Clocktower Terra Nova

by Fallowsthorn

Rating: mature
Tags: Romance, Original Character, Equestria Girls, Sex, Comedy, Main 7 (EqG), Twilight Sparkle (EqG), Slice of Life, Sunset Shimmer
Length: 27593

Sunset and Twilight find out the Fire of Devotion isn't limited to Equestria. A Clocktower Society story.

This fic is disavowed. That means I don't consider it up to my current standards of writing and I have no immediate plans to fix it. I am leaving it online for the sake of those who liked it and/or want to link to it, but I don't consider it a good example of my work.

Sunset sees strange magic and investigates. Twilight finds strange magic and investigates. Both of them learn a little more about magic, and each other, than they'd bargained for at the beginning.

A Clocktower Society story, focusing on the Equestria Girls universe. Familiarity with CTS isn't necessary but is recommended.

Kinks/keywords: bondage, BDSM, tentacles, consentacles, enthusiastic consent, EQG, f/f, lesbian, dragon, D/s, Dom/sub, minor pet play, interspecies sex, rope bondage, cunnilingus, probably some other stuff that I've forgotten about because that's what always happens.

All art including the cover art was draw by the amazingly talented Manifest Harmony, founder of CTS and generally cool person. The cover art is cropped to give it a PG rating; to view the full version, look up "artist:Manifest Harmony" on Derpibooru or the Clocktower Society's tumblr page.

Published 2017-05-07 19:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2017-05-16 21:43:28 UTC

Two

The next time Sunset was aware of her surroundings, she was dreaming, and more lucidly than she ever had before.

She sat up and looked around. She seemed to be in a lushy, grassy field bordered by a forest on all sides. Stars and a full moon gleamed above her. When she stood, she could see a light fog blanketing the ground.

“Hello, my little - well, pony-at-heart, I suppose,” a voice said.

Sunset spun around and stopped, confused. “Why am I dreaming about the vice-principal in a pretty dress?” For Luna stood before her, clothed in a dark navy gown reminiscent of the ancient Minoan style, solid fabric for the basic structure and a semi-translucent, lightweight cloth overtop. Diamonds studded the dress irregularly to create the illusion of stars twinkling in the night sky, and the outer layer seemed to shift and waver with the fog that roiled at Luna’s feet.

It only took a second for Sunset to take another look, see the darker blue skin, the hair that swirled with galaxies, and the crown and pauldrons made of polished obsidian, and realize her mistake. She dropped to one knee in a deep bow.

“Rise, please. You are by far not the worst thing I have seen while dreamwalking.” When Sunset stood up, both Luna’s face and voice were warm and without reprove.

“Uh, no offense,” Sunset said, “but how come I’ve never seen you before? It’s been... like a year. I get that you don’t exactly have a reason to talk to me, but there’s been a few times where some advance communication would’ve helped.”

Luna frowned, then gestured to Sunset. “Come. I have matters of import to discuss with you.”

They walked some distance in silence before Luna said, “You are not wrong. I have only of late been able to travel amongst dreams of such unfamiliar origin; as well, it seems I am confined to this form when I do. I suspect some Equestrian influence is at play, though if that is so, there is little we can do save monitor it.”

“You heard what happened at Camp Everfree from Princess Twilight?” Sunset asked.

Luna nodded. “But that is beside our point here. What knowledge have you of the Clocktowers of Equestria?”

“This afternoon, I would have guessed that they told time, but I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell me something completely different,” Sunset said dryly.

Luna giggled, which somehow seemed both incongruous and natural at the same time. “You know the story of Hearth’s Warming, then?”

Sunset nodded. “More or less, yeah, the founding of Equestria, be a good friend or the Windigos will come get you?” A thought struck her and she froze. “You don’t mean that myth is real.”

Luna arched an eyebrow. “You seem to have more information than I had presumed.”

Sunset closed her eyes, and when she opened them, they were in the cavern, next to the small but distinct pink Fire. Luna stared up at it, the closest to shocked that Sunset had ever seen her.

“It survived?” she whispered, then shook her head and refocused on Sunset. “You had better tell me how you came upon your world’s Fire of Devotion.”

Sunset took a deep breath, and for a moment reflected that she didn’t feel nearly as embarrassed as she would have expected, telling a princess and a stranger these intimate things she’d felt and done. Bemused, she said as much.

“When you dream, your subconscious is closer to the fore,” Luna explained. “Metacognition slows so as to be nearly absent, unless bolstered through practice or magic, as I have mine. It is good that you do not self-censor reflexively; that bodes well for your mental health and the work that must be done. Now: the information is more important than your modesty.” She gestured for Sunset to take over speaking.

And so she did, running through the events of that night as accurately as she could. Luna occasionally reacted or interjected, but stayed for the most part silent until Sunset’s words petered out.

“That... leaves me a great deal more optimistic than I had been,” Luna said. “And you a great deal wiser. To answer your previous question, yes, Windigos are indeed real, though they have not been seen in Equestria for many centuries. However, I have long suspected that some may have fled to this realm, and they may propagate wherever there is distrust and unrest.”

“And just like in the Hearth’s Warming story, the Fire of Devotion wards against them,” Sunset realized.

Luna nodded. “As a natural fire does snow and ice.”

Sunset stared intently at the Fire. “Judging by the ring around it, it’s going to need to be a lot bigger, and we’re going to need to give it a lot more power.”

“Indeed. The founders discovered that the most ardent fuel came from, well, sex, to put it bluntly. Consensual sex, informed, but still with a power imbalance that came most naturally to the participants. Over time, what started as a secretive group of ponies indulging in their devotion to each other - in such a way that was and is still frowned upon - became a large network of dedicated, and usually quite innovative, like-minded individuals. The Clocktower Society is so named in reference to the original site, which is crowned by a clocktower atop a cliff, some ways from Canterlot. It currently spans the entire world and is responsible for a majority of technological and thaumaturgical advancement.”

Luna stopped and gave Sunset a wry look. “Here is where I would have explained that attempts were made to establish a hoofhold for the Society in the realm beyond the mirror, but after my banishment, the sites languished and were eventually abandoned for various reasons. I had assumed this meant the Fire of Devotion had been extinguished, but it seems there was sufficient residual magic and fuel to keep it going until you and your Twilight rekindled it. Regardless of how it happened, it will take a clever and delicate touch going forward. Now that the Fire is no longer banked, it will draw attention from all quarters, some with ill intent. Your friends may be able to help, but tread carefully beyond that. Interest and willingness must come before obligation; consent cannot be coerced.”

Sunset switched her look of disbelief from the Fire to Luna. “How exactly am I supposed to sell that, though? It’s not like it’s a topic that comes up all the time.”

Luna smoothed the fabric of her dress. “I would say to them this: in your truest fantasies, those that attempt to satisfy your deepest needs, are you....” She hesitated, then closed her eyes. “Do you feel it a great relief to lay the burden of choice at another’s hooves, to surrender your very will into a trusted grasp? Or the opposite, that you are only truly satisfied when that trust is placed in you, and you are so aware of your lover’s devotion to anything you might ask of them that it seems the very air is sweeter for it?”

She opened her eyes, only to find Sunset staring at her, rapt, cheeks flushed and jaw slack. Luna smiled, not unkindly. “Then I think you will not find as much resistance to the concept as you believe.”

Sunset had to take a minute to recover. “Could I...?”

“What?”

“I don’t think there’s a way I can phrase this that won’t sound weird, but do you think I could visit a Clocktower in Equestria? If we can take the structures that are already working and put them into practice here, that saves a lot of time and energy.”

Luna tilted her head. “I can’t think of a reason why not. You may bring your friends, but as their counterparts are well-known in Equestria, they would need disguises. Especially Twilight, whose counterpart’s relation to the Society is... delicate, currently.”

Sunset decided not to ask. “So I shouldn’t write to her to set up a playdate?” she guessed sarcastically. “Should I tell her the truth? I’ll have to say something, I can’t just show up in her house.”

“Actually, you could,” Luna said. “I believe she keeps the mirror in a side room in her castle when she doesn’t anticipate its active use, and a large part of the building is open to the public. I can alert Tall Order, who lives in Ponyville, to the endeavor, and I’m sure he would gladly afford you the opportunity.”

Sunset blinked. “Oh. Well. Okay then.”

“Unless there is someone you would find more suited to the task?”

“Uh - not that I can think of. I don’t really know anyone in Ponyville though.”

Luna nodded decisively. “I shall withdraw and communicate this plan to Tall Order via more traditional methods. There is always a chance some obstacle will make the journey more difficult, but his job is flexible and often involves administration work within the Society. Shall I arrange your meeting two days hence?”

“Wait, counting tonight, or-?”

“It is near seven in the morning in Equestria, on a Sunday. My sister will be raising the Sun shortly.”

“Okay, so, assuming the times match, and it sounds like they do, I can come over tomorrow - there’s no school on Sunday, so I’ll have the whole day. I might have to stay overnight, but the portal is literally in front of my high school so that’s not much of a problem. Also, wow, I can’t believe I just said all that with a straight face.”

Luna hid her grin behind her hand. “On the morrow, then, at noon. That should be plenty of time. Fare thee well, Sunset Shimmer.”

“Um, you too,” Sunset said, watching Luna walk into the darkness. When the last trace of the Princess of the Moon had vanished from sight, she woke up.

Her clock read 7:04 AM in glowing red letters, and just past the blinds, a glowing red sun peered over the horizon.

“Huh,” said Sunset Shimmer. “Kinky sex club with friendship lasers.” She thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. “Here we go.”

She texted Twilight first, electing to take the bus to Canterlot High rather than potentially have to leave her motorcycle unattended in a park all day.

Princess Luna visited me in dream. Said we need more people. Friends first.

Her phone buzzed as she stepped off the bus.

Are you sure it was real?

100%. Get everyone to meet where we were last night? I’m there now.

Okay. I hope this goes well.

“Me too,” Sunset muttered, shoving her phone in her pocket. It took a bit of hunting, but she did eventually find the pillar with what she now realized was a stylized C. Below the C, now visible in the bright daylight, a similarly stylized S had been carved in dark lines on the light granite.

“The Clocktower Society,” she said. She moved to trace the letters with her fingers, but as before, the rock shifted at her touch, folding back on itself to reveal the stairs.

Sunset fiddled with her suddenly pointier ears. “I wonder if that’s going to keep happening.”

As much as she wanted to wander down into the facility itself, she had to be visible to her arriving friends. Instead, she perched on a nearby boulder and waited.

Applejack was the first to arrive, with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy in tow.

Rainbow pointed an accusing finger at Sunset. “This better be super important, to get up so early on a Sunday for!”

“It’s eleven,” Applejack deadpanned.

“Exactly!”

Sunset stood up and stretched. “Well, it’s definitely not boring.” While she’d waited, she’d returned to human form, and the stone doorway had closed. She didn’t change either state just yet, instead walking closer to the group so they formed a loose circle. “What did Twilight tell you?”

“Not a lot,” Applejack said. “Something about a magic thing in the park, y’all needed us here. I take it the shiny rock has something to do with it.”

Sunset glanced back at the hidden entrance. “Um... yeah.” She took a breath. “Look, what I’m about to say... it might sound... weird. Just, before you do anything, keep in mind that at any point, you’re free to walk away, and I’ll never bring it up again, I swear. Please don’t tell anyone else, though.”

Now all three of them were looking at her skeptically - or in Fluttershy’s case, with a look of vague concern. “We trust you, Sunset, but... you’re not in any trouble, are you...?”

Count on Fluttershy to say something unexpectedly sweet. Sunset smiled. “Amazingly, no, that is about the one thing that’s not happening.”

“Great,” Rainbow said, apparently still a little grumpy about being up at the same time as the sun. “Spill.”

Okay. Okay. She could do this. “L-”

“Last night you and Twilight found a super old magic thingie and it turns out it’s powered by BDSM and so we all have to fuck to save the world!”

Rainbow put a hand to her face and scooted back to make room for the sudden inclusion of Pinkie Pie into the group. Twilight and Rarity followed at a distance, making their way somewhat more carefully through the underbrush.

Sunset’s brain caught up with her ears. “Uh, that’s - no, not - well, sort of - how did you know any of that?”

Pinkie shrugged cheerfully. “Sometimes I say the craziest things when I’m not really paying attention and then they turn out to be true. It’s kinda fun! So, who’s up for a kinky play party?”

“Slow down, Pinkie,” three different people said.

There was a pause while Twilight and Rarity caught up, then Applejack said, “So, wait, how much of that is true and how much of it is Pinkie being Pinkie?”

Sunset gave up on fighting the blush that was spreading down her neck. “Magic thingie yes, kink basically yes, save the world maybe, ‘have to’ no. And yeah, it’s-” She leaned back and swatted the rock with the palm of her hand. “Right here, actually. But remember, what I said is still true, if you don’t want anything to-”

“Are you kidding?” Rainbow said, finally alert and interested in her surroundings. “Sign me the hell up!” She glanced at Fluttershy. “I mean, that’s okay with you, right?”

Fluttershy nodded, smiling a little.

“Uh,” Sunset said, rather intelligently.

“Shucks, might as well throw my hat in the ring.”

“Bondage party with friends! Whoo!”

“Well, it seems I have indeed fallen in with the right crowd,” Rarity concluded slyly.

Everyone looked expectantly at a dumbfounded Sunset.

“We were all friends during puberty, remember?” Rainbow pointed out. “Except for those, like, six months where you manipulated us against each other. There was... a lot of awkward fumbling and weird conversations at a lot of sleepovers.”

Sunset shut her mouth. “...Y’know, that explains a lot. I hope you like stairs. I’ll tell you about the magic stuff on the way.”

“...no, Pinkie, for the third time, Equestria does not have a kinky sex holiday. And you, stop giggling!” Sunset threw up her hands in mock exasperation, blithely pretending that she wasn’t also laughing so hard she’d started hiccupping. “Children, all of - hic! - you.”

“Wow, even for me that’s weird,” Pinkie observed.

Without giving the group time to dissolve into more laughter, Rarity interjected, “Darling, I thought you said you needed flashlights when you were here.”

Sunset sobered. “Last- hic! Last time we did.”

That was clearly no longer the case. The Fire of Devotion hadn’t perceptibly grown, but the entire cavern was now softly lit with a gentle pale pink light. It was perhaps not bright enough to read by, but they could certainly see.

“I think it’s warmer, too,” Twilight said.

“Heating spells, maybe.”

As they walked closer, the Fire caught everyone’s attention.

“Oh, that is just gorgeous,” Rarity marvelled.

“Is this in another language?” Fluttershy asked, kneeling to look more closely at the inscription surrounding the floating heart.

“It’s some kind of fusion between an Equestrian alphabet that ponies don’t use anymore, and sort of... 14th? 15th?”

“Fifteenth century, I think,” Twilight said.

“Fifteenth century English, then. I’m honestly not sure how anyone was able to read it. Modern English and Modern Equestrian are basically the same language, but the alphabets are completely different, because we started with different pictograms.”

“Ooh, what were Equestria’s like?” Twilight asked. She’d sat down on the floor with most of their group, to give her legs a break after all the stairs. When Sunset looked at her, she practically had stars in her eyes.

Sunset chuckled a little and walked over to stand by Twilight and put a hand on the girl’s head. Twilight hummed and leaned into Sunset’s leg, while Rarity had what looked like a minor stroke in the background, muttering something about a cuteness overdose.

“I’ll get you a linguistics book later,” Sunset promised. “For now, I figured we should explore a little. From what Luna said, this place could be huge, and apparently there’s more than one. Even if a lot of it isn’t working, there’s probably some stuff that just needs magic to run on, and resources are the most important thing right now.”

With general murmurs of agreement, they spread out around the cavern in groups of two and three.

Now that the lights were on - for a given value of “lights” and “on” - Sunset could see that the main room was divided into three sections, with the boundaries marked by carvings, low walls, or simply a line etched into the floor. The first looked like a sort of atrium, and extended from the bottom of the stairs halfway to the Fire. Sunset suspected the floor plan had been arranged around the Fire, rather than the other way around, but the original architects had done a pretty good job, considering.

The second, on the far left side of the cavern, mainly featured a large, and dry, fountain sculpted out of the wall, and a set of inscriptions to either side. The fountain itself was fashioned in the form of several human figures in various poses; Sunset was too far away to tell much more than that.

The third section, into which Sunset and Pinkie were making their way steadily further, took up most of the available space. It seemed to be both a social gathering area and a terminal leading towards the deeper parts of the facility. There were some stone structures in place that Sunset guessed could serve as tables or benches, but of course any more forgiving furniture had long since disintegrated. Several archways opened to smaller passages, each labelled helpfully in a language none of them could easily read.

Sunset took out her phone and focused the flashlight on the writing above the doorways closest to them. “Let’s see... um... that one says... ‘Gates’? Maybe I’m translating that wrong.... ’Private Rooms’, uh, ‘Eldritch Delights’? And... that one just has a heart over it.”

“I know where I’m going!” Pinkie exclaimed, already bouncing over to the archway with the heart. Sunset followed more slowly, and groaned when the crystal lights flickered into life within the passage.

“Great. More stairs.”

Fortunately, they weren’t nearly as extensive as the steps down from the entrance. If everything was connected by stairs in this place, though, they were going to have to figure out some kind of wheelchair access. Not to mention the fact that Sunset herself wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of climbing up and down what felt like a half-mile of stairs anytime she wanted to go anywhere.

When she reached the top, she was surprised to discover Pinkie doing something so mundane as... sitting at a desk? No, wait. Sitting on a desk. Okay, it was still Pinkie.

“This looks like some kind of post office,” she said.

“A kinky post office!” Pinkie declared.

Sunset shot her a look and walked past her to investigate the part of the room past a low dividing wall... counter... thing. “I don’t think it gets more exciting if you just add the word ‘kinky’ to it. How would that even work?”

“Weeeeeeell, you’d have to tie your package up, right?” Pinkie said cheerily, bouncing along behind Sunset like a balloon in a hurricane. “Make sure nothing can fall out or wriggle loose. And then you’d have to make sure it got where it was supposed to go, so it would have to be addressed really clearly. And then-”

Sunset cleared her throat. “Okay! Point taken.” She turned her flashlight onto the box in front of her. It was the same nondescript grey as the rest of the room, save for the light crystals, but it was clearly made out of a different material. When she rapped on it, it made a hollow banging noise. “...Metal?”

Everything else in the Clocktower was made of stone or crystal, except for the Fire of Devotion. Where had this thing come from, and why?

She explored further down the box, until she found a handle that, when tugged on, revealed the box to be a cabinet full of drawers.

“This is a filing cabinet,” Sunset said, mystified.

“A kinky-!”

“No, it’s just a filing cabinet. There is literally nothing stopping you from getting this thing at Staples. I mean, except for the part where it’s five hundred years old.” Sunset looked around the room again. “I wonder if this is some kind of admin area. If we get more people we’re going to have to figure out who’s supposed to be here and who’s not.”

Nothing was in the cabinet in front of her, or in the next three she tried, but the fifth one yielded a handful of identical badges, with pins on the back so they could be affixed to clothing. Each resembled the bright metallic C that marked the entrance at ground level. Like everything else, they were spotless.

Pinkie snagged six and pinned one to her shirt. “Now it’s official! Everybody should have one!” So saying, she rushed back down the stairs, leaving Sunset alone.

She explored a bit more, but there wasn’t really much else in the room. A few counters and desks had been formed out of stone, and a few metal chairs, though none too sturdy, remained scattered about. Most of the drawers and storage spaces were empty, though one of them did hold what looked like a key ring with several metal tags on it. Sunset pocketed it to puzzle over later, pinned her own badge to her jacket, and wandered back to the main hall.

--Which was, abruptly, a much shorter trip than she’d expected. She turned around in time to see a pinkish-purple mirage fade from view behind her, with the same hue reflected in her badge.

Huh. Fixed-point teleportation. Well, that solved the stairs, at least.

Shit. Teleportation. Magic. Equestria. What time was it?

Sunset dropped her phone on the floor, retrieved it, and turned off the flashlight to learn that she had ten minutes to get her act together and through the portal.

Projecting, she shouted, “I’m going to visit one of the Clocktowers in Equestria! Mostly to do a lot of paperwork! If anyone wants to come with, I’m leaving now!”

Across the room, she saw Applejack visibly shrug. Rainbow looked incredibly excited and then disappointed at the prospects of Equestria and paperwork, respectively, while Fluttershy’s reaction was, naturally, subdued enough to be invisible at a distance. Twilight and Rarity, somewhat closer, conversed with each other for a moment before waving at Sunset and heading towards the exit. Pinkie was nowhere to be found, which after a second or two Sunset decided was both unsurprising and not really that concerning.

“You both want to come?” Sunset asked when she’d caught up. “It’s probably going to be a bunch of me talking to some stallion and taking notes.”

Rarity waved a hand dismissively. “Who says we won’t be taking notes of our own?”

“We found - it looks like some kind of research lab, by the fountain - for engineering, chemistry,” Twilight chimed in. “It wouldn’t actually take that much to turn it into a viable workspace, and if it’s here then there must be a reason for it. I’d like to get an idea of what....” She blushed and pushed her glasses up. “What they might be working on.”

“Not to mention the design aspects of such a thing,” Rarity practically trilled. “This is a secret society, and I refuse to be included in it if we don’t look the part.”

“You know, we could just not wear anything and look the part that way,” Sunset pointed out, mostly to see the flustered look on Twilight’s face. “But sure, I don’t see why not. They might put some kind of illusion on you, though, so you don’t get mistaken for... well, yourselves, but you know what I mean.”

“Mm.”

Thankfully, the badges did indeed let them skip most of the stairs, though the time they might have made up was instead spent on both Twilight and Rarity goofing off with the magic system, having never seen anything like it before. Sunset just waited, smirking and surreptitiously filming the whole thing on her phone for later. The portals seemed to be linked to each landing, so that instead of half a mile at an incline, the path to the Clocktower was about a hundred-foot walk on a level plane - a fact for which Sunset’s knees were incredibly grateful.

When they did finally emerge into the sunshine, it was almost noon, and Sunset shamelessly used the rush to pretend that she didn’t notice the trepidation over entering the portal to Equestria - her own or the others’.

When she opened her eyes again, it was to an empty crystalline room, twelve hooves in a hopeless tangle, and a sense of ambient magic that she hadn’t realized just how desperately she’d missed. For the first time in years, Sunset was home.

Three

Author's Note

It's the first chapter with sex in it! There are four scenes, separated by line breaks, and the second and fourth are explicit. Both can be skipped without missing anything important.

Three

Later, after they’d left, Sunset could admit that it had not been her most graceful ten minutes ever. In her defense, she could use magic again! Normally! With her horn! She didn’t have to walk around on her hind hooves anymore! Sure, she had practice at it, but nothing compared to being the right shape again.

Twilight and Rarity, meanwhile, used the time Sunset had spent cavorting around like a filly to familiarize themselves with their changed, and in one case new, limbs. Their first steps were wobbly, but they soon worked out the implanted muscle memory and, within a few minutes, were trotting around like natural-born ponies. They likely would have given in to impulse and started playing with Sunset, too, had Tall Order not cleared his throat.

All three fillies gradually came to a halt. Sunset offered a weak grin. “Hi?”

Tall Order, thankfully, was concealing a faint grin, instead of any actual annoyance. “By all means, take your time. The Princess informed me that there would be anywhere from one to six of you needing temporary disguises, so I took the liberty of overestimating, as it were.” He pulled out several bottles of what, for all Sunset could tell, was green fire, and set them on the floor.

They looked at each other. “What’s that?” Twilight finally asked.

Tall Order blinked. Sunset watched his estimation of their prior knowledge (and perhaps collective intelligence) go down several notches. “These are transformative potions, my dear, courtesy of the changelings here at Clocktower Equestria East. In particular, these serve as ‘anonymizers.’ They’ll make you look like a random pony, instead of the Princess of Friendship and the Element of Generosity, among other things.”

Another glance at each other, and shrugs all around. Twilight levitated one of the bottles, while Rarity, having had little practice and careful of the glass bottle, settled for cradling hers in her hooves. Sunset pulled the seal off for her. Rarity toasted her, plucked up some nerve, and downed the whole thing in one go, with Twilight quickly following suit.

When all was said and done, two earth pony mares stood in front of Sunset. Twilight’s coat was now a dusty light blue, with a pale violet mane to match, while Rarity was a cool mint green, her umber mane and tail cut into a short bob.

Rarity pulled some of her hair in front of her eyes. “This... will grow back, yes?”

“It will,” Sunset confirmed. “Your cutie marks are different, and nothing permanent can do that. Think of it more like a tangible illusion than an actual transformation."

“Our cutie marks...?” Twilight wondered, and nearly tripped over her own hooves trying to get a look at her hindquarters. “Is that on the fur, or on the skin, or both?” Twilight’s new cutie mark was a pair of glasses frames; Rarity’s, a ribbon tied in a bow. Both were vague enough to mean pretty much anything.

"Focus," said Sunset. "You're not actually earth ponies, either; you've still got unicorn magic, you just can't do anything with it. Same way Twilight had wings when she came through but if she's a real alicorn I'll eat hay as a human. The Twilight from here is, though, so my guess is you're the same shape because...." She shrugged. "Magic, I guess. Yes, Twilight, we can stop at the library before we leave."

“I already know who Sunset Shimmer is,” Tall Order broke in, “but the both of you will need names as well.”

“Cross Stitch,” Rarity said promptly.

Twilight looked a little lost until Sunset suggested, “Emma Leigh.” It took a moment, but Twilight got the joke and burst into giggles. Rarity and Tall Order just looked bemused. “Emma Leigh it is then.”

Once that was settled, Tall Order put the empty bottles back in his saddlebags and gestured for the three visitors to follow him. The walk through Ponyville was uneventful, as none of them knew anyone from the town and Pinkie was presumably dealing with the lunch rush at Sugarcube Corner. It took them about fifteen minutes all told to reach the Clocktower interior and be granted visitor’s badges, after which they were left to their own devices in a great central hall.

Well, to Tall Order’s devices, anyway. He coughed a little to get their attention back from where it had wandered into the far corners and vaulted ceilings of the vast hall. “Now, since this all was a little short notice, I’m not sure what exactly you’re looking for. I could give you the standard tour, inasmuch as we have a standard, but why don’t you save us some time and tell me what you need instead?”

Sunset left off gawking at the decor - though she would bet anything the statue in their Clocktower was based on the one that made up the centerpiece of this room - and gave Tall Order the short version of the last couple days. “So honestly, as much as I’d love to stay here and play all day, it’s probably more important that we learn how to actually run one of these. Right now all we have for resources is a big empty cave, the seven of us, and whatever leftover magic still works; we need to fix that, the sooner the better.”

Tall Order tapped a hoof against his chin. “You could apply for a grant from the Princesses,” he said. “Normally that money goes to new Research Lab projects, but I don’t see why this wouldn’t count as ‘an experimental venture for the benefit of all sapient life’.”

“We’d also like to visit the lab here if we can,” Twilight said. “There’s a space set up for it back at... well, back home, but it would help to have some idea of how to furnish it.”

“Not to mention, clothing is rather more mandatory where we come from,” Rarity said. “I admit I’m here more out of an aesthetic curiosity, but that’s certainly no reason not to do a little research of my own.”

“Hang on - Mr. Order, are bits still made out of solid gold?” Sunset asked.

The stallion shrugged. “As far as I’m aware.”

“What’s the gem-to-bit ratio like these days?”

“That, I’m less sure of. I know Princess Twilight has a dragon who goes through them like candy, so it can’t be that much, even on a royal stipend. Why?”

Meanwhile, both Rarity and Twilight were boggling at the idea of gemstones being used as casual currency - Rarity even more so, since she probably spent a couple days out of the month sighing over the jewelry she couldn’t afford.

“Both gems and gold are worth way more where we live,” Sunset explained. “Two bits buys an apple, right? It could probably buy us an orchard.”

“I have some contacts in the jewellers’ world,” Rarity volunteered. “They should at least be able to give us a fair price, if not pay it.”

“And cash is king,” Sunset finished. “Even if we can’t get what we need outright, with some patience we should have more than enough money to cushion us while we figure out how to get a reliable income that won’t crash the global diamond market.”

Tall Order, whose estimation of their general ability to think for themselves had by this point risen to surpass his original guess, took over the conversation. “In that case, it seems I had better show you three over to CTRL to begin with - the Clocktower Research Labs. They come up with most of the products that finance the Clocktowers as a whole.”

Twilight wrinkled her nose in confusion, even as they started following Tall Order across the hall. “You can’t seriously mean this entire thing is run off the sales of sex toys.”

Tall Order laughed. “Do you brush your teeth?”

“What? Yes!”

“Then you’ve used a CTRL product. Not everything is dildos and fuck machines in there. A lot of it is, but they’ve been operating for over a thousand years. Toothpaste, condoms, almost every kind of lubricant, even pencil erasers were invented by Clocktower researchers. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good two-thirds of the material goods market was owned by the Society under various names. Of course, it’s not like most of the ponies involved are aware that, say, the box springs in the mattress they’re selling are repurposed from a failed restraint project, for example.”

There wasn’t much anypony could think of to say to that, and it wasn’t until they got to the end of the room that Sunset realized they were missing a person.

“T-Emma!” she called, seeing Twilight absorbed in some kind of information board behind them.

No reply, either because Twilight had forgotten her fake name or because she was reading and not paying attention. Or, likely, both.

Sunset trotted over to her to pull her back to the group. “Don’t make me put a bridle on you,” she grouched, with just enough of a lilt to her voice that she knew Twilight could tell she was joking.

Instead of the snort she’d expected, Twilight was silent. Sunset looked back to see her blushing furiously and looking a little shy. “Hm?”

“I might, um,” Twilight mumbled. “I might like that? I think?”

“Oh?” Sunset said, stretching the word out luxuriously. “Well. I wonder just wherever we might find someplace that could help us figure that out.” That got the giggle she was looking for. “After all, it’s not like we’re in-”

“Sunset!”

“-in a secret society just for BDSM or anything like that, nooo-”

“Come on, don’t-”

“-I guess we’ll just have to muddle on through, hope that-”

Twilight hip-checked her gently through her own laughter, making Sunset take an extra step and lose the rest of her sentence. She nuzzled Twilight’s cheek, glad that being a pony made the gesture that much simpler. “If you want to, I would love to see you all bridled up, ready to be led like the good little pony you are.”

And, oh, the blush was back. Not that Sunset’s cheeks weren’t a little rosy, too.

Both Rarity and Tall Order looked vaguely amused when Sunset and Twilight returned, having caught the general tone of the conversation if not the words themselves.

“Ready, then?” Tall Order asked, and at their nods, led the way down the hall marked “Clocktower Research Center and Laboratories.”

The lab was... unusually quiet, as far as Sunset could tell. Most of the ponies in the room were gathered around a window that overlooked a small, clean room with some kind of contraption in it; some of them held clipboards and pens at the ready. One of the researchers noticed them and broke away from the pack.

“Hello there,” she said hurriedly. “Right now we’re running feral dragon strength tests - you’re welcome to stay and watch if you want, but if you need something non-urgent it’ll have to wait. Also, none of the toys in here are safe to use, but if you’re going to masturbate, please wash your hooves after.” She pointed to a sink in the corner of the room and hustled back to her spot at the window.

Sunset glanced at her companions, only to find that they were just as confused as she was, including Tall Order. When they looked to him, he said, “I’m not a part of CTRL, I don’t know what’s on their roster. You don’t have to stay, but remember that whatever happens, it’s consensual. Don’t worry.”

They shared another look, and then, almost as one mind, turned to watch the testing area below them.

Scald panted, letting his saliva drip on the floor. He’d already dropped to all fours, claws scraping across the tile, and the muzzle band pressed hard against the bridge of his snout. It was tempting to slip into character there and then, but he’d signed up to test this rig of theirs, and they weren’t ready yet. He was twice the size of a grown stallion, so there was little chance of him being legitimately forced anywhere.

Right after he thought that, a pony entered the side room they were keeping him in. Scald growled a low warning. The pony balked for a second, wary, but continued along Scald’s side to the latches keeping the dragon anchored to the wall and floor. The pony left his collar lead alone and undid the wrist and ankle restraints first before moving back towards his head. Scald lashed his tail and glared balefully, though he was careful not to actually hit the pony, who had taken his lead up in her magic.

The pony glared right back. “Behave, and maybe I’ll let you open your mouth.”

Scald laughed a little, though it was muffled by the muzzle. Even so, he curled his lip back to give the pony a good view of his teeth. He may have been captured by these ponies, but damned if he would be tamed by them.

A jerk to his collar prompted him to step forward, which he did, if begrudgingly. He was led into a sterile white room, not expansive but large enough that he was in no danger of hitting the walls. In the center of the room, there was a... thing. It looked like it was made of some kind of dark metal, and had a few adjustable parts.

Scald tried to stop, and was surprised by a light sting to his ass. He whirled, growling, as far as he could before being pulled up short by his lead. A pegasus stood near his hindquarters, wielding a riding crop.

He subsided. The first pony led him to the thing and clipped ties to his collar before unhooking the flimsier lead. Another pony, without a horn or wings, approached him and took his head in his hooves.

“Hey, hey,” the pony said. “Listen. Listen.”

Scald snorted and jerked his head up and back. He didn’t get far, and was rewarded with a slap across the face and another smack with the riding crop. He got the message.

“Hey, buddy. It’s okay. You wanna give that safety bell a ring for me?”

Scald lashed his tail again, ringing the golden bell once and oh-so-incidentally snapping the tip against the flank of the pony with the riding crop. He heard a yelp behind him and saw the earth pony struggle to fight a laugh. Scald himself had no such compunctions, and let his amusement rumble through his chest.

“Okay. You gonna cooperate?”

He exhaled long and forcefully through his nostrils. As clear a we’ll see as he could make it.

The pony didn’t wait for more of an answer than that. He dragged a reluctant Scald over to the metal thing and manipulated it so that Scald was more or less locked into it, all four feet on the ground, tail lifted to expose his vent, and head closed in a cage made of a few metal beams, so that he didn’t have more than a few inches to move in any direction. Two bars under his hips and sternum made sure of that.

Despite himself, Scald felt blood start to rush towards his groin. He twisted, but all that accomplished was rattling his new prison. The situation only worsened when he felt hooves gently squeeze the base of his tail. Great Fires, were they going to-?

He couldn’t stop the alarmed noise in the back of his throat, nor the flush of shame up his spine as his sex everted, fully erect in embarrassingly little time. Just as full-throated was the pleasure that came immediately after.

Fine. They wanted to fuck with a dragon? Scald wasn’t so proud as to refuse to take advantage. He shifted a little, braced his weight, getting as comfortable as he could. Whatever the hell they wanted, he only had to be concerned with what he could get out of it. Unfortunately, the cage left him wanting as far as friction and purchase went.

The earth pony reached a hoof between his hind legs, and Scald watched with interest as the stallion teased at his own sheath and balls. At the same time, the mare with the riding crop brought it back to bear, lightly snapping it against the sensitive underside of his tail and thighs. He jerked, but realized that this was retaliation for his sass earlier, and subsided. Once the initial surprise was past, Scald realized the sensation wasn’t unpleasant at all, instead melting into a warm heat that at once relaxed him and drove him further into lust.

The stallion sat on the ground, one forehoof braced behind him and the other gently rubbing at his erect cock, almost aimlessly. He was close enough that Scald could smell his arousal, and for all that he had fought against this earlier, he couldn’t stop himself from inhaling deeply.

The earth pony chuckled a little. “Well, that’s a nice ego boost. Not every day I get a dragon wet without even touching him.”

Scald flushed, but it was true. Precome had begun leaking from the grooves on the underside of his twin cocks, dripping onto his hind legs and the floor. The pegasus mare trailed the tip of her riding crop down one of the grooves. Scald shivered and rolled his hips against the metal bar without meaning to.

The mare giggled and trotted around beside Scald, looking him in the eye. “So here’s the deal.” She idly licked the edge of her riding crop clean, ignoring his expression. “Lucky, here, and me are gonna do whatever the hell I want. If you can break out of that-” She flicked the crop against one of the bars to indicate the cage. “-then you get to come. Any way you want. If you can’t, then I guess we’ll just leave you there until someone more kindhearted comes along.”

Scald blinked.

The mare grinned. “Knew you’d be game.” She strode over to the stallion and kicked his legs apart. Lucky, who apparently had more prior knowledge of this than Scald, lay back and licked his lips, prompting the mare to spin neatly and crouch down, straddling his head.

The stallion tilted his chin up eagerly, lapping at the mare’s sex with very little finesse. He made up for it with a great deal of enthusiasm, and the mare groaned in appreciation. “Aww, yeah, that’s a nice warm-up. Get in there, you know you love it.”

Lucky made some muffled noises, then gave a recognizable yelp when the mare smacked her hoof lightly against his cock. She laughed and did it again, to his obvious gratification. “Isn’t he a cutie?” she said to Scald. Somehow, her tone was conversational, if breathless. “Such a pain slut, but you’d never get him to admit it out of a scene. Gotta get him begging for it first, practically. Good thing I’m patient, half the Doms here woulda just gotten bored before then.”

Lucky was squirming back and forth at this point, and when the mare stood, he tried to keep his mouth on her. She kicked him in the shoulder for his trouble.

“Hey! Did I ask you to do that?”

He refocused on her, hazily, and slowly shook his head.

“I don’t keep you for your creativity, slut.”

He stared at her through the fog of subspace, clearly not understanding what she wanted him to do.

She tapped the bottom of his chin with the riding crop. “Hello? Anyone in there?”

It took Lucky a second to claw up an actual response, but eventually he said, “Y... yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Mistress Thundercrack.”

“Better. Get up.”

Thundercrack directed him with the riding crop, until Lucky was half-bowing with his chest and forehooves against the ground, and his ass high in the air. It was almost invisible, but Scald could see the muscles of his thighs trembling as he worked to keep the pose. Lucky’s cock bobbed underneath him; only Scald paid any attention to it.

Out of Lucky’s sight, Thundercrack snuck a hoof under herself and ground against it briefly - Scald guessed to take the edge off. She considered something for another moment, then set the riding crop off to the side.

“Okay, listen up, fucktoy. I’m nice, so I’m gonna give you a chance to make up for breaking the rules just now. First off, you move or you talk without my say-so, and I’ll cuff you and leave you there and find a real sub who can actually get me off.”

Lucky swallowed and whined, just a little.

“Shut up, no one asked you. Here’s what you’re gonna do to get back in my good graces. You’re gonna tell me why you’re here, and every time you get it right, I’m going to slap your ass as hard as I can. Every time you get it wrong.... Well, I guess you just better hope you don’t.”

The stallion’s tail flagged to the side as he shivered, but he kept quiet and still.

“Good. Impress me.”

Lucky took a great, shuddering breath. He pressed his cheek into the floor to make it easier to talk. “I’m here because you want me to be here,” he said hoarsely.

Thundercrack’s hoof left a red imprint on Lucky’s flank. He gasped out his gratitude semi-coherently.

“Why else?”

“I... I’m here... because....”

“Stop stalling.”

“You... I....” Lucky glanced frantically at Scald, ears flat back to his skull. “I’m here because... so you can show off to the dragon?”

Scald, facing both of them, was the only one in the room who got to see Thundercrack’s expression as she divested herself of whatever idea she’d previously been working with and started improvising wildly. She caught him staring, winked at him, and licked her lips before grinning wickedly.

“Are you,” she purred. “By all means, elaborate.”

Lucky squeezed his eyes shut and went for broke. “You’re... you’re here for him,” he said thickly. “I’m, like you said, I’m a toy, I’m just here so you can....” He trailed off, looking for the word. “Practice? No... you don’t need practice, but he’s, he’s so much better than me, you want to make sure he likes what you want, want to make sure he can follow orders, not like - ah!”

Thundercrack lowered her hoof. “I might be here for him, but I don’t like my toys lying to me. You’re worth exactly as much as I say you are, got it?”

Lucky’s only reply was a soft, desperate keen. To his credit, he didn’t break form. Thundercrack waited patiently for him to come down, and paced in front of him to check how he was doing while she was at it.

“Please,” he gasped. “Please, please.”

She put a hoof on his muzzle and leaned her weight into it. “Did I say you should beg? No? Then should you be begging?” She barely waited for a reply. “No you shouldn’t. Right answer.” She trotted around behind him again. “I think that’s enough for now. Count for me - if you can get to ten without coming, you can eat me out.”

Her hoof struck Lucky’s flank again, and Scald started at the sound. He’d gotten lost in the scene, a little, but now he closed his eyes briefly, hearing his heart pound in his ears. He wanted, not specifically any one thing but just the sheer overwhelming greed that was his nature, the instinctive and singular desire to possess, to keep, to claim. It was an urge so strong and base that it threatened to drown his arousal, but the slap of hoof against flesh and the heady scent of sex brought it to the fore.

He opened his eyes and shoved.

Nothing. Frustrated, he lashed his tail as much as he was able. Fine.

Desperately trying to ignore the pair in front of him, and the increasingly slick floor behind him, Scald rubbed the buckle of his bridle up against the bar at the side of his head. Not fast enough - there weren’t any sharp points to catch on it. He couldn’t get any of his feet more than halfway to his belly. No, no, fuck this, he wasn’t going to sit here trapped and wanting and-

With what little space he had, he rammed the side of his head against the metal bar. This time, the buckle caught and bent, and he ripped the muzzle away with a hiss.

He took a moment to stretch his jaw as much as he could. Dragons, while possessing very little in the way of the muscles that opened the mouth, had one of the strongest bite forces in the world. It was a matter of simplicity to turn his head to the side, close his teeth around one of the bars holding him in, and yank.

With a great screech, the metal sheared away from its previous form, and once he had that initial leverage, the rest of the cage met a very violent, sudden end. Scald wasted no time, and pounced.

He didn’t bother even trying to fuck either of them - he was so on edge that just the friction of their fur against his scales tipped him over into orgasm. “Mine,” he growled.

Scald coiled around both ponies. He made sure they could breathe, but otherwise gave in to the instinct to hold close everything that was his, where it would be safe, where it was supposed to be. He ignored their startled cries. Not done yet. What else? Oh.

He wrapped his tongue around Lucky’s cock and milked him for all he was worth. Once that was done, he turned to Thundercrack, but she waved him off, already clamping down around her own hoof. He ceded her orgasm to her and wrapped himself more snugly around his prizes. His claim. His.

Amid the groans and babble of the scientists, Sunset gradually became aware that her mouth was hanging open. She shut it and (hopefully subtly) wiped a bit of drool away before looking around at the rest of the group.

...Who weren’t in much better shape than she was. Sunset would be lying if she said that didn’t make her feel a bit better. Twilight was blushing beet red even though her light blue fur, and her tail twitched back and forth. Rarity’s eyes had glazed over a bit; she kept lifting one of her forehooves slightly and putting it back down, as if unsure what she was going to do with it if she got any further. Out of the four of them, only Tall Order looked unperturbed - and that illusion was quickly dispelled when Sunset looked down.

They might have stood there for some time, had a dozen ponies not needed to get past them to various workstations. They regrouped in an out-of-the-way corner to have a hushed conversation.

Well, the start of a conversation. What actually happened was that Sunset blurted out, “Isn’t that uncomfortable?” and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Tall Order just smirked a little. “I’ve had worse,” he said mildly.

They stared at him.

He blinked. “Oh. Yes, that did sound a little.... Never mind. I am supposed to be your guide, after all, and it seems rather rude to leave you. This wasn’t what I had expected would happen, but I suppose it serves as well as anything else to introduce you to the Labs. I....” He paused. “I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten what it was you wanted to do here.”

“Uh,” said Twilight. “Uh, there was a, um.” She glanced wildly at Sunset.

“Clocktower,” Rarity said. “Ours, I mean. It needs... things. That.”

Sunset laughed helplessly. “Stars, we’re a mess.” She shook her head in an effort to clear it. “Right. Tw- uh, Emma, you wanted to ask the researchers things, yeah? And Cross Stitch was going to look up....” Sunset groped for the information for a second, then gave up. “Honestly, do whatever you want, but maybe stay in the main hall so we can find you?” Rarity nodded, the haze in her eyes already fading, replaced by a sharp curiosity. Sunset turned back to Tall Order. “And I need to talk admin with you.”

In an undertone, she added to Twilight, “Are you okay if we split up?”

Twilight bit her lip and glanced between Sunset and the ground. “I just - what do I do?” she whispered back.

Sunset stopped and really looked at Twilight for the first time since they’d walked in the room. What she saw was - well, a pony, but beyond that, a person who was utterly out of her depth, not at all used to the sensation, and on the verge of panicking about it. Sunset gently lifted Twilight’s chin with a hoof. “Do you want me to tell you?”

Twilight nodded. Some of her previously faded blush returned.

“Okay. I know you’re-” Sunset paused for just a second to choose her wording, then decided to go with whatever she thought of first. “-horny, and that’s fine, but you’re not gonna do anything about it, and you’re going to ignore it as much as you can. We’ll find someone who’s got the free time to answer questions, and I want you to ask literally every question you can think of. Even if it’s embarrassing, we need the information. Get some paper and take notes. Can you do that for me?”

Twilight nodded, eyes wide and mouth small.

“Good. If you finish before we do, or you need to leave, go down to the main hall and find Rar- find Cross Stitch. We’ll meet up by the map.” Sunset paused, as a thought occurred to her. “Hey, Tall Order, does the actual clocktower work? Like, does it ring on the hour?”

“At seven,” he confirmed. “But it’s only half past one. I’ll keep track of the time.”

Sunset gave him a quick smile in thanks. “Okay, so we should probably leave here at... fourish? We’ll come get you. Okay?”

Twilight took a deep breath, let it out a little shakily, and smiled. “Yeah. Okay. Thank you.”

Sunset exhaled a little, too, in relief. She hadn’t been sure she could pull that off, but she was glad it had worked.

It took about ten minutes to sort everything out with the researchers, but once it was clear what they needed, a griffoness volunteered to show “Emma” around the lab. Rarity had slipped off on her own after procuring a pen and some paper, leaving Sunset and Tall Order to walk to the offices at their own pace.

“So, you gonna put a collar on that filly?” Tall Order asked conversationally.

Sunset did a double-take. “On - on Twilight?”

“Mm-hmm. Unless I read that wrong...?”

Sunset rubbed the back of her neck with a hoof and glanced away. “Um, not... no, I guess you didn’t.”

The stallion’s tone became more sympathetic. “Complicated?”

Sunset sighed. “You could say that. I’ve had a crush on her for... probably three or four months now, but we both have... issues, and I didn’t want to pressure her.... And then all this happened, and I didn’t even know she was kinky, but - augh.” She scuffed a hoof on the floor. “It’s a disaster.”

Tall Order hummed. “Turn here. You like her, though, don’t you? And she likes you.”

“I... I think so. I hope so.”

“Then I think it’ll work out. You fit well together.”

Sunset couldn’t think of anything to say to that, which was just as well, as they’d reached Tall Order’s workspace, a large conference room that he shared with three other ponies.

“So, I actually do requisitions,” he said, “but I know enough about how we run everything else that I can help you with that. Emma’s going to cover how the Fire actually works, so that leaves you with....” He opened a drawer and dumped a sheaf of papers onto the table. “Paperwork.”

Sunset groaned. “I signed up for this.”

Tall Order just laughed.

Predictably, it took about three minutes after the others had left for Rainbow to decide she was bored out of her skull. Because it was Rainbow, that meant she made it Applejack’s and Fluttershy’s problem, too.

“I’m boooooooooooooored.”

“We noticed,” Applejack said, unimpressed.

Fluttershy took a more diplomatic approach. “Well, why don’t we see what’s in some of these other rooms? I’m sure it would be a great help if we could draw a map.”

Rainbow bounced to her feet. “Sounds like an adventure! I’m in.”

“Problem with that,” Applejack pointed out. “We can’t read any of the signs.”

“So what? We can just use the fountain and go from there, c’mon!”

Applejack and Fluttershy looked at each other, shrugged, and followed Rainbow through one of the near-identical archways at the edge of the cavern.

The light from the Fire of Devotion quickly faded, and soon even the crystal sconces lining the hallway were too dim to see by. Applejack flicked on the flashlight she’d brought, glad she’d thought to grab it from her truck.

They reached the end of the hallway as a group, and were surprised to see it open up onto... a cliff?

Rainbow peeked over the end of the ten-foot-wide platform they found themselves on. “Uh, is this it?”

Applejack waved the flashlight around, but all it illuminated was more of an empty void.

“Do you hear that?” Fluttershy asked. She was frowning slightly, with her eyes closed and head turned to one side.

“Uh, hear wh-”

A massive grinding noise echoed from the bottom of the pit. Rainbow and Applejack quickly stepped back towards the wall, but Fluttershy stayed where she was.

“Hey, Shy, you might wanna....” Rainbow started, then stopped when Fluttershy held up a hand. A series of low cracks came from below, then a smoother shifting noise.

“No, it’s... it’s okay. They’re just stretching.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “‘They’?”

A sinuous tendril of burnished, living metal crept over the lip of the platform. Fluttershy knelt down to greet it, letting it twine between her fingers. “Hey there,” she said. “I know, but we’re staying. Um, do you think you could maybe make it a little lighter in here? We’d be more comfortable if we could see.”

In response, pale golden light shone upwards, then revealed itself to be a crystal like the ones in the hallways, perhaps a little larger and a great deal brighter. The tentacle holding it reached far above the group, and with a clear chime, it tapped the lit crystal against smaller crystals set into the walls. At each point of contact, light bloomed in a fractal garden.

“Land sakes,” Applejack breathed.

Fluttershy stood, and a few more tentacles rose up behind her to frame her in mercurial bronze. “Would you like to come say hello?” One of the tentacles shoved itself under her hand, and she giggled and pet it a little. “They’re friendly.”

“We have a tentacle room,” Rainbow said. She looked between Applejack, Fluttershy, and the tentacles for a long second before sprinting to the edge of the platform and flinging herself bodily into the pit. “We have a tentacle rooooooooooooom!”

Applejack, whose instincts didn’t remember that Rainbow Dash could fly half the time, rushed to the edge, only to see her enthusiastically playing catch with the tentacles - with, since it was Rainbow, herself as the ball.

“Dash!”

Rainbow cackled. “Come on in! The water’s fine!”

“Rainbow Dash, one of these days you’re gonna get yourself killed and then I’m gonna murder you!”

Fluttershy hid her smile behind a hand. “They really are quite lovely, you know,” she said to Applejack. “All they want is to make people happy, and they’ve been so lonely for so long....”

Applejack stared at her. “Ah, fuck it.”

“Hmm- oh!”

Applejack clicked the flashlight off, then set it and her folded clothes to one side, near the door. “I like these jeans, I don’t want ‘em with holes in ‘em, and I trust ya, Fluttershy, but better not take the chance. Lessee, how is this gonna work?” The last question was mostly directed at the broad tentacle that had risen up in front of her. She examined it, and it drew level with the platform and flattened itself into a steady surface. “Good ‘nough for me.”

Fluttershy toed off her shoes, watching Applejack gradually acquaint herself with the... thing. “Do you have a name?” she asked it.

No. Need?

“It’s up to you.”

No need. Invitation, touch, crave, need.

She stepped lightly into thin air, and watched the bronze limbs rise smoothly to meet the bottom of her foot, pooling as though she was walking on the underside of glass. Fluttershy took a few steps, then a couple short hops, until she was sure of her footing. She found that she tended to second-guess her movements when she looked at what she was doing, so she closed her eyes and let the tentacles half-guide, half-react to some graceful thing between a dance and a gymnastic routine that Fluttershy would never think herself capable of, if asked.

When she opened her eyes, she saw both Applejack and Rainbow staring at her. She smiled at them, feeling somehow powerful and yet very present in the moment.

“You’re beautiful,” Rainbow said, almost involuntarily.

Fluttershy walked towards her, and felt the tentacles under her feet move smoothly to get her there. She relaxed into their hold as she straightened Rainbow’s hair, until she was no longer standing under her own power. “It wants to touch you,” she murmured. “Is that okay?”

Rainbow looked down at the tentacle poking half-out of the collar of her shirt, then up at Fluttershy, bemused. “Intimately,” Fluttershy amended.

Heart-touch. Skin-touch. Want to be wanted. Want wanting.

“It won’t do anything you don’t like.”

“How will it know?” Rainbow asked.

Tastes bad.

Fluttershy bit her lip to hide a laugh. “I think it has a kind of - empathy, if that’s the right word? It wants to do the things you want to do, and if you don’t, it doesn’t.”

Rainbow tipped her head back. “Okay. Okay. I - did you tell it the rules?”

Fluttershy shook her head, and began to do just that. “Rainbow belongs to me,” she told the bronze behemoth. “You touch her in ways I approve of, or not at all.” Her voice remained quiet, but firmed from the willow tree it normally was into hard oak. “You can be rough, but don’t get her off. Only she’s allowed to do that. You pay attention. You understand?”

Yes.

“Good.”

The tentacles retreated from under Rainbow’s clothes, rearranged themselves a bit, and returned to begin kneading at her muscles, especially her back and legs. Rainbow moaned softly.

“I get that y’all are having a moment,” Applejack said, sounding somewhat strained, “but could I maybe get a hand here?”

Both of them twisted to look at her. Fluttershy’s laugh was politely stifled; Rainbow’s gave no such mercy.

Applejack had managed to somehow get herself tangled in a nest of sentient vines. None of it looked very comfortable for either of them.

Help.

Still trying not to laugh, Fluttershy made her way over to Applejack’s side, leaving Rainbow to the tentacles’ devices. A quick glance revealed the problem, and with assistance, both Applejack and the tentacles eventually made it right-side-up with all limbs attached. The tentacles seemed to enjoy the texture and shape of Applejack’s hat, as they had caught it and now had a pair of tendrils off to the side, thoroughly investigating.

Before either of them could say anything, another three tentacles carried Rainbow’s shirt past them, stopping briefly in front of Applejack to fold it so crisply that a military hospital would’ve been jealous.

“Ha ha,” Applejack said, then, to Fluttershy, “So what’s the deal with this thing?”

“Um, it wants - oh my.” Fluttershy blushed. “I would - I wouldn’t say no to seeing that, but....”

“It wants to fuck me, doesn’t it?”

“It wants to do what you want to do, or at least everything it can. Which is... a lot.”

“Uh-huh.” Applejack looked down at the tentacles around her waist. “Well? Make it worth my while.”

A few tentacles came up to flick against the lush parts of Applejack’s breasts and ass, making her hiss and widen her stance a little. “I said, make it worth my while.”

Bronze limbs surged.

One thick one pressed itself between her legs, so that she was astride it, palms flat on the part of it in front of her and knees against its sides. One snaked up her back to grab her hair, and the gentle flicks became stinging lashes. “Fuck.”

Applejack tried to reach between her legs, but bronze caught her wrists and held her stretched at an awkward angle, so that she was forced to use her abdominal muscles to stay upright. The part of the tentacle under her labia developed ridges and ripples that made her squirm.

It teased her like that for a while, giving her just enough sensation to excite but not satisfy, until a pleasurable ache built, low and hot between her legs. As she watched through half-lidded eyes, a slim tendril curled under Fluttershy’s skirt and busied itself there. Surprisingly, the girl didn’t squeak or attempt to hide; instead, she stroked the tentacle near her shoulder in thanks.

Abruptly, Applejack couldn’t see anything at all; it took her a second to realize that the tentacles had jammed her hat back on her head, and it had fallen to cover her eyes. She snorted and freed one of her hands to fix it. The hold around her other wrist had transformed so that it looked like she was holding reins - not that she actually had any more control.

“Heh. Then get up, bronco.”

To her delight, the tentacles under her bucked, lifting her up just enough to shove another length into her cunt. It molded to the curve of her pelvis, firm but not uncomfortable. Applejack shouted and ground her hips into the smooth surface, rolling her weight so that her clit was crushed between bone and metal.

This was what she’d wanted. Mindless fucking, without the need to worry about her new strength. Living metal groaned under her thighs, pressed closer. “Yeah, yeah,” she panted. “Don’t you dare let up, stay right the fuck-”

Another tentacle wrapped around her hips, forced her to tilt and give it access to her clit. It dived under her and that was it for Applejack, who curled in a tight ball and swore a blue streak as she came.

She didn’t even have to tell it to stay put. It gave her a second’s reprieve and went back for more, giving her the kind of pleasure she could usually only get from her own hand. She didn’t know for how long spasms rocked her body before she shoved her palm against the broad tentacle, but when it finally let up, she felt like she’d plowed a field on her lonesome.

“Holy shit,” Rainbow croaked. “Did you just come, like, a dozen times?”

“Ah love our new hentai pet,” Applejack slurred. “Y’all shaddup.” She rolled her head back, which was about as far as she could get her muscles to cooperate. “Fffffffuck.”

“Pinkie owes me ten bucks,” Rainbow said, in just as much of a stupor from the tentacles’ evidently comprehensive knowledge of massage. “Y’ know what hentai is.”

“Pinkie fuckin’ bet ‘ginst herself. She showed it me. Me it. Whatever.”

“Don’t care, still won.”

As if by mutual agreement, they turned their attention to Fluttershy, who had by some miracle managed to stay clothed, though definitely not unmolested. Her back arched and she shook slightly as she came down from her own orgasm.

“I think that’s enough,” she told the tentacles gently. They retreated, and a few clean ones came up to straighten her clothing where it had been knocked askew. “Oh, that’s kind of you, thank you. Is there anything we can do for you?”

Satisfied. Smug. Sated. Continuation.

“Well, I’ll see what we can do. I don’t think that should be very hard to manage at all.”

“Uh, Fluttershy,” Applejack said, struggling back to consciousness. “What’re y’ promisin’ the tentacle thing we’re gonna do?”

“Nothing we don’t want to. It’ll be okay.”

“Sounds good to me,” Rainbow said.

“Nap first,” Applejack said. “Tired.”

“Mm.”

“Yeah.”

None of them made any move to leave the room, so they drifted off to sleep where they were, cradled in the limbs of a vast trusted thing.

Four

It was 2:15 on a Monday afternoon, and Dean Cadance Amore already wanted the week to be over.

It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy her job. In fact, most of the time, she absolutely loved it: she’d put herself through college and grad school for the chance to foster a love of learning and a sense of empathy in people. She knew most of her colleagues would say “kids,” but Cadance never let herself forget that they were people, and more intelligent and complex than adults gave them credit for.

No, what made Cadance wish she had a good vice to sink into was the people her own age that she had to work with. Sometimes she swore their job descriptions had to be “roadblock.” There was never enough for whatever she was trying to push through: enough money, enough people, enough responsibility, and stars forbid she suggest that the students were capable enough to run the thing themselves.

She was about to slam the drawer full of files shut in frustration, but a knock at her office door made her pause and shut it gently instead. “Come in,” she said, loosening the ponytail she kept her hair in. If they wanted to see her after school hours, they could deal with her looking a little less formal.

To her surprise, it wasn’t Cinch that opened the door, or even a Crystal Prep student. Instead, she found herself greeting three young women: an amber one whose name had something to do with the sun, an incredibly pink one who brightened the room just by walking into it, and-

“Twilight!” Cadance jumped up from behind her desk, grinning hugely, and embraced her former student. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you! How have you been doing at Canterlot High?” She realized she was ignoring the other two, and let go to somewhat sheepishly include them in the conversation. “Forgive me, I don’t think I remember your names...?”

“I’m Sunset Shimmer, and that’s Pinkie Pie,” the amber one said. She smiled at Twilight, and it only took a second for Cadance to pick up on the subtext. Internally, she grinned in glee. That was so cute!

Externally, she said, “Well, not that I’m going to turn down a chance to see Twilight and her friends, but what are you all doing here? None of you attend Crystal Prep.”

“We need an adult,” Pinkie Pie announced.

Cadance had about two seconds to suddenly become concerned, before Sunset put a hand to her face and sighed. “No, Pinkie. Not like that.”

The three of them looked at each other, deciding something, and Sunset stepped to the front of the group. “Okay. This is gonna sound a little weird, but hear us out before you jump to any conclusions?”

Cadance eyed each other them in turn before she finally nodded. “I can at least give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Sunset took a deep breath. “Thank you. So, Twilight and I talked about this on the way over, and we agreed that we should at least give you the option of plausible deniability. I promise that nothing we’re doing is illegal, harmful, or has any potential to hurt you or anyone else. But Pinkie’s right, no one will take us seriously the way they would if we were ten years older.”

Cadance narrowed her eyes and sat back down. This didn’t sound like a petition for an after-school club, and she got the sense that something much bigger than these three girls was going on. At the same time.... “What do you need?” she asked, careful not to imply anything with the question.

Sunset’s demeanor changed subtly. Cadance watched something in her eyes and the lift of her chin turn from unsure to calculating. To her surprise, instead of making her wary, she felt as though she was now on solid ground. Whatever this was, they had it well in hand.

“We need someone who’s willing to negotiate on our behalf with corporations. We need someone we can trust to do what we need them to with a lot of money, someone who’s good at reading social situations, and someone who’s not going to ask too many questions.”

Cadance held up a hand. “I’ll help you,” she said, “but I want to know exactly what’s going on and what I’m getting into here.”

Twilight spoke up. “Are you sure?”

Cadance, still looking at Sunset, nodded. Sunset gave her a long look, and eventually said, “Twilight, can you show her?”

Twilight closed her eyes.

Cadance watched, open-mouthed, as everything on her desk began to float, bathed in a rosy purple light. The pencils she kept in a mug lifted themselves out of their bundle and lined themselves up in order of height in front of her. Slowly, the floating objects drifted downwards until they rested, one by one, on the wood surface. The only sound was the quiet clink of her now-empty mug against the desk.

Twilight opened her eyes, a little bashfully. Cadance stared at her.

Pinkie, naturally, broke the silence. “Ooh, ooh, can I go next? I wanna show off too!”

“No,” both Sunset and Twilight said, emphatically and not a little horror-stricken. “She explodes things,” Sunset explained.

“Just sugary things!” Pinkie protested.

Cadance decided that was one problem too many to worry about, and let it go.

“So... yeah,” Sunset said. “Magic is real. It’s a little more complicated than that, but...”

“I was there at the Friendship Games,” Cadance said softly. She looked down at the pencils in front of her without really seeing them. “I... I don’t know what I thought it was. A - a prank, or.... Everything just went back to normal, so I never....” She looked back at Twilight. “I’m so sorry. I should have asked you if you were okay. Hell, I should have asked you anything.”

“It’s okay,” Twilight said, just as subdued. “I mean, it - I wasn’t, but Midnight Sparkle is gone now. I’m in control, and-” She couldn’t keep a grin hidden anymore. “-magic is pretty great.”

“Friendship lasers,” Sunset confirmed, offering her hand for a high-five. Twilight, who wasn’t looking at her, missed it, but Pinkie more than made up the difference.

“Anyway,” Sunset said, shaking out her stinging hand, “there’s a lot to fill you in on, but the really short version is that we found an ancient magical artifact that guards against evil beings and we need an income to maintain it. We can’t exactly ask the government about it without being dragged off to a lab full of red tape, but we do have some ideas, and that’s what we need your help for. If you don’t like it later once you’ve heard the whole thing, you can say no, but....”

“You don’t think I will,” Cadance finished. “If nothing else, my curiosity is piqued.” She stood, dumped the pencils back in their mug, and grabbed her purse. “Well?”

“You’re in?”

“I’m in. Lead the way.”

Comparatively, bolstering the fledgling Society’s numbers was significantly less nerve-wracking. Sunset just showed up to the next fetish workshop the local kink group was hosting and gave them the elevator speech. She’d gotten it down to a science after realizing that Cadance was by far not the last person she was going to run this spiel past.

“Is this like that thing with the plant lady?” someone asked. She didn’t know his name, but he’d been on the Camp Everfree trip.

Sunset opened her mouth. Shut it. Thought for a second. “...Technically, no?”

“Plant lady?” Autumn asked.

“Look,” Sunset said, trying to get the conversation back on track before she lost control of it completely, “what I’m saying is, I have a space dedicated to kink. It’s clean, it’s huge, it’s got everything you’d ever want in it, and it’s about as private as you can get without going to the moon. Everyone who wants to check it out, follow me.”

Supposedly, all seven of them were meant to be at the Clocktower on Friday nights. In theory, this usually involved Sunset and Twilight just staying after school, while the others went home to do chores (Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash, much to the latter’s aggravation), freshen up (Rarity), or for some reason complete what little homework had been assigned three weeks before graduation (Pinkie Pie). In practice, almost nobody got there on time, and Sunset and Twilight spent enough time fooling around in the proto-lab that she wasn’t surprised to see Applejack and Rainbow Dash lounging around by the Fire.

“Where’s everyone else?” Sunset asked, then considered the possible answers to that question. “Please tell me the answer isn’t one-hundred percent ‘tentacles.’”

“Fluttershy’s in there-” Applejack waved a hand. “-talkin’ to the thing.”

“Like you do,” Rainbow snarked.

“And I’m not real sure what all Pinkie’s up to but she keeps running in and outta here with - yep, like that.”

They turned to see Pinkie streak into the room wearing two masks, a collar, and two sets of wrist cuffs, not a single one of which matched in either style or color. “Guess what I found!”

“I’m gonna go with the collar and mask machines,” Sunset deadpanned.

“How’d you know?”

“What’d you do with the list of colors and crap?” Rainbow asked.

Sunset pointed at the temporary “information board” they’d set up - really a whiteboard mounted on an easel Fluttershy had found at a yard sale. The pamphlets that Sunset had brought back from Equestria East were stuck on it with scotch tape.

Rainbow snagged the one titled “Collar Coding for Newbies” and held it up in front of her, glancing between it and Pinkie Pie, who struck a pose.

“According to this, you’re... straight, gay, bi, married, in a relationship, dating casually, not attached to anyone, okay with fucking random people, not okay with fucking random people, okay with it as long as they ask first, into noncon play, into gentle lovey-dovey stuff, into getting trained, and you work as a maid. Also, you’re three different people.”

Pinkie cocked her head. “That sounds about right.”

Applejack put a hand to her forehead. “Rarity’s decided today’s the day she’s gonna make us all uniforms or whatever, so she’s getting her sewing stuff and bringing Cadance with her. Hey, Twilight.”

Twilight joined the group after blinking at Pinkie Pie for a second or two, and nodded in greeting.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Rainbow said, frowning at the color list. “How come there’s only things for straight, gay, and bi?”

“What else is there?” Rarity asked.

“I’m ace,” Rainbow pointed out, and then, seeing a couple confused looks, “Asexual. It stands for 'awesome'. Ugh, just ask Fluttershy, she can explain it better than me.”

Twilight hummed. “Come to think of it, it’s a little strange that the color codings are for orientation, rather than object of attraction. Even without getting into the five or six axes of sex and gender, it’s not hard to simply misread someone’s appearance, and since these are meant to be a visual shortcut, that seems important.”

For a speech on a subject most people knew nothing about, she delivered it in quite the offhand tone. “What?” she said, to the resulting stares. “I do my research.”

“Thirty-five of the eighteen hundred sixty-four people that attend our school are nonbinary,” Pinkie said casually.

“And you just... know that,” Sunset said, after a short silence.

“Yep!”

“Off the top of your head.”

“Uh-huh! And if you include everyone who’s gender-nonconforming it’s two hundred and thirteen,” she added, as if this wasn’t an incredibly strange fact to easily reference.

Sunset stared at her, and decided this was another piece of information to file in the Box of Things Pinkie Pie Does That I Don’t Question Too Hard. “Oookay. Well, it’s not like we can’t make up our own, since we don’t have to get them from Equestria. Who wants to be in charge of that?” Rainbow, Pinkie, and Twilight raised their hands. “Cool, have fun, come get me if you need me to kick the magic thing.”

They left, Pinkie leading the way, while Applejack heaved herself to her feet. “We really need to get some furniture in here.”

Sunset ran a hand through her hair. “Put it on the list,” she said, not without humor.

“Point. Aren’t you worried they’re gonna come up with something weird?”

“Not that much. Rainbow’s lazy, Twilight’s smart, and Pinkie Pie’s easily bored. It’ll work out. It might involve sex, but it’ll work out.”

Applejack snorted out a laugh. “Works for me.”

“Where did everyone else go?” Fluttershy asked as she drew near. They filled her in while she held her hands awkwardly at waist level.

“...are you trying not to touch anything?” Sunset eventually asked.

Fluttershy made a face that, for her, was probably a grimace. “I don’t mean to say anything bad about the Clocktower, but... it’s just that there’s nowhere to clean up in here. The floor has that magic on it, but we don’t, and....” She trailed off, looking a little uncomfortable.

“You know, I’ve been wondering about that,” Sunset said. “It’s old, sure, but Equestria had indoor plumbing five hundred years ago, even if it was mostly enchanted. I don’t know why they wouldn’t put something similar in here.”

“What about if we can get that fountain working?” Applejack said. “Might be hooked up to some main... thingamajig.”

“Highly technical term,” Sunset sassed, even as they started walking in the direction of the fountain.

[“Collar Coded for Your Convenience, draft 1” by Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, and Pinkie Pie]

All right, listen up nerds. You wanna fuck the rainbow? Pay attention.

Dash! We can’t start it like that. This is supposed to be an informational pamphlet, not a pep rally.

Yeah, yeah.

Why not both? Pep rallies are fun!

Give me that, I’ll do the writing.

No way, you’ll make it all long and boring. Nobody cares how the machine works.

It’s important!

Nooooot really.

Fine then, you write it. Everyone’s going to think “fuck the rainbow” is a reference to you, you know.

What-?! Oh.

Did you really just forget your own name for a second, Dashie?

Ugh, fine, you win, here!

Thank you. ...Does anyone know if this guide we got from Equestria East applies to all the Clocktowers, or just that one? It’s kind of vague.

Nope!

No idea.

Well... okay. Let’s start with the basics, then.

Collar Coding and You

Do we have to call it that? It sounds like a weird sex ed PSA.

It is a weird sex ed PSA.

...oh.

Collars are the Clocktower’s way of identifying submissives within the Society. They are custom-made for each individual and as such cannot be shared or exchanged. The collar also functions as a symbol of implied consent, so--

Ugh, can’t we just steal the intro from the other one? It’s the same until you get to the colors. This is gonna take forever.

Well, we can skip it for the first draft, I guess.

Okay, so blah blah blah rules, whatever, what’s next?

We’re keeping the base colors the same, right?

The white, red, black, and ada- adam-

Adamantite.

Is that even a real thing?

Technically it just means anything so hard as to be more or less indestructible. So probably diamond.

‘Cause that’s so easy to come by.

We’ll figure something out. Anyway, I don’t see a reason to change it. I think the first thing that’s different is the color bands.

The bands or the borders?

Uh - the borders I guess. How are you supposed to remember all this...?

Here! Look through it.

Oh, that’s cool! Check it out, Twi, the masks have cheat sheets in them.

Huh.

So, the problem with the borders is they’re super unreliable, right?

Yep! What if you’re a girl but you have a dick and you’re looking for a guy? Does that count as straight? What if the guy thinks “straight” means his partner has a pussy?

Then he should go get her a cat, Pinkie, we already know all this.

Well, wait. Badges are already a thing, right? So why don’t we change it so that the color means the gender of the person you’re looking for, and then the badges mean their... you know, equipment.

Penis.

Dash!

Testicles. Vagina. Cervix. Vulva. Labia. Clitoris. Foreskin, stop blushing Twilight! I don’t believe for ten seconds that you don’t know what a vase difference is.

Vas deferens.

See? What’s the problem?

I just... a lot of this is new to me, Rainbow! I’ve just been kind of going with it because I like Sunset and she likes me and it’s not like I’m not interested but sometimes I feel like everyone assumes I know all this stuff because I’m smart but mostly I don’t! I’m not comfortable with it, I’ve spent years ignoring all this shit because maybe you lucked out with your kinky friend group but back where all us mortals live it’s not normal and it’s not that easy! I’m fucking terrified that I’m going to say or do something wrong and the rest of you will abandon me because I don’t know all the things you do, and, and, I’m not used to not knowing things. And I know that sounds stupid and it is stupid and I can come up with every single argument you’re about to try on me and all of them are right but I can’t stop feeling like this and I don’t know what to do!

....

Twilight? Do you want a hug?

...Yeah. I’m... sorry, you didn’t deserve-

Shhhh. C’mere. Have a cookie.

Where did you get that?

It’s clean.

Just go with it, post-meltdown Pinkie cookies are the best.

...Mm, wow, this is really good. Thanks, Pinkie.

No problem!

Sooooo you wanna talk about it, or?

Rainbow, I know you too well to think you actually want to hear me talk about my feelings.

Hey! I’m your friend. That means sometimes I do bullshit because it makes you feel better.

Thanks.

Wait, that didn’t come out right.

It’s okay, Dashie. She knows what you mean.

I do. And thanks, really. It’s... complicated.

Is it really, though?

It is for me.

Hey, hey, Twilight, listen. Let me give you some advice, one sub to another. Talk to your Dom. Talk to Sunset. Talk to her. Talk to her.

Let go of my face, Rainbow.

Sorry. But trust me. I’ve been here, doing this, same as you, and it only got better when I talked to Fluttershy. Sunset’s your... Top, or Dom, or Owner, or whatever you have. This kind of thing is what she signed up for.

Yeah, Twilight. And if you take too long we’ll do what we did for Dashie and Shy and lock you in a supply closet until you confess your feelings for each other and realize that you’ve been projecting what you want onto the other person but really you’re perfect for each other and each of you wants to be what the other one needs!

Uh... thanks? I think?

Pinkie, I think they’re past that step.

Oh. Well, that’s okay, something about supply closets is great for romance.

I think you might be missing the point, here.

Heh. It’s okay. Thanks, girls. And you’re right, I should talk to Sunset, and I will. I guess I didn’t realize how overwhelmed I was getting.

Don’t sweat it. ...Cock.

Rainbow!

Penis. Dicks. So many dicks!

Sunset doesn’t have a dick, and aren’t you ace?

So what? Dicks are always hilarious, Twilight.

Can we go back to pretending we were working on something?

Ha! Not a chance.

Author's Note

While I didn't have Rainbow go into depth, if you'd like to learn more about asexuality, Wikipedia is a good place to start. There are also plenty of asexual kinksters, which number includes yours truly.

Cock.

Five

“Do we actually have a name for our Clocktower, here?” Rarity asked. Sunset looked up from her ever-fascinating currency conversion sheet to see her friend staring down at a card half-filled with elegant calligraphy.

“Uh... you mean like there’s Clocktower Equestria East and West and stuff?”

“Yes, exactly. I must confess I’ve only ever heard you refer to it as ‘our Clocktower’ or similar, and if there’s a name for the place carved into the walls, you’re the only one who can read it, dear.”

“There actually isn’t. I guess either it was never that successful or whatever name they had for it was on a cloth banner or something.”

“I can sort of read it,” Twilight objected.

There was a pause, and Sunset realized Rarity was still looking at her expectantly. “Wait, you want me to-?”

“Who better?”

“It should be in Latin,” Twilight said. “Or Latinate, anyway. All the Equestrian ones are in English, so even if some of the names are the same, they... won’t be the same? You know what I mean.”

“Hmm.” Sunset thought about it. “Nothing says we have to stick with the Equestrian naming conventions, either. Maybe a reference to the fact that we’re new? Well, new-ish.”

“And that it’s the first one that’s not in Equestria.”

“Terra Nova,” Twilight said suddenly. “‘New World.’”

“Clocktower Terra Nova,” Sunset mused. “You know what? I like it.”

For someone who’d learned magic was real less than a week ago, Cadance took to the terminology and basic theory like a natural, and displayed a surprising - or perhaps unsurprising - level of interest in Equestrian society, to the point that even Sunset found herself admitting she didn’t know enough about whatever intricacy Cadance had quizzed her on to answer.

Still, there was a great deal that Sunset covered, mostly to catch Cadance up to all the things her friends had learned over the months from offhand comments, magical adventures, and everything in between. She was just wrapping up her explanation of how the three pony races channeled magic when Cadance raised a hand to cut her off.

“You’re stalling,” the older woman pointed out.

“No, I’m not,” said Sunset, who had, in fact, previously thought she was doing a pretty good job of stalling. Cadance leveled a look at her and Sunset sighed and relented. “Yeah, okay, I’m stalling.”

“What about?”

A quietly petty part of Sunset’s mind was glad she didn’t condescend or attempt to say that she wouldn’t be upset no matter what it was. She sees me as an adult. Immediately after: I am an adult. Luna have mercy.

She took a breath. “About what the Clocktower is... for, and how it works.”

Cadance nodded. “I had guessed as much. You get evasive every time the subject comes up. I think you had better tell me the truth.”

Sunset winced. “Are you sure...?”

“Sunset.” Cadance folded her arms. “I agreed to this on the condition that you would tell me what was going on.”

“I... I know. I just....” Sunset sat down on the low wall surrounding the Fire of Devotion. “There’s a chance you’re going to run screaming, and honestly I don’t really know what I’ll do if you do.”

Cadance sat beside her. “Have a little faith. I do work at a high school.”

“The Fire of Devotion is fueled by the emotions produced by a consensual power imbalance in an intimate setting,” Sunset tried.

Cadance blinked once, twice, and then her face cleared in understanding. “Oh! You know, given all the other weird rules that magic has, I’m not really surprised that this thing runs on BDSM.”

Sunset threw up her hands, exasperated. “Sun and stars, did I just somehow go for years without noticing that everyone around me is a pervert?!”

“Yep!” Pinkie shouted cheerfully from across the room, having walked in wearing nothing but half of Rarity’s... whatever it was.

“Ugh,” Sunset said, while Cadance tried to stifle her giggles. Rarity ran into the room after either Pinkie, her runaway work in progress, or both, and started berating her indistinctly through the pins in her mouth - none of which helped anybody in the slightest.

Once Pinkie had been wrangled, Sunset scrubbed a hand through her hair. “So, yeah, that’s what I’ve been avoiding. It’s powered by kinky sex. Mostly. Probably. All the information we have is... poetic at best, except that consent is law. That one’s pretty clear. It’s on everything.”

“Better than the other way around,” Cadance observed.

“Yeah, no kidding. Bet my hind hooves I’d have more luck herding actual cats. At least now you know, so you’ll know why I want you to buy out a condom company for us.”

Cadance laughed again, eyes sparkling. “How in the world were you planning on spinning that one if you hadn’t told me?”

“I don’t even know. Like a good two-thirds of this is me pretending I have any idea what the hell I’m doing and nobody calling my bluff.”

“And you think the rest of us don’t do that?”

“Ha. Point.”

“Hey, Sunset?”

“Hmm?” She looked up from their working map of Clocktower Terra Nova. “Hey, Twilight. What’s up?”

Twilight fidgeted instead of answering, prompting Sunset to set her pencil down and straighten up. “Is something wrong?”

“No! Yes. No? I don’t know.”

“So, yes,” Sunset said dryly.

Twilight gave her a sheepish grin, though it came across more like a grimace. “Um... yeah.” She rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “I... look, just preemptively, I know how dumb this sounds, and it’s my problem, it really is, but Rainbow told me if I chickened out she’d make me run a mile with her-”

“Two!” came Rainbow’s voice, faintly.

“Can we get some privacy?” Sunset asked, pitching her voice to be heard from down the hall.

A pause, then, “Yep!” from five people who sounded an awful lot like their entire friend group. “We’ll be in the main hall,” Rarity added.

Twilight winced. Sunset ignored it, knowing that getting sidetracked wouldn’t help either of them. “What’s going on, Twi?”

Twilight fidgeted some more. Twice, she started to say something, then cut herself off. “I’m scared,” she admitted. “I know it doesn’t make any sense and there’s no reason to be nervous, but....”

Sunset considered. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” Twilight said, without any hesitation. Some of the tension in her shoulders vanished. Sunset smiled.

“Do you want me to talk you through it?”

Twilight nodded shyly.

“Okay.” Sunset looked around the room, privately wondering what in the hell she was doing. “I want you to grab one of those pillows, kneel or sit on it, whatever’s comfortable, close your eyes and count backwards in sevens from a thousand. I might interrupt you before you’re done, so it’s okay if you lose track.”

Once she saw Twilight’s eyes shut, Sunset indulged in a brief but expressive series of gestures and faces aimed at no one in particular. It did help her feel better, though. She fished around in a couple different drawers before coming up with a blindfold and then, after a moment’s thought, leather cuffs and a few lengths of rope. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure where this was going, but better to have it on hand than have to pause awkwardly.

When she was ready, she walked around behind Twilight, who jumped slightly at the noise. Sunset settled a hand on her shoulder. “Shh, it’s just me.” She undid Twilight’s hair bun, letting her hair loose, and tugged the blindfold on, going slow to give Twilight time to realize what was happening. “What will you say if you need me to stop?”

“Clockface,” Twilight whispered.

“Good.” She didn’t do anything immediately, just brushed Twilight’s hair back over her shoulders, running her fingers through it over and over to smooth it out. Twilight made a quietly appreciative noise, a faint little, “Mm,” that Sunset wasn’t sure she’d actually meant to voice.

After a few minutes of this, Sunset leaned forward. “What are you afraid of?” she asked quietly.

Twilight jerked, but Sunset made a vise of her hands in Twilight’s hair, and she settled against the pressure. Sunset finger-combed out the snarl she’d made, then took hold of Twilight’s hair more purposefully, taut enough to tug but not tear. She kissed the top of Twilight’s head as she thought.

“You’re afraid of me finding something out,” she guessed, watching Twilight’s body shift in response. “Of - not of something you did wrong, with what you said before, and you’re smart. You’re still worried about my reaction.”

“I - yes,” Twilight admitted. “And it’s stupid-”

Sunset covered her mouth gently. “It’s not.” She let go. “Unless you’re about to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be paying attention to?”

“Um! No.”

“Good,” Sunset praised. “Hmm.” An idea struck her. Might work, or not, but worth trying. “Twilight, what’s the first rule of bondage?”

“Never leave a bound person alone,” Twilight recited.

“Do you think I’d ever break that rule?”

“No?” She seemed legitimately confused, which was rather sweet of her.

“That’s right. I’m going to cuff your wrists together, and then you’re going to tell me what you need me to know.” She didn’t fill in the obvious conclusion, knowing that Twilight would catch the implication.

Twilight took a deep breath. “Okay.” She stayed silent, obviously thinking, as Sunset brought her hands together in front of her, clipped the two cuffs together, and tied one of the shorter ropes around the whole thing. There wasn’t anywhere to tie it off, so Sunset just stood on the end of the rope, pulling it forward enough that Twilight was obliged to stretch a little.

“I’m scared I’m going to do it wrong,” Twilight said into the silence. Sunset sat, keeping her weight on the rope, and pressed a calm hand to Twilight’s cheek, which the other girl took as a cue to continue. “That I’m going to want the wrong things, or want them the wrong way, or I’m not going to want all the things you want, and I won’t - it’ll just be the sunk cost fallacy in action, and I won’t be good enough and I don’t want to be selfish like that.”

Sunset’s heart broke a little. “Oh, Twilight,” she murmured. Shit. Where the hell was she even supposed to start with that.

Twilight tried to sit up and got stopped short by the rope. “But I know that doesn’t make any sense! I know there isn’t a, a wrong way and intellectually I know there are things I want that you don’t and vice versa, there have to be, statistically-” She quieted. “But I’m still scared.”

Sunset scooted closer and ran a hand over the back of Twilight’s head and neck. “Okay, I want to make one thing clear right now,” she said, voice firm. “You don’t get to decide what I do with my time and attention. Ever. That’s not something you do. You get the same amount of say whether I decide to spend it on you or on trig homework or on whatever else the fuck I want. Got that?”

Twilight exhaled so deeply she shuddered with it, and dropped her forehead to the cool stone. “Yes, Sunset.”

Well that was way more of a reaction than Sunset had been expecting. She shifted and coiled the rope around her fist to account for the extra slack. “You can always ask. I’ll never get upset with you for asking. But letting me take care of you isn’t selfish - taking that away from both of us because you presume to know what I want, that is.” She pet Twilight’s hair. Fuck, they probably should have had this conversation way sooner than this.

“Oh,” said Twilight, a little distantly. “Okay.”

“Give me a color?”

“Teal. Or chartreuse. I like the way that one sounds.”

Sunset bowed her head and struggled not to laugh aloud. “Twilight.”

“Oh!” said Twilight, apparently making the connection for the first time. “Green.”

“Thank you,” Sunset teased. “And the rest - Twilight, I like you, not some hypothetical person who shares all my kinks. If there’s something you need that I can’t give you, we’ll work something out. Maybe with Pinkie. That’s not a failing, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.”

“What if there is something wrong with me?” Twilight asked in a small voice.

Sunset made an exasperated noise. “Excuse you, I have plenty of things wrong with me and kink isn’t one of them.”

Twilight laughed, startled, but it was genuine and it took the last of the tension out of the line of her back. Sunset smoothed her hand between Twilight’s shoulder blades and laughed a little too, under her breath. “If you think there’s something actually wrong with you, then tell Cadance. If you’re just nervous about it, then I am perfectly happy to tie you up and torture it out of you.”

Twilight giggled. Sunset gave her more slack in the lead line and brought her head up to give her back a break.

“Um, Sunset?”

Sunset waited.

“Could.... Do you think I could stay like this?”

“On the floor, or...?”

“No, um, my knees kind of hurt, actually. I meant with the....” She gestured at her restraints.

“You know I’m going to make you say it.”

“I want to keep the blindfold and cuffs on,” Twilight squeaked out, blushing furiously.

Sunset kissed her. “I would love to see you like that. Do you want to stay here or go out and tell Rainbow she won her bet?”

Twilight’s brow furrowed as she stood. “Don’t you mean she lost? I told you what....”

Sunset shook her head, even though Twilight couldn’t see it, and started leading the way to the door. “Nah, not that bet. She knew you could do it. Applejack, on the other hand.” She paused. “I really do need to get you that bridle.”

Twilight nearly tripped.

Author's Note

When Sunset asks Twilight for a color, she's referencing the stoplight system often used in BDSM. Green means "I'm fine," yellow means "slow down," and red means "stop." The Clocktower's three safewords (staircase, clockface, and towertop) roughly correspond to these, though they're only used in the latter two cases.

Also this has nothing to do with the chapter but happy Mother's Day to any applicable parties!

Six

Author's Note

This chapter is almost entirely sex. Thank you to everyone who helped turn this fic into something resembling readable and the entire staff of the Clocktower Society! Have fun!

Six

The Terra Nova Research Labs were finally clean, stocked to accommodate every conceivable need (and a few more besides), and completely empty - save for two people idly debating in the middle of it.

Sunset gave Twilight a sly look. “You want a hypothesis? If I put my mouth on your clit and suck, then you will come so hard you see stars, because I like to think I know what I’m doing.”

Twilight swallowed. “Oh.”

Sunset smirked at her lazily, then blinked. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”

“Um-”

“You have your necklace on, right?”

“Yes?” It hung just below Twilight’s white-and-gold collar, the pendant resting lightly at the top of her sternum.

Sunset hopped off the table. “We should make sure it’s safe to wear during an orgasm.”

Twilight winced. “...Instead of making everything in the room float. Yeah. But wait, aren’t the, um.” She blushed. “Aren’t the others pretty good indicators of that?”

Sunset counted off on her fingers. “Rainbow doesn’t wear hers much because she can’t get a good workout with it on, I don’t wear mine because it’s creepy, Applejack does lose control when she comes but it’s hard to separate that from a normal physiological reaction, I don’t know what’s up with Rarity so we don’t have that data point, Fluttershy’s power doesn’t really have an ‘out-of-control’ setting, and Pinkie....” She trailed off.

“Pinkie kind of defies science,” Twilight agreed. “But what would we do with the information once we had it? We’re the only people it would possibly affect.”

Sunset gave Twilight the blandest look she could possibly muster. “I’m trying to come up with a cute excuse to have sex, I don’t think we have to adhere to scientific rigor so much.”

“But scientific rigor is hot,” Twilight mumbled.

Sunset paused. Her smirk came back. “Well, in that case.” She snagged one of the lab coats off the hook on the wall and shrugged it on. “Who says you have to know what I’m testing?”

When she looked back at Twilight, her sub’s eyes were wide and her mouth slightly parted. Sunset took it as a good sign. “When I get back, you should be undressed and ready for me. We’ll need--” And she rattled off several implements, enjoying Twilight’s mounting confusion as the list went from “spreader bar” to “digital thermometer.” “Three of each, if you can find all of it in here. If not, don’t worry. Once you’re done, sit on that table with your hands behind your back.” She paused just long enough to see Twilight starting to obey, then swept out of the lab down to the main room.

She took a moment, once she was out of sight, to firm up the vague idea she’d been working with into an actual plan. She’d left the room mostly to give Twilight time to go around in circles wondering what was going to happen, but since she’d told her to get extras of everything, they did have the space for a control. Hmm.

Rainbow, when Sunset found her, was doing wind sprints across the short end of the main cavern while Fluttershy sat at the other end with a book. Sunset eyed both of them, then got out of Rainbow’s way and just went to talk to Fluttershy first; she had a feeling that would be faster for everyone involved.

“Hello, Sunset.” Fluttershy had her mask on, a delicate black butterfly shape that stood in stark contrast to the rest of her pastel wardrobe. It matched Rainbow’s black collar in color and decoration.

“Hey, ‘Shy,” Sunset said, and paused as Rainbow reached them and turned to walk back across the room. “I was wondering if you and Rainbow wanted to help with an experiment Twilight and I are conducting.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Fluttershy said, and set her book to the side. “What do you need us to do?”

Sunset explained the short version of her idea, elaborating when Fluttershy asked various questions. Eventually the paler girl nodded and raised her hand, beckoning Rainbow to come back. Rainbow, who was already sprinting, put on an extra burst of speed and skidded to a stop in front of both Doms. “‘Sup?”

Sunset repeated the basic run-down.

“You know my snatch works, right?” said Rainbow, unimpressed. “Like, I totally could fuck people, I just don’t want to.”

“The whole point is not to come,” Sunset pointed out.

Rainbow’s expression cleared. “Well let’s go then!”

Sunset laughed and began to walk towards the Fire of Devotion, now blazing brightly enough to light the entire cavern easily, and then some. “That’s a surprising amount of enthusiasm for someone who just got told she won’t get any orgasms.”

Dash snorted. “Are you kidding me? This sounds like a contest, and if there’s one thing I like, it’s winning. This is gonna be a breeze.”

Fluttershy hid her giggle behind her hand.

Once they reached the Fire, Fluttershy gestured and Rainbow sprang upwards, sprouting wings at the peak of her jump. Sunset was impressed in spite of herself; for someone who had only spent the last year or so intermittently having wings, Dash’s transition from jumping to flying was amazingly smooth.

“How many of these do we need?” Rainbow hollered down.

Fluttershy looked at Sunset.

“Ten?” Sunset guessed loudly. It was probably a vast overestimation, but better to have too many than too few.

Rainbow held her sweatshirt out with one hand like she was collecting flowers in an apron, and poked at the bottom of the Fire. Several tiny embers broke off, and she caught them neatly in her makeshift pouch before returning to the ground, a blissful expression on her face.

“Waaaaaaarm,” Rainbow purred, to Fluttershy’s amusement.

“Do you want to carry them there?”

“Yeaaaaaaah.”

Sunset smothered her own laughter as Rainbow moved the embers to her front pocket for ease of travel. “Well, your sweatshirt’s not on fire, so there’s that question answered. Let’s see how worked up Twilight’s gotten herself.”

Twilight had, in fact, not had time to get herself worked up, and the first view the trio got of her was of her standing on a chair to reach a box sitting above one of the cabinets.

“Twilight,” Sunset said.

“Aah!” said Twilight, and dropped the box. Rainbow zoomed to her side and caught it. “Oh. Sorry. Thanks.”

“You didn’t follow my instructions,” Sunset said mildly.

Twilight fidgeted. “I - I was trying, but I couldn’t find the-”

Sunset cut her off. “I told you to be sitting on that table naked with your hands behind you. Is that what I’m seeing?”

Twilight realized she was still standing on the chair and climbed down. “No, but-”

“Twilight. I’m disappointed.”

“I didn’t have time!” Twilight protested automatically.

Sunset crossed the room in four quick strides, palmed a carabiner off the table, and spun Twilight around and locked her wrist cuffs together behind her before the other girl realized what was happening. A mean little part of her wanted to kick the back of Twilight’s knees to force her to kneel, but the floor was hard stone and too rough to indulge that impulse safely.

Instead, she stepped back and folded her arms. “What did I tell you to do?”

Twilight glanced back at her, confused. “Get the stuff out, get undressed and sit on the table?”

Sunset sighed, maybe overdoing it a little. “You’re incredibly smart, Twilight. I told you to find the items we needed, but not to worry if you couldn’t.”

Twilight blinked once before understanding lit up her face. “Oh! The important part was the sitting on the table, not the getting stuff!” She visibly replayed that sentence in her head and her expression wilted. “Oh.”

“Oh.” Sunset arched an eyebrow. Damn, but Twilight was cute when she learned something new.

“I, um-” Twilight looked around at herself, and then the floor, and then Sunset. She almost had her intentions stamped on her forehead, so clearly did she broadcast “I would do that now but I am tied up but this is my own fault, oh no what do I do.” “...Sorry,” she tried.

Sunset relented. “You’ll do better next time, won’t you?” Twilight nodded vigorously. “That’s good, because I had a surprise for you, but now you’re going to have to wait to find out what it is.” She considered. “Try and get your clothes off like that. You can lean on things if you need to. If you can’t do it without uncuffing your hands or getting help, you don’t get to come today.”

Twilight gave her a wide-eyed look and started squirming around.

Sunset wanted to watch, but since this had gone from nonsense banter to actual science, she had to help set up the rest of the equipment. “Could I get you guys to help me with this part?” she asked Fluttershy, who nodded. “Okay, so which way is closer to the... okay. Here, can you-?”

When all was said and done, six small stations dotted the room, each with variations on the theme of “an ember of Devotion with a thermometer and an infrared camera pointed at it.” The remaining four embers sat in a glass bowl, while Rainbow sat on the table next to them, looking anticipatory and shucking her clothes off.

Sunset checked on Twilight. She’d made a formidable amount of progress for someone with her hands cuffed together; her skirt, shoes, leggings, and underwear were in a pile on the floor, and she was currently frowning at her button-down shirt.

“It could have been worse,” Sunset pointed out, when Twilight noticed her watching. “You could have worn that sweater-vest thing.” She leaned one hip against the side of the table, grinning shamelessly. Honestly, she wasn’t sure what she would do in Twilight’s place, and was curious to see what Twilight could come up with.

What Twilight came up with was a pencil, which she held between her teeth. She sat against the edge of the table and her eyes unfocused - it took Sunset a moment to realize she was concentrating on undoing the buttons at the ends of her sleeves, to give herself more room to move.

Once she had that, she tugged on each sleeve with the opposite hand, so that the front of her shirt rucked upwards and she could reach the top button with the tip of the pencil. Unfortunately, all she managed to do was draw some squiggles around and on the button. She didn’t have enough dexterity to slide the button back through its hole while keeping the fabric taut.

Drool started to slide down the pencil, and Twilight finally abandoned it with a frustrated noise. Sunset started forward to help her, but stopped short at Twilight’s, “I can get it!”

“Okay,” she said, amused and somewhat skeptical.

Twilight craned her neck forward, but she wasn’t flexible enough to grab the buttons directly with her mouth, and her collar stopped her from touching her chin to her chest. She gave up on that and shrugged the shirt back to where it was supposed to sit. “I like this shirt,” she muttered.

“Hey, Twi,” Dash said.

“Wh - eep!”

Rainbow cracked up, and would have fallen off the table were it not for Fluttershy. Twilight, who had been focused on her clothes and mostly facing the other way, had failed to notice Fluttershy cuffing Rainbow’s hands above her head and attaching a spreader bar to her ankle cuffs. Rainbow fell on her back on the table, still giggling. Fluttershy, who was smiling too, gently covered Rainbow’s mouth with one hand, and held it there firmly until Rainbow subsided, the muscles of her back and neck relaxing. She blinked slowly at Fluttershy.

Twilight hadn’t been able to look away for long, and Sunset was unrepentantly staring at all three of the other people in the room. Twilight’s mouth was open slightly, her eyes wide and drinking in every detail.

Fluttershy took her hand off Rainbow’s mouth. Rainbow licked her lips and rolled her head to look at Twilight. “See if you can step out of it.”

Twilight gave her an utterly confused look, and then it clicked. She bent backwards, then forwards, trying to find a good angle, then eventually crouched. For all that she lacked much muscle definition, Twilight had long arms and narrow hips, and those facts combined with a lot of determined wriggling resulted in Twilight’s still-cuffed hands behind her knees instead of behind her back.

“I’m legitimately impressed,” Sunset put in.

Twilight pulled one leg and then the other through the hoop her arms created, took a moment to roll out her shoulders, and smugly undid the buttons of her shirt. Her bra was the sort that clasped in the front, and she looked very pleased with herself for it. She smiled at Sunset, though she couldn’t stop the edges of it from turning into a smirk.

“Good girl,” Sunset said, and stepped forward to unclip Twilight’s cuffs. “No, no, this doesn’t count,” she added to forestall that balk she could see coming. “I don’t want to mess around with your shirt. Stretch your arms out a little.” She gathered up the various articles of clothing on the floor and stashed them on the counter at the front of the room, then returned to Twilight. “Arms up.”

Twilight glanced at Rainbow, who was chilling in a slightly more elaborate set-up than Twilight had last seen: a rope stretched her arms above her head and anchored them to the table, while a second rope anchored the spreader bar to the floor, so that Dash was more or less pinned on her back with her belly exposed. Twilight studied her for a second, then laid back in approximately the same pose.

“Clever girl,” Sunset praised her, before remembering that most people thought of that as a line from a movie. Oh well. It made trussing Twilight up easier, after which she ducked under the table to grab the handful of leather and metal she’d hidden there earlier. When she straightened, Twilight lifted her head the few inches she could to try and see what was going on.

Sunset put her hands behind her back. “How much of a surprise do you want this to be?”

Twilight stared at her, then at her midsection, as though if she tried hard enough she would be able to see through Sunset. “I want to know!”

Sunset laughed. “Yeah, okay, I should’ve guessed that one.” She brought her hands out, revealing the strappy bridle she’d had made for Twilight. It was spare, with a minimalistic approach to its cheek and brow pieces. The straps were thin and a plain brown, though on a whim Sunset had gotten the metal bit tinted lavender.

Twilight gasped.

“You want it on you?”

“Yes.”

Sunset pulled Twilight’s ponytail out of the way and slid the bit between her teeth. Twilight, a little overeager, grabbed onto it, then held her head up to let Sunset buckle each pair of straps snugly.

“Is that comfortable? What’s your safe signal?”

Twilight rapped her knuckles against the table three times in a row.

Sunset smiled, then on impulse kissed Twilight. With the bit in the way, she mostly tasted steel and salt.

“Can we get going yet, or what?” Rainbow complained.

Fluttershy put a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder. She didn’t use any force, or say anything aloud, but it still prompted a, “Sorry,” from Dash.

Sunset grabbed an ember out of the bowl. “So the whole point of this is pretty much to see what... well, what happens when we do different things.” She grimaced a little. “As much as I’d like to have a more detailed hypothesis than that, we really don’t have any idea how this thing works. Every five minutes, Fluttershy and I will take notes on each ember, including the ones on you and Twilight here. Rainbow is acting as the control, and won’t come if she can help it. Twilight, you can come as much as you want, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop.”

So saying, she followed suit (heh) in taking her clothes off, leaving them with Twilight’s, and double-checking the equipment was working while she was at it. Then came the fun part.

She started slowly, mindful of Twilight’s inexperience and well aware of the effect of prolonging foreplay. She ran her hands over Twilight’s body, following everywhere she touched with the ember, and for a moment wishing intently that she still had a unicorn’s built-in levitation magic. Twilight made quite a number of wonderful noises, but seemed mostly confused.

That is, until Sunset dipped the ember lower, skating across Twilight’s groin before immediately moving away and going back to circling. Twilight groaned, realizing where this was going, and mock-glared at Sunset, who responded with the most innocent smile she could manage with a straight face.

This was going to be fun.

Much to her dismay, she did eventually have to leave off torturing Twilight to take notes on the other embers. She moved the one she was holding away from Twilight’s vulva and let it rest just below her sternum. Twilight whined.

“Oh, c’mon,” Rainbow said. “It’s not that bad.”

Everyone in the room gave her the same unimpressed look.

Fluttershy and Sunset switched places, making a circuit around the room as they did so. The readings on the other embers had mostly not varied, save for a slight increase in temperature on the ones closest to the side of the room facing the main cavern, but Sunset was itching to get her hands on that video data.

That, however, would have to wait. “So I take it you’re doing fine,” Sunset guessed dryly.

Rainbow blew out a long gusty sigh. “Uh, yeah. This one time I rigged up a vibe so it would stay put and then waited to see if it would do anything? This is like that but warm instead of... buzzy.”

“Huh,” said Sunset, writing most of this down. "Fluttershy's not really doing much with you, though, is she?"

"No. It'd be weird." At Sunset's arched eyebrow, Rainbow continued, "I don't really... like coming? Honestly it kinda hurts. I rub one out once in a while but it wouldn't really be fair to make Flutters guess which five minutes in the next two months I'm gonna be horny enough to get off. So it's just a soft limit for us. Anyway, the point is we'd both feel creeped out if she was actually trying."

“So you wouldn’t say it’s having any effect?”

Rainbow shrugged, which was kind of interesting to watch, given her position. “Not physically, but, like. I feel super subby and all I’ve done is lie here. Usually it takes an hour’s workout to get me like this.”

“Well, it is the Fire of Devotion, not the Fire of Orgasms,” Sunset said absently. Half her attention was on the paper in front of her; the other half was focused on Fluttershy talking quietly to Twilight.

“Oh, I know, and you’re doing so well, but you’re not mine, and it wouldn’t be very nice of me to touch someone else’s things, would it?”

Rainbow gave Sunset a wry look. “This is gonna be a short experiment, isn’t it?”

Sunset tapped her lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. “You shut up.”

Fluttershy appeared next to Sunset just in time for Rainbow to start melodramatically whining about “she hit me!”

“No, she didn’t,” Fluttershy said serenely. “Unless you want me to consider that my new definition of the word ‘hit’?”

Sunset made her way back to Twilight, tuning out Dash’s frantic backpedalling. “You doing okay?”

Twilight looked up at her with a gaze like honey and nodded.

“Good.” Sunset climbed on the table and swung one leg over Twilight’s torso. “‘Cause now it’s my turn.”

“Mm!” said Twilight, and picked her head up as far as she could, straining forward.

Sunset laughed. “Stars, you’re cute. C’mere.”

It took some maneuvering, but Sunset got herself scooted up so her knees were on either side of Twilight’s head and her weight was mostly braced on her hands. Twilight got impatient and licked the inside of Sunset’s thigh, which was all she could reach.

Sunset giggled and gently eased herself down. She didn’t want to overwhelm Twilight.

Oh, fuck, fuck, somehow she’d forgotten the bit in Twilight’s mouth, fucking Tartarus that was fantastic. She rolled her hips without meaning to, then did it again on purpose when Twilight gave her an enthusiastic noise. “You can’t have done this before,” she gasped. “How are you this good at it.”

Snickering came from her right. Sunset flipped the bird in vaguely the correct direction, which just made Rainbow giggle harder and Fluttershy join in.

“Fuck it, whatever.” Sunset arched her back and reveled in Twilight’s eager exploration, jolting when her tongue knocked the metal against Sunset’s clit. Twilight noticed, and messed with the bridle so she could do it again, and then in sequence.

“Have I mentioned how much I love it when you learn things,” Sunset growled. “Yeah, yeah, ffffffuck, I’m almost - ah!”

Her orgasm was the quick bright thing it had always been, and she moved as soon as she could to give Twilight room to inhale, catching her own breath at the same time. She felt herself drip on the table and couldn’t muster up the energy to care.

She kissed Twilight slowly, as thanks, tasting her own musk and come against the clinical steel.

“That was fantastic,” she whispered. Twilight hummed. “I think you deserve a reward for that.”

She hopped off the table, grimaced, then fished out a clean washcloth from one of the cabinets. That would keep the mess between her legs from smearing and drying on her skin, at least. She tossed it onto one of the empty tables before turning her attention back to Twilight.

First things first: she retrieved the ember from Twilight’s belly, prompting a protest that got summarily ignored. Hmm, what was the best way to...? Gingerly, she touched the ember to the fold of flesh above Twilight’s clitoris, only to draw it back, startled, when Twilight yelped and jerked.

“Uh, are you okay?”

Twilight smiled sheepishly around the bit and nodded. “Suhsi’ive.”

Sunset switched tactics, and slid the ember between Twilight’s labia, holding it nestled against the entrance to her vagina. She brought her free hand up to play with the swollen, slick pink above that, trying to not-quite-touch Twilight’s clit - at least, until Twilight whimpered and squirmed, and there went that plan.

Sunset swiped her fingers across Twilight's cunt, deliberately without precision. She tapped and tugged gently, making a note of which movements made Twilight buck and moan involuntarily. Twilight, shuddering, arched like a drawn bow when she came, and at that, Sunset backed off, satisfied.

For a moment, the only sound was Twilight’s panting. Sunset leaned heavily on the table, setting the ember to the side, and rested one hand on Twilight’s hip to ground them both. After a moment, she stood back up. “I’m gonna untie you now, okay?”

Twilight made an incomprehensible noise, and when Sunset looked at her, she shook her head, not quite lucidly.

Sunset pet her belly softly, shifting so she was sitting next to Twilight on the table. “Shh, it’s okay, I’ll be right here, I just want to let your shoulders relax. That all right?”

This time, Twilight nodded, if reluctantly, and Sunset reached up to undo the clip holding Twilight’s arms above her head. Knowing the muscle would be sore, she took Twilight’s arms by the joints, one at a time, and brought them slowly back down to a normal position. When she was done, Twilight sighed and leaned her head against Sunset’s thigh.

Sunset glanced at Rainbow and Fluttershy, whom she’d pretty much forgotten about. Rainbow was watching with detached interest, smiling to herself; Fluttershy had both hands over her mouth to suppress any noises she might make but was clearly also grinning irrepressibly underneath them. When she saw Sunset looking, Fluttershy took her hands away to mouth so cute while gesturing at Twilight.

I know, Sunset mouthed back, then turned back to the object of her affection. “Wow, that’s a fast trip to subspace for you, huh?” she murmured. She was pretty sure Twilight was only vaguely aware of what she was saying, but talking gave her something to latch onto while Sunset undid the bridle and other restraints. “Don’t think I’m not gonna remember that, Sparkle.”

“Hmmmmmmkay.”

“Come on. Future You will be happier if you clean up now. I’ll help.”

“So I take it the experiment’s done,” Rainbow guessed dryly.

Sunset snorted with laughter despite herself. “Uh, yeah. I’ll get Little Miss Loopy’s account out of her later. Thanks for hanging around and helping.”

“No problem,” Fluttershy and Dash said in unison.

“Mmmm-not... loops,” Twilight said.

“Sure,” Sunset agreed.

“Cold.”

“Yeah, okay, here, up, lean on me, there we go.” There were aftercare rooms along the hallway towards the main chamber, and most of them had showers. Magic: best source of immediate hot running water ever.

“I can bring your clothes over if you’d like,” Fluttershy offered. Sunset shot her a grateful look.

“That would be amazing, thank you. Are you two okay here?”

Fluttershy glanced back at Rainbow, who was fiddling with her cuffs, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth in concentration. “Yeah. Thanks for inviting us. I’ll come by once Dashie gives up.”

“Hey,” Rainbow protested, albeit distractedly.

Sunset shared an amused look with Fluttershy, then stumbled out of the room, supporting Twilight heavily as she walked them both in the direction of a hot bath.

“Mm, Sunset,” Twilight said vaguely.

“Yeah?” said Sunset, but didn’t stop walking, since if she did she was probably going to sit down in the middle of the hall and not get up again.

Twilight turned her face into Sunset’s neck. “Love you,” she mumbled.

“I love you, too.” Pause. “...Twilight? You don’t have to say yes, but I’d really like to change your collar to black. Would that be, um, do you think you would like that?”

“That would be really nice. Yeah. Yeah.”

Neither of them could have stopped the smiles that spread across their faces if they’d tried.

One

Sunset pocketed her keys, heading towards the only well-lit building in the vicinity. She wasn’t familiar with the area, but the first person she saw on entering - a perky woman with a t-shirt emblazoned with a St. Andrew’s cross and the phrase “The freaks shall inherit the Earth” - confirmed that she was in the right place.

“I’m Autumn Breeze!” the woman said. “Are you here for the rope workshop?”

Sunset nodded, a little nervous despite having gotten this far.

Autumn’s expression softened. “First time?”

“Second,” Sunset admitted.

“Just remember that people will be coming and going all night, so nobody will notice if you want to come out in the hall to cool off for a bit,” Autumn reassured her. “If you want pizza later, pony up five bucks for the envelope on the table inside. We’re set to start at nine, but it always takes a good fifteen minutes more than that.”

It took Sunset an embarrassingly long time to remember the other, much more common meaning of the phrase “pony up,” but once she did, she smiled and thanked the woman before heading into the indicated room.

About twenty people milled around a few tables, unpacking supplies and generally getting the room in order for the workshop. To Sunset’s surprise, she recognized about a quarter of them, and could even name a few. Vinyl Scratch and Octavia Melody seemed to be near the center of the commotion, and as Sunset lingered in the doorway, Vinyl saw her and waved her over.

“Oh, hello, Sunset,” Octavia said. “Would you mind holding this for a moment-?” This apparently meant a cloth backpack, out of which Octavia pulled several lengths of black rope along with what looked like arts-and-crafts supplies, including a weird-looking pair of scissors, a sheaf of paper, and some masking tape. “Thanks.”

“So...” Sunset said, fumbling a little. “I didn’t know you did... rope... stuff?” Stars, even to her own ears that sounded painfully awkward.

Octavia, thankfully, took it in stride. “For a few years, actually. We’re going to be lecturing a little and demonstrating some technique at....” She glanced at the clock in the corner. “Well, supposedly five minutes ago, but soon, at any rate.”

Vinyl looked at Octavia for a moment, reading her expression, then lifted her fingers to her mouth and whistled sharply. The room quieted down in a hurry, and Sunset joined the larger group of people sitting in folding chairs or on the floor, facing the two teens and the tables next to them.

“Unconventional, but thank you, Vi,” Octavia said, then to the room at large, “Good evening! To those of you who have met Vinyl and I before, it’s good to see you again, and to those who haven’t, it’s a pleasure to meet you! My name is Octavia, or Tavi, and this is Vinyl Scratch. Some of you are wondering why she doesn’t introduce herself, and I will indeed explain that in a bit. But first: safety.”

The majority of the gathering faked enthusiasm, intentionally badly.

Octavia laughed. “I know, I know, but there’s always someone who hasn’t heard it before! Now, there’s the basics - this club uses Safe, Sane, Consensual as a ground rule, though anyone who would like to hear my rant on that versus Risk-Aware Consensual Kink is perfectly welcome to stay later than is advised.”

There was general amusement, which Octavia let die down before continuing. “As this is a ‘102’ of sorts, the idea is that you’re already familiar with those principles. However, there are some safety rules that pertain to ropework in particular. The first and foremost is to always have a pair of EMT shears on hand.” She held up the strange scissors from earlier. “Rope can be replaced. Limbs, or a life, cannot. I got these for ten dollars and have used them twice. There is no excuse not to own a pair and keep them on hand.”

She set the scissors back down on the table. “Never leave a bound person alone, especially if sudden movement or panicking could result in injury. Never restrict circulation; you should be able to slip two fingers between the rope and your bottom’s skin, and check in frequently to make sure they aren’t losing feeling anywhere. We won’t be doing any suspension tonight, but if you plan on it, make sure their weight is borne mostly on their legs, hips, and torso. Wrists and shoulders aren’t designed to hold a person up; there’s a reason we don’t walk on them. And of course, circulation is even more of a key issue there.”

Vinyl groaned in exaggerated boredom and let her head loll onto Octavia’s shoulder, to the latter’s suppressed giggles. “All right, all right! If nothing else, communicate often, tops and bottoms. Scoot.” She pushed Vinyl away from her, towards the center of the open space they’d created, and busied herself with one of the shorter ropes.

“I’ll show off a few ties tonight - some are intended to restrain, and some are just decorative. Most of the time, Vinyl and I combine the two, but we’ll be going through them one at a time tonight, so we can take breaks as needed. Vi, arms up in front of you. If anyone is having trouble seeing, feel free to move closer.”

She folded the rope in half, creating a loop on one end, and threaded the other end through it, so that Vinyl’s wrists were caught in the center, narrating as she went. “This is called a lark’s head knot, or sometimes a cow hitch or a slipknot. It can be dangerous if you use it on its own, since there’s no way to stop it from getting tighter, but I’m going to leave a little slack in the line for later. Now I can simply go back and forth-” She pulled the two ropes, as one, halfway around Vinyl’s arms, then reversed the line and brought it back around the other way, hooking her thumb in the new loop to keep it in place. “-and pull the rest of the rope through the bight each time. It’s safer and more secure, and if you keep the bights on the inward side, the rope looks continuous. You okay?”

Vinyl nodded and shifted her arms a little to show how much give she had. Octavia put a couple fingers between Vinyl’s wrists, then cinched the rope more snugly. “Two things it’s important to note here: one, you can see how I’m making sure the rope is loose around her wrists. You can also use... well, pretty much anything you have lying around to do this same thing, but using your own fingers means you can feel exactly how tight it is, so it’s good practice. Two, Vinyl doesn’t speak, of her own volition, which means I have to be more proactive in checking in with her. We also have alternate, nonverbal safewords set up, though for this demonstration, any major discomfort is a signal for me to back off. Once she hits subspace, which I don’t anticipate taking long-”

Vinyl grinned and shrugged, earning a playful smack on the shoulder from Octavia and laughter from the back of the room.

“I’ll be keeping a much closer eye on her when we get there. Now, the other reason for doing the knots like this is because it’s much easier to keep the rope where you want it when you’re done. For this demonstration, I’m going to bring the rest of the rope back up through the inside of this column we’ve created here, and then through the slack from that first lark’s head, to keep it from tightening any further. I usually arrange this tie so I end up with about a foot and a half of extra rope at the end, but you can adjust that by changing the number of loops.

“I think we’re going to break for now, so if anyone would like a closer look, feel free to come up and ask questions. Next I’m going to show a few knots and ties that can be used on their own or integrated into a more complex harness or rig, and then I think to finish off I’ll demonstrate a full-body tie. If you’d like to practice any of the knots, I have some yard-long ropes here as well.”

The audience dispersed, many of them wandering out into the hall or towards the duo at the front of the room. Sunset, for her part, stayed where she was. Something had been bugging her since the workshop had started, like a sound barely on the edge of her hearing, and it had surged briefly when Octavia had tightened the rope. In fact... if she let her eyes relax... so she was looking past the crowd instead of at it... there. Almost a fog, colors that weren’t colors, siphoning away at the edges in a specific direction.

As much as she wanted to stay, if this was magic, Sunset couldn’t just ignore it. She left the room quietly, then the building, making sure she could still see the miasma. It was easier outside, without the lights and colorful background to confuse her. It trailed off into the distance, past the road she’d taken to get there.

Sunset groaned and cast one last longing look back at the building. At least she’d gotten to stay for a while. She slung a leg over the seat of her motorcycle, checked the direction of the nascent magic, and set off.

Eventually, the trail fed into the park near Canterlot High. That was where Sunset found Twilight. Unfortunately, with her eyes unfocused, she’d found Twilight by slamming face-first into the other girl, unable to see her in the dark.

“Ow!”

Twilight recovered first. “Sunset? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Sunset said wryly, rubbing her nose to make sure it wasn’t bleeding, and glad that her gloves had taken most of the impact. “And why are you in your pajamas?”

“I... oh!” Twilight held up a pendant she had on a lanyard around her neck. Something within it glowed faintly in the dark.

“That’s... nice?”

Twilight fumbled around for her cell phone, turning on the flashlight feature. With the added illumination, Sunset could see that the pendant was little more than a painted ball bearing suspended in a plastic sphere of water. Contrary to gravity, the ball bearing was at a 45 degree angle up the side of the sphere, pointing somewhere to Sunset’s left.

“It detects magic,” Twilight explained, then hastily added, “Nothing else, I swear! I just wanted to avoid... well, what happened at camp.”

Sunset nodded. “I believe you, Twilight. It’s a good idea. You were going to tell the rest of us about it, right?”

Twilight nodded and dropped the pendant to let it hang against her abdomen. “This is actually the first time I’ve been able to get it working without using magic myself. I figured I should do a little investigating before bothering everyone else about it, just in case it was, I don’t know, the MRI at Canterlot General. I guess I got a little excited and... maybe kinda grabbed my shoes and snuck out the window.” She paused and blinked. “But wait - why are you here?”

Sunset was suddenly grateful the flashlight beam wasn’t directed at her, as the dark hid her blush quite nicely. At least, she hoped so. “I, um. I was at a... thing, nearby. I noticed the magic too, followed it here.” She slapped an awkward grin on her face. Smooth, Sunset.

To her relief, Twilight seemed to take the explanation at face value, and gave a nervous smile. “Then, I guess...?” She gestured in the direction the ball bearing was pointing.

As they walked, a small part of Sunset quietly panicked about what they were going to find. To some degree, she’d almost be relieved if it turned out to be some monster trying to take over the world. If it had something to do with the event she’d come from.... She shook her head to clear it of the distracting combination of Twilight and the ropework she’d seen on Vinyl. One thing at a time.

Lost in thought, she almost didn’t notice when Twilight stopped moving and redirected the flashlight at a tall rock next to them. No, not a rock. A stone pillar, inlaid with gold or brass in the shape of a stylized capital C.

“Is that a clock?” Twilight wondered out loud, peering at it.

Sunset looked closer. There did seem to be what looked like clock hands extending from the middle of the C. If it had been a real clock, it would have read... about 9:30. Weird.

The girls looked at each other, then down at the compass, which was solidly pointing straight at the symbol. After a few seconds, Sunset shrugged and took off one of her gloves. “Well, if this kills me, warn the others,” she joked, and pressed her hand to the flat metal.

Unexpectedly, she felt her ears shift to the top of her head, along with the added weight from her now twice-as-long hair. Confused, she snatched her hand back, and didn’t notice the change in the pillar until Twilight said, “Look!”

The rock was... Sunset didn’t have a better word for it than “unfolding,” revealing an archway that couldn’t possibly have fit into the pillar - but then again, it was magic, and that was par for the course. Just past the stone threshold, an enclosed staircase led down, likely hewn from the earth itself.

She put her glove back on, mostly so she wouldn’t have to hold it, and reached a hand up to feel her now equine ears. “I didn’t pony up on purpose,” she pointed out.

Twilight grinned at her. “Isn’t this exciting? It’s new magic! It’s-”

“Potentially lethal,” Sunset pointed out, but even as she did so, it sounded wrong. A set of granite stairs leading down into what could be the center of the earth, unlit and silent, should have seemed ominous and unwelcoming, especially in the dead of night, but for some reason, Sunset felt... safe. Protected.

Twilight seemed to pick up on it, too, because she leaned into the opening, shining her flashlight over the walls. “There are crystals. Maybe in place of torches? Whoever built this place was obviously civilized.”

Sunset took a couple steps forward, hesitantly at first, but then surer as she passed through the archway uneventfully. She held out a hand to Twilight. “It might be kind of weird, but something tells me we’re gonna be okay if we go exploring. Still, I don’t want to get separated in the dark, and my phone’s low on battery.”

Twilight’s curious expression melted into a soft, almost shy smile as she took Sunset’s hand. It was hard to see with the light pointed down the hall, but Sunset thought she could see Twilight blush a little bit.

Well, it wasn’t anything she wasn’t doing herself.

Most of the walk down the stairs was... a walk down the stairs. They went slowly, just in case, and the most interesting thing that happened was the crystals on the walls flickering a few times, trying to provide light but failing.

“Maybe there’ll be some kind of generator we can turn on,” Twilight suggested.

Sunset’s only response was to shrug. Internally, she scolded herself for taking Twilight’s innocuous phrasing straight to the gutter. There was a time and a place for inappropriate fantasies about her friend, and Sunset had a hard time believing this was it.

After several wide landings, the stairs finally ended, opening up to a room large enough that the flashlight beam didn’t reach the other side. In the distance, Sunset saw what she thought at first to be an afterimage, but which stubbornly refused to fade, until she realized it was a light source, a dull purple coal some ten feet off the ground.

“Maybe that’s your generator,” she said, pointing.

They made their way carefully over to the purple dot, keeping the light on the ground in front of them.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

Twilight shrugged. “Does it strike you as odd that this place is so clean?”

Sunset opened her mouth, then stopped to think about it. “Well, now it does. The wear on the steps means it has to be at least a couple hundred years old.”

“Exactly. So where’s the dust? The cobwebs? Even if we are the first people to get in here in all that time, it can’t be airtight.”

They drew to a stop next to a low, circular wall, reminiscent of a fire pit, if the fire had been magically fed and thirty feet across. Along the top of the wall, the same brassy gold spelled out words in an archaic script.

“What does it say?” Twilight asked. “It’s not in any language I recognize.”

Sunset frowned and turned on her own phone’s flashlight, the better to read by. “This looks like... some kind of pidgin between Old Equestrian and Early Modern English. I think I can read it, sort of... hang on....” She squinted and traced one of the letters with her finger. “I think this says ‘freedom,’ but it’s spelled kinda funny....”

“Does it have extra E’s?” Twilight asked dryly.

Sunset snorted. “This looks like the middle of whatever it says. If we go that way we should find the start.”

Twilight pointed her own flashlight up at the purple ember. “Maybe it’s instructions for that. It’s gotta do something, it looks too important to be decorative.”

“Yeah,” Sunset agreed absently. “Here, look - I think... ‘Belonging. Devotion. Love.’ Oh, there isn’t a middle, it’s just single words that go all the way around. ‘Confidence. Responsibility. Care. Strength.’ I think it’s all attributes. There’s a pictogram of a heart in between all of them, but it doesn’t look like any letter I know.”

“This might have been some kind of ritual site for an ancient religion,” Twilight said. “And those were the virtues they practiced.”

“Here’s a sentence. ‘Your....’”

“Sunset?” Twilight asked, after a pause.

Sunset tried in vain to calm her pounding heart. Still, it wasn’t in her to lie to Twilight. Besides, it was unlikely Twilight knew what it would mean, and she could downplay the less than savory parts. “...It says, ‘Your safe word is law.’”

She looked up to find Twilight staring at her, both of them blushing furiously.

“Um,” Twilight said. “So that’s. I guess.” She cleared her throat. “It must have been one of the nice ancient religions?”

“It, uh,” Sunset said. Brilliant rejoinder! Now try an ‘ah’ or even an ‘oh.’ That’ll just stun her with your intellect! “You, uh, you know what that means?”

Twilight fiddled with a lock of her hair and finally nodded. “So... that means you do, too?”

Sunset’s mouth was dry and she was sure her cheeks were on their way to matching her hair. “That’s... actually what led me here. I was at a... a workshop, and I felt some kind of magic almost evaporating off the people there, and going somewhere else, and... well, then I ran into you.”

“There’s a workshop near here? What kind?” Twilight asked, forgetting to be embarrassed in her curiosity. Before Sunset could answer, she remembered what they were here for. “Wait, that’s not the important part.”

Sunset’s hormones begged to differ, but the rest of her could stay on track more easily. “My question is, if it’s some kind of dead religion or something, then why were they familiar with the Equestrian alphabet? And we still don’t know what that is, or does.” She waved a hand at the purple thing.

“Or why it’s so clean in here.”

“Or that. Well, I mean, that one is probably magic. And powerful magic, to last for so long.”

There was a brief lull in their discussion, and Twilight turned her phone to the side and started taking pictures of the fire pit thing. At something of a loss, Sunset continued around the outer edge of the circle, muttering under her breath as she went.

Once she was about halfway around, she set her phone upside-down on the wall and straightened up. “Here’s something. It goes on with attributes for a while, and a few short sentences, but this is longer. I think it takes up the whole rest of the space. Um... ‘The Fire-’ That’s capitalized, weird. ‘The Fire above you burns strong and bright; Devotion will fuel its eternal light. Though rapture comes from without and within, we give of ourselves and let harmony in. Kept and Keeper, no bond more high, the Earth to the Moon and the Sun to the very Sky.’ They really liked their important capital letters, I guess.”

Twilight looked over Sunset’s shoulder at what was to her complete gibberish. “It rhymes and everything?”

“Well, I took a little poetic license. This... Equestr-ish? Early Modern Equestrian? seems to have gone short on the syllables.”

“Ye Olde Pony Englishe,” Twilight suggested playfully. Sunset burst into giggles.

When she recovered, Twilight had set her own phone down and gone back to frowning up at the ember. “I’m not sure why, but whenever I think about leaving here without fixing whatever this is, I just feel awful. Like I’ve forgotten an assignment that’s due soon. It just feels bad.”

Sunset ignored the opportunity to take a jab at Twilight’s love of academics, much to the dismay of her inner Rainbow Dash. Instead she said, “If the writing on the base is related, it looks like that’s the Fire and ‘Devotion will fuel’ it.”

“You think I should call the others?” Twilight asked. “It might be more friendship magic.”

Sunset was silent. Finally she stood in front of Twilight, gaze steady, gloved hands on Twilight’s shoulders. She made sure her voice and face were gentle when she asked, “Do you trust me?”

Twilight’s eyes widened slightly. “Yes,” she whispered.

Sunset kissed her.

Twilight made a muffled, shocked noise, but responded eagerly, even if she’d clearly never kissed anyone before. To her credit, she was a quick study. Sunset could almost hear the gears in her brain whirring.

“?” Twilight said, and pulled away to look behind Sunset. Sunset turned to look, too, and saw that the faintly glowing ember from before had burst into pink and purple flame, in the shape of... a heart? And a familiar heart, at that.

“You know, I’m not even surprised anymore,” Sunset deadpanned. “You know how humans celebrate Christmas and stick candy canes and snowmen on everything for it?”

“Uh, I guess so?”

“Yeah. Ponies have Hearth’s Warming Eve and Day. Basically the same thing, but that heart is kind of the official symbol.”

Twilight gave her a strange look. “You have a holiday for kinky sex?”

Sunset smacked her own forehead with her open palm. “No. It’s supposed to celebrate, like, friendship and stuff. I don’t know, the last time I went to see a Hearth’s Warming play I was ten. Something something founding of Equestria, something something don’t be a jerk, something something Fire of Friendship. There’s songs and whatever. And wait, who said anything about kinky sex?”

Twilight froze. “Um.”

Sunset started to grin. “Because, you know, if a certain person is willing....” She let her hands drift down to Twilight’s waist. “That could be arranged.”

Twilight hesitated, biting her lip. “As much as I want to say yes... and I do really want to say yes....”

“What is it?”

“I’m wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants, and we’re underground in a giant cave in the middle of the night. I’m freezing down here.”

“Oh. Right.” Sunset chuckled a little, irrationally relieved that the answer hadn’t been Because you’re weird and gross.

“That, and, well...” Twilight turned her head, unable to meet Sunset’s eyes. “I kinda wanted my first time to be special,” she mumbled.

Sunset took a moment to parse the jumble of syllables, then wrapped Twilight in a hug. “Hey, it’s okay. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do, I promise.”

She felt Twilight nod. “Okay. I... I liked kissing you, though. Do you think we could do more of that?”

Sunset tilted her head so her lips were pressed to Twilight’s neck. “We better test that hypothesis.”

“Mm - what kind of researchers would - ohhh - would be we if we didn’t collect all the data we could?”

The experiment turned out to require multiple trial runs (including one false start at introducing new data points - “Cold hands! Cold cold cold!”), at least until Sunset’s phone died, cutting the light in the room nearly in half.

“Dammit,” Sunset grumbled.

“It’s a sign,” Twilight proclaimed, a little drunk on endorphins.

“Yeah, it’s a sign I need to charge my phone more often. At least the Fire heart is brighter.”

This was true; as they’d indulged in each other, the flame had gradually brightened, so that the immediate area was suffused with pinkish-purple light. Not quite enough to comfortably see by, but better than the previous pitch blackness.

Twilight looked up at it. “I think if we leave it’ll be okay. It lasted this long.”

“I think you’re right,” Sunset said. “And I should really write to the other Twilight about this. If it’s Equestrian, she might know more than we do.”

They collected their phones from where they’d left them. Twilight took a few more pictures of the writing, so they could reference them somewhere warmer.

As they trudged back up what felt like way more stairs than they’d walked down, Sunset took notice of the crystals lining the walls. Many of them were now glowing faintly but steadily, turning on and off a set distance ahead of and behind them as they walked. “Huh. I guess it does power the lights. I wonder how much of this place just runs off your ‘generator’ down there.”

“Who needs this many stairs,” Twilight grumped. “Gonna put an elevator in this thing, I swear to-”

Sunset smothered a laugh. “Do you have your necklace? You could try to levitate us out.”

Twilight stopped in her tracks and gave Sunset a flat look. “You could’ve said something at the bottom.” Regardless of her annoyance, a purple glow enveloped both of them and pulled them at a neat clip through the air.

Twilight looked at her hands once they were at the top and back on solid ground. “You know, all the fantasy I’ve read taught me to expect a significant energy cost for doing something like that, but I feel fine.” She took a step forward and staggered a little. “Okay, mostly fine. I got it, I’m good.” She straightened, then glanced at Sunset. “Wait, where’s your necklace?”

Sunset winced. “The mind-reading thing... isn’t as voluntary as I’d like it to be. And to be honest, it kind of creeps me out a little. I need more practice before it’s a good idea to wander around a crowded high school with it.”

Twilight grimaced as she caught Sunset’s meaning. “Right, yeah. So... should we meet back here tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Sunset said. “Let’s pick a time when I can see my hand in front of my face.”

Twilight giggled. “Text me when you get an answer from the other Twilight? We can figure out what to do then.”

Sunset nodded, and they said their goodbyes. Twilight, luckily, didn’t live far, so she didn’t need a ride home. It was two in the morning before Sunset collapsed into bed, grateful that tomorrow was Sunday. Vaguely, she thought about writing something in the magic journal, but before she could do any more than that, sleep claimed her.

Author's Note

The information Octavia gives out is all, to my knowledge, as correct as I could make it. The tie she demonstrates on Vinyl is called a ladder tie, and you can learn how to do it and many other ties with Fetish Weekly's tutorial series (SFW, no nudity). You can see the specific tie in this story modelled on yours truly: here and here.

The "Devotional Hymn" that Sunset reads off is meant to fit the tune of the Hearth's Warming Carol, the one that starts, "The fire of friendship lives in our hearts...."

Six and a Half: Outtakes

Author's Note

Both of these mini-scenes are things I just couldn't quite fit into the flow of the main story, but didn't want to throw out with the bathwater either. Both of them take place after Sunset & co.'s trip to CEE.

Six and a Half: Outtakes

By the time Twilight, Rarity, and Sunset made it back to their own world, the sky was beginning to darken. Sunset thought maybe the others would’ve already left, but they found Applejack and Rainbow Dash lounging under the - significantly larger and brighter - Fire of Devotion.

“How’d your trip to Equestria go?” Applejack asked. “And what’s in there?”

By there, she meant the messenger’s bag Sunset was wearing, which had been converted from the plain saddlebags she’d borrowed to hold the miscellaneous pamphlets and forms she’d ended up with, plus Rarity’s sketches and Twilight’s rambling, half-feverish and only mostly-legible notes on... everything, as far as Sunset could tell.

Before she could explain any of that, Twilight blurted out, “We saw two ponies fuck a dragon!” and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth.

Rainbow sat straight up. “What!? Man, I thought you said it was gonna be boring! What gives?”

“Darling, it isn’t as though we planned for it,” Rarity soothed, at the same time as Sunset said to Twilight, “Well, technically, we watched two ponies fuck in front of a dragon.”

“Yeah, well, that’s cool an’ all,” Applejack said, purposefully disaffected. She examined her fingernails and buffed them on her shirt.

Sunset smirked and took the bait. “Yeah? What did you guys do?”

“Nothing much,” Rainbow said.

“It jus’ turned out that-”

“-there’s a tentacle pit in here-”

“-and hoo boy does it know how to get some.”

In unison, both girls raised their hands and fist-bumped each other without even looking.

Sunset blinked. Rarity looked intrigued. Twilight practically vibrated.

“Oh my gosh oh my gosh how does it work? Please tell me you recorded it.”

Rainbow gave her a sidelong glance. “Uhhh....”

Twilight realized what she’d just said and blushed. “S- sorry. It’s been... an... afternoon.”

“And it started with the dragon-fucking,” Sunset pointed out.

“Wait, I thought you said you’d...” Rarity paused slightly. “...had liaisons with a room full of tentacles. If you don’t like sex, what would you enjoy about this place?”

“Nah, that was me and Fluttershy,” Applejack said, answering the first question.

Rainbow opened her mouth to answer the second, but was usurped by Fluttershy, who’d come within speaking distance. “For the same reason she likes it when I force her to hold a pose until she collapses, and then tell her she was a good girl for trying so hard.”

They all looked at Rainbow, who was blushing deeply. “Um.” She swallowed hard. “Y-yeah. Pretty much.”

Applejack snickered. “You’ve seen me naked and this is what trips you up?”

Rainbow socked her in the arm.

“And the status quo is restored,” Sunset said. “Okay, so now that we’re all here, the main thing I learned is that the Clocktowers in Equestria are loaded. We can get some money from them, and by ‘some’ I mean ‘a lot,’ but probably we should work on buying some companies, especially the ones that make sex stuff.”

“Setting aside the fact that that’s more of a vague goal than an actual plan,” Applejack said, “none of us can legally drink yet. Nobody in their right mind is going to sell their company to a bunch of teenagers for any amount of money. And last I checked, pony-land currency isn’t valid here.”

Sunset waved the last objection aside. “It’s literally made of precious gems and solid gold, we’ll be fine. And technically, I’m almost twenty, but you’re right. We look too young, so we’re going to need a reasonable adult on our side.”

“And when you say ‘reasonable’-” Twilight started.

“-I mean ‘willing to actually help,’ yes. In Equestria, it’s basically government-run, except for on paper, so Celestia, Luna, and Cadance are all safe bets. They don’t have nearly the power of their pony counterparts, though, and honestly I don’t know our Celestia or Luna nearly that well.”

Twilight bit her lip. “Dean Cadance might be willing to help....”

Sunset nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. It’s not going to be easy by any stretch, but it should be doable if we’re careful. That, and Princess Cadance is married to your - well, pony you’s - brother.”

“What?!”

“Oops,” Sunset muttered.

While she set to calming Twilight down, she handed her bag to Rarity, who pulled out the rest of its contents to sort through and spread the ones meant for sharing out on the floor for everyone else to look over.

“Oh, that’s cute,” Fluttershy said. “Themed safewords. Hmm, they don’t seem that easy to remember, though....”

“It’s like if you’re going up the clocktower,” Applejack said, and demonstrated with her hands. “Staircase, clockface, towertop.”

“Uh, where are we gonna get half of this stuff?” Rainbow asked.

Pinkie pointed to something on the paper Rainbow was holding. “I have that!”