Princess Twilight Sparkle's School for Fantastic Foals: The Soul Thief

Chapters

Happy birthday
A birthday bungled
Birthday blood bond
Knock knock o'clock
The Flier, the Fashionista, and the Flutterer
Out of the frying pan
And into the comfy chair
The quiet calm
The Soul Thief enters
Hope comes in odd forms and odder heroes
Mooked
Anchors away
Twinkle, Twinkle, little star
The sordid tale of Browngast of the Bloody Flatulence
One final star
The ghost

Happy birthday

“Kiddo… happy birthday.”

When Trixie Lulamoon looked down at her adopted son, she saw the best years of her life, a living, breathing reminder of her long recovery. With him, she saw evidence of her own generousity, her kindness, her laughter, her honesty, her loyalty… and yes, even her magic. Their relationship represented the great Equestrian Virtues. With him, she had found her greatness, and that splendiferous magnificence was altruism.

Smiling, Lemon Hearts said, “Six. How does it feel to be six, Sumac?”

Trixie could see that her son wasn’t quite awake yet. Twilight had kept him awake for most of last night during an unscheduled, impromptu astronomy lesson for her students. Little Sumac had finally been roused from his bed at the second first hour—one in the afternoon. His eyes were still crusty with eye-boogers and he had a wicked case of bedmane that would take a crack commando team of Manehattanite manedressers to fix.

“Where’s Boomer?” Sumac asked. “I woke up and she wasn’t there.”

“She went shopping with Megara and Pinny Lane. Smart little dragon. She understood the importance of getting you a gift.” Lemon Hearts laughed, a cheerful, melodical sound that seemed to bounce from wall to wall.

“Oh.” Sumac turned his bleary expression upon Trixie. “Boomer got a smart explosion.”

“She sure did,” Trixie found herself saying in response. “How about we get a proper meal in you before your party? Pinkie will be here soon and I don’t want her filling you with sweets. You need some proper, nutritious food. But first, you need to get cleaned up. Go do that, Sumac. Or do you need some help taking a bath?”

The look on Sumac’s face was endlessly amusing for Trixie and she struggled to contain her smile. So ferocious! So cute! The way his little stubby muzzle scrunched and wrinkled with annoyance. This was the best part of being a parent; you could be a pest and this was considered good parenting. Grumbling to himself, the colt stumbled off and because he was not wearing his spectacles, he immediately smacked headfirst into the staircase bannister.

“Kiddo… you gotta remember to put on your glasses when you wake up. Boomer won’t always be there to remind you.”

Lemon Hearts was just finishing up a few dirty dishes when Pinkie Pie’s face appeared in the window above the sink. The startled lemony-yellow unicorn gasped at the sight of the pink pony grinning in at her, and before Lemon Hearts could say anything, Pinkie Pie opened the window.

“Is it safe?” she asked while Lemon’s heart flopped against her ribcage. “Is the birthday colt distracted? Is my distractor distracting?”

“The distractor suffered from a distraction and got distracted,” Lemon Hearts replied. “Not to worry, Aunt Twilight showed up as a replacement.”

“Poor Moonie has been depressed lately. I was trying to distract her from her depression.” Her face framed by the window, Pinkie Pie scowled while rubbing her chin with one hoof. “If only she’d listen to her eyebrow… good advice, that eyebrow. Bother.”

“Do come in,” said Lemon Hearts to Pinkie. “I see you brought your wagon. I’ll help bring stuff inside. Kitchen is clean, so you’re free to work with no worries. I just finished the last of the dishes.”

“Thanks!” An excited squeal slipped out, followed by, “I’ll be right in!”

Boomer could no longer be called a hatchling. She was tiny, yes, but had more than doubled in size—except for her tail, which seemed far too long for her current body size. Hopefully, she would grow into it. Twinkleshine had to suppress a giggle when Boomer lept up onto her back, clambered up her neck, and clung to her horn.

“Did you find something?”

“Yes.” Boomer’s voice was shrill and somewhat metallic in nature, as if somepony was speaking through a trumpet. There was something brassy about how she spoke.

“And what did you find, young lady?”

In response, Boomer lept. Legs out, she stretched out her membranes and soared across the living room in a wobbling flight, which ended when she crashed into the brown paper bag that sat on the floor near the door. Not exactly a graceful landing, but Boomer was durable beyond belief. The little dragoness climbed into the paper sack while Megara giggled and emerged a moment later, dragging out a box bigger than she was.

“Boomer.”

At the sound of Twinkleshine’s voice, the pygmy tree dragon froze.

“Boomer… that’s a picture puzzle. You like picture puzzles. Far more than Sumac does anyhow. And you hide away the pieces for ‘safekeeping’ which means that nopony can ever finish a puzzle in this house… not without conjuring up the missing pieces, anyhow. And then you have tantrums when your secret stashes are disturbed.”

Offended, Boomer did her best chuckwalla impression. So outraged was she that this time, she managed to appear at least four times her actual size, and she shook her frills and spines at Twinkleshine in a menacing manner. She hissed, but this caused her to deflate a bit, and then annoyed beyond reason, the tiny dragon let everything out in a tremendous belch that made everything in the living room rattle while she shrunk to her teeny, tiny normal state of existence.

“I am not impressed,” Twinkleshine remarked. “Frankly, that burp does not live up to dragon standards, young lady. Either do it right, or don’t bother doing it at all.”

Dejected, Boomer tried another approach. Drooping, she let all of her inflatable bits sag like busted balloons and did a terrific job of looking pathetic. “We do together. Quiet time. Make puzzle make sense.”

Sighing, Twinkleshine realised the battle was lost. Boomer had good intentions. Yes, she had picked out a gift that she herself wanted, but she had done so with the intention of spending time with Sumac. Quiet time was the time when silence was enforced in the house, and everypony engaged in silent activities that improved cognitive abilities. Reading, writing, hobby work, and for Boomer, puzzle solving.

“Meg, did the two of you have a nice time together?”

“Yes.” The part-pony-part-manticore-spawn plopped her fuzzy haunches down upon the floor and smiled so hard that she revealed the roots of her tusks.

“Missing your father, Meg?”

The broad smile faltered for but a moment. “Yes.”

“Poor dear. Meg, feel free to play with Boomer, but don’t destroy the house. Oh, and please, stay out of the kitchen. Pinkie is working in there. Claws in, Megara. We have wooden floors, not stone. Be mindful.”

“I’ll do my best,” the chocolate-brown manticore spawn replied.

“I’m going to go help Pinkie,” Pinny Lane announced, and then she trotted from the room.

Summoning her patience, Twilight Sparkle did her very best to ensure that her voice remained neutral when she said, “Sumac Apple, surely there is something that you want. I detest having to guess what ponies want as a gift, so I take the direct approach. It’s okay to ask for something. Now let me be your aunt because I want to dote on you.”

The colt did not respond, but stood there with a blank expression upon his face.

“Ugh… every foal has a list of things they want. Things they desire to possess. Shining Armor wrote impossibly long well-organised lists of things he wanted. Why can’t you just ask for things like a normal foal? Argh!”

Throughout Twilight’s sudden outburst, Sumac remained impassive.

“Don’t you like dolls?” Sensing that she had just made a classical blunder, something akin to getting involved in a land war in the Midreach, she hurried to correct herself and hoped that Shining Armor never caught wind of this mistake. “Action figures! Action figures! Don’t you like action figures? At all? Spike loves action figures and I buy them for him all the time!”

The owlish colt had nothing to say.

“What about kites? Starlight Glimmer loves kites. She’s even got Spike liking kites. And there was that one time that Spike flew on a big kite… and I thought I was going to have to dig a shallow grave for Starlight…” Twilight’s words trailed off and her muzzle contorted into a fierce scowl. After a moment of intense glowering she added, “At least Starlight offered up a sincere apology for that boneheaded stunt. You know what? No kites.”

“I wasn’t going to ask for a kite anyway,” Sumac replied.

“Surely there must be something—”

“All my interests are covered. I don’t need another bow. I have a library full of books. I have model airships that I still haven’t finished putting together, so getting another one would mean leaving it in the closet until the others get finished.”

“What about a castle playset? So much imaginary fun to be had!”

“I have a castle playset.” Sumac’s ears stood up and one eyebrow arched, following the curve of his spectacles. “Boomer took it over. It’s her castle now and she becomes righteously indignant if I disturb the place where she likes to hide her puzzle pieces and other assorted treasures.”

“Righteously indignant… Sumac, have you been following my reading list for building a better vocabulary?”

“Of course. I’m currently working through year nine.” The colt paused to adjust his glasses, cleared his throat, and his hooves shuffled against the green grass at the side of the road. “Honestly, a lot of your year nine selections are puerile, Aunt Twilight.”

“Oh.” Twilight did the best she could to hide the disappointment that insidiously crept into her voice, robbing her of her confidence. Perhaps year eight was the cutoff point for foalishness and year nine should be the introduction for young adult reading. “I’ll take your input into consideration, Sumac.” Then again, her nephew was six as of today… what was he doing reading year nine? She was proud of him for his accomplishment, but annoyed with him for breaking the schedule. Schedule-breakers were troublemakers of the worst stripe, and she feared for Sumac’s future.

“Come along, Sumac. Perhaps if we continue to walk around, we’ll spot something that you like. Stay close. I wish Flurry was here… I could get twice as much Aunting done and that would be so much more efficient.”

“Lemon, stop squeezing—”

“I can’t help it!” The lemony yellow mare made an adorable face of defiant protest. “You’ve got your mane pulled back in a bun and you just look so… so… cute!”

Rolling her eyes, Trixie shook her head. She had pulled her hair back into a bun because it was too hot in the kitchen—sweaty hot—and being fondled by Lemon Hearts only made things hotter. Not to mention sweatier. How could she possibly enchant Sumac’s cake to explode with fireworks the moment it was cut? When the fireworks went off, the folded swan napkins would all take off in majestic flight. Not content with a mere birthday party, Trixie Lulamoon wanted a show.

But Lemon Hearts’ constant distractions made everything difficult.

“The bun is a good look,” Pinkie Pie remarked while she rummaged through a basket of assorted party favours. “My mother wears a bun.”

“Must we discuss Trixie’s bun? It was done for convenience!”

“Trixie’s bun is worth discussing.” The yellow mare gave the blue mare a playful nudge. “Hold still a moment, Trix—”

“Wait, what? What is this intrusion into Trixie’s equinal space!” Trixie’s eyes, wide with concern, darted to and fro while the prickle of Lemon Hearts’ magic could be felt upon her backside, tickling various unmentionable places. When everything was over, it felt distressingly breezy back there and Trixie’s hind hooves shuffled about, clopping against the wooden floor.

“Tada! A tail-bun! Now Trixie has a nice set of buns!” Lemon announced whilst snatching a camera off of the shelf. Before Trixie could defend herself, photographic evidence was collected and Pinkie Pie’s giggle-snorting joined with Lemon Hearts’ playful chuckles.

“I want to check out Trixie’s buns!”

“No!” Trixie stomped her hoof. “No, everything has gone wrong. Twinkle, no!”

But it was too late; Twinkleshine now stood in the doorway, holding aloft a bag of uninflated balloons in her magic. Her head was tilted off to one side and she stared at Trixie in very much the same way a cultured pony stared at a sculpture, a painting, or other great work of art.

After a thorough examination, Twinkleshine had only one thing to say: “That makes me gay.”

“Twinkle, you’re already gay. Go finish decorating the living room.”

“No, no, I think I’ll stand here and enjoy feeling gay, Lemon. I’m attracted to those buns.”

“What do I have to do to get you to look at me like that?” Lemon Hearts moved to stand between Trixie and Twinkleshine. She turned about, trying to show off every salient feature of her feminine form while somehow also remaining coquettishly modest.

“Show your buns off, you tease,” Twinkleshine suggested in what could only be described as a saucy deadpan.

“Excellent idea! Lemon buns will be perfect for the party.”

Little Sumac Apple’s attention was focused upon something that Twilight knew he wanted. She also knew that he wouldn’t ask for it, because it was expensive. Educational gifts tended to be on the pricier side for a variety of reasons, such as costly materials. A microscope was made of costly materials—at least, good microscopes were.

Stepping closer, Twilight peered at the Tiny World Educational Playset while also noting Sumac’s yearning stare. The Tiny World Educational Playset as it was labeled, promised to introduce foals to the amazing hidden worlds all around them and was recommended for ages ten and up. It came with a binocular microscope that had a camera mount, an aquascope, a book about microscopic organisms, glassware, an incubation chamber for growing samples and cultures, a sonicator, a colony counter, a simple spectrophotometer, an instrument for determining the pH levels of liquid media, as well as a whole collection of tools, instruments, and implements.

Twilight’s eyes lingered upon the recommended age.

Sumac blew the dust off of the box and it was at this moment that Twilight realised that it had been sitting here forever. It was a neglected toy—though perhaps not a toy. It was not the sort of thing that the typical Ponyville foal would play with. It had been placed on the shelf, forgotten, and left for so long that it had grown fuzzy with dust.

“Sumac—”

“I was just looking, that’s all.”

“Sumac, please. It’s okay to want things.”

“It costs too much.” The tiny colt was almost whiny and sounded sad.

Twilight looked down at him and when he started to back away, she placed a wing upon his backside to prevent him from escaping. “Sumac, we have to rescue it. Look at the dust. It’s been forgotten, Sumac… or maybe, it’s just been sitting here, waiting for you.”

“That seems unlikely, Aunt Twilight—”

“Sumac.” Holding out her other wing, she brushed his pale mane away from his face with a quick flick of her primaries. “We’re getting it, and that’s final.”

“No… too expensive. It makes me feel bad.”

Heaving a sigh, Twilight struggled to maintain her patience. “What am I going to do with you, Sumac Apple?”

In response, the colt shrugged, his slight withers rising and falling. He was small for his age, but Trixie defended this by saying that he was just fine, he just had a runner’s body. Studying his face, Twilight could not help but see features of the colt’s father. Normal foals would greedily exploit a generous aunt, but Sumac was not most foals. Thinking about this gave Twilight a bit of insight and she realised that little Sumac was desperately trying to not be his father. He never asked for much, or tried to take much of anything, and thoroughly avoided avaricious actions.

“I’m going to get this for you,” Twilight said to the squirmy colt, “and you’re going to share it with Pebble and your friends. You’re going to do science projects. Together.” Something could be seen on Sumac’s face and Twilight wondered if it was relief. Perhaps this was the best way to go about this; make expensive gifts something Sumac had to share. A gift that reinforced friendship was a good gift.

“Come, Sumac. We can’t have you late for your own party.”

Author's Note

This should update once or twice a week. Some chapters will be short, others will be long, depending upon the events in the chapter. This is a lore heavy entry and for this, I do apologise. There is a very helpful community though, just follow the link in the description.

A birthday bungled

A quiet, fretful Sumac turned one worried eye upon the house and then just sat there, unmoving, almost unnaturally still. This might have been disconcerting for most ponies, but Pebble Pie was not most ponies, and she appreciated that Sumac could sit as still as a statue. She found it intriguing; many things about Sumac were intriguing. In fact, there were just as many things about him that were intriguing as there were gross. Of course, gross was subjective, based on opinions and feelings. Most colts were unbearably disgusting, but Sumac’s grossness was a gross she could live with.

“Pebble, what are you thinking?” Olive asked while nudging Pebble in the ribs to get her attention.

“I’m thinking about how gross Sumac is, of course,” the chocolate-brown filly replied to her friend.

“He’s kinda icky, isn’t he?” Silver Lining slipped one foreleg around Pebble’s neck and then the griffoness cub leaned in. “He needs brushing. Look at him. Gross.”

“I know.” Olive nodded and then added in a conspiratorial sidelong whisper, “Somepony should sort him out before the party.”

“My mother,” Silver Lining began, also whispering, “says that friends do for others what others can’t do for themselves. That’s what friendship is, she says.”

“Huh.” Pebble took this into consideration and tilting her head to one side, pondered how this applied to this situation. Her eyes lingered on Sumac’s matted hide, noting that minimal effort had been put into bathing, and no real effort at all had been put into brushing. He had dull hooves and his stubby horn had tangled mane clumped around it. Gross.

“Are you two thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Olive of her companions.

“That would depend,” Pebble replied, “just what is it that you are thinking? Because I’m thinking that the three of us—”

“Could sort Sumac out?” Silver Lining moved her beak closer to Pebble’s ear. “He’s wiley and now that he’s all healed up, he’ll be hard to catch.”

“Hey, that’s what I was thinking.” Olive’s eyes narrowed while her ears pricked up like spearpoints. “I’ll go left. Pebble, you go right. Silver, you take him from the air. If he reaches the back door, we’ve lost. Once we have him, Pebble, you sit on him and smoosh the fight out of him.”

“Is this because I’m fat?” Pebble demanded.

“There’s no nice way to say it, so yeah, kinda.”

Pebble gave Olive a deadpan stare, but acquiesced to her logic. “Fine.”

“We’re gonna need brushes…”

The somewhat small kitchen was crowded with ponies, a manticore spawn, and one dragon. On the table was quite a spread of delectable treats and the main attraction was the cake, which Trixie Lulamoon was just finishing up the enchantments upon. It seemed silly to so heavily enchant something that would soon be destroyed, but logic was readily tossed out of the window when it came to labours of love.

“You see, Megara, this is what civilisation is. Social ritual.” Twilight extended her wing and waved at the table. “We attach significance to certain days and then create ceremonies or traditions to celebrate them. Which is a sign of yet another foundation of civilisation, the calendar. Without a way to keep track of the dates, we wouldn’t be able to celebrate the rituals specific and significant to those dates—”

“Twilight, you’re a dork.”

“Wait, what? What? Twinkleshine?” Blinking, Twilight turned to examine her lifelong friend.

“Meg is here because she loves food, Twilight. She hasn’t heard a word you’ve said.”

“But… but…” Stammering, Twilight swiveled her head around to focus on Megara. “What have I been saying, Megara?”

In response, the manticore spawn shrugged and then her broad paws came to rest upon the table. “Head-hurty Twilight stuff?”

Boisterous laughter rebounded through the kitchen, coming from all except for Twilight. Clearly miffed, Twilight just stood there, alone in a crowd, and after spending several long seconds taking everything in, she heaved a resigned sigh. What she thought was a quiet, attentive student was really just a creature politely waiting to be fed.

Before Twilight could say anything else, a commotion could be heard from outside. Pinny Lane moved to the window over the sink, lowered her head so that she could see out, and surveyed the situation outside. After a moment, the tall mare was joined by Lemon Hearts, who had to crane her neck to see out the window.

“They got him,” Pinny Lane announced, speaking over the laughter in the kitchen.

“Oh, I need a picture of that.” With a burst of speed, Lemon Hearts took up her trusty camera and trotted for the back door, slipping between the bodies that blocked her way with quick, deft agility. “I’ll be right back… with pictures so we can remember this moment forever.”

As Lemon Hearts opened up the back door to step outside, Twilight Sparkle, always true to form, took a moment to say, “Communal grooming and compulsory hygiene habits are just more social ritual, the glue that holds civilisation together.”

Embarrassment was the worst, and nothing was more embarrassing than being stuck in a crowded room and being sung to. Sumac could not help but notice that his mothers were all acting weird with one another, and all of them were wearing buns, which only made the weirdness even weirder. At least the dreadful birthday song was over.

Six candles with flickering flames waited to be blown out and Sumac wanted to do so, but he was feeling overwhelmed. There were a lot of ponies—and not-ponies—in the kitchen. The kitchen was kind of small and with so many guests over, the house itself felt far too small. Glancing around the table, Sumac found it difficult to breathe; it took tremendous effort to draw breath and getting enough air to blow out the candles seemed almost impossible.

Even worse was the feeling that he was… different. Most ponies didn’t mind being packed together. The more the better. Being a herd species, it was comforting for most ponies to be gathered together in large numbers. His mothers all stood together, pressed up against one another, happy smiles on their faces, their eyes—reflecting candle flames—were bright and cheery.

Silver Lining wasn’t too happy about the crowd, and he found this comforting. She clung to her mother, Gloomy, and when their eyes met, there was a silent flash of understanding between them. Wormwood, her father, stood in the corner behind them, his hulking bulk only making the kitchen feel even smaller than it was.

Spike was sitting on Twilight’s back, because there were no more chairs left and Spike was small enough to be stepped on. He didn’t seem to mind the crowd either and his claws ran through Twilight’s mane, trying to comb out tangles that didn’t exist. Spike was having a good time and didn’t appear to have a care in the world.

Moondancer seemed a bit out of sorts, but happy. She stood back in the corner beside Wormwood, her brow furrowed, her expression one of thoughtful absentmindedness. Moondancer might be here in body, but Sumac wondered if she was here in mind. In secret, he envied her ability to tune everything out.

“Hey,” Rainbow Dash called out, “those candles aren’t going to blow themselves out!”

A squelchy gurgle could be heard coming from Sumac’s tummy and this made everything worse. Ponies were looking at him now—he had become the center of attention. The feeling of so many eyes upon him caused his mouth to go dry and his frogs turned sweaty. His tummy made another urgly-gurgly-gurgle and the insides of his cheeks felt as though they were pasted to his molars.

Throwing up at his birthday party—or worse, upon his cake—would be the worst.

“Oh, sod it all,” Octavia said as she shoved Vinyl aside. “I tried to tell you that this would happen, but nopony believed me.”

“But this is just a small gathering of friends and family—” Twinkleshine was about to say more, but was interrupted by Octavia body-checking her and knocking her aside.

“In too small a room!” Eyes narrowing, Octavia shoved her way to where Sumac was sitting and then stood beside him. “He won’t say a word of protest because he’s too afraid of causing a fuss! Poor dear is about to spew!”

Sumac was, indeed, about to spew and he could feel the room pressing in on him now. The sound of many voices all speaking at once assaulted his ears, which pinned back, and his stomach gurgled yet again. One of Octavia’s forelegs wrapped around him and before he could protest or react, he was flung, flipped, and placed upon the stout mare’s back.

The kitchen was so crowded that it was difficult for ponies to step aside and make a path for Octavia to exit. Maud opened the back door, stepped outside, and other ponies stampeded to follow her lead. Sumac clung to Octavia’s neck, fearing that he might spew at any second. His anxiety was such that he couldn’t even breathe, for fear of barfing, and he held his breath.

Octavia knew what to do; Octavia always knew just what to do.

Once more, as had been done in the past, Sumac was plopped down on the toilet by Octavia. This bathroom was a bit smaller, but the feeling of familiarity with the situation was the same. There was a squeak as Octavia turned the faucet handle and began running cold water in the sink. Sumac’s mouth went even drier when he smelled water and he longed for a drink, but all in due time.

It was important to observe the ritual.

“I’m sorry, Sumac… I tried.”

Rather than reply, he focused on his breathing and drew in a shuddering breath.

“I tried to tell them and they kept telling me I was overreacting. That everything would be fine. It was just a get together with friends and family. I was told I was being overly neurotic. First the girls got you, and I’m sure that left you shook up… and then you were trapped in a room packed full of ponies with no means of quick escape. I told Pebble not to do anything that might get you riled up. I told her… I told her and she didn’t listen. You were going to have a tough day and you didn’t need to be overstimulated.”

“Are you okay?” Somehow, Sumac croaked out these words, his voice cracking every syllable.

“Am I okay?” Octavia stood blinking, confused, her ears rising and falling. “Am I okay? It’s you we need to worry about.”

“But you’re like me,” Sumac managed to say between laboured breaths.

Octavia’s composure broke, shattering like glass, and her face was overcome with a multitude of twitches, tics, and quivers. Her nostrils flared open, then shrank, and went wide again, all while her eyelids fluttered like agitated butterflies left to dance upon flowers somehow searing-hot. The entirety of the bathroom trembled when her backside collided with the floor, which caused a container of shampoo to fall over and bounce around inside of the tub.

“It’s difficult being us,” Octavia said, her voice barren, devoid of its typical cultured warmth. “I get so fed up with it sometimes, Sumac. I’m sorry. You were having a moment and rather than taking care of you, now I’m having a moment and I feel like crying right now. I feel bloody awful.”

Sliding off of the toilet lid, Sumac flopped onto the floor beside Octavia and leaned up against her while listening to the water run in the sink. The ritual had been broken, but that was okay. After a moment, the much larger mare hugged the much smaller colt to her, and then together, as if some silent agreement had been reached, both of them began to cry.

After sorting everything out, the party had been moved into the back yard. When Sumac returned to his party, he was relieved to see everything had been spread out and that there was lots of space. Fresh candles had been put on the cake and nothing had been ruined by his meltdown. As he came out of the back door, the sun shining upon his freshly scrubbed face, nopony rushed to him or crowded him.

There were small approachable groups rather than one big herd, and only his friends sat around the table, which had been moved out-of-doors. Though still pretty distraught, this was much easier to cope with. As various emotions churned within Sumac, annoyance rose to the top of the heap and he wished that the party had been this way before he had his meltdown.

Standing between Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle wore an unmistakably guilty expression that made Sumac feel terrible for her. She was an introvert too, albeit a far more sociable one than he was. He wanted to go to her, to say something nice or comfort her, but that would mean accidentally engaging Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash, who did not understand these things in the slightest. No, they would only overwhelm him in an effort to make him feel better.

Casting a final glance at Twilight, Sumac allowed himself to be led to the table.

“Kiddo, I’m sorry.” Trixie stood a few feet away with an apologetic, sheepish expression.

Not quite ready for the sound of his own voice, Sumac nodded.

“It’s hard to reach you, sometimes,” Trixie continued, a faint tremour in her voice giving away her state of emotion. “When it was just us, it was easier. I think. At least, I remember it being that way. I could be wrong. But now, with all of us together, it gets a little confusing sometimes.” Her eyes went from Sumac to the cake, back to Sumac, and then to Octavia. After a moment, she sighed, her withers sagged, and she tore her gaze away from Octavia to look at her son once more. “Happy birthday, Sumac. I wanted this day to be perfect for you. This is our new life. Our family. For me, this is starting over and not… not… and not sabotaging myself. In a way, your birthdays are kind of like my birthdays, and each one you have means I’m doing something right. I was such a selfish pony for so long… caught up in my own narcissism.”

Sumac turned to look his mother in the eye.

“Kiddo, with your birthdays… I might not have given you life, but I want to give you a life.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Trixie smiled her best brave smile, but the corners of her mouth quivered. With a flick of magic, Twinkleshine lit the candles and Sumac turned his attention upon them. His friends leaned in, eager for things to go right this time, and Boomer scrambled over the table to stand beside where he sat.

“Make a wish, Sumac,” Pebble deadpanned.

“There’s nothing else I need,” was his hurried reply, and he blew out his candles before anypony had a chance to say anything else.

Author's Note

This chapter is actually pretty important for setting the tone for later events.

Birthday blood bond

Sumac Apple sipped root beer through a straw dipped into an ice-filled glass glistening with condensation. His mothers were acting like fillies at the moment, skipping rope together on the foundation that would one day be a shed, or a workshop, or some sort of building. Others were singing some silly playground song while the three mares bounced in place.

For Sumac, watching others have fun was a thoroughly enjoyable activity.

“I went outside to play, I looked up in the sky, I saw a rude pegasus, and it poo-pooed in my eye!”

Pausing mid-slurp, Sumac considered what had just been sung. Pegasus ponies? Poo-pooing in one’s eye? Casting a sidelong glance in Rainbow Dash’s direction, he had a quiet, thankful moment that pegasus ponies were polite and well-behaved. Beside him, Pebble had an utterly baffled, quizzical expression, as she clearly did not understand what was going on.

The adults were sitting in the grass, some of them anyhow, and clopping their front hooves together while singing. Others stood. Some pronked and Sumac suspected that they might have had a bit too much sugar for their own good.

“My father has a horn, my mother has wings, I was born grounded, but I love to sing!”

Pebble facehoofed but Sumac wasn’t sure why.

Somehow, Twilight got pulled into skipping rope with Lemon Hearts, Trixie, and Twinkleshine, and Sumac could see the panicked expression that lit up her face. Poor Twilight had no idea what to do and was almost stumbling to keep up. But, Twilight persevered and in no time at all, she was keeping time with the trio of bouncy unicorns who pranced out a staccato rhythm upon the foundation slab.

Manes bounced, tails bobbed, and ears twitched in time to the simple beat of the repetitive song. It was the music that held everything together; so long as one jumped and kept the rope moving in perfect time, nothing could go wrong. Twilight had it now and looked rather pleased with herself—at least this wasn’t dancing, or it would be a disaster.

“I made myself a snowball, as perfect as can be, I thought I'd keep it as a pet, and let it sleep with me. I made him some pajamas, a pillow for his head, but then last night it ran away, right after it wet the bed!”

Something soft, fuzzy, and feathery touched Sumac, and when he turned his head to look, he saw Silver Lining. She was a clingy creature, Silver Lining, shy, and she was very much like he himself. At some point, she had let go of her mother and now, she was latching onto him. Under most circumstances, Sumac didn’t enjoy his sense of space being invaded, but Silver Lining was an exception. When she clung to him, he became her security, and that changed the feeling of things. He couldn’t be annoyed with her for seeking safety and comfort.

Griffons, by and large, were jerks. But Silver Lining hadn’t been raised by griffons in the traditional griffon way; which was to be coldly thrown out and left to fend for herself from the earliest moment possible. Her clinginess was nurtured—encouraged even—by Gloomy. Silver Lining had been raised with pony values, pony social norms, and Twilight loved to speak at length at how adaptable the different species were, how things could be changed. Spike was Twilight’s most perfect example, because most dragons were also jerks.

Boomer was blossoming into jerkiness, but also being taught a better way.

As for Sumac himself, knowing that one’s nature could be changed was comforting. His father hadn’t been a good pony. His mother was not a good pony. He came from a line of rotten Apples. But, as Applejack was fond of saying, even rotten trees produced fine seeds. The warm spring sun shone down upon him and Silver Lining was a warm, fuzzy lump against his side. Turning his head, he glanced at Applejack, who had arrived a little late. Sumac had high hopes of being a good Apple; Spike, Boomer, and Silver Lining’s very existence gave him all the hope he could ever want or need.

“I wish Father was here,” Pebble said, mumbling out the words in a fretful way.

“I hate when Daddy goes away too,” Silver Lining said to Pebble. “I hate it.”

Not sure of what to say, Sumac said the only thing that came to mind: “My father is a tree.”

“Do you want to visit him on your birthday?” Silver Lining asked.

It took awhile to work up a response, but somehow, Sumac managed. “Yeah. But I don’t want to ruin this. Everypony worked so hard to make this happen. It feels wrong to want to leave so I can go talk to a tree.”

“You’re a weird one, Sumac Apple. Trying to make other ponies happy on your birthday. Today is supposed to be all about you.” Pebble sighed, reached out, placed one hoof upon Silver Lining, and gestured at Olive with her other front hoof. “Look at her. Having fun with her parents. It’s quite a change. Plus, she’s a hero now, because she stood up to Queen Chrysalis. Not even a year ago, I hated her guts. Now I can’t imagine life without her.”

“She’s one of us,” said Sumac, agreeing. “We should form a club.”

“The Weirdos, Rejects, and Losers’ Club.” Again, Pebble sighed. “What a stupid idea.”

“We’re not like the others.” Silver Lining redoubled her grip on Sumac, but also lifted her head high. “As a griffon, I don’t fit in. Except with you.”

“My sister, Megara, scares other ponies. Oh look”—Pebble’s deadpan became particularly pronounced—“big scary manticore. Quick, run. Hide. It’s scarier than a zebra. We’re all going to die. Run away.” Heaving yet another sigh, she finished with, “The monumental stupidity of others physically pains me. The only refuge I have is with you. My friends. You weirdos, rejects, and losers.”

“Pebble, try to get Meg and Olive and I’m going to see if I can sneak inside.”

“Sumac?” Tilting her head, Pebble glanced around Silver Lining to get a better look at Sumac’s face.

“We’re gonna have a club.” Sumac glanced around, his shifty gaze going from pony to pony. “We’ll have a bond with spit… and blood. And it will be just us… against the world.”

“Okay.” Pebble offered up a resigned shrug. “I’ll see if I can cause a distraction so you can slip away with Silver.”

“Blood?” The faint waver in Silver Lining’s voice gave away her trepidation. “I feel queasy when I see blood.”

“Pebble’s parents and Trixie all share a special bond.” Sumac kept his voice low, almost in a conspiratorial whisper. “Especially Trixie, Tarnish, and Maud. They have a special bond that other ponies don’t have. It’s almost like a club, but better. Way better. It’s something they’ve bled for. If you listen when Tarnish tells his stories, there’s always blood involved. He and Vinyl have bled together. That’s the secret to friendship that they’re not telling us about in school. You have to bleed to bond.”

“There is a scary amount of logic in that statement.” Pulling her hoof away from Silver Lining, Pebble Pie rubbed her broad, fuzzy chin.

“Olive and I bonded and became friends when we bled together. When Queen Chrysalis did what she did to us. Look at us now. Olive and I are the best of friends. It was the blood that brought us together.”

“Gross.” Silver Lining pulled away from Sumac, but only just a little. “I can bleed for my friends… if I have to.”

“You two… wait for my distraction. You’ll know it when it happens.”

“Don’t think for a moment that I didn’t notice that you and your friends disappeared, Sumac Apple.” With a peculiar feeling of pride, Trixie gave her son a knowing look. “That was clever, setting up a distraction so you could slip off. You’ve learned so much from me.”

Of course, Sumac said nothing in return, and that was fine.

“You don’t have to tell me what went on in there, but I will admit, I am curious.”

Still, the colt was silent and Trixie was oddly prideful of his secretive nature.

“Are you having a nice time, Sumac?” she asked, this time posing a question she hoped he would answer.

“Yes.” He nodded, and what a prim and proper nod it was. A showpony’s nod. He was in fine form, now that he’d recovered from the incident earlier. “Did you have fun jumping rope?”

“In fact, I did.” Trixie allowed a smile to happen and she elbowed her son in his thin little ribs. “When Trixie was little, she wanted to play jump rope, but nopony would play with her. So Trixie got an attitude problem and took out her frustrations upon those who would not jump rope with her.”

“Lemon Hearts.”

“Among others.” Trixie’s smile remained, but she felt a painful twinge of guilt. “Things are sorted out now, though, and now I have others to jump rope with. Marital rope skipping is quite lovely.”

“Should you be doing that in public?”

Unable to stop herself, Trixie began snickering. Sumac was a funny little guy just brimming with charisma and wit. Slipping one foreleg around his neck, she pulled him closer until they sat side to side with one another. She could feel the past wanting to creep up on her, but she was in too fine a mood. A maternal mood, actually, and she realised that she had an opportunity to bond with her son.

“Kiddo, one day, you’ll grow up a bit more, and you’ll fall in love.” She sighed and gazed off in the direction of where Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine were facing off against Moondancer and Twilight Sparkle. “It will be real love… not just youthful infatuation. You will find that just spending time with those you love, you will find that it is a joy. A pleasure for one to treasure. It doesn’t matter if you are skipping rope, or playing cards, or washing dishes, or raising a son together… these moments take on profound meaning.”

“So it is like what I have now, but better?” There was a thoughtful look upon Sumac’s face and his ears remained pivoted forwards—a sure sign that he was listening with rapt attention.

Looking down at him, she could not help but be reminded of life on the road. She could always tell when he was listening, paying attention. When he was her ‘apprentice’ she prided herself on having such an eager student that hung on her every word. It built her confidence, made her feel worthwhile, and this… this had changed her in some fundamental way that she still did not have the words for.

Twilight Sparkle crowed in triumph when her horseshoe clanged against the metal post.

“What do you have now, Sumac?” she asked with the hope of giving Sumac something to think about.

“A bond that can’t be broken,” he replied.

“Oh. Is that so?” Intrigued, Trixie thought about the fact that he had slipped into the house for a time with his friends. Had some kind of birthday pact been made? That seemed likely. Determining that it was a private issue, and wanting her son to have a sense of privacy, she decided to drop the subject.

Pebble was outright heckling Twilight and Trixie could see that said heckles were getting under Twilight’s skin. Poor Twilight… she always approached competition with fairness and kindness in mind. Not a bad thing, but when others sought advantages or brought a harsh, competitive edge to the game, Twilight often became unnerved. It was an observable weakness.

Like her mother, Maud, Pebble was a natural-born heckler.

“Sumac, I can’t help but notice that your friends are all girls.” She saw her son blush, but he did not turn away.

“Olive is more of… more of a tomboy, really.” Sumac paused to adjust his glasses and let out a light huff. “And Megara is just as rough and tough as any colt. Tougher than I am. I don’t get along with most of the other colts my age. I don’t know why. Most of them seem mindless. I get in a bad mood around them. They don’t want to read books or learn stuff and I don’t know how to talk to them. It’s frustrating. My friends are all smart… mostly. They also just happen to be girls. It just works out that way.”

“Well, I think it is a fine thing—”

“Really?”

Trixie could not help but notice the relief in her son’s voice. Clearly, he had anxieties, and she had just stumbled across them, unawares. She knew that Sumac had trouble fitting in and she knew why. He had been socialised around adults and not around foals his own age. Life on the road had skewed his perspectives and his social interactions reflected that. It was something that had been discussed at length with Twilight Sparkle and Twilight Velvet.

It was a relief to find out that Sumac could still be considered ‘normal.’

As Twilight Velvet had pointed out, being a nerd was perfectly normal. She had, after all, raised not one, but two fine, upstanding nerds. Not just any nerds either, but alpha-nerds. Dorks. Twilight Sparkle had melted down a bit to hear her mother say this, and even tried to protest, but Twilight Velvet had shushed her, and had even threatened to send her to her room.

Sumac, being a nerd, had naturally formed a nerd-herd, though Megara’s nerd status was in question. Boomer showed signs of being a nerd, and would certainly swing in that direction if Sumac and his friends had any say in the matter. Olive had settled into a studious role because she wanted to impress Pebble and Sumac. As for Silver Lining, she was a shy, clingy nerdling in need of quiet, patient, understanding friends.

As for Trixie, Trixie was most certainly not a nerd. No, she was a geek. There was a difference. What that difference was, well, that was rather nebulous, but Twilight Sparkle was a nerd and Trixie was most certainly not Twilight Sparkle. No way. A line of distinction had to exist between her and her half-sister.

“This is the best moment of my party,” Sumac remarked, and Trixie was jolted from her thoughts by his words.

Unsure if this was a con-job, her eyes narrowed.

“I don’t mind it if there is a party around me just so long as I can sit down and talk with just one pony. If there is too much going on all at once, I get worked up.”

Making a mental note, she replied, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Right now, I can just focus on you, and everything is fine. I know that stuff is going on, but I can tune it out. Like how everypony is gathered around the horseshoe pit. If I was there with them, I’d be… uh, nervous. But worse.”

“You’d have anxiety?”

“Yeah, but worse. Listen to how loud they are. And see how they’re in each other’s space? Just looking at that makes me feel… jittery. Like when Twinkleshine lets me drink coffee.”

“Oh.” She gave her son a reassuring squeeze. “Well, thank you for telling me. That helps me be a better mama. I mean, technically, the Great and Powerful Trixie could read your mind to figure out what is going wrong, but that is fraught with danger for the both of us and I don’t think that would make me a better mama. I’m not cut out to know what little colts might be thinking at any given moment.” Hearing a soft, faint laugh from her son, she smiled while pulling him closer.

“Thanks for the party, Mom.”

“Kiddo, happy birthday.”

Author's Note

Updates might slow down a bit. I actually want tension to build to unbearable levels as this progresses, and most everything will end on cliffhangers. Prepare your fingernails.

Knock knock o'clock

After a long day of celebrating the day of his birth, quiet time with his mothers was just what Sumac needed. Familiar, soft touches and quiet, comforting voices; with Princess Celestia’s voice coming from the hi-fi phonograph being the loudest—though not too very loud. It was his favourite motivational record, the one where it felt as though Princess Celestia was talking directly to him, though perhaps that was the point.

As was often the case, moments just like this one were the times when Sumac could do his best thinking. He thought great thoughts, profound thoughts, the great big thinks that needed thinking. Why, there were moments when Sumac impressed himself with his thinking and marvelled at his own cogitation.

There was no fire in the grate, as it was too warm and there was no need. It was a warm spring night, warm enough to have the windows open. Too warm for tea or cocoa, even. The smell of warm wood tickled his nose, the scent that Sumac associated with home. It had been the wagon, once. That had been home. But this home, with its wooden everythings, also had that warm wooden scent that he found so pleasant.

Wooden floors scratched so easily; poor Megara couldn’t help herself.

“How do earth ponies keep their eyeglasses cleaned?”

Sumac’s question wreaked ruinous havoc upon the stillness of the room. The chair by the phonograph creaked as Twinkleshine sat up straight and focus returned to her eyes. Trixie closed her book—a spellbook by the looks of it—and there was a muted thump when the pages met one another. Lemon Hearts ceased the rubbing of his neck; she drew away, sat up, and made a curious sound deep in the base of her throat.

Meanwhile, Princess Celestia’s voice droned on.

“My glasses get dirty all the time. Stuff splatters. I just use a spell and my glasses are fine again. But earth ponies? How do they keep their glasses clean?”

“Have… have you tried asking one of your earth pony schoolmates?” Lemon Hearts’ hesitant question-suggestion had a faint hint of worry about it.

“I can’t do that.” Knowing that he had asked too big of a question, Sumac dropped his head and gave the paisley print pattern of the couch a bit of intense study. “A unicorn asking an earth pony how they keep their glasses clean. That sounds tribalist. It’s worse than… uh… nevermind.”

“It does sound a bit insensitive.” Twinkleshine leaned forward, her eyes glancing in Trixie’s direction for but a second, and then her gaze returned to Sumac. “Now, you were saying. Worse than what, exactly? Did something happen?”

Wincing, Sumac knew he had said too much. His mothers would press the issue and there was no way to escape this. As if on cue, Princess Celestia spoke of plucky determination in the midst of impossible odds. Lifting his head, he looked up, but Twinkleshine’s piercing gaze was too much to bear and so he returned to his paisley print studies.

“Twilight was wrong, okay? There are bad questions. I asked one.”

“Sumac Apple”—Trixie drew in a deep breath, perhaps in an effort to summon her patience—“what did you do?”

“Now wait… I think that Sumac wondering how other types of ponies do things isn’t too terribly wrong.” Lemon Hearts held up her hoof to stave off Trixie’s interrogation. “He’s just a curious colt. With more curiousness than is considered healthy, but Twilight wants us to encourage that for the sake of her own rather unhealthy inquisitiveness.” The yellow mare cleared her throat, pulled Sumac closer, and tousled his mane with her hoof. “Asking how earth ponies keep their glasses clean is insightful, Sumac. About your other question… what happened?”

“I asked Pebble a scientific question—”

“Whew, that doesn’t seem so bad,” Twinkleshine blurted out while she sank back into her chair. A long relieved sigh slipped free and the pearlescent mare let out a chuckle. “What could go wrong with a scientific question?”

“Now that I think about it, I gotta stop asking how earth ponies do things.”

“Sumac?” Lemon Hearts gave the colt a little shake. “Sumac, honey, what happened? Did you and Pebble squabble?”

“Pebble doesn’t wear eyeglasses and I didn’t ask her about that.”

“Here we go.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “Avoidance. We’ll be here all night. Can we wrap this up before bedtime?”

“Yeah… Trixie’s right. I don’t want this stretching on for hours while you try to get comfortable with it, Sumac. Spit it out. Maybe we can help you.” Twinkleshine sat up straight again and her forelegs came to rest upon the arms of her chair.

“During the Big Thaw when we were stuck inside because everything was so muddy, I got curious and I asked Pebble what I thought was a smart question. It wasn’t smart at all, but it seemed like such a good idea at the time—”

Trixie made a circular advancing gesture with her hoof. “Get on with it, Sumac.”

“I asked Pebble how earth ponies keep their butthole clean when they poop—”

“Oh by Luna’s stars!” Trixie facehoofed hard enough that there was a sound.

“My eyes just rolled so hard that I’m pretty sure I saw my own brain,” Twinkleshine remarked while recovering from her epic eyeroll. “Sumac, what were you thinking?”

“Big thinky thoughts,” the colt replied while trying to squirm away from Lemon Hearts.

Saying nothing, Lemon Hearts scooped up Sumac, flipped him around, and then cradled him in her forelegs. She was biting her lip, though he could not determine why. She might be holding back harsh words, or she might be fighting to hold in her laughter, it was hard to tell. At least Lemon Hearts was kind with her reaction and Sumac allowed himself to relax against her.

“You just want to know how things work, that’s all. Like Twilight, you lack social tact—”

Lemon Hearts was interrupted by a gentle-but-steady rapping on the front door. All three mares turned their heads at once, each of them listening, ears pricking to better hear the sound. Trixie was up on her hooves first and her expression was one of annoyance. Sometimes, knocks on the door happened at odd hours—like now. Twinkleshine rose as well, and followed Trixie to the front door, with her annoyance evidenced by her swishing, slashing tail.

Just before opening the door, Trixie asked, “Now who would come to call at this time of night?”

The door opened to reveal several cloaked figures with birdlike masks. For Sumac, they were terrifying, but for Trixie, Twinkleshine, and Lemon Hearts, there seemed to be no concern at all. He gawked at them, simultaneously thinking the masks were the scariest and most awesome thing he had ever seen. These ponies wore black suits made of rubber, leather, and heavy waxed canvas.

“Trixie does not remember there being a purge scheduled,” Trixie said to the masked pony in the doorway. “Is there some vermin-related emergency going on? Why is the Rat Catcher’s Guild here in Ponyville?”

From the masked ponies, the only response was the raspy, creepy sound of their respirators, a sort of faint mechanical whooshing. Trixie’s face could be seen reflected in the round glass eyes of the birdlike masks. One of the masked ponies pulled aside their cloak and with one swift motion, drew a gun with a long, dull barrel that had been blacked out.

Trixie too, reacted, stepping aside, her eyes wide, and then far too many things all happened at once. There was a bright flash of light, a muted pop like a firecracker going off beneath a bucket, a scream, and the air was filled with choking dust that made Sumac cough. Lemon Hearts dropped to the floor, her body thudding hard against the wood, and Sumac—now panicking—could see bright scarlet droplets running down her neck.

His very first reaction was to pull Lemon Hearts to safety, but his magic fizzled—nothing happened. Sparks flew from the tip of his horn but he had no telekinesis to work with. Lemon Hearts was coughing, gagging, and fighting for air. Sumac was aware of the commotion going on all around him, but only in some vague way, as all of his attention was focused upon his felled mother.

“Secure the colt and then we’ll away,” one of the masked figures said, its voice a mechanical thrum.

Sumac felt the telekinesis gripping him, pulling him away from Lemon Hearts, and his hooves scrapped over the hardwood floor while he tried to escape. Trixie and Twinkleshine were fighting, but like him, they had no magic. There was a thud when Twinkleshine rammed one of the intruder’s head into the solid door frame, which she then did again, and again, and on the fourth time, the mask shattered along with the intruder’s skull.

The magic that gripped Sumac was weak—his magic sense still functioned, at least. These were weak unicorns; in fact, they hardly had any magic at all. Not that it mattered, the choking dust from the gun blast had robbed him and his mothers of their magic. One of the masked intruders held up a glowing yellow gem and right away, Sumac’s magic sense told him what it was; a portal gem. It was like the portal gems that Twilight made, but not like hers. Those had to be charged—typically by Twilight, or by several rather powerful unicorns. This portal gem though, this one was ready to go. Sumac, much to his horror, recognised the magic too, as sensing it brought to mind memories of Catrina, his hated nemesis.

Just as the portal gem took on a dire yellow intensity, a gout of flame consumed the masked invader holding it aloft. Rubber melted, canvas ignited, hair singed, and a dreadful stench filled the entryway. The gem fell, hit the floor, bounced, clattered, and then before anypony could recover it, was snatched up by Boomer, who promptly gobbled it down.

Having eaten a highly magical gem, Boomer was primed for combat.

One of the intruders was already on fire and roiling smoke filled the entryway as he fell to the floor and rolled. Sumac scooted away and somehow, Lemon Hearts was getting up on her hooves. The wounds in her neck were quite tiny, but there were a lot of them and Sumac could hear wind whistling out of the holes in her throat. Boomer belched out more fire and one of the intruders vanished, as if teleporting away. He reappeared a second later, half-in and half-out of the wall beside the door, his forelegs flailing about while he screamed in agony, his body now merged with wood.

Twinkleshine, armed with an umbrella taken from the hook near the door, held her makeshift weapon in her fetlocks while she balanced on her hind legs. Hind hooves thumping, she propelled herself forwards, raised the umbrella high, and rammed its pointed tip right into the neck of one of the intruders. The point did not pierce, but tore away a wide, broad flap of flesh and bright crimson blood guysered in a fantastic parabolic arc, painting the ceiling overhead in a vivid shade of red.

Trixie, sensing opportunity, shoved a stunned intruder forwards, right at Twinkleshine, and the canny mare raised her bloodied umbrella, bracing herself for the impact. Sumac jerked his head away just as the masked unicorn fell onto the umbrella’s point, which still glistened with the blood of his companion.

Flames crackled along the wall and turned the ceiling directly above a sooty black. The air, still filled with the choking dust, was now also filled with smoke, and the worst of Sumac’s nightmares came to be; his home was on fire. He backed into a corner, fearing the flame, and didn’t know what to do. The invading unicorns had magic, but they didn’t have magic; at best, they were fighting with weak telekinesis and not spells.

One raised a weapon—a sword—but Boomer wasn’t having that. She lept, landed on the back of the would-be attacker, dug in her claws, and belched out a wad of crackling flames. The sword fell to the floor, bounced, and the unicorn, struck in the back of his neck, burst into flames. Sumac kicked the sword, striking the knob on the grippy end with his hoof. It went skittering away and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Lemon!” Trixie barked, her voice ragged. “Get Sumac to safety!”

The heat was overwhelming now, and the copious smoke made his eyes water. The wall was truly ablaze now and crumbles of plaster from the ceiling fell like hailstones. More intruders poured through the front door and Sumac could hear fighting outside. An orange glow could be seen in the windows, the dreadful suggestion that other things were on fire as well.

“Get the Master’s sorcerer!”

A second gunblast rang out, filling the air with many tiny pellets and even more dust. Sumac coughed, it was a struggle to draw breath, and he suspected that the dust was the cause of his magic malfunction. There would be no running to safety, as Lemon Hearts was grappling with one of their many assailants. More help had arrived and there was only so much that Twinkleshine, Trixie, and Lemon Hearts could do against such numbers. Boomer set another invader alight after somepony tried—perhaps more importantly, failed—to stab her with a sword.

“Catrina will be arriving soon! Get the sorcerer to the extraction point!”

A falling chunk of plaster struck one of the intruders on the head and sent him to the floor.

Twinkleshine now had a sword that she held in her fetlock. She buried it into an intruder’s neck, yanked it out, and then stabbed another. Boomer’s flames were now a danger to all; the entryway had grown unbearably hot and the stairs were now ablaze, cutting off any retreat upstairs. It was hard to see, even harder to breathe, and the little pygmy tree dragon showed no signs of stopping.

From the kitchen, Sumac heard the sounds of the back door bursting open…

Author's Note

Hang on.

The Flier, the Fashionista, and the Flutterer

A tooth lived an impossible dream. It flew without wings, free of the sometimes dark, crowded prison in which it had existed for the entirety of its life. Somehow, it resisted the siren’s call of gravity, arcing ever-upward—but like all dreams, those nightmarish and pleasant alike, the miraculous flight approached its middle. At the peak of its arc, it tumbled through the air, as if weightless, and then as dreamers who dream of the impossible do, began its descent as reality asserted itself.

The glorious dream ended as the tooth clattered against the wooden floor.

Pinkie Pie bounced from one hind hoof to the other, almost as if she was doing the hokey-pokey, and she turned herself about. Her arrival had been the source of much surprise among the invaders—Pinkie Pie loved surprises and she lived to surprise others. Though she had been the one who had been quite surprised a while ago when her Pinkie Sense informed her that somepony was trying to snatch a sorcerer.

This would not do.

Even worse, not long after that, her Pinkie Sense politely announced that Sumac’s nemesis was coming, and that all of Ponyville was in danger. The pink ponk, professional party pony that she was, immediately set out to surprise the surprisers. This hokey-pokey wasn’t very fun and at the moment, two iron-shod hind hooves were headed right for her kisser.

How rude!

Lunging backwards, as opposed to forwards, as lungers typically did, Pinkie Pie grabbed one extended hind leg, got herself a good grip on the left gaskin with her left front fetlock, and then she did the hokey-pokey and put her right hoof in—right into the stallion’s exposed groin. There was a sound that only night terrors—the nocturnal pegasus ponies of the night—could hear, and apparently dragons too, as Boomer paused mid-fireblast to cover her ear frills.

The stallion went limp, but before he hit the floor, Pinkie got ahold of his other leg, and with a mighty heave, she swung him about. Round and round they went, picking up speed, building momentum, and with a light hop, skip, and a bounce, Pinkie Pie bashed another stallion with the one she held. There was a terrific meaty smack, which stood out in a distinct manner against the sound of shattering bone.

But Pinkie wasn’t done, she still had momentum and was armed with a stallion who had to be called Sundae, because he had crushed nuts. There were others in the room, and she bore down on them, swinging Sundae round and round in the wildest, most life-threatening hokey-pokey ever. Sadly, Sundae was a party pooper, and after a second bone-shattering impact, he was in no shape to keep partying. In fact, he had very little shape at all and collapsed into a lumpy heap on the floor.

Pinkie Sense telegraphed out a warning and Pinkie turned around just in time to see a double-barreled shotgun pointed at her. This was problematic—for the shotgunner. There was an almost blinding flash as the gun went off, dust and smoke filled the room, and Pinkie giggled as she snatched the gun away from the rather alarmed unicorn.

Behind her, on the wall, were dozens upon dozens of tiny holes; somehow, every pellet had missed.

With a swift, curious movement of her front hooves, Pinkie Pie twisted the still-smoking shotgun, the wood splintered, shattered, and the metal barrels bent from the force of her earth pony strength. It was as if she was making balloon animals, only this wasn’t a balloon, it was a shotgun that had just been fired at her, and her assailant had somehow missed at point blank range.

“Luck is not a dump-stat,” she said to her attacker while she tied his shotgun into a rather plain square knot.

“Die!” The shout came from her left and she turned just in time.

“No, I was born this colour! Isn’t it amazing!” Pinkie disarmed another attacker, pulling away his shotgun as well before he had a chance to reload. With a few swift movements, she wrapped it around his neck and then cinched it tight. When he fell to the floor, gasping, she leaned in to say, “If you hold very still, you’ll get just enough air to keep living. But if you struggle… don’t struggle.” With a yank, she adjusted the invader’s brand new bowtie to ensure a snug fit.

“Pinkie! Get Sumac to Twilight!” Trixie’s voice was raspy from the smoke and all of the screaming. “Go! Hurry!”

“Okie dokie lokie,” she replied, still bouncing from one hind hoof to the other, a bit of bright, hopeful pink that stood out in sharp contrast against the dark, murky smoke that filled the house. “Come on, Sumac! Your nemesis, Catrina, she’s coming! We need to get you out of here in a hurry! We hafta oogie-boogie!”

Snatching up the sputtering sorcerer, Pinkie Pie departed with all haste.

The streets were in chaos, with the totally-not rat catchers now fighting the alerted, angry ponies of Ponyville. Pinkie Pie—purveyor of pony-parties—pronked, mindful of Sumac on her back, and she wove in and out between the chaotic fracases all about. Boomer was bounding along behind her, guarding the rear, and Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense was screaming that the mother of all doozies was about to happen.

“Does this qualify as a donnybrook, I wonder?” she asked of herself.

Right before her very eyes, invaders appeared, popping out of the aether like surprise party guests. Scarifying invaders too; out of all the diamond dogs that just poofed into sudden existence, not all of them were alive. Some of them were dirty, wormy, and just a teensy-weensy bit rotten. Decaying dogs? As it turned out, diamonds weren’t forever, as Rarity was so fond of saying.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Pinkie Pie giggled as the first of the supernatural fear began it’s assault upon her mind. Odd things lurked in the corners of her vision, elongated, distorted shadows that reached out for her if she wasn’t looking directly at it.

A rip in reality opened up, a rift that glowed with a pale, unwholesome light.

The sight of the undead, skeletal cat-figure caused Pinkie’s mane to stand on end. No introduction was needed to know that Sumac’s most dreaded, most terrible, most awful arch-nemesis had just entered from stage left. Or was it stage right? She could never remember these things. Catrina stood larger than life, holding a scimitar wreathed in witchfire flames in one paw and a wand in the other.

“Oops!” Pinkie said as she came to a sudden emergency halt—she had been running right in Catrina’s direction, after all. “Hang on, ugly cat lady, I’d love to party with you, but first, I need to ditch my sorcerer. He’s a confirmed party pooper and not only that, it’s way past his bedtime!”

Whipping her body around, Pinkie flung Sumac from her back, grabbed him, swung him around, and then hurled him skyward with all of her earth pony might, which was considerable. Shrieking, Sumac went careening upwards, tumbling end over end, and Pinkie Pie prepared to keep Catrina occupied until help arrived—an unknown outcome for sure.

“See ya, Sumac! Good luck!”

Coughing, Rainbow Dash clutched Sumac, unsure of how secure he was in her embrace. He was dusty, gritty, surrounded by an irritating cloud of something unpleasant. She redoubled her grip around his middle, and in doing so, pulled him so close, so tight to her that she could feel his troubled heart smashing against his frail, thin ribs. Below, Pinkie Pie was in some serious trouble, and while Rainbow wanted to stay and help her, she understood that Sumac had to be brought to Twilight—no matter the cost.

Pinkie Pie was buying time so Rainbow Dash could escape.

Sucking in a deep breath, the lithe pegasus prepared for takeoff, flapped her wings, and then, much to her consternation and shock, not much happened. No rainboom to light the night. She struggled to even get up to speed and the annoying, cloying dust left a nasty tickle in her lungs. Her wings clawed frantically at the air, but it was like she could get no grip on the sky.

“No!” the speedster pegasus shouted while her wings made exaggerated, jerky motions. “No! I shoulda been at the castle already! What’s going on! Ugh! Come on! Work, wings! The Element of Loyalty must deliver!”

Not only was she slow, but she was going down. No matter how much she tried, no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t stay in the sky. Rainbow Dash knew that she was about to Rainbow Crash right into the dirt. Already, she was picking up speed—not forward speed, the good kind—but downward momentum that promised a horrific crash into the solid, unyielding earth.

Rolling over, she clutched Sumac even tighter to her, determined to protect him right to whatever bitter end awaited them. She began her plunge towards the ground and since her wings were useless, she wrapped them around Sumac, a vain attempt to shield him as much as possible. She would crash into the ground back-first, using her own body to take the worst of the impact, and she hoped that somehow, Sumac would be okay. The idea of failing was somehow even worse than crashing; she was the weak link in the chain and Sumac might very well be taken because she had failed him—she had failed to be awesome. Gritting her teeth, she hugged the foal as tight as she could, hoping to comfort him during these last moments, and knowing that this might very well mean goodbye.

As the last of Rainbow Dash’s buoyancy expired, gravity at long last claimed the defiant pegasus.

With an annoyed sneer, Rarity surveyed the developing fight, but her efforts were interrupted by the brassy honk of a frantic pygmy tree dragon. Looking down, she saw Boomer pointing up, while pantomiming a frantic need to hurry. Tilting her head back, Rarity squinted a bit into the darkness above, and then saw something that left a chill in her blood.

“Oh,” she gasped, “that won’t do at all. Hold fast, all of you! I have to perform a rescue!”

Even as she spoke, Rarity was pulling out every bit of ribbon, every bit of silken cord, every string, every bit of twine, anything and everything in her shop that she could summon. She didn’t have long to work at all, Rainbow was in big, big trouble and coming down fast. Boomer now stood near Rarity’s hooves, ready to scorch anything that drew too close.

Weaving a net was a time consuming endeavour, but that was only if one wove it properly, one row at a time. Rarity, lacking that necessary time, cheated; which is to say, she used her telekinesis to weave every row all at once. Thousands of tiny scraps all writhed and wiggled like very fashionable worms, slithering into place, and forming a tight, well-tensioned mesh.

When one of her guardians got into a bit too much trouble—Thunderlane had certainly bitten off more than he could chew with not one, but three assailants—Rarity was forced to divert some of her attention towards helping him. A steaming-hot iron flew through the air, almost whistling, and pressed itself against the hindquarters of the brutish diamond dog bearing down upon Thunderlane with an immense, nail-studded club.

The howl could be heard all over Ponyville.

Rarity’s woven net was now ready, glowing, and drawn tight. A second later, a rainbow-maned pegasus plopped in, along with a young sorcerer, but Rarity could not celebrate her accomplishment—no, she had wrinkled invaders that needed ironing. Several more irons flew out of Carousel Boutique and trailing wisps of steam, they sought out the most unfashionable undesirables.

The howls of pain did not go unnoticed though and looking down the lane, Rarity could see reinforcements coming—no doubt with the intentions of snatching Sumac. This would not do. Eyes darting about, with several steaming-irons orbiting around her head, the fighting fashionista tried to think about what to do next. She was already thinking about so many things at once, fighting, saving Rainbow, Sumac, and Thunderlane; and of course, there was Carousel Boutique to think about—she didn’t want her beloved business burnt to the ground.

“Charge! Please… if you don’t mind. If it’s not too much trouble. Oh, please, please save my friends, Twilight is counting on me!”

That demure voice could only come from one pony and Rarity turned around just in time to see a screeching, yowling, roaring horde of fuzzy fury bearing down upon her. Bears, birds, snakes, beavers, bees, wasps, squirrels, chipmunks, badgers, cougars, a veritable militia of Fluttershy’s friends had arrived. Whipping her head around in the most dramatic way she could muster, she graced her assailants with her most devastating smirk.

“Oh darlings,” she called out, her tone mocking, “fur is murder!”

It was awful, putting her poor animal friends in danger, but they were wild animals—mostly—and for them, danger was the natural state of things. Still, it was awful, just awful, and Fluttershy could not help but feel a bit guilty. Tonight, some of them would die, there could be no doubt of that, and she would be the one to bury them.

“Harry! Look out!”

Too late, the club smashed into poor Harry and Fluttershy shuddered, unable to witness the suffering of another. But Harry… Harry was a bear and the wooden club snapped into three pieces on impact. A terrible, terrific roar of fury came from Harry, and though a bit slow, Harry whirled around to deal with his attacker. One slap sent the diamond dog reeling backwards, leaving him vulnerable, his vitals exposed, and a second swipe opened up the big dog’s throat. Roaring with ursine umbrage, the big bear lumbered into the mob of diamond dogs, an unstoppable juggernaut of nature’s judgment.

In the distance, a massive pillar of fire rose upwards, illuminating the night sky.

Less than an eyeblink later, the shockwave hit, and just after that, the sound. The all-consuming roar left Fluttershy deaf; she had no idea what had happened, what was going on, or what had just exploded. Beneath her, the ground trembled and ripples could be seen moving through the soil in very much the same way as they traveled through a pond. Windows shattered, buildings shuddered, and a great many structures just collapsed from the force of the blast.

With Fluttershy’s ears ringing the way they were, she could not hear the furious voice in the distance shouting, “HOLD STILL YOU STUPID PINK FOOL AND LET ME KILL YOU! I’LL TURN YOUR ANNOYING PINK HIDE INTO A BOOK BINDING! I’LL WEAR YOUR GUTS FOR GARTERS!”

Nor could she hear the mocking gigglesnorty laughter in response.

It was probably for the best, as Fluttershy was one prone to worry.

Author's Note

"..."

Out of the frying pan

Constant vigilance at last paid dividends. Moondancer trotted through the active battlefield that was Ponyville, ignoring minor threats and detonating anything that might get in her way. She had an antidote for the magic-nullifying dust and distributed this to those in need as she passed. Her mission? Find and recover Sumac at any cost.

It was a grim mission, with explicit instructions that the enemy could not be allowed to take Sumac; if he could not be recovered, alive, then she was to deny the enemy a strategic resource. She didn’t like these orders, not at all, not in the slightest, but she would see them through. But, oh how she would regret them. Even as she searched for the sorcerer, her anxiety and dread for the worst outcome grew within her like a ravenous cancer.

One of the cat creatures, like Catrina but not Catrina, was menacing a group of unicorns trying to defend a house. Wand in paw, he was weaving a spell, something no doubt awful, as nefarious green magic could be seen coalescing around the copper tip of the wooden casting implement. Concentrating, Moondancer ended the conflict by teleporting the invader approximately one-thousand feet straight up in the air above. Then, she passed several glass phials filled with antidote to the unicorns before she departed in search of the sorcerer.

Her ears pricked when she heard the distinctive sound of exploding harpy eggs; this was a problem, but not an unexpected one. It was a reckless choice and it showed that the enemy lacked real organisation. Harpies were indiscriminate killers and were just as likely to kill Sumac with their reckless assaults as capture him. Because Grogar lacked certain magical artifacts, harpies could be commanded—but could not be controlled. Still trotting with purpose, she clucked her tongue at the enemy’s carelessness.

A unicorn wearing the remains of a rat catcher’s outfit moved to intercept her and Moondancer was prepared. When the strange unicorn mare’s horn charged, Moondancer cast Rebounding Reflection, a powerful type of spell mirror, a spell that very few unicorns were capable of casting. Moondancer was not only capable of casting it, she had made improvements on Star Swirl’s defensive barrier.

The telekinetic bolt fired by the strange mare, though rather weak, struck the barrier and was returned to the sender with a great deal of multiplicative force. It rebounded at an angle and upon return, struck the unicorn mare in her left front leg—which was instantly pulped and turned into a fine red mist. She tumbled down with a cry, and then shrieked with agony.

Moondancer wasted no time finishing her off; a casual telekinetic flick was enough.

Carousel Boutique was under siege, Rarity was in trouble, and Moondancer found her objective. The roof of Rarity’s shop was on fire, reinforcements were arriving just as Moondancer had arrived, and Fluttershy—battered and bloody—was holding both Sumac and Pebble in the doorway of the burning boutique. Dead animals were all over the road and fallen ponies as well.

Harpies were coming in from the east, a group of Abyssinians from the south, and unicorns wearing rat catcher costumes from the west. Scissors and all manner of remorseless sharp things flew through the air in what could only be described as a telekinetic tornado as Rarity made her valiant stand. Beside her, Rainbow Dash pummeled anything that got too close. A bear, bloodied, was fighting diamond dogs and Abyssinians.

The timber roof of the boutique creaked as it burned ever-closer to a state of collapse. Smoke roiled from the upper windows. Rarity, seemingly unaffected by the nullifying dust, held her ground through sheer telekinetic prowess. Circumstances being what they were though, Rarity was losing, and with reinforcements incoming, Moondancer’s initial assessment of the situation seemed dire indeed.

Gunfire rang out; not the shotgun blasts filled with pellets and nullifying dust, no. Something bigger and nastier, something that was decidedly lethal. The harpies fired explosive eggs and the incoming Abyssinians began to prepare spells. Sensing that her objective might be in jeopardy, Moondancer took decisive action in the most spectacular way.

“No,” she said, her voice one of utter, inconceivable calm.

Moondancer did several things all at once, her magic not suffering in the slightest from being distributed over many tasks. Even more impressive, she did all of this at the same time. The roof was extinguished, the fire, heat, and energy sucked up and channeled into a destructive cone of ignition that set the flock of harpies ablaze. As for the incoming harpy eggs, each of those were carefully teleported and redirected into the oncoming crowd of spellcasting Abyssinians, with explosive, limb-rending results.

She wrangled the bullets too, harnessing their energy, their momentum, she liquified the lead and teleported it behind the false rat catchers. When it reappeared, it continued flying, as bullets were wont to do, and the enemy unicorns were pelted with blobs of boiling, fluid lead. Screams filled the night as invaders dropped, all of them maimed, burned, and incapacitated by Moondancer’s devastating assault.

Situation: neutralised.

Not too far away, Moondancer noticed Vinyl Scratch engaging a mob. Everything was on fire around Vinyl, and so was Vinyl herself. From the looks of things, Vinyl had the situation in hoof—at least now that the incoming reinforcements had been dealt with. Smart mare, Vinyl. The magic nullifying dust could not affect her if it was burned away. Vinyl’s fireballs were the bane of Ponyville’s thatched roofs, but Moondancer didn’t have time to worry about that right now.

She had her sorcerer; as a bonus, she had her second objective as well.

“Give me Sumac and Pebble,” she commanded while she strode over to where Fluttershy held them.

“Get them to someplace safe!” Fluttershy’s voice held none of its usual timidity. “Go!”

Moondancer snatched them both up and before either of them could say anything, she teleported, obeying her instructions to the letter. With the sorcerer secured, Moondancer stepped through the aether, returning to Twilight, grateful that no horrid, drastic action had to be taken. Victory was hers, and she was glad to have recovered her friends.

“You’re back.” Twilight tried to control the faint, tremulous waver of worry in her voice. “You were gone a bit longer than I anticipated. But I see that you recovered both Sumac and Pebble. Excellent.” After taking a deep breath, she turned her attention to the two terrified foals. “Are both of you alright? Sumac, you’re bleeding. Looks like scratches. Cloudy should be able to patch you right up. Boomer came to me and told me that you needed help. Oh, there she is. She heard her name.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, she watched as Sumac pulled Boomer into a hug.

“Moondancer, report.”

“Teleportation remains difficult, though not impossible. I was able to teleport an enemy straight up with ease though. Whatever is causing the interference is at ground level and can be overcome with smaller objects with enough concentration.” Moondancer took a moment to adjust her glasses while thinking about how difficult her own teleportation had been and then she gulped in a deep breath. “What other objectives can I fulfill?”

“We need prisoners… for interrogative purposes. I want them alive. They don’t need to be very alive, just alive enough.” With a turn of her head, Twilight looked her friend in the eye. “But that is a secondary or even tertiary objective. Go out and restore order. I don’t care about the cost. The town can be rebuilt. Secure the area near the hospital first and foremost, because lives are much harder to replace. I’ll come to join you once I send Sumac and Pebble to safety.”

Twilight thought of one more thing. “Oh, see that Rarity is brought to the hospital. Nopony sews like she does. She can stitch up multiple ponies all at the same time. Get as many pegasus ponies in the air as possible so they can transport casualties. Go.”

“As you command,” replied Moondancer with a bow of her head; then, without further ado, she vanished.

“Catrina is here,” Pebble said while clinging to Sumac.

“I am aware.” Twilight lifted up a portal gem and began to charge it. “Using zap apples, I was able to duplicate Sumac’s magical signature. Spike was very, very brave, and he’s out there right now, spreading it around. Catrina will be kept busy searching for a while. I hope.”

“What if Catrina finds Spike?” Pebble asked.

“Spike understood the risks,” Twilight replied, and again, she had to struggle to keep the worrisome fear out of her voice. “He’s a very brave dragon. Just like Boomer. Okay, the three of you, hold on to one another. Just like last time, you’re going to the Rock Farm, where you’ll be safe.”

“I don’t wanna go—”

“Sumac…” Twilight’s voice was firm, but only because she forced it to be so. “You know what must be done. I’m sorry. As soon as I am able, I’ll come to collect you, and I’ll bring you home.”

She watched as the colt closed his eyes. Not a word was said. Pebble pulled him a little closer, trying to comfort him, and Boomer clung to him, but was mindful of her tiny, sharp claws. For a moment, sheer terror gripped Twilight, she had the most dreadful thought; she wondered if she would ever see them again. Of course she would—she immediately dismissed the thought before it could paralyse her into inaction.

“I love you… all of you. I’ll come for you as soon as everything is safe, I promise.” Before they had a chance to respond, Twilight sent them away. With a crackle, the portal gem, now fully charged, blinked with blinding light and she was left all alone.

Then, Twilight too, blinked out of existence.

Sumac hadn’t even had the chance to recover from the long-range portaling when he knew that something was wrong. His ears, though ringing, heard shouting, voices raised in fear. There was a storm overhead, a massive vortex filled with thunderbolts and dire, shadowy faces that lurked in the swirling clouds. With each flash of lightning came cannon-blasts that threatened to leave him deaf. Ears ringing, the colt tried to raise his head, but had to fight back a powerful wave of nausea that almost overcame him.

“What are you doing here?”

The voice was familiar somehow, but Sumac, in his current state, had trouble placing it. It was not a pony voice, it was feminine, but rough, scratchy, and a bit barky. Gulping, trying to swallow the rising contents of his stomach, he was snatched up from the ground, lifted, and held in front of a familiar face.

“It’s me, Kabuki. Don’t you recognise me? What are you doing here? Long Ears!”

At the mention of his name, he came running, and Limestone came with him. Sumac was glad to see them, but worried at the same time, because there seemed to be trouble. In an instant, Limestone was all over Pebble and Sumac heard crying from his friend and constant companion. There was no shame in crying… though Sumac struggled to keep himself from doing so.

“This is bad.” The voice of Long Ears sounded as though he was barely in control of himself. “An army approaches. You shouldn’t be here. Even now, they gather, off some distance away. The strange magic of this place keeps them from appearing here.”

Sumac knew this; he knew of the ley lines and how the Rock Farm made magic misbehave. He also knew how poison joke had an effect upon the phenomenon. But there was no time to have a good think about that right now. Kabuki had grown since the last time he had seen her, she had grown so much larger and he almost vanished in her embrace. It made him feel secure in ways he could not comprehend.

“Well, this has gone from bad to worse!” Cloudy’s voice cracked with almost every word as the mare circled around both Limestone and Pebble. “For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why an army gathered to attack us, but now it all makes sense. We have to get you out of here!”

“It takes time for the students to activate the portal gem—”

“Igneous, they’ve only done it during drills… we don’t know if they can do it under pressure. What if whatever is attacking interferes somehow?”

Igneous, who stood a short distance away, began to toss his head around in frustration. Lightning flashed, thunder crashed, and the muted sound of falling rain could be heard coming from nearby. The wild weather grew worse with every passing second and the storm seemed poised to become a raging tempest.

Sumac sensed strange magic at work.

“The army amasses!” another diamond dog shouted, almost breathless as he jogged closer. “Already they march! The first wave is coming, even as more continue to appear!”

With a soft, worried whimper, Kabuki lifted Sumac, held him up for a moment to look at him, and then, with a pained expression, she placed him upon Cloudy’s back, where Boomer jumped up to join him. One paw came to rest upon the sword on her hip, and her gaze settled upon Long Ears.

“We’re running out of time!” said the breathless, panting diamond dog.

“We have time to prepare for our end.” Long Ears stood straight, tall, and proud. “We must buy time. The army must be held off so that there is time for the portal gem to be charged. Our friends must escape. If we cannot live as good dogs, than we shall die as good dogs, but good dogs we shall be.”

Sumac watched as Long Ears hunkered down, and Kabuki joined him. Together, holding paws, they prayed: “Black Hound, we ask for courage to meet our end. Carry us upon the divine wind, so that we might die as we lived, with honour and virtue. Hachikō gave us our honour back, let us be worthy of his wise tutelage.”

“Kamikaze!” Kabuki shouted as she rose.

“Kamikaze!” Standing up, Long Ears drew his sword while hollering the words for all to hear.

“For the Black Hound! Kamikaze run! Bring the Divine Wind!”

Swords and weapons were drawn. Bows were prepared. Sumac could feel some strange tension in the air, and then, that was when it happened. It grew dark. The light, what little there was, faded, retreating to whatever place the light went when the darkness came to call. A terrifying inky blackness crept over everything, and Sumac could see his breath as a chill crept over him.

The wind and darkness took shape. As the lightning flashed, it illuminated a giant made of swirling darkness. Eyes, glowing witchfire green could be seen as the figure took shape. The diamond dogs had prayed for the assistance of their god… and in an odd, scary turn of events, their god, their Black Hound had shown up.

As the thunder crashed and spears of lightning spilled down from the heavens, the Black Hound appeared, a giant hulking brute of a diamond dog. It was unlike anything that Sumac had ever seen, and his magic sense tingled in an overwhelming way. She held a glowing green sword that seemed far too tiny in her paws, and beside her, in the most curious turn of events so far, was a zebra.

“The mongrel hordes come!” Kabuki cried. “Let us sweep them from the field of battle!”

Author's Note

Only a student of history will understand the pun at work here.

And into the comfy chair

Time had slowed to a crawl. How slow? Slower than pouring maple syrup in the morning after a cold night. Everything seemed to be happening all at once. Another foal had arrived just as the Black Hound had appeared, and there was so much shouting. The army was advancing and the best diamond dogs in all of existence were calmly speaking of their chosen end. Igneous too, was preparing for battle, and he held in his fetlocks an enormous mattock.

“Here, Sumac… keep Moon Rose safe.”

Before he could protest, a stranger put a filly he only barely knew beside him. Moon Rose was sobbing, a bit bloodied, but otherwise seemed to be okay. The students, all of them strangers, were preparing the portal gem. Pebble wrapped her forelegs around Moon Rose, squeezed tightly, and did not let go. Sumac wondered if, in that moment, a lifelong friendship had been made. Was this how friendships worked? What would Twilight say? Why was he thinking about his schoolwork right now, of all things?

Before he could distract himself, Sumac found himself the focus of the Black Hound. She approached, larger than life, wrapped in a cloak of swirling, coalescing shadows. A giant—an actual honest-to-alicorns giant—and in all of his life, he had never seen anything quite like her. As she drew nearer, she brought the cold with her, and Sumac found himself shivering.

The Black Hound was large enough that he could vanish completely inside of her paw.

“Are you good?” the giant asked with a faint suggestion of a growl lurking within her voice.

Never in his life had a question been so terrifying. No teacher had ever made such a soul-chilling inquiry. Sumac felt his heart freeze, because he didn’t know how to answer. Lying—even a tiny fiblet—would be bad right now, and he honestly wasn’t sure if he was good or just pretended to be good so he’d get nice things and stay out of trouble. It was hard to be good, so very hard.

When the Black Hound sniffed him, Sumac almost wet himself.

“He struggles to be good.”

Pebble’s voice was a stolid, unshakeable, unbreakable deadpan. How could she be so calm? Sumac was fighting to hold his water, his hind legs twisting and writhing against one another, and somehow, Pebble sounded as serene as a spring day. It wasn’t fair. Sumac, feeling the Black Hound’s eyes burning into his very soul, looked away as he felt ashamed for every horrible thing he’d ever done.

“Sumac works hard to be good. It’s not easy for him. Apples are known for hard work.”

The Black Hound sniffed again and then placed one paw finger beneath Sumac’s chin, lifting his head so that he had no choice but to look up at her. “That is the best kind of good. Shēdo smell trouble about you, but another believes in your goodness. The Black Hound will fight for you.” The giant stood up, straightening out to her full height. Turning about, she added, “Bad things approach. They are unfit to see the dawn. Time to collect heads.”

“Heads?” Pebble’s lone word somehow formed a question.

“Only cure for badness,” the Black Hound replied while her eyes narrowed and her tail wagged. “Those heads coming off. Heads come off and badness leaks out. Makes flowers grow. Badness serves a purpose. Give life to soil.”

Somehow, Pebble found just a bit of extra reach, and pulled Sumac into an embrace with Moon Rose. Sumac’s sense of introversion was wanting to scream, but now was not the time. He needed space, he needed air, he needed quiet—but none of these things were available to him. Tonight, if he survived it, would be a long one. Impossibly long.

“Begin charging up the portal gem!” one of the students commanded.

Igneous—standing bipedal—paused for a moment. He stared at his granddaughter and Sumac almost couldn’t bear the sight of him. The old stallion’s face was pained, but there was something more, something that Sumac could not recognise. As the Black Hound prepared herself, Igneous did too, and Sumac wondered if Pebble’s grandfather would live to see the dawn.

It was a terrifying thought, and Sumac, fearing the worst possible outcome, made a quiet, unspoken promise that he would be there for Pebble, that somehow, he would be the friend that she deserved, and he would see her through this, even though he had no idea how.

The Black Hound looked down at the pony beside her, who had a mattock clutched in a tight death-grip, and much to Sumac’s horror, she sniffed. Just once. Sumac felt his heart leap up into his throat and begin thrashing around like a frantic bird trapped in a cage. But then, as panic completely overtook Sumac, the Black Hound nodded.

“You are good,” she said to Igneous. “You give life if needed. Old, wise life most important life of all. Hardest life to give away. Hurts most. Easy to die young. Hard to die old. Work twice as hard. Shēdo will fight with you. Be honoured.”

Igneous’ head tilted back so he could look up, and the mattock trembled somewhat in his grip. Sumac watched, frozen, his heart still in his throat, and in this moment, during this unforgettable span of seconds, Igneous was more than a pony. More than a grandfather. Something too great for words… like Rainbow Dash but a whole lot more humble.

The old stallion offered up a solemn nod at the Black Hound in response.

“Gem is charging!”

Time seemed to grow ever slower. For Sumac, each passing second was agony. He wanted this to be over. Though mere moments had passed, it felt like hours. In the distance, he heard horns and the pounding of drums shook the earth. He heard shouts of alarm and watched as the diamond dog army drew into formation, ready to defend the farm—to defend him. Others would die this night for his sake.

“If you are good,” the Black Hound bellowed, “then fight with me! Those who know war in this life will know peace in next!” She raised her sword overhead, waved it, and this caused the gathered defenders to howl.

Then, she charged, and like a flood, all those around her moved with her. As the zebra galloped off, Boomer lept upon the zebra’s back and held on. Sumac could say nothing, all he could do was watch. Thunder crashed, lightning flashed, and the two armies collided together. Sumac heard the ring of steel on steel, he heard wails of anguish, and the furious cries of battle. It all happened so fast, even as time felt so slow. Boomer and the zebra were swallowed up by the sweeping tide of battle, and Sumac lost track of them far too quickly.

In the middle of it all was the Black Hound. She was the biggest, the tallest, the most imposing. As lightning crackled overhead, he could see the ghostly shadows of chains shooting out from her body, and these chains impaled her attackers so they could be dragged in. The cacophony was deafening and he could hardly hear his own thoughts. It was so close; the battle was so close, a stone’s throw away. Night became day as plumes of fire rose into the sky and unfurled like flapping banners in the breeze.

Heads rolled.

A bright, blinding nimbus of light surrounded Sumac, and his magic sense threatened to overwhelm him. The portal gem was working and he could feel the curious tug at his insides. Over the crackling buzz of the gem’s activation, he heard the sounds of battle; cries of pain, yelps, whimpers, wet, splashing sounds that upset him and unnerved him a great deal.

In the final seconds just before the gem took him elsewhere, Sumac said, “Goodbye, Boomer…”

The quiet was the greatest thing that Sumac had ever heard. Even better, he was given space to recover himself, rather than be buried beneath a thousand-million questions. Livingstone backed off after just a few polite inquiries, and Sumac had been left in a comfortable chair, all by himself. Pebble and Moon Rose were sitting together on a paisley-printed couch. Moon Rose was crying a bit, but Pebble could have very well been a statue.

Livingstone was a purplish pegasus with a massive, oversized handlebar mustache. There were others, too, two more who stood by the door. Barnabus Stubbs and Bertie Stubbs, and there was something scary-pleasant about them. Oh, they were scary earth ponies, no doubt, but Sumac was not scared of them. He felt safe around them. Barnabus’ cutie mark was a smashed, broken chair, and Bertie’s mark was a smashed, broken table.

Sumac suspected that they had marks for mayhem; mook marks.

“Go on, Bertie… go and gum at the lad. Yer a shy sort. Go speak shy.”

The mare shook her head at her brother and didn’t budge from her spot.

“Sumac is introverted,” Pebble said in a matter-of-fact deadpan. For a second, it seemed as though she was about to say more, but then she didn’t.

Closing his eyes, Sumac allowed himself to collapse back into his chair and he took a deep breath. Pebble knew these ponies, she had been raised around them, and that was enough for him to feel okay with this. These ponies had been with Pebble practically since the day of her birth, and her familiarity with them made everything so much better. He could almost breathe again.

“Some kind of night.” Livingstone shook his head, his wings flapped against his sides, and he began to pace before the empty, unlit fireplace that dominated the room. “Attacks in every major Equestrian city. The Great Enemy is out for whatever they can get. You’re safe here though. So don’t you worry.”

“Say…” Barnabus smiled and nudged his sister in a knowing way. “Would you foals like some sweets? I don’t think it matters much that yer up past yer bedtime. When the cat’s away, the mice’ll play.”

Pebble alone reacted. Sumac watched as the very tip of her tongue came peeking out and did a quick pass over her bottom lip. His thoughts became a jumbled mess, because Pebble was cute when she did that—cute enough to be a distraction. In times of trouble, Pebble turned to food to comfort herself, and watching this play out brought a bit of normalcy that Sumac needed.

A stunning transformation overtook Pebble, and something about her demeanour changed, though Sumac couldn’t say how or why. She seemed almost foalish now; a frightened expression could be seen on her face, her ears quivered, and she sat rubbing her front hooves together in a fretful sort of way.

“Are there any paving stones?” she asked. “Those cookies from the bakery down the street. The ones with big chunks of caramel, chocolate, and rock salt?”

Bertie exchanged a glance with her brother, and then smiled.

“We always keep those in stock,” Livingstone replied. “Have you calmed down enough to come with me to the pantry? Do you need a little bit more time?”

“Sumac?” Pebble turned her foalish, expressive eyes on him. “Sumac, do you need more time to get better? I think this has been the worst on you. Though, that’s hard to say. I don’t know Moon Rose very well.” Saying her name, Pebble cast a sidelong glance at the filly beside her. “I’m not budging unless you can come with me.”

She wasn’t thinking solely of herself, as Pebble tended to do. He felt proud of her—even with everything going on, with all of the bad things that had happened, he felt a curious amount of pride for the weird filly that was his best friend. Pebble had her moments, and Sumac, he treasured these moments.

Boomer was gone and Sumac was left unsettled. Not knowing was the worst. His mothers were in Ponyville, their fates unknown. From the sounds of it, all of Equestria was being attacked, and he could not help it, he blamed himself. All of this for a sorcerer. Sure, Moon Rose was just a few feet away, but this did nothing to assuage the guilt that he was feeling.

Breathless, a young unicorn came crashing into the room, nearly tearing the door right from the hinges. This unicorn was young, lost in the cruel throes of rabid, consumptive puberty. His entire back half was a lumpy-bumpy expanse of acne, while his front half was a greasy, oily mess. He smelled.

“Doctor Livingstone!”

“You’d better have a darn good reason to come bursting in here and scaring these poor wee ones, Basil.” The purplish pegasus turned stern and waited for the panting unicorn to recover himself.

“The reliquary!” the acne-savaged colt blurted out. “The reliquary has been broken into! The artifacts are being looted!”

“Bollocks,” Barnabus Stubbs muttered to himself.

“No, it’s true! Somehow, they’ve found their way into the reliquary! My brother Pesto, he’s all burnt and battered! He came as a messenger! He’s being patched up right now!”

“Soggy dog’s bollocks.” Barnabus now stood grinding his silver-capped teeth and his right front hoof tapped against the floor.

Sumac, smart colt that he was, realised that something important had just happened, but lacked the presence of mind to understand what it was. He wasn’t sure what a reliquary was, but he understood artifacts—he understood the dangers of those just a little too well. Tarnish found artifacts, and destroyed artifacts. Well, some of them. Some of them went into hiding places, like this reliquary, whatever it was.

“Basil, rouse the others. I want everypony awake and alert. This is now a crisis of the worst sort. If the reliquary across town has been broken into…” Livingstone’s words trailed off and the purplish pegasus shook his head. Holding out his wing, he pointed in the direction of the three foals. “We must keep them safe. At any cost. Don’t just stand there, Basil… shake a leg and get moving!”

“Right away, sir!” Lickety-split, the adolescent unicorn galloped away to do as he was told.

Author's Note

This was supposed to be out yesterday. It wasn't. My apologies. It was finished up in the evening and things just didn't work out as planned. :raritydespair:

The quiet calm

The kitchen was blinding. Gleaming white tile, mirrored-finish stainless steel, and an unbelievable sterile cleanliness, the kitchen was nothing short of perfect. Multiple stoves formed a line against one wall. Countertop islands formed an archipelago that stretched the length of the room. There were sinks as big as a bathtub. While Sumac stood in the doorway, trying to take it all in, Pebble sighed a contented, happy sigh.

“I’ve missed this place,” she said while closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “So many happy hours have been spent here.”

“This is bigger than where I live.” Moon Rose followed Pebble into the kitchen proper, then stopped to have a look around. “Are those… elevators?”

“Service elevators,” Livingstone replied. “The dining hall is right above us, as is the ballroom, the assembly hall, and the auditorium. Five floors where food and drink is served. This place used to have dumbwaiters, but they were a tad inadequate. We like our lavish ceremonies of recognition.”

“Like when my father was given a lifetime achievement in brawlology.”

Snapping to attention, Sumac asked, “What’s… brawl… brawl-whatever-that-is?”

“The science of whoopin’ ass,” Pebble replied in deadpan. “The Stubbs siblings are the undisputed masters of the discipline.”

“Mister Teapot didn’t even flinch when Barnabus smashed a chair over his head in recognition of his accomplishments. That was a proud day.” Extending one wing, Livingstone wiped one eye, then the other, and then smoothed out his mustache. “What a fine culture of intimidation we have.”

With an impatient huff, Pebble took off at a brisk trot, with Moon Rose right behind her. Sumac moved out of the doorway so others could pass. Pebble followed the archipelago of countertop islands for a while, then took a sharp left towards some tall stainless steel doors. Fortress doors, imposing and just a little bit scary. Grunting, Pebble stomped down on a raised steel plate near the wall, and one of the doors swung open, silent on perfectly oiled hinges.

Beyond the door was an enormous room stocked with food of all kinds, and this was just one door. There were others. The pantry beyond was a long, narrow room that stretched so far back that Sumac couldn’t quite make out the end of it, mostly because the lights had not been turned on just yet.

Tinned goods of every conceivable variety could be seen along the right wall, while bags and boxes lined the left. Sumac was overwhelmed by the sight of it all, and he could not help but remember his hungry days with Trixie. Livingstone made his way inside, carefully stepping over Pebble, and stopped in front of a shelf to have a look around.

“Here we go,” he said to himself, “paving stones. We still have most of a bag. Some pretzels, some mixed nuts, and oh… some of these. Mellonella’s Munchy Moon Rocks.”

“Oh, I like those.” Ever polite, Moon Rose looked up, hopeful, but said nothing else, made no request, spoke nothing of her desires.

“Bertie likes the harvest moon flavour,” Barnabus said to nopony in particular.

“I think we still have some frozen custard.” Livingstone—mindful of Pebble—began collecting packages with his wings, and passed the cookies to Pebble for her to carry. Then, with no warning whatsoever, the purplish pegasus began tossing packages at Sumac. “Here, make yourself useful.”

Before Sumac was ready, he suddenly had things thrown in his general direction. Biting his lip, he had to concentrate to catch them and hold them aloft. Thankfully, he didn’t embarrass himself, and nothing hit the floor. It felt good to be useful, and having to maintain concentration to make his magic work prevented him from thinking about all of the awful things that had just happened.

“He’s a quick one.” Livingstone smiled, but it was almost invisible beneath his mustache.

“You have no idea,” Pebble deadpanned to Livingstone.

Barnabus Stubbs dropped Sumac atop a stool and the small colt took a moment to get his balance. He had no fear of falling, as Barnabus didn’t seem like the type who’d let him take a tumble. Even though the stool was quite tall, Sumac’s head just barely peeped over the table, his chin mere inches from the stainless steel surface.

“If you don’t mind me sayin’,” Barnabus said as he stepped away, “you lot hold up well in a crisis. Most foals would be a blubbering mess right about now.”

“We’ve been in crisis before.” Pebble had the same problem that Sumac had, and she too, was far too small to be seated at this table. “I can’t think of a safer place than this one though.” She sighed, shook her head, and in a low voice added, “I hope my family is okay.”

“This’ll be a bad night.” Barnabus’ gruff words weren’t reassuring, but they were honest. “We’ll be a different country come morning—”

“Shut yer yap, Barnie!”

“Bertie, I’ll only say this once… ‘tis better to be ‘onest than ‘opeful.”

Baring her teeth, Bertie revealed that her teeth were also capped with silver, and her mouth contorted into a lopsided scowl as she focused her aggression on her brother. “Yer losing yer nerve, Barnie. Lapsing into a bit of the Old World, are we?”

“You two… now is not the time to antagonise one another.” Livingstone’s stern words cut through the tension like a knife and as he spoke, he pulled the lid off of the container of frozen custard. “Why is it that whenever things get tense, you two always manage to try and have a go at one another? For goodness sakes, stop that.”

The two siblings both scowled at the pegasus scolding them, but said nothing.

“Sumac… would you please get me some cookies?” Pebble’s polite request broke the tension. She rested her fuzzy brown chin upon the edge of the table, and her ears pivoted forwards to point in Sumac’s direction.

She was kind of… cute. Her flannel plaid nightgown was a bit dirty, but the sturdy fabric was no worse for wear. Sumac thought of Boomer for a moment, and a million other things bounced through his mind, including the adults having their tense moment. But all of this was mentally pushed aside when he pulled out some cookies for both Pebble and Moon Rose.

If he was concentrating on his tasks, he couldn’t concentrate on his fears. Cookies were served. The frozen custard—lemon curd flavoured—was pulled away from Livingstone and Sumac attacked it with a fancy mechanical scoop. It was a relief to be working, to be doing something that took his mind off his troubles. He could turn off his brain and just work—which seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Bowls were arranged in a neat, orderly group, as were the plates, and an equal number of cookies landed on each of the plates.

“Oi, lookit him go,” Bertie said to her brother. “I’ve never seen a ‘corn his age do that much at once. It’s like he’s possessed.”

“Shush, Bertie, and let the lad work. This is the calmest I’ve seen him since this lot arrived.”

But Bertie was not done, and she gave her brother a hard nudge in the ribs. “Lookit, Barnie… he works like Scratch. See, he does everything in organised groups, just like she does. A bit of her has rubbed off on him, methinks.”

“Aye, Bertie, I see it too. A master is seen in their apprentice. Scratch’ll be happy to hear it.”

Sumac ignored the distractions and his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth while he applied direct force to the frozen custard, which had the consistency of near-dried cement. All the time spent with Big Mac using a hammer paid off, as Sumac had just enough telekinetic strength to carve through the solid yellow mass.

As his mind calmed and his magic flowed, Sumac gained awareness of magic itself. He felt it all around him, but of particular interest were the unseen unicorns just outside the doors. How many of them were there? Quite a few. Guards, but kept out of sight. Sumac took comfort in their presence. This felt like a safe place, even if it was on high alert right now. These were capable, canny, courageous adults—adults like Tarnish who lived and breathed danger.

“What is ‘Bertie’ short for?” asked Moon Rose.

There was a sharp inhale from Pebble.

“In fact, both of you have strange names. How did you get them?” Moon Rose held her head up as high as possible and studied the two siblings. “Are you from Trottingham?”

“Uh…” Barnabus shifted his bulk left to right, right to left, and left to right again. “Bertie is short for Aberdeen, the place where we was born. My sister was named for the place where we lived. Aberdeen, berd, Bertie. Sometimes Bertie is short for Roberta, or Bertha, or Bethany, or Bertram… or—”

“Those are some strange names,” said Moon Rose.

“Well, they’re pretty normal for us.” Barnabus reached up and began scratching his neck with his hoof. “See, uh, me and my sister… we’re not from ‘round here. Livingstone… a bit of ‘elp ‘ere?”

Livingstone made no reply, but stared at Barnabus. The purplish pegasus’ mustache drooped. Sumac, still working, was vaguely aware that something was going on, but he failed to notice everything happening around him. He placed not one, but two scoops of frozen custard into a bowl, and debated a third. Nopony seemed to have the presence of mind to tell him no, so he reckoned that he could get away with a bit of gluttony.

The lights flickered.

Bertie glanced around, one eye squinted, and her brother did the same. Livingstone too reacted, and cleared his throat. Sumac paused, mid-scoop, and waited to see if the lights might go out completely. They dimmed, grew bright, dimmed again, flickered a bit, grew dimmer, and seemed to be struggling.

“What’s going on outside must be pretty bad.” Livingstone cleared his throat again. “Not to worry. We’re safe in here and if the power goes out, we have back up lights. Absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“Berd could be Birdy.” Moon Rose seemed rather unconcerned about the flickering lights and her expressive, curious eyes remained on the siblings. “Where is Aberdeen?”

The lights ceased flickering and Sumac continued scooping out custard. It had the stink of lemon, strong, and thinking of lemons, he could not help but think of Lemon Hearts. Was she okay? He did not allow his mind to wander, and focused on his work. This was good work, meaningful work, and at the end of it, there would be a reward. It was better to keep working than it was to worry.

As it turned out though, Sumac scooped just a little too hard. A dollop of lemony yellow frozen custard was practically catapulted right into space, or would have been if it hadn’t splatted against the ceiling. Sumac paused in his efforts to look up, and the small, slight colt scowled at the evidence of his catastrophic failure.

“It ‘appens to the best of us, lad. We go to please the ladies and leave a mess on the ceiling—”

“Barnie!” Bertie slugged her brother hard enough to cause his teeth to clack together.

“Bloody fu—”

“No you don’t!” Bertie shouted as she slapped her brother’s muzzle.

“Will you keep yer ‘ands to yerself, ye tart?”

“Who you calling a tart, ye great titmouse!”

Just as things were escalating into something interesting, the lights went out completely, and the only available illumination came from the tip of his horn. The green glow of his magic bathed the room in a witchy light that was, unfortunately, just a bit creepy, and Sumac was deeply disappointed with himself over the fact that his own magic gave him the shivers. It was too easy to remember other green magic, like that of Queen Chrysalis.

He shivered so hard that he dropped the scoop, which fell to the table with a clatter.

“Ach, crivens!” Bertie sounded thoroughly unnerved. “Green magic! Turn that off! ‘Tis a witching light in this darkness.” She waved her hoof in Sumac’s direction while shaking her head from side to side.

“Now who’s lapsed back into a bit of the Old World?” Barnabus said to his sister.

“Funny, the backup lights should be on by now.” Livingstone’s mustache quivered and he cast a sidelong glance at Bertie, who was still trying to ward away the green light by waving her hoof around. “There’s a ten second switch. How odd.”

The whole of the building shuddered, rocked by some great unknown force.

“Barnabus, Aberdeen… we need to go to the bunker, I do believe.” Livingstone’s voice almost sounded calm, but there was a distinct, discernable waver to it. “The both of you need to cease your bickering at once.”

Just as the commanding pegasus was about to say something else, a door opened, and light came flooding into the darkened room, cast by a unicorn. Sumac turned his head and he heard the pony in the doorway say, “We have intruders. I don’t know how, but we do.”

“Right then, to the bunker it is then.” Livingstone failed, utterly and completely, to sound calm.

Author's Note

Okay. Deep breath time.

If death bothers you, reading further is ill-advised. I thought it only fair to offer warning.

The Soul Thief enters

Author's Note

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/372697/4/ink/chapter-4

The Soul Thief enters

“Ye think it be Groogar’s slippery wench?”

The heavy accent distorted every word said into something that was almost, but not quite, recognisable. Sumac listened, his ears straining, trying to hear everything around him. The sound of hooves striking the floor were far too loud—but the silence coming from elsewhere all around him was deafening. It was, however, somewhat amusing how Barnabus said Grogar’s name.

“Bloody preposterous,” Livingstone said in response to Barnabus. “We’re above rumours and hearsay, Barnabus. She’s barely even a common unicorn, much less the all-powerful witch that the rumours make her out to be. A rumour is a powerful weapon when used against the feeble-minded.”

“Soo, me sweet dear sister is done for, she is—”

“Shut it, ye dingus!” Bertie snapped. “Awa' ‘n’ bile your heid, ye great wrinkled scrote!”

Barnabus laughed, a raucous sound that echoed up and down the darkened hallways. Moon Rose, whimpering only a little, pressed herself against Pebble’s side. A moment later, Sumac noticed that the darkness somehow seemed a little darker, and that the light from the unicorns, including his own, somehow seemed a little dimmer. Weakened somehow. His observation left him with a powerful sense of unease.

“I don’t much care for this darkness,” one of the unicorns escorting them muttered. “Feels like a witching darkness.”

“Low grade fear spell of some sort,” another unicorn said in response. “Amateur work. Only effective on the feeble-minded. We’re not feebs.”

Sumac allowed himself to be led along, uncertain of his destination. Something felt wrong, but it was impossible to say how it was wrong, or what was wrong. The magic felt far too strong for what it was, too powerful. This dread might feel low grade, but the magic behind it wasn’t. With this being a time of crisis, Sumac kept his thoughts to himself, rather than distract the adults, whom he trusted that they knew what they were doing.

These were capable, rough and ready sorts; why else would he be sent here?

“I sense dream magic.” Moon Rose’s whispered words were almost a nasal whine.

“Dream magic?” Livingstone paused, distracted, but kept walking. “I wonder if Princess Luna is about.”

“No.” Head shaking from side to side, Moon Rose pressed into Pebble. “This is bad.”

It was at this moment that Sumac knew that Moon Rose’s magic sense was different than his own. More refined, perhaps, or more focused. He could feel magic, but couldn’t make out that it was dream magic. This terrified him, as the unknown tended to do, and he could feel a little more of his resolve slipping away. He wished that Octavia was here; she would know what to do, she would understand. She would lay a cold, wet cloth over his eyes and talk in a low, reassuring manner that brought much-needed comfort. Right now, what he needed was to be away from strangers and with ponies he knew—he needed the terror to end.

But with Moon Rose sensing dream magic, it seemed that this nightmare was just beginning.

Nothing worked. No elevators operated. The emergency lights did not power on. It was quiet, too quiet, and Sumac sensed odd bursts of magic just outside his range of perception. Something seemed to be happening, though nopony knew what, exactly. A small group had gathered, ready to go into the bunker, but this plan had been abandoned due to a barrier of impenetrable darkness.

“The order was given to fall back and regroup,” a pegasus said in a low, gravelly voice. “Where is everypony?”

“Not sure.” Livingstone’s voice lacked its usual smooth calm. “If there was fighting, you’d’ve thought we’d heard something. It’s too quiet. And that darkness…”

“That’s dream magic,” Moon Rose said. “It’s not real. That’s why the light won’t work.”

“What can do that?” a unicorn asked.

“Not sure,” Livingstone replied, “but I’m worried that we’re about to find out.”

“There’s no vibrations in the floor.”

“Pebble, love, what do you mean by that?” Livingstone, now quite worried, gave the filly his full attention.

“All the vibrations are gone. Gone still. Sound makes the floor vibrate. Just talking causes vibrations. I don’t think most ponies can feel them, but I can. And everything has gone still, with the silence. I don’t know what this means, but I don’t like it. This place is never still.”

“Everypony, be on your guard.” Livingstone’s mustache quivered, suggesting that his upper lip was a little less stiff than it should be. “First Moon Rose, and now Pebble. Their odd senses are trying to tell us something.”

An oppressive, almost smothering silence hung like a shroud over all who waited. Livingstone paced, while Barnabus and Bertie conserved their energy. A griffon, sitting at a table, opened and closed the cylinder on a revolver, endlessly, over and over, his talon-fingers moving with marvellous dexterity.

This room had no windows, and only one door—which was like a bank vault.

Now, even Sumac could feel the same unnatural stillness that Pebble spoke of. Not a sound could be heard, and nothing that was going on outside caused the slightest bit of disturbance. Surely terrible happenings continued outside, and those awful things should make some kind of noise. Explosions should cause the building to tremble, but there was nothing. The world had gone still—unnaturally so.

“No one has come to join us,” the griffon muttered as the revolver clicked. “How many of my fellows shall I have to bury come morning?”

Not a word was spoken. The griffon’s words were muted in some weird way, as if they too struggled to overcome the silence. Sumac attempted to discern the nature of magic at work here, but couldn’t concentrate well enough to make sense of anything. Pebble and Moon Rose were huddled together, with the earth pony filly trying to comfort the little, slender unicorn.

It was then that something in Sumac’s brain clicked, and something felt familiar about this magic. Great droplets of sweat beaded along his hide in many places, his scalp went damp, and his mouth went dry as a cold, clammy terror froze his bones. He knew this magic; he’d felt it before, but he couldn’t recall when. With the memory of this magic came the memory of pain—no, agony. A profound feeling of helplessness caused his knees to wobble and an ever-growing circle of glistening yellow liquid spread outward around his hind hooves.

“The poor lad has pissed ‘imself,” Bertie said as she hurried to Sumac’s side. “Easy, laddie. There’s no shame in it. Come ‘ere and let ol’ Bertie help sort you out.”

But Sumac did not move. He could not move. As his paralysis took hold, worsened, a figure cloaked in swirling shadow appeared in the darkened corner of the room. The darkness lit up with green witchfire, and then a great many things happened all at once, so many things that Sumac lost track of them.

The griffon was the first to react; moving with supernatural catlike speed, he pointed his revolver at the intruder—but never got a chance to fire. A thin green ray arced across the room, struck him, and then the smell of rotted meat grew strong. Pierced by the beam, the griffon’s body seized, twitched once, and the gun fell from his talons as a faint, silvery outline that was almost griffon-shaped rose from his body. In the span of an eyeblink, his corpse fell to the floor.

Livingstone started to shout out an alarm, but a thin green band of magic wrapped around his throat, both silencing him and strangling him. His eyes bulged, his wings slapped and flapped against his sides, but the pegasus had no defense against the cruel, slow torture caused by the spell slowly killing him.

Like rising steam, the griffon’s departing spectre dissipated into nothingness.

A whole wall of bodies rose before Sumac, who was pulled and then shoved back into the far corner with Pebble and Moon Rose. Livingstone collapsed to the floor, still throttled by the spell, and his lolling tongue slapped against the tile. Barnabus and Bertie both launched themselves at the intruder, but Sumac was unable to see what was going on.

Bertie was caught mid-air, and then crumpled up like a wad of newspaper. Her body contorted into unnatural, awful shapes, her limbs bent in ways that limbs should not bend, and her cries of furious agony were cut short when her neck was compressed like an accordion. Barnabus cried out, a seething howl of rage, but he too was silenced. A thin green ray burned through him, and like the griffon, his life force was torn free from his mortal flesh.

Before the silvery outline vanished, it waved once, a sad goodbye to his sibling.

“You’ve seen what I am capable of,” a cold feminine voice said. “Give me the foals and I’ll graciously allow you to live. Of course, the false-alicorns that roam the building will still probably kill you. They’re all quite mad. Raving lunatics, the entire lot of them.”

“I think I speak for all of us when I say, we’d rather die,” a unicorn said in reply.

“Really? Must it be that way? How annoyingly inconvenient. All these spells and maintaining this silence is really quite draining. It’s like… you don’t appreciate the lengths that I’ve gone through to pull this off. Those crazy false-alicorns are having to search room after room to find you. Have you no gratitude for all that I’ve done to hide you from them? Gah, how insulting.”

Standing shoulder to shoulder, the ponies that formed the living wall did not move. They did not budge. Not one knee knocked, not one ear was pinned back in submission, and each upper lip remained stiff. There was no response, no negotiation, no backing down even in the face of oblivion. It was a lesson that Sumac would only be able to appreciate later, but he was unable to comprehend right now.

“Very well, have it your way,” the shadow-clad mare said. “Die… all of you, die.”

Tendrils of nauseating green haze reached out and one by one, the staunch defenders fell to the floor, seizing and convulsing, foaming at the mouth as blood gushed from their eyes, ears, and noses. Now, much to Sumac’s terror, it was just him, Pebble, Moon Rose…

And his mother.

Dozens had just died in mere seconds and the mare, the intruder, didn’t seem bothered by what had happened, not even in the slightest. She paused for a moment, drew in a deep breath, refreshed a few of her spells, recasting them as necessary, and then she turned her attention to the three foals that cowered in the corner.

“They’re getting closer,” she said to no one in particular. “A moment if you please. Do be patient. I shall process you in a moment, but only after I determine how threatened I am.”

Unable to sense anything at all, his magical senses all but smothered, Sumac felt utterly cut off from the world. There were a few things he was able to determine though, even with his bowel-clenching terror. His mother was powerful, she was smart, and she was clever. A sickly green glow danced along the length of her horn, which he was certain had been somehow lengthened. Black shadows swirled around her body and her hooves did not touch the floor. Somehow, as she moved, she remained a good inch or so above the tile, her hooves never striking, never making a sound.

“Well, this certainly complicates things. I don’t think I’ll be able to leave here with my prizes. No matter, I can still do what’s needed.” Sumac’s mother let out a haughty sniff of contempt and one of her perfect eyebrows formed a contemptuous arch. “Those foolish ascension alicorns will rue the day they interfered with my plans.”

With his mother distracted, no doubt focusing on the other threats, Sumac looked down at the gun on the floor. It was still loaded. The blued steel was almost hypnotic. Could he do it? What would his mother say? Not the mare before him, but his real mother. Would Trixie be proud of him? What about Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine? He hesitated, uncertain, and knew that his window of opportunity was limited. His mother, the one just a few paces away, would only be distracted for so long.

What would Tarnish do?

This was the most important question that Sumac could think of. What would Tarnish do? He couldn’t ask himself what Big Mac would do, because Big Mac would frown at the very idea of hurting a mare—but Tarnish would most definitely do so without hesitation. Sumac had fillies to protect, and now, right now, was no time for Big Mac’s simple goodness. This situation was too complicated for simple goodness, and as such, called for Tarnished Teapot’s complicated goodness.

Trixie too, practiced complicated goodness, and she had told him that there were times when rules did not matter; did not apply. There were times when one had to be a dirty, no good, double-crossing, two-bit, low-down, no good cheater if one wanted to survive—and Sumac was almost certain that right now was one of those times.

With his mother still distracted, Sumac picked up the gun… and drew back the hammer.

The resulting click got his mother’s baleful attention—all of it.

For the first time, the colt noticed fear in his mother’s eyes, and it gave him courage.

“And just what do you think you are doing?” he heard his mother say.

The words caused such terror that Sumac almost dropped the gun. It was a struggle to hold it, to keep it pointed at his mother. He’d been taught to respect adults, to obey. Now, he was about to shoot one. And not just any adult, either, but the very mare that had birthed him. This conflict left him torn inside; the need to obey, to be a good colt, it was a powerful compulsion, and his current action, his current behaviour, he was pretty certain this was not what good colts did.

But sometimes, bad colts survived when good colts did not.

He’d survived Queen Chrysalis…

“Well, it’s nice to see that you didn’t get your father’s natural cowardice.” His mother’s voice was thick, almost husky with resentment and rage. “I hated your father… hated him… but that silver tongue of his… he made me love him… then you came along and I hated you both… him forcing himself on me, and you… because you’re a reminder of what he did!”

Sumac found that he had only one thing to say, and he did so while keeping the gun pointed at his mother. “I hate you more.”

“I don’t think you have the stones,” he heard his mother reply, and her hateful words were punctuated with a soul-curdling cackle, the likes of which that Sumac had never heard before.

Now, Sumac found himself in between a rock and a hard place—stuck between Pebble and his mother. His mother had just said that he didn’t have the stones, which infuriated Sumac in ways that he could not process, could not comprehend. Just where did his mother get off saying that he was a coward? Now he was stuck… he had no choice but to prove her wrong. It was a matter of principle; nopony called him a coward. His mother had to learn that lesson the hard way, the only way that mattered. With these careless words, Sumac’s mother had brought this on herself.

Gritting his teeth, he squeezed the trigger with his telekinesis.

The thunderous roar almost deafened Sumac, who had just shot his own mother to keep Pebble and Moon Rose safe. Blinded from the flash, he blinked several times to clear the dancing white spots from his vision. He could no longer feel the gun in his telekinesis; he’d dropped it, which left him disoriented and disappointed. Squinting, he tried to see what dreadful harm he’d done to his mother.

Much to his dismay, she still stood. She was looking at him, and her expression was one of startled shakiness, though that was changing even as he watched. The bullet was held just in front of her nose. Pebble was breathing hard, and he found this a distraction. Moon Rose was whimpering. His mother, completely and utterly unharmed, seemed to transform as her rage overcame her. Her face lost all beauty, all sense of equinity, and she became… something else. Something alien and unrelatable.

She was a monster, his mother.

“You know, I’d beat your little ass like I used to when you were little, but I don’t think it’d do me any good… I do know one way to hurt you though, I think… yes… I think I know how to put you in your place!”

Frozen with fear, it was all Sumac could do to give his mother a defiant glare. The gun had failed him. He had failed himself. Now, with whatever happened next, this rested on his back and he would live—or possibly die—with the consequences that were sure to follow. It stood to reason that if his mother was torturing him, she wasn’t torturing Pebble or Moon Rose. Having been tortured before, he prepared himself for the worst, not knowing what his mother was truly capable of, but the room full of dead bodies gave him some idea.

“They’re raising you to be noble,” he heard his mother say as she advanced, her adult stature towering over him. “As your mother, I feel like it’s my duty to teach you the folly in being noble. Allow me to demonstrate and show you the consequences of your actions.”

Pebble shrieked as she was hoisted into the air, held aloft by one hind hoof. Sumac, his blood frozen, remembered that Pebble was terrified of being lifted off the ground. Sometimes, her father forgot this during his more affectionate moments, and apologies would have to be given. Green flames surrounded Pebble, and then, a moment later, the screaming began in earnest.

It was a sound that Sumac was unprepared for, the sheer volume of it, the sound of it. Pebble screamed as if her very soul was torn in twain. For Sumac, it was pretty much the worst sound that he’d ever heard, and he could do nothing. No matter how much he struggled, his muscles would not respond. It was as if his head was too far away from his body.

This was his fault; this failure was his fault, and Pebble now suffered horrendously for it.

Something broke within, and when it did, he felt his mother’s magical hold on him relax. She no longer feared him; and for good reason. He was now a compliant, obedient foal. With the magical paralysis gone, he crumpled into a sobbing heap on the floor, curled up into a fetal ball, and tried to endure the sensation of his soul being shredded with Pebble’s every scream. Eyes closed, his guts twisting, his bladder gave way for the second time.

“Not so noble now, are you?” his mother asked while Pebble’s cruel torture continued unabated. “Look at how weak this has made you! Not so noble now!”

Groaning, he covered his ears with his hooves, but it did him no good. His mother pumped the sound directly into his ears, and he could feel it echoing through his mind. It felt an awful lot like dream magic, a nightmare, only he was awake—wide awake. Pebble’s voice went wet and she almost gargled with every shriek, every howl, every squeal of torment.

“See how fragile the noble spirit is?” his mother said, her voice both icy and imperious. “You scream and scream, but he does nothing! Nothing at all! Your screams mean nothing to him. Just like you mean nothing to him. If he actually cared, he’d still be fighting. Look at him, Pebble… just look at him! Just like his father! Weak, cowardly, and easily broken!”

Bawling, burning with shame, Sumac waited for whatever end might come.

“I need you to listen to me.”

Sumac felt his head held in a crushing vice, and try as he might, he could not focus on the mare that had just stolen a portion of his soul. Weakness consumed him, his body ached, and it sounded as though a hive of bees had taken up residence inside of his head.

“Those ascension alicorns are coming. They will take you. My efforts here tonight have been draining, and I can’t take you with me. It will be difficult for me to escape. Sumac, son of mine, I need you to stay alive. Use that silver tongue of yours… those false-alicorns are feeble-minded. Easy marks.”

Woozy, Sumac struggled to remain conscious.

“I just need a few hours. If you die, then all of this will be for naught. Your soul, all of it, including the part I just tore out, will go off to whatever afterlife there is. So I need you to stay alive until I can safely get this dumped into a phylactery and properly severed from the rest of your soul. Be a dear and don’t disappoint Mommy any more than you already have tonight, alright? Can you do that, you worthless, disgusting little foal of mine?”

When he failed to respond, his mother got his attention with magic, and white-hot pain went lancing through the tenderest, most vulnerable parts of his body, with the worst of it coursing through his groin. He couldn’t even scream—there was just nothing left.

“Worthless,” his mother spat as she flung him down to the floor.

He heard a moan from Pebble, or maybe Moon Rose; it was impossible to tell.

Without another word said, his mother vanished, collapsing into tenebrous shadow.

Hope comes in odd forms and odder heroes

An unnatural dawn spread much-needed light over the city of Manehattan, and Tarnished Teapot cringed as the light warmed his hide. It was a little past three in the morning or so, he wasn’t sure of the exact time, but knew that the sun should not be on the horizon at this time of early morning. While tampering with the natural order of things disturbed him, the fact that Princess Celestia was this desperate unnerved him.

One moment, he’d been working on an archeological dig in Baltimare, in Horseshoe bay, burning the midnight oil with Daring Do, and then without warning, he’d been magicked away to Canterlot. With little explanation, he was almost immediately magicked away to Manehattan—but something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. The small advance army that he’d been sent with was nowhere to be seen, and he was utterly alone in a city that was, at the moment, an active war zone.

Even worse, much to his consternation and ire, Maud had insisted on coming. Maud, quite pregnant, would not listen to reason and she had demanded to come. He was furious, but now also scared and quite worried, because there was no sign of Maud Pie. Not that she needed him to stay safe, far from it, but he needed her for his own peace of mind.

Alone, unarmed, with none of his usual weapons or his shield, without allies, Tarnish surveyed the austere, tragic dawn. Much of the city was on fire. Distant flashes of light suggested battles of a magical nature. The Ascension had come to the city, along with Queen Bumbelina, and a number of other dreadful foes had come to Manehattan with the hopes of claiming Sumac the sorcerer.

Tarnished Teapot had his own claim to Sumac; the colt was a major part of his daughter’s happiness, and he was determined to get the colt back, as safe and as sound as the situation permitted. Alone, in decidedly hostile territory, unsure of where to go or what to do next, he figured that his best move would be to head off towards the violence. Weapons would be needed, and he’d need to keep an eye out for whatever might be useful.

A subdued roar shook the city and the ground trembled beneath his hooves.

He was in the financial district, not too far from the train station, and with the flashes of light he saw, there seemed to be fighting there. It was as good a place to start as any, and no matter who he found there, he’d get some answers. By any means necessary. If he could save a few lives along the way, he would, but he already knew that he could not let himself be distracted.

Equestria’s future depended upon recovering Sumac, and he would do so…

Even if it cost him Pebble.

This is what peasants did when there grew to be too many of them; they built cities, places of criminality, despair, and vice. The sort of place where theft was necessary and the worst sort of behaviours were rewarded. A place where the respect of one’s betters, one’s providers was swiftly forgotten. This cesspool drove ponies mad; it made them only think of themselves, their own survival, and they abandoned all notions of the common good.

Dandelia Lion Lulamoon pursed her lips and cast her stern gaze around her while she got her bearings. Things had not gone to plan; she was alone, without an army to command, no soldiers with whom she could relieve the burden of heavy thought, as was her duty. Of course, this debacle wasn’t Princess Celestia’s fault; far from it, someone, or something had sensed their coming and had scattered them. It was a false hope, of course. This was little more than a peasant uprising that the monsters now took advantage of.

Before the day was over, both would be put in their place.

Preferably put down and out of their misery, as all monsters needed to be, the wretched despoilers of civilisation.

And perhaps the peasants as well, for their numbers had grown to far too many.

It wasn’t long before she was approached by monsters, just as expected. Calling them alicorns was distasteful in the extreme. For a moment, she considered obliterating them, for reasons, but then she thought better of her actions. These unwitting, dimwitted morons might be useful, and take her to right where she wanted to be. For now, she withheld her fire, all while smiling a most treacherous smile, the sort of smile that her cousins, the Darks, tended to favour.

“He said you would come.” The alicorn stallion’s voice was shrill and sounded as though he was in pain. “He sensed your arrival. Will you come along peacefully, so that he might speak with you?”

“Does he have my grandson, Sumac?” she asked while considering her next move.

“No.” The word was a shamed groan. “He does not. At the moment, the sorcerer’s whereabouts are unknown.”

A dreadful scowl contorted Dandelia’s face, but she was quick to recover. These… monsters were haughty. Arrogant. Believed themselves to be gods. Thought themselves infallible. Yet, they had lost their prize—her grandson. She had to keep her wits about her if she were to exploit these idiotic simpletons, these false-alicorns. Killing these two right here, right now, would gain her nothing. They would take her to the others if she let them, and then she could kill all of them.

It would be a struggle not to derive any equinal satisfaction from it, but she would try.

Oh, she would try.

“Will you take me to see him?”

“Of course, Daughter of Arcturus Capella Lion Lulamoon. He still holds hope that you will be his ally, just as your father once was.”

She flinched at the sound of her father’s name, and his associations.

“Without Arcturus, none of this would be possible. Come, Lady Lulamoon, we mean you no harm. At least for now. Mister Mariner is eager to see you.”

“Prince Gosling?”

Twinkleshine, disoriented and somewhat dizzy, found herself alone. Mere moments ago, she’d been standing between Prince Blueblood and Prince Gosling, with Night Light just behind her. They were gone; not just them, but the entire advance army. She was all alone, save for her axe, in a city that she was not at all acquainted with.

“Your Royal Jerkiness, where are you?”

Prince Blueblood did not answer, but that was expected.

“Tarnish? Maud? Trixie’s Mom?”

Uncertain, unsettled, she gripped her axe ever-tighter in her telekinetic grip.

In the in-between, as she whisked along and among the racing photons, diving through the many quantum tunnels, she had felt a powerful disturbance in the magic that propelled them. Something had popped, for lack of a better description, and now, here she was, all alone, with none of her companions.

That changed nothing, she still had to find Sumac.

She’d given her word.

Her eyes stung from the acrid smoke and she could feel a hot breeze. An awful lot of stuff was on fire, and nopony was putting it out. She was surrounded by brick buildings—older buildings by the looks of them, and while she heard screams in the distance, no other ponies were immediately visible. Rather concerning, really.

The ground beneath her hooves trembled as something exploded, unseen, out of her line of sight.

The heaped pile of bodies happened to be quite revealing. There were bumbles, harpies, raptorians, changelings corrupted by bumbles, and of course, dead ponies. A smattering of Grogar’s minions, as well as known enemies of Equestria. Dangerous foes, to be sure. Bumbles were mind-warpers, with dangerous stings, mind-influencing magic, and fearsome alchemical weapons. Harpies too, were vicious, credible threats, with sharp claws, teeth, and explosive eggs. Of all the bodies, the raptorians worried Tarnish the most, as they had raw cunning that matched his own.

Pausing in place, he took a moment to look around him, to take stock of his surroundings. The fight near the train station seemed to be over, the flashing lights no longer flashed, and the scattered corpses were now storytellers, still, silent actors, mute witnesses of a dramatic fight. Tarnish could feel the wrongness of something nearby, the sheer unnaturalness of a soul-spliced abomination.

Something about his druidic nature found it revolting, and the hair on his neck prickled.

“See, I am a benevolent benefactor,” a booming voice said from within the train station. “Do you not see how I have saved you? Submit to me, do as I say, obey my commands, and you will be freed from the bonds of tribalhood just as I once was.”

Hearing this caused Tarnish’s eyes to narrow, and his ears pricked forwards.

“I offer you godhood… why must you resist me? Why do you fear me? I’ve come to set you free. Now be still, while we wait for my fellows.”

Standing amidst the heaped corpses, Tarnish wondered if the false-alicorn he sensed might know anything about Sumac, Pebble, and Moon Rose. Alone, with no weapons, without Flamingo, he wasn’t certain if he could take on a powerful magic user in combat. Alicorns, false or real, were quite dangerous. He knew the stories, he knew the intelligence reports; the Ascendency—spliced horrors that they were—were incredibly dangerous. What he knew made him hesitate. Fighting wizards, casters, and magic-tossers was not his forte. He was, at most, a distraction, most of the time, as Vinyl was the one who dealt with rogue wizards and spell-chuckers.

If he did go in there, he’d have to improvise.

He took a deep breath, and held it for a time, before releasing it as a resigned sigh.

There were ponies to save; he couldn’t walk away from this, plus, valuable intelligence might be gained. This false-alicorn could be a treasure trove of information, though some digging might be required. No, he realised, this was something he had to do, even though he knew it was risky and he had no idea how he would pull it off. Princess Celestia had made his objectives clear; recover Sumac at any costs, and should the opportunity present itself, save the innocent and helpless.

Once more, he looked around him, hoping for something helpful—like a sporting goods store, or something, anything. If he had a golf club or something, that’d be better than nothing. Or a hockey stick. Even a garbage can lid might be useful. But a quick scan of his surroundings revealed very little.

“Mmm,” he mmmed, almost, but not quite, procrastinating. “Aw, fronk it, I’m going in.”

Author's Note

Train station battle will be epic.

That is all.

Mooked

Just as Tarnished Teapot entered the outer yard of the Manehattan Financial Station, the rising sun began to wobble. Alarmed by the sight, he froze in place, astonished and more than a little terrified. The sun flickered like a lightbulb during a brownout, almost as if it would go dark, and it moved in ways that the sun should not move, such as north and south, up and down, east and west, and for a time, it even zigzagged.

All of which were things that suns should not do.

Smarter than most, he realised that something, someone, was attempting to wrest away control of Princess Celestia’s sun. Perhaps moving the sun around the world and causing an early, unnatural dawn had left the sun, and by extension, Princess Celestia, rather vulnerable. Above him, the sun rolled about in circles like a flaming marble, and for a few seconds, he found himself wondering if the world was about to end.

The mere notion of the world ending left him feeling peeved.

Maybe angry.

It was a good thing he didn’t have anger issues…

No, anger had Tarnished Teapot issues. They just didn’t get along together. Could not be in the same room together. They did not see eye to eye. Swiveling his head around, he listened. Sure enough, the false-alicorn inside the train station was still trying to reassure his captives—and they were most certainly captives, because Tarnish had been listening. Ears pricked, he listened for a bit longer, but his attention was stolen away by the sun wobbling to and fro as it struggled to rise.

The train station was a mess, with broken skylights and windows. This meant glass on the floor, dangerous, awful glass that might slice his frogs. Glass that he might use to mess somepony up, somehow, if the opportunity presented itself. One of the front pillars near the central entrance was shattered and collapsed. A train sat in the cradle, ready to go by the looks of it, ready for the morning commute… which would be late this morning, no doubt. Or maybe it was the Midnight Special, because the financial district of Manehattan operated at all hours of the day, a sector that never slept.

As for the massive clock that stood as a sentinel in the outer yard, it had stopped functioning just a little before two forty-five. He found himself glancing at it to get an idea of the time, and was disappointed by its utter lack of movement. The false-alicorn was still bellowing, still orating, saying all manner of pretty words that infuriated Tarnish.

It was time to shut his mouth—perhaps permanently.

When Tarnished Teapot made his entrance, he did so with his best stiff-legged swagger. Mindful of broken glass—it was no good to have your power-walk interrupted with a sliced frog—he asserted his natural dominance in a way that never worked well in the past, but he was never one to quit trying. Octavia insisted that confidence was a matter of presentation, so he’d worked on his dramatic entrances with the hope of shoring up his fragile ego.

The false-alicorn, standing on a dais above a fountain, paused.

A million dreadful promises were made when they locked eyes, at least, it felt that way to Tarnish. He wanted it to feel that way. Something about the false-alicorn’s sheer unnaturalness unnerved him, unhinged him, it left him unsettled and rather queasy. This was a creature that should not exist, and could not be allowed to exist. It was a perversion of the natural order.

“Have you come for safety?” the false-alicorn asked. “Submit to me and I shall shelter you. Soon, when my fellows come, we shall leave on the train, and a new life will begin. Join us.”

“No.” Tarnish made his feelings known with his simple denial.

There was quite a crowd; a herd of terrified ponies, all of which were frozen and huddled together in terror. Tarnish surveyed them, trying to get a quick head count, and determined that there were maybe a hundred or so. A hundred that might also become unnatural abominations, false-alicorns. One-hundred or so potential new threats to Equestria, and the world at large.

“Kneel before me, and I shall give you new life, one free of tribal bonds. Submit and obey, and you too, might also become like me. A god—”

“You know,” Tarnish interrupted, “I once destroyed a god. And another, I gave him a black eye. He now holds a vendetta against me, and kind of stole my daughter. Don’t speak to me of godhood, gods bleed, and I’ve seen it.”

The false-alicorn’s face went twitchy and its wings slapped against its sides. “I just want to give you a future. You can share my future. We can all be gods, free creatures with self-determination. Free of tribal bonds. No more birth lottery pre-determining our lives, our fates, and our fortunes. Please, submit to me. I find what you’re doing quite enraging. Unlike my fellows, I’m better at controlling my rage, which is why I am here, trying to save these poor souls.”

“Funny,” Tarnished replied, “that’s also why I’m here. To save these ponies from you. Do they know about the high failure rate? The introduced insanity? Do you really think you are a suitable example of the final product that you have to offer—”

“Shut up!” There was a dreadful sound as the false-alicorn ground his teeth together, and his voice was ear-piercingly shrill. “Shut up! You must shut up! You make the anger come! The rage! The thousand voices all screaming! I had them almost silenced! SHUT UP!”

Eyes narrowed, Tarnish wasn’t sure if that final ‘shut up’ was directed at him.

“No… no… not the screaming… not the screaming…”

“How many souls were stolen to make you what you are?” asked Tarnish.

In response, the false-alicorn wrapped his wings around his face, and began sobbing.

“Get out,” Tarnish said to the crowd, hoping that they would flee while they had a chance.

“Don’t you move!” Now, the false-alicorn’s voice was unbearably shrill, almost like a foal with its hoof held to the fire. “You are needed! Every soul is needed! If we keep rearranging, we will find the right combination and all of the pieces will fall into place! That’s why we need the sorcerer! If we spread him out among us, we can be whole. You can be whole! No longer a mere part of a pony, but a whole alicorn… a GOD!”

“You’re not much of a god—”

“SHUT UP!” the false-alicorn shrieked, its voice causing everything in the train station to rattle. “Sharing is caring… sharing is caring… sharing is caring… we must share our souls and splice them together for the greater good. It hurt having a part of my soul ripped away, but it was a good pain! A great pain! And now I have the souls of others! I am never alone! NEVER ALONE! I am an army made strong with the souls of many!” While the pathetic creature rambled and raved, it also sobbed. “Twilight Sparkle’s friendship principles can make me whole! Mariner promised!”

Sensing opportunity, Tarnish advanced with slow, careful caution.

“I was like them once,” the false-alicorn babbled. “Scared. Confused. Uncertain. I didn’t want to submit. But Mariner assured me that I’d see the world in a different way. I had part of my soul torn out. It hurt… it hurt… it hurt like nothing else. The pain… a good pain. Lovely pain. The pain in that empty place… no words… no words…” Tears dripped down the pitiful creature’s cheeks and it turned a hollow stare upon Tarnish. “THE EMPTY HOLE MUST BE FILLED!”

There were a great many screams as the false-alicorn attacked, and everything happened all at once, which was the sort of thing that took place when chaos erupted. The crowd, screaming, all took off in random directions, every pony for themselves, and the false-alicorn fired at them as Tarnish watched, helpless to do anything to stop it.

Death happened quickly, with great rapidity and suddenness.

When the insane behemoth pointed its horn in his direction, Tarnish dove for cover, and threw himself over the rail of the stairs, not caring about the fall or the sudden stop at the end. He felt the telekinetic bolt fly mere inches above his spine, and the sheer heat radiating from the magical blast blistered his flesh. He fell, several yards, but landed well, his long legs flexing like springs. Now, more than ever, Tarnish understood the piles of corpses outside, as this false-alicorn was capable.

Screaming… so much screaming.

Glancing about, Tarnish searched for something—anything—that might help him. Construction was being done here; there was scaffolding, heavy equipment, tools, cans of paint, but nothing caught his eye as being immediately useful. The mezzanine was getting remodeled, and from the looks of it, so was the area leading down into the subway.

And then, Tarnish saw it. His heart almost stopped. There was a rivet gun on the floor, still connected to the machine that powered it. But between himself and the rivet gun was a sea of broken glass from the shattered skylight up above. Pegasus ponies were escaping out of the skylight now, some of them carrying earth ponies and unicorns. This moment of kind courage gave him hope, and reminded him what he was fighting for.

In the storage space beneath the impressive marble staircase, there was an emergency firehose and a flow valve. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do, it was all he had at the moment. Reaching out with his telekinesis, he smashed the glass case, sending more glass to the floor, and began pulling out the coiled hose. Then, gritting his teeth, he gave the flow valve a hard yank to get the brass wheel spinning.

The hose came to life with unexpected suddenness, and he had trouble holding on to it.

Tarnish wrestled with the hose, uncertain if he was strong enough, but he did not decrease the flow of water. No, he opened up the valve all the way, and would deal with consequences as best he could. The rushing flood of water swept the glass away, but also flooded the floor. Tarnish saw the false-alicorn coming around the corner, where the bottom of the stairs met the floor, and in a moment of inspired brutality, he turned the hose on the rampaging psychopath.

The insane creature was knocked from its hooves, which gave the crowd a chance to get away. Tarnish watched as they stampeded for the exits, many of them leaving behind bloody hoofprints. Much to Tarnish’s dismay, the alicorn began to recover, and astonishingly enough, it stood up, though it had to lean into the crushing flow of water.

It seemed impossible.

Uncertain of what to do next, Tarnish continued to spray his foe while advancing towards the rivet gun. Surely, red-hot rivets would do some damage. While he’d never actually operated a rivet gun, he had once smacked a mook with a jackhammer, so he had experience with heavy equipment. There was still glass on the floor, though not as much, so he had to watch his step. More ponies were escaping, some of them going down into the subway tunnels. Tarnish realised that he didn’t need to win this fight—he just had to keep the pseudo-alicorn occupied so that the ponies could make good their escape.

The alicorn-shaped brute fired a magic blast, not at Tarnish, but at the flow valve, which exploded. Water geysered up out of the pipe, and Tarnish, still holding his hose, heaved a sigh of unsettled disappointment as it went limp, the last thing he wanted when dealing with a larger, more dangerous, more capable foe. His hose going limp enraged him, and also left him feeling oddly insecure… inadequate, somehow. When he looked down at the now dripping nozzle, he scowled and then tossed the hose away.

When the pseudo-alicorn began shooting at him, Tarnish was forced to flee, to take cover. He scrambled about, but there didn’t seem to be any particular place to go. One blast came a bit too close, and left a crater in the floor mere inches from his hind hooves. He owed Vinyl a hearty and heartfelt thank you for the live-fire exercises, where she had shot at him without holding back. Sure, Octavia and Maud both were distressed by this activity, but it was saving him now. He had to survive this so he could gloat about it—possibly, if the opportunity struck.

One blast grazed his tail; which not only left it a bit shorter, but now the stench of burning hair tickled Tarnish’s nose and threatened to make him sneeze. These telekinetic blasts were crude, not particularly magical, but dangerous nonetheless. The sheer, terrifying friction from their force almost made them fireblasts. Another blast grazed his ass, skimming right over the spot where he’d been shot long ago, and he could feel skin peeling away.

Yep, he owed Vinyl breakfast in bed for those live-fire exercises.

“HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?” the false-alicorn shrieked, its voice somehow foalish.

Unwilling to respond, Tarnish hightailed it to the food court, hoping to find cover, and maybe something sharp.

“WHERE DID YOU GO?”

Squatting beneath a counter, Tarnish could hear the ominous crunch-crunch of the nightmarishly tough abomination approaching. His ass hurt—considerably—but not much could be done about that right now. As much as he wanted to sit down in a tub of cool water and soothe his burning buttocks, now was not the time. He wouldn’t be able to sit for a while, that’s for sure, and the injury’s location would make pinching a loaf more than a little difficult.

No one shot him in the ass and got away with it; no one.

Now was not the time to get mad though, but it was the time to get even. Sniffing, Tarnish could smell burned food and hot fryer oil. Ears pricking, he listened as the false-alicorn drew closer, closer, and closer still. The fryer was just about two yards a way, but would also leave him exposed and in the open. He waited, unmoving, trying not to think of the pain in his ass, and allowed the false-alicorn to come even closer, a risky move indeed. Reaching out with his telekinesis, he snatched a metal spoon out of a pot and hurled it to the back of the kitchen.

“I HAVE YOU NOW!”

Not knowing his enemy’s exact location, Tarnish launched himself at the fry-station. He lifted the basket, slung it around, and boiling hot grease spattered his hide, burning him and leaving dozens of angry red blisters. As for the false-alicorn, it was right there, at the counter, mere yards away, and Tarnish hurled the fry basket, filled with burnt, black food, right at him.

There was an awful sizzle when the basket collided with the pseudo-alicorn’s face, and the creature screeched as it was drenched in boiling hot oil, which ran down its neck in rivulets. One eye burst as the jelly within boiled, and the screeching, howling creature swiped at its face with its wings, trying to make the burning stop.

Tarnish was just about to toss the second basket when his foe vanished.

Reflexive teleportation?

For all of its power, the false-alicorn didn’t seem particularly skilled in magic. He waited, listening, his ears straining to hear. This fight wasn’t done, this score was not settled, and Tarnish was still sore about being shot in the ass yet again, which brought out the worst of his vindictive nature. He heard screaming and splashing, but he wasn’t sure where he heard it. Now, it was his turn in this game of hide and go seek.

Wincing, he looked down at his own grease burns, and then quickly turned away. Those would leave scars, maybe even bald patches. The grease was still burning him, still cooking him, the hot spatters that had rained upon him still fried his flesh and there was little he could do about it at the moment.

Of course the pseudo-alicorn had retreated to the fountain, that made sense. Tarnish peered between two enormous potted plants, which gave him cover, and watched as the horrible beast rolled and thrashed in the water. Safe, at least for the moment, he calmly considered his options. Water was wet and electricity was a terrible, unforgiving mistress. His eyes went from place to place, surveying the wrecked, demolished lobby of the train station, and he hoped to find a suitable source of electricity that he could use.

Above him, there was an electrical cable that hung down from the ruined ceiling, the cord that gave power to the overhead ornamental light fixture. He wondered, briefly, how Princess Celestia was doing, how her battle to maintain control of the sun fared, and then with icy calm, he yanked the electrical cord free from the light. With a casual toss, he flung the cord into the nearby fountain, where his foe still thrashed about, trying to stop the awful burning.

A keening wail filled the lobby and in the fountain, the pseudo-alicorn went rigid as blue arcs danced along its body and its wings. Wearing an unbearably smug expression, Tarnish chalked this up as a hard-won victory. Alicorn or not, this sort of electrocution was fatal. Organs would be cooked, arteries would boil, and brain cells would pop like popcorn.

Inside the wall a few yards away, there was a sizzle, a pop, and then a bang. As Tarnish licked his lips, the electrical arcing ceased, and the false-alicorn, steaming and partially cooked, began to rise up out of the fountain. One eye was ruined, its face was a nightmarish mask of cooked meat, its lips were gone, which left its teeth visible, and it had no ears.

But it was very much alive, and angry.

So angry.

“Well,” Tarnish said to himself, “that could’ve gone better.”

A single blast destroyed the machine that powered the rivet gun and Tarnish was forced to keep moving so that, he too, would not be obliterated. His frogs were on fire, and each step was agony as little shards of glass worked their way into the sensitive flesh. Alicorns, even false ones, were tough—impossibly tough creatures, and they took exception to being fried in grease and shocked. He was doubtful now, wondering if he’d live through this.

At least some of the crowd had escaped, maybe more than half. He had no idea if they’d survive the city, and he couldn’t worry about it, either, because he was too busy trying to survive this. He bounded left, he bounded right, going this way and that way, but never travelling in a predictable path. Powerful bolts of telekinetic magic skimmed by him, some of which he could feel the searing heat from.

He thought about tapping into his druidic magic, but worried that it might do more harm than good. That was something that couldn’t be controlled, it could only be unleashed, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to deal with that sort of catastrophe right now. He was hungry, in pain, and getting tired. When had he slept last? He’d been up late, burning the midnight oil, as he was prone to do. When he slept, he dreamed of Skyreach, so sleep wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

It was something that both he and Vinyl dealt with, a shared problem.

Fearing that he might be out of ideas, he lept over the retaining wall of the indoor garden and took cover.

Too much ground had been lost, and now, Tarnish found himself backed into a corner. He was safe for the moment, but not for much longer. His enemy—his surprisingly capable enemy—seemed to be taking a bit of a breather, and Tarnish didn’t blame him. Trapped in a corner, there wasn’t a whole lot that Tarnish could do, and he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Tarnish knew that when his foe came for him, he would come on strong and ready.

The mistakes made in the kitchen ambush would not get repeated.

Glancing around, he searched for something, anything that might help him, but nothing presented itself. He could hear the clip-clop of hooves on marble tile, and the heavy, laboured breathing of his injured foe. As for Tarnish himself, he left bloody hoofprints behind with each step, he was blistered, burnt, and had a sore ass.

This wasn’t how he wanted to die.

He thought of Maud; their last words had been angry ones, shouty ones. They’d never been the sort to make outright demands of one another, that just wasn’t their way, but he’d done exactly that—and now, as he was stalked by an enemy that he’d underestimated, Tarnish felt guilty and ashamed.

No weapons. Nothing he could improvise with. This game of hide and go seek would end poorly. Badly. While the delay was pleasant, it gave him time to think, Tarnish began to wish that the end would just hurry up. He glanced around, still trying to find something, still hoping that some opportunity would present itself, while not feeling terribly optimistic about his chances.

Then, he noticed the brass vent. Tarnish, a skinny stringbean, could not help but smile. Most ponies would never be able to fit into the vent, but he was not most ponies. Sure, he was a giant, but he was a giant made of noodles, as Pebble was fond of saying. Maud teased him sometimes about being stick-thin, and Octavia fretted that he was too thin, that he needed to eat more.

As quietly as possible, he began to unscrew the vent so that he might escape.

He emerged into a dark storage closet. It was a tight squeeze, and he’d lost more than a little skin squeezing through some spots, some corners, but he was alive, if bloodied. A little light crept beneath the gap under the door, and he had himself a look around to see what he might find. Pulling aside a heavy sheet of canvas, he found himself a construction cart of sorts, and it was filled with tanks of compressed gas. Turning one around, he saw a yellow warning sticker emblazoned with bright orange flames.

This was something.

There were six tanks, each of which was almost as tall as he was. Heavy, solid, and filled with something flammable—it almost left him giddy with glee. If all else failed, things could be exploded. Surely the abomination was vulnerable to good old-fashioned exploding. Outside the closet, he could hear the pseudo-alicorn bellowing, making wordless shouts, and shrieking.

The big green canister was almost too heavy to lift, but somehow, he managed. With a flick of magic, he flung open the door, stuck his head out, and spotted his target right away. Tarnish recklessly smashed the valve at the top of the canister with as much telekinetic force as he could muster, and when it broke off, the makeshift missile went flying off with a foul-smelling whoosh.

With a wordless shout, the false-alicorn dove away. It’s alarm was understandable, reasonable even, but Tarnish was annoyed when his shot went wide and his makeshift missile went flying right past. There was a terrific kebong as the canister buried itself into the wall of the mezzanine, and lodged in place, it hissed as it continued to release its gaseous contents.

“You know,” Tarnish said as he lifted a second canister and took aim, “the newspapers once called me the most dangerous unicorn alive. Some of them still do. It gives me a real rush of ego, let me tell you. When I’m done with you, I do believe there will be some actual truth to that statement. Have fun riding the express train to Tartarus!”

With a telekinetic chop, Tarnish snapped off the valve and set his second missile flying.

A wordless stream of garble streamed forth from the lipless mess that was the pseudo-alicorn’s mouth. Tarnish had a pretty good idea of what was being said, probably the usual questions that he got during moments just like this one, asking if he was mad, or suicidal, or both. Or perhaps a warning that he was about to kill them both, that one was pretty common.

The second canister-missile also missed, but came close, so close. It skittered over the floor like a skipping stone, smashing and shattering marble tiles, and disappeared down the stairs leading to the subway. Tarnish readied another canister as his enemy hurried off for cover and he wondered just how much flammable gas was getting dumped into the air. At the moment, he didn’t care, but had secret hopes that this would be a fireball visible from Princess Luna’s moon.

“Third time’s the charm!” There was a whole lot of crazy in Tarnish’s voice, but he failed to notice, he was too busy preparing to fire.

As it turned out, the third time was not the rousing success that he had hoped for. Slack-lipped, Tarnish blew a raspberry of disgust, but did not give up. Now was not the time for quitting, not when he was so close to blowing himself to smithereens. The third missile had smashed into a wooden newspaper stall, and reduced it to splinters.

Unknown to Tarnish, the third missile had also ruptured the natural gas line, the same line that supplied the entire mezzanine. Oblivious to this fact, he prepared the fourth missile, all while wearing a mad, bloody grin that showed far too many pink teeth. The false-alicorn was running back and forth now, panting, its lone eye glittering with fear.

This time, he scored, and a harsh, barking cheer erupted from his lips as the flying canister missile struck the pseudo-alicorn. The impact tore off a wing, severing it neatly at the joint, and bowled the impossibly-durable creature right over. From the looks of things, several ribs were shattered, and a tremendous puddle of blood spread over the floor as the felled creature floundered about, bleating from pain.

But this was not the end that Tarnish had hoped for.

Somehow, the felled behemoth managed to get its hooves beneath it, and Tarnish watched in wide-eyed horrified astonishment as it stood up. Several ribs could be seen poking through its side, its wing was gone, a bloody mess of feathers and meat on the floor, and arterial jets spurted from the gaping wound where the wing once was.

The closet behind Tarnished Teapot was of stone construction, with a metal door. He considered this as he chose his next action, and hoped that it would be enough. If not, he doubted that he would suffer much anyhow. This fight had to end, this abomination had to die, and Tarnish hoped that this would not be a pyrrhic victory.

Retreating into the closet, he struck a spark of flame…

What happened next was indescribable. A Tartarian fury engulfed him, and in seconds he was deafened. The heat was hot and the world became a smear of impossible colours as everything exploded. Though deaf, he heard strange beeping in his ears, then silence, then beeping again, a sound that resonated against the inside of his skull. He was being cooked alive, not that it mattered, because this would all be over in seconds.

But the seconds stretched to an eternity.

As the Tartarian eruption continued, Tarnish tried to think of good things before he died. His thoughts turned to Pebble, as was so often the case. For whatever reason, he thought about when she was young, so very young, and he had just returned from Skyreach. She’d sneezed, and he thought it was the most precious thing ever, never mind the fact that his face had been drenched in snot.

The world around him tumbled, and Tarnish felt himself falling down, him and his closet.

As his head smacked against the steel door, dazing him, he thought of Megara. He was only just getting to know her, and as much as he loved her, it was quite possible that Maud loved her more. It left him jealous sometimes, the special relationship that seemed to be developing between the two. He wanted Megara to be a daddy’s girl, he wanted her to adore him like Pebble did, but life it seemed, had other plans.

Hot, sticky blood dribbled into his right eye, and the sting of it made him cry out.

The contents of the closet clunked around him, bashing him, smashing him, and cruel corners of crates pressed hard into his flesh as reality collapsed. Something monstrously heavy struck the back of his skull and the impact filled his vision with dancing multicoloured lights. What was up was now down and what was down was now up. Left was right. Right was left. Nothing made sense.

It seemed as though he would go tumbling down forever.

Just as he thought about his mother, whom he loved, the hard, sharp corner of a crate crashed into his left ear, and he knew no more.

Unexpectedly, the closet door opened, and Tarnished Teapot peered out into the unknown. He saw dancing dust motes and darkness speared by a few shafts of light. He guessed that the entire lobby had collapsed down into the subway station beneath. There were no flames to be seen, which was odd, and he wondered if the explosion had somehow snuffed them out. Bloodied, busted up but alive, he emerged from his closet to have a better look around.

Metal beams, stone blocks, steel conduit cables, glass, and other hazards were all around him. To his left was brown dirt and sunlight—it seemed as though some of the outside had come spilling in during the collapse. A section of wrought iron fence poked up through the dirt, and Tarnish, a paranoid sort, picked up a piece of the wrecked fence to use it as a makeshift spear. It was two yards long, black, had a wicked spiked tip, and would no doubt do incredible grievous bodily harm.

As his hearing returned, he heard the arcing crackle of electricity. Water dripped down from above, and poured from broken, exposed pipes. Would Princess Celestia forgive him for blowing up the train station? Would Cloudy? Thinking of his mother-in-law chilled his blood, and he feared her anger more than just about anything else.

In the darkness, something whimpered, and Tarnish felt his guts twist. He was not alone here, his enemy still lived. Though his ears were ringing, he tried to listen. Somewhere, nearby, he heard the squeal of metal against metal, and the grinding of stone. Killing alicorns, even false ones, was a dirty, dreadful business, and for the first time, Tarnished Teapot began to worry about a princess taking a turn towards evil. Taking them out, subduing them would be almost impossible, and it was only now that he understood Princess Celestia’s obsession with purity of thought, an issue that they’d discussed a few years back.

He did a poor job of guarding his own thoughts, and maybe, just maybe, that needed to change.

Everything ached and he limped. His head had a few knots that hurt now, but he knew from experience that the pain would be unbearable later. If there was a later. He still had to survive this somehow. Gripping his iron implement of impalement in his telekinesis, he scrambled over the rubble, mindful of the sharp, pokey bits, and made his way towards the whimpering.

Near the subway tracks, he found his hated foe, now little more than a pitiful mess half buried alive. One hind leg made feeble kicks, its hoof trying to knock away rubble, and the other hind leg was a mangled, twisted mess. The creature’s rump was visible, exposed, but the rest of him was buried in a jagged prison of shattered steel, broken glass, and crumbled stone.

Still alive, though not for much longer.

Stabbing him wasn’t enough. Tarnish feared that ramming his makeshift spear into the creature’s rump just wouldn’t be enough to end it all. Woozy, he wobbled, but recovered himself. There was a lot of water down here, everything was wet, and Tarnish thought of his failed attempt to electrocute his foe. This time, he would not fail.

The subway’s third rail, damaged, had an exposed power cable—one of the big dangerous ones. It was still quite live, hissing and popping as though it were a living thing. This had to end; it had to end because this creature was just too dangerous to let live. An alicorn, even a false one, was just not something that one could imprison. Even if it could somehow be contained, Grogar’s agents raided the prisons.

No, this poor creature, twisted by soul-splicing, had to be put down.

Tarnish climbed, getting up and away from the wetness, and using his telekinesis, he lifted the cable that powered the third rail. It crackled like an electric serpent, hissing and spitting, and never in his life was he more careful than he was right now. He moved away from drips, wondered briefly if there still might be explosive gas in the air, and thought about how good some ice cream would be, how cooling, soothing, and refreshing.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked, his voice cracking. “You and I, we can’t exist in the same world. I exist to defend the natural order from corruptions such as yourself. I gotta admit, at first, this was all about me being pissed off. You… you came to the city that I sometimes call home and you… you’ve done all these awful things. My daughter has been foalnapped. I was having a bad day and I suppose I came to take it out on you. But I’m putting all that behind me right now, so that I can do what is vitally necessary.”

As he spoke, he wrapped the live cable around his makeshift spear.

“Princess Celestia warned me to guard my thoughts, and she’s right. I’m not doing this out of malice, or anger, but from a sense of duty. Cloudy… my mother-in-law, she told me that I’m not supposed to kill things, even if those things are trying to kill me. But she also said that exceptions have to be made when others are dying… I’m allowed to do what’s necessary, what’s needed. Right now, my conscience feels pretty clear. No hard feelings.”

Electric arcs danced along the length of his improvised impaler.

With nothing left to say, Tarnished Teapot jammed the wicked point of his electrified spear right into the false-alicorn’s exposed, vulnerable rump, harpooning his enemy. He drove his weapon down, ramming it through, until he felt the iron tip strike stone. The body ignited as blue electrical arcs crackled, and wishing to spare himself the sight, Tarnish turned away. Though he did not watch, he knew that the sound would be one of those things that would haunt him forever, something heard in dreams, just one more thing to cause him insomnia.

Panting, in pain, Tarnish somehow pulled himself up and out of his tomb. He emerged into the sunlight, which seemed dull somehow, not as bright as it should be, and had a hazy moment of understanding, a realisation that Princess Celestia was having a bit of trouble with her sun. It was dark to the west, a line could be seen in the sky where the light abruptly ended, and even the stars could be seen.

He hoped that ponies wouldn’t think that the Royal Pony Sisters were having a spat.

Turning about, he had himself a look at the train station. It had collapsed. Well, some of it. Most of it. The outer walls still stood, sort of, but the roof and middle had come tumbling down. Rubble covered the tracks, and from the looks of things, the train in the cradle wouldn’t be moving any time soon.

“Oh no,” he groaned as he noticed the pseudo-alicorn flapping clumsily, no doubt flying over to investigate the train station, perhaps to check on its companion. “No… no…”

The pseudo-alicorn didn’t land so much as it just smashed into the ground. It was quick to recover though, and Tarnish tried to think of his options as his new foe approached. This one was female, not that it mattered, and she appeared to be completely whole of body. Running wasn’t an option; he wasn’t sure if he could run in his current condition, and it probably wouldn’t do him much good.

Since running wasn’t an option, that meant fighting.

Author's Note

It's a bad pain day. There's lots of editing, but I worry that some mistakes might have slipped through. Forgive me. A lot of work went into this. I'd love to hear what you think.

Anchors away

Flanked on both sides, Dandelia paid no mind her to escorts as she was led into Bank Square. Of course he would be here, at this place, as this place was once his headquarters. Mariner Financial & Trust had been stripped of its name, its branding, and the enormous anchor adorning the front had been pulled down just after the failed coup. Where else would he go to lick his wounds, but to the place that had once been his palace?

From the looks of it, the building was quite damaged, but seemed structurally sound, at least at the moment. Even damaged, it was quite a structure, a distinct feature of the Manehattan skyline. Just a hair over one-thousand feet tall, it was the world’s tallest brick building, with about eightyish or so floors. Some called it a wonder of the world, but in Dandelia’s opinion, the brick and glass building was tacky—just like Mariner.

Then, she saw him; he stood near the front entrance, surrounded by a dozen or more of his fellows. When he saw her, he started moving right away, and she could not help but notice that his face showed signs of relief. Of course it did; a peasant posing as a prince. How it must trouble his mind, and how comforting it must be to be back in the presence of one’s betters. It took effort to keep her face neutral, because she wanted nothing more than to sneer with contempt.

“Lady Dandelia—”

“I am Princess Emeritus of the Night Court, She who ruled in Princess Luna’s stead until her return.” Dandelia’s words were cold, frozen, and utterly lacking in emotion. She drew herself up to her full impressive height, as was befitting a royal, and then she leveled her gaze upon the approaching earth pony wearing an alicorn’s skin, a contemptible monster that would have to be put down.

But now was not the right moment.

Tilting her head slightly, she looked up at the phallic monument that Mariner had built for himself; feeling disgusted, she did not look at it for long, and with a snort, she brought her gaze to rest upon Mariner once more, who seemed to be struggling. His face was a bit twitchy and there was a bloody gash along his jawline.

“Things have not gone to plan,” Mariner said, stating the obvious.

“Where is my grandson?” she demanded, her tone firm, spoken in much the same way that one spoke to a servant that was a colossal disappointment. She saw Mariner wince, and silently celebrated that she could wear away at his confidence.

“The sorcerer undid our unity with words,” Mariner replied as his head shook from side to side. “I thought it to be a matter of willpower, but I was wrong. Even weakened as he was, the sorcerer has a curious power. He turned us against one another. Many were swayed by his silver tongue and there was a huge fight. Some questioned my leadership. My vision. I do not know where the sorcerer is at the moment, but I am planning to recapture him.”

Willpower. To his credit, Mariner had remarkable willpower. Earth pony willpower. Dandelia studied her father’s former business partner, noted each and every facial tic, and was somewhat impressed at how calm Mariner seemed to be. From what little that was known, most Ascendency alicorns were volatile and more than a little insane. It didn’t take much to provoke them, and to cause them to fly into a rage.

“I miss Caper,” Mariner mentioned, his expression now one of exquisite sadness. “His counsel was invaluable. There was no finer business partner. Without him, none of this would be possible. He was just the investor I needed to realise my dreams. Well, both he and Lord Sunfire. Both are males of means…” His words trailed off, he blinked a few times, ground his teeth, and then looked Dandelia right in the eye.

“Have you come to join me?”

Jaw firm and set, Dandelia somehow kept her cool. “Just what is it that you hope to accomplish?”

Mariner twitched, and his wings rustled against his sides. For a brief moment, it seemed as though he might explode, as if he was containing something that threatened to come bursting out of his skin. His eyes turned glassy, as if a torrent of tears might come rushing out at any moment, and the pavement cracked, split, and crumbled beneath his hooves when he stomped.

“Why should godhood be exclusive to princesses?” he said at last, his every word reedy, almost a shrill whine. “The lottery of destiny is cruel and untenable. Why should one be born with the destiny to be a pauper and another born to move the sun? It is all so senseless… so meaningless. You yourself… what makes you fit to rule, other than birth? Some strange quirk of fate? This city is built upon the suffering of those born to be paupers… and I have come to put an end to all this. When we are all gods, when we can all choose our futures, we shall be free.”

What drivel.

What dreck.

So infuriated was she, that Dandelia wasn’t even sure where to begin. Some had to rule, while others had to serve. Such was the way of things. Then there was the matter of Mariner’s hypocrisy; he proclaimed himself the leader of his band of malcontents and ruled over them with an iron hoof—or did, until encountering Sumac. It took all of her willpower to suffocate a furious laugh, and maintaining her neutral expression was exhausting.

“The Lord of the Sunfire Barony is quite an enlightening fellow,” Mariner said to Dandelia. His words were only a little screechy, and so far, he seemed to be holding everything together. “An earth pony… just as I once was. What dreadful quirk of fate caused him to be born as such? Why was he denied the privilege of magic? Of power? Why was one born to rule put into such a humble body devoid of power?”

Dandela felt her ears twitching, and was annoyed that she couldn’t stop them. Earth ponies had magic—exceptionally powerful magic. Princess Celestia moved around the sun and planets with earth pony magic. She had trouble holding back her distaste, and with each passing second, she became more and more convinced that Mariner was an idiot of the worst sort. Just being in close proximity to him made her brain ache. Why, Lulamoon Hollow’s very existence was owed to the earth ponies, who kept the land fertile without the sun. White hot contempt made her neck prickle, and for a time, she considered schooling Mariner in the ways of magic.

Unicorns might bend and control reality, but earth ponies held dominion over life.

Tongue-tied, tongue dried, and with her lips feeling like cracked parchment, Dandelia considered her options. This was not a situation favourable to her, but she held some advantages. These… imposters wearing alicorn skins were not well-schooled in magic. They were all brute force, with undisciplined telekinesis as their primary weapons. From what little that was known, from Prince Blueblood’s intelligence report, most did not have even a rudimentary understanding of spellcraft, or even the remedial understanding of those who’d completed magical kindergarten.

“After hearing the plight of the Lord of the Sunfire Barony, I was ever-more motivated to do something about the unfairness of all of this. We all deserve greatness… to live up to our full potential.” Mariner squirmed and his impressive muscles knotted beneath his skin. “The great gifts can be divided… split up and shared equally. Princess Celestia, we already know that her magic can be stolen from her. Taken. Why should only one pony have all that power? It should be taken from her and a fair portion given to all, equally.”

“So you think all of this is justified?” she said at last.

“I will confess, extreme measures had to be taken. Revolutions are hardly ever bloodless.” Mariner paused, his lip quivering, and his eyes turned glassy with tears once more. “You want to hear me say that I am a monster… well, I am. Do not think me foolish, I am fully aware of what I’ve become. All of this is necessary. How else could this happen? Righting this wrong was almost impossible, so I’ve taken the form of a creature that does the impossible as a daily occurence. This is just a first step, a clumsy one I’ll admit. We’re still learning how to walk.”

“How many foals have you destroyed to make this first step possible?” she asked.

Mariner’s expression turned to one of pained guilt. “Even one is too many. But necessary. I’ve had to step outside the bounds of ethics and morality. At the cost of a few lives, I can give millions a better future. I suppose you’re worried of Sumac’s fate. Regrettably, it is necessary. A sorcerer is a rare gift to the world. It cannot go to waste. With but one life, we can facilitate great change. Level the playing field. In the glorious future I’ve seen, these awful misdeeds are recognised as a small price to pay.”

Dandelia struggled to maintain her stony, stoic mask.

“Every single pony has the right to power.” Mariner struggled with his words, and his speech was halting. “Every single pony has the right to magic, to flight, and to great strength. As individuals, we are not whole. We’ve been parted out and made lesser, perhaps to keep us dependent upon the alicorns that rule us. Each of us exists as a mere part of a greater whole, and that is a dreadful crime against us. We deserve better. Every foal born deserves to know the joy of flight, the wondrous discovery of magic, and the stamina and strength of earth ponies.”

She found his words abhorrent, but hid her repulsed reaction. The others had let down their guard now; they were not a disciplined sort, not soldiers. Most of them weren’t even looking at her, or watching her for signs of treachery. Even Mariner had lowered his guard so that he might indulge himself in what he thought was a sympathetic ear. She had him monologuing, which meant that he was lulled into a sense of false security.

Dandelia Lion Lulamoon was a pony of an exceptional and storied bloodline. A princess by birthright. Before Princess Luna’s return, she had briefly sat upon the Throne of Night, and ruled the Night Court, just as her father had done. Her loyalties were to Equestria; not herself, and perhaps, not even to the Royal Pony Sisters. She was a devoted servant to the land, who also just so happened to serve the Royal Pony Sisters, as long as they too served the better interests of the land.

Mariner’s entire monologue reeked of self-serving selfishness.

She cast her stern gaze upon the city around her, a city now in ruins. Flames rose from whole neighborhoods, the sky was filled with acrid smoke that burned the eyes, and there was a blood-red haze obscuring the troubled sun. The cacophony of chaos could be heard all around them, the complete and utter lack of harmony. Dandelia had grown up troubled, never quite knowing her purpose. She never fully understood the point of life and living. Ruling was something thrust upon her, a duty, like having a foal and continuing her storied bloodline. It was something expected, demanded of her.

But today was not a day to rule, no.

Today was a day to serve.

Taking a deep breath, she made peace with what she was about to do, and hoped that another who also served would be able to return Sumac to Beatrix. Perhaps Blueblood would be successful, or Night Light. She paused when she thought of Night Light. He loved her, for all of her faults, he loved her. If only things had been different—if only she had been born different. She loved him, and Twilight Velvet as well. Together, the three of them had ruled the Night Court. She’d given them power, influence, and all the social capital she could muster.

Night Light would look after Beatrix and Sumac, she decided.

She had to look after Equestria.

“If I were to join you, what would be expected of me?” she asked.

Mariner blinked, hopeful.

“How might I serve this glorious future?”

A glimmer of hope blazed to life in Mariner’s eyes, his lips moved, and he struggled to respond. “Stability…” The word was almost stammered, and he had trouble spitting it out. “Not all of us have to go through the transition. We need somepony whole of mind… with clarity of mind… until we can get everything sorted out. Once we understand the process, you could ascend, of course, so that you too might share in your rightful reward.”

“So what I hear you saying is, you need somepony to bring about the stability of rule.”

Confusion flickered in Mariner’s eyes and he stood there, blinking and slack-jawed.

“You’re asking me… a born royal, to aid you in organisation. Is no one else up for the task? Who rules in this glorious future? Who is in charge? I hear you telling me not to transition, to remain as I am, so that clarity of mind is maintained and that my natural gifts, that of rulership, remain intact.”

Somehow, Mariner was now even more confused as he tried to make sense of what had been said. His lips flapped together, but no words came forth. When he blinked, he almost looked sleepy, as if he’d just woken up, and he was clearly having great difficulty forming a sentence. Dandelia reveled in his utter lack of response, she gloated that she’d exposed him for the simpleton that he truly was.

“I still remember our discussions over tea,” she said to him. “You had such entertaining ideas. Such notions of wealth and power, and what could be done with wealth and power.”

“Your father, Caper, he hoped that we would marry for practical reasons,” Mariner said as he worked to recover himself. “I must confess, I found you captivating.”

“Caper saw your true colours though, and distanced himself from you. He found out about you.” Dandelia felt a cold prickle in her belly, but refused to be ruled by fear. Not now. She’d spent too much of her life being afraid, and today was not a day to give in to fear. “His reputation suffered because of his associations with you.”

“I told him what I was planning,” Mariner confessed. “Well, some of it. I wanted to include him.”

“Sometimes, I wonder why he said nothing, and allowed all of Equestria to fall down when you made your grab for power. Blackmail? A misguided sense of friendship? Why did he abandon his sense of duty?”

“I’d like to believe that there was a part of Caper that believed I was in the right,” Mariner replied. “Just like I believe about you. I’ve always admired your intelligence, Dandelia. Beauty has never appealed to me. I’m not like other earth ponies. Always saw my sexual desires as a distraction, something to keep me from my goals. But there was something about you… about your mind.”

“Oh, I am flattered, Mariner.”

“I mean that sincerely, Dandelia.” Something that was almost a smile contorted his face unpleasantly. “Caper and I had a complicated relationship. We were business partners, but so much more. Co-conspirators, I suppose. He helped me and I helped him. I rigged the stock market while also feeding him inside knowledge. I paid him back for all that he’d given me. When I finally came into my own, I was able to finance all of Caper’s magical experiments and make his dreams come true.”

“Yes…” Dandelia almost hissed out the word. “My father’s… experiments.” She never knew much of what he’d done, because she felt better not knowing. Wizards experimented. In the old days, this was no big deal. A wizard experimented and all of magic benefited. But now, in these modern days, certain experimentations were frowned upon.

Caper did the frowny sort of magic.

“Caper once told me that he was a Dark in all but name, but I found myself in disagreement,” Mariner remarked. “Met quite a few of the Darks. All of them were quite mad. Lunatics, in the truest sense of the word. Caper didn’t quite shiver the skin like the Darks do. He was sane, for the most part. I do not wish to speak ill of my allies though. Without the Darks, I would have been discovered a whole lot sooner, and my plan exposed. They made this possible.”

Dandelia hardened her heart, looked Mariner right in the eye, and put on her best, most fetching smile. While she had graduated from Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, her real magical instruction came from several Dark tutors—family members trusted to teach her the Dark arts. While dark magic was frowned upon, and Dark magic even more so, Dandelia believed that such magic could, in fact, serve a noble purpose.

She had once saved her grandson with it, after all.

“Did you know that Caper had the Darks cast a hex on the Sunfire Barony? Lord Sunfire started making demands… wanting more and more in return for what he’d given. The final straw came when Lord Sunfire threatened to go whispering into Celestia’s ear. I still can’t believe that this was pulled off. It almost fell apart so many times, in so many ways. It does prove one thing though, one incontrovertible, fundamental fact.”

“And what would that be, Mariner?”

“Wealth, like magic, makes anything possible. I came to this country with nothing. Look at what I have done. What I have made happen. All of this”—he extended a hoof and waved at everything around him—“all of it, it was my doing. Even if I fail, which I don’t think is possible, so long as wealth exists, somepony else can pick up and continue my great work. Wealth is the great enabler. It is the only thing that can threaten the rule of the Royal Pony Sisters, and I have proven that beyond a shadow of doubt.”

“Are you suggesting that wealth is a greater force than magic?” she asked.

Mariner’s face brightened with a wry, twitchy smile. “Perhaps.”

Dandelia too, also smiled; she was going to show Mariner just how wrong he was…

Author's Note

Mariner's mark is an anchor. Did people remember? I don't know.

Much is revealed in this chapter that comes from previous stories, both from this series, and from the Weedverse as a whole. This is a heavy chapter... like an anchor.

Twinkle, Twinkle, little star

The trash-strewn streets were quiet—almost eerily so. There was a lot of noise in the distance, but Twinkleshine found the near-silence of her immediate vicinity to be quite unsettling. She was in the middle of what was a bustling city, but the streets were almost deserted. All of her senses on high alert, her body ridged, twitchy, her axe held at the ready, she had to be mindful of where she stepped, lest she put a hoof down on shattered glass or jagged, crumbled bricks.

Oh, and there was blood; enormous puddles and smears of blood.

There were ruined brownstones around her. Some had doors ripped off, others had broken windows, while others still had tremendous holes smashed into the walls. It was as if something had swept through this area, invaded every home, and hauled away the residents. It was difficult not to imagine what had happened here, which was a dreadful, unwanted distraction.

In the distance, a busted fire hydrant spewed water.

Off to her right, she saw a pile of rubble, a collapsed set of stairs, and noticed a twisted, mangled leg protruding from the destroyed masonry. She approached, cautious, and examined the body, which was almost certainly dead. Using the pommel of her axe, she poked at the exposed frog, and there was no response. Pursing her lips, she spent a moment surveying the grisly scene, observing the poor mare buried beneath the rubble of what might have been her home, and a prickle of anger left her back feeling itchy.

For the first time, she noticed the faint drone of the air raid siren way off in the distance.

Leaving the dead mare behind, she continued down the narrow street. Her eyes darted in every direction as her ears pivoted, fearful that she might be caught unaware. It was not her eyes, nor her ears that alerted her to danger, but her thaumaturgical sensory organ. Horn tingling, she came to a halt and began to swing her head around. To the left, her horn tingled less, but to the right, a faint current could be felt in the base. She raised her axe and kept her eyes peeled, certain that danger was coming.

A faint buzzing could be heard; her ears angled forwards while she bared her teeth in an almost wolfish manner. There were only so many enemies that buzzed. Bugbears, changelings, and bumbles—and she’d been warned that invading bumbles had come to Manehattan to exploit the chaos. Where they came from was unknown, as was the means by which they had come here.

Bumbles were an insectoid race with weirdly mammalian faces. They had the appearance of bees—misshapen, mutant bees, and were about half the mass of a common pony. Each of their six segmented legs ended in a clawed hand, but the most dangerous part to them was their stinger. It functioned as both a means to inject a variety of venoms, but also acted as a magical foci, similar to a unicorn’s horn. Bumbles had a collection of rays, which did everything from stunning to domination. Their jelly completely corrupted changelings and turned them into bumble-drones.

Twinkleshine didn’t know if she was ready, but she was prepared to give a good accounting of herself. Bumbles were dangerous; natural enemies of ponykind, and with a catalyst like Sumac to empower them—she didn’t want to think about what might happen. Gripping her axe, she ducked behind some stairs and waited in ambush.

Sensing the incoming ray, Twinkleshine raised her mirror-finished axe before the blast even happened. She was lucky that she had her axe; ray spells could be deflected with any suitable reflective surface that could endure the blast and not be destroyed. Even a simple vanity mirror could stop a ray spell—once—but with a powerful ray, it was likely to shatter. Thankfully, her axe was made of sterner stuff.

Rays, beams, and spells were all very different things, and she had learned about them extensively in Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. A ray and a beam might look very similar, but were completely and utterly different, at least by matter of classification. Now, at this moment, she was putting all of her schooling and time spent in dueling club to the test.

The reflected ray bounced as expected, and once reflected, harmlessly flew into a wall. Another ray was quick to follow. Rays were quick; like arrows made of light that delivered some magical effect. Twinkleshine returned fire with a beam, a continuous focused attack of heavy light, loaded photons that carried both a physical and magical element. The beam missed as the bumble dodged, and the stone pillar at the base of the stairs was cut neatly in twain by the stray blast.

A third ray was fired, and this too was deflected; she swatted it away as if she were playing badminton with a dangerous beam of light. She marvelled at how quick she was, how impossible this, and was thankful for her schooling, which allowed her to sense the rays before they manifested. As the reflected ray passed through a window, Twinkleshine fought dirty, and hurled a steel trash can at the bumble.

One segmented leg collapsed, bending in all the wrong ways, and the bumble buzzed in pain.

Twinkleshine seized the opportunity, but did not advance. Reaching out with her telekinesis, she lifted the trash cans by the stairs, six in total, and manifesting as much force as she could muster, accelerated them to astonishing speeds. The bullet train of steel trash cans smashed into the bumble, one right after the other, each of them causing extensive harm. Legs buckled, chitinous armor cracked, and with the fifth can, she somehow sheared off the bumble’s stinger.

When the bug beast hit the sidewalk, she raised the final, sixth can, and brought the hard steel edge down upon the bumble’s neck, severing it with dull, blunt force trauma. Almost panting, Twinkleshine watched as the dying body convulsed, its broken legs twitching and flailing about.

The bumble bled red; this, along with its strange mammalian face, left her unsettled.

A growing puddle of scarlet spread out from the decapitated corpse, staining the trash-strewn cement sidewalk. Wary for more danger, Twinkleshine kept her guard up, but also took a moment to collect herself. She had killed. It was not her first kill, but something about this one disturbed her. Or maybe it was the fact that she was alone, without allies, and she was already somewhat fatigued after all the fighting in Ponyville.

She didn’t know what it was, or why it was, only that she was perturbed.

Avoiding the corpse and the puddle of blood, she took off at a brisk trot in the direction the bumble had come from. Would she find more? It seemed likely. Hefting her axe, she held it out in front of her face to examine it, and saw that the mirrored, polished surface was unmarred. The crescent moon-shaped axe head was unblemished, undamaged, and this was comforting.

Buzzing alerted her to danger, as well as the tingling of her magic sense. Lacking any form of useful cover, she dove into a dumpster. Not a great place to hide—in fact, it was a terrible place to take cover, because it was full of wet garbage, warm with decomposition. She landed on piles of half-rotten, fly-blown fruits and vegetables, most of which were cabbages.

She thought cabbages smelled bad when Lemon Hearts boiled them; somehow, this was worse, so much worse, and she made herself a promise that she would never complain about Lemon Hearts cooking cabbage ever again. Why, this was even worse than what happened after a meal of boiled cabbage.

Raising her axe just a teeny, tiny bit, she used the reflection like a periscope, and was able to see two bumbles. They were talking to one another in low, droning voices, but she could not make out what they were saying. These bumbles were different than the one she had killed, as these had more armor, and their stingers were barbed.

Perhaps the creepiest thing about bumbles were the eyes, which were decidedly mammalian, and not all that different from a pony’s eyes. Killing a changeling was a whole lot easier, because they looked alien. Harpies were easy to put down, because they just looked evil as can be. But bumbles looked like fuzzy-wuzzy bumblebees, with relatable mammalian faces and eyes.

These two had to die.

After they had passed by her location, when their backs were turned to her, she popped up out of the dumpster, surrounded by a cloud of buzzing flies and adorned with rotten salad bits. She was remarkably quiet for a mare mucking about in a dumpster, and with her axe at the ready, she contemplated her next action with great care.

Rather than try something new and untested, she stuck with what she knew and cast a Dizzy-Dazzle spell. An explosive burst of concussive light flashed just in front of the bumble’s faces, blinding them, and stunning them too. They fell to the ground, clutched at their faces, and cried out in pain. This was Twinkleshine’s signature move, something she’d specialised in from a young age. Axe ready, she lept from the dumpster and moved in for the kill.

Before her hooves hit the ground though, she knew she was in trouble, because a whole bunch of bumbles swooped down from the roofs up above. Making a split-second decision, still airborne, she grabbed the dumpster behind her, and hurled it with all of her telekinetic might at the approaching swarm of bumbles. Some flew left, some flew right, some went down, and some rose up—but not all of them were fast enough to dodge a dumpster flying at subsonic speeds.

Twinkleshine hit the ground running just as the dumpster smashed into the side of a brick drug store and soda shop, crushing everything caught between it and the bricks. She kept her axe between her and her enemies, using it like a shield, all while running for her life. There were too many, far too many, and in the frantic rush, she couldn’t stop to count them all. Rays came darting down from above and speared the pavement all around her hooves.

A pair of bumbles moved in to attack, their clawed fingers extended. This was good and bad; with the bumbles moving in to finish her off, the others had ceased firing, which was good. The bad thing, however, was that they had the advantage of being airborne, while she was stuck on the ground.

The soldier bumbles began to recover, and rubbing their eyes, sat up in the road.

Perhaps it would have been better to remain hidden in the dumpster.

To her left was an appliance repair shop that had an intact window. With a hammering thud of telekinesis, she struck the glass. As it shattered into thousands of slivers, she gathered them up with her telekinesis and with high hopes for success, she hurled them at the two bumbles in hot, murderous pursuit.

Hearing shrill, droning cries of pain, she cast a glance back over her withers and saw that her pursuers were now a bloody mess. Both had been blinded and their wings shredded by the dirty fighting. But with these two down, now the entire swarm moved in as one, and Twinkleshine began to suspect that she would not be captured. They weren’t even firing rays at her, but came at her as a phalanx.

Though it was a tiring move, she cast a quick fireball, hoping to end this right here, right now. Mere seconds after the pea-sized blob of flame left her horn, the phalanx scattered, and the fireball passed through their ranks, failing to strike anything. Fearing her spell wasted, Twinkleshine manually detonated it, hoping that she might catch her attackers with the outer edges of the blast.

She had no such luck. Though there was an impressive explosion, one worthy of Trixie Lulamoon’s admiration, the fireball was a resounding failure, and now, she was even more fatigued. The consequences of failure were steep, and she hoped that she would not pay for this with her life.

Hooves skidding, she turned the corner and ran into the narrow space between buildings. A few carts were parked here, but she spotted nothing that would help her. The swarm was just behind her, getting closer with each passing second. Should she try another fireball? Perhaps the narrow confines would help.

The skinny alley opened up onto a cobblestoned street, and there was a roundabout intersection with a few abandoned delivery wagons. It was still technically night time, even though she sun was shining, and a part of her mind wondered what traffic was like during the middle of the night.

More bugs appeared, pouring out of a department store on the other side of the roundabout. Twinkleshine remembered that bumbles were hive minded, and she realised that the ones behind her had warned the others now in front of her. She was fronked and she knew it, so very fronked. There was no sense in running, she had to stop and make a stand. The hive-minded bumbles would just keep calling in reinforcements.

With that in mind, maybe making a stand was a bad idea, and she took a brief second to consider this. She had no good options. If she ran, more bumbles would come to join the chase. If she stayed and fought, reinforcements would arrive, until she was overwhelmed. Her quick thinking put the pieces together, and concluded that the two soldier bumbles were probably dispatched to look for her, after she had killed a scout.

She halted, ready to face her end, a lone unicorn against a growing swarm of bumbles.

Baring her teeth, she raised her axe and eyeballed the approaching swarms. There were a few of the bigger, better armored bumbles, those with jagged, barbed stingers, and quite a few of the lighter, smaller types that she considered scouts. They weren’t attacking yet, for reasons she did not understand, and she wondered briefly if she would, in fact, be taken alive. The prospect of which terrified her.

Perhaps they were silently conversing, deciding her fate.

A few deep breaths restored air to her burning lungs as she tried to calm herself, she considered attacking them, but wasn’t sure what that might accomplish. They were planning something, silently plotting without words. Perhaps it would be best to run, and make them chase her. It was agonising not knowing what to do.

The ponyhole cover in the street lifted and a dark figure wearing a birdlike mask spilled out. It was not alone, another figure came out, and other, and several more of them came up and out of the subway entrance. Mouth agape, Twinkleshine watched as the nightmarish masked marauders emerged from various locations.

“We have you now, ja?” one of them said in a heavily accented mechanical voice. As he spoke, he raised a massive shotgun and waved it in the direction of the bumbles that had come out of the department store. “What did I tell you? If you run from me, you will die tired.”

The bird-masked figures, many of them were armed with guns of some sort, and had swords as well. Twinkleshine suspected that she knew what the bumbles had been discussing, and why they had not attacked her—they were conveying the message that armed resistance had arrived. It was a tense moment, made more so when Twinkleshine noticed that some of the masked resistance were foal-sized.

Heart in her throat, she thought of Sumac.

“Master, I’m sick of mucking about in the sewers,” one of the foal-sized marauders said. “I’m ready for a bug hunt in the open. Give the word, Master.”

Nothing happened. Guns were held at the ready, but no shots were fired. The bumbles hovered, no doubt coming to some silent consensus, and several of the cloaked, masked figures gathered around Twinkleshine, forming a protective barrier made of living flesh. It was so sweet of them to protect a lone, vulnerable mare, but if a fight started, and she suspected that it would, they would be quick to learn that she was no helpless powderpuff.

When the first shot was fired, everything descended into chaos…

Author's Note

How's those fingernails holding out?

The sordid tale of Browngast of the Bloody Flatulence

Dying was a dirty word, at least when it applied to him, and Tarnished Teapot was less than excited by the prospect of it happening. At the moment, he could barely stand. He needed to find a spot where he could flop over onto his back and then pull the many slivers of glass from his frogs, because each step he took only pushed them in further. Though he’d been in worse scrapes, he had trouble recalling them at the moment. This was either going to be the fight that killed him, or it would be a great story to tell over tea and biscuits.

For now, the outcome remained unknown, and that was kind of exciting.

“What happened to Gentle Gust?” the mare asked in a voice that was only slightly screechy. “I felt his passing. He came here to secure the train so we could move the ponies we freed out of the dangerous city. What happened to him?”

Tarnish, lacerated, burnt, battered, blown up, bruised, and still a little deaf, took a moment to consider his response. Gentle Gust? Probably a pegasus, before the transition. How strange, he expected a pegasus to be far more brutish, but that was probably a bit tribalist. Or perhaps the opposite was true; because Gentle Gust was a pegasus, he was used to suppressing violent urges. At the moment, Tarnish wasn’t sure what he thought, or believed, but he was positive of just one thing: this would end—badly.

“You are injured. Let me save you.” The mare took one step closer, then halted with a puzzled expression. “There is something off about you. Something not right. Who are you? Perhaps more importantly, what are you?”

Well, this one was perceptive, at least.

He watched as her eyes narrowed.

Was she trying to focus some kind of magical sense upon him?

“Gust is dead,” he said to her, rather hoping to enrage her. “I killed him.”

When she replied, her voice was considerably more screechy. “Who are you that you killed a god?”

Was that fear? He suspected that it was. Injured as he was, he needed something, anything that might level the playing field. This was just more improvisation, but not the sort he was good at. He needed to be intimidating, as much as equinely possible. Perhaps if she was absolutely terrified, she would make mistakes that he could exploit.

At least, he hoped.

Looking down at himself, he found his inspiration, and then squinting at her, as menacingly as possible, he said, “I am… Browngast of the... Bloody… Flatulence. A maleficar. The more I bleed, the more dangerous I become.”

The false-alicorn mare seemed rooted to the spot.

“The one you call Gust tried to take the bodies I needed for my vile, disturbing experiments.”

“You’re… a necromancer?” Incredulous, the mare’s head shook from side to side. “Tell me, do you traffic in the knowledge of souls? Me and my kind, we might have use for you. Compensation for your services will be fair and just.”

This caught Tarnish off-guard, and he scrambled to recover himself.

If the Ascendency was openly accepting of necromancers and soul-traffickers, then things were far worse than he believed. Sure, they were dabbling in animancy, that much was known, but Tarnish held the belief that there were worse things than animancy—such as necromancy. As a druid, his magic was all about life, and necromancy was the antithesis of that. Necromancy warped the natural order.

“Are you aligned with Grogar, Maleficar?”

This sort of improvisation only worked if things remained uncomplicated and Tarnish could feel the center giving way. He’d bought himself enough time to take a breather, but he had no plan, not even an idea of how to survive whatever happened next. He supposed it was time to tap into his druid magic, but that had risks he wasn’t prepared to deal with. If he summoned a massive hurricane that wiped Manehattan off of the map, Celestia would be more than a little cross with him, and there was no telling what Cloudy might do.

“Tell me, are you the corpse-copulating type of necromancer?” she asked. “I’m not one to judge, but Mister Mariner might be hesitant to deal with you. It might be best to leave certain details out when I bring you to him.”

A free ride to Mariner. This… this was an unexpected but welcome development. As long as he was alive, he could think, make plans. If he had a little face-to-face time with Mariner, he might unleash druidic fury on a worthy target. Sure, Manehattan might get swept off into the ocean, but so would Mariner, and maybe, just maybe, that anchor cutie mark of his might drag him down to the briny depths.

As Tarnish stood there, contemplating his options, choosing how he was going to die, a confusing sequence of events all happened in quick succession—so quick in fact that he had trouble understanding everything that took place. Glass shattered as a shockwave burst through the area, steel structures warped a bit, bent, and twisted. Something that almost resembled a glowing orange blob of lava blazed along, almost travelling faster than the eye could measure, and the pseudo-alicorn just sort of exploded.

She ceased to be in an eyeblink, vanishing in a poof of explosive, hungry flame.

Tarnish couldn’t really make out what happened though, as the shockwave struck him, lifted him from his hooves, and sent him flying away from the epicenter of the false-alicorn detonation. The world was exploding again, and it was loud, so very loud. His ears, already damaged, balked at processing this new blast, and so he only heard brief blips of it as he was hurled through the air, propelled by invisible, violent forces.

The spot where the pseudo-alicorn once stood was now a bubbling, boiling mess.

While he tumbled end over end, watching as the horizon of the world flipped over and over, Tarnish thought of Pebble. She was utterly fantastic, Pebble. A real treat. Skyscrapers pointed up, then they pointed down, then up again, then down again. Sideways skyscrapers were the worst, and left him with a sense of vertigo. He saw blue, then rubble, more blue, more rubble, and if he squinted just right, he could see the remnants of the fiery blast that had just killed him. For a few troubled seconds, he worried that he might fall up into the blue sky, and wondered if this is what Pebble felt when her hooves left the ground.

Poor Pebble, terrified of heights.

Riding the concussive force of the ever-expanding explosive shockwave, he waited for his end.

“I’m sorry.”

The deadpan was awfully familiar, and even though he was half-deaf, he could hear just enough of it to make it out. An apology? Groggy, he tried to recall what had just happened. Right, he’d been exploded. For the second time this day. Day? No. It was dark. Why was it dark? Was he blind? He blinked, and things came into focus a bit. But it was still dark.

“I threw a rock.”

“You threw a rock…” he groaned.

“I threw a rock really hard,” was the monotone reply. “It smashed the sound barrier like Octavia smashes cake and transitioned into a liquid state about a third of the way to the target. By the time it struck, it was trailing streams of superheated gas as it boiled from the friction. On impact, there was a massive release of energy—”

“Yeah, I felt that,” he said before Maud could really get into it. “Why’s it dark?”

“The sun went back east. I’m not sure if Princess Celestia is in control of it at the moment.”

Wincing, he gingerly attempted to move, and suffered instant regret. His body seemed to be one giant bruise, but he was alive though, and would recover. The false-alicorn had been, well, it was either vapourised or de-atomised, he couldn’t tell in his current state. Maud—encased in her centaur-steel armor—was standing guard just about a yard away. Upon seeing her, he was immediately relieved and angry, so much so he couldn’t decide which one to feel first.

“Never thrown a rock that hard before,” she deadpanned. “Wasn’t sure what might happen. Never applied that much strength to anything before. I saw you were in danger. Was trailing you with my Maud Sense and when I saw the pillar of fire rising up from the train station, I sort of figured that just had to be you. Browngast of the Bloody Flatulence, huh?”

Again, he groaned.

“You know, after all our years together, you never stop impressing me, Tarnish. Even in your current sorry state, you remained in control of the situation. She was terrified of you, you know. And for good reason.”

“Buttering me up doesn’t change the fact that I’m pissed at you,” he said as he flopped over and tried to get his hooves beneath him.

“Really, right now—”

“Yes, right now!” He tried to stand, but failed. “You shouldn’t be here!”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” was her stolid response. “That’s not how we work—”

“The foal, Maud… the foal. What if something happens? Do you really want to lose both Pebble and the foal? What were you thinking, coming here to do this? Do you know what this is doing to me? I could very well lose almost everything important in one fell swoop! How can you do this to me?”

The suit of armor didn’t move. It didn’t rattle. Nothing clanked.

He rose, his legs wobbling like those of a newborn, and somehow, he managed to stand. Blood was running down inside of his ear, which annoyed him, and he tilted his head off to one side so it could drain out. There were no stars overhead, just a curtain of blackness, and the city all around him was alive with the sounds of violence.

“I couldn’t stay at home,” Maud finally replied. “Like you, I couldn’t bear losing what I hold dear… namely you and Pebble. Don’t you understand? I had no choice. I had to come. Tarnish, don’t you insult my intelligence, I know the risk I’m taking. We can fight about this later, but can we please just focus on what is important? Our survival? Finding Pebble?”

“I don’t want to fight about this at all,” he whined while he fought to keep his legs strong.

“Fine.” There was a faint wavering in Maud’s response. “We’ll sort this out later.”

“There shouldn’t even be a later,” he snapped. “You shouldn’t be here!”

Maud’s armored head turned in his direction.

“As much as I want to find Pebble, I have orders, Maud… I’m supposed to bring back Sumac above all else, even if it costs me Pebble. It’s awful, and I don’t like it, and if you’re here, that makes everything so much harder if the situation gets out of hoof! I can’t make decisions like that in front of you! This just twists me into pretzels!”

“I understand.”

“You understand?”

“I do.”

“You do?”

“Yes. I do. While I might not like it, I understand the necessity of it. No matter what happens tonight, no matter how this ends, I will not fault you for doing your job. I give you my word.”

“Maud, that’s… that’s quite a thing to say… especially after I acted the way I did.”

“I love you because of your sense of duty,” she said with a soft quaver in her voice. “You do what is right and you never back down. What sort of mare, no… what sort of wife would I be if I prevented you from doing the very thing that makes me love you?”

“I… uh…”

“If you stand there with your mouth hanging open, you’ll swallow yet another bug.”

Defeated, Tarnish’s ears drooped. The pain in his frogs threatened to make him swoon, and he really needed to pull the slivers of glass out. Ideally, finding a drug store and borrowing some supplies would be a smart move, because the constant, steady blood loss would be his undoing, sooner or later. Probably sooner.

“I know Pebble’s general direction,” Maud said to Tarnish. “If we find her, we’ll probably find Sumac and Moon Rose. Hopefully they’re all together. Not sure how we’ll recover them, but we’ll have to think of something. Preferably together. Throwing more rocks probably isn’t our best option.”

He nodded in agreement.

“Getting you patched up is a priority. What a mess.”

“I’ve had worse,” he replied, almost boasting.

“Husband, you look like a zombie in a horror movie.”

“Thanks, Wife. That makes me feel immeasurably better.”

“Don’t mention it,” she replied in a sweet, demure deadpan.

“I got shot in my ass—”

“Again?”

“Yeah, again!” Baring his teeth, he sat back down, and then flopped over onto his back so he could start pulling out slivers of glass. “I give as good as I get though. Made myself a harpoon, and connected the power main for the subway to it. Then I stabbed him in his ass.”

“Shocking.”

“Keep an eye out, Wife. I gotta pull glass out of my frogs. Don’t let danger sneak up on us.”

“Well, hurry up,” Maud urged. “We must find Pebble. Nothing feels right. Bad things are about to happen.”

Author's Note

Next up: Dandelia's diplomacy.

One final star

Surrounded on all sides, outnumbered and overwhelmed, Dandelia Lion Lulamoon calmly considered her options and evaluated every advantage she had at her disposal. There was a fountain full of water, which was potentially useful. She was no great and powerful hydromancer, in fact, she barely had a connection to water at all, but she could do a little water shaping if the need arose.

In the distance, there was an explosion, and a pillar of bright orange fire rose into the sky. She did not let this distract her, but she did notice how skittish the pseudo-alicorns were. Feathers were now ruffled and heads turned in every direction as the whole herd of them became spooked. For all their talk of godhood, for all of their boasts of superiourity, they were still weak, pathetic equines unable to rise above their base nature.

Why, Beatrix could be around explosions and not even flinch.

As she prepared herself for the inevitable, she thought of Night Light and Twilight Velvet. She loved them—even if she had trouble saying it—and she wished that things had been different. There were a lot of things that she wished had been different. Over the course of her lifetime, the world had changed, it had done so drastically, dramatically, and she found that she could not. The old ways were dying off and the pony most responsible for the recent upheaval was right here in front of her, lost in contemplation, muttering something about wealth and compound interest.

They had once been cordial with one another. She had worked as her father’s assistant, as his secretary, and as such, she and Mariner had spent a great deal of time together. A pang of regret caused her stomach to twist into painful knots. He was a living calculator, as some earth ponies tended to be, and she had long suspected that the true nature of his magical talent was securing himself. His anchor mark had long been something of an enigma to her.

Caper had once said that a ship was only as good as its anchor.

She started everything by winking away, and reappearing further up the street. The false-alicorns were perturbed by this, and when she saw their blank, confused stares, she felt both revulsion and contempt for them. She milked her contempt, hoping for hatred, and before any of them could react, she launched a fireball into the midst of the largest gathered group.

Fireball spells were adaptable and versatile, with most of them unique to the wizard, a signature of sorts. Lulamoon Hollow had issues with trolls. Normally, trolls avoided dark places, and being part plant, sought out places with lots of sunlight. But Lulamoon Hollow was filled with delicious ponies, and so trolls came a-calling upon the shadowy sanctuary that Dandelia called home.

From a young age, it had been her responsibility to deal with troll incursions—it was standard wizard work, and a great chance to gain skill. She had started off with a typical standard-issue fireball spell, as most apprentices do, and over time, she had tweaked the spell’s framework to suit her needs. Trolls were vulnerable to fire, very much so, but a fireball didn’t always kill them outright. Sometimes, they ran about willy-nilly while on fire, screaming trollish profanities, and this was always a headache.

So, after much trial and error, Dandelia had added a secondary element to her fireball: a caustic cloud element that billowed out from the epicenter of the fiery detonation. Trolls caught in the blast were not only set ablaze, but also began dissolving rapidly. It was a good spell, one that Dandelia felt truly captured her brilliance and showcased her magical prowess.

A tiny pea-sized blob of greenish flame flew towards the unsuspecting pseudo-alicorns…

Despicable Dark had been a fine, if a little cruel, teacher. An advocate for brutality—a strong, firm hoof was needed when it came to establishing order over unruly peasants—she could almost hear his voice right now. What a voice he had, a voice of cold, cruel perfection, with no trace of emotion, feeling—or empathy. Despicable had spent his whole life as a teacher in Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, and it was said that upon the day of his retirement, the entire school had heaved a collective sigh of relief. He was the disciplinarian, Lord of Detention, He of the Dastardly Demerits.

From a young age, Dandelia wanted to be just like him.

As the miniscule poof of greenish flame closed the distance, she shouted, “Dirty peasants! You don’t even know what you threaten!” As she spoke, the spell detonated within the crowd and in an eyeblink, half a dozen false-alicorns were set ablaze and a wicked green cloud spread amongst their number.

The other pseudo-alicorns began screeching as their brethren both burned and dissolved. Some ran for cover, others flew away, and as for Mariner himself, he raised a glittering bubble of magic around himself. Dandelia might have been impressed that an earth pony had learned magic, that is if she wasn’t trying to kill him at the moment.

Old Despicable Dark was a cantankerous sort, mean-spirited, and absolutely, totally, completely loyal to Princess Celestia. The old coot was paranoid of uprisings—both from students and from Equestria at large. His life had been spent preparing to put down said uprising, and he’d dabbled in the most destructive of the wizardly arts. She had learned much from him, and today, she was determined to do him proud. The uprising was here, just as he had forseen, and with him gone, dead, and sealed away in a Lulamoon crypt, it fell upon her to deal with these unruly peasants.

“Vile, dirty peasants!” she cried as she hurled another one of her signature fireballs.

Screams echoed up and down the urban canyon, bouncing from building to building. Mariner was fleeing to a more defensive position. Dandelia’s magic sense told her that cracking his shield would be a demanding task, one that would allow no distractions. She brought the water of the fountain to life, it slapped against the stones of its container and sloshed into an enormous ball, which went rolling down the boulevard in hot pursuit of the fleeing false-alicorns.

It was quite a sight to see a twenty-foot wide ball of water rolling down the street, behaving in a way that water shouldn’t. One of the pseudo-alicorns stopped to stare, and this was his undoing. Bloop! As the water-blob rolled over him, he was pulled inside by the rampaging liquidious monster.

“Wretched peasants!”

Dandelia willed the water to move faster. It crushed wagons left in the street and bore down upon the fleeing miscreants with one of their number trapped within, slowly drowning. Her shock and awe was wildly successful; these dimwitted peasants were awestruck by her prowess, her command of magic, the thaumaturgical birthright that guaranteed her right to rule.

The fireballs had done significant damage. Quite a number of the pseudo-alicorns were now burning and dissolving. They rolled around on the street, trying to quell the flames, but nothing could be done about the caustic gas, which melted steel, crumbled concrete, and turned the asphalt soupy. The poor ponies not on fire, but trapped in the cloud, they melted like candles. Eyes oozed from sockets, ears were sloughed off, feathers fell like snowflakes, all while skin bubbled and blistered.

There would be no mercy, not today. No kneeling, no groveling, no prostrating. A firm hoof was needed. An example had to be made. The peasants needed a reminder of their place. For too long, they had grown insolent. Petulant. Because discipline was lax, the sacred order had been upended, and this, this was the end result. These miscreants had tampered with a sacred power that they were incapable of understanding, and to make matters worse, they now had blasphemous bodies that were a pale imitation of Equestria’s rightful rulers.

“HERETICAL PEASANTS!” she shrieked, outraged to the point of spitting her words.

At last, the blob of water caught up with the fleeing false-alicorns, and slurped them up as it rolled over them. They could be seen swimming inside, flailing about, trapped in the middle but unable to reach the surface. A great deal of debris had also been picked up as the water-minion had rolled along, things like shards of glass, broken planks from smashed wagons, and all manner of pointy, unpleasant things.

With but a thought, the enormous sphere of water froze solid, trapping those inside in an airless, burningly cold Tartarus. Dandelia hoped that they would die slowly, with much pain. Though it was too heavy to lift with telekinesis, the Come to Life spell allowed for much mobility, even in the water’s current frozen form. She set it moving once more, a big almost-opaque bowling ball with bodies trapped inside. It moved with terrific speed, a thundering, blundering colossus that made an indescribable sound as it came tearing along the roadway, crushing everything in its path.

If the water was a bowling ball, Mariner’s former headquarters was a bowling pin.

“Why would you do this?” Mariner’s magically amplified voice was screechy, shrill with outrage and shock. “Why would you do this!”

Sensing incoming magic, Dandelia reinforced her own protections and focused her willpower into her wards. The telekinetic bolts were powerful, dangerous, all brute force. She sensed no real skill, just bullets of mostly psychic energy with just a hint of magic. While dangerous, she could mitigate this threat, if not nullify it outright.

The streaming psychic projections converged upon Dandelia’s location, but she vanished, only to reappear again, this time on a balcony overlooking the street down below. Just in time, too, as the elevated position allowed her to view the massive ball of ice smashing into Mariner’s former headquarters. It smashed through the glass in the front, collapsing support struts, rending steel beams in twain, and demolished the lobby in a spectacular display of superiour wizardry.

Then, it exploded like a bomb, shattering into smithereens. The blast was such that the skyscraper swayed, rocking back and forth in the sort of unsettling way that skyscrapers never should. Mariner was screaming wordlessly now, a high-pitched, throaty scream that could have been agony or anger—or both.

Dandelia reveled in her destruction.

Weird sounds could be heard now, something that was almost like whalesong mixed with somepony playing a saw. It came from inside Mariner’s tower, the surreal music of metal fatigue. As it swayed to and fro, weakened by the blast that rocked its foundations, it sang a curious, sorrowful song, which provided a surreal soundtrack to this absurd moment.

The false-alicorns recovered, they regrouped, and now, led by Mariner, they began their assault in earnest. Dandelia’s magical sense was almost overwhelmed by the sheer power that she felt, and for a moment, she feared sensory-overload. Gritting her teeth, she reminded herself that she was not fighting true alicorns, but charlatan peasants masquerading as alicorns.

She vanished, winking away, and the balcony she had been standing on mere seconds ago was obliterated. When she reappeared, she was immediately under fire, and was forced to relocate once more, all while Mariner’s tower sang a sorrowful, melancholy song. While surprise had given her advantage during the start of the fight, Mariner’s incensed rage now gave him the upper hoof. Everywhere she blinked, every spot that she winked, each and every one of them were destroyed as she escaped to another.

Forced to keep moving, Dandelia had trouble returning fire.

Reinforcements came, pouring out of the swaying tower like ants from a disturbed mound. The intense cold of the ice bomb had done something awful to the foundation of the building, the outcome of which was still unknown. Dandelia found herself in a bad situation that grew worse with each passing second.

With the few precious seconds she had before she had to blink away again, she lobbed off a caustic fireball, another, and then a third. One of these struck the corner of Mariner’s tower, which began to slowly dissolve as the greenish gas billowed forth, spread by the fiery detonation. More of the pseudo-alicorns fell, victims of either the flames, the caustic gas, or both.

As more and more of them died, being the brilliant mare that she was, Dandelia could not help but notice that her enemy seemed to gain and grow in strength. What monstrous rage fueled them; what great desperation drove them to such extremes. They utterly lacked in finesse, but excelled in brute force.

For the first time, Dandelia understood that she was in trouble.

Would her defenses hold during a stand up fight?

Many of them did not behave like unicorns, and most certainly not Mariner. They did not move, but stood still, for the most part. Because of some flaw in their design, they had trouble flying and performing magic at the same time; they could do one, but not the other. Mariner was advancing now, brazenly moving about in the open. Something about his cocky confidence infuriated Dandelia, and she poured her fury into her magic.

Though it was costly, and potentially her undoing, Dandelia cast Spell Mirror with a specific focus on mental magics. The spell drained her and she could feel the fatigue gnawing away at her mind. Hunger pangs made her stomach growl, and a quiet, sleepy voice in the back of her mind demanded that she nap. Then, with Spell Mirror protecting her, she used her magic to root herself to the ground. Spell Mirror would reflect psychokinetic energy away from her body, but without rooting, she could still conceivably be shoved around even if her body was unharmed, due to the quirky nature of physics.

The incoming blasts were deflected, but Dandelia could sense the sheer, raw force of them. Safe, if only for the moment, Dandela began to cast a complex summoning spell. It was something that she’d never actually cast before, but knew in theory. More and more telekinetic bolts bounced away from her, and with each of them flying in random directions, some of them flew towards the pseudo-alicorns surrounding her.

Mariner took a direct blow and his barrier shield rippled, but held. He did fly backwards, however, and tumbled for almost a half-a-city block. This served to confirm Dandelia’s theory, all brute force, and no finesse. Knowing magic, understanding magic, she had rooted herself to the spot to prevent such a blunder.

Rubble began to move about as a small whirlwind took shape. Wind converged with earth, and earth melded with fire. Steel, bricks, stones, and chunks of asphalt swirled in the whirlwind, which ignited with vivid blue flames. The tri-elemental roared, somehow doing so without a mouth, and something about the sound was utterly terrifying.

So much so that Dandelia’s concentration broke.

With the lapse in concentration, her connection to the tri-elemental was severed, and her control was lost. This was bad; this was exceedingly bad, and the explicit reason as to why conjuring elementals was frowned upon. They took exceptional control, and if for some reason this failed, a rampaging elemental would be set loose, just like now. It was a monster that she had no hope of fighting, but then again, Mariner and his crew had no chance either.

Lashing out, the tri-elemental skewered a false-alicorn with a white-hot steel strut and set her ablaze. Many of the Ascension alicorns now ignored Dandelia completely to deal with this new threat, and they focused their fire upon the havoc-wreaking tri-elemental. It was growing in size, the unchained elemental, gaining mass as its vortex body tore up the road beneath it.

Dandelia focused on Mariner, who was no longer focused on her. His ignorance left him vulnerable. For all of his might and power, he was still just an earth pony. He had not grown up as a unicorn and lacked understanding of the minute mechanics of magic. She unloaded a massive telekinetic blast of her own and felt a rush of satisfaction when Mariner was once more knocked off of his hooves. His barrier spell protected his body, but she could sense that it was weakening. Again she fired, hoping to catch him before he recovered, while he was still down, down on the ground where he belonged.

Unfortunately, Mariner was quick to recover. After the second blast pushed him back, his body scraping against the trash-strewn street, he rose up with a furious nimbus surrounding his horn. Dandelia braced herself, and had faith that her protections would hold. The blast she expected never came though, as a random telekinetic bolt was reflected by her Spell Mirror, and by fortuitous circumstance, struck Mariner as he started to cast.

His shot went wide and blasted a massive, gaping hole into the front of the building off to Dandelia’s left. The building shuddered, it wobbled, and then a torrent of bricks poured down like water as the structural integrity of the building gave way. The whole front of the building collapsed, and mere seconds after the front gave way, with no supports to hold them, the sides of the building failed as well. As the sides fell inward, floors came crashing down atop one another, and dreadful screams could be heard from within the crumbling structure.

Dust and debris filled the air, along with smoke. The stench of burned hair and feathers almost made the air unbreathable. As the brick building buckled, crushing its own foundation, Dandelia ignored it, she was deaf to the pitiful screams within, such was her focus on Mariner. This had to end somehow—though how was anypony’s guess.

Psychokinetic energy alone wasn’t enough. Mariner’s barrier would not be so easily cracked. He was too-well shielded from psychic force projections. What she needed was raw physical force to bust his shield, and she was surrounded by bricks on all sides. Reaching out with her mind, she lifted dozens of bricks and then gave one of them a telekinetic flick. There was a shockwave as the brick broke the sound barrier, and Dandelia’s hearing faded in and out because she’d done nothing to protect herself from the sound.

The brick missed, though narrowly. Mariner was on the move now, panicked, no doubt frightened by the idea of being struck by a missile flying faster than his eye could see. Dandelia prepared another brick. They had to be hurled, not guided by telekinesis. If even the merest hint of telekinetic influence was on the brick, a psychokinetic barrier would arrest the momentum, thus rendering it harmless.

She flicked another brick, there was a thunderclap as it exploded past the sound barrier, and faster than the eye could blink, Mariner was struck. His barrier spell shattered and blood fountained from his nostrils as the psychokinetic backlash scrambled his brains. Most unicorns would outright die from such trauma, but not Mariner. Somehow, he stood, and seemed to be recovering, even though torrents of scarlet liquid gushed from his nostrils.

His horn sparked and Dandelia was almost giddy with sadistic glee.

The rampaging tri-elemental kept most of the other pseudo-alicorns busy, or at least distracted, leaving Dandelia free to deal with Mariner. Once friends, they were now enemies, though not for much longer. Sensing weakness, Dandelia fully expected to kill him. It was a matter of time. Skill would rule over brute force.

A third brick was flicked; again, thunder pealed through the urban canyons, structures shivered, windows cracked and shattered, and more bricks were shook loose from the ruined building off to Dandelia’s left. Mariner’s left wing vanished. One second, it was there, he had it extended to help him with his balance, and the next, it was gone. His eyes were wide with shock and horror, and no doubt pain as well. A wordless, gurgling moan escaped from his lips, completely unheard by Dandelia, who was deafened.

It was a lucky hit, for certain.

A particularly powerful blast struck Dandelia, though not one from Mariner. Her Spell Mirror faltered, and after a second, fizzled out. All of her senses felt slowed, her thoughts were like molasses, and it occurred to her that she was dazed. It took several seconds to realise that her legs were wobbling, that her knees threatened to buckle. Her lip was curiously wet. When she breathed, she sniffled, there was a gross snorgling sound, and she could taste copper in the back of her throat. The left side of her body felt weak; far too weak, and she realised that she had trouble seeing out of her right eye.

What had happened?

There was a roar all around her, an almost crushing force that pressed in on her body from all sides. A moment later, her hooves were yanked from the ground and her sluggish eyelids blinked a few times from befuddled confusion as she rose up into the air. With her heart pounding in her chest, the taste of copper on her tongue, and her curious sensation of weightlessness, Dandelia wondered if she was dying.

Dandelia Lion Lulamoon saw sunflowers. Brilliant, beautiful sunflowers as far as the eye could see. A sea of sunflowers, all of them waving, swaying back and forth beneath an eternal sun. Her cutie mark was a sunflower, a reminder that her bloodline was infused with Sunfire blood—Princess Celestia’s blood—the very embodiment of goodness, so it could be said.

Though that bloodline had fallen upon hard times.

The sunflowers tickled her sides, they swayed and shimmied against her. She was warm now, her body awash with pleasant sensations. These sunflowers were giants, or perhaps, she was very small. Was she a foal again? That seemed possible. When she was little, Princess Celestia had called her a precious little sunflower. Dandelia had been a rambunctious sprout, and she had grown tall and powerful with Princess Celestia’s nurturing guidance.

Dandelia Lion Lulamoon...

“Who’s there?” she asked, her voice squeaky and shrill.

You knew me once, when you were innocent, when you were still a vessel for goodness.

“Who are you? What are you?” She turned about, but there was nothing but sunflowers all round her, and soft, rich dirt beneath her hooves.

I am an infinite number of tears shed that have flowed into the soil. Tears that come from a soul consumed by sorrow. Hundreds of years of tears, a river of tears, enough tears that earth was turned to mud from weeping. You might say that the liquified essence of a truly benevolent soul impregnated the fertile earth, and from that, I was conceived.

“Where am I, and why am I here?”

A choice must be made, Dandelia.

“How can I make a choice when I don’t know who or what you are?”

You strayed from goodness, Dandelia, and in doing so, silenced me.

“Goodness never did me much good,” she said to whatever was listening.

All around her, the sunflowers rustled, almost as if they were sighing. A confusing jumble of images danced within her mind; crumbling buildings, a rampaging elemental, a flood of bricks, burning fires—and pain. So much pain. But the pain was vague and rather difficult to remember.

“Goodness left me weak. It got me abused. I was a filly all alone, surrounded by those who despised weakness—”

Despised goodness, you mean.

“The two don’t seem so different. I sought power so I could rid myself of weakness.”

You dabbled in darkness, Dandelia, and in doing so, silenced me.

She stood, listening to the sighing sunflowers, and wondered what the point of all this was. What purpose this served. Her magic sense didn’t seem to be working, but she had other senses now, ones that she wasn’t familiar with. Turning her head to and fro, she tried to make sense of her surroundings, she looked up, and then looked down.

Looking down, she noticed the small silver thread protruding from her chest, and saw that it connected her to the soil upon which she stood. It was a curious thing, rather glowy, and the light burned her eyes if she looked at it for too long. Blinking, she averted her aching eyes and looked up at the sunflowers, which seemed to be peering down at her, silent sun-worshipping sentinels, the lot of them.

You are of two bloodlines, Dandelia Lion Lulamoon. One of them is cursed, the other has the means to set you free. Do you wish to be free, Dandelia?

“What sort of question is that?” she demanded.

This is the part where you choose, Dandelia. What will it be, Dandelia.. goodness and redemption, or—

“I reject weakness,” she said, and regretted it even as she said it.

Do you wish to reconsider, Dandelia?

“To what end?”

It is my hope to spare you some pain.

“My life has been nothing but pain. Where were you when I suffered? When I was in pain? In suffering, I found meaning. My pain gave me strength. That strength allowed me to purge my weaknesses. I made the pain go away. Me. You… you… I remember you… you were an imaginary friend, a playmate made of delusion. I… I’m having a stroke, which is why I am seeing you now. You’re a whisper from a past that I’d rather not remember.”

So this is how this ends...

“If I’m dying, I’d rather get on with it, rather than spend another moment experiencing this drivel.” Doubt, like a fluttering, frantic bird, could be felt thrashing about in her ribs.

The Darkness can give you nothing, Dandelia. It seeks only to abuse you, to exploit you for its own means. It has consumed so much of your bloodline. The Darks have been thoroughly devoured by it, and have been made slaves to it. This is your final warning, Dandelia.

“I’ll not be made weak,” she spat out, defiant.

A shadow moved among the sunflowers, an inky amorphous mass that lurked just beyond Dandelia’s senses. She recalled all too well; she had two imaginary friends as a filly—but only one of them brought comfort and succor. Sensing her old friend, she was overjoyed, and all doubt fled from her.

Dandelia tried to run to her old friend, eager to see her, but the sunflowers blocked her way. The stalks were surprisingly sturdy, quite stiff, and it took a great deal of effort to push past them. She had learned much from her unseen, shadowy playmate; secrets about the stars, strange magic, ancient spells long forgotten and uncast by modern tongues. Dabbling into this magic, she had discovered her birthright—power.

With power, she could destroy Mariner, and save Equestria from a terrible fate.

Very well, Dandelia. I release you. What sort of friend would I be if I did not respect your choices?

“You wanted me to stay meek, and meekness is weakness.”

Overhead, the beautiful, brilliant sun ceased to shine, and there was only all-consuming darkness. Dandelia was afraid, but only for a moment. She allowed the darkness to embrace her, and the sensation of sunflowers all around her vanished, replaced by nothingness. Beneath her hooves, there was only a void. All fear was suffocated within, all doubt, and she knew that she had what she wanted; the power to be free. At long last, it was hers, and she would make these unruly peasants bend their knees. They would kneel, or she would crush them, for such was the way of things.

Giddy, enveloped by the Darkness, Dandelia laughed until her ribs ached.

Still laughing, her ribs aching, Dandelia tried to overcome her dizzy disorientation. Something was wrong, but all of her senses were scrambled. For some reason, she seemed to be high up in the air, and she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her hooves. She kicked her legs, or tried to, but they didn’t feel responsive.

Looking down, she saw Mariner staring up at her. He had a pained grimace on his solemn face. In fact, he looked quite sad. Heartbroken, even. Blinking, she looked around a little more, and that was when she noticed the steel pole that she’d been skewered on, like a bug on a pin. She squirmed, but that was quite uncomfortable. The pole was crimson with blood—her blood—and after a bit of time thinking about it, she concluded that she was impaled on a flagpole, one that protruded from the side of a building.

It had gone through her lower torso, through her stomach just below her ribs, and had exited from just below her left front leg, punching through the ribs to be found there. Was Mariner crying? He was… he was most certainly crying. Why would he weep? Why would the poor, deluded fool weep? His face was a garish, ghoulish mask of glistening blood, and she could see that his tears washed some of the blood away, leaving streaks on his cheeks.

Her laughter became a wheezy, wet, raspy, nightmarish cackle.

“Kneel, you filthy peasant!”

The look of shock on Mariner’s face was delightful, and Dandelia reveled in it. She couldn’t see it, his face did not betray him, but she could sense his terror, and it was delicious to taste. Wanting it, needing it, she drank deep of his terror, and felt strength in her body as her pain faded away. Terror made such sweet sustenance.

“Dirty peasants!” As she shouted, green witchfire erupted from her horn, and the green flames of Tartarus danced in her eyes. “Vile peasants! Disgusting peasants! Disgusting primitives!” Her words were punctuated by a bloody cackle and her whole body twitched as powerful magic flowed through her like a conduit. She’d never felt more alive than she did right now, and the power felt better than anything she’d ever known.

“You will learn to kneel, you insufferable, disgusting ingrates!”

A thin green beam shot from Dandelia’s horn and she chortled with glee as one of the false-alicorns was disintegrated. It was a nightmarish death, and as his flesh dessicated into dust and blew away from his bones, screams of terror could be heard all around. The green flames cast a Tartarian glow upon the darkened street.

Though the sun had been shining during the odd hours of night, it had retreated, and Darkness held sway. Dandelia felt drunk, the terror she drank left her clumsy and dizzy. She was now beyond pain, beyond weakness, and she was growing stronger by the second. No stars shined overhead, for the Darkness had come to rule…

And peasants would be made to kneel.

Oh, they would be made to kneel.

She needed their terror to sustain her.

Inky tears dribbled down Dandelia’s cheeks, tarry tears that stained her pelt, turning it black. This blackness spread, consuming her body, but she needed more terror to fuel it. She would bring night to the world, eternal night, eternal terror, because the weak, superstitious disgusting primitives were afraid of the dark. With endless, eternal darkness, she could feast forever, a veritable buffet of suffering, terror, and pain. She would grow strong—so strong—and when there was nothing left to sup upon, she would move on to other worlds… other whens, and they too, would learn to fear the tenebrous night.

Just a few more delicious gulps of terror, and she would have wings again, beautiful, leathery wings, a mantle of living, fleshy darkness. With wings, she could free herself from this flagpole, and then she could get busy putting the peasants in their place—all of them. They would submit, or she would drink them dry. Sooner or later, she would drink them all dry, but for now, she needed subjects while she gestated.

“This is beyond us!” Mariner shouted. “Flee! Run away! Fly away! Depart from this place at once! This foe will be our ruination! Go! Flee! With all haste!”

As the herd of panicked pseudo-alicorns began to scatter, she fired upon them at random, disintegrating them, and sowing more terror in their ranks. She only needed just a little more terror, and then she would be free. The world would be cloaked in darkness. In mere moments, the ruined streets were empty, and Dandelia found herself all alone.

Alone.

She’d always been alone.

Memories of her loneliness gave her pause. She hesitated, uncertain. There were those who risked her ire to battle her loneliness. She thought of Twilight Velvet and Night Light. Would she make them kneel? Could she? A part of her didn’t want to, but it was such a small, weak, insignificant thing now, something so easily smothered.

Yet, the light within persisted.

Night Light and Twilight Velvet had given her Kiddo… to keep her company.

Kiddo kept the loneliness away.

She thought of Beatrix… Trixie. Trixie had her own Kiddo now, and Trixie too, had brave, brave souls that risked her ire to keep her company—to keep the gnawing loneliness at bay. Did Trixie know the Darkness? Had it spoken to her? Dandelia had come to save Sumac, but now she found herself wondering, who would save him from her? Beatrix? Night Light? Twilight Velvet?

“No,” she murmured, and as she shook her head, the witchfire dancing around her horn dimmed. “No, this was a mistake.”

Tears gushed from her eyes; not the goopy, tarry tears of corruption, but cleansing tears of sorrow and regret. The black stains on her cheeks were washed away by the torrential flood of tears as she was overwhelmed by a succession of images. Kiddo splashing in the bath. Little Trixie with a dirty face, spewing cookie crumbs everywhere. She looked up at the sky devoid of stars, and tried to find meaning in the vast, incomprehensible darkness.

Night Light had been the one to call her Trixie, hadn’t he?

Though separated by secrecy, imprisoned by lies, the clandestine bond had sustained her. It kept her going. Caper’s brutishness was made tolerable because of the secret love that was shared, a valuable treasure hidden away, with promises and vows kept silent. Oaths had been made—oaths that she was now on the verge of breaking.

Oaths that mattered.

Impaled on a flagpole, Dandelia Lion Lulamoon gazed up at the darkened heavens, and sought answers. How had she reached this point? Why couldn’t she have fled from Caper? She wondered, why didn’t she just take Trixie and run? Night Light and Twilight Velvet would have took her in… they would have sheltered her. So why hadn’t she left?

Why had she done this to Kiddo?

She knew why.

The Darkness needed misery to sustain its starved, thin shadow, its parasitic presence.

Kiddo too, now lived with its taint, Dandelia was sure of it.

When she tried to take a deep breath, she found that she could not. Weakness consumed her, devoured her, it was eating her alive, because she was all the Darkness had left. When she tried to speak, all that came out were bubbles of frothy blood. Limp, almost lifeless, Dandelia hung skewered from the flagpole and contemplated her many mistakes.

This last one had cost her dearly.

With the last of her strength, she held her head up, still hoping to find some meaning in the shroud of darkness overhead. A single star twinkled to life, and Dandelia, dying, saw it as a sign. Perhaps not all hope was lost. The night, the sacred Night, was illuminated by precious lights, and those lights were her birthright. She’d almost squandered her birthright.

Troubled by her actions, she coughed and vomited up a copious quantity of blood.

She’d come to save the peasants, not consume them.

Too weak to hold her head up any longer, she gasped and gurgled while she savoured the sight of the lone, twinkling star. It was alone, just like she was—a dreadful fate that nopony deserved. Somehow, she knew that this was her fault, her doing. She had caused this. Just one more poor choice among many, a life of bad choices, with this final one no doubt condemning her.

Alone, on a deserted, ruined street, Dandelia Lion Lulamoon faced her end. This was not how she wanted to go—being alone was the worst. She thought of Kiddo as her mind began to cloud over, and she felt sleepy, so sleepy. Teaching Trixie to talk had been quite an accomplishment, one that Dandelia was extraordinarily proud of. Dandelia, of course, Princess Emeritus of the Night Court, had taught her daughter to speak in the Royal We, but that lesson did not quite turn out as planned.

The weak attempt of faint laughter that followed the precious memory turned into a blood-drenched gurgle. One star still blazed, it still burned bright. It was defiant, adrift in a sea of blackness. Dandelia understood its meaning all too well… Beatrix was the last to bear the Lulamoon name. House Lulamoon’s stars had all gone dark, save one, and this one shone the brightest.

Dandelia was confident that this final star would endure.

It had to.

Too sleepy to keep her eyes open, Dandelia drifted off into a painless slumber, and her final thoughts were of sunflowers…

Author's Note

...

The ghost

Time slowed, but also sped up, and everything became a confusing jumble. Some of the bumbles retreated, while others offered defense. Gunfire and spells caused a discordant cacophony that made Twinkleshine’s ears ring. One of the masked marauders tossed a glass flask filled with some glowing bright-orange liquid, and after it smashed against a brick wall, yellow smoke poured from the point of impact. Those bumbles swallowed up by the yellow smoke suffered a horrendous fate, as their chitinous armor began to slowly dissolve and slough off of them in goopy, stringy blobs.

A bumble was seized by magic and yanked towards a masked unicorn who stood with his sword ready. Eyes wide, Twinkleshine watched as the bumble was impaled, and then callously flung away. She could feel that the unicorns around her weren’t particularly powerful, but watching them, she could see that they were skilled. Another bumble was drawn in, and this one too, was skewered, only to then be tossed away.

Twinkleshine, a quick learner, understood a new way to fight when she saw one. She had long used whatever was around her as distractions or weapons, so this was the next logical step. Following the example made, she snatched a weakened, somewhat dissolved bumble from across the street. As her magic mingled with the bumble, she felt a contest of wills take place. The creature was resistant, but also in pain, suffering, and its willpower had been weakened. After what felt like seconds, or maybe even minutes, but might have been an eye blink, the creature rocketed towards her, accelerated to absurd speeds, and Twinkleshine raised her axe into the incoming bumble’s flight path.

When the creature was cloven clean in two just over her head, Twinkleshine was bathed in curiously red blood. She blinked, her eyes stinging, and as she opened her eyes, she saw one bumble get shoved into another. Her ears were ringing now, and the gunfire, once a deafening sound, was now little more than a dull roar. When a formation of bumbles moved against them, Twinkleshine was the first to react as the weird insectoid creatures with mammalian faces came around the corner. She fired off a stunning spell that exploded in their midst, leaving them dazzled, stunned, and dazed.

This left them easy pickings for the masked marauders, one of whom flung another alchemical bomb at the clustered bumbles as the others opened fire. After flying in a beautiful, high arc, the glass flask struck the ground. It exploded on impact, and a massive bloom of blue-orange flames consumed the bumbles, who were set ablaze. Fragile wings turned to ash and they fell into the roaring flames beneath them.

It was a quick, brutal exchange, but it taught Twinkleshine a great deal about the nature of fighting, just as the long night in Ponyville had done. But this felt different somehow, in a way that she could not say, in a manner she could not express. There were tactics at work here. Teamwork. Ponyville’s defense was a disorganised mess of skirmish fighters, while this group, whomever they might be, all moved and acted as one, as if they were but a single body.

Just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. The last shot was fired from a blue steel revolver and it appeared to be some kind of alchemical load, because the flesh around the wound it caused melted like boiling wax. As the hulking soldier bumble writhed on the street, all six legs kicking and twitching, while its innards bubbled like a horrific bumble stew, Twinkleshine found that she felt no pity. In fact, she’d gone quite numb, enough so that it alarmed her.

“Reload,” one of the masked figures commanded. “Restock. Recover.”

One of the soldiers opened his mask—it split open like a maw—and much to Twinkleshine’s surprise, there was an actual beak beneath. Keen eyes peered at her, trying to size her up, and soaked in blood, itchy, and twitchy, she stared back at her rescuer. Gloved talons pulled back a protective cowl and then the mask was removed completely, revealing the feathered head of a rather smallish albino griffon. His beak was strangely translucent—his tongue could be seen within—and his feathers seemed to lack colour.

But his eyes were striking; two pale, almost colourless hunks of pale pink ice.

“I am Geist, of the Guild of Rat Catchers. Nice axe.”

It took Twinkleshine a moment to find her voice. “I am Twinkleshine, Mare-at-Arms for House Lulamoon.” Then, still a little shell-shocked, she added, “I came here to find my son, the sorcerer, Sumac. The fate of Equestria hangs upon the completion of my mission.”

“Interesting, ja.” The albino griffon tapped one talon-finger against the mask he held in his talons while he studied Twinkleshine in earnest. “We hunt the bumbles, who have hives in the sewers. Elusive prey. For reasons unknown, they came to the surface in force and now build a hive aboveground. Perhaps because they have this sorcerer, ja?”

Twinkleshine dared to hope, but was also terrified by the prospect.

“Strange night we’re having. Monsters who wear the skin of alicorns walk the streets. The bumbles are out in force. Even Queen Bumblina has come out of her secure hiding place. Monsters of every stripe have crawled out of their slimy dens and hidey holes to take advantage of the chaos. We’ve even had to put down an outbreak of the undead. What a night we’ve borne witness to.”

For whatever reason, Twinkleshine found Geist’s old-world gutteral accent comforting.

Upon further examination of the leather and rubber-clad griffon, Twinkleshine couldn’t find any trace of wings. His outfit was almost skin-tight, and she couldn’t find any protrusions, any lumps or bumps, not even a suggestion of wings beneath his slinky garb. It would be rude to bring it up, or to call attention to it, so she remained silent.

“We’ve heard reports that the bumbles have taken over a marmalade factory,” Geist said to Twinkleshine.

“Marmalade?”

“You will find many such factories here in Manehattan,” the ghostly griffon replied. “The earth ponies, lacking the means to peel oranges, developed a taste for the whole fruit. Peel and all. There is a very large factory, the first of its kind, and the bumbles have seized it as a base of operations. Lots of sugar and food for the bee queen. If the bumbles have your son, he would be there.”

Twinkleshine had only one response: “Then we have to go there.”

“We?” one of the rat catchers asked.

“Doctor Stroker, do shut up,” Geist commanded. “We are graced by nobility. This is clearly a Lady, you twit. If she asks us to die for her, it is the least we can do. Equestria’s fate hangs in the balance.”

“I don’t need you to die for me,” Twinkleshine was quick to say. “But I do need help recovering my son.” She heard a rapid succession of a great many deep breaths and gasps.

Doctor Stroker, a unicorn, stepped forward. “That’s a fortified hive. Well, the start of one. They’ll have superiour numbers.”

“Ja”—Geist nodded—“they will. We’ve been skulking around, trying to pick off the isolated scouting parties while avoiding the bands of airborne cavalry. Perhaps we should take the fight to them.”

A female voice said, “They are too many, and we are too few.”

“Opinion noted, Doctor Persimmon,” Geist replied without turning to look at the mare who had spoken.

“We are ill-equipped to do—”

“We will do what is necessary,” Geist snapped, cutting off Doctor Stroker before he could finish.

“We’ve got bombs and bullets,” one of the foals said, and it was clear by her squeakyish voice that a filly had spoken.

Doctor Stroker, looking down at the pack-laden filly beside him, said to her, “Miss Pecan Pie, do be silent.”

“Of course, Master. I will be silent... and brave.”

Geist chuckled and a powerful snort could be heard within Doctor Stroker’s mask. Twinkleshine—blood soaked and stricken with adrenaline jitters—was just aware enough to catch the meaning in the filly’s words. She had all but called her master a coward. For some reason, this exchange made Twinkleshine think of Sumac and Vinyl, though they had a very different relationship.

“Little earth ponies.” Talons tapping against his mask, Geist appeared thoughtful, at least by griffon standards. “So fearless. Pecan Pie… she’s from the Broncs. She is insolent, willful, and absolutely fearless. What can be done with her?”

“A whole lot of floor scrubbing,” Doctor Stroker remarked. “Hospital-grade cleanliness.”

“Aw… shit.” The filly’s profane expletive was muffled by her mask. “Scrubbing floors is the worst.”

“Pecan Pie is right though,” another foal said. “What’s the point of packing all these bombs and bullets in such numbers?”

“Mister Haflinger Bluemark, that is quite enough out of you—”

“Doctor Stroker, do not rebuke my apprentice.” Geist ceased to chuckle and was now annoyed. “Though I suspect that this has nothing to do with the bravery of my apprentice, and everything to do with the fact that he longs to kiss young Miss Pecan Pie.”

“Well, duh,” the colt quipped. “But I’d like for it to be known that I’m a Bluemark, from House Bluemark, and my house don’t run from nothing, be it rats or bugs.”

“This goes beyond all of us,” Geist said to his companions. “I know of the sorcerer and his importance. Have none of you read the dispatches from the Crown?” The griffon, maskless, turned his head around to have a better look at his fellows, and his cold, predatory eyes lacked any sort of discernable emotion. “We are, in times of desperation, a militia. Our numbers are few, but we are well trained. Are we not fierce? Are we not—”

“We have grown cautious, because we keep dying. The sewers have grown far too dangerous. New recruits are in short supply. Each and every one of us represents a significant effort spent in time, training, and resources. We should not carelessly throw that away.” Doctor Stroker undid his mask, and pulled it away to reveal his scarred face. “I will not stand here and be called a coward for my caution.”

“No one is calling you a coward,” Doctor Persimmon said to Doctor Stroker. “And your caution is respected. But Geist is right. If the bumbles have this sorcerer, we have a chance to stop them before they become entrenched and dangerous. You know how rapidly bumbles can increase their number. If we wait for the army to arrive, what could be a skirmish will surely be a bloodbath.”

“The army was sent.” Twinkleshine felt every eye now upon her. “I was part of it. We got scattered to the four winds, I think. Something messed with Princess Celestia’s teleportation. I don’t know what happened, but I am cut off and alone. And if I have to go after my son alone, I will.”

“That… that is quite alarming.” Doctor Persimmon stood rigid, unmoving, and the sound of her mechanical respirator was like that of an idling locomotive. “My apprentice and I stand ready.”

“Mister Bluemark—”

“Must you even ask, Master?”

The other rat catchers stood waiting, uncertain. One stepped forward, and was followed by a younger, smaller apprentice. Another also moved forward, and this one too was joined by a smaller companion. Doctor Stroker, scowling, gritted his teeth and glared daggers at Geist, who did not seemed bothered by the murderous stare in the slightest.

“Doctor Stroker… somepony must make sure that the guild survives. Somepony has to see to it that the pieces are picked up. New recruits must be whipped into shape.” Doctor Persimmon’s voice was a mechanical deadpan. “Go do that. Secure our future.”

“All of you are throwing your lives away,” Doctor Stroker said. “Come, Miss Pecan Pie. We must be going.”

“No, Master.” The filly stepped away from her master, and looked up at him. With her face hidden behind her mask, her expression and her feelings were unknowable. “I cannot obey that order.”

“This will mean walking papers.” Doctor Stroker’s voice wasn’t angry, but pleading.

“So be it.” Pecan Pie bowed her head and retreated to be closer to Geist.

Defeated, broken, Doctor Stroker’s face contorted in pain. He looked down at his apprentice, while she looked up at him, and Twinkleshine saw that the doctor trembled. He was sweating now, the doctor, and his eyes had turned bloodshot. His emotional turmoil was such that it was clearly tearing him apart from the inside out.

“May all of you live to stand in Celestia’s sun once more,” Doctor Stroker said at last. “All of you are fools… damned fools. May the Sisters bless and keep you. I’ll return to headquarters and make sure the infirmary is prepared.”

Just as the doctor turned to make his hasty departure, he paused, his facial muscles bunching with pain. “Young Miss Pie… you were the finest apprentice that anypony could hope for. Stay with Mister Bluemark, he will keep you safe. Do not leave his side, that is an order!”

Then, before anything else could be said, Doctor Stroker departed, galloping away with astonishing speed. Twinkleshine watched him go, conflicted, unsure of what or how to feel. She didn’t think of him as a coward; on the contrary, it took extraordinary bravery to stand up to one’s own fellows. He was doing what needed to be done.

Raising his mask to his face, Geist said, “We must be going. Let us go and see if we can find this sorcerer, ja?”

Author's Note

I have no idea who is still reading. The numbers are terrible. It is a pity, too, because this is such an important story in the series.