The Collapse

Chapters

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 10
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Chapter 9
Chapter 11
Chapter 26
Chapter 28

Prologue

Magic pulses raced throughout the old castle, each one a highly complicated bundle of detection spells placed into a golem of pure magic. Celestia huddled behind a collapsed wall. Feeling one of the pulses getting too close for comfort, she dropped her collection of stealth spells for a split second to destroy it, then managed to drop another seven in random locations throughout the castle before she had to conceal herself once more, or risk Luna sensing her directly.

Now she had time to plan. Except she couldn’t think of one. Celestia almost idly lifted a chunk of rubble with magic but stopped herself before accidentally breaking her concealment, and after a moment of thought instead brought a hoof to her head and rubbed at her temple. Normally she excelled under pressure, but now she had no idea where to start. She’d been ready for Nightmare Moon’s return for centuries, had planned for every eventuality—or at least, had thought she had.

Celestia had teleported to their old castle in front of the Elements of Harmony as a last resort after the backup plan, the backup to the backup plan, and the backup to that. Nightmare Moon shouldn’t have had a chance. Except that the corrupted alicorn had somehow managed to rebuild her magic patterns so efficiently that Celestia’s worldwide spell network didn’t even have the hint of a magical signature to latch on to. And then the Nightmare had casually torn the network apart. After having been active for centuries, stopping Tartarus-level threats and dispelling dark magic gathering from as far as the other side of the planet time and time again, the marvel of magical engineering had been utterly destroyed before Celestia could even get a lock on where the source of the destruction was coming from. Then her sister had teleported right in front of her. A hurried teleport later and she was here, without any idea how it had happened.

How had Luna had the time to entirely remove her magical signature? She’d had to have spent centuries rebuilding the base of her magic from the ground up over and over again with no distractions, which should have been impossible seeing as how the Elements had literally sealed her inside the moon, displaying her frozen face across one side of it. Unless...unless they hadn’t.

A chill swept through Celestia as she thought of what that would mean. If Luna had been stuck on the moon for a thousand years, awake the whole time, with no distractions, she could have invented almost anything. A spell to destroy the Elements was not out of the question. And if Celestia’s very last resort could be gone at any moment, she had to use it as soon as possible.

She teleported back to the throne room. The Elements, sensing the rising disharmony, had risen glowing into the air. Nightmare Moon stood across from her, inspecting the Elements as if they were interesting toys and not dangerous golems, each with the powers of a million-year-old alicorn. Above, moonlight shone down on the ruined castle, having abruptly replaced the day. The unicorns would have to deal with it like they had before she’d taken over the job.

Celestia ignored her sister, relying on the wards she kept active wherever she went to shield her from Luna for the few critical seconds it would take to link with the Elements, and reached out with her horn—

“Sister, stop!”

Celestia paused and glanced over at her sister. Still Nightmare Moon.

“What is it, sister? Have you finally freed yourself from the corruption?” she said, horn hovering less than an inch from the closest Element.

The Nightmare snorted. “I’m not corrupted, you fool. I was just mad, and yes, I’ll admit it: a little bit insane. But I’m cured now!” She continued quickly, seeing Celestia’s skeptical expression, “The Elements, combined with a thousand years of having nothing but my thoughts for company, eventually fixed me.”

Celestia considered her sister’s words. It made sense. The Elements were constructs of Harmony, and isolation usually either caused gibbering insanity or crystal clarity. She wanted to believe her sister already cured—oh, how she wanted to. But the Elements were blunt instruments incapable of nuance or subtlety, and Luna still had the body and armor of Nightmare Moon.

“I’m sorry,” Celestia began, attempting to bring her horn to the Element, but found her way forward blocked. She had less than a second to comprehend what had just happened before she found herself flung backward in a magical explosion.

She groaned and pushed herself off the floor. Bones were broken, but they’d fix themselves soon enough. Or not. A quick glance and she calculated the amount of magic she’d have to spend to connect with the Elements at this distance. It was a lot. She would be reduced to a literal shadow of herself for several years, and that was on top of whatever the Elements would do to her. But she couldn’t let her sister escape, or her subject's lives would become a living nightmare.

All her magic went into forcing a link between herself and the Elements. She felt their disdain for her—forcing every pony to cooperate in peace and harmony had required her to do many things she wasn’t proud of.

Please, she projected at the Elements. Just one more time.

The Elements went silent. It looked like she would have to fight her sister, then. The fight would likely leave the area a magically chaotic wasteland for dozens of miles around the site of the battle. She tried to teleport to a deserted island out in the ocean, hoping the Nightmare would follow her. It didn’t work.

It was at that moment that Celestia realized everything was frozen. In front of her, Nightmare Moon had her fangs bared in an ugly smile, a dark bolt starting to fly from her horn. Then the Elements awoke.

The world unfroze. Celestia slumped to the ground, wards and body devoid of energy, and looked at her sister. The bolt flew through the air toward her, then abruptly curved and hurled toward one of the Elements, disappearing with a fizzle. Something shifted. The world suddenly seemed incredibly wrong, somehow. Then a rip appeared in the middle of the slowly rotating circle of Elements. It wasn’t as if an invisible giant had torn a hole in space. Instead, it was as if history was being rewritten to say that the hole in reality had always been there. Then the Elements pulsed, and Celestia was dragged toward the hole. She caught Luna disappearing into it first out of the corner of her eye before she was thrust into another world. An emptier world. Space surrounded her, filled with a strange solidity that was strangely familiar. It took her a few minutes before she could place it.

Is this...magic?

Chapter 1

Twilight hunched down as her magical construct fizzled into nothing.

“Professor Radiance, I—”

“Yes, yes, you’re exhausted from trying to stuff every single book in the library into your head in three days. No, don’t look surprised, I know what you’ve been doing, and you should know that going through the most momentous and difficult occasion in your life without sleep is a terrible idea.”

The normally jovial brown earth pony’s face was now in a heavy frown, the contrast only adding to the effect. He stared at Twilight for several seconds as she drew herself into an even tighter ball. “You know the meditation towers are going to be sealed next week. So on top of having no sleep, you left this to the last minute,” he continued.

Twilight drew her head up. “I—I could—”

“Yes, I suppose you’d better,” the professor said, waving a hoof. He then walked forward until he was right in front of her. Twilight stared at the floor as she waited for him to continue his tirade, tracing a stylized rune with her eyes.

“Twilight,” he said. She looked at him again and was startled to see his face transformed back to his habitual smile. “I’m not disappointed in you. None of us are—not even professor Veracity,” he finished with a grin.

Twilight gave him a small smile in return, unable to help it. He always had the ability to give his students some of his drive with just a look. His class wasn’t Twilight’s favorite, but it was a close second.

“Now,” he said, switching to his lecture voice, “since you know what your mistake was, I don’t expect you to be repeating it in the future.” He waited for Twilight’s nod, then continued, “And so, because this is such a big occasion, you have my permission to cast that spell.”

Aware of how close she’d gotten to critically delaying her entire career as a mage, Twilight only nodded, then closed her eyes, focusing on her spell. It was one she’d made when she was a foal, cobbled together from hints in ‘forbidden’ books that she’d read anyway and her own desire to be able to read as many books as she could as soon as possible. It was a piece of mind magic that allowed her to put off sleep indefinitely. The only downsides were that she would eventually have to sleep it all off at once, as it became more taxing to use the spell the longer it was active, and that mind magic was commonly known as dark magic, its usage carrying a heavy stigma as well as an insane amount of regulation. She’d gotten off lightly as she’d been a foal and her parents had pleaded that she hadn’t known what she was doing, but if anyone caught her using it again she’d be thrown into the nearest psych ward and scanned for outside influence, then get saddled with a heavy fine for unauthorized use of dark magic.

She finished the spell. It would last for three days without being sustained, though she’d be able to feed it magic whenever she wanted without recasting it. “Done,” she said.

“Good. Now focus. You need absolute concentration to make that template,” the professor said.

With a deep breath, Twilight was once more only aware of the magic around her. She opened a connection with her horn and searched the Aether. After a few minutes, she found an isolated clump of magic and dragged it into the real world, and then held it all together before it could disperse into the ambient magic of the world. No one knew where magic came from, though there were many theories; most unicorns just called it the Aether and left it at that.

She twisted out the knot of magic into usable strands and imprinted a bunch of ‘move’ and ‘stop’ commands onto the drifting magic, then used mind magic to make the spell activate based on what she was thinking (Sure, it’s mind magic now, but make my own spell and it’s suddenly dark).

When everything was prepared, she brought it all together into a flawless thought template. She was cheating at this part; when she did it for real, the challenge would be having to fit it all together with individual ‘move’ commands.

“When you’re not reading yourself into a coma, you can be surprisingly competent,” the professor said, then pointed at the staircase spiraling around the side of the tower. “Up you go.”

Letting the practice construct dissolve into ambient magic, Twilight nodded at him and walked up the staircase, listening to the professor place sheets of metal down on the floor. After he arranged them, he would carve them with runes so that if Twilight’s meditation went wrong, it wouldn’t backfire and blow up the tower.

She opened a carved wooden door into a plain room. Unlike the rest of the tower, with its inlaid jewels and giant runes, this room had an unpainted plank wood floor and ceiling along with rough white stone for the walls and a single window. In the middle of the room was a magically suspended ball of light. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, then sat on the floor.

Twilight began stripping thought pattern after thought pattern into pieces, trying to get it over with quickly. A childhood of doing nothing but learning spells finally proved a disadvantage as she struggled with untangling threads of magic frozen ever more stiff as she reached older and older thought patterns. Eventually, she reached her core. It was the thought template on which everything was built, made on instinct when she was a filly. On close examination, without the rest of her thought patterns cluttering it up (she felt an unpleasant twang at having to think about how they were gone; she was already missing them) it was an extremely sloppy structure, leaking magic everywhere like a boat that was half boat, one-fourth sloppy patchwork, and one-fourth hole. Idly, she noticed that it had suddenly gotten a lot darker, but ignored it. Focus must come first.

She tore the final thought template apart like a scab and summoned a large amount of magic into the room for her new template. After adding each spell, she arranged the strands of magic into a semi-organized mess in the center of the room. Magic didn’t do anything on its own: it was just used as a power source. To be useful, the magic is funneled down and compressed and then explodes, but only through certain strands, and the shape of the strands determine what the magic does. Right now she needed to have the template funnel magic from the tip of her horn to the base when it detects her drawing on magic with her horn, and then read her mind for start and end coordinates, as well as speed, whether or not she wants to avoid hitting anything, and over a dozen other factors, and use many ‘move’ and ‘stop’ commands in conjunction with each other to most efficiently move the object without leaking too much magic.

Twilight grinned at the mess of magic in front of her. Most unicorns who took their magical studies this far took at least three tries to get it right. She planned to do it in one.

Chapter 2

“Twilight! Twilight, we have to go!”

Twilight twitched at the sound of the shout and accidentally pumped too much power into a ‘move’ command, causing a strand of magic to shoot clean through her thought template. The whole thing started to unravel. She dived to the other side of the room, ready for the explosion, but professor Radiance charged through the door and reached the template, which dissolved into its composite strands and faded once he got close enough, obviously the effect of a few runes.

“What...professor! I was almost done!” Twilight shot her most venomous look at the professor, who started pushing her from the room. She stumbled to her legs and swayed from side to side, unused to walking after moving nothing but her eyes for...however long she’d been building her template.

“I’ll explain on the way, but right now we need to evacuate Canterlot,” the professor said, nudging her down the stairs. She took them one step at a time, the pauses between each one growing shorter as she got used to walking again.

“Wait but—What! Evacuate?” Twilight got out when she regained enough focus that she was able to talk without risking a misstep.

“Yes, and I’ll explain on the way, but right now we need to go!”

Before Twilight could say anything else, they reached the tower’s exit and the professor threw the door open. Twilight stared. On the street were more ponies than she’d ever seen outside at one time. The mob streamed for the exits, communication reduced to a few hurried whispers. Moonlight shone down on everyone, giving the whole scene a strange dreamlike quality.

“Follow me. Amber’s waiting just outside of the city with most of the class. Veracity and Luminescence are with the other two unicorns who were using the towers. They were much closer; they’re probably with Amber’s group already,” the professor said as they joined the exodus. “It’s times like these that make me wish I had a horn,” he continued in a mumble.

“Professor, why is everyone so quiet?” Twilight whispered as they neared the gates.

“Because ponies like you insist on whispering,” the professor replied in a normal tone, the volume seeming very out of place. “Sorry, it’s not you. I forgot you don’t know anything that’s going on. I’ll tell you when we find everyone the rest of the class. Promise.”

Twilight continued moving in silence for a few seconds, the forced exercise having already gotten the blood flowing through her. Then a thought occurred. “If we’re leaving, then—my parents! My books,” she hissed.

“If they found the rest of the school, then we’ll find them. If not, then try not to worry about it. Even a foal can outrun it. As for the books, well, they’re replaceable.”

“It?”

“Well, since you clearly won’t stop pestering me long enough for us to reach a place where I can give you the full explanation, the short of it is that the Everfree’s expanding and it’s almost reached the city, the princess is missing, and it’s been night for two days.

“How does that require a full explanation?”

“I was kind of hoping to ease you into it, but you don’t seem that surprised, so I guess that was all you needed.”

“Trust me, I’m going to be very shocked when I have time to think about what you just said.”

“Fair enough,” the professor said, and then they left the city.

Twilight shivered in the chill night air and looked around. It was difficult, since ponies require a lot more light than most animals to see clearly, but with the light of the moon she could make out several large groups of ponies clustered on the grass outside the gates, while individuals and smaller groups continued on the path down the mountain.

Professor Radiance idly stomped a hoof in the stiff grass then continued moving. “This way, they should be on the right side of the...aha!”

Twilight followed the professor’s gaze and made out several familiar forms. There was Moon Dancer, who she knew because that was the one student in Celestia’s school who wasn’t a constant annoyance and refrained from constantly sending Twilight invitations to this party or that ceremony, and Minuette, Lemon Hearts, and Twinkleshine; Twilight’s roommates, and Lyra, one of her old roommates before she’d moved out and Twinkleshine had moved in. Surrounding the group were three harassed-looking unicorn professors, and judging by the movements of their heads as Twilight drew near, they all seemed to be occupied in a never-ending head count.

“Got her,” professor Radiance said once they were next to the group.

An unfamiliar white unicorn with a highly stylized purple mane burst out of the group and stood in front of the professor. “Excellent! Then we can begin searching the paths leading from Ponyville at once,” she said.

The professor sighed. “As I’m sure my colleagues have already told you, we’re heading straight for Manehattan, not traipsing around searching the entirety of Equestria for ponies who could already be on another continent by now. That’s the job of the Wonderbolts, and they can do it much more efficiently than we can.”

“But I couldn’t possibly leave—”

A Lyra placed a foreleg over the white unicorn’s neck, interrupting her. “Rarity. They’re right. If they escaped, they’re probably already in Manehattan by now. If not, then there’s nothing we can...nothing we can do for them,” she said, closing her eyes.

Twilight averted her eyes from the scene and tried to think of something to say to drown out the sound of the two mares quietly sobbing.

“Uh, professor, why can’t we just take one of the trains?” she finally blurted out.

“Too many ponies. Also, I think a bunch of them broke down from carrying way over their maximum capacity,” professor Radiance said.

His explanation seemed to remind the other professors that they were there. Amber turned her head to face them, her disheveled red mane obscuring many of the stern lines of her face, giving her a worried look.

“Right. Now that you lot are here, it’s time to get moving. Rarity, Lyra, Twilight, and any pony who doesn’t know their basics: go get a copy of the Essential Book of Spells from professor Veracity. The rest of you, follow me. Anyone who passes me gets zapped. If I’m feeling generous. Try my patience and I’ll let Veracity lecture you.” With that, the orange unicorn lit up her horn and marched toward the sloping path down the mountain. After a moment, the rest of the group followed suit.

Twilight looked for professor Veracity and spotted the blue unicorn levitating the large saddlebags off her back, revealing the cutie mark of a thin black stick with sparks shooting out of the tip on her flanks. She trotted over to the professor and spotted Lyra and the white unicorn—Rarity, that was her name—approaching.

“Professor, I—”

“Don’t have saddlebags. Yes, I see. Fortunately for you, I have spares.”

With that, the professor levitated a set of saddlebags consisting of two small pouches, each big enough to fit a few books and nothing else, on to her back.

“The book’s on the right side. If you want to read it, get someone else to levitate for you. If you try to levitate it and mess it up, it’s on your head.”

Twilight murmured her thanks and stepped away, letting Rarity and Lyra pass her to collect their books. Hopefully they’d stop and camp somewhere on the way to Manehattan so she could rebuild her first thought template. Casting out of a spell book was all well and good in theory, but having to finagle it so she could read it, then hold the entire thought pattern in her head instead of having it imprinted into her horn would be a chore, not to mention the fact that spells cast from books couldn’t be modified.

She then caught up with the rest of the group, but stayed slightly behind the pack so that she could think without interruptions.

What could have caused the Everfree to suddenly expand after centuries of being the exact same size? Ponies had lived near and sometimes in the magical forest their entire lives, harvesting magical plants and minerals that couldn’t be found anywhere else. If some random pony could have tripped something that caused the expansion, it would almost certainly have already happened. Whatever it was, it had to have something to do with the princess disappearing and the night lasting two days in a row. Those three events happening all at once had to be related somehow. Despite the fact that the Everfree forest was expanding and displacing thousands, if not millions, of ponies from their homes, that wasn’t the most upsetting fact. Twilight hadn’t been one of those superstitious ponies who believed that the princess literally raised the sun; astronomers had known for centuries that the tiny star revolved around the planet, which in turn revolved around the moon. Even if Celestia did control the sun, all she had to do was place it in a stable orbit around the planet and it would continue revolving all on its own.

The only conclusions she could draw from any of this was that nothing about the situation made sense. But Twilight was going to become a famous magic researcher one day, as famous as Starswirl the Bearded. Her ultimate goal was to figure out where magic came from. Next to that, something as simple as the Everfree mysteriously deciding to eat the planet, Celestia going missing, and night lasting for days was not a mystery, but a puzzle. And she excelled at solving puzzles.

Chapter 3

A small cloud of frost formed in front of Twilight’s muzzle every time she took a breath. It was now four days since night had refused to leave, and the temperature was slowly dropping. Soon they’d have to resort to warming spells to keep everyone from constantly shivering. As for what the cold would do to Equestria’s crops…well, it was a toss-up as to whether the Everfree or the never-ending night would do more damage in that department.

Twilight tried to distract herself by taking in the surroundings. There wasn’t much to look at. To the right towered the Foal Mountains, behind her was Canterlot, and up ahead in the distance a glimpse of green was all that was visible of the Hollow Shades forest, which was fortunately not trying to eat everything like the Everfree. And around her the rest of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns grazed on the now uncomfortably rigid grass, each one except for Lyra and Rarity with a bright glow emanating from their horns. It was no substitute for more filling foods, but it would sustain them for the few days it would take to reach Manehattan.

She bent her head forward as if to take a nibble on the grass, but instead stayed in that position and darted her eyes back and forth. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her. Still, best to do this quick. Twilight concentrated, ripping an undetectable hole in reality with her horn. She felt magic flow through it, lighting it up with rippling purple energy that was too dim to be of any use as a light source, yet just bright enough to stand out if anyone saw it. After a few seconds she stopped maintaining the link and the invisible hole closed as if it had never existed. She quickly shoved her energy into the spell keeping her awake. She didn’t want to use it, but she had no choice. She’d been studying for three days straight before she’d begun creating her thought template, which had taken another two days, and then there were the two days traveling with her school while they walked onward toward safety in Manehattan. When she was done shoving all the magic into the spell, she probed the bundle of energy, looking for any signs that it might unravel. Finding no flaws, she lifted her head and pranced in place for a second to let out her accumulated nervous energy. One of the most useful applications of mental, or dark, magic (the other being the ability to detect and modify thoughts) was its use as a binding agent for more conventional types of spells. With a bit of mental magic, anyone could cast a spell and then bind it to anything; ponies, rocks, trees, or even the middle of the air, and the spell would last until it ran out of magic or unraveled from age or shoddy construction, which was how so many ancient tombs and temples contained functioning magical traps. What this meant for Twilight was that, since her anti-sleep spell only needed a thought pattern to cast, she could sustain it indefinitely without rebuilding her template.

“Hey, Twilight!”

Startled, she turned toward the sound of the voice. Lyra trotted up to her with an eager look in her eyes, while Rarity followed slightly behind and held a more resigned posture. Twilight considered her options. She could try to get the conversation over with as fast as possible. With the amount of contact she invariably made with other ponies of the course of a day, she had an almost supernatural ability to make any conversation incredibly awkward. Or…she could actually talk to them. Her inability to use levitation made any attempts to read incredibly difficult, and her other past time—magic—was unavailable to her. And some other ponies might be helpful in figuring out what was going on. Normally Twilight was adamant about only relying on her own thought processes, but this situation was clearly not normal, and she could use other ponies as sounding boards to bounce ideas off of. And who knows; one of them might even have a good idea or two of their own.

She turned to face Lyra head-on. “Yes?”

The other pony’s smile dropped into an expression of utter shock. An unpleasant tingle ran through Twilight at seeing the reaction acting like a normal pony had on her former roommate. She shifted her weight from side to side and lowered her eyes as she waited for Lyra to compose herself. Behind the green unicorn, Rarity drew closer. She seemed unaffected by Twilight’s response. That was expected, as this was Twilight’s first meeting with the unfamiliar unicorn.

“Um, if you were expecting any sort of news…” Lyra said.

Oh. She thought Twilight was expecting someone to come tell her if her parents were all right. The thought of them traveling to a far away city and not being able to see her again for years, or worse, being overtaken by the Everfree and being…well, whatever it was the Everfree did to ponies that went inside it now filled her with a fix of anger, fear, and confusion, but she wasn’t stupid enough to expect that anyone would find them and then tell her before they’d even reached Manehattan.

“I’m not. So what did you want to talk to me about?” Twilight said, pretending to focus on nudging around a patch of grass with a hoof while studying the other unicorns’ reactions out of the corner of her eye.

Lyra seemed to have recovered, but Rarity forestalled her. “Well you see dear, we wish to…sort of...backtrack, if you will, and find out what happened to anyone who might have been delayed before they could start journeying to one of the port cities.”

Twilight spent a moment parsing the ridiculously circuitous statement. “So you want me to help...what, patrol the area to help find evacuees from your home town? You realize the Wonderbolts are already doing that, right? And they’re professionals.”

“Not...exactly,” Rarity began.

“Oh my Celestia. By ‘find out what happened,’ you mean you want to actually go inside the Everfree.”

“We just need a few protection spells, but neither of us is skilled enough for that sort of thing. I focus exclusively on precision levitation for my boutique, and Lyra...can’t do that sort of thing either.”

Lyra looked away at that. She’d dropped out of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Ostensibly it was because she’d found a more fulfilling job as a harpist, but everyone knew she’d picked up the instrument because she couldn’t really control her magic. If she tried to summon the sound of a music note from midair, it would emerge as a cannon blast. Even plucking the strings of an instrument with levitation usually resulted in a broken instrument. So she abandoned her attempt to marry magic with music and abandoned one for the other.

Two unicorns who didn’t know more than levitation and how to summon explosions wouldn’t survive a second in a place as hostile as the Everfree. Still, even with Twilight with them they probably wouldn’t be able to do much. There were magic researchers in the peak of their career who would be investigating the Everfree, and if they hadn’t found a way to shield themselves from the Everfree already, there wasn’t much she could do, even if she was given a week of uninterrupted time to rebuild her entire repertoire of spells from scratch. Going with the pair would still be suicide, and her presence would make them assume she could actually help them.

“Again, there are professionals working on this. If they can’t do it, I can’t either. I’m sorry,” Twilight said. She felt another pang as she looked at the two unicorns’ disappointed expressions.

Normally she reveled in the disapproval of her peers, as it meant they wouldn’t be bothering her. But this time she was actually trying to connect with them, and their feelings actually meant something to her.

“It’s quite alright dear, I know I wouldn’t travel to such a dreadful place unless I had to. We’ll find someone eventually, even if we have to reach Manehattan and hire someone from there,” Rarity said.

The pair walked away. Twilight looked after them for a moment, then sighed and dropped her head to the ground again, trying to give off the appearance of grazing. If only she had a book to distract her. The Essential Book of Spells was just that; the only reason to read it would be to cast something, as she’d memorized it ages ago, and the spells inside it were too basic to even do a few quick experiments with. That on top of the effort it would require to get the book out and flip the pages and it wasn’t worth it to get it out.

Without anything else to do, she began to graze. She hoped those two wouldn’t get themselves killed. Rarity at least looked like the type to deal with danger from a distance.

Chapter 4

“Look out below!”

Twilight turned her head. Several pegasi were streaking toward her group, bearing the distinctive colors of the Wonderbolts. As she watched, three of them in a tight formation barreled at the group at an extremely steep angle. They approached and seemed to only get faster as they drew near. A twinge of doubt entered Twilight’s mind and she drew back slightly. She’d been stronghoofed into seeing a few of their shows back when ponies still tried to get her to do things with them, and during said shows she’d watched the performers level out from much steeper dives. But this didn’t seem to be a performance.

Levitation was beyond her at the moment, but not all spells needed intricate thought patterns. Quickly, she drew on her magic. Power flooded her horn. She picked out a strand of magic and twisted it into a simple move spell, one that would fling anything in its path backward, or hopefully slow down three speeding Wonderbolts. She got ready to throw all her power into the brute-force spell when the professors (except professor Radiance) started using their magic. Their horns lit up and the three pegasi were surrounded by the rainbow prism of a shared levitation field.

Twilight abandoned her spell, dispersing all the built-up magic she’d been about to force into that one ‘move’ strand so that it wouldn’t turn into a mini chaos storm. My spell would’ve worked, she thought with a huff.

The trio slowed to a halt until they were inches above the ground. Then the levitation field suddenly disappeared and the pegasi dropped to their feet. The gray pegasus in the middle immediately collapsed, apparently unconscious, while the two beside him stumbled but maintained their upright positions. Twilight trotted over, joining the gathering crowd.

“What happened?”

“Is he alright?”

“I think he needs a hospital, or at least a medical spell…”

Indeed, on closer inspection the unconscious Wonderbolt had cuts all over his uniform, which was itself stained with a number of red smears. Twilight uneasily remembered how she’d unthinkingly resented her teachers for a second for levitating the pegasi. Ponies were hurt, and she’d just been jealous that she hadn’t been able to show off. Well, it was just a second, and she didn’t do anything. In fact, if the teachers had been too slow she would have...saved...on second thought, a pegasus who had their momentum suddenly reduced to zero would suffer major whiplash. The wounded Wonderbolt might not even have survived. She immediately resolved that her rash almost-spell would be a secret that she kept until the day she died, then leaned in closer to see if the Wonderbolts would answer any of her classmate’s questions. Just because she’d almost killed someone didn’t mean she wouldn’t leap at a chance to get information.

“Can everyone back up a bit unless you know some medical spells? Silver here was clawed up by a griffon. Or seven. Not sure how many got to him. Yes, I’ll answer your questions. Just...oh, you know some? Go right ahead,” said one of the Wonderbolts.

His uniform covered his coat, but his white and orange mane was visible. He let Amber pass. The professor then knelt down beside the downed pegasus and began casting healing spells. Those were notoriously tricky to get right—from what Twilight had read, they involved casting a series of ‘move’ spells that affected time, but didn’t really mess with time either. It was complicated and she wasn’t anywhere close to skilled enough to use them yet. Not that she would be able to even if she knew how, as unless everyone stopped for a minimum of three days she wasn’t even able to use basic levitation. She idly began channeling magic and separating it into the components required for a levitation thought template. Never hurt to practice.

“Anyway,” the Wonderbolt continued, “the name’s Fire Streak. I’m technically retired, but in times of crisis the Wonderbolts pull out all of the reserves. This is one of those times. Now that introductions are out of the way—that’s right, no need for any of you to introduce yourselves. I can share my own ego, thank you very much. Don’t worry, it’s big enough—we can talk about the Everfree. So as you probably know through your magic vision spells—”

“They don’t work too close to the Everfree! We’ve tried.” That sounded like Moon Dancer.

“Right, then as you probably don’t know, the Everfree’s eating unicorns and earth ponies.” Fire Streak waited for the exclamations to stop. “Anyway, yes. We don’t know if it literally eats ponies. All we know is, any earth pony or unicorn to go into the forest that isn’t shielded, never comes out again. Any pegasus that comes out...well, we’re not yet sure how, but the forest just steals their magic. They can’t fly or do any magic and it apparently really sucks. Some of them said they would have preferred to be eaten, and to date none of them have had their magic come back, so if you see any pegasi on your travels, do not, for the love of Celestia, do not tell them it’s safe to go into the Everfree.

“Now that we’re all on the same page—and before you ask: no we don’t know where the princess went or why the sun still hasn’t come up—some of those pegasi I mentioned that got caught in the Everfree are coming this way. They should catch up to you slowpokes soon. Silver Zoom okay yet?” he asked, suddenly switching his focus to Amber.

“Mmm…should be in a few minutes. I’m good at what I do, but he’s lost a lot of blood. He needs lots of water and lots of rest,” the professor said, raising her head from Silver’s side to look at Fire Streak.

“You still never explained how he got that way,” Lyra said, pointing a hoof at Silver.

Hopefully it was the Everfree. Maybe that would make those unicorns abandon their plan—scratch that, it wasn’t even a plan—their suicide in the pony-eating forest.

“It was the griffons, of course,” Fire Streak said with a blink.

“Yes. You said that. Why did they attack him?”

“Huh. I didn’t think all of the port cities and trains were blocked from your spells.”

There was a moment of silence while all the unicorns in hearing range looked away or fidgeted with the grass.

Fire Streak looked around. “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that none of you thought to see if your destination was safe? Or why the trains weren’t working? Are you all really that—never mind. We’re going. Try not to get yourselves killed. I’ll even give you a free tip, since you’re all so smart: a nice big moving shield should help against the griffons. Or anything else that tries to attack.”

Professor Luminescence immediately started whispering to Veracity about setting up something like that. Her monologue faltered and stopped when she caught Fire Streak looking at her. “Um...yes. Shields. We have those,” she stammered out.

Fire Streak just sighed. He turned and supported a woozy Silver Zoom, helping the other Wonderbolt as they lifted him into the sky and rejoined the wheeling patrol in the sky, which, after a short discussion, zoomed off into the distance.

“So...magicless pegasi coming, huh?” someone said. “And griffons. I hope we see some. It’d be cool to see how they fight.”

Twilight facehoofed.

Chapter 5

The grass was stupid. The mountains were stupid. The path that wasn’t even a real path, just a place with slightly less grass was stupid. The cold that she was used to only feeling at high speeds and altitudes was stupid. The one thing that wasn’t stupid was the Everfree. The evil forest hadn’t taken her wings, it had taken worse: her magic. Without her wings she would look stupid and wouldn’t be able to steer very well, but she had plenty of practice dealing with crashes and would still be able to fly.

But without her magic, Rainbow Dash was nothing. She wasn’t the best flier in Ponyville, and probably Equestria. She wasn’t the pony who would one day, after she’d practiced her routine enough to get it down perfectly, join the Wonderbolts and become its most awesome member from day one.

The Everfree had taken everything from Rainbow Dash. And for that, it wasn’t stupid. It was a nemesis. And when Rainbow Dash finally found a unicorn who could make her a magic Everfree shield, she would go back to that forest and tear it apart. She wouldn’t need any unicorn magic or earth pony strength or even pegasus magic. No, she would tear the Everfree apart with the one thing she had left: her wits.

“Do you...do you maybe want to talk about it?” the frail yellow pegasus beside her asked.

She was always doing stuff like that. Rainbow Dash vaguely remembered her from flight camp. She had barely been able to do more than flail helplessly as the wind tossed her about like a leaf.

“No. Because there’s nothing to talk about. I’m going to find someone who can actually help instead of running away from the source of all our problems.”

“Oh—okay,” Fluttershy squeaked and scurried to the back of their little group. Thunderlane snorted.

“Look,” he said, “boss. I get it. You’re upset. We all are. But I think what she’s trying to say is, well, how are you going to do it? You can’t just kick a lightning cloud over the—you can’t just kick the Everfree forest and expect it to give us our homes or our magic back. It’s a force of nature.”

Rainbow Dash sighed. Why did she have to explain something so simple?

“It’s an ancient evil,” she said significantly. Nothing.

“The Everfree. It’s an ancient evil.” Still nothing.

She huffed at them. “These sorts of things always have something at the middle that makes them tick. Take the thing out, and it stops ticking.”

It was perfectly obvious. She couldn’t see how they weren’t getting it. She wouldn’t even need earth pony or unicorn magic. Or even pegasus magic. All she needed were her wits and a magic shield that would keep the Everfree from instantly overpowering her until she found whatever made it evil.

“Rainbow Dash, I don’t think this is really about the Everfree for you,” Fluttershy said.

Rainbow found herself lost for words for a moment at such blatant stupidity.

“Um, Fluttershy, you know that the Everfree caused all of this, right?”

“No, I mean...what would you do if you got rid of the Everfree and your magic didn’t come back?” Fluttershy said the last part extremely fast and then hid her face behind her bangs, one eye peeking out of it as if trying to gauge Rainbow’s reaction.

She needn’t have worried.

“Hah. As if. Even if it doesn’t come back immediately, some egghead unicorn will eventually figure it out. Or maybe even Celestia could do it. Getting rid of the Everfree will probably also get rid of whatever made her go missing,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Okay,” Fluttershy said softly, retreating in defeat.

Well, it would probably be a good idea to get a bird’s-eye—to scout the surrounding area. The Wonderbolts should’ve left them someone who could still fly. Rainbow Dash felt blind this close to the ground. And she had to walk on it. And-And Sleep on it. That last thought made her shudder. The last time she’d slept, she’d woken up with mud and bits of grass clinging to her. She’d washed it off in a nearby stream, but the cold, sticky feeling had lingered for hours afterward.

“Up there; someone’s kicking up dust!”

Rainbow Dash was instantly on alert. A group of magicless pegasi was easy prey for any griffon or creature from the Everfree. She focused on the small brown cloud in the distance but couldn’t make out whatever the source of it was.

“Thunderlane, go ahead with me and scout it out. Everyone else, follow at a safe distance and try to keep a low profile. We’ll come back and give a shout if it’s safe.”

“Why do you always pick me to do everything?” Thunderlane whined.

“Because you get my attention the most,” Rainbow Dash said, already settled into a crouch and beginning to stalk toward the dust cloud.

“Captain, you look ridiculous.”

“Shut up,” Rainbow Dash said, but adjusted her stance as she continued to walk.

“If you don’t go faster than a turtle, we’ll never catch up to—”

“Yes, Thunderlane, I get it,” Rainbow said.

"Seriously? None of you—”

“We will!”

Two familiar ponies approached Rainbow Dash, one green and the other white.

“Lyra? Rarity? What are you two doing here?”

“Trying to go back to Ponyville, of course. Though we need a unicorn that can pull off a decent shield spell first,” Rarity said.

“Wait, but—gah. Figures. The first unicorns I find who actually want to go to the Everfree don’t know how to do a shield either.”

Before Rarity or Lyra could respond, a purple unicorn with six stars surrounding a bigger one as her cutie mark walked up to the discussion.

“I can’t listen to this anymore! You three are plotting suicide. Su-i-cide. You are going to get yourselves killed. It will not be fun.”

So it was another coward trying to give out excuses before she had to refuse to help.

“Don’t worry, we won’t need you,” Rainbow said with a wave of her hoof. “It would speed things up, is all. I’ll hire us a unicorn who isn’t scared of her own shadow once we get to Manehattan.”

“You realize that’d cost you—”

“Yep.”

“And there’s no guarantee that—”

“Mmm hmm.”

“I give up. You win. I’m done trying to convince you lot not to kill yourselves. But when the Everfree is eating you, don’t blame me.”

With that, the purple unicorn stomped off to do whatever unicorns do in their free time. Probably criticize things they can’t do themselves.

“Anyway, there’s apparently a bunch of fighting going on in all the port cities,” Rainbow Dash resumed the conversation as if nothing had happened. “It’s probably fighting over the boats, so we should be good. Rarity, you’re practically a noble. You know what fancy places are like; when we get there, you lead the way to the fanciest unicorn spell pony there is. I have a ton of bits in the bank so cost shouldn’t matter.”

They continued planning as the endless night wore on and on. She would have to sleep on the ground again. In the dirt. At least Rarity understood her pain.

Chapter 6

“Griffon approaching from the northeast!”

Rainbow Dash flung herself off the ground and was in a basic earth stance defensive position before she was even fully awake.

“Distance?” she shouted.

A bright purple and yellow unicorn with a clam shell for a cutie mark startled at Rainbow’s voice.

“Um…I can’t say exactly, but the spell says they’ll be here in a few minutes,” the unicorn said apologetically.

“Well don’t just stand there, do something! Help with the magic defenses or whatever it is you’re good at,” Rainbow Dash said, then fell back on all fours and galloped to where what looked like the oldest unicorns were gathered in deep discussion. She scanned the area in the short amount of time it took her to reach them.

Skies, clear. Ground, clear. Mountains…she couldn’t see through the clouds blocking the peaks, and she couldn’t fly—a slow pulse of anger burned through her at the reminder—or send anyone else up because the only other pegasi here didn’t have their magic either. Out of options, she marked the mountain range as suspicious.

“You have a shield up?” Rainbow asked the gathered professors. She didn’t show it, but she was feeling slightly winded—and for the tiny distance she’d crossed, that was incredibly worrying. She hated how weak she was now. She wouldn’t even stand a chance against a manticore in this state.

The unicorns—and, she noted with surprise, one earth pony—glared at her.

“We were discussing the best course of—”

The blue one tried to say more words but Rainbow didn’t let her finish.

“Well stop. Evil griffons are going to be here soon, and I know griffons. Even the friendly ones don’t think a day’s complete until they’ve speared some poor little animal and torn its guts out. So stop delaying and start doing.”

Rainbow Dash stared at them. The blue one tried to speak again but Rainbow once again started first.

“Anyway. Another unicorn said they’ll be here in a few minutes. So you get your magic stuff ready and I’ll make sure my team doesn’t do anything stupid.”

With that, she galloped back to where her pegasi were. They weren’t professional by any means. A weather team with more competent leadership would never have let Rainbow Dash into the prized position of lead weatherpony, no matter her skill. That meant these Ponyville pegasi frequently slacked off, were extremely disorganized, and knew pretty much nothing except how to do their jobs.

“Right. Form up, team.”

Her pegasi formed an uneven row that was somehow even more chaotic than just standing around.

“I’m going to be blunt with you. None of you can fight. All of you need to go under the unicorn’s shield while they fling magic stuff at the griffons. And don’t touch anything. Keep your hooves to yourselves and when I get back, if I find out you’ve broken something I’m letting the griffons have you.”

Rainbow stared at her troops. “Any questions? No? Good. Now go.”

The pegasi hurried over to where the unicorns were all clustered, then went into full out gallops when a purple dome formed over the unicorns and started descending. They all made it, thankfully. Now Rainbow could fight without worrying about the collateral damage. Except she wasn’t as awesome as she normally was, so she’d have to restrict herself to fighting two—three, tops—griffons at once.

Then she heard wing beats. They were different from the light staccato of a pegasus. These were the slow and hard flaps of predators that feared nothing. She looked back to the mountain and saw a series of winged forms flinging themselves toward the travelers.

“Incoming!” she screamed, then flung herself up to meet the attackers.

And fell to the ground.

This would require some thought. She couldn’t fly, so most of her pegasus-style martial arts would be useless. She had trained in some earth pony styles, but not very extensively. So her options were to use only very basic moves that she knew would work or to try to combine them with the pegasus styles. The second option was an extremely bad idea and every instructor she’d ever had, even that one grouchy old unicorn who’d seemed to revel in seeing her struggle, would be screaming at her to stop if they knew what she was thinking. And perhaps slapping her across the face.

But she was Rainbow Dash. She took risks all the time. And she could finally spend some of her pent-up anger on targets worth the effort. She flattened herself to the ground and waited for the griffons to swoop. Once that happened, she could jump on them. And then…wait.

They weren’t swooping. And they were wearing plate armor. And were carrying thin tubes of metal with a strap fixing it to their bodies so it wouldn’t fall off.

“They have guns!” Rainbow called. Hopefully that shield wasn’t sound proof. If it was, well...they would see the results soon enough.

Rainbow Dash shrunk backward, trying not to draw any attention. Griffons with plate armor and guns were an entirely different story than ones using just their claws and talons. If she’d had her magic, she might still have risked attacking, but now her only chance at winning would be to surprise one on the ground. She might be itching for a fight, but she wasn’t stupid. She began subtly digging at the ground, tossing grass on top of her and partially burrowing into the mud. It was extremely icky and cold and wet and slimy and sticky, but she did it. Then she looked at the griffons again.

As she watched, one of them sighted along the barrel of its weapon and depressed the trigger with a claw. A bang rivaling the sound of a small tornado roiled through the air and a cloud of smoke engulfed the barrel of the rifle. The purple dome of energy surrounding the unicorns brightened for a second and then went back to its normal glow.

Wow, that shield was tough. Rainbow had seen rifles actually shatter unicorn shields before. It was extremely cool to watch, and Rainbow had actually hired a unicorn to set up a range for herself and Gilda with the unicorn’s shield spells as the targets.

She waited for a beam of light to emerge from the shield and strike back at the wheeling targets overhead, but nothing happened. Griffons didn’t fall from the sky, or have their feathers explode, or fall to sleep in midair. Maybe the shield was too strong and wasn’t letting out any attacks.

Then the griffons started to descend. Rainbow Dash abandoned her line of speculation and gathered herself back into a crouch. If they were going to stay on the ground for more than a few minutes, one of them would eventually get too close to her. And then she would pounce.

Chapter 7

Seven griffons landed on the grass and began circling the purple dome of energy. Now that they weren’t moving from a distance, it was easier to make out specific details. Even though it was still night, Rainbow Dash could make out the more sharply-defined shoulders and—through gaps in their armor—the more gray scale feathers of male griffons.

The griffon lands were an extremely strange place. They didn’t have princesses, or really any leaders that ruled for more than a few years at a time. How they fought was even stranger: for large-scale battles, groups of griffons would organize under a leader without much authority, like a mayor in a pony town, and do whatever that leader told them. And all those griffons would be male. It was probably because they wanted to showcase that even their weakest fighters could win battles, but Rainbow Dash still thought it was odd. For ponies, a stallion would never be seen in a position that would let them go through actual battles. At most, one of them would take a ceremonial position ‘guarding’ the princess, or very rarely take on a position as a mall cop at a big city.

What all that meant, though, was that these griffons had come here not just to fight, but to kill, which meant Rainbow’s objective had just changed from winning a fight to protecting the civilians.

Well, she had no magic, so a tornado or something similar was out of the question. That obviously meant the best way to protect the noncombatants was to engage the griffons in hoof-to-claw combat. It would also help the unicorns by being a distraction. Probably.

One of the circling griffons near Rainbow Dash stumbled. It was just a tiny hitch in his stride, something that only two types of ponies would notice: negotiators, and skilled fighters.

Rainbow Dash exploded out of hiding with a jump and a forceful flap of her wings, trailing mud behind her. It was time to stop moping and start doing something. She dove at the back of the griffon, time stretched around her, the almost-unnoticeable stumble slowing him down just enough that when she arrived, he hadn’t yet turned completely around. She leaped into the air, another flap of her wings generating almost no lift, but was still able to land on his back.

Then everything happened very fast.

A claw lashed out. Rainbow leaned away and brought a hoof up that collided with the back of the griffon’s head. It fell forward with a cry, bucking Rainbow into the air. She let herself get flung away and angled her body to provide the least wind resistance. The rest of the griffons were coming, so she needed to get away from the one she’d first attacked at soon as possible.

She landed right beside the force field. A soft but intense humming filled the air. She looked left, right, up, and then rolled out of the path of a diving griffon. Seeing her move, he scrambled in the air and got himself into a respectable crash-landing position before reaching the ground and skidding across it before he could dig his talons in.

But Rainbow Dash had already pounced. A precise bat of her wing and a coarse feather rubbed against his eye. A swift headbutt to the chin and he collapsed to the ground. Then it was only the work of two quick bucks to the head with her forehooves to ensure he wouldn’t be getting up again any time soon.

The fight wasn’t over yet, though. She could see two more advancing toward her. These ones were guarding each other, not blundering at her like the last idiot. Their caution, along with their armor and the rifles that they were now training on her, having apparently decided that a lone pegasus actually was worthy of using up their precious ammo, was going to make this fight...interesting.

Then a red-orange field surrounded her and she was dragged through the purple bubble with a plop. Then the professor who’d been levitating her let the field drop and she collapsed to the ground. The humming she’d only heard before had gone through her as she’d gone through the shield, making even her bones feel like they were vibrating. Rainbow Dash didn’t throw up—she never threw up—but it was a close call.

“You idiot!”

Great. It was that purple unicorn again. And she couldn’t even respond because some pony had dragged her through a shield that apparently tried to kill you even if the ponies that set it up took you through it.

“That was awesome!”

Well that was new. The little orange filly—Scootaloo, that was her name—that had followed her along with the rest of Ponyville’s now flightless pegasi had suddenly decided to speak up. And even though she’d only been able to fight two griffons, Rainbow Dash had to agree; she had been pretty awesome. And she hadn’t even fluffed up when she’d used her wing in her attack, which was definitely not part of any earth pony styles.

“Thanks, kid,” she told the filly, who squealed and started jumping up and down, and then looked at the unicorn. “What? I could’ve taken the rest of them, easy. You guys should’ve been shooting laser beams and doing other unicorn stuff to help. Not that I needed it, but it would’ve been nice. Seven on one isn’t a sure thing when I don’t have my magic and they have armor and guns, even for me.”

“You were going to die,” the unicorn said flatly. “Once you proved you were a threat, they all went for their weapons. I know what those things can do to an unarmored pony.”

“Look purple guy, if you’re not going to help by blasting them or something, that’s fine, but you are not going to stop me from doing my job. I’m going back out there.”

Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth and galloped at the barrier. It thrummed, then grew brightly where she pushed against it and stretched a bit. She pushed as hard as she could, and then it flung her backward into the air. Normally a midair quick loop would’ve bled off all the kinetic energy, but she didn’t have her magic. She was going to kill the Everfree. So she streamlined her body and hit the ground at a shallow angle, then rolled to her feet.

“It’s Twilight. And you’re welcome.”

“For what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe saving your life. See all these unicorns?” Twilight said, waving a hoof around at the ponies around her. “They collectively wasted a lot of their energy to get your sorry flank in here. I was able to convince the professors to bring you in, but the shield can only last about half as long as before. Then it runs out of energy.”

“What about you? You don’t look tired,” Rainbow pointed out.

“That’s because I can’t use any spells until I can meditate. Neither can Rarity or Lyra. The Everfree came at one of the worst possible times...”

“Well, that’s great and all,” Rainbow said, digging a hoof into the ground, “but what are we going to do? Wait here until the shield breaks and we all die?” she finished, then raised the hoof and drove it back down. It made a squish instead of the solid thump it should have.

“No. We’re going to plan. And we have unicorn magic, while the griffons will have, at most, a few basic runes. We shouldn’t have to worry about posting a watch because if the griffons had any shield breakers with them they probably would’ve used them, but the professors will probably post one anyway just in case.”

“Right. Well while you guys are working on that planning stuff, I’ll be...sleeping.” Then Rainbow Dash looked at the ground. While mud was unpleasant, at least it turned warm after lying on it for a while. With the night just going on and on, the mud had eventually congealed into a part-stone, part-mud substance that was all-cold. It was just about the worst thing Rainbow had ever had the misfortune to have to hide under. Sleeping on it would be so much worse.

“But Fluttershy will be there. And your other friends from Ponyville. I think Rarity actually likes talking to you for some reason.”

“On second thought, I’ll go help plan. I’m awesome at planning.”

“Really?” Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“That’s so cool! Let me try,” Rainbow Dash said, bringing up a hoof to her forehead. “Uh, I mean, yeah. You’re looking at the captain of Ponyville’s weatherworking team. I plan the schedule every year!”

Unfortunately, Thunderlane happened to overhear.

“With a lot of help. And even then, we just recently had to schedule a storm could be called a monsoon with no loss in meaning because you missed three storms in a row.”

“Yeah, I remember. That storm was some of my best work,” Rainbow Dash said with a smile.

“I was trying to make a point about how—”

“You can bicker all you want later. It’s meeting time. Let’s go!” Twilight said.

Chapter 8

It was not for the first time in her life that Gilda felt ashamed of her own species. Not only had a diplomatic mission to Equestria failed to stop the constant stream of pony refugees to her home, which threatened the security of the Griffon Stone, but said diplomatic mission had also led to one of the guards getting drunk and killing some random pony. The latest bout of stupidity had come from her own House: not wanting to back down, her own superiors had apparently decided that declaring war was the only way to save face and sent raiding parties into Equestria. Meanwhile, refugees continued to flood Griffonstone in such numbers that forcing them out wasn’t an option.

And for recognizing the problems and trying to get them noticed, she’d been forced to head a raiding party into Equestria, “or else.” Though, looking back, she probably shouldn’t have called her captain a complete and utter idiot. Along with some other things.

Now she was circling in a wide loop around Canterlot, finding groups of ponies, and telling them in no uncertain terms that raiding parties had probably hit all their port cities by now, and that if they did manage to find a boat, that sailing to griffon lands would be a death sentence. The other six members of her squad standing behind her menacingly and hefting their rifles had probably helped too.

She flew at the tip of a wide arrow formation, two griffons flying on each side and two more circling around. As soon as they finished flying over the mountain ahead, the griffons at the edges of the formation would peel off and start circling while the former sentries took their place in the arrow.

As the mountain range ended, Gilda spotted a purple dot on the ground. Before the sentries could rotate out, she barked, “Hold formation and ready your rifles! There’s something up ahead.”

The inbound sentries gave her dirty looks, but leveled off and began circling again. Her squad started loading their guns and somehow managed not to spill gunpowder everywhere. It was an impressive trick and almost made her want to join the boot camps just so she could do it. Meanwhile, her twin shoulder-mounted versions would do. They lacked maneuverability, but as long as she kept her distance their state-of-the-art performance shone through.

As they approached, the splotch got clearer. It was a dome of shimmering purple energy. And inside it were ponies. Then it lit up, getting brighter and brighter until it outshone the sun. Gilda closed her eyes, trusting in her instincts and wing mates to guide her. After a second it flashed so brightly that it blinded her through her eyelids. She continued her flight as her vision cleared. She was going to give those ponies a piece of Tartarus for that.

She tilted her wings and her squad followed her downward. She touched down first, and every other griffon dropped out of the sky behind her in perfect formation. It looked extremely cool. She knew that because when she’d been little, her mother had come home the same way every day.

“Listen up ponybrains!” she yelled.

Then she got a good look at the ponies around her. Usually she was met with a healthy dose of confusion, and more lately fear as what the raiding parties had been doing reached them. Some of these ponies had similar looks, but most of them just looked angry.

“Hah! We totally blew those other guys away. We can take all of you just as easily.”

Rainbow Dash?!

Gilda looked at her old friend in shock.

“That’s right! Be scare…wait. Gilda?”

Gilda finally found her voice. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your Cloudsdale buddies?”

Rainbow Dash waved a hoof from side to side. “Nah, not really. I moved to Ponyville a while ago. I mean, I would’ve gone to Cloudsdale anyway to help the Wonderbolts—they’re taking volunteers, you know—but, well...you know. Hard to do anything when the Everfree gets you.”

“Gets—hang on. Other guys?”

Now that Gilda looked, she could see them, all apparently unconscious. They looked like…

“Wow, what did they do to get that done to them?”

“Oh, not much. Just except for, you know, trying to kill us. And you guys definitely look like them,” Rainbow Dash said, eyes narrowed. A rumble of agreement from the nearby ponies underscored her statement. “Got anything to say about that?”

“What?”

“So I take it you’re not with them, then.” Rainbow looked relieved.

“Of course not,” Gilda replied, “they must’ve gone rogue. We’re only supposed to...uh, warn you. Even the ones at the cities and train stations are only there to destroy property.”

The whole situation had started with an accidental killing, but Gilda hadn’t thought any griffon would be stupid enough to think they were in a real war. The only reason they were attacking was to prove a point. Killing entire groups of ponies would lead to massive amounts of bloodshed on both sides. Plus it was so easy to avoid. The griffons had endless daylight. All they had to do was wait until the ponies’ crops failed and they wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Destroy property? Gilda, the Everfree’s going to overtake this entire continent unless we can stop it, and if ponies are stuck here they’ll die. Why are you doing this?”

“Politics. Not my idea. If I could help you with your Everfree problem I would. Something to do other than fly around and talk to ponies would be just what I need. Helps that everyone in my entire House is an idiot,” Gilda said, giving a stand down signal to her squad with a few flicks of her wings.

Rainbow Dash looked up with her “I’m going to do something stupid and drag you with me” expression.

“Well you could come with us! We’re going in to the Everfree, and when we find the thing that’s making it move, we’re going to smash it,” Rainbow said.

Gilda sighed. “I would love to—really—but I’ve got a job. Break a wing, or good luck, or whatever.”

She stepped forward and spread her wings to take off when she heard a loud bang, as if someone had fired a rifle off right next to her. She turned to scream at whichever idiot had done it when she felt liquid dripping from her side. Confused, she looked down. The left side of her chest was a bloody mess. Below her, one of the formerly unconscious griffons had managed to aim and fire his rifle without anyone noticing.

“Traitor.” It seemed to take her forever, but she eventually understood what the griffon beside her had said. She opened her beak to reply, but then she fell forward. Her face met the ground and everything went black.

Chapter 10

Twilight prodded the scraps of metal with her hoof.

“Yep. Those are definitely runes.”

Runes were basically unicorn magic that every race could do, though if you were a unicorn it would be impractical in the extreme to use them unless you were really opposed to mental magic, and even then they would only really be useful for spells that you wanted to keep using without having to maintain it with your own magic. Twilight could recognize a bunch of them from her classes; as an earth pony, professor Radiance had to use runes to teach his classes. She’d even inadvertently memorized a bunch of sequences and what they did. But the miniaturized and extremely complex sequences of characters carved into the inside of the armor were beyond anything she’d seen. They were set on places that anyone putting it on would be extremely unlikely to find unless they were looking, or the armor was torn apart like this. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, though. Their unusual placement could merely be to keep them from burning whoever wore the armor. And the fact that they were on the inside of the armor could just be for their protection. When in use, runes grow hot, and even the slightest touch could smudge an inscription, making it useless.

“So I was right. And they call me a traitor,” Gilda muttered, glowering at the metal.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Twilight said, leaning over the armor.

It wouldn’t do to have Gilda wrecking the remaining pieces in a rage. Griffons were notorious for getting angry extremely easily, and she wanted to keep these runes intact for as long as possible so she could study them. It might be weeks before everyone was situated and she could get her spells working again.

“Don’t worry, you can have it,” Gilda said with a bitter laugh. “I don’t want anything they gave me.”

Twilight noticed that she was still standing protectively over the ruined armor. She coughed and stepped away from it.

“So…cold weather we’re having, huh?” she said.

Rainbow stepped up beside Gilda. “Hey. It’s probably just a misunderstanding. Your family wouldn’t—”

“Stop!” Gilda barked.

Rainbow Dash blinked and stepped back.

“Just...stop. You don’t know my family. You’ve never met them. And even if this wasn’t their fault, someone with a lot of power in my House wants me dead. The only thing I can do is lay low for now.”

“So how about that forest, huh? It’s crazy times we live in, guys. Crazy times!” Twilight said, walking forward and putting herself between Gilda and Rainbow Dash.

“But you’ll never know unless you talk to them! You can’t just keep something like that to yourself, you’ll explode!”

“How about that eternal night thing we’ve going on? Don’t want to keep that to ourselves, do we? No we do not. Let’s all talk about it!” Twilight tried.

“Yeah? Well what about you? You lost your magic. You can’t even fly anymore. How can you say I’m keeping stuff to myself when you won’t even mention it!”

“It’s—It’s different, alright! This is something you can fix—”

“Good idea,” Gilda said with a glare. “Let’s go fix your little magic problem. I needed a vacation anyway.”

“What? You too? It’s still suicide to go into the Everfree, you numbskulls!” Twilight said, abandoning her attempts to change the subject.

There was a pause while griffon and pegasus glared at each other over Twilight.

“Fine,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Fine.”

Gilda and Rainbow Dash walked away without looking back at each other.

“You’re going to get yourselves killed!”

They ignored Twilight’s shout. With a sigh, she sat back and turned her attention back to the armor. Maybe she would learn something. She’d never studied runes before, though. She hadn’t thought she’d need them.

She wished she could go back to the library.

Everyone clustered around the tiny hill that the professors stood on. Amber, Veracity, and Luminescence’s horns lit up with spells Twilight couldn’t detect without her own templates.

“We’ve been scrying the nearest port cities,” Amber said, her voice cutting through the low hubbub of the crowd, which went silent at her words. “It’s…worse than we thought. Buildings are either on fire, rubble, or taken over by griffons. The ships are gone. We’ve been discussing our options, and our best bet is to go north. Anyone who still wants to try for a port city can follow Veracity. Those who want to try experimenting with the Everfree can go with Radiance.”

What? No, they couldn’t split up! What if the griffons came back and decided to attack? What if something else happened?

Twilight opened her mouth to speak up, to protest against the decision, but the professors were already stepping off the hill and everyone else was beginning to argue.

“Yes! We’ve got a professor! Shield: check.”

Twilight looked around and found Rainbow Dash punching the air next to her.

“Rainbow, stop. He’s obviously not going into the Everfree. Professor Amber said he’s just going to experiment,” Twilight explained.

“And you actually believe that?” Rainbow Dash jumped into the air and flapped her wings, then thudded back down to earth with a surprised look. A scowl spread across her face.

“Uh, yes! A professor would never lead students into that kind of danger, especially without explaining where they were going.”

Rainbow Dash just turned her scowl at Twilight and then stomped off. Twilight shook her head helplessly. Rainbow wasn’t thinking rationally. Her lack of magic made her want to do anything that might get it back, but all she was going to do was get herself killed.

Can you really blame her? If the Everfree had taken your magic away, wouldn’t you do anything to get it back?

Twilight shook the thought away. That wasn’t the point. She would really want to go to the Everfree, of course, but she would consider the risks and determine that it wasn’t worth it.

But then again, professor Radiance was going to the Everfree. He could probably make some sort of runic shield that would allow Rainbow Dash to go explore a bit. And as long as Rainbow thought she was doing something, she would probably stay at the edges. Plus, who knows; she might actually find a clue as to where the Everfree’s victims and stolen magic went.

Maybe Rainbow’s plan wasn’t that bad, if she was prepared. But the way she’d presented it had been so stupid that Twilight hadn’t even had to think about it for more than a second before she opposed it. But where else could she go? The north was just a stopgap measure. If the Everfree did stop because of the cold, then it would just be a waiting game until the cold and lack of food caused everyone to starve. And that was without the endless night. And Twilight was a magic researcher in training. The Wonderbolts and whoever else was no doubt researching the Everfree would probably welcome extra help. At the very least, she could act as a magic battery.

Twilight started walking in the direction Rainbow Dash had gone. Yes, there was an element of danger in everything, but you couldn’t just charge into it. She had to explain that some things needed preparation.

Chapter 12

“We’ve been walking for a while now.”

“Yes, Rainbow, we have,” Twilight said.

“Hey, I’m just saying—”

“Um, maybe we can talk about what a draconequues is? It sounds interesting, but I’ve never heard about it before,” Fluttershy said, gently inserting herself between Rainbow Dash and Twilight.

“Yes, excellent idea Fluttershy. That er, thing, was quite alarming. It only seems prudent that we should know as much about it as possible.”

Rarity was still acting as if she was in the middle of the Grand Galloping Gala. You had to hand it to her; she was dedicated. Meanwhile, even Lyra was nodding at the suggestion that they learn more about the strange creature that had accosted them. Not that Twilight had any objections. She just thought it would be best to let the professor tell them what he knew on his own time.

“Very well,” Radiance said, focusing only on where he was walking. “I have to warn you, though: I don’t know much about him myself. I only found a footnote about him in a book. He’s also on one of the stained-glass windows in the palace, though most ponies think it’s just a piece of art. He was apparently in control of Equestria for a thousand years, and is the extremely powerful embodiment of chaos itself. And that’s pretty much it.”

“That’s it? The dude controls your entire country for a thousand bucking years and that’s all you know?” Gilda said, glaring at the professor. He didn’t notice.

“Keep in mind that he is chaos. Even if we had records of what he did, it seems unlikely that he would repeat himself,” Radiance said, then continued with a sigh, “Still, I am just making excuses. I have no idea why he was purged from the records. Maybe his reign was so terrible that the Princess wanted no mention of him left.”

“Okay then...meanwhile, for some reason, all the unicorns in this group pretty much can’t use magic. Got a plan to fix that, or…?” Rainbow Dash said.

It was a pretty astonishing coincidence, at least at first. All three of the unicorns that wanted to investigate the Everfree lacked their magic. But if you looked at the circumstances that led to it happening, things made a lot more sense. Lyra and Rarity were from a small village, and had only come to Canterlot for the express purpose of rebuilding their magic systems. And Twilight herself probably wouldn’t have come if she hadn’t been doing the same. Going without magic did a lot to foster sympathy for those who were drained of theirs, perhaps permanently.

“Yes. When we get to the edge of the Everfree, we’re going to set up camp. We’re going to gather as much data as possible while they get their spells restored,” Radiance said. His dedication to not reacting to the conversation going on around him was impressive. His ears hadn’t even twitched.

“Isn’t that...stupid?” Rainbow Dash said.

“Yep. It is,” Gilda agreed.

“I have something on me that will make the addition of three unicorns unnecessary. And if the Everfree can get through it, they wouldn’t make a difference.”

“Is that the thing Discord pulled out of your saddlebags?”Rainbow Dash said, pausing in her step for a few seconds to speak and then trotting to catch back up. “Because he took it away really easily.”

Twilight had been wondering what that package was as well, but no one had asked about it until now.

“I know. I wasn’t prepared. I am now,” Radiance said.

Out of things to say, the group lapsed into silence. The building cold made everyone shiver, but it was still bearable. Twilight looked ahead at the Canterlot mountain in the distance. It hadn’t visibly moved since they’d started their trek. She sighed. This would take a while. Maybe she should’ve...no, she’d decided this was the best option. Granted, they were all terrible, but at least this one might solve something. If she could rein in Rainbow Dash long enough to keep the Everfree from noticing everyone and deciding to eat them.

The Everfree forest spread out before them, a tangled mass of trees that looked like they’d been there for hundreds of years and thick black vines. A thick carpet of undergrowth assured Twilight that any movement would require a lot of magic. Its appearance, together with the ridiculous amount of area it took up, made the idea of actually doing something about it seem insane.

“Is it...warmer?” Lyra said, pawing at the ground.

At least she was talking again. She’d been oddly silent for most of the trip, only chatting a little with Rarity. She’d had a brooding face on the rest of the time, and Twilight knew brooding faces. You couldn’t go to the most prestigious magic school in Equestria without some stress.

“Yeah, feel the grass. It’s almost edible,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Ugh. I don’t know how you ponies force yourselves to eat this,” Gilda replied, shredding her claws through the soft green blades.

Twilight lit up her horn, allowing her to sense the ambient magic. She might not be able to cast spells, but detecting relative amounts of magic in an area was a built-in ability all unicorns had, like drawing on magic and storing it, or the Seven Basic Patterns.

She bit back a gasp at what she sensed. In front of her, the Everfree blazed with a green glow so intense it masked anything that might be inside it. And the magic seemed to be contained, somehow, swirling about in what almost seemed like parts of a larger pattern that she couldn’t figure out. But some of it leaked through the edge of the forest, suffusing the air in a level of magic that Twilight hadn’t thought possible.

“I guess we should set up camp then. I’m ready for a good nap, and all you unicorns can fix your spells and stuff. And after that, maybe one of you could wrangle a cloud for me? I hate sleeping on the ground,” Rainbow Dash said, directing a pleading look at the three unicorns.

“Sorry Rainbow, unicorn magic is really bad at affecting stuff below a certain density. That’s why you guys are the weather workers, not us,” Twilight replied, momentarily derailing her train of thought.

“Well, what if you used a lot of magic? You guys have magic stones, right? The Everfree looks pretty magic; just get it from that.”

Twilight didn’t manage to hold her gasp back this time. “Rainbow Dash, you’re a genius!”

“Of course I am. So you’ll do it?”

“No, not that. One second, I’ll be right back!” Twilight said, galloping toward the Everfree.

Of course; it was obvious once someone pointed it out. When a bunch of magic accumulated in a small enough area, it condensed into solid magic. That was standard magical theory, though the last recorded time some pony had managed to do so had been several hundred years ago. Now these pure sources of magic were sought after for use in experiments, standard spells, or even magical duels. But when someone wove a golem spell into a piece of solid magic, it had a rare chance of not exploding into a chaos seed and instead becoming a Domain.

Twilight skidded to a halt right outside the edge of the Everfree, ignoring the shouts behind her. Domains were a piece of advanced magical theory. No one had recorded proof of the existence of a Domain. All accounts of them were legends. But if they really were just advanced golem spells tied up inside of a piece of solid magic, she should be able to connect to them.

She drew magic through her horn and spun a thread of magic into a ‘siphon’ string, then shunted all her power through it and flung it at the Everfree. She couldn’t do anything more complex, what with not being able to use spells, but hopefully…

It connected.

Movement. Absorption. Depletion. Movement…

Concepts swirled around in her mind, nuanced and fully fleshed out ideas that stunned her with how vivid they were.

Stop! she tried.

...Depletion. Absorption. Movement…

Why are you doing this? she sent, magnifying the thought with all the magic she could spare.

A pause. She felt the connection twist, and then the enormous consciousness was focusing on her. She froze, terrified.

Spellkey?

Spellkey? Why did...oh. Oh! It asking for the spellkey that would allow her to control it. All their problems could be solved if she could get this question right.

The square root of two… No, it wouldn’t be like that. The ponies that had made the Everfree would have wanted to make sure it didn’t go out of control, wouldn’t they? Then again...maybe they wanted the Everfree to do this.

What are you trying to do? she sent, stalling for time.

Guest access granted. Goals: 1. maintain a stable level of magic. 2. stay below 20,000 aesaethers of magic. 3. gather magic.

That was...surprisingly helpful. Something must have gone wrong with its ability to detect how much magic it had. Or maybe twenty thousand aesaethers was less than it had. There were no real standards used to measure magic in current use. Or maybe...well, she could be standing here forever if she just kept speculating without any data. On the chance that the creators hoped someone would be able to easily shut off their creation, Twilight sent the spellkey that was bound with almost every basic to mid-level spellbook’s collection.

It took all of two seconds for her to realize her mistake.

The forest didn’t respond to her attempt, but she felt its mind pressing down on her. Thick streams of magic flowed toward her. She did not stand around to see what they were meant to do and forced her trembling legs into a gallop.

Its mind was completely alien. There would be no reasoning with it. The only ways to make it stop would be to guess its spellkey or, as Rainbow Dash so eloquently put it, “find what made it tick.”

She stopped when she reached her group. They had apparently decided to just let her go, but were now turned to her with expressions of concern. Even professor Radiance had raised an eyebrow.

“Oh dear. What happened to you? You look terrified!” Fluttershy said.

Twilight swallowed back her fear. “It’s a long story,” she said shakily.

“Well? We have time.” Rainbow Dash nudged her shoulder. “C’mon, it’ll be fine. No one will judge you for recognizing my genius.”

“Alright,” Twilight said, taking a deep breath. “There are these things called Domains...”

Chapter 13

“So now we know it has to be destroyed.” Rainbow Dash cracked her neck.

“Not necessarily. We could also find the spellkey,” Twilight said, then muttered, “it’s not like I’ve told you that twelve times already.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing...”

They were still trying to set up the first tents that would let Twilight and the other two unicorns get their spells back, but judging the rate at which the Everfree expanded was hard. At first it would seem to be moving slower than a snail, then it would suddenly accelerate to a walking pace for an hour, then it would go back. They’d already had to tear down the tents and start putting them back up three times. At least Rarity seemed to have endless amounts of fabric in her saddlebags so they could patch them up after the frequent moves.

“So how exactly will we go about finding the center? Of course, the middle of the forest is an obvious choice, but even I know how the Everfree can change apparent distance, and that’s without it trying to, ahem, gobble us up,” Rarity said, threading a needle through a piece of fabric using only her hooves. How she was managing to do it, Twilight had no idea.

“Magic, probably,” Rainbow Dash said.

Gilda snorted.

“Conventional spells won’t work, Rainbow,” Twilight said, wishing she had her magic if only so that she could write down a list in her notebook. Lists were calming. “The Everfree would just absorb any spells with a different magical signature.”

“So don’t use a magical signature.”

“You can’t just not use a magical signature! It’s based on how you build every thought template you cast a spell from. The only things that don’t have a spell signature are the Seven Basic Patterns, and you can’t do anything complex with them,” Twilight said, exasperated. If you don’t know magic, it’s better to just say silent then offer any ‘helpful’ suggestions because of how utterly ridiculous they sounded to someone who does know magic and—

“What about runes then?” Rarity said.

Twilight opened her mouth to explain why exactly runes would not work and how just because she was a unicorn that did not mean she had a right to pretend she knew magic, then realized that she had a point and closed her jaws with an audible clack.

“That could work...” Radiance said slowly, a small thoughtful frown spreading across his face. “Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about runes to really do anything that complicated.”

Twilight stared at him. “You’re a professor! You’ve demonstrated magic in your class over and over. How—”

“I am a theoretical magician, not a practical one. And besides, my knowledge lies in the domain of unicorn magic.”

“But you’re an earth—”

“Ahem. I believe I can handle this,” Rarity said, marching toward them with her head up.

“You know how to use runes? Why? How?” Twilight said, feeling her mouth drop open.

“Well, as you can probably guess, my magic isn’t the strongest around. I often need some assistance to be able to keep up with my workload. Just a few runes in my boutique are often a tremendous help.”

Twilight shook her head. She supposed that with everything else that was happening, a fashionista knowing high-level runes wasn’t that high on the ‘surprising’ scale. “Alright, then. So you’ll be in charge of the tracking spell. Make it search for the largest concentration of magic there is.”

Rarity cleared her throat. “As you no doubt know, runes need a certain level of precision to work as intended. I will need to use levitation, a sheet of metal, and something to inscribe it with.”

“Of course. Right then, all non-unicorns, find those items for Rarity. Professor, I guess you can start the runes, or at least think about them so you can help Rarity when she’s done. The rest of us will be having to do a lot of meditation,” Twilight said.

Behind her, a tent collapsed.

“...After those are done.”

The mass of magical commands in front of Twilight was too complex to understand all at once. To make a thought template, you needed to focus on separate sections and worry about integration later. She could hold a lot of thoughts in her head at once, but even she wasn’t able to do something as taxing and just plain monotonous as a levitation thought template differently from the normal way. All the pieces of her template would theoretically fit together with no problems, but it would just take one wrong strand to unravel the whole thing. Maybe she should check it over again…

No. She was going to finish this. With a thought, she pulled at a single strand of magic. With the obstruction removed, the template collapsed into itself. Twilight looked it over. It seemed okay. She forced some magic into the template and gave it the relevant coordinates. Her hoof rose into the air apparently of its own accord, surrounded by a purple glow that was much fainter than she remembered.

Success!

Twilight established a connection with the template and sort of...pulled it inside of her horn. She was never sure what exactly happened when she made a new thought pattern, but she would now be able to levitate objects to her heart’s content. Even without her normal library of spells, that felt good. And she could just use that spellbook in her saddlebags if she wanted to use a basic spell.

She got up, shaking stiff limbs and stretching, then slowly walked out of the tent. The moon still shone overhead, giving everything a silvery glow. She was starting to get used to it, occasional stumble and unclear details notwithstanding.

Around a small campfire sat Radiance, Lyra, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Gilda. Rarity was holding a flat circle of metal in her levitation field while talking to Lyra, Rainbow and Fluttershy were having a surprisingly sedate looking chat, and—Twilight blinked, then rubbed her eyes—yes, her professor was talking to Gilda.

Rainbow Dash noticed her first.

“What took you so long?” she said, breaking off her conversation with Fluttershy, who looked startled at the sudden increase in volume.

“I—well, I wanted to make sure I did it right—” Twilight began.

“Whatever, you’re done now. C’mere and get some nice Everfree leaves. They’re surprisingly good,” Rainbow said, beckoning to her with a hoof.

Twilight did so and snatched the plate Fluttershy offered to her, greedily devouring the roots and leaves on it. She barely even registered that it was made of a patchwork of fabrics. No doubt Rarity’s work.

“You would not believe the trouble we had getting something for Gilda to eat,” Rainbow whispered once Twilight slowed down.

She looked at the griffon. Sure enough, she was eating chunks of...something. She turned away before she inadvertently picked up more details.

“So, Rarity,” she said, desperately trying to think about anything other than Gilda’s meal, “you, uh, get that thing done? The thing with the runes?”

“The tracking spell? Why, yes I did. As a matter of fact, I have it right here,” Rarity said, the teal glow of her magic lifting the metal plate into the air. “And I can confirm that it does work.”

“That’s good. Now we’ll need to prepare some shield spells—”

“Good? Good does not begin to cover it, darling. There must be a level ofappreciation for my work. You have no idea how many times I had to remake this. It was a lot,” she hissed.

Rarity’s mane did look a bit frazzled, which for her was probably the equivalent of rolling around in mud, so Twilight didn’t argue.

At least something was going right. They had a tracking spell that was apparently working, though Twilight would have to—respectfully—test it before they actually went into the forest. Maybe runic shields would work just as well.

But it wasn’t time to theorize. She was included in a group of ponies—and a griffon—that, for once, she hadn’t managed to completely alienate. It was a good feeling.

Chapter 14

Radiance stared at the forest, tuning out the sound of his companions bickering in the background. They were an unusually cooperative bunch, and he had faith that they’d reach an agreement without him. For now, he concentrated on his other senses.

It was a common misconception that earth pony magic required interaction with soil to be used. It was a view that made sense though, since even a completely unskilled earth pony could bludgeon plants with magic until they grew. All it took to sense and mold the magic in the air was a certain mindset and a lot of concentration. And Radiance himself had learned one of the secret Ten Talents earth ponies possessed that made detection a lot easier: the ability to piggyback on the consciousnesses of other living things. The more like a pony it was, the better. Something too smart and self-aware could trap him in its head, but jump on something too simple and he ran the risk of dispersing his consciousness to such a degree that the pieces wouldn’t be able to think for themselves, instead just sitting there until he died.

To scope out the Everfree, he would have to make the second risk. He knew his limits; a quick extension through the grass and into a tree inside the forest and he could safely observe for a few seconds before his thought processes grew too hazy.

He gathered the magic floating around inside him, bundling it into a ball in the middle of his chest, then started shaping it into an often-practiced pattern. Using one of the Ten Talents was a lot like casting unicorn magic, except it was a lot more limited and he had to build his spell each time he wanted to use it, since it was impossible to hold the amount of concentration required to keep it together while sleeping. And he couldn’t just conjure magic from nowhere. Magic would naturally flow into ponies until the amount in their bodies and the atmosphere equalized. And Radiance had to constantly sit through that months-long process every time he depleted his internal stores.

Then it was done. Radiance fed some of his magic through the pattern, feeling a minute amount of what he held disappear. Then he focused on the grass in front of him.

Wind. Water. Growth. They were simple concepts, and Radiance easily brushed them aside, his mind flooding into thousands of blades of grass at once. Then he expanded in a circle until he could feel which parts of himself were the warmest and flowed in that direction. With a jarring thud that felt like he’d slammed into a wall, he hit resistance. He spread out even more, feeling the wall stretch before him.

He considered the problem. Thinking while sharing the mind of a simple organism was a strange cross between possessing a clarity of not being bogged down with any of the distractions of a body and the slowness of thought that came with being too spread out to think as fast as he was used to.

Can’t pierce it... he thought. Go...under?

Yes. There would be many living things underground that he could hitch a ride on, and the solid matter would lessen the strength of the magic saturating the air. It would also slow him down, but he was actually concentrating on the area, unlike the Everfree.

Tendrils of his consciousness reached down into the soil, finding seeds, a few burrowing animals (but not enough), and then, finally, a large root. There were no other trees in the area. It had to be from the Everfree. Radiance attached himself to it, then filled it with himself. The chaotic magic of the Everfree surrounded him, eroding away his consciousness, but the tree insulated him enough that with the amount of time he would be staying, it wouldn’t even matter.

With his unique position, Radiance was better able to determine the nature of the magic flowing around him. It was completely unstructured, just raw magic. The kind of stuff that saturated the entire world. The kind that shouldn’t pose a threat to anything. The only difference was its density. No unicorn had the power necessary to overpower the Everfree, or even just tear away the spellkeys it had on its free-flowing magic. This wasn’t something that was going to be staved off by a spell, no matter if it was made of runes, or canceled out with a ‘nullify.’ It would take years to make any kind of progress, since the Everfree would instantly detect any foreign magic and use its own to crush it. He would have to use another of the Ten Talents.

Radiance rapidly disengaged with the tree through the same root he’d taken it over from, then rushed through the grass until he found something intelligent. A light brush—and he recoiled. That was Gilda’s mind. Lyra’s. Fluttershy’s. Ah, there it was.

Radiance settled into his own body with a relieved sigh, only to find himself being prodded.

“Yep, he’s dead. Sorry Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Stop scaring her Rainbow Dash,” Twilight scolded. Radiance turned his head to see her looking at the yellow pegasus. “It’s okay Fluttershy. I’m sure—AAH! Zompony!”

Rainbow Dash burst out laughing, curling up into a ball on the ground and pounding her fist on the ground. “Hah! He got all of you! Good job, professor.”

“That wasn’t funny Rainbow,” Twilight said, frowning.

Radiance cleared his throat. Every pony looked at him. Gilda looked more interested in something dead she had clutched in her talons.

“I’ve been hiding something from you,” he said, finding it easier and easier to keep wearing the emotionless he’d spent his youth hiding in, before he’d begun teaching at Celestia’s school.

“Well no duh. First Discord outs you, then you say you have something so awesome that even with me here, it won’t matter if you use it on an attacker,” Rainbow Dash said. At least she was honest.

“Yes, well, here it is: I have some enchanted items in my saddlebags that act like an extreme version of a ‘nullify’ spell. They can probably get us quite a ways through the Everfree before I run out.”

Radiance held his solemn expression and looked everyone in the eyes. He didn’t even vary his breathing rate. The royal interrogators would be proud.

“Okay...I just don’t understand why that was a secret,” Lyra said with eyes wide and ears laid back.

“Good.”

Radiance hoped none of them did. They were all some of the finest examples of ponydom he’d seen, so it probably didn’t matter if they did, but the thought still made him nervous. And Gilda probably wouldn’t care either way. Still, being brought up from birth not to reveal the true extent of earth pony abilities—as well as a few other...experiences—had an impact.

The mindset dated back to the wars between the three tribes. The pegasi had retreated to their cloud cities, ignoring everything that happened below, but the earth pony and unicorn tribes had been in vicious battles for decades. It had been a mostly even fight at the start, but the unicorns had been slowly gaining ground. When the earth ponies’ situation had grown obviously hopeless, a few hundred earth ponies who had mastered the usable eight of the Ten Talents had sneaked behind enemy lines, and—ignoring conventional wisdom in what you just did not do in a war—had done as much damage as they could. Their resistance against magic, ability to instantly deploy huge thorny walls, coupled with the abilities to speed up both body and mind so they were just blurs, left the unicorns a bloody mess. Corpses were everywhere, magically cultivated crops destroyed, homes destroyed, wells despoiled, libraries burnt—it was horrific.

It had only gotten worse when the unicorns retaliated. Magically propagated sicknesses were released, mind control spells used with abandon, and sealed weapons unleashed just for the purpose of wreaking as much destruction as possible.

The earth ponies had surrendered, and frequent insurrections caused any use of their abilities to be banned, on pain of death. The pegasi were horrified, of course, but it took them years to decide on a plan of intervention, and by then the precedent had been established: earth pony Talents were not to be used. Ever.

In modern times, death wasn’t likely from the general population, but there were unicorn groups out there that still remembered. And so did their assassins.

“Professor? You, uh, kind of faded out there,” Twilight said with a worried smile.

“I’m fine,” Radiance waved her off. “But get ready, and try to build back some of your more useful skills. These things degrade over time, so it’s best if we enter as soon as possible.”

It was true. Radiance couldn’t activate his magic resistance ability without help, and learning the Talent required someone else who already knew it to guide him through it. The process of learning took months at a bare minimum. There was more to earth pony magic than just memorizing a pattern. So he cheated. In his saddlebags were a collection of obsidian, filled with the specific magic pattern needed to resist magic. Some rock farmers had specifically shaped the magic inside of them, discreetly selling them to anypony who needed them. It was extremely expensive, though, since the process needed a skilled pony to thread the magic through the rock for hours at a time instead of filling other rocks with ambient magic that they could sell as magical batteries to unicorns. He could trigger the ability within each rock by consuming one of them. Earth ponies actually had a second tiny stomach specifically for that purpose, though few knew what it was for. So he was prepared.

He just hoped everyone else was.

Chapter 15

Twilight looked at the Everfree. The forest had a reputation for making anypony who entered lose their sense of direction. She added a compass spell to the list in front of her, scoring the now-blank pages of the basic spellbook with a crude spell that lightly agitated selected air molecules so that they cooked the letters she wanted onto the paper. It was surprisingly effective. She hated to vandalize a book like this, but having the ability to plan ahead was crucial.

She swiveled her head back toward the rest of her group. Lyra and Rarity were laying down chatting by the fire, while Gilda and Rainbow Dash seemed to be locked into some sort of mock-combat that looked all too real, and the professor looked content to just sit in the grass and meditate. Twilight breathed another sigh of relief. They weren’t ready yet. She still had time to rebuild a few more spells. Then she looked at her list again. It was a large list. Then the Everfree. She’d probably need something that could camouflage them in case the shield failed…

“Um, Twilight?”

Twilight shrieked and channeled her magic into activating her now-large array of shield spells all at once. A visible wave of purple magic spread out around her, flinging the yellow pegasus backward with a pained squeak.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry Fluttershy!” Twilight said, removing her shields and trotting to where Fluttershy was laying, then nudged the pegasus with her nose.

“Eeek!” Fluttershy said, then jumped up and stood still, trembling.

“Are you okay? If you’re not I have some spells I could make patterns for that could help. Or I could get Rarity or Lyra and ask if they know any healing spells, or maybe the professor knows a few runes that could help—”

“I’m—I’m fine. I was just going to ask if you were, um...ready,” she said, speaking the last word so quietly Twilight had to strain to hear it.

“Oh! Oh, of course, we could go right now if you like, or we could wait a bit, I don’t mind at all if we wait a bit, but then we really should leave as soon as we can so that professor Radiance’s artifacts don’t run out of power...sorry, sometimes I can ramble on a bit, silly me, of course I’m ready,” Twilight said with a smile.

She was so not ready.

“Gr-Great,” Fluttershy said. Even her voice was trembling. “I’ll just go and, um, tell the others...”

Fluttershy turned around and started trotting away. Twilight looked past her and saw everyone was looking at her. They turned away when they saw she was looking, but they still sneaked looks when they thought she wasn’t looking at them. Shame filled her. She’d reacted without thinking, and if not hurt, then severely scared the most insecure member of their group.

“Fluttershy, wait!” she called. The pegasus stopped and looked back questioningly.

Twilight slowly walked up beside her, trying to act as non-threatening as possible.

“I wanted to apologize. I was on-edge, and worrying about what the Everfree might throw at us, and then I was startled, and—and I’m sorry. I didn’t even check to see what it was, I just...moved. Can you forgive me?” she asked, crouching down a bit and laying her ears against her head.

“Oh, of course I forgive you Twilight. We’re all a bit jumpy. I should have realized you would do something like that,” Fluttershy said, looking earnestly into her eyes.

“Thank you,” Twilight said quietly.

Gilda landed in between them, glaring at Twilight, who shrunk back at the griffon’s harsh gaze. Rainbow Dash galloped up soon after.

“Hey! What happened over there?” Rainbow said, joining Gilda in boring holes through Twilight.

“I—I don’t—” Twilight started to say, bewildered. Ponies butting into each other’s business was discouraged back at Celestia’s school, mostly because if you tried something like that you’d find the library had been stealthily rearranged and the book you’d been reading hidden in somepony else’s room. Twilight shivered at the memory.

“You could’ve killed Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash continued. “I don’t know what things were like at your fancy unicorn school, but here friends don’t make other friends fly through the air, especially when they can’t fly.” Gilda said nothing, instead tilting her head in a half-nod before catching herself and returning her expression to an icy but aloof glare.

“Stop!” Fluttershy yelled.

Everyone looked at her. She stalked up to Rainbow Dash, showing more anger than she’d exhibited any other emotion—besides fear—the entire journey.

“It was an accident. She came over here, to me, to apologize. And then you two came up here and—and started yelling at her. Can’t you tell that she’s scared?”

The irony of the most timid member of their group reaming out the bravest for scaring somepony wasn’t lost on Twilight.

Rainbow Dash looked abashed. The fire left her eyes and she shifted her weight back to her front, her hooves visibly sinking into the grass. “Well...I’m sorry too, then. For, you know, assuming. It looked bad. Still friends?” she said, extending a hoof toward Twilight, who looked at it in confusion.

Had they been friends? She didn’t remember having that conversation. And they hadn’t gone to a party together. Twilight had read about friends, and all her books agreed that to be friends, two ponies must have a party. But...now that she thought about it, she liked everyone in this little group. They had their flaws—by Celestia, they had flaws—but they weren’t just irritating distractions she had to include on her schedule under Things To Get Rid Of.

Choice made, Twilight brought her hoof up and lightly touched it against Rainbow’s.

“Wow, you really don’t get out much, do you?” Rainbow Dash said, shaking her head. “That’s okay. Me and Gilda are the best at not being eggheads. We’ll make you into someone you can have fun with in no time!”

Twilight didn’t know how to respond to that. At least Gilda had lost her glare. It was scary, and the effect only heightened when Twilight considered that Gilda hunted for food.

“Hi?” she said to the griffon, sticking her hoof out. Gilda considered it for a moment, then wrapped her claws around it and shook it up and down. It was an extremely strange gesture. Twilight had never seen it before, but she could guess at its meaning.

“I don’t like you,” she said bluntly, her glare still intense despite losing the anger from before. “But if Dash says you can fit in with us, I’ll give you a chance. Don’t blow it.”

Twilight’s head spun. She had friends. It was a strange feeling, but a good one.

“Alright, everyone ready?” Radiance called.

The arrayed ponies and griffon nodded.

“Right then. I’m going to activate it here, just to make sure everything works.”

Blackness descended on Twilight like a hammer blow.

Chapter 16

Twilight awoke in a tent.

“Gah! What happened?” she said, bolting upright in a second.

She looked around. It was one of Rarity’s fabric tents. The multicolored insanity that surrounded her made it so she didn’t see the runes attached to the walls for a few seconds.

This must be what Gilda felt like, Twilight thought, rubbing at her forehead with a hoof. What could have happened? The last thing she remembered was the professor activating his secret shielding artifacts. He’d been extremely confident in the things, so Twilight didn’t think they’d been attacked. Perhaps the shield had reacted badly with one of the spells she’d had active? She tried to think. It was hard. She’d just recovered from being unconscious for an unknown length of time, and her brain was fuzzy.

Let’s see. It had been just after the unfortunate incident with Fluttershy. Maybe she’d had a shield on. A low-level detection spell? Yes, she’d had one of those on to heighten her reaction times, though she couldn’t see how either of those would have interacted with professor Radiance’s artifacts. Twilight shook her head. If only she was able to sleep…oh.

Hoof met face with an audible thud and she slumped to the floor in embarrassment.

“I can’t believe I was so stupid,” Twilight said with her face pressed against the tent’s fabric.

She’d had her anti-sleep spell on for more than a week by now. Eventually feeding it had become routine, and even when she’d regained her ability to cast spells she’d kept it active without thinking about it. Radiance’s artifacts must have operated by nullifying the magic from an area. If she’d known...well, she couldn’t blame the professor. The same thing would most likely have happened.

And now she’d have been sleeping for weeks. How was she not dead of starvation?

Oh. Right. She had friends now. It was still odd to think about, especially since none of them knew much about magic, except the professor, who was still a professor. If she’d ever considered having friends, she would’ve thought they’d be like-minded individuals, ones who could discuss the finer points of magic for hours without getting bored. Showed what she knew.

Wind rustled against the tent, jolting Twilight back into the real world.

I have to find everyone! she thought, scrabbling at the ground until she got to her feet. Then she realized what she was thinking. They were friends now. And her friends wouldn’t abandon her. They’d put her in a tent and somehow kept her alive for however long she’d been out for. She stuck her head outside and looked at the moon. Time to tell the others she was ready. They’d delayed for too long.

“Twilight’s awake,” Gilda called out, lounging on a low-hanging cloud right above her. Twilight flinched at the sudden noise, then relaxed her face into a smile.

“Hi Gilda. How long have I been...out?”

“For us? A few hours. For you, I don’t know. More.” Gilda lapsed into silence, looking content to sit in her cloud forever.

“Right, I’ll ask Radiance instead. Know where—oh, there they are,” Twilight said, abandoning her attempts to regain Gilda’s attention on spotting the other five members of their group trotting toward them from the direction of the Everfree.

Twilight decided it would be best to have everyone in one place, so she waited next to Gilda. The griffon seemed to decide that now that Twilight wasn’t talking, it would be a great time for conversation.

“You ever been on a cloud before?” she asked, leaning over the edge and looking down at Twilight.

“Nope,” Twilight said, laying down on her belly in the grass. It was so much warmer by the Everfree, almost like summer.

“Why not? Unicorns can do it if they use magic, can’t they?”

It looked like Gilda was just going to continue to pester her until she provided a good enough answer. Twilight sighed. “Yes, we can walk on clouds in extremely specific circumstances using extremely dangerous spells that fail if your concentration wanders for even a second.”

“That’s too bad. You should do it anyway, just to feel it,” Gilda responded, rolling around on her back. Her feet sticking off the edge were the only part of her that was visible.

“We can’t feel it. To cloudwalk, we have to infuse the cloud in question with our magic. It apparently feels much different, and many books have described the experience as ‘not worth it for the effort.’”

“Huh.” Gilda said nothing more, and Twilight had to resist the urge to elaborate. The griffon wouldn’t appreciate the lecture anyway. No one did.

“Finally! Now we can finally go,” Rainbow Dash said, actually pawing at the ground in her eagerness to be off.

“Um, I think we should maybe wait a bit to make sure Twilight’s okay...” Fluttershy said, gently tapping Rainbow’s shoulder.

“Oh. Of course. Er, sorry Twilight. You okay?” Rainbow Dash said. She really did look sorry, which was surprising. Then again, she’d just accused Twilight of attacking Fluttershy and then saw Twilight fall unconscious.

Twilight shook herself as if to rid her body of water. Nothing hurt. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

That was a flat out lie. If she could only rebuild all the spells she’d written down on her list...but the professor’s artifacts apparently lost power over time, not to mention they had to free Equestria from the Everfree before the forest took over the entire continent. They had to go now.

“...Right,” Radiance said, looking at her. “If any of you feel anything out of the ordinary, tell me immediately. I should have realized...but the past is past. Gather around.”

Twilight and the others clustered around the professor, who took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and went still.

Then everything lost its intensity. An entire dimension to how she perceived the world was suddenly cut off. The others winced too, but they were used to it. Gilda was the only one who looked completely unaffected.

“I can’t feel my magic,” Twilight said, more out of shock than anything else.

“Good. Means it’s working. Anything else?” Radiance asked.

Twilight shook her head. “Wait, professor? How did you wake me up so quickly?”

Radiance eyed her. “Not planning to make that spell a regular thing, are you?”

“No! Of course not,” Twilight said, rearing backward.

“Settle down, Twilight. I’m just making sure. Rarity and I used runes to put you in a sort of time bubble. Many healing spells use the same method; speed up time for the afflicted area and it heals on its own. Of course, that’s too complicated for us to accomplish, even together. Thankfully, it’s quite easy to just speed up everything in a small area.”

“You messed with time?!” Twilight shrieked.

“Yes. Any other questions?”

Twilight just stared at him.

“Then let’s get moving. I can’t hold this forever.”

Everyone trotted with professor Radiance to the edge of the forest, Twilight lagging slightly behind as the implications of what he’d said swirled around in her mind. Then they crossed it.

Twilight was instantly distracted. Nothing felt any different, but if she could still sense magic Twilight knew she would be seeing the green magic of the Everfree pressing down at them from all sides.

“Woohoo! Further up and further in!” Rainbow Dash said, prowling around everyone else in quick, jerky motions.

Twilight snorted without meaning to. She looked ridiculous.

“What?” Rainbow straightened up defensively.

“Nothing! Like you said, further in. Rarity, direction?”

“Just forward for now, darling,” Rarity replied, focused on the round metal sheet she held in front of her.

The group entered the Everfree proper in a more sedate manner, every footstep a calculated maneuver.

Their quest had truly begun.

Chapter 17

“Scouting daaaay!”

Applejack stopped in her tracks, the plow she was pulling jolting against her harness, and looked up. Yep, still night.

“Pinkie...I’m real sorry, but you know I can’t come this time. I’ve been saying again and again, this cold is killing these here crops, and I can’t allow that,” she said.

“But this is more important than some silly old crops! If we don’t find a way out of here, we could be trapped! Forever!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing anxiously in front of Applejack.

“Now look here Pinkie Pie; this isn’t just about my ‘silly old crops.’ If we run out of food—and we will, eventually—you won’t be complaining so hard about my taking care of them.” Applejack angled her body away from Pinkie and tugged at the plow. It moved an inch. She gave it another pull with the same result. It was no use; her momentum was gone. Why couldn’t Pinkie ever bother her when she was doing something that wasn’t crucial to their survival?

Pinkie stood still—a rarity, for her—as she considered Applejack’s response.

“What if I help?”

“Don’t be ridiculous Pinkie, you wouldn’t know the first thing about farming.” With a final tug, Applejack got the plow moving again, though at a much slower pace than before.

Pinkie blocked her path, forcing her to stop again.

“Darn it Pinkie, I don’t have time for this! Crops are dying on my watch!”

“I do know the first thing about farming! And the second thing, and the third, and maybe even the fourth. I grew up on a farm too, you know. I could definitely help you,” Pinkie Pie said, looking at Applejack with wide, hopeful eyes.

Applejack hesitated. “Well...if you really do know all that about farming—”

“I do!”

“—then alright.”

“Yippee!” Pinkie Pie burst into the air, taking out a cannon from...somewhere and firing a blast of confetti all over the place. “Oops...”

Applejack unhitched herself with a sigh. “Come on Pinkie, the sooner we get this over with the sooner I can make sure we don’t starve.”

“All righty!” Pinkie Pie said, then turned around and began hopping away from the Sweet Apple fields. “Let me just get my sextant.”

“...Sextant?”

Pinkie Pie jumped back over to Applejack. “Yes siree! It’s used for navigating against celestial bodies,” she said in a whisper.

Applejack reared back in shock. “Pinkie Pie! I can’t believe you’re talking about the Princess that way!”

“What? It’s just for if we get lost. The stars are out, so it’ll be easy to use.”

Applejack stared at her for a moment. She never could be sure whether that mare was doing it intentionally or not. “You go get your...sextant, then. I’ll be hauling this plow back to the barn so it doesn’t get all rusted.”

“Okie dokie!”

Pinkie hopped off.

Applejack sighed again. Pinkie’s ‘scouting missions’ always took a good few hours to finish. At least the extra help would allow her to catch up for lost time. Hopefully.

“We done yet?” Applejack said, glancing at the stars. It had taken a while, but she’d eventually learned how to roughly judge the time from them. Right now it was around what would have been noon, and Pinkie still wasn’t satisfied that they’d looked hard enough.

“Of course not! See that part over there? Something unexpected is going to happen sometime in the next, oh, five or six seconds.”

Applejack looked in the direction of Pinkie’s hoof. It was just another stretch of the Everfree forest.

“I don’t see nothing odd,” Applejack said.

“Waaaait for it...there!” Pinkie said.

Right on cue, a purple unicorn walked out of the forest. And then a brown earth pony, and a griffon, and...Fluttershy? And there was Lyra, and Rarity, and Rainbow Dash.

“Wha...what?” Applejack got out.

“Hello everypony, and welcome to the Inner Everfree!” Pinkie Pie said, conjuring her party cannon and sending a storm of confetti into the air. The new arrivals froze in confusion.

“Don’t worry about her, she’s always like this,” Applejack said, waving the group over. They trotted over to her, relieved looks on their faces.

“So, what brings you to the Everfree? Oh wait! You’re new! That means I need to plan you all a party with cake and decorations and drinks and presents and oh my gosh there’s only me and Applejack and no one else to celebrate—”

“Pinkie Pie,” Applejack said, putting a hoof to the pink pony’s mouth. “I think we ought to listen to what they have to say before going off and doing stuff.”

“We’re here to destroy the Everfree and save Equestria!” Rainbow Dash said.

The purple unicorn broke in. “Excuse me, but do you two know why the Everfree just...stops?”

Applejack snorted. “Nope. We’ve been wondering as much as you. All we know is that the forest keeps expanding, and the parts in the middle just...go away. They don’t really die, as such, they just kind of shrink until they’re gone, until you’re left with, well...this,” she said, waving a hoof at the forest.

“Resident eggheads, it’s your time to shine!” Rainbow Dash said.

Everyone stared at her.

“Oh come on. Radiance? Twilight? Neither of you have any ideas?”

The earth pony shook his head, but the purple unicorn looked thoughtful.

“I...might have some. But they’re just speculation. I’d need to do some tests to confirm,” Twilight said.

“Right, sure, but what is it?” Rainbow Dash said, sitting back and continuing to look expectantly at Twilight.

“I can’t just spout my ideas for everyone to hear! Then you’d all be biased and I wouldn’t be able to test my predictions, and throwing out speculation as if its fact never ends well.”

“Yeah, sure, but whatever you’re thinking right now is what’s going on. That’s how it works,” Rainbow Dash said.

“That...that is so not how science works!” Twilight said, stomping away from Rainbow Dash.

Applejack silently agreed with Rainbow Dash. Whenever she got a paper with a fancy scientist discovering stuff, it had a bunch of stuff about “error” and “uncertainty” but if it was published it always turned out to be right. They just wanted to hedge their bets so that if they were wrong they didn’t lose face.

“Why don’t y’all come over to Sweet Apple Acres? We’ve got food—for now,” Applejack added with a glare at Pinkie Pie, who continued bouncing without showing a sign that her ire affected her in the least, “and y’all can plan all your fancy strategies for saving Equestria all you want.”

“Food? I’m starving! Lead the way, Applejack,” Rainbow Dash said with a grin.

Applejack turned back toward Ponyville. She was very curious about how these new ponies had gotten here, because that would mean a way out. But that could wait until dinner.

Chapter 18

Lyra walked at the very back of the group, content to just listen. The others could have their arguments or discussions. They were all either smart, strong, or skilled in magic. She was just somepony who could blow up musical notes and do a few chores to make this whole misadventure go better.

“So how did you two escape the Everfree? And...what happens to those who get don’t escape?” Twilight asked Applejack, levitating a spellbook in front of her. She seemed to have it out at all times, and when asked said she needed it to keep her thoughts organized.

Lyra mentally shrugged. She wasn’t one to judge.

“Well...I don’t rightly know myself,” Applejack said, stretching out her words. “Pinkie’d probably be willing to tell y’all about it, but I can’t say I understand her explanations.”

Twilight sped up her pace until she reached Pinkie Pie, who was happily bouncing along the gravel path. The inside of the Everfree was weird. Every living thing seemed to have disappeared, including the grass. The result was an alien landscape made up of dirt and rocks. And they were all going uphill, so nothing much was visible ahead.

“Pinkie, how did you and Applejack escape the forest? As I understood it, once you’re caught inside without a shield, you’re done for.”

“Oh, it was easy! I just put Applejack in my mane and carried her until we left. I didn’t know where we were because I didn’t have my sextant, so I accidentally led us here instead of outside,” Pinkie Pie said.

What? If Twilight didn’t ask why she was lying, Lyra would do it herself.

“In your...mane?”

Twilight... Lyra thought, actually bringing her hoof up to her face before realizing what she was doing and hastily putting it down as if she were making an extra long step.

“Yep! It’s where I store all the important stuff. I’m kind of tired right now though, and sleep isn’t helping, so I use it as much as I want to. I think it’s the forest,” Pinkie Pie said to the side as if she were talking about a naughty foal in hearing range.

Pinkie Pie then bounced into the air, flatly contradicting everything she’d said about being ‘tired.’

“I see...” Twilight said thoughtfully. “So what spells do you know?”

Pinkie Pie froze mid-bounce. In the air. It was kind of creepy. Her eyes slowly moving until they met Twilight’s made it even more so.

Then she continued bouncing like nothing had happened. “Spells? Silly Twilight. I don’t know any of those!”

Twilight scrambled back, eyes wide, and started taking deep breaths. “What are you?”

“Aw. Did I scare you?” Pinkie Pie ended her bounce and began walking normally. Her body seemed to droop even while she maintained a fairly respectable walking pace.

“Um. A little? It’s just, professor Radiance here can sort of do spells too, but...not like that.

The older earth pony sighed. “Pinkie, I think we can tell them. Twilight already has it pretty much figured out.”

“Oh...are you sure?” Pinkie said.

“No. But they’re not monsters.”

“Hmm. I guess you’re right! Hey, you guys wondering where the Everfree puts everypony?”

Lyra jerked to a halt. How were Pinkie and Radiance’s secret spells connected to that?

“Okay, so you know how the Everfree sort of wraps a bunch of vines around you and drags you off somewhere?”

“No...” Lyra said, unable to stop herself from voicing the word.

“Oh.” Pinkie Pie paused for a second. “Well, that’s what it does. Anyway, I had an idea, so I went in the direction everyone got dragged off to.”

“Pinkie, how come you never told me about this? And I was there, at least at first. Them vines dragged everypony off to completely different places each time,” Applejack said, looking askance at Pinkie.

“Oh, yeah at first they went all over the place, but then they went in one direction.”

“Perhaps I should explain,” Radiance said, looking around. Everypony (and griffon) was staring at the two earth ponies.

“Right. Earth pony magic has nothing to do with the Everfree, in case you were wondering.”

Lyra breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“We naturally absorb ambient magic, and if taught, we can twist the magic inside of us into spell-like abilities called Talents—like thought patterns. But we can’t summon magic out of nowhere like unicorns can, and we only have ten Talents,” Radiance continued, settling into his lecture voice. A smile spread across his face and he became more animated than any other time Lyra had seen him during the trip. “Any earth pony who knows a Talent can teach a pupil how to use any Talent they possess, or they can put the structure of the Talent into a crystal, which we can eat to temporarily use the Talent. After the War of the Races...well, anypony who still knew a Talent had to hide it.”

Twilight looked thoughtful. “Interesting...I’d always assumed that war was heavily exaggerated. One of my books talked about earth ponies possessing ‘evil forms of ancient magics.’”

Then she looked wide-eyed at Radiance. “But you don’t have to hide your abilities anymore! No one’s going to hunt you down over it.”

“Yeah! And it’d show those snobs at Canterlot who think they’re better than everypony else just because they’re super skilled at magic,” Rainbow Dash said, then hesitated. “Um, no offense.”

“None taken,” Twilight and Radiance said. They looked at each other.

“That’s not true at all! I heard from Maud’s friend’s uncle that someone he knew used a Talent in the open, and then a secret society hunted him down and put him in the dungeons!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing again.

“And I too have a distant relative who died after disclosing his abilities,” Radiance said.

“But what about the ponies? Where did the Everfree put them?” Lyra blurted out, unable to keep silent any longer. She missed Bon Bon.

“Oh, they’re somewhere near this spooky old castle in the middle of the old Everfree. But there are a ton of super mean vines there, so I couldn’t get too close.”

Rarity looked at her metal plate. “If that castle is where I think it is, we might just be able to free those poor ponies and get rid of this horrid forest all at once.”

“Excellent,” Twilight said.

The group traveled in silence for a bit.

“Is it just me, or is there no ambient magic here?” Radiance finally said.

“Ain’t just you sug—uh, Radiance. I’m having to work near twice as hard just to keep the plants from dying off. Anything I don’t tend to just up and disappears come night time.” Applejack turned her head slightly as she spoke, but still scanned the road ahead. The focus she had on the task put Lyra on edge.

“Yes!”

Lyra looked at Twilight, startled at the exclamation. The purple unicorn was prancing in place.

“I’m so sorry, I’ve been bursting to ask you, but I couldn’t say anything or I’d biased you, and you’re not listening, so I’ll get to the place where I explain,” Twilight said all in one big breath. “The Everfree’s always been a highly magical place with clearly defined boundaries. No one knows why that is. But we know that it’s a Domain, so it has to have a purpose. And based on my observations, that purpose is probably to collect a certain level of magic. Which means something must have disrupted the level of magic in the Everfree, and so now it’s expanding to collect more. But it can’t get enough to sustain what it already has, so it soaks up all the ambient magic from an area and then moves on to get more magic from a new area.”

Lyra struggled to understand the deluge of words that assaulted her ears. That was...good? Now that Twilight knew what was going on, the smart ponies could get together and talk about how to fix it.

“That sounds mighty interesting, but we’re here. Welcome to Ponyville. It’s a bit of a mess,” Applejack said, gesturing.

Lyra looked in her direction, then flinched back slightly. They were on the edge of a cliff, but that wasn’t the part that caused her reaction. In a valley below rotted a village. Houses were shattered and vivisected, fences and other stationary objects twisted and broken, and inorganic refuse littered the streets, which themselves were marked with impressions, crisscrosses on depressed dirt where the Everfree had sent vines into the town.

“We’re going in there?” Rainbow Dash said.

“Nah. Ponyville’s...a bit of a wreck right now. Sweet Apple Acres is too, but it’s functional and I’ve got a lot of the damage patched up.” Applejack led the group down a switchback. Everyone followed silently, even Gilda, who Lyra had never seen in Ponyville before.

Chapter 19

Applejack’s barn was full of patched up holes and empty of a lot of furniture from the Everfree’s incursion, but with everyone filling the place up with chatter, and with the feeling of a warm meal and the crackling fire of the hearth washing over them, the place was undeniably cozy.

Thoughts swirled about in Twilight’s head as she took a swig of her cider. It was surprisingly good for being made from crops that had been maintained by only one pony for weeks. Still, despite the lively company, she couldn’t stop thinking about the earth pony Talents. It was an entire unexplored branch of magic. And she would be the first to study it, if they got out of this whole ‘adventure’ thing alive.

But these Talents went a long way to helping solve that. Professor Radiance’s anti-magic Talent had completely annihilated every speck of magic from the area around him. Destroying the Everfree Domain might be as simple as having him use his ability next to the Domain’s crystal. Not that she was banking on it, of course. Never rely on an untested theory. Still, their magic could be amazingly helpful. She quickly pulled out her list, then made it swerve to the side as Gilda sloppily raised her mug to her beak and liquid sloshed through the air. The griffon had relaxed a lot once Applejack had brought the food out, claiming the long table and cider reminded her of the griffon mead halls back home. Twilight had jotted that down. Not much was known about the griffon lands.

She ran through the list again. She didn’t think she had them wrong, but it never hurt to check.

Let’s see. The first Talent was the ability to resist magic. Two and three were the abilities to control the speeds of their minds and bodies. That explained what Pinkie Pie had done earlier; she’d slowed her body down in the air. Though her eyes had seemed to move at a much faster pace compared the rest of her body. If they could control the speed of individual parts of their bodies...and she was getting distracted again. Four: amplify their natural strength and resilience. Earth ponies were already strong compared to the other two races. Next she had down that they could extend their consciousnesses to other living things, control the growth of plants (another obvious one), and create and maintain pocket dimensions. And then there were apparently another two Talents, and no one knew what they were because they’d been taught only to the elite earth ponies before the War of the Races. She couldn’t verify any of this information, and Pinkie Pie and Radiance absolutely refused to be tested unless it was absolutely necessary. Radiance had already agreed to let Twilight test his magic resistance, but they were extremely closed-lipped about any specifics of what their magic could do. To a mare whose calling was a magic researcher, this was an unbelievably frustrating state of affairs.

“Twilight, dear, this is no time to be worrying. We are celebrating. It may be a little...unorthodox for your tastes, but you really should try to have a good time.” Rarity smiled at her from across the table.

If even Rarity was saying that she should join in, who was Twilight to argue?

“Alright Rarity,” Twilight said, carefully tucking the book back into her saddlebags. They might be on a schedule, but right now the schedule said it was time to relax. Twilight was notoriously bad at any sort of relaxing that didn’t involve a book, but maybe being among friends would make it more bearable.

“Rise and shine!”

Twilight groaned. She’d had too much cider last night.

“Up you get.”

Something nudged Twilight in the side. “Mzzzz.”

“Gilda, help me get these lazy lumps up, would you?” Applejack said.

“Fine,” Gilda said, sounding annoyed. Twilight could almost hear her rolling her eyes.

Then she froze. Something sharp was prickling her side.

“You feel that?” Gilda whispered.

“Yes,” Twilight said back, trying to move as little as possible as she did so.

“If you’re not up in ten seconds, you’re going to regret it.”

The feeling slowly subsided. Twilight shivered and jumped to her feet, glaring at the griffon. “What was that?” she demanded.

“That was me waking you up.” Gilda chuckled. “Always works.”

“But,” Twilight began, then stopped. A second later she tried again. “You just don’t...that...you can’t do that!”

“Just did. Won’t work with Rainbow, though. We used to do that sort of thing with each other all the time. She’s gotten lazy,” she said, poking Rainbow Dash in the side where she was sleeping on a pile of hay. The pegasus just rolled over.

Gilda bent down. “See this bucket of water, Rainbow?”

There was no bucket.

“It’s really cold.”

What was she trying to do? Pegasi didn’t get cold. It was a basic part of their…magic. Oh.

Rainbow Dash jumped up. “I will throw you into the Everfree."

“They’re up,” Gilda called.

“Gilda, how could you do something like that? It’s not right!” Twilight said.

“I’m a griffon,” Gilda said as if that explained everything.

Rainbow Dash seemed to have settled down. “Yeah, that’s how she is. Don’t worry about it, she’s really just a big softie. She’d never actually do anything like that. If she did I’d tie her wings together and drop her from Cloudsdale.”

“That’s not—Gah! You just don’t do stuff like that!” Twilight stomped at the floor.

“What did you just call me?” Gilda said, slowly and deliberately. She took a step toward Rainbow Dash.

“You’ll get used to it. Honestly, I’ve been wondering why she’s been this nice so far.”

“Nice?” Twilight said.

“What did you call me, Dash?”

“I would run,” Rainbow Dash said conversationally. Then she followed her own advice and darted out of the barn.

“Dash, you come back here,” Gilda screeched, flying after the pegasus.

Twilight shook her head. She needed to run those tests.

“As powerful as the Everfree? That seems a bit...absurd,” Twilight said.

“Yes, well, it’s true. The Everfree’s magic masked it, but now my runes are picking it up. It’s a bit confusing, actually. The number of sources is shifting constantly between one and six,” Rarity said, looking at her metal circle.

Twilight couldn’t read the thing herself, but Radiance was looking at it with a puzzled frown.

“That is what it looks like,” he said.

“Great. So now we have to prepare for not just one, but two potential Everfrees.”

The one piece of good news was that Pinkie Pie had popped out of nowhere when Twilight was preparing her magic tests and had reminded everyone that she had worked on a rock farm. So if the unicorns could generate enough magic and disperse it into the atmosphere, they could both recharge the earth ponies’ magic and Pinkie Pie could fill up a crystal to the brim with magic, creating a magical artifact that Twilight could test on. It wouldn’t be a Domain, but they would be similar enough that the addition of the object to her tests would be invaluable. She just had to get Rarity to agree to donate one of her gems. Shouldn’t be that hard.

Chapter 20

It had taken a few days of preparation, but now they were finally going to defeat the Everfree.

So far their trip to the abandoned castle had been uneventful. Twilight was armed to the base of her horn with spell after spell, Radiance had shared some of his magic crystals with Applejack and Pinkie Pie, Rarity had made a small anti-magic rune that she was wearing as a necklace, and even Lyra was prepared to blow things up.

That didn’t stop Rainbow Dash from obsessively scanning the surroundings for anything out of the ordinary. The Everfree’s vines didn’t extend this far out, according to Pinkie Pie, but it could have scouts. Or ambushes. You never assume any plan will survive contact with the enemy.

Gilda flew down from the air, looking smug. “Nothing but dirt and rocks for miles, except at that castle. It’s full of trees and creepy black tentacles.

“Gilda!” Rainbow Dash hissed, flattening into a crouch and quickly looking back and forth. “Get back into the air! We could be ambushed at any second.”

“Wow, you’re really tense. Relax, you’re just being paranoid,” Gilda said, settling down on the ground and making a show of stretching out.

“Gilda I am serious. Get back up there right now or I will knock you up there,” Rainbow threatened, stalking over to the griffon with a hoof raised.

“Not to be rude, but I’m picking up magical signatures from all around us,” Rarity said, backing up toward Radiance.

“Gilda get in the bucking air,” Rainbow Dash said, jumping next to Pinkie Pie and landing in a pegasus martial art stance with her back to the earth pony.

Gilda’s eyes widened. “I’m not leaving you idiots. Do you realize what would happen? It’s never a good idea to separate a group.”

“Gilda, you—”

Before Rainbow Dash could finish her sentence, a vine whipped around Gilda’s middle. She struggled against it, but it was too late. Another three quickly joined the first and dragged her down a hole in the ground that closed as soon as she was inside.

“No!”

“Dashie. Calm.”

Rainbow felt a hoof on her shoulder, and looked over to see Pinkie Pie looking at her with an understanding gaze.

“It’s taking her to the same place as everyone else. No matter how bad it gets, just keep a smile in your heart, if not your face, and keep trying.”

“Pinkie, the only time I’m going to be smiling is when we beat this stupid forest,” Rainbow Dash said, settling back into her stance. Those vines wouldn’t catch her off guard.

“Oh Dashie. Pretend that already happened. You beat the Everfree. This is just a memory. Aren’t you happy?”

“Pinkie, you’re crazy. Anyway, we need to get to the castle before your magic juice runs out. How fast can you move while still keeping the vines away?”

Another black root erupted out of the ground and lunged at Rainbow Dash. She jumped to the side, but it just changed direction midway. Then it started turning gray, and its speed slowed. When it reached her, the tip evaporated on contact with her coat. Then the rest of it fell apart into a pile of ash.

“Wha—”

Then another one struck Rainbow Dash from the side. Too late, she realized it had been a feint. The first one had been a distraction, calculated to make to flee to the edge of Pinkie’s anti-magic area, while the second one sneaked up on her. She felt at her side and winced.

A few ribs were definitely broken. If she’d had her magic, this kind of thing wouldn’t even have slowed her down. As things stood, it was a chore just to get back into her guarding stance.

“Dashie! You’re hurt,” Pinkie Pie said with a look of concern. Then she looked at their surroundings and her eyes narrowed. Her entire expression changed until she actually looked scary. Rainbow Dash had never seen her this way.

“You hurt my friends! I’m still going to throw you a party, Everfree, but first I’m going to get an apology out of you. Whatever it takes.”

No more vines lunged from the ground. A cold gust of wind blew through the air. Rainbow Dash shivered.

I’m coming, Gilda, she silently promised.

At least the rest of her friends were alright. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy were next to her, surrounding a small area in one of those anti-magic bubbles. To her left, Radiance, Lyra, and Rarity stood in a small circle, while to her opposite side Applejack and Twilight were standing side by side. Twilight looked exhausted. Her head drooped, and she was panting. She’d probably tried to cast a spell. Understandable, but that mare was just too jumpy.

“Alright everyone!” Rainbow Dash called. “We haven’t really been acting like it, but we’re on a time limit. Ponies are dying of starvation or raids, and soon we’ll run out of Radiance’s special crystals. So we need to go. Rarity, you need to be between me and Twilight. You have the map. Radiance and Lyra can guard you.

She waited for Radiance’s small group to shuffle into place, then moved with Pinkie into flanking position, Fluttershy trailing behind, while Applejack and Twilight did the same on the other side. They were much sloppier, but Rainbow didn’t call them on it. She didn’t have time to drill.

Then a pair of vines rose from the earth. They moved together until they almost looked like a giant..spring.

“Everypony run!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

A boulder ripped through the air, barely missing Rarity. Their choice of target could’ve been coincidence. It could’ve. But it wasn’t.

“Pinkie, can you use your other Talents right now?”

“Yup! It makes me suuper tired to use more than one at a time, though.”

“Okay, so what exactly can you do?” Rainbow Dash said, panting as the three groups galloped toward the castle in the distance.

“I can go faster, and I can put my mind into other things, and I can also see things a liiitle bit before they happen.”

“Great. Okay. If one of us is about to get hit, yell out which way to dodge.”

“Okie dokie! Hey Dashie, dodge!”

Rainbow Dash blinked. “Which—”

Not enough time to ask. She ducked to the ground. A chunk of earth whizzed over her head.

“Hey everyone! Big hole ahead!” Pinkie yelled as soon as Rainbow picked herself off the ground.

Rainbow Dash skidded to a stop as soon as she’d gotten back into a gallop. The castle was right in front of them, but a chasm surrounded it.

“Stairs over there,” Pinkie said, pointing with a hoof.

Rainbow Dash followed it with her eyes. Oddly enough, there were stairs leading into the chasm.

“It’s our only way. If there are stairs going down, there’s bound to be stairs going back up into the castle,” she said, then darted toward the others, Pinkie and a panting Fluttershy close behind.

“Follow us!” she shouted.

They followed, all skirting the edge of the chasm in their race to get to the stairs before the vines hit them with something. If only the unicorns could use their magic. Then they could just fling the rocks back. Wait, never mind. Then the vines could just attack them directly.

They were almost there when the next volley reached them. It was easily the largest. Boulders, rocks, even loose chunks of dirt flew at everyone. Every substantial projectile but one missed. A large rock struck Radiance in the leg. The limb collapsed under him, and he teetered on the edge of the chasm. Rarity and Lyra reached him before he fell down entirely and hauled at him with their hooves.

Then another terribly well-aimed boulder struck the group and sent them tumbling over the edge.

“No!”

Rainbow Dash wasn’t even sure who had said it. Maybe it had been her. Or everyone.

But now Radiance, Lyra, and Rarity were gone. Even apart from the fact that they were friends, Rarity had the map. Without it, they were lost.

Without it, Equestria was lost.

Chapter 21

Tears streamed down Twilight’s face. This was bad. None of this ever should have happened. She should have expected this. But no, she’d thought they could just waltz into the place that held the Everfree’s mind and remove it without much difficulty.

“Down the stairs. Down!” Rainbow said, her gaze darting all over the place. She would have looked crazy if her movements weren’t so calculated.

They all crowded together, Applejack, Fluttershy and Rainbow going first while Twilight and Pinkie went behind. Everyone was silent. Being in such a vulnerable position lent to the tense atmosphere, making the strain almost unbearable to Twilight.

“I don’t much like bringing this up, but I’ve got to say, what if only one of us reaches the Everfree’s crystal thing?” Applejack said when they left the stairs.

“Please don’t say that,” Fluttershy whispered.

Twilight took a deep breath. She didn’t like contemplating the thought either, but they needed to know. “First try the anti-magic field. If that doesn’t work, buck it as hard as you can. It probably won’t work, but the crystal might be flawed, so it’s worth a try.”

“So I’m pretty much useless?” Rainbow Dash said.

“No, of course not! You’ve been a huge help, and without you coordinating, we would’ve—”

“Save it. I’m not going for pity. You guys are more important right now. I just needed to know that.”

“Rainbow, you know that’s not tr—”

“I said save it.” They walked in silence for a bit. “Rarity’s gone, so we need another way to find the Everfree’s crystal thing. Got any spells for that?”

“Well, yes, but Radiance would need to drop his shield. Runes have their own source of magic, but we—”

Rainbow Dash interrupted again. “So the best thing to do is just wander around until we find something. Gotcha.”

“Er. Yes?”

“Guys? Any of you know why them vines ain’t throwing down a bunch of rocks on us right now?” Applejack said, craning her neck as she studied the top of the gorge.

Fear flooded Twilight’s body. “Oh. Oh no. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, how easy would it be for them to bury us down here?”

“No idea,” Pinkie Pie said, moving with a strange floaty gait halfway between walking and bouncing. “But I could check!”

“Judging by how they flung stuff at us earlier, I’d say...we need to find shelter, now.” Applejack’s eyes moved wildly from side to side. “If this is just a circular moat sort of thing, we’re done for. The stairs ain’t safe. We have to hope there’s something around the bend. If worst comes to worst, Pinkie and I will turn off our anti-magic things and hope Twilight can save us with a spell.”

“Um. I was in the middle of rebuilding my teleport spell, and I can’t take other ponies with me. Maybe I could...” Twilight lapsed into silence, trying to think of a spell she could use to get them all out of here. Levitation could only do so much…

“Twi. You don’t need to start freaking out about it. It’s a last resort, and if we have to drop our shields it probably won’t even matter what you do,” Applejack said absentmindedly as she continued looking up.

No! She would think of something. She just needed to think unconventionally.

...It’s a lot easier to think about thinking unconventionally than to actually do it.

“Right gang, this way. Full gallop until you see something,” Rainbow Dash said, then darted to the front of the group and led the way around the chasm.

Twilight panted. She wasn’t athletically gifted, and every book she’d read about running advised that you should slow down and pace yourself. But the first clumps of dirt had started to fall about a minute ago and if they stopped they’d be buried.

She bent her head down and charged forward. Tears blurred her vision, brought by exertion and not knowing what the Everfree had done to the rest of her friends.

“Tunnel!” Rainbow shouted.

Twilight looked up. The chasm narrowed ahead, eventually leading into a cave with atrophied versions of the vines that had been chasing them hanging over the entrance.

“Applejack, lower your field for one second! I’m going to get rid of those vines,” she shouted, then attempted to channel magic. It didn’t work. She kept at it with a continuous pull.

The field flickered and fell away. She could see magic again, and it was everywhere, packed even denser than the magic in the actual forest. The familiar sight of the swirling threads of power all around her would have calmed her, if she hadn’t been galloping at top speed. She pulled on her magic and threaded it through a specific thought pattern with all the speed and skill of a master weaver.

A bolt of pure, refined magic burst out of her horn and zipped through the air. It hit the tangle of vines covering the cave opening with a hiss, then started spreading.

Pure magic not in a solid form was extremely dangerous. It’s inimical to regular matter at high enough levels of concentration and will convert said matter to magic. And since there’s no way to completely immerse someone in magic all at once, it will always kill them. The part that makes it truly dangerous though, more than a fireball or cannon, is the way it spreads to matter similar to the stuff that it initially lands on until it runs out of energy.

And Twilight had put a lot of energy into that blast.

The result was that the cave entrance was completely exposed. And it was dark.

Then the anti-magic field flickered back on. Twilight would’ve expressed her relief in some way if she wasn’t too busy galloping toward the...safety?

It was a cave entrance so completely dark that she could see nothing beyond the entrance.

A large boulder crashed into the ground next to her.

But they had no choice.

Discord?

No. They’d already discussed that, and he hadn’t promised to help, but only to make things ‘interesting,’ whatever that meant. It was too risky to involve the creature, since he either didn’t want to help, or was behind this entire thing.

Twilight wished she’d prepared a better plan.

Then they charged through the entrance.

Twilight stopped her charge and collapsed to the floor, panting. They were safe. Even if the vines kept piling rocks down, Applejack and Pinkie Pie could just lower their shields for a split second and she could levitate them away. After a few seconds of laying down in a heap, she raised her head. The darkness had dissolved. An illusion? Instead, all around her was the inside of a large cave, a huge crystalline tree in the middle lighting the cavern in a cold glow. Scattered around its base were six large stone orbs, each of a different color.

“What is this place?” Rainbow Dash said.

“I reckon it’s the Everfree. Pinkie, with me. Get as close as you can to that there tree and turn your Talent thing on full blast,” Applejack said.

That was smart. Twilight turned around and faced the cave, ready to fire several spells at any intruding vines that might somehow manage to overcome the earth ponies’ anti-magic fields.

She smiled. This was it. They were done. The captured ponies would be free, the sun would come up, and Celestia would come back.

“Twilight?” Pinkie said, sounding uncertain.

“Yes?”

“It’s not working.”

No.

Twilight took in a deep breath.

“Get ready to lower your fields, both of you. I’m going to try something stupid.”

Chapter 22

“Um, Twilight? Maybe we should discuss this first?” Fluttershy tried. No one noticed.

“Now!” Twilight yelled.

Nothing happened. Maybe she’d changed her mind?

Then Twilight staggered back and fell back to her haunches, forehooves on her horn and face showing bewilderment.

“It...it just sucked all the magic I tried to summon. This whole cave has no magic. It’s like your fields,” she said, looking at Applejack and Pinkie Pie, “but instead of blocking magic it just...eats it.”

“Twilight?” Fluttershy tried again.

“Oh, what is it Fluttershy?” Twilight said, rubbing her horn and looking at the cave walls with unfocused eyes.

Fluttershy fluffed her wings and walked toward Twilight. She might be a unicorn with a lot of magic, but they were friends.

“I think we should discuss things before we do them. If that’s okay with you,” Fluttershy said.

Maybe that was too strongly worded. Oh no. Now Twilight would end up hating her. She wished she could take those words back and say them again.

“I’m sorry Fluttershy, you’re right. I was being stupid. Just because you’re not unicorns, it doesn’t mean you don’t know magic. Or common sense,” she added with a strained smile.

Fluttershy quickly moved away. That could’ve gone very badly. But it hadn’t. And Twilight had actually taken her advice. She felt a smile of her own spread across her face.

“I have a theory. But I’ll need to test it. I’m going to probe the area. You’re going to have to lower your anti-magic fields for a few seconds when I say. You okay with this?”

“Sure as sugar am. I got nothing else.”

“Yep! I’m just full of ideas, but mostly for baking right now. I’m hungry.”

Rainbow Dash grunted.

“Okay...and you, Fluttershy? Got any other ideas?”

Fluttershy jumped. Her?

She stood frozen until twilight gave her an encouraging nod. “Um. No? I mean, not right now. I’m sorry.”

“Alright. You all might want to get comfy. This is going to take a while,” Twilight said.

“Twi. They’re going to collapse soon,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing at Applejack and Pinkie Pie. She was pacing around the cave in a never-ending circle.

Fluttershy watched her sympathetically. Earlier, Rainbow had informed her that she would much rather be sleeping, but without a cloud it was just too uncomfortable. Fluttershy didn’t have the skill to keep a cloud solid for more than a few hours, but she was too nervous to attempt sleep. What if the Everfree did something? Its brain was apparently right there in the middle of the cave, in the shape of a crystal tree.

“Nah. I’m...good. Can keep this up for a while longer. Don’t you worry none,” Applejack said. She was sitting on the floor, eyes closed. The image of calm, with only her voice betraying her exhaustion.

“Me too! But the rocks are burning up, so you might want to hurry up,” Pinkie said, bouncing up from the floor and speeding up until she was next to Rainbow Dash.

“Hey Dashie! Want to play eye spy?”

“What? No—”

“Okay, I’ll go first. I spy something gray.”

Rainbow Dash stopped walking and turned her head toward the other mare. “The walls?”

“Oh, you’re good. Okay, your turn!”

“I don’t want—”

“That means it’s my turn! I spy something blue and grumpy and red and grumpy and yellow and grumpy and—”

“Me. It’s me! Can we stop now?”

“Not until you play, silly!”

Rainbow sighed.

“I’ve figured it out!” Twilight said.

“Well, what is it? Tell us tell us tell us!”

“Okay, so I sent a bunch of probes out, along with greater and greater amounts of magic. The Everfree’s core is like...like a magical version of the sun. It pulls any magic close enough into itself and completely overwhelms any structure it has, adding it to its storage. This happens with any magic in the area, even its own. So if it sends any vines in here, they’ll just get their magic sucked out of them.”

Twilight started pacing herself, eyes bright and eager.

“I’ve done some calculations, and to send anything at us, it’ll have to bring a huge amount of magic to this place to be able to keep it together this close to its core. It’ll have to gather it all from the forest, put it together so it doesn’t lose cohesion on the way over, and give it a golem so it’ll be able to operate semi-independently. We have at least a day before it’ll be able to get it together. Er, day-like amount of time.”

Rainbow Dash scoffed. “You’re supposed to be this super egghead, and all you can say is that the amount of magic it’ll need is ‘huge?’”

“We don’t really have ways to measure magic! There’s usually just too little of it to bother. It’s ‘three seconds worth,’ or ‘a whole lot.’”

“That’s stupid.”

“I know. Anyway, we’re safe without the anti-magic fields for a long while.”

Applejack slumped to the floor. “Oh thank goodness,” she muttered into the ground, finally showing her weariness.

“I’ll stop too. Got to save these special tummy rocks!” Pinkie Pie said, then stopped bouncing and curled up on the ground. She was snoring seconds later.

“Now that we’ve identified the problem, we just have to figure out how to get a lot of magic without the Everfree sucking it up,” Twilight said.

“This isn’t working!” Twilight said.

Her mane was disheveled and her eyes were in the abnormally open position of somepony who’d gone without sleep for days. Except it had only been a few hours.

“Can’t gather up any amount of magic myself without it being eaten, can’t interact with the Domain directly, earth ponies can’t modify Talent functions...”

Fluttershy poked the pink stone at the edge of the tree. Normally she kept her hooves to herself, but this one felt welcoming. Inviting.

Then it pulsed with a warm glow.

“What was that? Magic? Is that magic?” Twilight darted over with a maniacal expression.

Fluttershy backed away.

The unicorn put her own hoof on the gem.

“They’re...they’re hiding! I couldn’t even sense them before, but these have magic in them!”

She whirled around and stalked toward Fluttershy. “How did you know?!” she demanded.

“I, um, didn’t. I just touched it...” she said, squeezing herself against the wall.

“Good job Fluttershy. Good job!” Twilight said with a cackle, her words completely at odds with her tone.

“Um. Thanks?”

“These are magic. They’re big magic. The Everfree hasn’t eaten them. It hasn’t even eroded them. They’re hiding. And they’re doing it on purpose. They’re Domains!”

“Oh?”

“I know right? It’s crazy! I bet they were the other magical signatures Rarity was...detecting...earlier.” Twilight slowed down. Her eyes lost their wide look and her too-large smile disappeared. “But we’ll get them back. After this is over.”

She said it like she was trying to convince herself. Did she know something? But Fluttershy wouldn’t ask. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it.

“Um. Anyway.” Twilight sniffed, turning her head to the side and wiping away a tear that Fluttershy still saw. “I’m going to connect to them and...hm. This is grossly oversimplifying things, but I’m basically going to ‘ask’ them for magic so that I can brute-force the Everfree’s core. I just hope they have enough.”

Fluttershy did too.

“And let me in,” Twilight muttered.

That wasn’t reassuring.

Chapter 23

Twilight couldn’t probe the Domains with magic because of the Everfree’s whole ‘black hole’ effect on the substance, but she could still establish a connection through touch.

So she bent her head down and touched her horn to the orange gem.

It was shockingly well designed.

The best and oldest Domains still had golem-level intelligences, like the Everfree. Every decision it made was filtered through the lenses of its commands, and communication was more like constructing a thought pattern than conversing with another pony.

But this...this was on another level altogether. Foreign thoughts, opinions, even emotions swirled through Twilight’s mind, too large and too fleetingly glimpsed for her to understand them. But she got flashes. It was assessing her. Judging her.

And eventually, it came to a conclusion.

No.

That was it. It didn’t throw her across the room, or try to destroy her, or anything. She could still interact with it, but it didn’t respond to any attempts at discussion.

After what seemed like an eternity of interfacing with the vast mind of the Domain, she withdrew, and let out a huge gasp.

Huh. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath.

“It doesn’t like me,” she admitted, hanging her head in defeat. “Forcing it will get me nowhere.”

“Well, try the others,” Rainbow Dash said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Twilight stomped over to the next one, this one a light blue. “That’s not how it works, Rainbow! These are obviously connected. One of them refusing a connection is like them all refusing.”

“So? Try anyway.”

Twilight huffed. Fine. She’d try this one too. It wouldn’t work, but if she didn’t try then she’d look like a stubborn idiot. Why was no one here a unicorn mage? Besides Radiance. And maybe Rarity and Lyra. Everypony who might’ve understood was gone. Ugh.

She touched her horn to the opaque blue crystal.

FZZZZZZ

Energy. Thoughts. Energy. Emotions. Energy. Judgment. Energy.

And then the Domain unceremoniously rejected her, sending her skidding across the floor in a flash of light.

What?

Much as she hated to admit, she might have been wrong. If these Domains were that different from each other, one of them could let her in.

“Twilight? You okay?” Pinkie Pie said, leaning over her.

“Gah!” Twilight scrambled to her hooves. “Yep. Fine.”

She was. Her body felt all tingly and jumpy, and her brain felt exhausted, like she’d solved an exam worth of extremely strenuous questions. But she felt surprisingly okay for being shocked and thrown across the room. She’d been expecting it with the first Domain. Misleading pieces of rock…

Next one. It was a pink one, and although it was no less bright than the others, it seemed softer somehow. Twilight brought her horn to it…

A wall of goodwill crashed into her consciousness. She had not been expecting that. Then it just...lingered. The massive amount of benevolence she felt masked anything else the Domain might’ve been thinking about. Then, without any sense of judgement, she felt a gentle but firm no.

Twilight blinked. She felt...happy. Her head felt clear and any lingering exhaustion had been washed away. She smiled as she walked over to the next one. This one was purple. She touched it.

Magic. The world was made of magic. How could she not have seen it? It was frozen, and frozen more solidly and compact than, well, what she’d before considered solid magic. And it was different. It wouldn’t consent to being shaped like real magic. But it was, at its core, magic.

Assent.

The Domain granted her access.

Yes!

Twilight drew on the power held in the small glowing stone. It streamed out and filled her, suffusing her until she was so magically dense she could probably become pure magic without dying. Not that she would test it. Or at least not until she could get to a lab.

She kept drawing on the Domain’s stores, pulling and pulling until she was sure it would be empty. But it didn’t seem like she’d taken anything.

Twilight shivered. What were these things?

A question for another time. Twilight instead turned to the Everfree’s core, the intricately carved tree that would have taken a team of hundreds of the most skilled ponies in Equestria years upon years to create. Then she cast the most powerful ‘move’ command in recent history, even more powerful than Celestia’s raising the sun. If she even did that. The night was a big data point in favor of it, though.

The command drained all Twilight’s borrowed magic to nothing, all of it used up to change every manipulable variable of the tree. She’d simultaneously torn it apart, inverted its very structure, scattered it across time, and thrown it into alternate dimensions.

For a few seconds after the command took hold, nothing happened. The tree was still there.

Then something seemed to radiate through the air, an invisible ripple of pure change.

And the world was different. Instead of a tree, the center of the cavern held a swirling vortex of energy that led to...somewhere. Twilight studied it for a second. She’d been an idiot. She’d had power, and then disregarded the most basic rule. The most essential rule. The one that had been drummed into her and every other unicorn’s head when she was a filly.

Don’t change what you don’t understand.

Then she realized she was in the air, and the gaping thing of wrongness she’d just opened in midair was sucking her in.

She turned her head toward her friends.

“Run!” she screamed.

Everypony else was thankfully quite close to the cave exit, apparently guarding against a surprise attack from the Everfree. Rainbow Dash gathered up Fluttershy in her forelegs, then bucked against the ground and threw her out of the cave. Not bad for a mare without magic. Pinkie Pie and Applejack, meanwhile were both at a far enough distance and had enough strength to combat the pull and were straining against it as they slowly trudged out of the cavern. Either they’d run out of magic, or Talents didn’t work against reality holes.

At least they’d be safe, she thought. Then Rainbow Dash scrabbled at the ground and rose into the air.

Not her too!

Did I get it? Is the Everfree gone?

I hope so.

Then Twilight was sucked out of her world.

Chapter 24

Applejack braced herself against the side of the cave entrance and looked back inside, then immediately averted her eyes from the...thing in the center.

The six multicolored gems still surrounded the area where the tree had been, but the tree itself was gone. In its place was a rip in reality, a multidimensional twisting of the fundamental nature of reality that made her sick to even look at.

“Right. Now I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t think they’re going to be coming out anytime soon,” Applejack said. She couldn’t help but stare at Pinkie Pie. Maybe she had another trick?

The pink mare slowly shook her head. Applejack couldn’t help feeling a stab of disappointment.

“Well. The Everfree should be nice and destroyed after...that,” Applejack said, waving a hoof behind her, then snatching it back. The portal thing couldn’t drag them back in from outside the cavern, but it was uncomfortable to feel her hoof drifting away all by itself. “So I reckon we ought to find everypony it caught and free them. One of them’s bound to know enough magic to help Twilight and Rainbow get out of that.

Assuming they weren’t dead.

“Um. That sounds nice. But there are an awful lot of rocks in the way,” Fluttershy said.

Applejack finally took a good look at the outside.

“Well buck.”

The entire moat was filled with rocks and dirt.

“Looks like we’d best start digging.”

The good thing about being dead was how peaceful it was. Like drifting in the sea, without the need to breathe. And her ribs weren’t hurting anymore. That was definitely a plus.

“Rainbow. Stop sleeping and help me find a way out.”

“What?”

Rainbow Dash opened her eyes.

She was in the Aether.

The pegasi are the most secretive tribe in Equestria. They can live up to six hundred years old, double the age of unicorns, and triple that of earth ponies.

And that’s it.

Pegasi don’t have the ability to naturally suck magic out of nowhere or absorb it from the earth like the other two tribes. They don’t have super strength even without any training, or an innate understanding of the workings of reality. They’re just ponies. Ones that can’t even fly. The pegasi’s wings are vestigial, kept only for their looks.

Then a unicorn discovered a secretive pegasus cloud city with an innovative cloud-walking spell and changed the world. With several years of study, experimentation, and the grudging helpfulness of the pegasi, she found a way to break into the place unicorns got their magic from.

There, she found the Aether Crystals, shards of pure magic. Unicorns were much more powerful back then, and she was able to harvest hundreds of the Crystals before she ran out of magic.

Magic starvation is a real, deadly threat that most fall unconscious before experiencing. In a panic, she drove an Aether Crystal into her chest.

She survived. For a few days. Long enough to give every pegasus a Crystal of their own and teach them an extremely costly way back to the Aether. Then her natural magic came back, interfered with her new Crystal, and killed her.

The pegasi came to a conclusion. Any unicorn could become an unstoppable powerhouse for a few days before killing themselves if they knew about the Crystals. Or, worse, they might even figure out how to consume an unlimited amount without dying.

And so it became a secret.

A secret that the Everfree apparently knew about. After it had taken her Crystal, Rainbow Dash had blustered, had hoped, had endured. But she’d had the knowledge, deep down in a place so far away from conscious thought that she wouldn’t have admitted it even to herself, that destroying the Everfree wasn’t going to restore her magic.

And now she could do it. She could find an Aether Crystal.

She desperately scrambled against empty space. There was a pinkish mist as far as she could see in all directions, and bright pink sparks lit up and disappeared in the distance.

“Rainbow!”

She finally looked behind herself, and tried to jump against nothing. Twilight appeared to be...swimming toward her.

“I can’t move!” she shouted.

“Relax,” Twilight called back. “Move slowly. Slow enough, and you can sort of push against it.”

Rainbow tried it and felt something stretch against her legs like elastic before popping.

This was hard. She was used to fast. Sudden. Not...slow.

She tried again. That’s right, sort of catch the elastic, and push. Then catch it again and push.

There was a certain rhythm to it. She had to slow down to get hold of...whatever it was she was pushing against, but then she could push as hard as she wanted. It was actually kind of fun.

“Hey, Twilight?” she asked once she reached the other mare.

“Yeah?”

“Have you seen anything...unusual?”

Twilight gave her a flat stare.

“I mean, anything except this weird mist stuff and those lights.”

“Rainbow, we’ve been here for a minute at most. I haven’t exactly had time to look around.”

“Then let’s explore!” Rainbow Dash made the slow-then-fast swimming motions that were necessary to get around in this place, shooting off in a random direction.

“Rainbow, wait!”

“What is it?” Rainbow drifted to a halt and looked at the unicorn with a raised eyebrow.

“Geometry is...weird here.”

“Going to have to be a bit clearer than that.”

Twilight drifted up beside Rainbow Dash again. Upside down. That was cool.

“Okay. So basically, every time we move, we move...more. Finding a specific place here would probably be impossible. Like...geometry is non-euclidean here. Triangles add up to less than one-eighty degrees.”

“And you know that how?”

“I can sense magic. Every time I move I have to stop sensing it because I get really nauseous.”

“Great. Anything else?” Rainbow Dash said, flapping her wings and drifting forward a bit. Oh. She hadn’t been able to use her wings for so long. She’d kind of been ignoring them.

No more, she promised herself.

“Yes! Exploring is a bad idea. We should stick right here and figure out how to get out of here.”

“How about instead, I explore and you stay behind me and do that?” Rainbow Dash pumped her wings and shot off toward a distant speck of light, not allow Twilight time to respond.

“No! Rainbow!”

Yep, Twilight was following. Didn’t matter that she was yelling.

Then Rainbow saw it.

An Aether Crystal.

A thick covering of pink mist obscured it, but it was still visible. It had some amount of clear edges. If she tried to look at them too hard, they blurred together. Whatever, not important. Rainbow swept the tiny thing up in a wing.

Now she had magic!

Oh.

No she didn’t. She needed somepony else with magic to put it in. Meanwhile…she could find a bigger Crystal. One that would fit her current body. Then she’d be able to go even faster.

Maybe pull off another rainboom.

“C’mon Twilight!” she called, spinning away, wings reluctantly tucked back against her body. Not going to risk losing the Crystal, even if it was small. It might be the last one.

Then she saw the first multicolored blob.

It was both shapeless and easy to make out.

Changing colors, all colors, and no colors.

And it was heading toward her.

Chapter 25

Twilight growled. If only she could sense magic while moving without throwing up, this would be so much easier.

“Exploring huh? Still seem like a good idea?”

Strangely enough, she could still comfortably converse while swimming away from the weird blob things at top speed. The pink mist that this place was made of seemed to make actual exhaustion an impossibility.

“Yes,” Rainbow Dash said, shooting ahead of Twilight without even using her wings.

“You led these...things to us!”

“Yeah, well, we needed to get out of here somehow,” Rainbow said defensively, not even looking at the blobs.

“I told you, if we’d stayed in one place I could’ve—”

“Move!” Rainbow Dash dove against Twilight, shoving her away from a blob that had been sneaking up from behind her. For a second, she stared right into it. The moment slowed.

Without movement, the thing’s color was the exact same shade as the mist. If they didn’t move, they blended in completely.

Twilight felt a chill.

There could be hundreds—thousands even, all around her, in wait or just hibernating or something. The mist could be their sleeping state. She needed more information.

Risking nausea, Twilight reached out with her magic. The sense of reality being wrong infused her. Space twisted, presenting her with data that no pony was meant to comprehend. It was like looking at a map that had been crumpled up and combined with another map, then the other map had been extracted and burned, but she could see both at once, superimposed over each other.

That was what it felt like. But she couldn’t describe what it was actually like. She swallowed, forcing back bile as she concentrated on extracting any information she could.

Then she reached an understanding. It was a tiny piece of what reality really was in this place, but it was a glimpse. The blobs and the pink mist were both made out of the same basic stuff. And that stuff was condensed magic, pressed into a form she’d have to break down before she could use it. Magic condensed this far didn’t really have a color. It looked pink when it was still because it was the first thing the mind latched onto, and when it moved her brain was assigning the substance different colors at random, trying to find an analog to her world that made sense.

Twilight rejected the colors her brain was sending her. She looked at the blob’s shapes, saw a superposition of formlessness and sharp definition, rejected it, and looked again.

And nothing made sense. She was surrounded by magic except she was magic, and she wasn’t and everything was different and she could feel her mind twisting and cracking, and the blobs were actually Domains but with real minds instead of just a series of instructions, bundled inside a bunch of magic, and then the world wrenched—

—and once again she was surrounded by pink mist, swimming away from the multicolored blobs.

Flicker.

The world was magic.

Flicker.

The world made sense. Twilight shuddered. No more of that. No more. She could feel the damage in her mind, an area that had been excised. It felt like running her tongue over her teeth and finding a gap where one had been before. She hoped it hadn’t been important.

Still. She had knowledge.

“I’m going to try to set up a shield!” she called to Rainbow. The other mare grunted in assent.

Twilight closed her eyes. She couldn’t directly draw from the magic of this place. She began to summon the magic for a quick but effective shield spell.

Pain.

She heard a distinct cracking sound. Her forehead felt like it was on fire. Her horn was completely numb.

That was probably bad.

“Twilight! Twilight, you okay?”

Rainbow was shaking her, concern in her eyes. The blobs—constructs—blobs were closing in around them.

“Something...wrong. Can’t summon magic.” Twilight croaked. She placed a hoof on her horn and then yelped.

There was a crack. She could feel it. A crack in her horn. The worst possible fate for a unicorn.

She kept her hoof in place, freezing. Not even able to form a tear.

Then she felt the gap closing.

Unicorn horns were sturdy, but every once in a while somepony would get in an accident and lose it. Some nobles even had cracked horns from childhood misadventures. If there was a way—magical or otherwise—to heal a unicorn’s horn, nopony knew of it.

And her horn was healing all on its own. Within moments, every bit of pain had faded away.

Rainbow Dash hauled Twilight over her back and swam away with slow-but-quick motions. “I think this is the place your magic comes from, Twi. Trying to break isn’t going to work. You’re already here.”

“No, the magical signature is completely different,” Twilight said fuzzily. Her body might be fine, but her mind was still recovering. “It’s much more...dense...”

And when she summoned magic, she was breaking something down. She used the process so often that it was normal, but on reflection is was very strange. It was an ability that stuck around even without any thought templates, something that would take hundreds of years of study and building up to it to otherwise. Nopony understood how it worked.

And here Rainbow Dash had just given her the answer on a silver platter.

“How do you know that?!” Twilight shouted.

Rainbow Dash flinched at the volume, throwing Twilight off her back.

“Look. Not important. We need to get away from these things. Any ideas?”

Twilight hesitated. This was important. She wasn’t just going to let Rainbow keep it a secret.

“After we get out of here, I am going to get everything you know out of you, by any means possible,” she promised.

“Oookay psycho. And?”

“...And, I can probably use the magic here, but it will take a while. You’ll have to carry me again while I figure it out.”

“Not going to get sick all over me, are you?” Rainbow eyed her.

“I don’t think so. I have a way to cope, now.”

A way that broke her mind piece by piece, but a way nonetheless.

“Right. Hang on then.”

Rainbow rushed under Twilight, who latched back onto her friend’s back.

This would be a delicate operation. She had to ignore all distractions.

Twilight siphoned in the magic from around her, building herself a stash of useless magic.

Now came the difficult part. She would have to break the magic apart without destabilizing it. She reached in…

“Princess?”

The tone of utter shock drew her out of her concentration. Twilight looked up, and in front of her…

In front of her was the Princess.

Chapter 27

Rainbow Dash swam through the Aether, the movement of her wings making her feel almost as if she were flying again. There was a gap. She arrowed toward it, folding her wings and legs in.

So close…

The blobs suddenly closed in on the gap, blocking it off.

They could plan?

Then they mobbed her. Rainbow struggled against...nothing. They felt fizzy, like spectra, and when they passed through her it felt like she was conducting a low-voltage electrical current. Unpleasant, but nothing too bad.

But they didn’t impede her movements. Just her vision.

“Get off me!” she yelled.

They didn’t. Figured.

“Ack!” she choked out.

One of them was traveling through her body. She could feel it sitting near her heart, then traveling upward, giving her constant shocks as it moved.

“No! Get out you stupid—”

It reached her head, and then she felt a terrible ripping in her wings. It traveled down the rest of her body in quick, violent bursts. Rainbow Dash kept her eyes closed. Whatever was happening was something she absolutely did not want to see.

Didn’t stop her from feeling it though. She couldn’t move; the blobs had her in their grasp. She couldn’t even scream. That somehow made it even worse.

Rainbow Dash couldn’t even endure. She had dealt with crashes from every height imaginable. With the discomfort of being laid up in the hospital for months after smashing into a pen of storm clouds and having hundreds of bolts of lightning simultaneously shooting into her and frying her wing off. With almost drowning after crashing into Cloudsdale’s water reservoir.

This was worse. So much worse.

Rainbow fled into a deep, dark corner of her mind. A place where the pain was muted and where everything became a distorted shadow of itself. She drifted while changes went on in her body, while pieces of herself were ripped apart and replaced. It was hard to care, now. Hard to think, really.

She floated for an indeterminate length of time, burning. Always burning. She missed moving. It was a pretty fun thing to do. If only she could twitch an ear. Then it would be better. Then the pain swamped her again and she had to retreat to thoughtlessness.

If she let herself go far enough, she could almost sleep. Not too far, though. Every time she did it she felt like she was slipping. Like she was slipping and she wouldn’t be able to come back.

A cold shock ran through. She was doing it again. Back to the pain. The constant, grinding pain.

The shock of realization became less and less each time. If this torture didn’t end soon, she’d eventually succumb. Already she felt the temptation to drift off.

Then it started to lessen. Slowly. So slowly. She didn’t let herself acknowledge the change for the longest time, in case it was just a lull.

Maybe it will go away. Maybe I’ll wake up. Maybe this is a dream. Maybe it’s not happening. Maybe the Princess will come back, since the Everfree’s gone now—

Pain.

It crescendoed.

Thought too hard. Clouds. Flight. Wind. Crashing. Pain.

No.

Wind. Friends.

She felt better already. Almost as if…

The pain stopped. It was gone, completely. Rainbow tried to move, to open her eyes, to do anything. It didn’t work. Still. The pain was gone. Complete blind immobility was a cakewalk compared to the pain.

She waited. Blind, deaf, and unfeeling. Getting...bored.

She waited.

Well, might as well try to get away from the blobs. If they were still there. If she wasn’t dead.

She concentrated on her eyelids. Just her eyelids. Concentrated on them with the sort of fervor she usually reserved for flying. She felt a twitch and stopped her efforts, exhausted.

So she could move. A little. As long as she tried really hard. The next step was obvious: she needed to open her eyes.

If she was anyone else, Rainbow Dash would’ve given up after the tenth attempt. Or the hundredth, if she were determined. But she’d been through hundreds of attempts by now, enough that she’d lost count several times. Each time she got closer. The last time she’d gotten a flash of light.

This time she would succeed. She opened her eyes.

What?

It was as if whatever was keeping her frozen had simply...stopped. She blinked. Moved a hoof. Looked around. The blobs were gone. She was still in the Aether. She turned around. Blinked. The Princess was gone. With Twilight.

Celestia looked bright but cold. Her coat was a brilliant white, her ethereal mane tangling with the currents of the Aether around her, turning it violet with specks of every other color woven into it. But imposing as she appeared, she looked less...solid. Like she was stretched across too much space and was trying to keep herself from falling apart.

“Where’s Twilight? Did she escape?” Rainbow asked, rotating her forelegs, reveling in the feeling of being able to move. The Princess might be standing in front of her, but that wasn’t going to stop her. Not after...that.

Celestia held Rainbow’s gaze, her face expressionless.

“I know not what you refer to. Kindly describe what I and this Twilight did.”

Something was off. Rainbow Dash had heard a few of the Princess’s speeches before. They were warm and welcoming, simple, understandable words that nevertheless conveyed every iota of meaning Celestia wanted to express.

She took a breath. Not answering wasn’t an option. She was still the Princess, even if her face lacked the normal smile that graced it, even if her speech was aloof and distant.

“Me and Twilight were looking around, then you found us and gave her a spell that let her open a portal. I stayed behind to defend against the blob things. Then they got me. I...don’t know where they went, but if you can do a spell or find Twilight, you should do it before they find us again. I don’t want to go through that again.”

Celestia absorbed her words, still expressionless. Finally, when Rainbow opened her mouth thinking she needed to add more, the Princess spoke. “That was not me. It was my sister.”

“Sister?”

The Princess didn’t have a sister. That was common knowledge.

“Yes. Luna. I banished her a thousand years ago. The Nightmare possessed her, gave her power. Even here, it aided her. My power is but a wisp of a shadow,” Celestia said, then raised a hoof, forestalling Rainbow’s next questions. “I will tell you more. First. A spell. I assume you saw how the Nightmare fed knowledge to your companion?”

She waited for Rainbow’s nod, then continued.

“I will do something similar. Keep still.”

“Uh, Princess? I don’t have a horn. How am I supposed to use a spell?” Rainbow said.

“You have a horn.”

“No I—” Rainbow said, bringing a horn up to her forehead, then froze.

Something long and hard was sticking out of her head.

“What...” she said.

“The Constructs you ran into act to ascend anypony who enters this dimension. They are flawed. Most of those who have managed to open a stable conduit here have gone insane.”

Oh. Rainbow Dash felt...well, she wasn’t sure yet. She was surprised, certainly, but it was a dull sort of surprise. The kind you’d feel when finding out a member of the Wonderbolts had been cycled out. She guessed the impact would hit later.

“So...I’m an alicorn.”

It didn’t seem quite real. Like she was dreaming and just hadn’t woken up yet.

“Yes. Be still.”

Rainbow obeyed, if only because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. Celestia’s horn lit up, the entire length glowing a hot and eager yellow. It approached. It was like staring into the sun.

A flood of information drowned out all coherent thought. Colors, concepts, shapes, numbers, memories, all blended into a big mush in her head. She could see Celestia looking at her with an odd expression. Something between pride and sadness. Then the Princess disappeared. She should have felt more, but just like discovering she was now an alicorn, the realization hit a wall before she could really process it. It didn’t help that her brain felt like it was moving inside her skull.

She stared off into the distance while she assimilated the experiences. Floating.

Then she was done. She shook her head and stared at the space where Celestia had been.

“Hey! Come back!” she demanded the swirling eddies of Aether.

I’m here.

Celestia? Where was she? Rainbow turned her head, scanning the area. Nothing.

I am with you.

Great. The Princess had abandoned her. At least she had that portal spell. Hopefully. She concentrated on teleporting. It didn’t work.

What was she supposed to do?

Epilogue

Cold winds blow across dirt and rock, raising a thin film of dust into the air and forming deposits of sediments into what would eventually be sand dunes. No crickets chirp in the constant night. No animals prowl. No seeds grow.

A faint scent of ozone fills the air, and the tang of electricity settles across the landscape. A dark vortex opens in the air, a rip in reality that devours the moonlight and absorbs ambient light from the area around it. It finishes opening. It was always open. A paradox. Something wrong, something that shouldn’t exist. Reality notices and forces it shut, but not before a rainbow-maned alicorn tumbles out.

Rainbow Dash looked around at the empty area around her. No one. Magic buzzed in her chest, waiting to be used. Even without drawing on it directly, she had no doubt that flying to the nearest settlement wouldn’t be a challenge, even if it was on the other side of the continent.

Try it now, a voice suggested. Celestia. Absorbing the new memories had taken time and effort, but come with understanding. Rainbow could slip into another mode of thought, a pattern that traced another consciousness. She could become Celestia, could mimic the Princess just by thinking a certain way. Memories. Tracing familiar patterns. That was all it was, really. They were still separate, though. She would have to sit down and go through every experience in the older alicorn’s life before she could truly understand everything she had absorbed. For now, she was content to run a simulation of what the Princess would say if she were here.

She looked up at the moon.

It was beautiful. Every pit and scarring on the surface had been the study of countless nights at her balcony with a telescope.

But it would have to go, for now. Rainbow Dash sank into the part of her that was the alicorn, feeling the immense power and connection that came with it. Energy swirled around her, stored in wind and clouds and the earth itself, each bit a distinct but manageable piece of the world. But the world wasn’t her focus. She stretched her awareness up, and up, and up, farther and farther into the cold, empty void of space. Another type of energy radiated in the vacuum, cold vibrating strings of wind. And far above even those was an immense ball of chaos. Strings of energy curled and bent and twisted together, tangling and fighting as they erupted from the surface of the sun.

She pulled at it, the familiar sensation setting her at ease. When she was younger, the task had been exhausting, boring, repetitive. But now it was a time to think.

Still, she wasn’t Celestia. The sun struggled against her control. Another alicorn with more precise control over the machinery of the heavens could’ve torn the ball of energy from her mental grasp with ease.

She persevered. Opening her eyes, she looked up and was greeted by the dawn’s warm rays.

Chapter 9

“Get up featherbrain!”

“Rainbow Dash, stop being insensitive. She almost died!”

“Yeah, and then she got better in, like, ten seconds after Amber did that spell thingie on her.”

“Um. I don’t think we should be fighting right now.”

“And the fact that she still hasn’t woken up hasn’t clued you in to the face that she’s still healing?”

“I know Gilda. You don’t. She sleeps almost as much as me. Trust me, she’s just being lazy.”

“And you’re basing that off...what, exactly?”

“Guys...”

“I just know, okay?”

“Guys!”

A pause.

“She’s awake.”

“Wait. Stop. You’re avoiding something. Tell me.”

“I don’t think—”

Gilda jabbed a talon into Rainbow Dash’s shoulder, ignoring the stabbing pains in her own chest. “Tell me or I gouge your eyes out.”

Rainbow Dash pranced back, hooves out before her in a placating gesture that Gilda had seen her use maybe twice in her entire life. “Jeeze Gilda, you’ve gotten—alright! Alright. No need to be pushy. So. More griffons came right after you got, uh, shot. Then the guy who did the shooting flew past us and started yelling stuff about traitors and beheadings and stuff like that.”

“And you couldn’t stop him?” Gilda said, half mocking and half teasing.

Anger flashed across Dash’s face. It wasn’t irritation or annoyance, but real, deep anger.

“No,” Dash said, sounding as if she was trying to bite the word.

“So—”

“He started flying.”

Gilda looked Dash over closely. No metal wings or apparent injuries, but just because a unicorn healer closed a wound didn’t mean it wasn’t still there. And signs were all over the pony’s body. Feathers flattened away from an area. A blunt object had hit there. A wing was kept from folding by just the tiniest amount. Her mane was just slightly out of place. Whatever had happened had led to violence.

“So, anyway,” Dash continued, forcing her voice close to her normal cheerful register, “the new griffons all started arguing about you. You’re not a traitor, so I went up to them—well, as close as I could, anyway—and told them that you were all set to fight us.”

Gilda leaned forward, cot now entirely abandoned. “That was the stupidest thing you could’ve done.”

“What? But—”

“Think, Dash. Try it for once in your life. You tried to convince them that I was your enemy so I could keep being your enemy. See the problem?”

“Oh…”

Gilda sighed and settled onto her haunches. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t bad enough to cause her to show it. “Moving on. What happened next?”

Rainbow Dash gave her an odd look before continuing. “Well I couldn’t really hear much beyond what I told you already. They talked some more and then dumped you on us. And then they, well, attacked. I couldn’t just stand there. Luckily they just wanted to scatter us, so no one died. They knocked a lot of the unicorns unconscious though. The professors and a few other unicorns made another shield and blasted any griffon that came near, which was pretty awesome. I wanted to see more, but I was kind of fighting by then. I got three of them before they knocked me down.

“And right now, we’re all sort of….deciding what to do. All the port cities are supposedly wrecked, but every pony here will probably want to go for one of them anyway. Cowards, the lot of them.”

Griffon blinked. “You only got three? What kind of sad style did you have to use to do that badly?”

Dash gritted her teeth. “The Everfree got me. I’m not at my best.”

“Yeah, and? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What’s that supposed to—you don’t know. Fine. That’s fine. Any pony who gets caught in it is never seen again, unless they’re a pegasus. For us it just sort of...sucks on us. It hurts. A lot.” A full-bodied shiver traveled through Dash from head to hoof. “And then we don’t have magic anymore.”

“What? But then how do you fly—oh.”

“Yep.” Dash’s voice was so flat it could’ve come from one of those ancient golems in the north.

“Great. Now I’m going to set every griffon straight. I’ll catch up with you guys after to talk about payment.”

Rainbow Dash looked like she was struggling with something, then blurted out, “There! Right there! Did you hear yourself just now? You’re being...nice. And business-ey. You hated anyone thinking of you like that. You wanted to be a pro at doing stuff, remember? What happened?”

“My House. Now, I’m leaving. I have stuff to do.”

Gilda moved to leave the small and obviously hastily erected but still garishly overdecorated tent.

“Gilda, you can’t go yet! You’re not all the way fixed yet,” Dash said, hastily stepping in front of her.

“Oh?” Gilda raised an eyebrow. “And what was that I remembered about me just sleeping because I’m lazy?”

“You heard that?” Rainbow Dash said, then backtracked. “I mean, probably a dream. Er, that’s not going to fly, is it?”

Gilda shook her head.

“Right. I was just trying to get Twilight—she’s that weird purple unicorn—and the other guys to leave you alone. I know what it’s like to be stuck in a bed and have other ponies near you, just talking and talking so you can’t sleep, but not about anything interesting enough that it would be worth hearing, and all that time just being stuck and not able to do anything because you’re not healed up enough to talk…um.”

Gilda’s eyebrow climbed even higher.

“So, yeah. You can’t go because you’re not better yet. Also we don’t know where any of them went.”

“I can find them,” Gilda said with a wave of her claw. Then she froze. “Wait. After that guy shot me, how long did it take for the reinforcements to show up?”

“It was actually pretty quick. Like, five, ten minutes tops. Fluttershy started getting you all bandaged up and out of the way by then.”

“Where’s my armor?” Gilda said. She pushed past Rainbow Dash, who stumbled back, and exited the tent. There were only two other ‘tents’ around. The patchwork of different fabrics on the smallest one made it look like a child’s art project.

Rainbow Dash emerged behind her. “About the armor...if it was important to you, it’s kind of broken right now. Fluttershy had to kind of...cut it apart to get you out of it.”

“The armor isn’t important,” Gilda said, limping to the next tent. “What is important are the tracking runes my oh so loyal lieutenant might have put on it. My House kind of threw me out here because I was rude or something like that.”

“Rude? You? You’re joking,” Dash said.

“Hah. Anyway, if they were willing to put tracking runes on me, my House most likely wants me dead.”

“Really? That seems kind of...cynical. They could just be to look after you. I mean, the cavalry came after you got shot!”

Gilda snorted as she continued walking. “You may know some stuff about us, but you will never get griffon politics. But speculation does me no good until I know they were tracking me, which is why I need to find my armor.”

“Oh. In that case, you’re going in the wrong direction.”

“You idiots left my armor exposed to the elements?”

Chapter 11

Well...this is certainly interesting.

Thorny vines sneaked into the garden, disrupting the routine cycle of cultivated growth and regrowth that had kept Discord trapped for over a millennium. Not that he was counting. But with nothing to listen to but ponies idly chatting and without the ability to do anything about it, he’d had to resort to...cheating. He would imagine the ponies into his mind, letting them view the chaos of the cosmos he kept inside his head. After a while, though, it got boring.

Negative gravity and sight as smells? Again? the pony he was currently imagining falling said, tapping its hoof in midair. You’ll have to do a lot better to surprise anyone out there in the real world. They’ve probably been preparing themselves for your return for the past thousand years. This sort of thing might get a yawn at best.

Hush, you, Discord thought, throwing the irritable pony into an imaginary black hole. Something interesting is happening.

Discord observed the encroaching vines. He couldn’t really see, or hear, or anything, but he could still sense magic, and there was magic in everything. And the magic in these vines was...odd.

Have my little seeds finally grown? he pretended to ask the plants. Took you long enough.

Discord waited for the new greenery to overtake the garden. They didn’t let off that much unstructured magic, but eventually, well, who knew? It might be enough to let him finally get rid of his second layer of skin.

The entire garden was full of plants. Discord had been steadily collecting the magic flowing through the forest for about a day by now. It was a strangely high amount, almost as high as the level of ambient magic had been when he’d been an alicorn. Maybe the Old Council had finally unfrozen themselves. Hah. As if. Their successors were determined. They’d be on ice for a long time.

Still, it was strange. As soon as he got out, he was going to investigate. Or maybe not. The world could change a lot in a thousand years.

A crack appeared on his statue.

Finally.

Finally.

The imperfections spread until the statue was a web of stone chunks held together with only a shadow of the old harmonic bonds that had held it together for so long. And with a thought, Discord dissolved those bonds.

“I’m back! Did anyone miss me?”

He looked around, then opened his eyes.

“My, that is just so much better. Magical sight is all well and good, but only having one sense gets so boring after a while.”

The plants stayed silent, so Discord snapped his fingers.

“I know what you mean,” one of the larger vines said with a voice emanating from nowhere. “I can’t see at all.”

“Well at least something appreciates me,” Discord said, folding his arms.

“Yes, yes, you are an amazing...you. Just, um, I’d feel a lot better if I could, maybe, see?”

“Oh all right then.”

With a snap, Discord gave the vine two large googly eyes. That acted as ears. And a plastic nose that it could see out of. In inverted colors, because why not.

“So tell me, what’s been going on in Equestria lately?” Discord asked while conjuring a large lemon.

“I don’t really know. I’m just a vine, you see,” the vine said, tilting its nose so it looked vaguely apologetic. “I’m just here to spread and harvest magic. You know how it is, nothing but work, work, work.”

“I do indeed,” Discord said, idly spinning the lemon on his thumb. “All the chaos I do takes quite the effort. Though since I got out of the rock I’ve been living in for the past thousand or so years, I haven’t had quite the same urge to spread my lovely samples of disharmony.”

He bent down next to one of the vine’s eyes, whispering, “You know, I think the compulsion part of that spell is wearing off. Since you’re not a pumpkin by now.”

He stood up and walked away from the talking tree, which looked a bit uncomfortable with its shape. Then he tore a hole in reality and threw the lemon in it.

“You never can be too careful with these. They’re combustible, you know. I used to burn down houses with them all the time. Then it got old.”

Discord grabbed the zipper on the hole and closed it, then whistled. A giant eagle swooped down from above and carried him into another portal in the sky, which closed after he left.

“...Huh,” the former vine said. “I’ve always wanted to be a tree.”

It wiggled its branches. “Neat.”

“Oh, good. I wouldn’t have wanted for you to dislike it. I’ve resolved to make everyone enjoy my chaos now, unlike last time,” another tree with Discord’s face on it said.

“AAH!”

“Yes, well, while I would love to scream with you, other me is being an idiot, so I have to go help him.”

The face twisted like water draining in a sink, then disappeared. He might not have liked being forced into it, but chaos was fun.

It had been an exhaustive ten-second search, but Discord’s plot-relevancy spell had finally picked up some characters with some decent metaphorical armor. After a few more seconds of consideration, he’d decided to give some to himself as well. Teleportation, duplication, immortality, and being relatively invincible were all well and good, but if he stumbled into just one plot hole or picked up a stray idiot ball he could find himself dead again. And being dead was not pleasant.

With a snap of his fingers, he teleported to the nearest targets of his spell. They were, unsurprisingly, mostly ponies. It was always ponies. Lyra, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Radiance, Fluttershy, and finally Gilda. At least she was something else. Griffons were interesting creatures.

“Greetings! You may have thought your troubles were at an end, but worry not, for I am here!”

The griffon threw a pebble at him. “Shove off.”

“Gilda! That was very rude. Also, he used a teleportation spell, so we don’t know how powerful he is,” Twilight Sparkle whispered.

“I do like a nice bit of chaos, but dear Twilight was right. That was just rude. Think of my feelings,” Discord said, catching the pebble in a conjured hat and then turning it over and pouring out a disgruntled cat.

Twilight gasped. “How do you know—”

“Your name?” Discord gave her a flat stare. “You’ve only been the main character for five chapters. Give someone else a chance.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Your party is more boring than I expected. I think you need a dragon. That would make things more exciting.”

Twilight looked at the sky and tapped on the ground with a hoof. “A dragon could be a huge help. Their fire is extremely unique and completely unreproducible. Against the Everfree, who knows—wait, no. No dragons!” she said, suddenly looking panicked.

“Oh, relax. I’m not giving you a dragon. At least not until your little adventure is over. It would be a huge help for you, I admit. But since I’m not letting you have one, you’ll find you’ll have a very hard time convincing one to help you.”

“Look bud, we don’t know who you are. You seem pretty cool and all, and if you want to help us that’s great, but if not, what do you want from us?” Rainbow Dash said, dropping into one of the more subtle guarding positions from an earth pony martial art.

Discord still noticed it, of course.

“Help you...you know, that thought never occurred to me,” Discord said, rubbing his goatee.

Understandably, the little group looked nervous. Radiance started to bring out a package from his saddlebags.

“Oh, are those what I think they are?” Discord said, extending his arm to a ridiculous degree and snatching the package out of the professor’s mouth. He bounced it a couple of times as if to get a feel for its weight. It was just for show. He knew what was in it.

“Interesting...I didn’t think there were any earth ponies who still used these. I’d have thought by now you lot could either do just fine without, or would have forgotten about that kind of thing entirely.”

Discord slipped the package back into Radiance’s saddlebags. “Not to worry, though, your secret is safe with me.” He gave the professor an exaggerated wink. “But you have given me an idea, Rainbow Dash. I’ve never played the part of the wise old sage before.”

Discord made his goatee into a ridiculously long beard, then conjured a large rock and sat on it in a cross-legged pose. With a snap of his fingers, a droning hum filled the air.

“Now young ones, hear me well: on your journey you will encounter many things. Some of them will be big. Some of them will be small. Some of them will be the size of the breadbox. If you can guess the number I’m thinking I’ll grant you one wish.”

“What?!” Rainbow Dash said.

Gilda just growled, while Twilight started pacing nervously. The other unicorns and Fluttershy seemed to be trying to blend into the grass. Only the professor seemed calm.

“Is there a purpose to this, or do you just want to foster disharmony?” Radiance said.

“Oh, heard of me, have you? The answer is yes.”

“The answer to—”

“Both of them. But I am serious. Even if it ends up causing harmony, I think they’ll let me. The trick is that it has to be sufficiently random.”

“Fourteen,” Gilda said.

“Gilda!” Twilight stomped over to the griffon. “There was probably a clue, or something! Now we—”

“Correct! Except not really, I was just kidding,” Discord said. “It was the square root of two. Have a chaotic adventure, don’t die, all that good stuff. And if you want to call me, do something you would never do otherwise. I won’t promise to help, but I will make things interesting.”

A flying saucer flew down and stopped right above Discord, then emitted a beam of light from the bottom. Discord started rising into the air.

“Until next time! I’m very busy following a whim right now, so I’ll have to meet you all later after you’ve either saved or destroyed Equestria. If you want to know more about me, ask your mysterious professor who’s actually not really that mysterious and should just get over himself.”

Six ponies and one griffon looked at each other.

“That was weird.”

“I’ll say!”

“Yes, he was a bit...odd. Still, at least he didn’t attack us.”

“Yeah. Wonder what his deal is.”

Discord’s head popped out of the ground. “I heard that!”

“AAH!”

Discord shook his head with mock-disappointment, then shook it again. Then it started spinning, slowly gaining speed until it rose off the ground.

“Again, love to chat, but I’ve got a UFO to catch.”

Chapter 26

“Citizen of Equestria,” Celestia proclaimed.

Twilight just stared. What was going on? Was this a trick from those blob things? Was it a hallucination?

“I will transfer a thought pattern to you that will allow you to create a portal back to Equestria, so that we may escape this accursed realm.”

“Right. Sounds great. Can you, like, hurry up and do it? These blob thingies are getting closer every second!” Rainbow Dash shouted, diving between two that had appeared out of the mist in front of them.

Twilight studied her monarch in awe. She’d seen her before, when she’d been a filly, and then again when she’d gained her cutie mark, but momentary glimpses through a crowd couldn’t compare to the sight of the Princess somehow managing to regally swim through the air in front of her.

Celestia closed her eyes and took a breath, then continued speaking, ignoring Rainbow. “Come. I can transfer the pattern in but seconds. Less, if you have a measure of skill.”

Then one of the blobs raced toward her, forcing her to swerve out of the way before it hit.

“Perhaps these...things do merit some consideration. Quickly then.”

Twilight held on as Rainbow Dash angled toward Celestia, doing a few quick evasive loops on the way. Then they were there.

“Touch your horn to mine,” Celestia said.

Twilight hesitated. That was...kind of taboo. She’d also never heard of any way to transfer thought patterns between unicorns. That kind of skill would be revolutionary.

“I’m not sure—”

Celestia didn’t take no for an answer. With a single fluid movement, their horns were touching. Then shadows coated the Princess’s horn, and the entire thing appeared black. Her eyes glowed a pure white.

‘Dark’ magic? From the Princess? But she was the one that banned its use in the first—

A new presence forced its way into Twilight’s head. It was a new part of her, a way of thinking, yet it was easier to think of it as a separate entity. The new portal spell. She needed to know...and with that, the presence activated, and Twilight followed the train of thought it spelled out like a raindrop following a well-worn groove in a road, each conclusion seeming natural, logical.

This was mental magic of the highest order.

She reached the end. It was so simple, really. All she needed to do was put a few ‘move’ commands into a skein of magic in the right places...to put a twist in space that wasn’t really a twist but more of a logical intersection of how things worked that would form a pathway between dimensions.

All she needed was magic. A lot of magic. But the blobs were coming. They’d be here before she could gather and break apart the necessary amount.

“I can’t do it in time, Princess. I need more magic,” Twilight said. The Princess could provide it. She was an alicorn. She raised the sun.

So why would she need somepony else to cast the portal spell that she had to understand intimately to be able to pass along to her?

Oh.

“We-we will have to rely on you. Magic above a certain level is suppressed in this place.”

Had the Princess stumbled over her words? Twilight couldn’t blame her. Being trapped in here for weeks on end, with nothing to do, no books to read...she shuddered to imagine it.

“I’m sorry Princess. Rainbow Dash. I can’t do it in time.”

More blobs were appearing at an exponential rate, forming from the magic that made up the dimension. With its strange geometry, this place could hold a lot more than she’d at first estimated. Upwards of billions. Trillions. More.

Speaking of this place’s geometry, how had the Princess found them? With the enormous amount of space, it had to be more than coincidence. Perhaps she could only use a certain amount of magic? A low-level tracking spell targeting for the closest ponies in a dimension with no other ponies could’ve worked.

But speculating was for later. After they survived. If they did. She gathered as much magic as she could from the area around them, even knowing it would be useless. There was always a chance that something would distract the blob things, or they would slow down, or the Princess knew a spell that could hold them off. That she hadn’t cast it yet spoke volumes about her ability to do so, but hope was all Twilight could rely on, and she was going to hold on to it no matter what.

“Twilight?” Rainbow said, her voice oddly hesitant.

“Yes?” Twilight replied tersely, concentrating on spinning together as much magic as she could.

“Would this help?”

Something poked Twilight in the side. She looked back and saw one of Rainbow’s wings with the primary feathers curled around a gem. A quick probe was all it took to confirm her suspicions.

“A piece of solid magic that dense? Did you find it here? No, wait, of course you found it here. Yes, that would definitely work.”

Twilight snatched it up in her kinetic field, establishing a link with the unclaimed gem. This would do.

They were going to make it. They were actually going to make it. The Everfree’s consciousness was destroyed and its magic would eventually disperse, which solved that problem. With the Princess of the sun freed from the alternate dimension she’d apparently been trapped in, the eternal night problem would be solved as well.

“Right. You save the Princess.”

“What? You’re coming Rainbow, the portal will be big enough to fit all of us,” Twilight said.

“Sorry. But I’m not living a life without my magic.”

“What? But the Everfree’s gone!”

“Yep.”

With that, Twilight felt Rainbow disentangle herself, leaving Twilight floating in the air. Then she flew off, straight into the sea of blobs. They converged on her like piranhas on a fresh meal. Within seconds, she was obscured.

“No...” Twilight whispered.

“Quickly. Before they come for us as well. Do not let your friend’s sacrifice be in vain.”

The Princess was right. Rainbow Dash would be remembered. Despite getting herself swarmed by probably evil blobs for no reason whatsoever when they were all this close to escape…

Twilight took a deep breath, drew on the energy on the crystal, and cast the spell.

Magic folded around the portal, feeding it to a bigger size than Twilight had expected. When it was done, the rip in this dimension’s reality was big enough for three ponies to walk through comfortably side by side.

Celestia swam through as soon as it stabilized, disappearing from view. Twilight hesitated and looked behind herself. Hundreds of blobs were shooting toward her. She gazed them a look that was both sad and angry.

“Why?”

They were close now. Too close. Twilight entered the portal.

And woke up back where the tree had been. Everything hurt. It felt as if she’d been liquified, squeezed through a straw, and then forced into a mold of her previous shape on the other side. She groaned and looked beside her, then did a double take.

Laying in a similar position was a dark mare about the size of Celestia, but with a mane made of flowing stars instead of pure magic.

“Who...who are you?” Twilight choked out.

“Ah. Our disguise seems to have fallen apart.”

Chapter 28

Twilight stood next to her friends. She ran her gaze over them. Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Gilda, Pinkie Pie, and professor Radiance. Most of her friends. A tear rolled down her cheek. Why did Rainbow have to be so stupid? Gilda still wasn’t talking to her.

“Applejack? Applejack!”

A yellow filly bounded out of the milling crowd in front of them and barreled into Applejack, sending them both tumbling down to the barren ground.

Rarity smiled at them, then looked back to the crowd. Looking for Sweetie Belle, Twilight knew. The Everfree’s victims might be free, but they were scattered all across the former forest in pockets of about twenty each. Apparently they’d been trapped inside strange cocoons that kept them alive but sucked at their magic, feeding them the necessary nutrients in a deep, dreamless sleep. So far, the unicorns and earth ponies had been able to use magic if provided with a power source, but none of the pegasi could do the same.

The Everfree might be gone, but Celestia’s doppelganger was on the loose, able to turn to shadow and fly through solid stone. The night was still eternal, ponies were displaced all across Equestria, and the griffons were still raiding, maybe even at war by now.

Still.

She had her friends. Equestrians were hardy creatures, able to withstand cold and stave back starvation. They’d done it before, back before they’d settled this land, and they could do it again.

It would be a logistical nightmare, but Twilight excelled at organization.