I suspected I would discover yet more oddities before this madness was over.

I had descended into the hole as nothing more than a mist, slipping between crevices, boulders, and shadows to remain hidden from the sentries who guarded the mouth of a vast cavern dug underneath the Crystal Empire, easily as large as a respectable town. Enchanted gems on narrow braziers scattered about illuminated the area. The mushroom people directed giant and apparently domesticated shrew-like creatures as they expanded the hole and pushed debris out to the way. Why the tunnel had been dug was not hard to guess.

Near the hole stood rank upon rank of ironclad mushroom soldiers and spider cavalry, all ready to move forward at the command of their leaders. I had led enough armies to recognize a fielding force. The force I had routed on the surface were only their scouts or vanguards.

They intended to invade the Crystal Empire. The greater question was why. Mayhaps they merely hoped to take advantage of the chaos on the surface to annex territory, but something about that rang false to me. An undertaking of this scale would require time and planning to put into motion. Assuming these salient mushrooms acted anything like ponies, coin was needed to be collected to pay for their army, soldiers recruited and trained, and a wealth of supplies and weapons gathered and moved into position. All of that would have taken far longer than the recent troubles with Flurry Heart would have allowed for.

Whatever the truth of the matter, I intended to get to the bottom of it. I continued to move deeper into the enemy camp, unseen and silent as a whisper thanks to centuries of practice with illusions and the art of stealth. I tried to listen to the steady chittering and shrieking speech of the mushrooms, but it was unlike any language I had ever encountered before. Even my translation spells failed to decipher whatever they were saying.

So instead, I paid careful attention to which mushrooms talked to one another, who looked important, and where they went. Some of the mushrooms did indeed seem much more finely dressed than others—the ones that struck me as more important than their fellows wore what I believed to be spidersilk, adorned themselves with gems and precious metals, and even seemed to carry themselves with a proud gait that reminded me of some of the stuffier nobles in Canterlot’s court.

Those important-looking mushrooms led me further into the camp, to what I believed to be my goal. I darted underneath a cart and examined the large tent they entered. Made of blue spidersilk, the structure was larger and more richly adorned than any other nearby. It was at least worthwhile to scout out, and if it had who I hoped it had within...

I slowly approached the tent, moving only when none of the mushrooms seemed to be watching—a somewhat difficult task, considering I wasn't even sure how they saw. Still, I got up the tent with no one seeming the wiser. Once within the tent’s shadow, I sensed for any magic placed on it. I detected several wards against scrying and against anyone attempting to sneak into the tent invisibly, but no actual defenses against intruders. That made enough sense if this was indeed a command tent; preventing others from magically spying on one’s meetings was only sensible, but a ward intended to incinerate intruders to the tent were liable to accidently destroy some hapless visitor.

I slowly slid under the tent in my shadow form. What I saw inside pleased me: standing around a table were half a dozen important-looking mushroom people. Each one seemed to be dressed in finery in the form of silken robes, precious metals and gems, and were all busily chirping their strange language.

The one who drew my attention wore an ornate circlet of gold around his head—a crown, albeit one fitted for the rather unique physiology. Between its garb and the fact it sat on a cushion that raised it higher than any of its fellows, I surmised this was the leader of this army threatening the Crystal Empire.

What I was about to do was a risk, but these were not the times for timidity.

I closed behind the mushroom leader and, taking a moment to absorb my surroundings, reformed into my corporeal form. Before any of them could react, I cast a summoning spell and retrieved a scythe from my collection of weapons. The black blade wooshed through the air before resting against the stem of the leader, stopping short of actually breaking the skin. The scythe wasn't the most wieldy of weapons—unless facing an army of wheat, something I wouldn’t rule out at this point—but it looked quite intimidating, especially when wielded in earnest.

I scowled down at mine enemies, my voice echoing through the tent. “I have captured your leader. I suggest none of you do anything untowards lest you wish to see what your fellow looks like in two pieces.” After a moment I added, “Also if you had some means by which we could communicate, I would appreciate it.”

Seconds ticked by as the mushrooms froze in place. Then the leader started flailing, its tentacle appendages wildly. It screeched loudly enough that I had to flatten my ears against my head. Everyone else in the room scurried back to the other side of the tent, and one of the mushroom shrieked and fled altogether. The leader jabbed a tentacle in the direction of one of its cowering fellows. The mushroom reached inside of a small bag.

I pressed the scythe closer to the leaders stem, fixing the mushroom with a fierce glower. “Slowly, cretin. Otherwise something unfortunate will happen.” For my trouble, the leader only screeched louder.

Seemingly understanding the meaning of my message, the mushroom very slowly withdrew a large ruby from its bag and held it up for me. It started glowing, and I felt an aura fall over the interior of the tent. Then a voice spoke Equestrian. “The translation gem is wor—”

“Please don’t kill me!” the leader screeched, interrupting its fellow. “I’m too rich to die! I’ll pay you a king’s ransom to let me go, just don’t hurt me!”

This was not what I quite expected out of the leader of a foreign power trying to conquer the Crystal Empire, but I recovered quickly. “I am Princess Luna, Steward of the Moon and Co-Ruler of Equestria—the nation whose land you have invaded, if you did not know. Are you the one responsible for leading this army?”

The leader stood stock still before hesitantly replying. “Which answer is less likely to result in you killing me?”

I scowled and brushed my blade against the mushroom's skin. “The truth.” There was a great deal I wished to learn, and this might be my best chance to get answers. The others seemed in no rush to move at the very least, though it might only be a matter of time before I had a whole army coming down on my head. All the more reason to hurry.

“Okay, okay! Don't do anything hasty!” the leader blurted. “I’m Hard Exchange, High Executive Administrator of the Fungerengi Consortium, and I'm the one in charge here. Just please don't chop me in half! I make the big decisions but I don’t actually do anything! I barely even understand what’s going on around me! I’m so wrapped up in decadence and hedonism that I’m almost completely divorced from reality! Don’t blame me!”

“Enough with your sniveling,” I growled. “Your begging irritates me. Have you no pride as the leader of your people?”

“I'm no warrior!” Exchange said with what I believed to be indignation. “None of us are. We’re a peaceful people!”

I glowered at the obvious lie. “Peaceful? Is that why you launched an unprovoked war against us?”

“What?!” Exchange sputtered. “You've forced this war on us, and now we defend ourselves as best as we are able!”

One of my eyebrows raised. “‘Forced this war on you’? What do you mean? We did not even know you existed until you emerged from the earth to invade the Crystal Empire.”

“You know why!” the Executive Administrator accused. “Flurrygeddon is upon us, threatening to bring about the end of the world! Flurry Heart, Bringer of Eternal Winter, She Whose Screams Break the Heart, Herald of Destruction and Recessions, Demonrider, and the Breaker of Economies has been born and threatens us all! Our financial forecast farseers have foreseen nothing but disaster. Do you have any idea what the end of the world is going to do to our third quarter profit margin?!”

“My financial portfolio!” one of the finely dressed mushrooms screamed as it fell over. Whether it had merely fainted or died I could only guess, though in either case the others did not seem overly concerned about their fellow.

Before I could reply, Exchange jabbed a tentacle in my direction. “We sent ambassadors to try and warn you about Flurry, and now it’s almost too late. We had no choice but to raise an army to stop you. We even had to levy...” The Consortium leader shuttered. “Taxes.”

I frowned as I thought over what I had just been told. “What ambassadors? Neither I or my sister have received any ambassadors.” Ambassadors from a people we had never seen before would have caused no little fanfare in Equestria, and it would certainly have been brought to my attention.

Exchange’s tentacles slowed in their movements. “But our Chief Foreign Trade Officer, Busy Dealings, said that you rejected our overtures—that you welcomed the end of the world.”

“We most certainly did not.” My brow furrowed as I detected duplicity in the air. “We would have taken any such warning seriously, and would have accepted any help offered in good faith.”

“And what about the magical disruptions focused on Flurry?” the Executive Administrator asked.

I chose my words carefully, knowing this was now a delicate matter. “They are indeed dangerous, but we are attempting to stop them. Though your invasion is distracting us from preventing my great niece from being possessed by some foul demon.”

Something like a growl rolled from Exchange, and one of his tentacles jabbed in the direction of one of the mushrooms across the tent, this one wearing a fine black robe. “And what do you have to say about this, Busy?”

“She lies!” Busy cried out. “This is all a trick to slow us down from stopping them!”

I glared at the elusive mushroom. “If I merely intended to slow your invasion then all I would have had to do was slay everyone in this tent. The sudden death of so many of your Consortium’s leaders would cause chaos in your ranks and damage morale—especially if your people are no warriors, as you claim.”

One of the other mushroom’s spoke next, sliding away from Busy as it did so. “This pony has already shown her ability to rout our scouts, and has even snuck into our command tent.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to believe her over me,” Busy scoffed. “You can’t trust these ponies. Just look at them: all that weird body hair, those creepy big eyes of theirs, and their collectivist concept of friendship.” It shivered in revulsion.

“I suggest you be careful about who you declare a liar,” I warned. “I do not take kindly to my honor being questioned in such a manner. Especially under such dire circumstances.”

Exchange’s tentacles started twitching in irritation. “I think it’s becoming pretty obvious who is the liar here, Busy. It seems that plucky group of adventurers were right about you all along. It’s all true isn’t it? You really did start this war so that you could make a profit by investing in war industries.”

“And what if I did?” Busy demanded. “What’re you going to do about it?”

My head shifted from looking between the two arguing Consortium leaders. “Is that what all of this is about? War profiteering? We are looking at an apocalypse and you are more concerned with making money?!”

“Profit is everything!” Busy declared. “And I’ve made a fortune with this war. We don’t even have to go through with it for all I care. I’ve already made a killing.”

Exchange was all but vibrating with anger. “I should have you punished for this, Busy!”

Busy crossed its tentacles over its chest. Stem. Front. “You’re welcome to try, but there isn’t a high auditor in the Consortium I can’t bribe now. I’m untouchable.”

Exchange’s tentacles stopped moving and then fell to its sides. “You’re right, damn you. I can’t punish you, so I’m going to have to do something far worse.”

“What could you possibly do to me?” Busy chortled.

I was tempted to do something about the dastardly mushroom, but I decided to see how the Consortium handled its internal business. It would give insight in how they did things, in any event.

“The only thing I can do,” Exchange stated. “Promote you.”

Busy took a long moment to reply. “You wouldn’t...”

The High Executive Administrator of the Fungerengi Consortium drew itself up—as best it could with my scythe pressed against it—and spoke with a commanding voice. “Congratulations Busy Dealings, you’re being promoted to Chief Executive Vice President of Internal External Developmental Regulatory Affairs.”

“No, nooo!” Busy fell before us. “You can’t kick me upstairs!”

“As majority stockholder of the Consortium, it’s well within my rights to promote you,” Exchange said solemnly.

“That position doesn’t even mean anything! I’ll just be sitting in my office doing nothing important all day. Why don’t you just kill me? At least then it will be quick!”

“I’m sorry, Busy, but you leave me no choice. Auditors!” A pair of mushrooms wearing armor shuffled into the tent. “Take our newest Chief Executive Vice President to his office and throw away the key. I’ll see to it that gets some pointless paperwork to keep him busy later.”

“Yes your Corporatorialness,” the auditors answered in unison, taking positions on either side of Busy.

“Also, have Grinding and his merry band of accountants freed,” Exchange continued. “We should have listened them from the start when they warned us about Busy. See to it that they’re given a bonus and an apology basket of exotic butters—no, make that a thank-you basket. We don’t want it to sound like we made a mistake.”

“Of course, your Gross Profitableness.” The auditors bowed and dragged the limp form of the new Chief Executive Vice President out of the tent.

Once Busy was gone, Exchange addressed me. “I’m terribly sorry you had to see such an ugly thing done, Your Highness, but I’m afraid tough times demand tough measures.”

“It is ... quite alright, Executive Administrator.” In truth, I was still figuring out what to make of the strange scene I had just witnessed. The Consortium’s ways were quite different than what I was accustomed to and it likely would take time to fully understand them. “It is my hope that you will at least stop your army from invading my realm?”

“Of course,” Exchange agreed. “Obviously this was all one big misunderstanding. I hope we can put this ugly business behind us, and perhaps ... make a trade treaty once the current crisis is over?”

“I think that is a possibility.” A grin worked its way to my lips and I brushed the edge of my scythe along Exchange’s stump. “Though first there is the little matter of the king’s ransom you mentioned earlier, as well as restitutions for the damages caused to the Crystal Empire.” My grin widened. “All in the name of friendship, of course.”

Shining Armor

I suppressed a yawn as I walked back into the coliseum with a fresh mug of coffee in hoof. Coffee was probably the only reason I was upright at this point. I had been forced to call for a recess to the debates between the cultists when Fluffy Cakes and Sunshine Rainbow had gotten into a hooffight over the exact definition of ‘the’ in relation to some obscure passage in one of their religious texts. They had even brought two different editions of the same dictionary to argue over—the ones printed immediately before and after the text in question had been written. The endless semantics had become so trivial that I had fallen fast asleep, and only woken up when the cultists started fighting again.

At least that had given me the excuse I needed to call for a recess and catch a badly needed nap. Naturally, I had only gotten enough sleep remind me how tired I really was when one of my guards woke me to tell me there was something I needed to see to. I only paused long enough to put my armor back on and grab a cup of coffee before heading back to see what idiocy these cultists were fighting about now.

I was met by the sounds of Fluffy and Starlight yelling at one another. I sighed, not looking forward to dealing with this fresh hell. Starlight had probably been caught doing whatever it was she had been doing, and now I had another mess to sort out.

I rounded the corner into the coliseum and paused at the sight of something unexpected. Fluffy was standing by himself, red in the face and looking like he was about to explode at any moment. Starlight was standing opposite of him with a smug grin on her face, a couple dozen of the cultists behind her. Something seemed ... off with them, but my sleep-addled brain couldn't quite make out what. Maybe it was the way that they were all smiling way too happily for the situation? That was certainly off-putting, but something else felt off about the situation.

“How dare you!” Fluffy stomped a hoof. “Stealing my followers out from under me when I wasn't looking! Don't you have any shame?”

Starlight rolled her eyes at Fluffy’s ravings. “It's your own fault you lost them to start with. Move aside, buddy, there’s a new religion in town.”

I strode forward to address the ground before Fluffy ended up attacking Starlight. “Excuse me. What's going on here?”

Fluffy jabbed a hoof at Starlight. “This—this false prophet is stealing my followers with her heretical...” He growled deeply in his throat. “Equalism.”

Starlight frowned at Fluffy. “He's just sour because everypony agrees with me instead of him.”

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this yet. Starlight was supposed to peel some of these cultists away from their leaders, not all of them.

Fluffy turned his indignant glare on the cultists behind Starlight. “How can all of you betray our cult on the brink of victory?! Flurrygeddon is upon us and you break faith now?!”

Most of the cultists didn't meet Fluffy’s furious glare, and more than a few shuffled in place. One of the cultists spoke up, hunching his shoulder as he did so. “Um, I'm only really in the cult because it'd have broken my mom's heart if I wasn't.”

“I like the idea of the end of the world,” another said. “It's just the actual execution that I'm a bit sketchy about.”

“The world does kinda have all my stuff in it,” a third added lamely.

“The cult is kinda where all my friends hang out. So, you know...”

“I kinda like Dreaded Equalist Starlight's message a bit more,” one of them added. “Equalism speaks more to my interests and the needs of my community.”

“Bunch of traitors is what you all are,” Fluffy huffed, shaking his hoof disapprovingly at the cultists. “If these were the old days you’d all get a good lashing, sent on a quest for the cult, or worse. The lot of you are soft and stupid and don't have any conviction in anything. First next thing that comes along and you've all jumped wagon. Why, in my day—”

“Excuse me, Fluffy,” I said, interrupting him before he could continue his rant. Once he got going there was no saying how long he’d go, and I had a few questions I wanted answers for. I took Starlight by the leg and started moving to the side. “If you'll give me a few minutes, I’d like to talk with Starlight.”

Before Fluffy or any of his new opponents could object, I took Starlight away from everyone else and cast a privacy spell. “So ... you took over Fluffy's cult?”

Starlight buffed her hoof on her chest. “And Rainbow Sunshine's branch too. It was child's play, really.”

“So you're running the entire cult now?”

Starlight nodded. “Pretty much. There's a few holdouts like Fluffy, but for the most part I've got this whole cult under my hoof. Am I good or am I great?”

That was the best news I had heard all day.. “Good, then you can shut it down and make one less problem for me. I want to get back to the palace and help Cadey—I've already been gone too long as is.”

“Um.” Starlight’s eyes flicked to the cultists gathered in the coliseum. “That's a bit easier said than done.”

I did not like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

“It's not as easy as saying ‘Okay, great meeting everypony! Time to pack it in. See you next week!’” she explained. “They're all riled up and ready to do something. Especially after I took over. I need time to ... let the energy out of the air.”

That wasn't what I wanted to hear. Any more time spent with these lunatics was time I could spend better someplace else. “How long will it take to—” Something finally clicked in my brain as I watched the cultists mill about, and a very important detail about them finally kept out at me. “Wait, why are they all missing their cutie marks?”

I carefully studied the cultists, and each of them had a strange equal sign cutie mark. I took a second look at Starlight and noticed even she had an equal sign cutie mark—or more likely, had painted a fake onto her rear. I had read Twily’s report from her first encounter with Starlight, and I had a pretty good idea about what was going on now.

Starlight gave me a badly strained smile. “I did have to promote an alternative belief system that they would find palatable. Crafting a custom set of beliefs to appeal to these doomsday cultists would have taken too long, so I just went with something I already had ready. Gotta go with what you know, am I right?”

I groaned and rubbed my temple. “You gotta be buckin' kidding me. You turned around and made your cult all over again!”

Starlight puckered out her lips in a scowl. “Hey, what you grumpy about? I did what you wanted me to. Sure, I may have kinda made my cult all over again, but at least they're not trying to end the world anymore. That has to count as some progress, right?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You seriously don't see anything wrong with starting another cult after what happened last time?”

Starlight opened her mouth, but stopped herself from saying anything. She closer her mouth and thought for a good few seconds before answering. “I may have a slight cult founding problem.”

I pressed my hoof to my face. “You think?” I just knew I was going to be getting a lecture from Twily about this later. Cadey too, for that matter.

Starlight scowled at me. “Hey, don't go blaming me! You're the one that asked me for help. You can't just take a former cult leader like me, put them in front of a cult and not expect ... something like this.”

“So you're claiming to be some sort of cult addict?” I asked, returning her scowl.

Starlight huffed and rolled her eyes. “Look, I did what you wanted me to. They're no longer operating a doomsday cult, wrecking up everything, or worshipping your daughter as some kind of world-destroying being. I consider that a win.”

Starlight might have considered that to be the end of the matter, but I was a long way from satisfied. “So instead of a doomsday cult that worships Flurry, we have a equalizer cult that worships you?”

“They don't worship me,” Starlight was quick to object. “It's nothing like that.”

“Please excuse me, Dread Equalizer.” A cultist wearing one of those too-wide smiles walked up to us. “We've got two thousand of those brochures you wanted us to print out. Shall we start passing them around the city immediately to spread your message of the inevitable and terrible march of equality over the land?”

Starlight’s eyes widened for a moment before a strained smile returned to her face. “What brochures? I don't remember any brochures.”

“The ones you told us to make.” The cultist held one up. “You posed for the front of them. Remember, Glorious Bringer of the Message of Equality?”

I calmly took the brochure as Starlight’s eye twitched. She was featured prominently on the front, smiling as a beam of sunlight shone down on her in the middle of a grassy field covered with flowers. A couple other ponies stood behind her in the background, all with exact same uncanny smile on their faces. ‘Equalize Your Life’ was printed on the front, and a quick look inside revealed a series of talking points that were lifted right out of Twily’s report from the equalized town.

“Care to explain this?” I didn't like the idea of Starlight spreading her cult in my town. Not the least.

“Oh! That!” Starlight forced out a laugh. “I nearly forgot about those. You know, I was giving the cultists busywork while we waited for things to calm down. Idle hooves are the tools of Discord, and all that.” She quickly turned to the cultist before I could respond. “How about you just sit on these for a little bit until I finish up with Prince Shining? I'll review them then. But tell everypony they're doing great thus far.”

The cultist bowed before her, his smile growing despite seeming to have already reached the limits of what a pony's face should have been capable of. “Of course, Most Terrifying Leveler of Society.”

I crossed my forelegs. “Sounds like you've been busy.”

“I have to be,” Starlight answered, jutting out her jaw. “If I don't keep on top of them, who knows what they’ll get up to.”

“Like try and spread the message of your new cult that’s just like the old one?”

“Look, it isn’t that bad,” Starlight insisted. “It’s not like I’m using this cult for nefarious ends.”

Another of Starlight’s cultists trotted up to us with a steaming cup. “Dread Mistress of Equality Who Shall Show Everyone The Path To Equality, Destroy Your Enemies, Especially Princess Twilight Sparkle Who Ruined Your Life And Forced An Unequal Lifestyle On You Against Your Will But Which You Shall Have Your Inevitable Revenge For, I have your mocha latte.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That is an awfully specific title.”

Starlight laughed all the more forcibly. “These cultists, they have some pretty wild imaginations. Don’t you think?”

“Shut it down, Starlight,” I growled. “You've gone too far. What's next, mind control?”

Starlight’s ears wilted. “Do you mean magical or non-magical mind control?”

“Both!” I groaned. “The fact you even have to ask that is... Argh! You do realize that mind control is highly illegal, right?”

“Right, and I don't need to be getting into any more trouble with the law,” Starlight said, not meeting my gaze.

“Tell me exactly what you did,” I told her. “Don't leave anything out.”

“Er, don't you have your foal to get back to at some point?” Starlight took the mocha latte from her cultist and waved him off, avoiding my eyes the entire time. “You know, demon possession, cracks in the skies forming, near end the world scenario? That’s all kinda important. Don’t you think?”

“How about you just tell me what you're trying to cover up?” I asked, not letting her squirm out of this.

Starlight let out a long sigh. “Alright, fine. But everything that happened totally wasn’t my fault! So I did as we planned and started converting the doomsday cultists, and funny enough, they took it hook, line, and sinker. Soon enough I found out that most of the cultists were coming to my side. Then things got a little silly.”

“Silly?”

“Well, yes.” Starlight cleared her throat. “Turns out Sunshine Rainbow didn’t like how I was taking away all of her followers, and we got into bit of a fight. The coliseum foyer is going to need some repairs, by the way. And after our duel I kinda-sorta cast a mind control spell on her.”

I glowered at her. “And why did that sound like a good idea?”

“It’s what cult leaders who fight one another do! I can’t help it! Besides, it let me finish taking over her half of the cult.”

“And the equal cutie marks?” I asked.

“Funny thing, they all asked me to do that.” Starlight’s eyes flicked to the milling cultists. “They were so into the whole equality thing that they were practically begging me to equalize them with my magic. What was I supposed to do? Tell them no?”

“It might not have hurt,” I groused. “And did you use mind control on them too?”

“Look, sometimes things get crazy in cults,” Starlight said, as if all of this insanely illegal behavior were part of making her mocha. “And these were some loons before we got here. It’s not like mind controlling a bunch of crazy cultists counts, right? Especially when one of them attacked me?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I'd arrest you, but that would probably just make things even worse.”

“That would probably set the cultists off,” Starlight confirmed.

“I'll deal with you later, then. Just ... try not to commit any more crimes, or make the situation worse. You’re lucky I’m as desperate as I am right now.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” Starlight tried to assure me, some of her confidence returning to her smile. “Once things settle down, we can lay this cult to rest no problem. I have this situation perfectly under control.”

A tremor ran through the coliseum, a thrum of energy running through the building that struck a chord in my very being. My hair stood one end, and while I couldn’t put my hoof on what was causing it, I could feel something heavy in the air.

“Um, that's the dimensional abomination whose name can't be pronounced, right?” Starlight asked, a quiver of doubt in her voice.

“For your sake, I hope so.”

Sunshine Rainbow ran over to us with a wild, wide-eyed look. “The ritual is complete! Egalatriximarious the Homologous is summoned!”

“What ritual?” Starlight laughed that awkward laugh of hers. “I don’t remember any ritual.”

“Starlight...” I growled. “What did you do this time?”

“They shouldn’t have been able to summon anything!” Starlight hastily explained. “You can’t just summon some eldritch being that easily! It takes a lot of time and effort to get their attention, and even more to break dimensional barriers and create a hole in reality big enough to...” Her eyes widened. “Uh-oh.”

I covered my eyes. “I’ve heard enough uh-ohs from Twily’s magical mishaps to know that one ranks about a nine out of ten. What’s going on?”

“Um, I just want it on the record that this can’t be considered my fault.” Starlight’s eyes darted around. “Like you, I haven’t gotten much sleep lately and I’m not quite at the top of my game at the moment. So I may have made a few ... miscalculations.”

“Like?” I growled.

Starlight swallowed as I glared at her. “You see, the walls between dimensions are a lot thinner than they normally would be thanks to everything happening with Flurry and—”

A great, unearthly voice boomed through the coliseum hallways and shook my very being as it rolled over me. “AFTER THOUSANDS OF YEARS I AM FREE! LET ALL THE WORLD TREMBLE BEFORE ME AND DESPAIR AS THE GREAT EQUALIZATION BEGINS!”

Starlight’s ears flattened against her head. “I know I just said that I had everything under control, but that might have been an ... overly optimistic opinion.”

“Ya think?”

Author's Note

I would like to thank my prereaders Chengar Qordath and Comma-Kazie for all their help. As well as Show Stopper, JiiKoo, Jeray2000, Billymorph, 621Chopsuey, Rodinga, Trinary, and Swiftest Shadow for all their help editing this chapter.

Ragnarok-a-bye-baby

Celestia

I am a Princess of Equestria, diarch of ponykind, unifier of the three tribes, bearer of the Sun Mantle, Sol Invictus, ponykind’s greatest defender for a millennium, and holder of a hundred other titles besides. I had warded off foreign invaders, vanquished scores of demons and other horrors, and given my people relative peace and prosperity for centuries.

And I was losing a children's card game.

It certainly seemed so as the Unpronounceable’s accountants defeated my Chief Accountant Kennedy. The card went to my discard pile, leaving me in a pickle. The Accountant had been my best character card in the field, and now my defense wasn't nearly as solid as I would have liked. Really, I had been struggling through the entire game. I was used to traditional card games played with a normal deck. This game, though... this had a wholly different set of rules, hundreds of cards that each worked differently, and in virtually limitless combinations. Across my many lifetimes I had never come across a game remotely like this. I was certain I could master this game with enough time and practice, and if not for the dire stakes weighing on the outcome on this match I think I would probably even enjoy it. New experiences were something to be treasured for a being with eternal life. But the fate of the Crystal Empire wason the line, and my inexperience was showing. It was a frustrating feeling.

I looked over what cards I had left. It wasn't much to work with, especially in comparison to Unpronounceable’s hand. Though maybe if things went my way and I drew the right cards over the next couple of rounds...

The sudden, faint clinking of metal on metal interrupted my thoughts. I turned to see Luna flying up to me, and did a double-take when I saw her new attire. Fine purple silk covered most of her body, and the few parts of her coat that showed through were covered in a rainbow of gemstones woven into gold and silver necklaces. She had woven even more finery into her nebulous mane and tail, and—somehow—her wings. Every beat of her wings caused the jewelry to clatter together, to the point that I truly wondered how she ever managed to stay aloft.

“Luna?” I asked as she landed on the cloud next to me. “What did you do?”

She grinned and posed for me, her excessive jewelry glittering in the sun. “Do you like it, sister?”

“I ... it is most impressive,” I hazarded. “But where did you get all of that? And why?”

“It is simple.” Luna ran a hoof through her mane, gemstones clacking against her hoof. “I have earned myself a king's ransom from our would-be invaders. It is something I have a talent for, as you know.”

“I am both immensely curious and scared to ask.” My sister did have a knack for capturing the leaders of those who attacked Equestria and ransoming them back to their people. It had been the practice of the day when we had first come to rule, though in more recent centuries it had lost some favor—usually in nations with no major nobility or persons of singular importance. Strangely enough, though, monarchies were often far less willing to part with their leaders than, say, democracies.

“We can thank the Fungerengi Consortium for the recent earthquakes.” My sister waved to the gaping hole in the ground at the edge of the city. “They are some sort of mushroom people whose ways are quite foreign. It seems they were under the impression that we were intentionally causing the end of the world with Flurry.”

In a rare occasion, I found myself momentarily lost for words. If not for the seriousness of the situation, I might have accused my sister of trying to pull my leg. “And I presume you cleared that up?”

“I did.” Luna pulled a scroll from her silk ropes. “I have the armistice in hoof, and the Fungerengi have told me they wish to open peaceful relations with us—for the sake of trade, I believe. I told them I would need to discuss the matter with you before I could proceed any further, but they have granted us some leeway in opening negotiations on account of trying to prevent the end of the world.”

“That is good, then.” At least that crisis was in hoof. I wanted to know all the details, of course, but that would come in good time. Though that left led me to another question. “And ... your current attire?”

“I thought to bring some of my king's ransom with me.” She stretched to better show off her new riches. “The rest will need to be carried up to the surface once the crisis is over.”

I frowned slightly. “You extorted them?” Luna tended to use methods I didn't always approve of, and I didn't want her to do something that would cause bad blood between us and this Consortium. Extortion was the type of diplomatic gaffe that could sour relations for generations.

Luna shrugged. “They invaded the Empire, and I captured their ruler. It was the quickest solution to ending this war—far moreso than mustering our own army, especially since the chaos in the city has occupied them for the time being. Besides, we are going to have to pay for the repairs to the Crystal Empire somehow; best it be from a failed invader who has been chastised for misbehavior.”

She made a strong case. I wasn't sure I completely approved at this juncture, but I didn't want to hurt my sister’s feelings. If nothing else, I could always soothe any hurt egos the Consortium had suffered later once the crisis was over. “I see. Well ... good job?”

Luna smiled brightly. “Thank you. I did try and resolve this matter without too much violence, and I even managed to make friends in the process. Exactly as you would have wished.”

“I am quite proud of you, Luna.” The compliment came far easier this time. No doubt Luna had quite the tale to tell if she somehow made friends after capturing the Consortium leader. “If only my own efforts had gone as well.” I frowned down at the cards currently in play.

Luna tilted her head as she picked up one of the deck boxes. “Accountants and Audits? Sister, have you been playing a card game I’ve been off stopping this invasion?”

I sighed. “It's what the Unpronounceable wanted to do.”

The Unpronounceable struck the table with a gavel.

“Yes, yes, it’s your turn, Unpronounceable,” I said, trying to keep an even tone. “Really, as an immortal being who has been around for eons, you really should have enough patience for me to talk with my sister for a few minutes.”

The Unpronounceable summoned a pair of toy eyes that rolled within their sockets and it drew a card.

Luna frowned. “Let me guess: it challenged you to a game with great stakes?”

“For the fate of the Crystal Empire,” I confirmed

Luna sighed. “So the fate of the entire Crystal Empire depends on the course of one card game?”

“Of course not.” I paused, then clarified. “It's best out of three.”

My sister fixed me with a flat look. “Ah, but of course. That is so much better.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Well, considering I lost the first round, I don't see why you're complaining.”

Luna frowned back at me. “And how are you doing now?”

I grimaced as the Unpronounceable laid out more cards in what looked like what was going to be a nasty combo. “It could be going better.”

The Unpronounceable then laid down Competitive Bidding, a card that forces the opposing player to discard two cards each time the owner discards a card. It lifted up its CEO card, Bradford the Exchanger, telling me that it was using the card’s ability, which allowed it to discard cards from its opponent’s hand and draw a new card for each discard card.

I groaned as I was forced to discard the six cards on my stand. “That card is ... ugh. This is exactly how it beat me last time.”

Luna lowered her head to read the text of Competitive Bidding. “That card seems rather overpowered, if you ask me.”

I rubbed the sides of my aching temple. “Well, what can I do? I barely know the rules to the game, and there seems to be a card for everything. It's not exactly a friendly game to jump into.”

Luna raised one of her eyebrows. “I take it you have not played any of these new card games before?”

“I'm afraid not. I read through the rule book before we started, but then I had to figure out how to properly build a deck, and that's an experience of trial and error as far as I can tell.”

Luna grinned in the way she always did when she had the upper hoof on me. “Well luckily for us, I have done as you have asked and have been learning about modern times. Including new games like this one.” She turned to face the opposite end of the table. “Unpronounceable, I desire to see the errata for the cards you use.”

The Unpronounceable summoned a whoopie cushion into existence and it deflated to create a less than dignified sound.

“Errata?” I asked. “What's that?”

“It's a list of any errors or changes made to the game,” Luna explained for me. “For a game such as this there are often any number of mistakes made. Sometimes the text on a card is poorly worded or needs to be clarified in its meaning, for example. Or might even have an editing error.”

“So some of the cards might be wrong?” I hadn't even considered that. If that was so, then that could change a great many things.

“Indeed so.” Luna knocked the table. “So present the errata, Unpronounceable. I command it. You are bound to do so, for every player is required to produce the errata for their cards when asked to.”

The Unpronounceable produces another whoopie cushion it deflated, but this time it produced a thick three-ring binder that thumped onto the table.

“Much better.” My sister started flipped through the binder.

“That is a lot of errata,” I said, narrowing my eyes. This was the type of thing that should have been available from the start of our game. Now I had to wonder what else the Unpronounceable had ‘forgotten’ to make available to me.

“Indeed it is.” Luna’s eyes narrowed at the rifts in the sky before returning to the binder. “Aha! That card was made illegal several years ago for being too powerful. I thought as much.”

There was an ominous rumble from the sky above us. The Unpronounceable was no doubt unhappy it had been caught using an illegal card.

I raised an eyebrow. Yes, now I was certain the Unpronounceable had been aware of its misdeeds. No way it hadn't known what it was doing. It knew this game far better than I, and its very nature would require it to know the rules of every game it played. “So I can get all my cards back?”

“That depends.” Luna flipped through the rulebook. “Considering you're playing for the fate of the Crystal Empire, I assume you're using the official rules?”

“I believe so, yes,” I said.

“Then according to the rulebook, anyone that uses an illegal card is disqualified and his or her opponent wins by default.” Luna gave me a mischievous grin. “Congratulations, Tia! You are the victor of this round.”

“Just like that?” After all the trouble is had thus far, it almost didn't seem real. Especially considering the manner I had ‘won’.

Luna shrugged indifferently. “We caught the Unpronounceable cheating, so it forfeits the round.” She grinned evilly. “Isn't that right, Unpronounceable?”

In response, the Unpronounceable’s flipped the table we had been playing on, sending cards flying into the sky.

“Now now,” I chided, “that's not very sportsmarelike.” Despite my tone, I smirked. “Though I do have to ask: don't most tournaments have rules about that kind of behavior?”

Luna smirked alongside me, a conspiracy silently forming between us. “Oh yes, unsportsmarelike conduct can result in everything up to and including expulsion from an event.”

“That would make sense,” I agreed. “So Luna, as the only neutral party to this game, would you say that the Unpronounceable’s conduct has disqualified it?”

“Oh most certainly,” Luna said with false seriousness. “The Unpronounceable, as a eldritch being of such unimaginable power, should know better. An example should be made.”

The cracks in the sky rumbled and turned a furious shade of red. A ball bounced on empty air before coming to rest in front of us, then rocketed upwards. A blinding flash lit the sky, and the cracks slowly mended themselves as the toys, game pieces, and other manifestations of the Unpronounceable’s will floated up. In a matter of moments the sky was clear of cracks, leaving everything as normal as before this whole mess started.

Luna scanned the sky. “I think it is upset it lost.”

I smiled, happy that this particular crisis was over. “How unfortunate.”

“Yes, very unfortunate.” Luna smiled back. “However will we survive?”

“I am sure we will manage.”

Luna chuckled. “Even if it is a bit low to win purely through rules-lawyering.”

“A win is a win, sister.” I shrugged, not being too upset over saving Equestria through such means. At the end of the day, the safety of my ponies was what was most important.

“So it is, and this way we didn't have to fight some eldritch monster whose very existence threatens all of reality,” Luna added.

A voice erupted from the Crystal Arena, shaking the both of us in mid-air. “AFTER THOUSANDS OF YEARS, I AM FREE! LET ALL THE WORLD TREMBLE BEFORE ME AND DESPAIR AS THE GREAT EQUALIZATION BEGINS!”

I sighed and rubbed my brow. “You had to jinx it.”

Shining Armor

“So we agree that this isn't my fault, right?” Starlight hunched her shoulders as she tried to smile apologetically. “I just want it on record for when we have to explain what happened here. Assuming we survive this, that is.”

I rubbed my eyes as I felt my headache returning. Great quantities of magic rose up into the air, like high pressure air blowing its way into a low pressure space. Whatever Starlight’s new cult had summoned, it was big. “I think we have more important things to worry about right now.” After a second I added, “And this is one hundred percent your fault.”

“But-but I can't help it!” Starlight puckered out her lip in a pout. “I had to go through some rough things in my past. Sometime I can't tell what's right or wrong in a situation like this.”

I rolled my eyes at her sob story. I'd heard at least three versions of this during my time in the Guard, and I didn't have the time or the patience for it right now. “Yes yes, I'm sure some massive childhood trauma caused you to have an irresistible impulse to make terrible decisions. Now how about you actually be useful and help me fix this?”

Starlight beamed. “I can do that.”

“Good. Any ideas?” I narrowed my eyes. “Which don't involve you becoming a cult leader and summoning demons?”

Starlight bit her lip for a moment. “Could you define 'summoning demons’?”

I groaned and pressed my hoof to my face. “The fact you actually have to ask that doesn't fill me with confidence.”

Starlight glowered in reply. “Hey, there are several definitions for what's technically a demon, never mind all the other types of extraplanar beings out there. I need to know what's in and out of bounds here. You're the one that’s going to get upset if I creatively interpreted your instructions and used some initiative to fix this.”

“Just ... don't magically summon anything.” The last thing I needed Starlight to do was summon another monster. Best case scenario, Egalitrximarious would attack it on sight and catch the Crystal Empire in the crossfire.

“Fine, limit my options,” Starlight grumbled.

“You clearly need limits,” I countered. At this point, I wouldn't trust Starlight to make my coffee. She'd probably end up creating some sort of coffee monster.

She sighed. “Genius is never appreciated in its time.”

“Neither’s stupidity.”

Starlight bared her teeth into something that resembled a smile. “You're so lucky that you're Twilight’s brother and that we don't have time to argue, or I'd give you a piece of my mind.” Before that little threat could hang into the air, she continued. “Anyways, to answer your question on what we can do. We need to act quickly if we want to stop Egalitrximarious. With something that big and powerful, it's possible that it isn't at full power yet. Bringing over its full being into our dimension isn't going to be easy for it, so we might have time to do something to stop it.”

“Sounds like a plan.” It was better than anything I had. I might be able to call on one of the alicorns to pull our rears out of the fire, but the way things were going I doubted any of them would be able to help.

I nodded to a pair of Guardponies and motioned towards Fluffy Cakes and Rainbow Sunshine, both of whom were busy arguing again about ... something. I stopped caring what those two had to say after the first twenty minutes. “Keep an eye on them while I clean up Starlight’s mess.”

They saluted. “Yes, sir.”

That dealt with, I turned to Starlight. “Lead the way. The quicker we get there the sooner we can figure out what needs to be done.”

“It should be in the basement.” She lead the way with me in tow. “Maybe if we can break the magic circle we can cut it off ... ooor just unleash it on the world. Hard to know until we examine what's happening. Something like this shouldn't even be summonable, at least this easily.”

“And yet, it happened,” I said acidly.

“Blame your kid for that,” Starlight grumbled under her breath.

My jaw clenched. “You really enjoy digging yourself deeper, don't you?”

“What?” Starlight asked. “It's true! You can't tell me Flurry isn't involved in all of this. You'll be lucky if ponies don't request request a royal vasectomy after this.”

I scowled, but I couldn’t quite argue with her. “Point being, you are going to help me stop this thing, right? Because I don’t want to have to worry about you suddenly but inevitably betraying me when my back’s turned.”

“Well it'd be one thing if I was in control of Egalitrximarious, because then maybe I could put it to some good use.” Starlight blinked and then quickly added, “If I was still into the whole equalization thing, that is.”

“Naturally,” I said evenly. By this point, I was certain Starlight had been planning to use Egalitrximarious from the beginning. I was just counting my blessings that it backfired on her.

Starlight nodded as we descended down the stairs. “Thing is, it looks like Rainbow Sunshine unleashed it instead of keeping it contained. Now that it's free in our dimension, it’s liable to do something like make everypony exactly the same down to the last atom, or spread all matter and energy around the universe evenly in an attempt to make everything equal. And to be frank, I don't want my atoms smeared across the galaxy to make everything same-y.”

“Try and remember that before you and your cult summon something next time,” I snapped. “Or better yet, no more cults or summoning at all. Ever.”

Starlight ground her teeth together. “I'll keep that in mind.”

As we headed deeper into the basement I saw exactly what the cultists were up to. We reached the bottom of the stairs and found ourselves in a storage room that looked like it had been hastily repurposed by Starlight’s cultists. Crates and other supplies had been pushed to the walls to create an open space in the center of the room.

The cultists had drawn a chalk circle onto the floor, and the runes surrounding it glowed with their own pale light. The gathered cultists formed a ring, bowing in supplication towards the … thing, in the circle. The being was unlike anything I had never seen before. It looked crystalline in makeup, with thin strands of light blue crystal crisscrossing this way and that in a complex web that was nearly impossible to follow. It thrummed with level of energy that I had only felt from the Royal Sisters on the few rare occasions when they had actually cut loose.

“I'm guessing that Egalitrximarious?” I asked, more as a statement than a question.

Starlight nodded, her eyes wide as she took in the sight before us. “It looks like it. That fits every description I've heard of.”

“Great.” I pressed my lips together as I considered my options. “Wait here while I talk with it.”

Starlight’s jaw dropped as her head snapped towards me. “What, just like that?!”

I shrugged. “Trying to slug it out with that thing isn’t going to work, so I might as well see if I can talk it down.” Before Starlight could raise any further protests, I stepped forward.

I felt Egalitrximarious’ attention focus on me, and its crystalline form glowed slightly brighter. “Prince Shining Armor, I sense great unequality in you. You are greater than the ponies around you in power, station, wealth, and more. This will not do for my plans for this world. Have you come to submit yourself to the Great Equalization?”

“No,” I told it. Sure, I’d had several pretty lucky breaks in my life, but I wasn’t like I should feel bad about that. Really, my abilities and station just let me better be able to help and protect ponies, so I wasn’t inclined to let some eldritch monster tinker with that just for ‘equality’.

“Your objection is irrelevant in face of what is to come,” Egalitrximarious replied evenly. “Your feelings will become neutral, your opinions balanced, your very being equalized. It is how it should and will be.”

Great, so it was as bad as I thought. Stupid Starlight and her stupid crazy monster-summoning cult... “So why did you ask me if I wanted to be equalized if you're gonna do it anyway?”

“It is good to know how much effort I must expend,” the demon explained. “There is much work to be done in this world of endless disparity, and you will be among the first to be freed.”

An idea struck me, and I tried not to smile as I kept talking. “So, wait—you'll equalize me regardless of whether or not I wish to be equalized? Is that right?”

The entity nodded. “Yes. Once I have harnessed enough of my strength then my work can begin.”

“But it doesn't seem very equal to impose your will on others who have an equally valid viewpoint.”

A slight tremor seemed to run through the eldritch being, and seconds passed by before it replied. “No. There is only one truth: that of Equalization.”

I rubbed my chin in thought. “And aren't you vastly more powerful than me?”

There was another long pause. “Yes.”

“Well that doesn't seem very equal, does it?”

Egalitrximarious started vibrating in place. “Yes! But—I am ... equality, but ... But I am not equal. That is—I am—” Cracks started spreading all over its surface, beams of light flowing out of the seams. “How can ... this doesn't not equal itself. Could I have... Disparity?! No! I c-cannot be!”

Egalitrximarious shattered in a blinding light with enough force to knock me to the ground.

Time passed before I was able to register anything around me again. I blinked against the spots covering my vision to see the gathered cultists all staring in a daze at the empty magic circle. Of Egalitrximarious, there was nothing left; whether he had been outright destroyed or merely banished back to his realm, I could only guess. For now, it was gone. That was enough.

Starlight slowly stepped up besides me, slackjawed. “Did you just ... logic him to death?”

“Looks like it,” I said.

She tilted her head as she looked at me. “You actually thought that was going to work?”

“I was just making it up as I went.” I shrugged, too tired to explain what had been going through my head at the time. Really, the whole idea had been a desperate attempt to head off a disaster, and the fact that it worked was nothing short of a miracle.

“You're crazy, you know that?”

I shot her a flat glare. “Look who's talking.”

Starlight scowled. “I'm not crazy.”

“Sure you're not,” I said without even attempting to sound genuine.

Starlight rolled her eyes. “So now what?”

I checked the time on a nearby clock, then headed back towards the stairs. “I think I’m going to have all these cultists arrested. The reinforcements I’ve been waiting for should be in the coliseum here soon.” Not that they couldn’t be here soon enough. If I never saw a black cloak again for the rest of my life, it would be too soon.

Starlight followed close after me. “Well, the good news is that they'll be easy to arrest now I've equalized most of them.” She smiled in that strained manner she always seemed to us when she tried to put a good spin on one of her mistakes. “They couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag in their current state. I pretty much mean that literally—one of the drawback to equalization is that it puts everypony on the lowest common denominator.”

“I noticed,” I groused. “Oh, and speaking of, clean off your fake cutie mark.”

Starlight glanced back at her face equal sign cutie mark and sighed. She brushed off the false mark with a quick spell, revealing her actual cutie mark. “Promise not to tell Twilight?”

I glowered at her. “Oh no, she's hearing all about this.”

Starlight groaned and covered her eyes. “I'm going to be in so much trouble when we get back to the palace. She’s going to make me write a report about this, I just know it! Just like she did last time I screwed up.” She shivered in revulsion. “So much red ink.”

Cadance

“Cadey, if you could keep that demon from biting my face off while I work, I'd really appreciate it.” Twilight somehow kept her attention on the arcane sigils she was drawing on the floor as the demon swooped down on her.

The demon looked like someone had the spare parts of a pug, a hawk, and a pig, and had glued them all together with the skill of a small child with more enthusiasm than artistic ability. It screeched as it dove at Twilight, fangs and talons at the ready.

“Sure thing.” I fired a beam of magic, sending the demon tumbling through the air and into the far wall. The demon exploded in a haze of sulfuric smoke as the demon dissipated and returned to its home plane.

“Thanks.” Twilight kept working with a piece of chalk. We had cleared out the floor of a room next to the library, and she was hard at work preparing the ritual to prevent Flurry’s possession. “This would be going a lot quicker if I didn't keep getting interrupted.”

“I'll make sure to send the Abyss a strongly worded letter later noting our displeasure,” I announced with a grin.

Twilight paused long enough to return my grin. “I'm sure that will show them.” She looked around, frowning. “Have you seen Starlight yet? She’s been gone for hours now, and I'm really starting to get worried. I could have really used her help with this.”

“I haven't seen her.” Starlight had slipped out on us when we had been busy with ... I honestly couldn't remember anymore. All the monster attacks had started blending together.

“Hopefully she isn't in trouble.” Twilight’s frown deepened. “Or getting into trouble.”

I sighed, really not having the energy to worry about Twilight’s wayward pupil. She was a grown mare, unlike my daughter, who was in trouble. “Well whatever the case might be...”

I trailed off as I saw a thick black smoke drift under a nearby door and started to coalesce into a vaguely equine shape. Red eyes opened, as did a maw with far too many obsidian teeth. “I am Ssxzthkpbthwxzq the Unmentionable, and I come to—”

“Come back when you have some vowels in your name!” I fired off another a beam of concentrated light and love. The spell burned a hole right through its chest, and it let out a howl of pained rage as pink fire consumed it that would probably be part of my nightmares for the next few months.

Twilight grumbled under her breath as she kept writing, unphased by the latest attack. “I swear, the only way this day could get worse is if Discord came to join in on the fun.”

“Are we sure he isn't responsible for any of this?” There was certainly enough mayhem going around to make the Spirit of Chaos happy.

“Positive,” Twilight growled. “I checked in on him when everything started, and he swears he has nothing to do with this. Instead, he’s just sitting on the sidelines watching everything go down. Claimed he was on vacation, or some stupid excuse.” She frowned deeply. “He even had a drink with a umbrella in it and a bag of popcorn. He could at least give us a little bit of help as we try and save Equestria. Jerk.”

“It's probably best not to introduce any more unpredictable elements anyways,” I pointed out. “We've got enough to deal with without Discord’s ... assistance.” I wasn't exactly eager to ask for his aid after his ‘help’ against Tirek. Especially where my daughter was concerned. I wasn't that desperate yet.

The door burst open, interrupting our discussion yet again. I prepared another attack spell, ready to bring down whatever extraplanar invader was next, but stopped myself when I saw who entered.

Rainbow Dash flew into the room in a blur of color. “We got it!”

Rarity wasn't that far behind her. “We have the vase!”

Applejack nodded with satisfaction as she trailed the group. “Took a bit of doin', but we got it.”

I let out a relieved sigh. “That's great news. I knew we could depend on you.”

“Of course.” Rainbow threw out a few punches at empty air. “We'd never let you down.”

Twilight smiled brightly, turning away from her work for the first time in a couple of hours. “Way to go girls. Where is it? There isn't any time to lose.”

“Here you go, darling.” Rarity levitated the vase out of Applejack’s saddlebags and gave it to Twilight. The clay vase looked ancient, and sported multiple runes that ran along its surface. I hadn't gotten all the details from Twilight, but apparently it was central to whatever ritual she had planned to save Flurry.

“That crypt you sent us to check out was like something out of Daring Do!” Rainbow zipped around the room. “There were booby traps, collapsing walls, winding mazes...”

Applejack nodded. “And that's not even getting into the giant spiders and talkin' mushrooms that Princess Luna had to save us from. Ya know, before today, that would been the weirdest thing t'say. Now that don' even make the top ten.”

Rainbow shrugged uncaringly. “Eh, normal is boring.”

“There was certainly nothing boring about this little adventure,” Rarity huffed, looking into a mirror to try and salvage her disheveled mane.

“Are you girls okay?” I checked them over for injuries. “You were gone for a pretty long time and we we're starting to get worried.” All of them looked the worse for wear, though none of them looked any worse than me or Twilight. Each of them sported their fair share of bruises and cuts, and they were more than roughed up enough to justify a good day at the spa. But they were here and safe, and that's what mattered.

Rainbow snorted and waved a dismissive hoof. “We're fine. No big deal—just one of the most epic, adventuring quests ever! Really, you need to hear all about it later. The other Wonderbolts are going to be super jealous when they hear about all the awesome stuff we got to do!”

Rarity cleared her throat, indicating that she wasn't quite as thrilled by their adventures. “We would have been back sooner, but I'm afraid we ran across a few emergencies that we just couldn't ignore.”

I grimaced. “Do I want to know? The whole city is a mess right now.”

“There was a group of ponies being chased by a giant foam lizard on a wire,” Rainbow reported. “Which was just weird.”

“And that one horrid demon we ran across, Groteous the Uncomely.” Rarity shivered in revulsion. “It was horrible, Twilight! The beast tried to make me wear plaid! PLAID!”

“That's ... terrible?” Twilight asked uncertainly.

“And not even good plaid, it was pink and acid green!” Rarity covered her mouth, her cheeks turning green. “I'm just glad we stopped the horrible brute. Who knows what sorts of crimes against fashion that thing might have caused?”

“Don't forget about the monster ewes,” Rainbow added. “Their wool tried to drag anypony they could grab into them. And inside was a weird place that made me feel like I was on drugs, althought I have to admit that was kinda cool to fly through.”

“An' then mah hat tried t'eat me.” Applejack took a moment to carefully tap her hat. “Pretty sure it ain't playin' possum anymore, though. It tried trickin’ me earlier but Ah got wise to its ways.”

Rainbow crossed her forelegs over her chest as she gave Applejack a flat look. “Told you you needed to wash that thing more often.”

Applejack narrowed her eyes. “Oh, quiet you.”

“Was there anything you weren't attacked by?” Twilight asked.

Applejack rubbed her chin. “Apples?”

As if in response, an uneaten apple that had been sitting on a nearby desk turned, revealing a sharp-toothed maw and glowing red eyes. “At last! I, Appletrimaritus the All-Devouring, was just waiting for you fools to drop your guard! Now my day has come!” It shook with a unroaraous laugh.

Applejack’s scrunched up in confusion at the sight of the apparently demon-apple-thing.

Rainbow snerked and then laughed. “Ha! Even apples have failed you, AJ!”

Rarity sighed and flicked her hoof at Appletrimaritus. “Twilight, darling, could you be a dear deal with that?”

Twilight groaned and massages the bridge of her nose. “I am not in the mood for this.” A blast of magic energy shot from her horn and struck Appletrimaritus. It exploded, and plastering the room with applesauce.

Rarity squeaked and quickly jumped behind Rainbow, whose wings spread on reflex just in time to catch pulped demon apple. I didn't bother to do more than shield my eyes as it splashed me; I was already covered by much fouler smelling ichors from the various monstrosities I had destroyed over the last couple of days. At least this wasn't acidic.

“Gyah!” Rainbow flicked a wing to try and get some of the applesauce off of her—and onto me and Twilight. “Seriously, you know how long it'll take me to clean this gunk out of my wings? Bleh...”

Rarity, apple free, stood up and huffed as she beheld the mess. “I never knew there were so many demons of such horrible random and petty things! There should be rules against this type of thing.”

Applejack’s eyes twitched as half an apple core rolled off her nose. “You low-down cracker-croakin' excuse of a fruit! How dare you tarnish the goodly nature of apples?!” She tossed her hat to the ground and stomped repeatedly on it.

For its part, Applejack’s hat squealed every time she brought her hoof down on it. “EEK! Oog! GLAH!”

“Aw shuddup, you.” Applejack stomped a few more time before she snapped her hat back into her head, though it now lay on her head like a wet noodle. “I’ll be happy if Ah never have another day like this again.”

I covered my face with a hoof and whispered to myself. “Please let Flurry grow out of this, pleaseletFlurrygrowoutofthis. PleaseletFlurrygrowoutofthis.” Foals were supposed to be a hooffull, but this was utterly ridiculous. I could only hope that this type of thing wasn’t going to become a regular occurrence with her, or it was going to be a serious crimp on my and Shining’s family planning. I took a long breath to steady myself; I had to and hold myself to the standards of a princess, whatever toll the stress and fatigue of my duties. “Did you at least get what you needed, Twilight?”

Twilight nodded. “Yep. This looks exactly like the vase in my books. I can do the ritual with the Disk of Breezy Ice , and it should be right here inside of the vase...” She carefully removed the lid from the vase and groped inside. Her smile turned into a frown. After a few moments of searching, she withdrew her hoof and looked inside the vase. “Um, girls, where's the disk?”

“What disk?” Rarity asked, a flicker of confusion crossing her features.

“Yeah, what disk?” Rainbow scratched behind her ear. “You never said anything about a disk. You told us to get the vase!”

Applejack scratched the side of her head. “That's all there was, Twi—Ah didn't see anythin' else near the vase.”

I felt a lurch in my stomach. This was a joke right? Some cruel, awful joke? Surely during the thousands of years the vase and disc had been entombed in some abandoned dungeon some intrepid adventurer hadn’t already looted what we needed, right?

“B-b-but the disk was supposed to be inside the vase!” Twilight upturned the vase and shook it, but nothing came out. “I told you all about it... Didn't I?” She blinked a couple of time, the bags under her eyes obvious. She was probably running purely on coffee by this point.

“Yeah, no,” Rainbow said flatly. “You didn't.”

“You just said to get the vase,” Rarity told her. “You never mentioned the disk.”

“There wasn't anything else in the room but the vase anyway,” Rainbow added. “Plus, when we took it off the pedestal the room fell down around us. Kinda like in Daring Do and the.... well, okay, pretty much every Daring Do story.”

Twilight eyes slowly widened. “Uh-oh.”

Applejack grimaced. “Whooee, there’s a phrase Ah never like hearin’ outta her.”

“‘Uh-oh’ and Twilight usually ends up going as well together as Pinkie Pie and ‘extra caffeine’,” Rainbow agreed.

“Um, Twilight, are we in trouble?” I asked, already having a sinking feeling I knew the answer to that question.

“This is really, really bad.” Twilight put the vase to the side and snatched up a couple of scrolls to read over. “I needed that disk to stop Flurry from being possessed. Without it—”

The palace shook as a harsh red light flowed through the crystal of the building.

“Flurry!” My chest tightened as I realized what was happening. “The possession must be happening right now! We have to stop it!”

Twilight grabbed a variety of objects from the table and shoved them into her saddlebags. “Okay, we’re falling back on Plan B. I'll just have to hope that an exorcism works.”

We all ran to the library. Flurry hovered in the center of the room, the red runes covering her body glowing brighter and brighter. Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Spike were slowly picking themselves up from the floor. Before I could ask what had happened, a burst of pressure from Flurry nearly knocked me off my hooves. Fluttershy rubbed her head, bracing herself against the wall to help hold herself up. “Um, I'm not an expert on this type of thing, but I think this is bad.”

Twilight turned to me. “We need to restrain her before—”

A pair of red bands of energy shot from Flurry’s horn and struck Twilight in the side. She hit the wall hard enough to blast the air out of her lungs, and black chains formed and wrapped themselves around her, pinning her against the wall.

Flurry opened red glowing eyes, and a menacing smile that didn't belong to my daughter spread across her face. When she spoke, it was with a voice far too deep and loud to be her own. “AT LAST! I, DAGGOTH THE DESTROYER, HAVE RETURNED TO CONQUER THIS PUNY WORLD!” The demon possessing my daughter laughed heartily. “DESPAIR LITTLE PONIES! A DARK AGE OF—”

He suddenly stopped speaking and wrinkled up Flurry’s tiny nose. He looked down and exmained his vessel, then screamed in rage. “WHY AM I POSSESSING AN INFANT!?”

Spike leaned in to whisper to Twilight. “Um, shouldn't he know that, considering he set all of this up to start with?”

“You would think that,” Twilight growled back.

I stepped forward and glared at this Daggoth, trying to not let any of my fear for Flurry’s safety show. “I’d like to know myself, because I certainly didn't approve this, and I’m Flurry’s mother.”

Daggoth growled deeply with Flurry’s throat. “I WAS SUPPOSED TO POSSESS FLURRY WHEN SHE WAS A TEENAGER FILLED WITH ANGST AND COVERED WITH ACNE! I AM A DEMON LORD, A BEING OF UNSURPASSED POWER WHOSE NAME BRINGS FEAR TO WORLD, AND NOW I’M WEARING A DIAPER! I DEMAND TO KNOW WHY!”

“You tell us.” Twilight teleported out of her bindings and reappeared next to me. “It's your ritual that caused this—you tell us what went wrong.”

“Also, could you use your inside voice?” Pinkie added. “We can hear you just fine if your talk normally, you know.”

“NEVER!” Daggoth roared. “AND AS FOR WHAT WENT WRONG...” Flurry’s eyes glowed brighter and Daggoth turned his gaze up to look at something none of us could see. After a moment, her lips peeled back in a snarl. “YOU STUPID PONIES! YOU’VE RECLASSIFIED PLUTROT AS A DWARF PLANET?!”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Wait, that matters?”

“OF COURSE IT MATTERS!” Daggoth quivered with rage. “IT ISN'T EASY TO ALIGN THE PLANETS AND STARS FOR MILLENNIA-OLD PROPHESIES, YOU KNOW. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!”

“Enacted a more clearly defined planetary classification system?” Twilight hazarded.

Daggoth didn’t seem to appreciate her answer. “I AM A DEMON LORD, A BEING WHOSE VERY NAME INSPIRES FEAR AND DREAD FOR UNTOLD EONS I HAD RULED MY VILE REALM OF EVIL—AND NOW I'M WEARING A DIAPER! THIS IS HUMILIATING!”

“How about this as a solution then?” I told him—or at least I was guessing it was a him. One can never quite tell with ancient evils. “You leave Flurry alone and we forget all about this incident.” I narrowed my eyes. “You won't like the alternatives if you hurt my daughter. Trust me.”

Daggoth wrinkled Flurry’s brow into a scowl. “I THINK NOT.”

A shockwave of magic energy pulsed out of Flurry and struck everypony in the room, sending us flying. Spots flashed over my vision from the shock of the impact. Before I had time to recover, I felt black chains wrap around my body and pin me to the floor and wall. A quick look around the room showed that everypony else was also trapped by the chains. I struggled against my restraints, but they held me fast. I summoned my magic, but Daggoth struck me with a counterspell that sent an irrepressible wave of nausea and vertigo through me, disrupting my magic.

“FLURRY WILL JUST HAVE TO GROW INTO ME,” Daggoth announced with utter contempt. “AND NOPONY IN ALL OF EQUESTRIA CAN STOP ME!” He chortled deep within Flurry’s throats before bursting out into an unrepressed and uproarious laugh.

“Yeah, but what about a dragon?” Spike glared up at Daggoth, glaring at the demon as he met his gaze with crossed arms.

I tried to warn Spike to get away from the demon, but the chains around me tightened and cut off my words.

Daggoth sneered down at Spike. “A BABY DRAGON?” He barely repressed another laugh as he levitated down near Spike. “OH, THIS IS RICH. DO YOU HONESTLY THINK YOU CAN STOP ME, WYRMLING?”

Spike set his jaw. If he was intimidated by the demon lord he didn't show it. “Yeah, I think I can.”

Daggoth barked a laugh. “AND PRAY TELL, HOW DO YOU PLAN ON DOING THAT, PUNY LITTLE CREATURE? I AM DAGGOTH THE DESTROYER, PUNISHER OF WORLDS, DARK MASTER OF FELL REALMS, AND FUTURE RULER OF EQUESTRIA. I POSSESS BOTH THE POWER OF A DEMON LORD AND ALICORN. I HAVE NO WEAKNESSES. I AM INVINCIBLE!”

Spike smirked ever so slightly. “Yeah? Well maybe you don't have any weaknesses, but Flurry does.” Before he could reply to that, Spike snatched Flurry out from the air, wrapped an arm around her and and tickled her belly with his free claw. Daggoth started laughing under the onslaught and flailed helplessly.

“S-STOP!” Daggoth tried to cast a spell, but only useless sparks of magic shot out of Flurry’s horn as Spike disrupted his spellcasting. “I-I CAN'T CON-CONCENTRATE!”

“That was the idea.” Spike held onto Flurry despite all of Daggoth’s attempts to squirm free, and he didn't stop tickling her for a moment. He looked up to Twilight. “Hey, think you could give me a hoof here? I won't be able to keep this up forever.”

“I'm on it!” Twilight cast another teleportation spell and freed us with a pop of magic.

The instant I was clear, I turned to her. “Twilight, the exorcism ritual!”

“Way ahead of you!” Twilight pulled a piece of chalk out of her saddlebags and drew a circle around Spike and Flurry. “Keep it up, Spike. I just need a couple of minutes to pull this off.”

Daggoth laughed in spite of his desperate flailing. “NO! NO! I-I CAN'T B-BE BEATEN THIS WAY! IT'S TOO-TOO E-EMBARRASSING! ALL THE OTHER DEMONS WILL L-LAUGH AT ME I-IF I'M DEFEATED BY SOME WYRMLING TICKLING ME!”

“That's not my problem,” I snarled. Perhaps not the most forgiving stance, but after a couple of days without sleep and my daughter on the line, I wasn't in a very forgiving mood.

Twilight pulled out an old staff covered in arcane runes and a stoppered glass piece. She uncorked the glass and splashed the water onto Flurry. The runes in her staff lit with magenta magic and Twilight’s eyes glowed from the magic she summoned for the ritual. “Daggoth the Destroyer, I cast you out! Daggoth, in the name of friendship I denounce and banish you! Daggoth, leave my niece alone so that all this stupid madness can end and I can finally get some bucking sleep! I exorcise you banish you back to your realm, preferably never to return!”

“NOOO!” The runes on Flurry glowed all the brighter as Daggoth struggled in vain. “I WON'T FORGET THIS, PONIES! YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF ME! I'LL BE BACK.”

“Could you not?” Rainbow asked with a deep frown. “‘Cause you're a pretty big jerk.”

Applejack nodded. “Can't say Ah’ll miss the backside of ya.”

“Um.” Spike grimaced as Flurry started vibrating. “Should I still be holding her right now?”

Twilight puckered out her lips in concentration. “Probably not when she’s experiencing a magical buildup which could result in—”

Before she could finish, a blinding light filled the room, and I grimaced and covered my face with my wings. Moments passed before dots over my vision cleared leaving me with a welcome sight: Flurry was no longer covered by demonic runes, and she gurgled happily as Spike held her.

Spike, for his part, was covered from head to toe in ash, and blinked dumbly as Flurry squirmed in his arms. “Ow.”

“Here,” I offered, “let me take Flurry.” I gently lifted my daughter into my arms.

Twilight looked Spike over. “Are you okay, Spike?”

Spike raised his arms to check them. “Let me make sure nothing’s missing and then I’ll get back to you.”

If he was well enough to joke then he was probably okay. Thus letting me concentrate wholly on my daughter.

“Is that it?” I looked around us, seeing if any unforeseen threats lurked around us. “Is it over?”

Twilight nodded. “I’m pretty sure I got off the exorcism just fine. Flurry doesn’t seem to be possessed at least.”

I let out a relieved sigh. “Thank goodness, it’s all over.”

“Yep. Now all that’s left is repair millions in property damage to the Crystal Empire and deal with a population deeply traumatized by the last few days.” Twilight gave me a strained smile. “Yay?”

I rubbed my aching temple. “It could be worse.”

“Huzzah! Spike the Dragon has saved us from our terrifying future ruler!” one of my servants called from a nearby doorway. “Spike’s our hero again! Three cheers for Spike the Hero, Vanquisher of Flurry Heart, Bringer of the Apocalypse!”

I groaned as more of the palace servants cheered. Fixing Flurry’s reputation alone was going to be a job all in of itself.

Author's Note

The Dread Overlord of Ultimate Evil Arrives

Cadance

Flurry Heart hiccuped, and a tear in the very fabric of reality ripped open in the sky above the Crystal Empire. I watched through the palace window as it joined the spiderweb of cracks above us. The rifts cast a green light that illuminated the city, reflecting off the crystals buildings and street to create an odd luminous effect. Puzzle pieces, pony-sized toy soldiers, game pieces, and a variety of other toys trickled down through those cracks where I knew they were terrorizing the citizens of my city. Every so often, a yellow or blue beam of my aunts’ magic would run across the length of one of the cracks, closing it. But those moments were too few compared to the number of tears in the sky, and they were losing the battle to maintain our reality.

The sounds of chaos and terror echoed through the streets of the Crystal Empire. Down one street, I saw a small army of toy soldiers marching in file as the ponies of my Crystal Guard attempted to block them off. There was an explosion, and I winced as Spike’s statue smashed on the ground. That was going to be expensive to replace, along with everything else that was going to need to be repaired—assuming we got the opportunity to do so.

“So, do you want the good news or the bad news first, Princess Cadance?” Sunburst asked, fumbling with a couple of scrolls as he stopped in front of me.

The question drew me out of my thoughts, and I looked away from the palace library window to face him. He looked haggard, more so than usual; his mane looked like it hadn't seen a comb in a couple of days, an extra layer of stubble had grown along his jawline, and his robe was badly crumpled and had a fresh pair of green stains on it. He looked about how I felt at that moment. I hadn't slept a wink over the last couple of days, and while an alicorn didn't need as much sleep as other ponies, fatigue and stress still take their toll.

“Good,” I answered after a moment’s thought. I could use some good news after the past couple of days.

A small brittle smile crossed Sunburst’s face, one that cracked as a tremor shook the ground. “We think we know what's wrong with Flurry Heart.”

That was something at least. I glanced at Flurry Heart. We had set up a temporary play area for my daughter in the palace library, and Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were currently watching over her. It would have seemed like a perfectly normal scene if not for the fact that my daughter was covered in glowing red runes. We had woken up the previous morning to find the interlocking and complex arcane setup all over her. That's when the trouble started.

Flurry hiccuped, and a sound like paper being ripped out of a book echoed from outside, sending a brief vibration through the palace. Through the window, I saw another tear in reality—this one yellow, for some reason—join the spiderweb over the city.

“Oh dear.” Fluttershy picked Flurry up and gently patted her back. “Please stop hiccuping, Flurry. Breaking reality isn’t very good.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie shook a pair of rattles. “Your Aunt Twilight says that causing cracks in reality is really, really, really bad. So you know, it’d be great if you could stop doing that.”

Flurry hiccupped again in response, causing yet another crack in the sky.

Pinkie sighed. “Okay, let's try that again, only without hiccuping?”

Momentarily putting aside the havoc my daughter had wrought to the borders of our dimension, I focused my attention back on Sunburst. “And the bad?” I suppressed a groan; I really didn’t want to know, but I had asked for Sunburst’s services to help me sort through this crisis, not sugarcoat the facts.

Sunburst pulled out a scroll and its bottom hit the floor long before it finished unfurling. The not-quite-mage fiddled with his glasses and grimaced. “Um, how much time do you think you have?”

I sighed. It seemed that Twilight had been as thorough as ever with her own research. “Start at the worst thing and work your way down. I'll stop you when I've heard enough.”

“Of course, Your Highness.” Sunburst cleared his throat before continuing. “Princess Twilight and I have been researching the runes covering Flurry, as well as the events which followed their appearance.” He gave me a smile so strained that it looked more like a grimace. “Based on what we’ve discovered, we're relatively certain that Flurry is in danger of being possessed by a demon lord from one of the abyssal dimensions whose objective is the enslavement of the whole world and turning it into a nightmare realm of horrors. We’re working on narrowing down which demon, but it seems that he laid the groundwork to possess her millennia ago. It’s quite a complicated piece of magic, if our hypothesis on the matter are correct.”

My eyes narrowed. “I don’t care how much work he put into it, I will not let him take my daughter.” No demon was going to possess my foal if I had anything to say about it, and as a princess of Equestria, I damn well did have a say in the matter. If this demon lord thought otherwise, then I was going to have some choice words with him.

“Yes, well, we're working on that.” Sunburst nodded toward Twilight, who was sitting at a desk, busy reading through three different books as Spike piled up another stack of tomes in front of her. “That's what Twilight's working on at the moment.”

Twilight glanced up from her reading, her mane frazzled with random ends sticking up and bags under her eyes. “I’m working on a counter to the demon’s magic, but it’s going slower than I’d like.” Twilight scowled. “An eldritch cosmic prophecy has a lot of momentum behind it after three thousand years. I have Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity collecting some things I’m going to need while I work on the magical end of things here.”

Spike smiled up at Twilight, mostly hiding his own fatigue. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Another cup of coffee,” Twilight said, letting out a long yawn and blinking her tired eyes.

Starlight grunted in agreement, taking a seat next to Twilight and frowning at her own book. “Make that a double. Maybe that will help me stop seeing double.”

“Can do,” Spike said with a salute.

He turned to go, but Twilight held up a hoof. “No wait. On second thought, just bring the coffee maker to the library. And the coffee—all of it.”

That was a measure long overdue, if the collection of coffee mugs and trash can overflowing with styrofoam cups was any indication. Spike hesitated a moment, his eyes flicking to the overflowing trash can. “Are you sure you should be drinking that much coffee?”

Twilight groaned, closing her eyes and rubbing the sides of her head. “Just get me the coffee, Spike. Once my niece isn’t going to be possessed by a demon and our dimension isn’t going to be cracked like an eggshell, I promise I will sleep.”

I smiled to Spike and squeezed his shoulder. “Just give Twilight her coffee for now, okay? Once this is over, I’m sure all of us will be more than ready to hit the hay for a bit.”

Spike sighed. “Sure, fine. I'll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.” I turned my encouraging smile to everyone in the room as Spike fetched the liquid fuel of the all-nighter student. Maintaining that smile was a lot harder to do than it normally would have been. “Thanks, everypony. I can’t thank you enough for helping.”

That problem attended to, I turned my attention back to Sunburst. “Alright then, what's the rest of the news?” No reason to stop the bad news train yet.

As if to mock me, a piercing whistle blasted from outside, giving everypony just enough time to leap out of the way as the double doors leading into the library were smashed in. A toy train large enough for children to ride in, painted in a bright yellow, green, and pink, rolled into the library, and brightly colored toy soldiers started stepping off of it—turning to face us and marching towards Flurry.

They didn't get far.

Twilight was the first to strike. A fireball shot from her horn and exploded above the oversized toys, blowing them into burning splinters. I followed up Twilight's attack with an energy beam that hit the steam engine head-on. The beam all but disintegrated the boiler, cab, and coal car and continuing into the passenger cars behind them. What few toy soldiers that had survived that explosion were quickly cut down when Starlight fired a series of quick energy bolts that destroyed them outright. It had only taken a few seconds to end the intrusion, but the sudden and terrible destruction of the sapient toys had been enough to make Flurry start crying.

Fluttershy gently tried to shush her. “It’s okay, Flurry. Those were only the bad toys that were destroyed. We still have plenty of good toys. See?” She picked up Batsy, a stuffed toy bat Aunt Luna had given her. Flurry sniffled as she hugged Batsy and then started chewing on its ear.

Twilight stood and growled as she approached the burning wreckage. “I really hate those things. How am I supposed to get any work done when we keep getting attacked by sentient toys? I really wish we could schedule this type of thing to make Equestria’s invasions much easier to plan around.”

This hadn't been the first time the library had been attacked, much less the palace. Those extra-dimensional toys were causing havoc all over the city in their push towards the palace.

Shining came running through the wrecked doors with a pair of guards in tow, his breath labored from exertion. He had been running all over the city trying to get ponies to safety amid the unfolding disaster, and my heart skipped a beat as I saw that his armor had been dented in several places.

Seeing that none of the attacking toys were currently active, he relaxed ever so slightly. “Aaand I see I'm not really needed here.”

“Sorry, big brother.” Twilight smiled wearily as she dumped the broken remains of the toys onto a pile to the side. “But I'm just not very good at the whole damsel-in-distress thing.”

Shining chuckled. “You do make it a bit hard for me to be the big protective brother and husband like that.”

“It’s the thought that counts, hon,” I said, pecking him on the cheek.

“Sorry about that train getting through.” Shining grimaced as he glanced at the burning pile of broken toys. “They broke through our left flank when a dodgeball swarm hit us hard.” He shivered, a haunted look coming over his eyes. “There were just too many for anypony to dodge.”

I gently took my Flurry from Fluttershy and nuzzled my child, trying to calm her. “We dealt with it. Lets just concentrate on keeping a lid on everything until we can figure out how to fix this. Speaking of...” I turned to Sunburst. “Have we figured out why we’re getting attacked by a bunch of toys?”

Shining scowled. “I’m more than a little bit curious about that myself. I was trained to expect the unexpected when it came to threats against Equestria, but this is ridiculous.”

“Yes, about that.” Sunburst fiddled with his spectacles as he searched his scroll. “We think the dimensional rifts being caused by Flurry's hiccups are a result of the magical instabilities in her body and the upcoming possession—attempted possession!” he hastily amended, flashing an apologetic smile when I glared at the suggestion that some demon was coming anywhere near my daughter. “The fluctuations of wild magic are what’s creating those rifts.”

Shining frowned as he considered that information. “Right, and what about the attacking toys? They’re all over the streets now, and I'm not sure how long we can hold them back.”

Sunburst unraveled another scroll. “According to this, they’re actually the manifestations of another dimension. A sapient dimension at that, or at least some approximation of sapience. Genius loci are a bit of a complicated topic, especially ones this big.”

Twilight stopped stacking the dead toys to give us a wide smile. “I could give you a lecture on the topic. It’s really quite fascinating.”

“Let’s just stick to the practical stuff for now,” Shining said quickly. Considering how many of his little sister’s lectures he had endured as a colt, it wasn't hard to imagine why he wanted to derail the idea quickly. Twilight could be quite enthusiastic when an academic topic caught her attention or there was an opportunity to teach others. I had found that out when I had foalsat for her.

“Maybe later,” I said. “Right now lets concentrate on the crisis on our hooves.” Part of me also hoped that she would forget about the topic by the time the crisis had passed, especially since she didn’t have anything to write with on hoof to remind her later.

Twilight groaned and dropped another chunk of the toy train onto the pile a bit more roughly than necessary. “Fine. Stupid apocalypse getting in the way of a good lecture...”

Sunburst cleared his throat. “Yes, continuing where I left off. This genius loci goes by the name of...” His eyes squinted as he studied the scroll. “Excuse me if I butcher the pronunciation of this: Xykdhthnmpxyzwqjnptsktxvzq-Yjthmwqpzvsmvwqty’Gyqwmzxvypthyyyzxxvth the Unpronouncible, the Great Oncoming Tide of Fun and Games, Master of Puzzles, Purveyor of Parties, Sovereign of Its Great and Fantastically Fun Realm of Itself, and ... you probably get the idea.”

Pinkie giggled. “That doesn't sound so bad! Just look how silly it is to say the genie locust’s name.”

“The problem isn't that it's outright malicious,” Twilight said as she finished tossing the destroyed toys to the side. “The problem is that it wants to absorb our dimension and turn everyone into more game pieces for itself to play with for all of eternity, whatever anypony might feel about the matter. That's just how it is. I have a theory that Xykdhth-um-nmpth—the invading dimensional entity might be drawn to some subconscious desire of Flurry’s to have more toys or have fun, though I don't have much in the way of concrete proof for that yet.”

Pinkie rubbed her chin. “Okay, forcing ponies to have fun isn't very nice. We should have fun when we want to, not ... that. Maybe if we threw it a party it would stop trying to invade our dimension?”

“How about we make that Plan D?” Twilight cast a repair spell to put the library doors back together. “There are a few things I want to try first before we ... well quite frankly, feed into the madness surrounding us.”

Pinkie sighed sadly. “Oh phooey, we almost never get to Plan D. Can we at least promise to have a party once we've saved the world again.”

“I'll add it to the list of things to do once we've actually done that.” Twilight sat back behind her pile of books and scribbled onto a scroll. “Maybe somewhere after assessing all the property damage done to the city and seeing how much all of this will cost us to fix.”

“Joy oh joy,” Starlight grumbled, writing on her own scroll. “The fun just never ends around here, I see.”

“That's the spirit!” Pinkie said with her usual cheer. “Don't let a little something like the end of the world keep you down. I know I don't!”

“Meh, dealing with some sort of world ending problem has become pretty much normal by this point,” Spike said as he wheeled in a coffee machine on a cart.

“I know it has for me,” groused Twilight. She didn't waste any time levitating the coffee maker onto the table and turning it on.

“Focus everypony,” I said gently. We’d be here all day if we started reminiscing about every time we stopped some threat to all of Equestria. “I know everypony is tired, but we need to concentrate on what’s important here.”

Shining nodded. “Like how we beat this genius loci. Any ideas on that front?”

Fluttershy spoke up. “Pinkie and I have tried everything we can think of to try and get Flurry to stop hiccupping, but nothing seems to be working.”

Spike stepped over to tickle Flurry’s belly, making her squeal and flail her hooves. “Yeah, even tickling hasn’t helped.”

Pinkie back over to me and Flurry. “I think she’s going for the world record for hiccuping. Go Flurry, go! Only three hundred seventy-eight days, four hours, and fifteen minutes to go!”

“Please don't encourage my niece to destroy reality and doom us to a fun but terrifying eternity as toys, Pinkie,” Twilight pleaded in perfect deadpan, drinking deeply from her mug of coffee.

“Anyways,” I interrupted yet again in a desperate attempt to steer the conversation back on track. “Aunt Tia and Aunt Luna are trying to close those rifts, but at the rate they're being opened they just can’t keep up—and after going at it all day, they’re starting to slow down.”

“Twilight and I think we can clear that problem up if we can keep Flurry from being possessed,” Sunburst said. “That would end the magical instabilities in her body, and give us the opportunity to close those rifts.”

Twilight borrowed Starlight’s scroll and checked over her notes. “Which is why we’re putting most of our efforts in fixing that first. If we can fix that everything else becomes much easier.”

“We’ll go ahead with that plan, then.” I couldn't think of a better one, in any event. “What about those cultists that snuck into the city last night? Do we know what they're up to right now?” My agent within the city had notified me that some strange ponies had been slinking into my city while we were distracted by the ongoing apocalypse, but the cultists had been a fairly low priority, all things considered. Now, though, I worried what they might have been up to. There was just too much to keep track of when I had to deal with intruders breaking down my palace doors.

Sunburst frowned at the mention of the cult. “According to the spies we sent to check them out, they're part of a doomsday cult that apparently believe that Flurry is their dark mistress who will bring about the the apocalypse.”

I scowled. “My daughter isn’t out of diapers yet. She isn’t becoming the dark mistress of anything.” I really needed to look into if I was doing something wrong as a mother. Flurry should not be central to so much ... trouble. Sure, I had been warned about all the usual trouble a newborn could get up to, but repeatedly causing world-shattering events should at least wait until she was a teenager.

Sunburst gave me an apologetic smile. “Of course not, Your Highness. That’s just what they believe—and are completely inaccurate, naturally. Though there is some good news: it seems they’re fighting amongst themselves for the time being instead of causing us any major trouble. Though they did destroy Spike’s statue, unfortunately.”

“Wait, they did what?!” Spike ran over to the window. His jaw slowly dropped at the sight of the shattered remains of his statue lying in the city street. “My statue!” His lip started quivering and tears welled up in his eyes.

Twilight didn't waste any time to get to his side and nuzzle him. “It's okay, Spike. It's just a statue.”

“Yeah, but it's my statue.” He looked down at the floor and his shoulders slumped. “Why would somepony destroy my statue?”

Starlight was first to answer as she boredly flipped through a book. “Probably to protest against the nepotistic oligarchical class structure that dominates Equestria.” She continued reading until she felt Twilight’s glare. “What? Did I say something?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Twilight told her.

Trying to defuse the situation, I turned to Spike.“We’ll probably rebuild the statue later. You know how much the crystal ponies love you, Spike.”

That brought a smile to his face. “Yeah, because I'm their hero.”

Also, Spike’s statue was—had been—surprisingly good at bringing in tourists, which pretty much guaranteed we’d rebuild it in good order. Not that I was happy it was senselessly destroyed by a bunch of cultists who had troubling misconceptions about my daughter.

I sighed and rubbed my face, reminding myself to stick to business before the Toy Battalion (or whatever their master called them) tried again. “So, do you mind explaining why the doomsday cultists are fighting amongst themselves?”

“That we haven't figured out yet,” Sunburst admitted. “We need to send somepony over there to sort that out, but most of the guards are busy dealing with things like the sentient chess pieces and volleyballs that took over the Crystal Imperial Library.”

“I could help out with the cult,” Starlight offered, almost a little too eagerly.

Twilight frowned slightly at her student as she sat back down at their table. Considering Starlight had run one of her own through some extremely shady practices, it wasn't hard to figure out why Twilight might not be happy about her getting mixed up with those types again. “I need your help here, Starlight. We need to work out the ethereal transfiguration principles on that exorcism spell, and it would really help if I could have somepony triple-check that formula.”

Starlight let out the type of sigh only a pony who had already worked a long day and now had a bunch of overtime dumped on them right when they thought they were about to escape the drudgery of the workday. “Alright then...” She grumbled something I couldn't make out under her breath and started reviewing Twilight’s notes.

“So then, who do we have to deal with the cults?” I asked.

“I could deal with them, Cadey,” Shining offered. “Next to everything else we're dealing with, some cultists shouldn't be much of a problem. We don’t have many troops to spare at the moment, but I think I can pull something together to at least make sure these cultists aren’t going to cause us too much trouble like trying to summon some sort of demon or extradimensional horror. Such as that asparagus demon those teenagers summoned a couple months ago.” He shivered at the memory.

I suppressed the urge to cringe at the reminder. Still, Shining seemed like a reliable pick to make sure the cult didn’t blindside us with something. “Alright then. Good luck, honey.” I pecked him on the cheek.

He pecked me back and smiled. “I'll come back as soon as I'm done with that. Keep Flurry safe.”

“Will do.” I turned my attention back to Sunburst as Shining left. “Any other fires to put out?”

The ground shook for a moment, making Sunburst glance around nervously. “There are those tremors. We don't know what's causing them yet, though honestly they might just be a byproduct of everything else that’s going on.

I sighed, feeling my irritation grow at the knowledge that there was probably some other unknown problem waiting to bite me in the rear.

Sunburst gave me another apologetic smile. “Sorry, Your Highness. Our resources are pretty stretched at the moment.”

“I suppose we'll just have to deal with the issues we can address right now, then.” I gave Flurry back to Fluttershy. “Please watch Flurry for me. I’m going to see if I can help Aunt Celestia and Luna with the rifts. Twilight and Sunburst, prevent that possession. Everything else should become more manageable if you can handle that.”

Or so I told myself. I hoped I was right.

Shining Armor

As prince of the Crystal Empire, sneaking out of my own home—palace—whatever, wasn't the most dignified thing in the world, but I didn't have much choice when the palace was under siege by all these stupid toys. I had to wonder how many of the more outrageous old soldiers tales I heard as a new officer in the Royal Guard were actually true. What was it Twily said once? That the difference between real life and a story was that a story actually had to make sense?

In any event, the secret passages hidden throughout the palace made sneaking out a lot easier than it otherwise might have been. Whether those passages had been made by King Sombra or some other slightly paranoid pony I didn't know. We had put a lot of work into trying to find them all, both to keep anyone from sneaking into the palace and to make sure there wasn't some sort of nightmare shadow monster hidden in the basement somewhere. (There had been, but luckily it was just the one.)

Years of training and a few stealth spells let me and my squad dodge most of the attacking toys, the amorous giant slinky notwithstanding. Soon enough, we found ourselves in the city square dominated by what was left of Spike’s statue.

The whole square looked like it had been at the center of a battle. Most of the nearby buildings now had holes in them, and broken crystal from the street and buildings lay scattered all about the place. I tried not to grimace at the shattered chunks that littered the street. Spike was a cool guy, and it just seemed cruel to destroy his statue like that. Especially when so many ponies seemed to really like it.

But the statue wasn't my objective; that was the dozens of cloaked individuals scattered about the square. My tactical eye quickly noticed that there seemed to be two different groups of the cultists facing one another from opposite ends of the square. As we got closer, I heard a pair of the cultists yelling at one another next to the remains of the statue. Each seemed to be doing their best to yell over the other, making it hard to understand what either of them was saying.

The cultist on the left was an elderly unicorn stallion with a light blue coat and frazzled looking yellow mane. His cloak had seen better days, now sporting a splattering of holes along its flank, and the hood looked like it had nearly been completely burned away along with a portion of his mane. Opposite of his was a young unicorn mare with a dark grey coat and light grey mane done up to fit under her black fedora. Her cloak looked every bit as battered as that of her opposite, and her narrow glasses had a crack running down one of its lenses.

Both of them were breathing heavily as they shouted one another down, and given the devastation around me I suspected they’d exchanged more than words at one point. The other cultists in the square looked equally bedraggled, many of them limping or resting on the sidelines. If they were too tired to fight one another, then they should be too tired to cause me any trouble. That would be some actual good news on a day that had been dumping literal trainloads of bad news on me.

I decided to try and give diplomacy a chance. Trying to arrest this many cultists would be messy, to say the least—tired or not, they had the numbers advantage. Besides, it was a lot easier to try and talk things out and then crack some heads than to try it the other way around.

I marched up and called out to the pair with an authoritative voice that I had perfected from years in the Guard. “What's going on here?”

The elderly stallion jabbed a hoof in his counterpart’s direction. “This heretic is corrupting our faith right on the cusp of our greatest victory!”

The mare stabbed a hoof right back as she replied. “He's holding us back with his out-of-date beliefs!”

I rubbed my brow and groaned. I’d had to mediate more than one argument during my time in the Guard, and religious disputes were always the ones that caused the biggest headaches. Still, it was better than an outright fight. “First thing’s first: who are you two?”

The stallion puffed out his chest in an attempt to make himself appear more respectable—an effect undercut by his shredded cloak and the fact he looked like he had just finished a twenty-mile run when he wasn't used to seeing natural sunlight. “Fluffy Cakes, High Foreseer of the End Times.”

The mare cultist adjusted her glasses as she glared at Fluffy. “Sunshine Rainbow.”

“Acolyte Sunshine Rainbow,” Fluffy corrected harshly. “Remember your rank in our order.”

Sunshine scoffed. “Don't you subject me to your patriarchal autocracy! I’ll let you know—”

“Excuse me,” I said, interjecting myself before her rant could build momentum. “Could I ask what you two are arguing about?”

Fluffy Cakes huffed derisively under his breath. “She's been taught unorthodox beliefs. As I've told her time and again, Flurry Heart is the apocalypse!”

“Stupid dogmatist,” Sunshine shot back. “Flurry is of the apocalypse! Get it right you old fool!”

I ran that through my head a couple of times, making sure I fully comprehended what they’d said. “Are you really arguing over one word?”

“Of course we are! It's everything!” Fluffy insisted. “Don't you know anything about the teachings of Dark Prophet Sunny Days the Foreseer of the Darkest Days of Darkness?”

“I can't say I do,” I answered dryly. Good Celestia, and I thought warlock names could get ridiculous.

Sunshine sighed melodramatically and spoke with the level condescension that only an armchair expert could manage. “That just figures. We're dealing with somepony who doesn't know the first thing about theology. I bet he hasn't even read The Apocalypse and What It Means For You or The Doomed Diatribe On The Destined Death and Destruction of Ponies.”

Great. Not only was I dealing with a bunch of lunatic cultists who thought my daughter was some sort of harbinger for the apocalypse, but they were condescending elitist lunatic cultists. I always hated it when ponies thought I was dumb just because I’m a soldier. I did have a couple of degrees, after all. Still, I bit back the reply I wanted to give them and instead went with something more diplomatic. “Well, now's the perfect time to lay out what you believe in. I'm sure we can work this out if we just talk it out.”

“That's what we're trying to do!” Sunshine shook her hoof at Fluffy. “But this stubborn old stallion couldn’t see the obvious if it ran up and bit him.”

“I'm hearing you just fine,” Fluffy shot back. “You're the one that's being a stubborn little brat who can't listen to her elders.”

Sunshine crossed her arms over her chest, not looking like she was going to give an inch. “Well maybe if you weren't so wrong all the time I'd have something to listen to.”

“Can you two just tone it down while you sort this out?” I waved towards Spike’s ruined statue, straining to keep a friendly tone. “In case you haven't noticed, we’re having a little bit of a crisis right now. The collateral damage really isn't helping.”

“Of course we can't,” Sunshine said, rolling her eyes. “We’re trying to end the world here. It's a little hard to do that without significant collateral damage.”

“Why do you even want to destroy the world?” I was morbidly curious what in the world was going on in these ponies’ heads, even if my better judgment said I was healthier not knowing.

Sunshine answered in a tone usually reserved for speaking to a peculiarly slow child. “Because the universe is a cold and uncaring place that is ultimately doomed through the eventual heat death of the universe. It's best to just end our continual and unending suffering and be done with it, rather than prolonging an ultimately meaningless existence. Duh.”

I frowned as I mulled that over. “I might be a little biased as a successful officer of the Guard who married a bombshell princess and lives in a palace, but that sounds like a pretty pessimistic way to look at everything. Just saying, I’m not too worried about something that’s only going to happen to me long after my remains have been used as fossil fuel by some post-equine civilization.”

“In any event, she’s completely incorrect,” Fluffy Cakes said with a snort. “See what I mean when I say that she's a heretic? Obviously the apocalypse is a good thing!”

I quirked an eyebrow. “How could the end of the world be a good thing?”

“It will allow the rebirth of a new and better world, a paradise,” Fluffy said with a fanatical level of self assurance. “It was foretold long ago by one of our order’s founders, Wobbly Waffles the Unmentionable.”

I looked to Sunshine, not quite sure how to respond to this fresh madness. “And your counterpoint?”

Sunshine smiled smugly. “Any world with sapient life is doomed to suffer gradual corruption and atrophy. The resources of their world will gradually be consumed as overconsumption as greed subverts the moral fabric of society, resulting in a growing state of inequality doomed to collapse in on itself.”

“And?” I asked, feigning interest as I considered how best to deal with these crazy ponies.

Sunshine applied her hoof to her face. “You really don't get it, do you? Figures some dumb meathead soldier would be overwhelmed when I started throwing big words around.”

“I understood perfectly,” I growled. Really, this wasn't nearly as bad as some of the conversations I'd had with Twily over the years that had gone completely over my head. Especially any conversation where words like ‘quantum’ or ‘theoretically’ came into play.

Sunshine sighed. “You would say that.”

“Enough!” Fluffy stomped a hoof. “That is no way to treat our prince and father of our savior. I am calling for a conclave to resolve this division in beliefs.” He turned and solemnly addressed me. “I request that as the father of Flurry Heart, the bringer of our ultimate destruction, you oversee this conclave.”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out as I was too stunned by this fresh bout of insanity I had just heard. Before I could figure out how the hay to reply, Sunshine interrupted the silence.

“Why him?” Sunshine narrowed her eyes. “In case you're too old of a doddering fool to realize, it's pretty obvious he doesn't like either of us.”

Fluffy nodded. “Of course, but he hates each of us equally. What could be more fair than that?”

Sunshine rubbed her chin. “That is true.”

“What do you say, Prince Shining?” Fluffy asked. “If you would be willing to preside over our conclave, do you have someplace we could hold our meeting?”

I nodded as a plan started forming in my head. It might be crazy, but I think I had a way to keep all of this from turning into a big blockbuster of a fight between these crazy ponies. “I think I can arrange something.”

Celestia

“Careful of the rubix cubes, sister!” Luna called out to me.

I ceased trying to close the rift above me and turned to see something brightly colored and square right before it struck me on the forehead. I grunted in annoyance at yet another distraction that kept me from sealing the dimensional rifts above me. I rubbed my forehead ruefully.

Luna frowned at me. “I told you to be careful.”

“I am aware, sister,” I said, trying to keep my annoyance out of my tone. “I cannot work on closing the rifts, dodge, and destroy everything all at the same time.” Case in point, I incinerated a swarm of playing cards that were hurtling towards us.

My sister growled under her breath, launching a lightning bolt to strike down a trio of rubix cubes flying at us. “It is most irritating. And I fear I am growing weary from so many hours of combat.”

I didn’t comment about my own pain and fatigue from our efforts. The madness around us was making for a very strange day. Not nearly in my top twenty, but a strong early contender for this century, certainly.

Instead of letting any of that distract me, I concentrated on the more important matter at hoof. “Just watch my back as I close the rifts. This will go a lot faster if you can keep those things off of me.”

“I will try and do so.” She transformed into a star-filled mist to dodge a collection of flying checkerboard pieces, reverted back to normal, and blasted the checkers to pieces with a lightning bolt. “Though I cannot help but note that our great niece is causing more than a little trouble today.”

“She seems to be making a habit of it,” I admitted, deflecting several darts with a shield spell before returning to the rift.

“We should probably discuss the matter with her parents.” Luna spotted a woodblock dragon as large as an actual one descend out of one of the rifts, and charged it with a flap of her wings. The toy dragon turned to counter-charge. It opened its great maw and spewed a torrent of confetti and party streamers. Luna skillfully rolled to the side and closed the distance. With a flash of her horn, the dragon’s wings were frozen in ice. Not content with that, Luna slammed into one of the wings with her forehooves, smashing it to splinters. The oversized toy flailed as it plummeted to the ground and certain destruction.

“As soon as the current crisis is done with,” I told her. “One thing at a time.”

“I do not remember us being quite this troublesome as children,” my sister groused, her head turning as she scanned for the next threat.

“Well, I could tell a few stories.” I smirked at some of my memories from our childhood misadventures. “But yes, nothing quite like this.”

Before we could continue our conversation, Cadance flew up to join us, dodging through an elaborate jungle gym that was slowly descending towards the city. “I'm here! Sorry, everything seems to be happening all at once.”

“I've noticed.” I also noticed a trio of rubber snakes flying towards my niece’s back, and incinerated them with a beam of pure light before they could cause further trouble. “Don't tell me Flurry decided she didn't have enough toys. I can't help but note how she’s produced a sudden abundance of them.”

“Flurry has more than enough toys,” Cadance answered, a little indignantly. “Besides, I'm pretty sure she's still too young to ask for more.”

“She is also a bit young to be tearing holes in reality.” Twilight was at least in her teens the first time she accidentally fractured the walls of the universe.

Cadance’s answering smile was more than a bit strained. “To be fair, I don't think she's doing it on purpose. At least I can't see a foal intentionally summoning … um, the monster whose name I can't pronounce.”

“Of course not, she's just a child.” I finished closing the rift I had been working on, though I had to suppress a grimace as two more opened up in the sky.

“She seems to have a talent for starting trouble,” Luna commented as she smacked away several incoming dodgeballs.

“She'll probably grow out of it. Probably.”

I picked another rift and got back to work closing it with a beam of magic. “I certainly hope so. I would hate for this to become a regular problem.”

“I would prefer not to have to ask my aunts to help me stop an apocalyptic event every few weeks.” Cadance took her place next to me and cast a shield around us to keep several game board pieces at bay.

“We all would,” I said. “Have you found out what's causing this?”

Cadance’s features hardened. “From what Sunburst and Twilight were telling me, some demon lord is trying to possess Flurry.”

“I see. That is most worrying.” I frowned as I digested that news. There was plenty of trouble a demon could get up to by possessing an alicorn, even if it was just an infant. Best not to let that happen. “And the rifts?”

“The demonic possession’scausing magical instabilities in Flurry that are causing her to accidentally destroy the fabric of reality. According to them, all of this is some sapient dimension that's trying to absorb our reality called ... I forget how to pronounce it.”

“Xykdhthnmpxyzwqjnptsktxvzq-Yjthmwqpzvsmvwqty’Gyqwmzxvypthyyyzxxvth the Unpronouncible?” I hazarded. It had been some time since I had last tried to pronounce its name, so I might have butchered it.

Cadance blinked and then nodded. “Yes, that. Have you seen this thing before?”

“Only a couple minor incursions that were pretty quickly dealt with, but nothing on this level.” A flood of stuffed animals suddenly attacked Cadance’s shield and she strained to maintain the spell. I sent a rolling wall of flame to burn them away. “The last major incursion happened before my time.”

“The good news is that Twilight and Sunburst think the rifts will stop once they block the demon from possessing Flurry,” Cadance said. “They’re working on that right now, and they seemed pretty confident when I left them.”

“Then I’m sure the problem is well in hoof.” Another rift sealed, I gave Cadance my full attention. “See to defending your daughter for now. We will contain the rifts.”

Cadance raised an eyebrow. “You're sure? This seems like a pretty big problem here. Shining and the Crystal Guard are barely holding the line as is.”

“It’s pretty grim, but from what you said things will be far worse if Flurry is possessed,” I pointed out. “I would feel a lot better if you were beside your daughter to protect her.”

Not to mention Cadance would be constantly distracted by her daughter’s plight. That would put all of us in danger with so many threats to keep track of up here. Luna and I had sent our bodyguards to help defend the city after it became clear how dangerous it was up near the rifts. Even with all of our power and experience, the cosmic menace still pushed us to our limits.

Cadance grimaced and looked like she was going to argue with me, but thankfully nodded in agreement. “You’ve got a—”

She was cut off when a particularly large tremor quaked, its rumble loud enough for us to hear from the sky. I looked down to see cracks form in the earth and a great hole opening right at the edge of the city.

I called out to my sister. “Luna, deal with ... whatever that is.”

Luna frowned, not immediately doing as I asked. “You wish for me to leave you alone? Dealing with these rifts all by yourself is no small burden, sister.”

“No, but somepony has to deal with that on top of everything else.” I pointed at the hole, and with my superior alicorn vision I could see figures starting to climb out of it. “We’re badly stretched at the moment, and I want somepony I can trust to see what’s going on down there and deal with it.”

Hopefully playing to my sister’s pride a bit would help convince her to go. That, and everything I said was true. Additional units of the Royal Guard were coming by the train to reinforce the Crystal Empire, but that would take time. Meanwhile, Luna was here and more than capable of dealing with most threats. Even if she was fatigued from helping me close the rifts.

Luna frowned, visibly deep in thought before she sighed. “Very well. I will see to it and return when I am done. Guard yourselves, you two.” She dived and quickly made her way to the new threat.

“And I better make sure Flurry is safe, then.” Cadance pecked me on the cheek and started making her own descent. “Be careful, Aunt Tia.”

I smiled confidently, doing my best to reassure her despite the growing madness around us. “I will. You too.”

That left me alone with the rifts and the dimensional invader just beyond them. Simple, I told myself as a couple more cracks opened in the sky. True, I was tired, my magic was slowly being drained, my wings ached, I hurt in a dozen places where I had been hit, more rifts seemed to form with every passing minute, and I was being attacked by a seemingly innumerable foe while the real threat was attempting to possess my great niece, but the task before me was simple. I would just have to trust the others to play their parts.

I smiled up at the maelstrom, confidence growing in me despite the grimness of the situation. A plan came to me, if a potentially risky one, but I needed to buy everypony else time to get a handle on the unfolding crisis. I couldn't close all these rifts fast enough on my own, and so I needed to take a different approach to the problem.

“Alright then,” I said out loud. “Let's play a game.”

It was a nearly imperceptible thing, but something in the air changed, like how the atmosphere in a theater changes during a critical scene. The various game pieces even slowed, as though hearing something that had grabbed their attention.

A hooffull of colorful letter blocks floated down to me and spelled out a word. ‘G-A-M-E-?’

So far so good. “Yes. I am Princess Celestia, co-ruler of Equestria, and I would like to play a game.” That was the thing about an entity like the Unpronounceable: it was bound by its nature. It was all but outright compelled to accept the offer of a game. Of course, issuing a challenge came with its own risks.

Celebratory fireworks shot out of the rift and exploded into sparkling blossoms.

“What game shall we play?” I asked, hoping it would be something I could handle. This was one of the more risky parts of my plan to distract the Unpronounceable. Who could say what horrors it could unleash on my country if it had a mind to? Still, the slow flood of sentient game pieces falling on the Crystal Empire had stopped, so that much was going right.

Half a dozen colorful boxes floated down from the rifts to levitate before me. One of them depicted a pair of children excitedly playing with cards with unusual images and lettering. ‘Accountants and Audits’ read across the front of the box in big, bold font. Whatever game this was, I hadn't heard of it before.

I checked the side of the box and frowned pensively. “‘Recommended for ages six and up?’ You want to play a children's card game?”

An explosion of confetti, streamers, and balloons fell around me.

“That would be another yes then.” I carefully considered what I was facing.

A stack of coins then appeared in front of me, and the Unpronounceable started clicking them together.

It took a couple of seconds for me to figure out what it was getting at. “Ah, you want to make a wager on the game?” As I had feared, I wasn't going to be able to play a game for the sheer enjoyment of it. That was the problem with dealing with entities such as the Unpronounceable: while you could manipulate its nature, it was ultimately bound by that same nature and would act accordingly. “What type of wagers were you wanting to play for, then?”

Small building blocks floated before me and started clicking together and slowly but surely a city started to form. My eyes narrowed when I recognized the city in question. “So if you win, you get the Crystal Empire?”

Several small pony shaped toys descended into the city and danced about the streets.

I frowned, not liking this new development. We were playing for high stakes indeed. Likely the Unpronounceable wanted to use the Crystal Empire to gain a foothold into our dimension and spread from there, probably by forcing situations where ponies would have to make bets with the entity in an attempt to stop its advances. I would certainly be tempted to bet another city to regain something as important as the Crystal Empire. That could easily lead to a slippery slope of trouble, to say the very least.

The problem was that I was somewhat stuck. If I turned down the Unpronounceable, then it would probably start rampaging in anger over being rejected and make matters even worse than they already were. No, I couldn't risk something like that. I had to put my skills to the test and see this through. This wouldn't be my first time playing high stakes games with other immortal beings.

Having settled on my course, I asked, “And if I win, you'll close these rifts and leave Equestria alone for no less than one hundred years and a day?”

For a long moment nothing but happened, but then the building blocks reformed themselves into a check mark.

That decided, I concentrated on figuring out how to win the all-important game. “I trust I can have time to examine the rulebook?”

One of the nearby balloons deflated, but the entity opened one of the boxes and levitated over a small rulebook. I took it and started reading, hoping I wasn't being too clever as I prepared to bet the fate of an entire city on a children’s card game.