From somewhere very far away but right around a corner, the bells tolled.
“And you have enough diapers?” Princess Cadance asked.
“Literally thousands,” Starlight confirmed, glancing at the storeroom full of boxes.
“And her favorite book?”
“Two copies.” She held them up for inspection. One had been gnawed on around the edges by tiny alicorn teeth and scorched by tiny alicorn fire. The other was a spare and temporarily in perfect condition, waiting to be called upon to give its binding in the name of duty.
“What about food? She can be a picky eater! Maybe we should call the whole thing off. Princess Celestia doesn’t need both of us there to talk about this vision of hers, does she?” Cadance looked at Twilight.
“She said it was important,” Twilight reminded her. “Princess Celestia even wanted all of my friends to come, just in case we needed the Elements again.”
“I know,” Cadance sighed. Her first choice for a foalsitter in Ponyville would have been Fluttershy. Her second through fourth were most of Twilight’s other friends. (Starlight did rate above Rainbow Dash - no matter what she said, the best way to teach Flurry Heart to fly was not to ‘throw her off a thunderhead and see what those oversized flap flaps can do’.)
“I’ll order pizza if she doesn’t like the applesauce.” Starlight smiled. Cadance didn’t share her expression. “No? Maybe pasta?”
“Twilight, are you sure about this?” Cadance whispered.
“I have total faith in Starlight Glimmer,” Twilight said, proudly. “And I’m certain she’s joking about the pizza. They won’t deliver here anymore after one of the deliverymares got lost in the castle for three days - even though I paid for the pizza and she ate it while she was trying to find her way out of the east wing! That’s awful customer service, as I noted in my harshly-worded letter to their company president.”
“I’m just worried about leaving Flurry Heart alone,” Cadance said. She looked at Starlight and offered an apologetic smile. “You understand. It’s just…”
“It’ll be fine,” Starlight assured her. “You’ll only be gone a few hours. Besides, I won’t be looking after her alone.”
“Honestly, that’s partly why I’m worried,” Cadance muttered.
The doors on the other side of the room burst open, smoke pouring out of them.
“NEVER FEAR! THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE IS HERE!”’
“Starlight, that’s a broom closet,” Twilight said, as Trixie posed dramatically in the smoke, strutting into the room like it was a stage.
“She was waiting in there for three hours,” Starlight sighed. “She wanted to make a good impression. Trixie’s really great with foals, I promise!”
“That’s because she practically is a foal. Are you sure you can manage Trixie and Flurry Heart at the same time?” Twilight asked.
“Trixie does not need foalsitting!” Trixie huffed. “Trixie saved Equestria once, you know! Maybe even twice! Find out at Trixie’s next amazing magic show! Tickets on sale Thursday, special rates for royalty. Take a few flyers, give them to your friends!” Trixie pushed pamphlets into Twilight and Cadance’s hooves.
“The rates are higher for royalty,” Twilight noted, looking at the paper.
“Royalty can afford it,” Trixie huffed. “Not all of us get to live tax-free in a giant crystal castle.”
“I’ve noticed you stay here most of the time anyway,” said a voice from a dark, edgy corner. Fizzlepop Berrytwist turned a page in the book she was reading, then glared sideways at the prose of the story until the narrator agreed not to use her real name again.
“Twilight, do you collect villains?” Cadance whispered.
“Everypony needs a hobby,” Twilight said. “But hey, you know, this is a great opportunity for a friendship lesson! Tempest, why don’t you help Starlight foalsit Flurry Heart and Trixie?” She coughed. “I mean, help Trixie and Starlight. Same thing.”
Tempest closed her book slowly and deliberately, and stood, looking down at the ponies before her.
“I have led armies into battle, commanded hundreds of trained soldiers and mercenaries, subjugated nations, and crushed entire nations beneath my hooves, and you want me to look after a foal?”
Twilight nodded.
“Okay,” Tempest said, mildly.
“Great!” Twilight smiled. “Now, let me just renew the suppression spell so Flurry Heart doesn’t uncontrollably spew apocalypse magic!"
Twilight cast a quick spell, then, before Cadance could protest, teleported away with the Princess of Love in tow.
“What was that about apocalypse magic?” Trixie asked.
Starlight laughed nervously, looking at the tiny bundle of joy they’d been left with.
Flurry Heart burbled and sneezed, sparks shooting from her horn.
“She’s not such a bad foal,” Starlight said. She shut the door to Flurry Heart’s room quietly, making sure not to wake her up now that she was down for a nap. “Especially when she isn’t ending the world.”
“Trixie still has many questions about that, actually-”
“And she fell right to sleep after your magic show!” Starlight continued, running right past those uncomfortable questions.
“I nearly fell asleep too,” Tempest said.
Trixie turned slowly to look at Tempest.
“Are you calling Trixie’s show boring?” Trixie asked, her tone dangerous.
“I think it’s an excellent cure for insomnia,” Tempest said, her tone even more dangerouser.
“No magic duels when the baby is trying to sleep!” Starlight snapped. Quietly. Because she didn’t want to wake up a foal with the power of a million exploding suns.
Tempest and Trixie glared at each other silently.
“How about we play some Mareopoly?” Starlight suggested, pulling out the boardgame and thrusting it between them as a distraction.
“Trixie demands to be the hat!” Trixie said, quickly, grabbing the box and tugging on it.
“The hat is weak. All who play the hat fall before the might of the battleship!” Tempest declared, slamming her hooves into the game, knocking it from Trixie’s grasp.
“Well, I’ll take the-”
The bells tolled.
“-what was that?” Starlight asked, looking around. “Did Twilight install a new doorbell?”
“Oh! Did you order pizza?” Trixie asked. “Trixie hopes you remembered extra cheese and double mushrooms and onions.”
“I didn’t order pizza,” Starlight said. “I already told you, they won’t even come out here- and now Flurry Heart is crying.” She groaned, hearing the wailing from the next room.
“Don’t worry, Starlight!” Trixie said, pushing past her. “Trixie can handle this!”
Trixie swept into the room imperiously, horn lighting up with flares of limelight and sparks.
“Do not worry, tiny Princess! Trixie is here to calm your tears!”
She lifted the bundle out of the crib.
Trixie screamed.
“Don’t make sudden motions or sounds!” Starlight yelled. “She reacts to surprises with death rays!”
“That makes two of us,” Tempest muttered.
“SHE TURNED INTO A SKELETON!” Trixie yelled. “THIS IS NOT TRIXIE’S FAULT!”
Trixie dropped the bundle, and a tiny horned skeleton with burning eyes jumped out of the blankets, laughing madly.
“Your precious foal belongs to Grogar the Undying!” The skeleton cackled. “The living will tremble when the dead are restless!”
“...Grogar?” Starlight asked.
“The Undying,” the skeleton added, enunciating to make the capital obvious.
“Is this a revenge plot?” Starlight asked. “Did Twilight defeat him? I can’t really keep track of everypony she’s beaten.”
“For over a thousand years, Grogar the Undying has waited for revenge!”
“Oh,” Starlight sighed. “It’s one of these.”
“Should Trixie get the Princesses?”
“No! They’ll never trust me with anything again if I can’t even foalsit!”
“This probably counts as something outside your control,” Tempest said.
“We can fix this,” Starlight said. “We’ve got… at least two or three hours. That’s more than enough time to save her and pretend this never happened!”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Tempest countered. “We should get the Princesses, then attack the enemy with overwhelming force. Crush this Grogar with an army, and have his head put on a pike at the front gates of the Castle of Friendship to show Twilight Sparkle’s foes what fate awaits them.”
“Trixie thinks that goes against Twilight Sparkle’s branding.”
“Branding is important,” Tempest conceded.
“This is about earning trust and redemption and friendship and… stuff…” Starlight said, pleading with Tempest. “And if you help I’ll wipe Pinkie Pie’s memory of your real name.”
Tempest turned without a word and stomped over to the tiny skeleton, her horn showering the floor with sparks. The skeleton looked up, and was grabbed under the chin, shoved against the wall.
“WHERE IS SHE?!” Tempest screamed.
“You’re- *gurk* - choking me! I don’t even breathe! How are you-”
“WHERE IS FLURRY HEART?!”
“Tambelon! She’s in Tambelon!”
Tempest looked back at Starlight, who shrugged.
“Trixie knows what Tambelon is!”
“You do?” Starlight asked.
“Unlike you, Trixie went to the finest school in Equestria, for almost a whole year before they realized Trixie had never paid tuition!”
“Where is Tambelon? Will we need an airship?” Tempest asked. “I know where we can get an airship.”
Trixie smiled. “Let Trixie tell you the tale of the Fall of Tambelon!” She flourished her cape, producing a flashlight that she switched on, making shadow puppets on the far wall.
“Long ago, there was a city of grand towers and beauty, a cathedral to life and light called Tambelon!” Trixie used a few of the toys and books around the room to make a surprisingly, even impossibly, detailed city on the crystal wall. “Before Equestria, it was the birthplace of harmony and peace, the bells on every tower ringing with an ever-changing song.”
Trixie jangled a triangle.
“Like that, but better and with more bells,” she said. “But then one dark day, a dark wizard forged an evil bell-” A hunched figure appeared among the towers, looming over them with dark intent.
“What makes a bell evil?” Tempest interrupted.
“Trixie will explain if you stay quiet and listen!” Trixie huffed. “The dark wizard made a bell that rang with terrible, dissonant sound! The skies turned black, and soot rained from the clouds! The dead rose, and the world quaked!”
Trixie shook the toys she was holding, the triangle jangling.
The skeleton applauded. “This is my favorite part!”
“The bells tore open a portal into Limbo, and the entire city, bound together with the dissonant magic, fell into the darkness. Forever!”
Trixie dropped the toys, the city collapsing as she turned off the light.
“Or at least a thousand years, apparently. The end! Please make sure to tip Trixie if you enjoyed her performance.”
“So how do we get to Limbo?” Tempest asked.
“It is impossible to enter the realm of darkness without the invitation of Grogar the Undying,” croaked the skeleton. “Your quest is over before it has even-”
“Got it,” Starlight said, ripping open a hole in space-time. From the other side, bells tolled with leaden dissonance.
“That’s, um…” the skeleton hesitated.
“Stay,” Tempest ordered, firmly.
It nodded quickly, watching the three ponies go through the portal.
“It’s probably safer on this side anyway,” it said, quietly. “...Hey, Mareopoly!”
It started setting up the board for a solo game.
Towers, stretching from the darkness of a bottomless pit into the sky above, their peaks hidden by something midway between fog and smoke. The air filled with the stink of funeral pyres and incense. Bridges like narrow branches joining the city hanging in the void, cobwebs of stone and mortar. Specters, barely visible, like projections against the fog, wailed in endless torment, their spirits caught between worlds.
Tambelon.
“Trixie is not impressed,” Trixie said. “This is only half as frightening as the changeling hive. The overuse of darkness and ghosts makes it shallow and pedantic. Especially the endless abyss.”
“The Storm King’s palace had better branding,” Tempest added.
“Honestly I’m just kind of surprised how close Trixie’s shadow puppets were to the real thing,” Starlight said.
“Trixie prides herself on accurate representations of events, especially her own heroism.”
“We need to take care of this quickly. A strike at the center of government as a decapitation attack would be ideal.” Tempest asked.
“I’m guessing that’s the place we want to go,” Starlight said, pointing. A tower of obsidian and ice stood like a tombstone among the others, smothering them with shadows like an inverted lighthouse, black lightning crackling and flashing across the misty sky.
“It’s a bit of a walk,” Tempest muttered. “We should have brought an airship.”
“No problem!” Starlight smiled and her horn flashed, the unicorns vanishing in a flare of teleportation magic.
They reappeared ten paces to the right, over the long drop into the endless abyss of Limbo.
Trixie reacted quickly, screaming and closing her eyes.
Tempest reacted quickly and also intelligently, grabbing Starlight and Trixie as they fell and throwing a burst of explosive magic, riding the blast wave into and through the ancient, crumbling walls of one of Tambelon’s towers.
“Lesson learned, teleportation isn’t working correctly in this dimension,” Starlight said, breathlessly. “Let’s not do that again.”
“Trixie humbly suggests we use the bridges.”
“This place is a maze,” Tempest complained. “Why would anypony design a city like this?”
“They were goats, not ponies,” Starlight corrected. “And I think it’s because this whole place is a giant magical sigil. These are less like streets and more like leylines.”
“None shall pass!” Declared a tiny voice, echoing and high-pitched.
The three ponies stopped. In the middle of the bridge was a goat skeleton, only the size of a foal, glaring up at them.
“You ponies shall go no further! I am one of the three bridge guardians!”
“Do you want me to…?” Tempest looked at Starlight.
“Trixie will take care of this,” Trixie sighed, sweeping ahead of them to look at the tiny undead horror. “Shoo.” She waved at it. “Get going.”
“It’s a monster, not a stray cat!” Starlight groaned.
“Trixie is an expert on monsters! Do you not remember the many stories of her heroism? This tiny thing is merely a- ow!” Trixie yelled, the tiny goat smashing into her kneecap. “Stop it- ow!”
“You will never pass!” The goat yelled.
Trixie kicked it over the edge of the bridge.
“Stupid thing. The last time ponies saw Trixie with bruised knees they thought she was an entirely different kind of performer.” She huffed. “Trixie’s pride is still recovering.”
“I will avenge my brother!” Cried a second, slightly larger skeleton, running at Trixie from the shadows, head down. Trixie held out her cape, the goat running right into it and vanishing without a trace.
“Not bad,” Tempest admitted.
The bridge shook. A huge, armored skeleton stomped out of the misty darkness, the bridge threatening to crumble under its weight.
“WHO DARES DESTROY MY BRETHREN?!”
“Trixie dares,” Starlight supplied, pointing at the mare.
Trixie glared back at her.
“You got this!” Starlight assured her.
“Trixie is an expert on monsters,” Tempest added.
“Trixie is never volunteering for heroic acts ever again!”
“PREPARE FOR DOOM!” The giant goat yelled. Trixie took off her hat, reached inside, and threw a bouquet of flowers into the goat’s face. It sputtered in surprise, blinded, and Trixie put her hat back on and lifted her cape, a skeletal goat charging out of the revealed folds and slamming into the knee of its bigger brother.
The two goats tumbled over the edge, hitting a lower bridge on the way down and bouncing into the endless darkness.
“Trixie calls that the disappearing-reappearing rope-de-rope maneuver ala extra Trixie,” she said, smugly.
“I’m impressed,” Starlight said. “It’s too bad we’re on a secret mission where we’re never going to tell anypony it happened, or else that would be a great story.”
Trixie’s expression fell.
“Shoot!”
The bridge ended at a pair of doors, one black and the other also black. Skulls hung over them, cackling and looking down at the ponies.
“One of us always lies!” said the one on the left.
“And one tells the truth!” sung the skull on the right.
“One door leads to the tower!”
“And the other to certain doom!”
Trixie tapped her chin.
“Are you the liar?” Trixie asked, pointing at one of the skulls hanging over the doorways.
“No,” it said, smugly.
“Aha! So you’re the one that tells the truth! Unless you’re lying about not being the liar…” Trixie hesitated. “This is an impossible puzzle!”
“Trixie, it’s not impossible,” Starlight sighed. “We just have to think logically. If I remember correctly, there was a riddle like this in one of the Daring Do books, and all she had to do was think of a question they’d both answer the same way.”
“What was the question?” Trixie asked.
“I, um, don’t really remember,” Starlight admitted.
“I know what to do,” Tempest assured them.
“Trixie doubts you can solve a puzzle that eluded even her own mighty intellect.”
“You just have to ask the right questions in the right way,” she said, her horn sparking.
The skulls looked at each other.
“The first one to tell me which door I want gets to stay on the tower,” Tempest said.
“She’s bluffing,” whispered one of the skulls.
“You must be the one that always lies,” Tempest smiled.
A skull screamed as it fell into the abyss.
“This looks like the place,” Starlight said, knocking on the vast obsidian door.
Tempest rolled her eyes. “It’s an evil stronghold. You don’t have to knock.”
“It’s polite to knock.”
“I used to work in an evil stronghold. Heroes don’t knock on the front door.”
“She’s right,” Trixie said. “We should sneak in.”
“I already knocked!” Starlight protested. “We can’t just leave!”
The door cracked open.
“Can I help you?” Asked a well-dressed skeleton, slightly better preserved than the other corpses they’d seen. It was wrapped up in a colorful robe that couldn’t quite hide the fact it was a desiccated horror, if a polite one.
“We’re here to stop, um-” Starlight glanced back at the others.
“Grogar,” Tempest sighed. “Grogar the Undying.”
“Right, him,” Starlight said. “Sorry. I’m not great with names, and I’m in kind of a hurry, so could we move this along? I need to get Flurry Heart back home before anypony notices she’s gone.”
“Ah…” the skeleton looked back into the tower. “This isn’t a good time. The Master is currently in the midst of a ritual designed to bring about the end of the world. Could you come back after the apocalypse has concluded?”
The door exploded open with the crackling firework snap of uncontrolled magic, and the three unicorns stepped through, two of them avoiding the fallen skeleton and the last very purposely stepping on it.
“We’re on a tight schedule,” Tempest growled.
“Sorry,” Starlight apologized. “Usually I’d try and do some kind of friendship... thing.”
“Please wipe your hooves…” the skeleton said, dazed.
Grogar paced in a circle around the sleeping foal, dust hanging in a cloud around his massive, twisted form, the bells around his neck quietly jangling, their song muffled by his black cloak. His good black cloak, mind you. He hadn’t worn it in centuries, since the last time he’d tried to return to the living world.
It had gone poorly, which is why the cloak had a large hole where his heart had once been. He still missed that heart, for sentimental reasons.
“I’ll get a new one,” he promised himself. “Twice as good as the old one.”
Flurry Heart burbled.
“Don’t think you can plead for mercy!” Grogar snapped. “I’ll use your magic to crack open Limbo and unleash all the wailing shades of the damned!”
Flurry Heart giggled and wiggled her hooves.
“Hurm. Usually my captives are older.”
Flurry heart tilted her head. “Wah-wah!”
“What?”
“Wah wah! Boom!” Flurry Heart sniffled and started to cry.
“Yes, cry! Feel the sorrow that will consume the light of the world!”
Flurry Heart wailed.
“...You can stop now, that’s getting annoying.” He paused. “I said stop! Stop crying! What do you want?!”
Tempest kicked down the door.
“Stop right there, undead scum!” Trixie yelled. “We’ve come to- oh CELESTIA the smell!”
“I know!” Grogar snapped. “Give me a minute! I’m trying to change this bloody diaper! I haven’t done this in two thousand years…” he grumbled. “...hate foals. Going to outlaw children when I’m ruling the world.”
“Should we shoot him in the back while he’s distracted?” Tempest whispered.
“Not unless you want to change the diaper,” Starlight retorted.
“Just a minute,” Grogar said. “I swear foals have the worst timing.”
“No, it’s fine,” Starlight assured him. “I understand.”
“This is really awkward,” Trixie mumbled. “It’s not going in Trixie’s official retelling.”
Flurry Heart finally stopped crying, and Grogar looked around his lab for a moment before making a decision and throwing the old diaper out a window.
“Endless abyss might as well be good for something,” he muttered. “Now where was I? Right, confronting the champions of the living world.”
Grogar cleared his throat and turned, his eyes blazing with blue balefire.
“Tremble, brief mortals! I am death incarnate! I am Grogar, the Undying!”
“We know,” Tempest sighed. “We’re here for the foal. Turn her over or else.”
“Or else what?” Grogar snorted.
“Or else you’ll wish you’d never found out what ‘or else’ was,” Tempest growled, narrowing her eyes.
Grogar laughed long and hard, ending in coughs as his dust-filled lungs started to protest.
“I haven’t heard anything quite so funny since the last time a hero came here. Little brat named Star Swirl, came here to steal the secret of making magical bells.” He shook his horned head. “You remind me of him.”
“Thank you?” Tempest said, unsure of how to respond.
“Don’t thank me. He ruined my best robe!” Grogar’s eyes flared. “I’m going to use your hide to fix the holes.”
The three unicorns looked at each other, and their horns flared in a variety of colors, sparks, and showmareship.
“You don’t know who you’re up against,” Starlight said. “Just give us Flurry Heart and-”
Grogar reached into his robes and pulled out a bell, ringing it.
The sound hit them like leaden waves, the magic on their horns being smothered like fire quenched by gallons of seawater.
“No, no, none of your pony magic,” Grogar grumbled. He lowered the bell, and it kept tolling on its own. “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…” he hesitated. “I don’t get fooled twice. I’m too smart for that. Never got the point of that phrase.”
“Why is it every time I come with you to fight a villain I end up without magic?” Trixie groaned.
“This is only the second time it’s happened, Trixie,” Starlight reminded her.
“That’s two more times than it should have happened to Trixie! Her magic is her greatest and most powerful asset besides her slight of hoof and ability to promote her own shows!”
Tempest lowered her head and charged, jumping and spinning in midair in an extremely impressive kick. Grogar sighed and pulled out another bell, a dome of blood-red magic forming around him and Flurry Heart. Tempest bounced off harmlessly.
“I made this little trinket to ensure my ritual wouldn’t be disrupted,” Grogar explained. “No pony spells. Whatever enchantments or runes or whatever you were planning? They’re gone too, and you can’t cast more.”
“...All spells?” Starlight asked. “Like… suppression spells?”
“If you were going to try and restrain my magic you’re more a fool than most ponies,” Grogar said.
“I was just asking,” Starlight said, backing away from the barrier. “There’s something you should know about Flurry Heart.”
“I already know all about her,” Grogar said. “Her alicorn magic will allow me to break through the dimensional barrier and bring Tambelon back into the living world, and then my dark magic will, well, you know,” he sighed. “Sorry. I already explained this to her but she didn’t appreciate it and then I had to change her diaper.”
“And I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Starlight said. “It’s just that, if you really turned off all the pony magic around here… you better take a close look at her.”
“Hrm?” Grogar turned to Flurry Heart, leaning in to see, dust trickling down to tickle her nostrils. “She looks like a pony. I’d say perfectly normal but none of you pastel equines is normal to begin with and her wings are-”
Flurry Heart sneezed.
A beam of coherent death vaporized Grogar’s skull, and the rest of his body fell to the ground, twitching.
“When you used your bell it turned off the suppression spell keeping her surges under control,” Starlight explained. “You probably can’t hear me, though.”
“We’ll leave him a note letting him know how clever you are,” Tempest said, rolling her eyes.
“...but nothing ended up happening,” Twilight finished, as she paced around the library. “According to Celestia all the signs were there, but it all just went away on its own.”
“It almost sounds like you’re sorry an evil overlord didn’t show up on schedule,” Starlight said, amused.
“No, no, of course not,” Twilight said. Her wings fluttered, and she blushed. “Okay, maybe a little. I was hoping to use it as a practical exercise to teach certain ponies about how you can overcome anything with the power of friendship.”
“You mean you were going to send me and a motley crew on a mission instead of dealing with it yourself,” Starlight corrected.
“It would be a character building exercise,” Twilight huffed. “Celestia did it to me and look at how I turned out! Besides, Tempest needs to get out of the castle more.”
“Maybe next time,” Starlight said. “We should just be thankful that nothing bad happened, right?”
“You’re right,” Twilight sighed, sitting. “I shouldn’t make it sound like I wanted evil to rise up just so we could have something to do.”
“Your tea, Dark Mistress,” a goat skeleton said, putting a teacup in front of Starlight and bowing before leaving the room.
Twilight watched it go.
“Starlight, that was a ghoul.”
“Skeleton, actually. Ghouls eat the flesh of the living.”
“Why is there a skeleton in my castle?”
“Well, um,” Starlight coughed. She started sweating. “I learned an important lesson while you were gone.”
“And what was that lesson? Was it about necromancy? It had better not be about necromancy!”
“I learned that everypony has secrets,” Starlight said. “And sometimes its a name, or the tricks of the trade, or what really happened while you were gone. The important thing is, don’t judge ponies for having skeletons in their closet. Literal or otherwise.”
