Princess Twilight Sparkle and the Fortress of Egress

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Chapter 1

The application of governance demanded persistence and determination. Twilight Sparkle, facing a potential avalanche of paperwork, began to question her persistence and determination. Questioning her persistence and determination, she sat in her hard, uncomfortable chair, wondering if she had the wherewithal for the application of governance. Slumped over in her chair, distracted, disturbed, distraught, Twilight knew that she had reached some sort of self-defeating circular repetitive cycle from which there was no escape.

Being a princess sounded awesome, until one realised that it was a public service position, one with lousy hours, and hardly any thanks or gratitude for a job well done. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy the work—she did—it was just that, lately, the work was all that she had been doing. It had swallowed her, consumed her, it had left her bereft of all comfort and satisfaction.

She was bored.

No monsters attacked. Time travellers ceased their temporal disturbances and offered no dire warnings of disasters that might be. The dreadful and terrible war in the Midreach had concluded, a war that had changed the entirety of the world, a war involving mechanisation, industrialisation, leveraged economies, and entirely new tactics. An unwanted, yet unavoidable paradigm shift for multinational conflict. Now, it seemed as though the world itself was panting, trying to catch its breath, perhaps realising that a whole new era was upon it.

While peace was pleasant, it was also boring.

Ponyville’s economy was operating at a surplus. The new cash crops, planted at her request, had done exactly as she had predicted. Hemp in particular brought considerable wealth to the region. It provided farm jobs, fibres, textiles, oils, paper, soaps, foodstuffs, and more importantly, money. Twilight was quite pleased that the economy thrived with her guidance, but now that everything was doing well, there wasn’t much to do. She could only watch as the plotted points of data that formed a beautiful curve continued to rise.

There was no point in committing to high-risk ventures for a little excitement.

“Come on, Twilight,” she said to herself. “This paperwork isn’t going to do itself. And hiring somepony to do it for you would be wasteful government spending.” After rolling her eyes, she looked up at the towering piles, and regretted that she had let it pile up. Perhaps if she was more attentive and did it before it became a towering heap of bureaucracy, this wouldn’t be such a chore.

But she had been busy, during a long stretch when there had been a famine of boredom.

Now, she faced the feast and found it quite unappetising.

“Perhaps… perhaps there are spelling errors, or maybe grammatical errors that I could find,” she said to herself, trying to entice herself into action. “Might be fun… a little light spell-checking.”

When her self-directed pep talk failed to motivate her, she threw her hooves up into the air and let out groan that turned into a shrill whinny near the end. Hooves still in the air, she waved them around, grunting and whickering, all while making the sort of faces that her mother warned her not to make, because her face might freeze that way.

“Horsefeathers!” she swore.

It did nothing. Her expletive failed to satisfy. First, she looked left, then, in a sneaky, furtive manner, she glanced right. The coast seemed clear. Left again, then right again. When she looked left, her left eyebrow rose into a fine arch, and when she turned her gaze rightward, her right eyebrow arched while her left eyebrow fell. Her ears, too, acted in concert with her eyes, and she had somehow magically transformed into the wily filly that she once was.

Then, when she was satisfied that she was, indeed, alone, a devious smirk caused wrinkles to appear upon the bridge of her muzzle, and in the voice of a sneaky, devious filly, she said, “Fronking horseapples—”

“Twilight!”

Utterly panicked, Twilight’s wings sprang out, unleashing a minor windstorm indoors. The piles of paper on her desk quivered, the bastions of bureaucracy, the bulwarks of beadledom, all of it teetered in the most alarming way. Whole fractions of a second took place, stretching out to small, bite-sized infinities that no amount of vigorous chewing would allow one to swallow.

“No! No! No!” Hooves still raised, she pleaded with her paperwork, with the hopes that she could prevent the inevitable through the repetition of a monosyllabic utterance.

“Twilight, there’s an emergency,” Spike said as the fortress of paperwork toppled atop Twilight’s desk.

Papers drifted on unseen currents like autumn leaves, many of them circling around Spike’s head. The baby dragon held a scroll clenched tight in his claws, so tight that the parchment had wrinkled. If Twilight had not been frozen in abject horror, she might have scolded him for it, but she sat unmoving, wide-eyed, as the paperwork unsorted itself.

Cosmic punishment was swift and merciless.

“Celestia-fronking-damnit!”

The colour drained from Spike’s scales as he flinched from the unbelievable expletives.

“Spike! What’s the emergency? It’d better be a good one!” Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “By the way, Spike… would you mind helping me sort out this paperwork? It seems to have unsorted itself. I’m probably going to be busy with that emergency.”

“Twilight,” she read aloud as she paced in a broad circle. “Moon Rose has been abducted and there is a crisis of the highest magnitude. Please await further instruction.”

With an annoyed sniff, Twilight turned the parchment over, but found nothing on the back. Moon Rose? Abducted? This wasn’t good. Little Moon Rose had disturbing dream magic. More to the point, little Moon Rose could pull things from the dream realm into reality, which allowed for all kinds of nightmarish possibilities.

How had this happened? Moon Rose was watched over. Protected. Her every move was tracked, monitored. Twilight wondered who was responsible for this. Catrina? Belladonna? Dark Desire? It had been done with no army, it seemed, no catastrophic series of events unleashed to create opportunity. Just snatch and go. At least, Twilight was fairly certain that an army hadn’t invaded Canterlot. She hadn’t been paying much attention, but she was confident that even in her distracted state, she would have sensed the magical disturbance caused by an invading army.

As Twilight continued to pace, she was almost bonked in the head by a massive hammer that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. This hammer was every bit as enormous as its armor-clad owner, who also suddenly appeared from right out of the blue. Twilight, always one for etiquette, offered up the traditional greeting when one was accosted by an armored, unannounced, gargantuan guest in one’s own domicile; she screamed, and what a scream it was.

Princess Celestia was larger than life, and clad in black armor that did not seem to reflect light. She was a terrifying figure, truly intimidating, and her horn—also encased—almost scraped the ceiling. The hammer hovered mere inches above Twilight’s head, but made no sudden moves, as one simply did not make sudden moves with a hammer of this size, not without consequences. Dreadful consequences, such as collapsed castles or puddles of equine jam.

With Celestia, there were two unicorns, one of which said, “Hello Twily. Overreact much?”

The other offered up a far more traditional and respectful greeting; he tipped his grey, broad-brimmed, conical hat.

Like a teakettle with no water left to boil, Twilight’s ear-piercing shriek trailed off, her uvula ceased to wag, and she slowly managed to recover her composure, due in no small part to the sound of her brother’s voice. Though, perhaps not due to her brother’s sarcasm, which would have to be dealt with later. When the time was right and opportunity presented itself.

“Twilight Sparkle,” the armored alabaster behemoth said to the much smaller alicorn.

“Contrary to popular rumours,” Twilight said as she cowered, “I did not say your name in vain.”

Whatever reaction Celestia had was invisible behind her helmet, which was the worst. Twilight sucked in a deep breath, pulled herself together, and kept one wary, weathered eye on the hammer floating mere inches over her head. She had tried to lift it once, and had failed. It was said to be heavier than the sun, which might have been true. Which made the fact that Maud Pie had once lifted it with her bare hooves a scarily exciting factoid that Twilight did not enjoy being reminded of, like right now.

“What’s he doing here?” Twilight asked while pointing her hoof at the unicorn adjusting his grey woollen hat.

“Twily, don’t you trust him?”

“I trust him,” she replied to her brother. “Trust isn’t the issue. Dim can’t be away from the Crystal Heart. Which means he shouldn’t be here, in my castle, in Ponyville. He has that insidious curse of his.”

“Twilight, we have a crisis to deal with.” Princess Celestia’s words cut in with smooth effectiveness. “Dim is needed. As for you, you shouldn’t worry. His transformation is slow—”

“But can’t be undone.” Twilight’s ears pricked as she interrupted her beloved mentor. “There is no means to turn back the progression.”

“That is a topic for another time, Twilight. For now, we must go to a dangerous place and recover Moon Rose. Fetch your armor, Twilight. We must depart at once.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight noticed for the first time that her brother was wearing his armor. Her eyes drifted to Dim, who wore no armor, just a faded grey hat and a nondescript grey cloak. She blinked once, twice, and thrice, all while trying to remember which closet she kept her armor in. It was magical stuff, impossible to conjure because it had been crafted by Luna to be exceptionally magic resistant.

It was just the sort of gift that princesses made for one another, as they had all agreed to never purchase presents.

“Hang on,” Twilight said with all of the princessly politeness she could muster. “I have to go look for my armor. Before I go, mind telling me what we’re doing and where we’re going?”

Celestia, still holding her hammer aloft, replied, “Why, Twilight Sparkle, we’re going to the Fortress of Egress.”

Twilight struggled to put on her armor, which couldn’t be manipulated with telekinesis. Well, it could, just not very well, and she kept dropping the various pieces, fumbling them to the floor. Celestia was busy casting some complex spell that Twilight couldn’t even begin to make heads nor tails of. As she struggled with her barding, she turned some of her attention to Dim.

“How’s Blackbird?”

“She curses my name daily,” Dim replied, wheezing out each word.

“How are you adjusting, Dim?”

“Work keeps me busy,” was his casual, nonchalant response.

Twilight’s tongue slipped out as she did battle with a strap beneath her belly. The damnable thing was slippery, and located in a rather difficult to reach place. This would be so much easier with telekinesis. She tried not to think about the fact that she was getting dressed in front of her brother, which was weird for some reason, and she did not wish to ponder the reason why.

“Sunburst tells me that you and he are becoming fast friends.”

If Dim had something to say, he kept it to himself.

“Just wondering, but why are we bringing Dim, anyhow?” Twilight asked of her brother.

“I asked the same thing,” replied Shining Armor, “When Celestia came to abduct me. She said something about the potential for sanity damage where we’re going.”

“Oh.” The strap cinched into place, but was far too tight, and Twilight found it difficult to breath. Now, she would have to somehow loosen the cinch she had fought so hard to tighten. She wondered if, perhaps, this armor was Luna’s idea of a practical joke.

It was black, reflected no light, and had a dull, matte finish. Twilight wasn’t sure what sort of metal it was, and when asked, Luna had offered no answer. The armor was very much like Celestia's, but not nearly as ornate. It was imposing, intimidating, and wearing it made Twilight feel very much like a badass—though she would never, ever admit this to anypony.

“So we’ll be fighting something that can probe minds?” she asked.

“I guess?” Shining Armor shrugged. “I pity anything that probes Dim’s mind. Even the Wardens won’t do it.”

Her brother’s words caused Twilight to shiver, which made her armor clank and clatter.

“How’s Flurry? And Skyla?”

“Flurry”—Shining Armor blew a raspberry right after her name—“the less said about Flurry right now, the better. The little pain in the plot poured hair removal tonic into her sister’s shampoo.”

Twilight accidentally kicked a piece of armor that went on her leg. Which one? She had no idea, as her armor training was equivalent to her knowledge of wearing fancy ballroom dresses. Blinking, she stared at her brother, and did everything she could to avoid thinking about what her niece, Skyla, might look like right now. She failed, of course, and it took all of her willpower, all of her concentration, and all of her focus to avoid smiling.

“Here, let me help you with that—”

“No!” Twilight almost squealed the word. “I’m a big filly. I can dress myself.”

“Twilight, you have your crupper plate tied to your neck.”

“I do not!” She didn’t, did she? If she did… that’d be embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as the time she put her gown on backwards and Rarity had to help her fix it. She hated wearing armor, as it pinched and bunched in unmentionable places. Heaving a sigh of defeat, she hung her head and surrendered.

“Shiny, help me.”

A door stood in the middle of the room, which was odd, as doors typically did not stand alone in the middle of the room. Celestia had conjured it into existence and now, Twilight was stuck trying to make sense of it. It had a stone archway around it, and the door itself was wood, with black iron bands to hold the rough hewn timbers together. The magic it radiated made her feel uncomfortable, her feathers tingled, her skin prickled, and there was a strange, weird fire in her hooves that made her want to dance around.

“Pay attention to me.” Celestia’s schoolmarm voice caused every ear in the room to prick. “The Fortress of Egress is a dangerous place. There is great peril there. It is a fortress, a mighty bastion that connects various worlds, places, and realities. It is constructed almost entirely out of doors, most of which are dangerous. My sister uses these doors to access various locations within the dream realm.”

Twilight, ever the eager school filly, nodded to show she was paying attention.

“The mirror, Twilight, is a shortcut that connects two doors together, so one does not have to traverse the dangerous location in between.” The big mare drew in a deep breath, and then continued, “Moon Rose has been taken. Whomever took her fled to the Fortress of Egress. I’m not sure how, which troubles me. Moon Rose could potentially be on another world, or in another when. She might have been taken to another where. We must recover her.”

“Which means facing otherworldly horrors,” Dim muttered.

“That’s why we brought Dim.” Shining Armor cast his clever gaze around, as if seeking his schoolmarm’s approval. “Otherworldly tentacles. I’ve played enough Ogres and Oubliettes to know where this is going. I don’t have good saving throws versus otherworldly tentacle attacks.”

“Meanwhile,” Celestia said, cutting in, “tentacles must make a saving throw when encountering Dim.” If she smiled, it was obscured by her helmet. “Twilight, we’ll need your quick mind, your understanding of magic, and your plucky sense of determination. Shining Armor, we’ll need your shields. As for myself, I can sense Moon Rose’s soul with animancy. No matter where she is taken, I will find her.”

“Are we leaving?” Twilight asked.

“Just step through the door.” Then, after a pause, Celestia added, “All of you are free to back out. I won’t make you go. Through that door, there lies dangers beyond your understanding. We might not recover Moon Rose alive… or whole of mind. I’m confident that I can bring all of you back, but what comes out of that door might not be the same as what goes in. This is a risk.”

“Sure beats boredom.” Twilight took a moment to adjust her helmet, which was hot, sweaty, and obscured much of her vision. The narrow slit only allowed her to see what was directly in front of her. Her belly was clammy with sweat and cold metal.

“I am being paid… handsomely. I care not about risks.” Dim smoothed out his grey cloak, which had gleaming metallic threads woven through the wool.

“What sort of brother would I be if I let my baby sister go without me?” Shining Armor lifted his head and stood in a proud, martial pose. “We have a filly to save.”

Bowing her head, Celestia nodded. “Go then. Dim, you first, as you’re the one most familiar with Luna’s foyer. Don’t let Twilight or Shining step on the traps.”

Author's Note

This is a short. I love sharing my shorts with you.

Chapter 2

Doors. Everything was made of doors, with the exception of the floor and the ceiling, which appeared to be made of some unknown stone. Twilight wasn’t fooled though; ‘twas no stone in this place. Nothing here was particularly real in any sort of meaningful way, and she was almost certain that if she compared notes with her brother, they would both be seeing different things as their minds constructed something for them to see.

There was no source of light, yet everything was well-lit. Nothing cast a shadow—no, wait, Dim did. Of course he did. Twilight angled her head off to one side, the left, and then off to the right, and as she did so, she observed how the shadow moved, sort of like the dark patch on a sundial. It was fascinating in more ways than one, and she knew that if she wasn’t here to rescue a filly, she could easily spend an enjoyable day studying how Dim cast shadows based upon the observer acting as a light-source.

“Dim, you have a shadow,” she said aloud, as she felt the need to point out that she had caught this detail.

“Twilight Sparkle… once again proving just how smart and capable you are.” There was nothing sarcastic or demeaning in Dim’s words, just sincere, honest praise. “Of all my contemporaries…” Whatever words were almost spoken were left unsaid. He sighed, with only the barest hint of a wheeze, and then went on to say, “Even now, standing in an extra-planar dimension, you’re busy piecing together how the local laws of reality work.”

This place reeked of Luna’s magic. Twilight, calm and unmoving, allowed her magic-sense to do its own thing and she didn’t do much to direct it. Luna’s magic was strong here in this spot, but beyond, the magic was utterly unknown. Dim had magic here, strong magic, and being this close to him was like standing next to a too-hot radiator.

“Stay on the rugs,” Dim said as Celestia slowly began to fade into existence, little by little. “Except for that rug over there. Luna did that to break up the pattern. The doors are all trapped. If I were you, I would not attempt to open one, no matter how curious you might feel. Luna’s power holds sway here, but beyond the foyer, great, unmentionable horrors await. Other than this spot with the illusion of safety, Luna holds no dominion here.”

“It speaks highly of Luna’s power that she was able to claim this tiny section,” Shining Armor remarked as he glanced around.

“A tenuous hold, sure.” Dim adjusted his cloak, lifted his hat, pulled out an ornate wooden pipe, placed it in the corner of his mouth, and lit it ablaze with a flick of his magic. Then, he blew puffs of clove-scented smoke while he stood there, watching Twilight and Shining Armor. “Some things are held back, kept out, but there are ancient horrors here. Great and terrible things beyond your imagination.”

“Why try to hold this place?” Shining Armor asked.

“Control,” replied Dim. “These doors”—he gestured around him—“all lead to various locations in the dream realm, which is a mirror of our world. Though, the size is kind of weird and changes according to the whim of dreams. It would take forever to get anywhere in a hurry, and the trains tend to not run on time, as ponies and other creatures dream about train rides that last forever—”

“I’ve had that dream.” Shining Armor pawed the not-stone floor with his armored hoof. “No restrooms. I was on a train with Flurry, and there was no restroom. I kept telling her she had to wait until we arrived at our destination.”

“Indeed.” When Dim smiled, Twilight felt parts of her soul curdle. “That is part of my duties as the Lord of Nightmares. I must maintain the doors. It frees Luna to do other things. More important things. I am honoured to ease her burden in whatever way I can.”

A little more of Celestia protruded into this place, and for the first time, Twilight noticed that a door was missing. Just a black gap, like a smile missing a tooth. She couldn’t study the dark space though, as staring directly at it caused her vision to fuzz over and a faint throb could be felt just behind her eyes.

“That door…” She pointed with her extended right wing.

“That leads to our world. It is a direct portal. Celestia took it and she keeps it in a portable planar protrusion of her own making, a universe beholden only to her rules. We stepped through it so that we might come here bodily. It is but one of the many things Celestia does to protect our fragile existence.”

“But there are other openings to gain access, correct?” Twilight asked.

“Oh yes,” replied Dim, nodding while puffing on his pipe. “There are.”

“Just not easy ones, I suppose.” Twilight felt her imagination itching to go soaring, but held it in check because she knew she had to focus. “We stepped directly through, but it seems as though Celestia is coming through a little at a time.”

“She has to move the door with her.” Dim’s words came out as clove-scented smoke. “She and the door are one, in a sense. To come through the door is to come through her. That door has weight here, in a sense. Mass. If anything here is real, that door is. Immense as Celestia’s power might be, moving that door takes an effort that none of us are prepared to comprehend. You try carrying around the doorway to the local universe in a pocket of your own devising and see how you do.”

Twilight’s brain, when confronted with this particular realisation, balked.

“My. Brain. Hurts.” Shining Armor spat out the words one by one, all while shaking his head from side to side.

With an audible pop, Celestia realitified and joined them. The mighty titan gave herself a shake, shook each wing, and pulled her hammer from the nothingness just behind her. Twilight watched in awe, mindful of what Dim had just said, and perhaps for the first time in her existence, she began to truly understand the mind-blowing potential of her mentor’s power. Hers was a power without limits, absolute power, the dangerous kind of power that would corrupt most who meddled with it.

Yet, Celestia was Celestia, she of good cheer, the unconquered sun.

“Twilight, stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what?” Twilight, just a little terrified, looked up at her mentor.

Magic flared along the armored length of Celestia’s horn, and Twilight felt a peculiar sensation. Something was ripped away, something insubstantial, something unseen, and Dim’s shadow began to move on its own. It trotted about on the floor, prancing in a circle around Dim, and when it laid down and became a shadow again, it did so at an angle away from Celestia.

It took Twilight several seconds to understand why.

When Celestia spoke, her tone was one of chiding. “Dim, your shadow—”

“Does as he pleases. If you take issue, bring it up with him.” Still puffing his pipe, Dim glared up at Celestia, defiant. “I am not my shadow’s keeper. I’m sure that he’d rather be home, humping Blackbird’s shadow, but I dragged him here, to this place.”

Twilight was almost certain that she could hear Celestia’s eyes rolling inside of her helmet, and she was overcome with a most peculiar sensation. Somepony was flippant… somepony was flippant to Princess Celestia. Then, much to Twilight’s shock, she heard Celestia laughing. It was an odd, terrifying sound, and the laughter echoed inside of her helmet in unnatural, unpleasant ways.

“Dim, your shadow recognised Twilight’s dominion and played along.” Celestia said these words even as she chuckled, and some of them had extended pauses between them.

“My shadow is not particularly loyal. What can I do?”

Twilight felt a chill and she was certain that the tone of Celestia’s laughter changed with these words. She looked down, checking on her own shadow, but she still had none, even with Celestia’s radiance. Something beyond Twilight’s ken had just taken place, but she didn’t have a good understanding of it, just a bare idea, bereft of any real substance.

“Mind your shadow’s loyalty, Dim.” Not a trace of laughter could be found in Celestia’s voice now, as it had eerily vanished. “Subjugate it if you must. Strangle it into submission as you are wont to do with everything else. Do not be careless and lax. Have you learned nothing from Luna?”

Dim bowed his head. “As you command. My playful shadow will be made to obey.”

“Good.” Celestia drew herself up to her full imposing height, all while keeping her eye on the shadow on the floor. “Now, about our business here. Once we leave this foyer, we’ll have no protection other than what we bring with ourselves. The rules here are different. Magic is different here. Time is different here. We exist outside of our native thaumasphere and chronosphere. Twilight, mind your strength. I really need you to be paying attention, Twilight. Our lives depend on it.”

“Right,” Twilight replied, though unsure of what she needed to do. Celestia was trusting her to figure it out though, and she would. She would prove worthy of that trust, no ands, ifs, or buts.

“Do as I say. Obey me. When I speak, or give a command, I do so with experience and understanding. Do everything I ask, as I ask, how I ask, and we have a good chance to make it home with Moon Rose.” Celestia lifted her hammer to a ready position and her wings folded against her sides. “Shining Armor, shields ready. Twilight Sparkle, attune your magic and feel for disturbances. Dim—”

“Yes?” He hissed the word and set curls of smoke loose around his head.

“Know that you are trusted, even if your shadow is not. We’re counting on you.”

The grey-clad vizard nodded.

“Now then,” Celestia said to those around her, “through that door. Let us move as one.”

There was no light here, only supernatural darkness. Twilight pushed it back with the light from her horn, but she could feel the darkness striving against her, taking offense to the light she cast. Ahead stretched a hallway, with doors on both sides. Beneath her armored hooves was something that had the appearance of stone, the sound of stone, the solidity of stone, but wasn’t stone.

Looking left, then right, then ahead, she took notice of the doors. Different shapes, styles, and sizes. One door to her immediate left was like a bank vault door, complete with some manner of combination lock. When she looked at the lock itself, and saw its strange symbols, her vision blurred and she felt something go stabbing through her mind, not through the center, but a little off to the left, and just below her ear.

Blinking, she tore her gaze away before any more mental damage was done.

It was neither cold nor hot here. If sensation existed, it was illusion, reality conforming to a standard that her mind found acceptable. She knew that she only saw doors because her mind understood doors. What she was actually seeing was probably something else entirely. How nice it was, for reality to cooperate and coalesce into a form that she could comprehend.

It was almost worthy of a fruit basket and a thank you note.

“Mind your thoughts, Twilight,” Celestia said in a calm, but commanding voice.

Twilight settled into a cautious half-trot down the hallway, and focused on pushing back the living darkness. The magenta glow of her magic seemed dull, it did not have its usual rosy glow, but she did not let this disturb her, and as her mentor had said, she was mindful of her thoughts. Her magic didn’t need to be just the right colour, it just needed to function.

“Twilight,” Celestia said as she pulled up alongside of her former student. “The mirror… it exists as a shortcut, connecting two doors together. It acts as a bypass so this place is avoided. There are many mirrors, many portals. There are many pools that reflect other places. Their creation was so that the danger of this place could be avoided. This place stretches on forever. It is always growing, always gaining new halls, new doors as the infinite probabilities of reality manifest in new and unexpected ways. I have studied this place for over a thousand years, and I barely understand it. Perhaps some day, you and I shall study this place together. Would you like that, Twilight Sparkle?”

When Twilight nodded, the light she cast bobbed.

“Moon Rose is relatively near, though distance has no real meaning here.” Celestia too, ignited her horn, and her light intermingled with Twilight’s. “This hallway has changed. There are new doors here that I do not recognise. Soon, Twilight, we shall come upon a door to a place that is familiar to you. I have long sought to secure it, but I only have so much power. I fear that world is vulnerable, Twilight, and there is nothing I can do.”

One door gave Twilight pause. It was rotten looking, decaying, and cracks could be seen all around the doorframe. She halted, unaware of her own actions, because she had to look. The door radiated sour magic and standing too close chilled her blood. It had been blue once, this door, a bright, vivid shade, but now it was faded, almost blue-grey. The timber planks were all decaying, the wood splintered, and the doorknob was missing. Darkness seemed to pour through the keyhole, trickling into whatever was beyond.

“This world has fallen,” Celestia whispered in a soft voice. “Just as I feared it might. The vampire plague proved to be too much, I suppose. They spent all of their time warring and bickering with one another. The nation-states had no sense of cooperation, no shared sense of survival.” She sighed, a heavy, forlorn sound. “In time, this door will fade away, and another will replace it.”

“But… what of the vampires?” asked Shining Armor.

“Based on the state of the door, I would say they’ve escaped this world and now feed elsewhere. Or perhaps they starved. Either way, this world and its door are dead.”

Shivering hard enough to make her armor clatter, Twilight made her hooves move. As she strode away from the decaying, dead door, she cast a final sidelong glance at it, and it was quickly gone from her obscured peripheral version. Just behind her, she heard Dim wheezing as his laboured breathing went drifting past her ears.

“Beyond that door,” Celestia said as she kept pace with Twilight, “that door right over there”—she pointed with her wing—“Starswirl and I would visit there for tea. It was quite unique. He and I brought back samples, but they just didn’t grow in the right way. I’ve since grown wiser about introducing new and potentially invasive species.”

“Back when unicorns had more power…” Twilight took a moment to compose her thoughts, carefully choosing the words she said. She licked her lips and her tongue touched cold metal. “When there were fewer unicorns and more magic to go around, they used to come here, didn’t they?”

“Yes, Twilight, my clever and perceptive student.” The big mare sighed as she reached out with her wing and touched the smaller mare who kept pace beside her. “Many dangers were introduced into our world. It is why I had to find a way to steal the door.”

“Stealing is wrong,” Twilight said to her mentor.

“Yes, Twilight, it is. Yet, I did it, and do not feel regret. I acted out of necessity, and the need to protect others goes beyond any moral compunctions I might have. Our world was made safer once I pilfered the portal.”

“Unicorns growing weaker as their population grew also contributed to our safety.” Twilight glanced up at her mentor, but could not see her, as Celestia existed in a blind spot. “Stealing is wrong, but I agree, taking the door was the right thing to do. As a princess, I have a pretty good understanding of necessity. Sometimes, you have no choice but to do something that you find reprehensible. The trick, I suppose, is learning how to live with yourself afterwards.”

“That’s quite a trick,” Dim muttered.

Behind her helmet, Twilight’s lips pressed together as she thought about Dim’s regrets.

“The walls don’t feel straight here,” Shining Armor said. “It feels as though they angle, narrowing ahead of us—”

“Shining Armor, guard your thoughts.” Celestia’s voice was kind, but also commanding and firm. “If you allow yourself to think that way, you may cause the walls to close in on all of us. Be mindful of what you think, Shining Armor.”

Standing in an archway, Twilight Sparkle had a look around the junction of hallways. Five of them met here and there was a pentagonal room. Twilight had questions, but she refused to allow her mind to entertain them. The five archways all led to darkness and Twilight, unable to control her thoughts, began to think of the terrors of getting lost here.

“Reality overlaps here,” Celestia said as she strode into the middle of the room. “Walk down any of these passages and soon enough, you will find another five-sided room just like this one. And then you can pick a passage from there, and if you think about how these passages twist and turn about, you will realise that they overlap. Truly, this is a place of madness.”

“We come from a dead-end?” asked Shining Armor.

“As far as I know, we’re unique in that way. In my explorations of this place, I have not found another dead-end. Starswirl had a theory that our planet, or home, it exists as a sort of nexus, a central location, and that all of this expanded outward from there. Time and discovery might prove him right.”

“You speak of Skyreach—”

“Twilight, never say that word again.”

Though she wanted to apologise, Twilight chose to remain silent. She heard the hurt in her mentor’s voice, and knew all too well that it was a touchy subject. Twilight wanted to say something, anything, she wanted to indulge in some means to make it better, but she had no understanding of how to tend to this wound.

“We are not alone.”

Dim’s soft utterance caused all of Twilight’s senses to go on high alert. Frozen in place, she listened, her magic-sense strained to detect whatever might be near, and she concentrated upon her hooves, with the hopes that she might sense some vibration. Celestia too, was rigid, but Twilight could spare no thought for her mentor’s actions.

“Something hungers for Celestia’s regrets,” said Dim as he lingered in the amorphous shadows. “She is fatty with regrets, left wide and broad with remorse. Meaty with melancholy—”

“Dim, I may never forgive you. Of all your slights, this is the worst.”

Twilight, still straining, wondered how these two could joke at a time like this. And what an awful joke it was. Even worse, it was distracting, and she found that she had trouble focusing. She couldn’t even sense what was wrong, just that something was wrong. So very wrong. And that wrongness, wrong as it was, drew closer.

“Shining Armor, shield us. But not Dim.” Celestia pulled Twilight and Shining Armor closer as she spoke. “Hurry, Shining.”

A flickering magenta bubble appeared. It was weak, it crackled as though it would fail, but then it grew bright with purpose as Shining Armor adapted his magic. Twilight wondered why Dim was left outside of the shield; surely Celestia had a purpose, a reason, and not just petty punishment. Dim was remarkably calm for being an unarmored, squishy unicorn left with no protection.

He stood there, smoking, not particularly concerned, and Twilight was thoroughly unnerved. “Shining, shield him!”

“Belay that order,” Celestia said in a voice of cold iron.

Every muscle clenching painfully, Twilight bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. The copperiness of it flooded her mouth, a disgusting taste that made her shudder with revulsion. A tall bipedal figure entered, gliding through an archway, and Twilight found that she was paralysed. Perhaps from fear, or perhaps because of Celestia’s will. She couldn’t move, could not make magic, she could do nothing.

The creature, this horrid, wretched thing, was tall, thin, with gangly limbs and it appeared to have a squid for a head. Writhing tentacles waved around a mouth that Twilight could not see, but she was certain it was there. This squid-headed monster hurt her eyes to look at, but paralysed as she was, she could not turn away. Drool glistened, the tentacles were slick with it, and the creature’s eyes were impossibly disturbing.

It stopped in the center of the room, lifted its arms, and unnaturally long fingers slid out from the draped sleeves of its dark robes. The fingers seemed boneless, almost tentacles, but had claws on the end. A fiery nimbus blazed around the fingers, and a tether of magic appeared between it and Dim.

“That’s right, come into my mind,” Dim said to the squid-headed horror. “Have a look.”

A keening, burbling wail emerged from the tentacles as the squid-headed creature waved its clawed hands around. The eldritch shriek caused Twilight’s guts to slither painfully around her insides, and she could feel her kidneys trying to cosy up to her pancreas for comfort as her intestines sought the warm reassurance of her beating heart.

“Oh, that poor illithid,” Celestia murmured. “No creature deserves that.”

The squid-headed abomination writhed in place, its body seizing, convulsing, and it appeared to dance some manner of eldritch jig that Twilight Sparkle didn’t want to understand. Its arms bent in places that seemed to have no elbows, they just curved in a most unsettling way, and it began to claw its head with its long, noodly fingers.

Twilight made the mistake of looking into its eyes. Such terror, such tenebrous horror. It had connected with Dim’s mind. While Twilight couldn’t even comprehend what might exist in Dim’s mind, she knew that Dim was a vessel of nightmares, and that Luna had poured the memory of every nightmare, every foul dream, every nocturnal, unimaginable horror into his skull. For Dim to become the Lord of Nightmares, he had to be remade with nightmares.

And now, right before her eyes, two eldritch abominations touched minds in ways that Twilight Sparkle refused to understand. What unspeakable dread might a squid-headed horror dream about? Twilight didn’t know, and she didn’t want to find out. Her mind recoiled at the merest thought of it. She feared that her sanity might be in danger, but try as she might, she could not close her eyes.

“Dim! Stop that at once! Right now!” Celestia’s commands rang in Twilight’s ears like hammer blows on an anvil. “Stop playing with it. Just… stop enjoying this! Cease indulging in your darkest aspects! Remember what Luna said!”

The keening wail increased in pitch, so much so that Twilight now heard it inside of her head. It now existed in a place beyond perception. Just as it crept past the point of being utterly unbearable, the shriek became a gurgle, and then the squid-headed monster’s squid-shaped head exploded. It popped, bursting like some pus-packed pimple or a cyst. For a few horrible seconds, it rained chunks of squid-headed monster, and there were wet splatters that sizzled against Shining Armor’s shield.

Headless, the body wobbled a bit, rocked to and fro, and then toppled over.

Author's Note

Twilight could have better saving throws.

Chapter 3

“I think I might spew,” Twilight said as the paralysis receded from her body.

“What did you have for lunch, Twilight?” Celestia asked in response. “A little colour might do this place some good.”

Stunned, Twilight faced a new round of paralysis. Celestia was entirely unlike herself right now. Never, at any time, could Twilight recall Celestia behaving this way. This was not Princess Celestia, or secretly shy Celestia, or Headmistress Celestia the Schoolmarm. Twilight did not know this Celestia and began to wonder if her mentor had been replaced by a changeling.

Princess Snarklestia had to be a changeling doppelganger.

“What was that?” Twilight asked.

“An illithid.” After a bit of a pause, Celestia added, “A mind flayer.”

“Those are real? I thought they were imaginary monsters in Ogres and Oubliettes!” Twilight almost looked at the headless corpse on the floor, but then squeezed her eyes shut.

“Twily, take a deep breath.” Shining Armor’s voice somehow permeated Twilight’s panicked state. “We’re having a real life dungeon adventure. A campaign. Pull yourself together and get into character.”

Twilight sucked in a deep breath, priming herself to unleash a devastating torrent of snark upon her brother, but then she realised that he was right. Shining Armor was right and she needed to get herself into character. She was Twilight Sparkle, the Elemental of Magic, Caretaker of Dragons, Awe-Inspiring Aunt, and a Princess of Equestria.

“A mind is a terrible thing to taste,” Dim remarked while he began to pack his pipe with more clove-scented whatever.

This made Celestia whinny, and she tossed her head around. Meanwhile, Shining Armor moved beside Twilight, and she leaned up against her brother, thankful for his kind reassurance. On the floor, the abnormally long illithid corpse twitched a few times, but thankfully, did not stand back up. Hot bile bubbled in the back of Twilight’s throat, and her innards made a mad scramble to return to their original locations.

Celestia snorted, which somehow reverberated through the whole of her armor like a miniature hurricane trapped in a tin can. “Dim, I believe the correct idiom is, ‘a mind is a terrible thing to waste.’ That’s a good effort, but I am not sure if the humour works here. I’m not even sure if that counts as a pun.”

The smaller unicorn looked up at the armored hippopotamic force of nature, coughed once, spat, and then replied, “Says you, but you’re not the one with mind flayer in your mouth. I think it went up my nose.”

Twilight panicked when she realised the futility of spewing whilst wearing a full-face helmet. She fought to control her gorge and thought back to all of the times she went adventuring with her friends. Most of those trips were pleasant. At least compared to this. Even her excursion to Castle Midnight wasn’t this bad, was it? Surely she had behaved better than this, right? She tried to recall that trip, but her recollection of it was hazy at best, and faulty at worst.

“Do you need a hankie?” Celestia asked.

Twilight was astounded by the sheer chilly sarcasm in her mentor’s voice.

“Twily, are you okay?”

She had to turn her head to see her brother, and there was a clang as their full-face helmets smacked together. Beyond the narrow slit in the black metal, she saw a flash of blue. She was fine, for the most part. Things had been boring for a while, maybe too boring, and now she was just getting back into the swing of things. She had to adjust. Yeah, that was it. Too much quiet for far too long. Maybe Celestia was adjusting too. That had to be it. While she looked into her brother’s eyes, she heard Dim and Celestia trading barbs with one another, but she failed to make out what they were saying.

“I’m fine, Big Brother. We should keep looking for Moon Rose.”

Try as she might, Twilight could not make sense of things. Why was Celestia here? She had just become a mother not all that long ago. The world was still reeling from the war in the Midreach. Of all the things that Celestia could be doing, she was here, in this place. It didn’t make sense. Celestia could have sent Luna.

As for Dim, Twilight understood why he was here, but felt that he shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t just his curse; he had a wife at home, Blackbird, and she would foal any day now. Did hippogriffs foal? Twilight wasn’t sure. Aside from the fact that he was about to become a father, Dim had duties. Studies. Obligations aplenty.

So then, why were these two busy ponies here, in this place, cutting each other down with reckless abandon?

She watched as Dim looked over the corpse of the illithid, and felt both disgust and revulsion the whole time. It was beyond repulsive, and the corpse being headless didn’t help the situation in the slightest. Celestia was humming to herself, which made a droning sound as it went rebounding and echoing through her armor.

Dim coughed as he removed a jeweled wand, a wicked looking dagger that did not gleam in the light, and a glass phial filled with some unknown substance. She watched as these trinkets were dumped into his hat and could not help but wonder just how dangerous they might be.

Or, for that matter, how useful.

“That dagger is made with changeling chitin,” Celestia said to Dim.

“I know,” Dim replied.

“Well, be careful with it. Don’t go poking a pony’s eye out with it. Or your own.”

Dim’s face—obscured by goggles to protect his eyes—contorted into a magnificent sneer. “It’s a blade purpose made for alchemy. I’ve seen their like before. To stab it into an eye would be wasteful. With one of these, you never have to worry about cross-contamination when chopping and slicing ingredients.”

“How incredibly mundane.” Celestia’s helmeted head tilted off to one side, and the big mare sighed. “If you keep making faces like that, one day it will stick that way.”

In response, Dim’s aristocratic sneer intensified into something indescribably magnificent, and Twilight was impressed by what she saw. She was also annoyed by the delay, and she cleared her throat with the hopes that it would act as a subtle reminder that they should get moving. But Dim wasn’t finished, it seemed. He pulled off the creature’s boots, upended them, and several gemstones came tumbling out. Celestia whistled, an odd sound that Twilight did not often hear, and Dim scooped up the stones with a speed that would make Spike envious.

“We should be going,” Celestia said as Dim secreted the gemstones into his hat.

Though she knew better, and she kept cringing in anticipation of Celestia scolding her, Twilight kept thinking what might be beyond these doors. If she flung one open, what might she see? What worlds awaited? She had been to other worlds, other whens and wheres. She and Starlight had tumbled through quite a number of places. Or maybe it was this place, or what this place might be, or could be. Or maybe those tangent universes broke off from this one and made their own pockets of reality.

The world of Sunset Shimmer’s exile was just a few doors down. It was the world right next door—quite literally. What incredible magic the mirror had, what wonder it possessed. Twilight was pulled from her thoughts by Celestia pulling ahead and then suddenly stopping. Somehow, Twilight halted her forward momentum before crashing into Celestia’s armor-plated hindquarters.

“I sense life,” Celestia said to the others as Twilight’s ears pricked inside of her helmet.

Shining Armor strode to Celestia’s side, halted, and cast a spell. Then, after a moment of thoughtful concentration, he said, “I sense good, harmonious creatures. Like ourselves. Well, not Dim, obviously. If I can sense them, and they can sense us, and if they get a feel for Dim, we might be in trouble.”

“Let me go ahead and see if I can parley with them.” Celestia fixed her posture and somehow became downright princessly, even in all of her heavy plate. “Stay behind me. Close, but not too close.”

Excited, The Princess of Friendship eagerly awaited a chance to meet strangers.

A griffon, a unicorn, an earth pony, and one of the magically-touched hominid derivatives that populated the world of Sunset’s exile. They seemed friendly enough and made no threatening moves or gestures when Celestia introduced herself. Well armed, they had an assortment of guns, wands, and blades, all of which remained sheathed.

“We’re bounty hunters,” the griffon said as he jerked his talon-thumb at the earth pony. “This is Blue Baroque, the brains of our outfit. She’s not only our leader, but she’s also our pack pony. My name is Guess. The unicorn, his name is Boletus, and our pet human is named Tart Tucker.”

“Hey, I’m no pet,” the pink-skinned, blue-haired female said in protest.

“Nobody asked you, you two-legged freak show.”

“Freak show?” Tart Tucker demanded.

“Who puts mammaries there of all places? That has to be a mistake—”

Reaching out, Tart Tucker smacked the griffon on the back of the head, which caused Guess to fluff out to almost twice his size. When his beak opened to say something, she smacked him again, and this time, the unicorn, Boletus, began laughing. Blue Baroque cleared her throat just once, a soft sound, and the entire group of bounty hunters went both quiet and still.

“Miss Baroque, I’m looking for a unicorn filly. Her abductors may have brought her here, to this place. Have you seen anything?”

“Nope, sorry.” Blue Baroque shook her head from side to side. “We’re looking for a lich. A really nasty bugger, too. He escaped and went off-world. Two-headed, one dog, one cat.”

“I’ve seen nothing of the sort,” Celestia said to the stocky earth pony.

“Drats.” The earth pony mare offered up a gracious smile to Celestia. “Look out, there’s a mind flayer around here. He’s been stalking us for a while. Boletus thinks it was waiting for reinforcements, or maybe went to find help, because it scarpered off.”

“It’s no longer a problem,” Dim said.

“What a relief.” Tart Tucker tousled the griffon’s head feathers as she spoke. “Good luck finding your abducted filly.”

“Why, thank you.” Celestia bowed her head. “Best of luck finding your lich.”

Twilight smiled, but failed to recollect that her face was obscured behind her helmet. She stood waiting, hoping for a meaningful exchange of information, an enlightening discussion about their respective worlds—but then came to a hurried understanding that this would not happen. Two adventuring parties had bumped into one another in the strangest of places. What were the odds? With nothing but a hello and the exchange of pleasantries, this meeting was already over. They would part and go their separate ways.

Yet, Twilight’s curious nature nagged her; these creatures had bumped into an adventuring party with not one, but two alicorns. No reaction. Not a one. They had not stared or gawped. They had spoken with Celestia as if it were some perfectly natural, normal thing, the sort of thing one did when navigating an otherworldly maze populated by squid-headed horrors that no doubt came from some dungeon dimension.

The world—the universe—now felt a little larger and Twilight felt a little smaller.

“It’s nice meeting fellow adventurers,” Celestia said as she led the way. “I miss my time as an adventurer. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Adventuring allows for a lot of close, intimate moments with friends during the long stretches of boredom, and moments of bonding when things get exciting. Now that I think about it, I think that’s what I miss. The chance to get close. To be close. These truly special moments that only come with adventuring.”

The big mare halted, and a golden glow emanated from the armored cone surrounding her horn. Twilight waited, her magic sense tingling, and she gave careful consideration to what her mentor had just said. It was practically a friendship lesson. Behind her, Dim coughed and Shining Armor hummed a jaunty tune.

“Her position has suddenly changed.” A fearful wicker made Celestia’s armor clatter. “Not sure how that’s possible. Perhaps a series of doors was involved, or some manner of teleportation. Moon Rose is scared, I can sense it, but she still lives. So long as she lives, everything is fine. If her life force is snuffed out…”

The unspoken threat hung in the air like an asteroid preparing for orbital impact.

“This becomes a mission of vengeance,” said Dim, whispering these words between coughs.

Twilight could not help but shiver.

The repetition was becoming tedious. A long hallway with doors on either side. Living darkness that nibbled at the edges of the light. At the end of each long hallway segment, a pentagonal room with more hallways. Whatever excitement this place had once presented had long since worn off. But Twilight was far from bored; she was focused, alert, aware, even if she was uncomfortable.

And she was uncomfortable.

The armor… the armor changed Celestia. No warm eyes the colour of rosy dawn were visible. Of Celestia’s warm, reassuring smile, there was no sign. The only sign of the mare known as Celestia was her mane and tail, which drifted right through the mysterious matte black metal that seemed to devour the light. Not even the eye slit in the helmet offered a peek inside, but was obscured by smoked black glass.

It occured to Twilight that she had only ever known her mentor during times of peace. Celestia was a mare that held back; she couldn’t let go. In times of conflict, she could only ever let loose with the merest fraction of her power, otherwise civilisation around her would be evapourated. Incinerated. All of life was a hostage, and her mentor was forced to submit.

But here, in this place, the rules were different; Celestia was free to be a behemoth.

Well, within reason. Twilight suspected that Celestia surrounded herself with smaller, weaker, somewhat more fragile beings for a reason. Did Celestia hold any secret resentment for being held back? Gratitude? More than ever, Celestia remained a mystery. A wonderful, beautiful mystery that Twilight treasured.

Just as Twilight was about to say something meaningful, something beautiful to her instructor and mentor, a door opened. Celestia halted, along with everypony else, and Twilight’s heart lept up into her neck, where it lodged in her windpipe. What eldritch horror was about to come out? Would it ooze? Slither? Squirble, with squelchy squishes? Squirble-glurble-blurble?

A rather familiar pink ponk pronked out, bounced once in the middle of the hallway, and then vanished through a door opposite the one she exited. Twilight’s heart, currently cuddling with her epiglottis, telegraphed what it was feeling with excited thumpy-bumpy-pumpy undulations while her precious, life-giving blood went squishy-squirt.

Then, the door opened again, and a somewhat shy Pinkie Pie poked her pink head out. She blinked a few times, her blue eyes twinkling in the harsh light, and looking right up at Celestia, the playful pink ponk giggle-snorted. Twilight was desperately trying to make sense of what she was seeing, and Celestia’s armored hoof rang out a death knell as it tapped against the floor.

“I was jaunting, and got a little lost.” Pinkie Pie’s words were almost bashful. “Boulder and I were playing hide and go seek. I have to find him so my sister, Maud, won’t worry.” Then, in a whisper, she added, “Maud doesn’t know I took him. He knows the best hiding places!”

Twilight’s ears itched, as she could not recall hearing an exclamation point following a whisper before.

“Pinkie Pie… we talked about this.” Celestia’s voice was firm.

“Um, did we?”

“Pinkamena Diane Pie—”

At the mention of her full name, Pinkie Pie shuddered, her tail went twitchy-twitch, her mane boinged, going straight, then back to curly, straight again, and back to curly. She vibrated, her legs stiff, and her ears rotated in opposite directions on either side of her side. Her eyes became pinpricks, and making a fearful face, she vanished back through the door, which slammed shut with a thunderous boom.

“—I’m going to tell your mother!”

But it was too late. The pink ponk was gone and Celestia was left fuming.

Author's Note

Hmm, one wonders, what class is Twilight Sparkle?

Chapter 4

Another hallway that ended in a pentagonal room, a place identical to the previous. Tedious? Perhaps. But there was a satisfaction in the exploration; there were new doors to be seen, some of them quite beautiful. Like the one that Twilight was examining now. It was made of water, solid water that was still somehow liquid. She could see fish swimming around, and golden rays of sunlight created glittering cascades of diamonds in the water.

It was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

All these worlds, all these variations. She had stood on another world, and she had visited various variations of her home. Starlight’s time-travel assault… how many ripples had it created? How many new doors had sprung into existence? Which tangent universes became more than mere bubbles and gained permanency? How many lives suddenly sprang into existence when a derivative manifested—and how many lives were lost when that tangent bubble popped? Were they lives, or mere anomalies, variations and derivatives that sprang into being when the right conditions necessitated—demanded—their existence?

How many variations of herself existed?

Celestia?

As the fish swam by, unaware of otherworldly observance, Twilight wondered if coming here had changed anything, and if a new universe sprang into existence, one where she stayed at home to finish paperwork, a universe where she, Twilight Sparkle, could not be bothered to go adventuring. How old would that world be? That Twilight Sparkle might believe her world to be old—ancient. A world with a long, rich tapestry of history, but in truth, that world might be just a few hours old.

But it would have memories.

Would a false tapestry of history hold any less meaning?

The lessons of the past—false though they might be—would still shape the future.

“Twilight… your thoughts—”

“I’m okay with it,” she said to Celestia, who stood beside her. “Really, I am. My past and everything in it might not be real. But that’s okay. My friendships are real, and I’ve seen the consequences of them not existing. That’s real enough for me to go forward.”

“Twilight Sparkle.” Celestia breathed out this name. “There are moments when there are just no words in any known language to express just how proud I am of you. Many would be crushed beneath the doubt caused by these realisations. But not you.”

Casting one final glance at the watery door, Twilight knew that she had to keep moving.

When Celestia came to a halt, Twilight did too. Something felt off—wrong. A dreadful coldness—something felt in the soul—approached. Shining Armor murmured something and began casting a spell and Twilight recognised it as Protection from Disharmonious Evil. Celestia brought her hammer to bear, and Twilight began casting her own wards.

Dim stood puffing his pipe, and didn’t seem particularly concerned.

Tendrils of frost engulfed the floor, walls, doors, and the ceiling. Twilight could see her breath now, little curls of steam rose from the confines of her helmet. A pale blue glow could be seen, a wretched, unwholesome corruption of light. The blue illumination was ghastly, unnatural, a light that should not be.

“Rottergeists.” Celestia half-spat, half-hissed the guttural utterance.

Then, Twilight saw one, and it froze her blood. Some kind of skull—what species was unknown—and a section of vertebrae, ablaze with unholy blue flames. A second one manifested, and something about this one seemed distinctly feline. Twilight had never seen anything like it, she had never even heard of such a thing, and was quite horrified that something like this even existed.

“If one kills you,” Dim said as his body burst into flames, “you become one.”

“Oh great,” Twilight replied.

Almost panicked, Twilight released a partially-charged bolt of disruption and was pleased when the floating skull and spine was blasted into dust. But more were coming—a whole lot more. Celestia cast a barrier of golden light just ahead, and from the warm glow it radiated, Twilight knew it was sunlight. Pure, golden, cleansing light. One of the approaching rottergeists shrieked, and Twilight felt a stabbing pain go through her skull.

The pain was such that her knees wobbled and went weak. She might have dropped to the floor, but her brother came to her aid. Rather than topple over, she leaned up against him as she waited for the weakness to pass. Twilight, who didn’t particularly like the undead, began charging up her horn for another blast.

She just needed time, and Dim was buying her that time. He summoned darts of pink and black flames, all of which flew unerringly to their targets. Twilight knew the nature of these flames, the odd, peculiar magic of Chantico and the Void—an anathema to the undead and the unnatural.

“Get behind me!” Twilight shouted as she changed her spell focus from pinpoint to catastrophe-in-waiting.

Dim teleported while Celestia lept backwards. Twilight did not fire prematurely, but was patient, and allowed her spell to fully charge. Visible wibbles of magic coalesced around her armor-sheathed horn; tiny motes of light created by overcharged thaumatons excitedly bouncing about. Rottergeists, perhaps hundreds of them danced into view.

Closing her eyes, Twilight let go.

The resulting blast of disruption formed a cone that engulfed the hallway and reality struggled to reassert itself as the destructive silvery illumination spread ever-outward. Whatever happened in the hallway was invisible, unseen, as the unbridled destructive force obscured all view. The roar was deafening—thunderous—it sounded like a howitzer fired into the tight confines of a tunnel. Twilight had failed to protect her ears yet again; she heard a ringing sound, a high-pitched chime, and then the world went silent, utterly silent.

Silver flames roiled, consuming everything, and only the otherworldly nature of this place prevented its own destruction. Twilight opened her eyes and then immediately wished she hadn’t, as she was blinded by the view. The cone of calamity cleansed the hallway and seared silvery, dancing stars onto Twilight Sparkle’s retinas.

The thick silence in Twilight’s ears became a droning whine, then a cacophonic chorus of bells. She could feel the pressure just behind her eyes, and for a second, her mind tormented her with cringe-inducing imagery of her eyes popping right out of their sockets. Her brain was a bell, and the ringing in her ears was a sort of clapper. Each bong, each dong, each resonating toll, she could feel her grey matter squishing against the inside of her skull, and she feared that her brain might go squirting out of her ears at any moment.

Ashes swirled and blew around like snowflakes. Particles of bone dust glittered in the air as the silver light raced down the hall like a cannonball express locomotive destined for Tartarus. Nothing remained. Absolute and total obliteration had been achieved. The dire chill was gone. Utter eradication restored warmth and good cheer.

With a stupefied smile hidden beneath her helmet, Twilight stood listening to the bells.

“That,” said Dim in words that Twilight could hardly make out, “was a bovine brouhaha.”

“Dim, I don’t follow.” Celestia stood nearby, examining a pile of ash. “What does this have to do with cows?”

“Was that not a cattle-clysmic event?”

For the briefest moment, Twilight Sparkle thought about disintegrating Dim. She could barely hear anything, but had been subjected to this. Perhaps she was a bit fatigued, maybe still under the effects of magical fear, or it could have been Dim’s pun, but Twilight felt her knees wobbling and her spine made her feel almost like a quasi-invertebrate.

Celestia jerked her head back, which caused the articulated plates of her armor to creak and squeak. Twilight could feel her mentor’s powerful stare; it was like standing too close to a kiln, or something wickedly hot. Thankfully, this stare was focused on Dim, and Twilight was secretly pleased that the vizard might get a little comeuppance.

“Come now, Auntie Celestia, this is no time to start a beef.”

At the sound of her brother’s voice, Twilight, her ears still ringing, felt her duodenum slither upwards so that it could throttle her defenseless windpipe. In her weakened state, she had no protections against the pernicious punning. If looks could indeed kill—Celestia, a being of nigh-infinite power—Shining Armor would be a bubbling puddle on the floor.

“So this is how it is in the Crystal Empire now,” Celestia said in a voice made cool with menace.

“Forgive me, dairy godmother,” Dim said with all of the sincerity he could muster, which wasn’t much.

Twilight heard her brother chortling and something about the sound lifted her spirits. Then, she heard Celestia… giggling. She had heard it before, but never like this, at a time like this. It seemed so out of character, so out of place. Twilight was left awe-stricken by the experience of having yet another aspect of her mentor revealed.

But she found herself bothered, annoyed, irritated. Twilight, still hearing the tolling of the bells, took a moment to determine why she was irked. The puns? No, those were bad, awful even, but that was not the source of her ire. She looked around, first at her brother, then her mentor, and then at Dim. Looking about did not reveal the source of the sourness she felt, so she had to put her mind to work.

Where was her well-deserved praise? A major threat had been dealt with. She, Twilight Sparkle, had just resolved conflict in a manner most spectacular. Her companions, rather than focus upon her glorious achievements, made puns instead. Bad ones. Dim had stolen her moment of glory with some unworthy wordplay. Celestia offered no praise, no congratulations. Her brother offered no compliments, no plaudits, none of the big brotherly admiration that she craved.

Hmph!

Twilight’s mental harrumph did nothing to make her feel better. If anything, it made her feel worse, and now, having identified the cause of her consternation, she felt foalish and self-conscious. She was a big filly—a mare in almost every way—and such accolades were not necessary. Yet, she craved them. She wanted Celestia’s approval. Needed it. Craved it. When she adventured with her friends, the praise was free-flowing and constant. They were supportive of one another and mindful of each other’s accomplishments. Rainbow Dash had her pep-talks. Rarity was generous with her flattery. Applejack was always there with a good word to say, or encouragement when needed. Pinkie Pie was Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy… Flutters had her quiet, soul-affirming ‘yays.’

A clever turn of phrase held more importance than a spectacular feat of magic.

Dim had pulled off his hat, and was now rummaging around inside of it. Twilight heard things go clunk, things rattled around, and with a raspy cough, Dim retrieved his prize. A bright pink bottle of Cadance~Cola. The bottle was glistening, sweaty with condensation, and Twilight found herself licking her lips when she looked at it.

“Dim, how thoughtful,” said Celestia.

“I have no intentions of sharing,” the vizard replied with an impressive sneer.

“But Dim—”

“Did no one else think to pack a hat? Do I detect a dearth of common sense amongst my companions?”

“Just what else did you pack in that hat of yours, I wonder?” Before Dim could react or respond, Celestia snatched his hat away, pulled it close, and peeked inside.

It was quite unlike Celestia to behave in such a manner, and Twilight almost swallowed her tongue. Why, the big mare… she was almost… foalish. Dim was left holding his glistening bottle of Cadance~Cola whilst Celestia plundered his hat, no doubt searching for any provisions he might have secreted away. The first thing that Celestia pulled out was not food, but an alchemist’s shotgun that was longer than the hat was deep. Something about the weapon caused Twilight a great deal of alarm, as it was both a weapon—a firearm—and it reeked of less than wholesome enchantments.

Celestia pulled out an empty jar and eyeballed it. “We could use this as a glass, so we can share.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Dim, don’t be contrary. An empty jar will work as a glass in a pinch.”

“It’s not empty,” the vizard said with a faint hint of alarm in his voice. “Do not unscrew the lid.”

Celestia shook the jar, held it up to her helmet, and then gave it another shake. “What’s in here, anyhow? It’s resisting my efforts to determine what it is. What it might be.”

“Uh…”

“Dim.” Celestia’s playfulness was gone now. “Do you need to confess one of your many egregious sins? What is it? Tell me. Now. The only thing I can tell about the jar is that there is some kind of amplification spell on it. Some kind of sound enhancer. Why keep that on what appears to be an empty jar?”

Before saying anything, Dim backed away from the armored alicorn and his hindquarters bumped into the wall. Twilight—now curious—waited for Dim to respond. The decidedly not-empty jar filled her with alarm now when she looked at it, a sort of sweaty, quivery terror. The unknown was a great and glorious thing to Twilight—but not unknowns when it came to Dim, who dealt with truly unpleasant things.

“Just do not open the jar,” Dim said again, repeating his words from mere moments ago.

“Tell me, what is in the jar?” Celestia demanded.

“Distilled essence of banshee scream, highly refined and processed. Made from the finest, most shrieky of banshees.”

Twilight felt her nethers clench when she realised the implications.

“You put that in a jar”—Celestia moved the jar away from her face and held it at a distance—“and then you enchanted it with an amplification spell?”

“Oh crap!” There was a clatter as Shining Armor ducked behind his sister and took cover.

“This… this could bring ruination to a city. Destroy it—”

“I’ve destroyed cities before,” Dim said, smoothly interrupting Celestia.

“Dim… this is a weapon of mass destruction. I almost drank from this.”

Twilight felt an almost odd sense of relief. She wasn’t the one being lectured. It felt great to hear Dim getting lectured. Sure, she had once almost wrecked Ponyville with Smarty Pants and a poorly applied spell, and as awful as that was, it wasn’t as bad as keeping weapons of mass destruction in a hat. Hearing Celestia’s heavy breathing made Twilight giddy in a way she’d never felt before.

If she couldn’t be praised for her extraordinary accomplishments, then at least she could listen to another pony be lectured for his dastardly deeds. She found this quite satisfactory, and was no longer miffed. Then, much to Twilight’s horror, Celestia stuffed the jar back into Dim’s hat, and continued to look around.

It was contraband; why didn’t she take it away?

“For punishment, you’ll be sharing your soda pop.”

Dim sighed, but said nothing.

“I get the first drink,” Celestia said while towering over Dim. “I don’t trust you not to backwash out of spite.”

Author's Note

One wonders how one collects a scream in a jar...

Chapter 5

There were no songs, no revelry. What little laughter there was felt unwholesome, sarcastic, insincere. There was no sense that the stygian darkness all around them was being conquered, only held back, and only barely. Even Shining Armor was not the pony that Twilight expected. He was ever the stoic soldier, sure, but he seemed far too comfortable, too accepting of everything happening.

Twilight was surrounded by ponies that she loved, that she cared for, ponies that were very dear to her—but she detested them as adventuring companions. Celestia had brief moments of warmth and sincerity, but clouds of sarcasm and cold cynicism turned Celestia’s sunny disposition a bit overcast.

It occured to Twilight that her friends were seasoned adventurers; ponies who adventured and made the most of it. Her current companions however, were also seasoned adventurers. But more than that, they were hardened killers. Callous souls left scarred, jaded, deadened by the lives they had taken. Celestia had lived for a mighty long time—and had survived the worst parts of history. Dim had introduced a new type of war to the world when he brought peace to the Midreach and destroyed Menagerie. As for Shining Armor, he led armies, and regularly consigned some of Equestria’s best and brightest to a grim fate, all to secure some shore or hill.

Twilight wasn’t sure if she belonged here with these ponies—Celestia most of all.

It was a hard realisation to stomach. Twilight marched shoulder to shoulder with her brother, just behind Celestia, who led the way while Dim was behind them, coughing, always coughing or wheezing, each laboured breath a struggle. Twilight concluded that she was a fairweather adventurer, who prefered companions at their best and brightest—not their darkest and dingiest.

She thought of her trip to Castle Midnight with Starlight, Trixie, and Sumac. That had gone less than perfectly, with Starlight and Trixie making everything worse. So much snark and derision. Starlight and Trixie would do well with this group, Twilight realised, and that made her feel sad. She wanted to believe that Starlight and Trixie were better ponies—they were better ponies—but given the right circumstances, their worst aspects returned in force. They were consummate survivors, all too familiar with the mantra of survival at any cost.

“Dim, are you okay back there?” Celestia asked whilst she forged ahead.

“Some disgusting primitive drank my refreshing drink,” Dim wheezed in response.

Twilight cringed so hard that her stomach muscles cramped.

Celestia halted with no warning. “Oh no… we’ve come to a place where I hoped we would not.”

The hallway… was made of meat. Just beyond the archway, the hallway of glistening muscle could be seen. Meat, sinew, and tendon. A yellow eye rolled around in its socket and came to focus on Twilight. The doors visible in the island of light were not doors at all, but sphincters. Mouths perhaps. Maws. Though one in particular looked a bit like a slicked, shiny anus.

Meat that lacked the polite sociable attire of skin.

Rude meat, adorned with unspeakable nudity.

Inconsiderate, rude meat that did dare to go bare; Twilight could not abide such meat.

Twilight retreated, driven back by the anus door, which seemed to clench in anticipation. She bumped into Celestia, and the two mares whinnied together. Celestia wickered, a deep, bellowing rumble, and Twilight whinnied in response. This exchange continued, as all speech seemed to have departed from them, and they were now dumb beasts with a shared disgust of nude meat.

“Do not dare to look at me in such a manner,” Dim said to the rolling, lolling eye. “I shall pluck you out if you offend me.”

“The last time I saw something like this, Skyla was tearing her way out of her mother.”

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and did battle against her rising gorge.

“I’ve seen spiders that spun webs… made of meat,” Dim remarked. “This is not my first hallway made of meat.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say about Blackbird, Dim.” Shining Armor’s casual deadpan caused the vizard to turn away from the baleful eye.

Twilight was too distracted to be disgusted.

“A series of dungeon dimensions.” Celestia’s voice was mostly steady, but held a hint of unsettled revulsion. “Once, they came to our world. I couldn’t close the rift, so I had to come here, fight my way through this place, and close the tear in reality from the other side. I started with an army, and went home woefully alone.”

“And beyond these doors,” Dim said to Celestia after turning away from Shining Armor. “These worlds, are they made of meat?”

“With scabbed over oceans of blood.” Reaching out with one wing, Celestia pulled Twilight closer. “The denizens of these worlds are unspeakable horrors. Worse than demons.”

Metal clattered against metal as Celestia shivered against Twilight.

“Well, time to earn my salt.” Shining Armor began to stretch and flex his legs in preparation for the grisly task to come. “It’s gonna squish when I walk on it, ain’t it? Will it feel pain?”

Just as Shining Armor asked his question, several things happened all at once. A creature made of meat and eyeballs was pooted out from the glistening anus door. Twilight stared at it in abject horror, as if she had just witnessed the miracle of birth. A long ribbon of slimy, stringy mucus connected the excessively eyeballed horror to the still-clenching sphincter like an umbilical tether.

“That’s an eye tyrant,” Dim said in a voice of remarkable calm. “We’re doomed.”

Twilight found herself snatched—lifted—and held out in front of Celestia. An eyeblink later, Dim was beside her, mere inches away, so close that the brim of his hat brushed up against her helmet. At first, Twilight, confused, feared that she was to be used as a shield, but that wasn’t what happened at all. As had happened once before, Twilight’s horn fired percussive, explosive blasts, and beside her, Dim unleashed a blinding torrent of flame.

Then, the weirdest thing happened: Twilight heard Celestia singing.

“Shoot to thrill, play to kill! I got my gun at the ready, gonna fire at will! 'Cause I shoot to thrill, and I'm ready to kill! I can't get enough, I can't get the thrill! I shoot to thrill, play to kill!”

The beholder did not last long against the onslaught of magical blasts, flame, and Celestia’s rowdy bellowing. Eyes popped, meat ignited, and writhing tentacles waggled in pain. Twilight couldn’t process everything that was happening, nor could she understand how Celestia was holding her up, seeing as how her armor made her magically slippery.

“What was that?” Twilight demanded as her hooves touched the ground.

“Twilight, look around you. Do you see these doors? You are not the only one to have been to other worlds—”

“Forget the song!” Twilight snapped, all of her frustrations frothing over. “You just… used me!” She stomped her armored hoof against the seemingly stone floor as fire burned in the hallway made of meat. “I am not a gun!”

Something about the stench of burning meat made Twilight’s rage all the worse. Dim too, was set down, and the vizard took a moment to collect himself before looking up at Celestia. The beholder, little more than lumps of charcoal at this point, was no longer a concern. As fire consumed the hallway, the living doors clenched and puckered, trying to escape the cleansing flames.

“I am not a gun,” Twilight repeated.

Celestia’s face, hidden and secured behind her helmet, was unreadable. Twilight’s growing fury felt insurmountable, and for a brief second, she was certain that she was about to explode and unleash a tirade against her beloved mentor. Deep breathing did nothing but stoke the angry fires in Twilight’s guts, infernos that were threatening to consume her from within.

Something slithered from the hallway, the hallway made of meat, and Celestia was quick to snatch up Dim once more. Twilight, stunned into uncomfortable silence, watched as her mentor, her teacher, her idol used Dim as a living, breathing weapon, a flamethrower. Something squealed, and the meaty hallway sizzled like hot oil in a pan.

Then, still holding Dim, Celestia said, “Twilight, you’re right. You’re not a gun. You’re my sword, and your brother is my chosen shield. You are the weapons and armaments with which I defend Equestria from all threats.”

This did nothing to make Twilight feel better.

“And what is Dim?” asked Shining Armor as Celestia put Dim down and gave him a kindly pat upon his head with her wing.

“Dim is Luna’s doomsday disaster, which I borrowed for this trip. I felt that it was warranted.” Touching Dim on the cheek, she then pointed down the burning hallway and told him, “If anything else moves, do what you do best, will you?”

Twilight’s rage, frustration, and anger reached a boiling point. “All of you are terrible! All of you! You’re so callus… a little witty banter is one thing, but you”—she pointed at Celestia with her wing—“and you”—here, she pointed at Dim—“the both of you just casually rip each other apart. Some of the things you’ve said are heartless! Cold! You’re supposed to be friends… no, not friends… family! You… you’re the worst!”

“Twilight—”

“Don’t you dare Twilight me!” the smaller alicorn snapped as she went stiff-legged with defiance. “My friends and I adventure, and we don’t behave like this! The only time we acted this poorly was when Discord turned us against each other! We sing and have camaraderie and we support each other and we act like friends! As the Princess of Friendship, I have to tell you, your friendship sucks! It is beyond terrible. I’m wondering if everything I believe about you is wrong! Sometimes… sometimes, Celestia, I’m not entirely convinced that I know who you are!”

“Twily—”

She rounded on her brother, daring him to say another word. Reaching up with her wing, she slapped the side of her helmet, trying to undo the catch. After a few fumbles, she managed to pop the latch and the helmet opened up like a yawning maw. Inside, there was an intensely frowny face, and Twilight’s eyes burned like two cherry-red coals.

“Celestia, I can’t defend you from this.” Lowering his head, Shining Armor backed away from his sister. “You’re on your own. I think you brought this on yourself.”

“Twilight—”

“Don’t you dare say how proud you are of me right now for standing up to you!” Again, Twilight stomped her hoof. “I will not be mollified! Pretty words of faint praise will not appease me! Those words won’t matter because you’ll just go back to how you’ve been during this whole trip! When I said I felt sick, you made a terrible joke about it bringing colour to the place!”

“Twilight, what I said was—”

“Now is not the time to pick nits,” Shining Armor said to Celestia.

Celestia sighed, a heavy sound, and Dim began packing his pipe with medicinal herbs. A part of Twilight was mortified about everything she had just done, all that she had said, but she refused to acknowledge that part of herself at the moment. Dim cast a sidelong glance down the hallway made of meat and Twilight found herself doing the same.

“Twilight Sparkle…” Celestia paused, waiting for another interruption, and when it didn’t happen, she cautiously continued. “Princess of Friendship though you might be, I’m not sure if you have the grounds to judge our camaraderie. It might not meet your standards, but right now, Dim and I are calm, cool, and collected, while you’re the one displaying a distressing level of distracted temper. I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt. I believe we went into this with very different expectations. I believed you to be a seasoned adventurer, and I treated you as such. A mistake was made, a dreadful one that I feel bad for.”

After sucking in a deep breath, and every muscle tensing with the need for response, Twilight had an embarrassing moment of deflation. She looked at Dim, then at Celestia, back at Dim, then up at Celestia once more, and she found that she didn’t know what to say. What could be said at a moment like this?

“I made an error in thinking our relationship was such that we could take a few good natured digs at one another.” There was hurt in Celestia’s voice, real hurt, and a sincerely apologetic tone. “I was treating you as my equal, Twilight.”

What Twilight wanted to say was quite unpleasant. All she could think of were insults, bad ones, dreadful things that she could never live with herself if she said them. If this is how you treat your equals, perhaps this explains why you were alone for so long, friendless in Canterlot. Even as the words tumbled through her mind, they felt clumsy, wrong, and the longer they lingered, the more shame Twilight felt. It was just the sort of awful thing that Dim might have said—or perhaps he would say something worse.

She felt her tongue shrivel as her hidden pettiness consumed her.

As was so often the case, Shining Armor came to her rescue.

“Princess, no disrespect, but you’ve made a mistake.” Shining Armor moved in close to his sister, bumped up against her with a clang of metal, and then just stood there, resolute. “Twily isn’t like us. In some ways, she’s better than us. We”—he pointed at Dim with his armored hoof and then banged it against his broad chest—“Dim and I, we’re beaten down, battered, and bloodied. Maybe not as much as you, Princess, but enough so that you recognise us as equals. Twily is a scrapper, but she’s not like us. And that needs to be respected.”

For a moment, silence reigned and the only sound was that of crackling flames.

But then, Shining Armor kept going. “Dim and his friends… in the dead of winter, they warmed themselves with the flames rising from mass graves. I cannot even begin to comprehend that, but you… Princess… you can. As for you and I, I might be the Emperor now, but deep down inside, I’m still your Captain of the Guard. You are still my Commander. And we behave as soldiers and commanders do. But with Twily, she is none of these things. The true horrors of war and violence haven’t been branded into her brain. She’s not martial-minded. And I think that, if you wish to treat her as an equal, as you’ve claimed, then you need to spend some thinking about your common grounds. Because this”—he gestured at everything around him—“is not one of them.”

“You can see faces in those flames,” Dim whispered, his words slithery in the air. “Faces contorted in agony. Haunting expressions of unspoken accusation. In dreams, they talk… they say what could not be spoken as they burned. Millions dead… so many dead… all those bodies.”

Overcome with some unknown emotion, Twilight found herself moving. She pushed past her mentor, her teacher, who stood frozen, unmoving, and after spreading her wings wide, she wrapped them around Dim. He resisted, of course he did, but after she held firm, he relented and leaned into her embrace. He was thin, frail, and he wheezed with every feeble breath he drew.

“You see, Princess, that’s why Twily isn’t like us. She still feels. Holds nothing back. I dare say that makes her better than us and that all of us, yourself included, Your Majesty, should aspire to be like her.”

Later, when the opportunity presented itself, Twilight would give her brother a hug.

“As touching as this is, we have a filly to save.” Shining Armor snapped to attention and was ready to go. “Come on, let us finish what we’ve started.”

Author's Note

I wrote this sober...

Chapter 6

Twilight Sparkle was uncertain if any words of encouragement or motivation could make her traverse the nightmarish passage. The hallway made of meat was a blackened, charred mess. It wriggled, quivered, it writhed with squishy, though mostly silent pain. Stepping on it would only cause it further pain—not to mention it would be incredibly gross. Plus, the hallway was cramped, tight, confined, and she feared that she might develop claustrophobia if she even took one step.

How real was the hallway?

Why did her brain have to perceive this section of this manufactured reality in such a way? What was wrong with her brain anyhow? How could it possibly have the knowledge, the imagery to construct this so that her eyes would have something to look at? The hallway reflected the worlds it connected to—worlds made of meat. When she thought of Princess Meatlestia, Ruler of Meatquestria, Twilight Sparkle almost blew chunks.

What a world.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Twilight spat out her aborted laughter, but not before it left an awful taste in her mouth. Though she had giggled—or at least made an effort—the ghostie did not go away. The hallway continued to be made of meat and Twilight balked at the very idea of trodding upon it. Some of it was already scabbing over and she knew that if she stepped on it, the scabs would crack and ooze.

What dreadful ickiness would come gushing forth.

“I can’t do it.” She regretted the words as soon as she said them.

“Twily, do you need me to carry you?”

“Shining Armor! I am not a foal!”

“Twily, no you’re not. But you’re having a tough time right now and being your Big Brother, I just wanted to help you. I would never think of treating you like a foal, not at a time like this. What sort of Big Brother doesn’t offer to help his Little Sister?”

Thinking about her brother’s words, Twilight stood chewing upon her lip, thoughtful.

“Dim,” Celestia said to the little grey vizard, “I’ll be carrying you through here. No, don’t you dare… not one word. You have bare hooves.”

“There goes my dreams of walking on a red carpet… made of meat.”

Horrified, disgusted, Twilight was startled by her own bleats of laughter. She tried to shake it, she tried to make it stop, but it would not go away, nor could it be contained. It felt good to laugh, even if the joke was the distilled essence of nightmares. After the abortive laugher from just mere moments ago, this was like a soothing balm that made everything better—but what a disgusting, revolting balm it was, what abysmal, abhorrent application it had.

“Help me, Shiny. Please?”

There was no need to ask twice, or beg. Shining Armor, dutiful soldier, Big Brother, Best Friend Forever, kneeled down. Right away, Twilight saw the challenge; she was no longer a filly and both she and he were wearing full articulated plate. The armor—a marvel of engineering—did a lot to restrict movement. Twilight felt her teeth go on edge when she both felt and heard metal scraping against metal. Somehow, she clambered up onto her brother’s back, and got her forelegs around his neck.

She knew she looked ridiculous, but at least they looked ridiculous together.

The first step was the worst step. Twilight could feel her brother sinking, sinking into the meat, and it made a grotesque sound that defied all efforts of description. Meat dangled from the ceiling, and she could not help but think about how the roof of her mouth sometimes felt after she burned it. Every nerve, every muscle, every thaumaturgical organ was at the ready, as she expected a wall-sphincter to open at any second.

She had no desire to witness the miracle of birth a second time.

Just as she was about to close her eyes for a moment, just a brief second to allow the horror to pass, she heard her mentor’s voice. It was a soft sound, a gentle sound, filled with the warmth and comfort that she craved right now. Hearing her name spoken was like listening to a sunrise, and having warmth and light restored to the world after a long and chilly night.

“Twilight…”

She found herself basking in the sound and the glow it created within her mind.

“I am sorry. When you were younger, before you became a princess, I would watch you and your friends. You know the means and the methods by now…” Her voice trailed off just as Twilight opened up her eyes once more. “But, I would watch you, and I would daydream of being there with you. Having adventures. Doing exciting things again. At some point, a threshold was crossed, and there were times when the loneliness was too much, and the fantasy of being part of your group would be very real to me.”

Hearing this confession, Twilight did not know what to say.

“I was, perhaps, a bit too eager to have this happen,” Celestia said to Twilight.

Twilight nodded, while also avoiding dangling flaps of meat. “This just wasn’t a good first adventure for the two of us,” she said to her beloved mentor as her brother’s hooves went squishy-squish in the meat below. “This is high stress stuff. I don’t have any of my friends with me. No offense meant to present company. I am not myself in these situations, not without my friends. I do my best adventuring on trains, or airships, on trips where travel is required, but not insanity and violence. Celestia, you and I have very different ideas of what a fun adventure happens to be.”

“‘Tis true,” replied Celestia whilst she carried Dim through the throaty hallway, progressing to whatever gullet awaited. “Such is the danger of fantasy, I suppose. I believed that you would be your usual plucky self here. I was so hoping for the two of us to have a grand adventure together. Slay an old god or two. Delve deep into danger and madness, relying upon our skill and wit to preserve us.”

“Yeah.” Twilight almost squeaked the word as she said it. “You know, if I could offer a bit of friendship advice, it sounds as though Dim is your ideal adventuring companion when the mood strikes to do those sorts of things. I think I’d do better on adventures where diplomacy is involved.”

“Twilight, my dear, devoted friend, I am here, in this place, doing this right now because I find that sort of adventuring to be quite boring. A real snorefest. One-thousand years of diplomatic soirees and well-bred galas. No thanks! Twilight, you know exactly why I invited you and your friends to the Grand Galloping Gala. I had to sabotage that detestable event.”

“We both crave very different things,” Twilight responded. “When your letter arrived, I was quite bored. Nothing exciting had happened in a while and it was getting to me. To be honest, I was ready for mayhem… but nothing could have prepared me for this.”

There was an odd, but pleasant feeling as whatever was torn between her and her mentor mended. Twilight felt her spirits lifted, some great weight was lifted from her soul, and things didn’t feel so bleak. Sure, she was getting a pony-back ride from her brother through a hallway made of meat, with wall-sphincters that led to dungeon worlds made of meat, but this wasn’t so bad. It was actually rewarding, in its own special way, and once she had a year or so of spa trips, she might actually feel good about it.

Or perhaps that was too optimistic.

“I’m flattered that you wanted my company and that you wanted to slay old gods with me. With all my heart and soul, I mean that. But this isn’t my idea of a good time. Perhaps at some point in the future, we can have a discussion and find something that we both enjoy together.” Feeling a hopeful warmth blossom in her soul, Twilight tried to hug her brother, but all the armor in the way made it impossible to achieve some sort of meaningful embrace.

Twilight, thoughtful, found that she had more to say.

“You speak of slaying old gods… what makes for a god, anyhow? You have immense power, and publicly at least, you reject the title ‘Goddess.’ Why do you feel that you are not a goddess?”

“Because,” Dim replied in a creaky, wheezy, raspy voice, “she has failed to kill them all.”

Confused, Twilight did not understand a word that Dim had said. Celestia was chortling now, almost laughing, and much to her dismay, Twilight found that she wanted to know what was so funny, no matter how bleak or how horrible it might be. She had to know. Why, it might help her understand Celestia, and be a better friend.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“It is a matter of progression,” Celestia replied.

Dim coughed, a horrible hack, and picked up where Celestia left off. “Progression, Twilight… progression. I have achieved the rank of ‘Conqueror.’ It has stained and shredded my soul.” His words transmuted into violent coughing, and Celestia clucked her tongue with worry.

When Dim spoke again, his lips glistened with blood and his voice was ghoulish. “Take a life or two, and you’re a murderer. Take fifty lives, and you’re a mass-murderer. Take many lives, an incalculable number of lives, and you’re a conqueror. To become a god—”

“Yes?” Twilight, her muscles bunched, clung to her brother.

“You must kill them all.”

“Dim, I swear, your sense of melodrama will be your undoing.” Celestia took a moment to clear her throat, she touched Dim with her wing, and then turned to look at Twilight. “I have chosen to be a benevolent sort. I much prefer to think of it in terms of the lives I can save. I’ve made mistakes, Twilight. I am fallible. My mistakes have cost the lives of many. While there is some truth to what Dim says, it is a truth I reject. Absolute power is a curse, Twilight… a terrible curse, and one I hope that you are never branded with. I have made a conscious choice to be a pony… a pony that moves the sun, the stars, and the planets in some meaningful way, but still a pony. I suppose I could be something more, but I reject that. Should you ever become something greater than what you are now, Twilight Sparkle… I do hope that you will look back and remember these words. It would do you good.”

“Princess, would you trust me with absolute power?” asked Shining Armor.

“I already have,” Celestia was quick to reply. “You married Cadance. With my blessing, I might add.”

“Hey, I’m trusted.” Shining Armor tried and failed to hold his head up higher, as Twilight was in the way. “Feels good. That’s all the power I need, thanks. I suppose you trust Twilight with absolute power… I mean, you made her an alicorn. An alicorn bound to magic itself.”

“She is trustworthy,” replied Celestia.

“What about Dim?” Shining Armor’s question was punctuated by a rude squelch as he stepped on something unmentionable.

“Dim has an active, working, functioning doomsday device stashed in his hat. For now, that is all the trust I am giving him. Which is quite a lot. More than that might be folly.” Celestia snorted, which blasted and rebounded through her helmet. “I might trust him more once he is a father. We shall see.”

“‘Tis folly to trust me at all,” Dim wheezed. “I should be destroyed—”

“Shut up, Dim, or I’ll tell Cadance.”

“You don’t fight fair,” he said, almost coughing out the words.

“Hey!” Twilight shouted, looking down. “The meat has ended! There is stone just up ahead. Look!” A clever pony, Twilight lifted her head and gave her mentor a shrewd stare. “Say… you distracted me. You distracted me so I wouldn’t be completely horrified.”

It was impossible to see Celestia’s reaction.

“Both of you,” she said to Celestia and Dim. “Both of you kept up your act to get me through this awful place of meat. But you toned it down a bit so it was a lot more pleasant. Thanks… I mean that. Thanks. Both of you are great.”

She heaved a sigh of relief when she heard her brother’s armor-clad hooves clattering against the stone floor. No more meat. It felt great to be on solid, non-living ground once more. With a joyful cry, she lept from her brother’s back, and with a cacophony of clattering, she landed in the center of the pentagonal room.

“She’s close,” Celestia said to the others as she put Dim down. “We’re so very close. Yet so far away. She’s gone through a door, I can sense it. I’m going to try and touch her mind to let her know that we are coming. Defend me, I’ll be vulnerable in this state.”

Shining Armor snapped to attention. Twilight tuned in to everything around her, and cast a wary eye on the hallway of meat, fearing that danger might come from there. Celestia was stretching her wings, which were soiled, dirty, less than white. Dim began brushing off burnt wads of meat from his cloak and hat.

“Twilight, you are in charge while I am away. I trust your judgment, wholly and completely.” Then, quite suddenly, Celestia went still and ceased moving. Her hammer floated in an odd orbit around her head, drifting through her billowing, flowing mane.

With nothing left to do, Twilight waited.

Author's Note

This story is secretly about Shining Armor...

Chapter 7

Celestia seemed bigger somehow. Perhaps it was the strange magic of this place at work, but Twilight felt smaller when she compared herself to her mentor—and hero. Dim stood guard near the archway that opened into the passageway of meat, and for this, Twilight was grateful, because it spared her the sight of it. Shining Armor had assumed that strange soldierly posture he had when resting while standing up. Twilight envied him just a little, that he could get comfortable in all this armor while she suffered through every passing moment.

She looked up at the fifth member of their party, Celestia’s hammer. It was silent, imposing, and like Celestia herself, supremely dangerous. The hammer was very much like its owner in so many ways. Large. Commanding. Striking, in more ways than one. Both were beautiful, but the implied threat of violence was very real. While magic would always be Twilight’s go-to solution, she understood the necessity of a bloody big hammer, a lesson hard-learned when fighting a golem in Castle Midnight.

“I worry sometimes,” Twilight said, her voice a soft, almost inaudible whisper. “What sort of hero am I?” Feeling doubtful, she gave her lip a good chew, just for a moment, all while looking up at her mentor. “I mean, I know I’m a hero, I just don’t know what kind of hero I am? So far, I’m not doing a great job at handling this place, am I? My brother had to carry me. My resolve has been tested and seems lacking. Sometimes… sometimes I wish that I was more like my brother… or like some of the heroes I know. Which feels weird, because I know ponies that want to be just like me. How strange, all of this feels.”

She felt foalish, awkward, and vulnerable, but did not stop.

“No matter what I do or how I do it, I could always be doing better. Is that what sets me apart from other ponies? Doing well, that doesn’t feel good enough. I always strive to go above and beyond. There’s just this need to give just a little bit more of myself to any situation. But this situation is strange to me, and I’m not sure which part of myself to give. I’m sorry if I snapped.”

Here, Twilight let go a halfhearted chuckle and then took a step back while saying, “Good talk.”

A mere moment later, something tickled Twilight’s sense of catastrophe.

Her blood froze and she was certain that her heart stopped beating. Beneath her armor, her pelt glazed with icy sweat. Her muscles turned to lead as magical fear robbed her of sensation. Shining Armor was already casting a spell—which spell, she could not make out—and Dim cast a spell on her, which warmed the icy deadness pemeating her flesh.

Recovered somewhat, Twilight brought her magic to bear. Something was coming, it drew closer, and it radiated an aura of dread. She began casting defensive spells, all of them that she could think of, and she cast them on both herself and her companions. Celestia was defenseless, vulnerable in this state. Teeth gritted, Twilight prepared for a spectacular defense.

Cold, creeping doom manifested in the form of a vaguely doglike skull with mismatched antlers that were like some fractal equation. It appeared suddenly, first as a shifting cloud of dust, debris, and filth, and then it gained sobering solidity. Twilight, whose heart was lodged in her throat, somehow kept casting defensive spells. Shining Armor too, was preparing for what was certain to be mortal conflict.

Twilight shouted out a warning: “Draconequus—”

“Demilich!” Dim shouted, finishing off her dire warning.

The chaos and confusion intensified as Celestia stirred, regaining her senses. Twilight’s knees almost buckled as her magic sense was overwhelmed by the demilich’s first spell cast: Hold. It struck Celestia and all movement ceased. Dim cast something that surrounded the demilich with a nimbus of light, and Twilight knew it to be some kind of modified anti-invisibility spell.

Then, much to Twilight’s horror, the demilich turned its attention upon her. Some kind of corruption ray fired from the demilich’s empty eye socket, a type of magic that Twilight had never encountered before. It was like Discord’s magic, but worse, so much worse, and this was fused with necromantic energies the likes of which she had never experienced. Before the beam struck her, Shining Armor raised his shield.

The corruption ray was a fate worse than death.

Twilight knew that, if struck, it would change her from living to undead. Her and her brother’s magics intermingled, and his shield held as the full force of the beam was brought to bear. Failure meant undeath and Twilight could not recall when the stakes had ever been higher. Celestia was held, bound, unable to move. She was probably too powerful to be made undead by the corruptive chaos beam, but Twilight had no doubts that the draconequus demilich would deal with Celestia at its leisure.

“It was a mistake to think that I am not a threat,” Dim said whilst drawing his alchemist’s shotgun stashed within his hat. “What I lack in raw magical power, I more than make up for with raw, creative brutality.”

With that, Dim took aim and fired.

Noxious, toxic green witchfire belched forth from the two massive barrels and eldritch green wibbles flew crazily in loops. There was a thunderous sound—rolling thunder that persisted for several long seconds—and the draconequus demilich bore the brunt of the point-blank blast. Covered in green goo, holes appeared in the skull as the foul eldritch alchemy went to work. Little curls of smoke rose from the many ever-widening holes in the skull. One antler began to sag, drooping, and Twilight felt the demilich’s magic falter ever-so-slightly.

The horrible corruption ray weakened as the demilich’s other eye socket flashed with light. She felt strange magics at work, awful, terrible magics that she feared would pollute her mind from the knowing. Twilight, fearful of the corruptive ray, took a chance. She took advantage of this distraction, this moment of weakness, and she reached out to Celestia.

Dim vanished.

He simply ceased to be.

One moment, he was reloading his alchemist’s shotgun, and the next, he was gone.

Not even a trace of his magic was left behind; he had simply ceased to be. Shrieking, Twilight poured all the magic she could muster into freeing Celestia, while also reinforcing her brother’s shield. The demilich was still dissolving, damaged as it was from Dim’s acidic alchemical assault. Dim was gone, wiped from existence, but his passing would not be in vain.

Still shrieking with rage, with fury, Twilight Sparkle broke Celestia’s bonds.

The massive, mighty hammer swung around as movement returned to Celestia’s body. A great and terrible light enveloped the hammer, the sort of light that purged everything that wasn’t good. The Sun rose in this odd place, and what a terrible Sunrise it was. What awful majesty Celestia radiated as she burst into flames. Her mane and tail, pastel rainbows, transformed into waving, flapping curtains of flame, awash with all of the colours of dawn.

No mercy!

Twilight’s ears rang with the terrible fury of Celestia’s voice. This was no longer Princess Celestia, or Headmistress Celestia the Schoolmarm. This was not her mentor. No, this was something horrendous, something Twilight earnestly wished that she had not witnessed. This was Celestia, the Fury. Cringing, wincing, almost pissing herself, Twilight threw everything she had into her brother’s shield, not to protect them from the demilich’s corruption ray, but so that she and Shining Armor might survive Celestia’s righteous anger.

Everything around Twilight ignited; the very air itself turned into a burning miasma of incandescent plasma as the local electrons went helter-skelter. Whatever danger the demilich posed was now forgotten as Twilight focused all of her concentration upon surviving Celestia. She and her brother stood within the confines of the nuclear furnace and she watched with fascinated horror as Celestia brought the hammer down upon the floating skull.

How was she even seeing anything?

Twilight did not know, nor did she dare question it.

With the hammer a mere inch away from the skull, time slowed. It was as if reality itself dreaded this moment, this impact, these colliding improbabilities. The embodiment of harmonious good was about to strike the manifestation of disharmonious evil; whatever followed was incomprehensible. Unfathomable. Little by little, the hammer plowed through the air, coming closer to the skull, while time slowed more and more. Twilight could feel the raw essence of time itself fleeing the area, fleeing the righteously indignant, angry alicorn, and she feared this moment might last forever.

Or, at least, a very long time.

Reality was sundered; all around Twilight, things looked odd. Mathematical equations danced in the flames—arcane arithmetic that damaged something within her mind when she tried to focus on it. There was no floor beneath her hooves, just a yawning chasm of nothingness. Glyphs, siguls, and arcane marks manifested and danced with the arcane arithmetic. Was she seeing the very fabric of reality? The structures over which reality was stretched?

In the middle of it all, Celestia was a burning orb of fury, and the draconequus demilich—a being of monstrous, inexplicable power, a recondite, abstruse entity—was little more than a common nail. Ages passed, whole epochs. Civilisations rose, fell, and rose again during the time it took for the hammer to close the distance. At a hair’s breadth away, Twilight Sparkle—now a doddering old mare who had lived too many lifetimes—forgot how to breathe.

When the hammer struck, there was a sound, but Twilight’s mind could not comprehend what it was. She felt a ripple, a weird wibble in the flow of magic as the hammer—now resting against the skull—ceased all movement. Twilight felt Magic itself go sour as it tried to determine this cosmic coin toss. Celestia had given her hammer infinite mass, incomprehensible, unfathomable mass, and said hammer had collided with the undead draconequus’ reality-warping powers.

Magic hesitated while determining the outcome, and Twilight had the distinct feeling that Magic was afraid.

She and Magic now shared something in common; a mutual terror of Celestia.

The coin rose and fell. Twilight had a keen awareness of it, even if she could not see it, could not comprehend it, she understood that it existed. Whatever happened next was something that her homeworld could never survive, and Twilight was thankful that it was happening here, in this alien place. Celestia had let go. A minute fraction of her full power had been revealed, and Twilight wished that she had not witnessed it.

It was only here, in this place, a plane outside of the standard boundaries of reality, that Celestia could be herself. Somehow, Twilight held back the crushing, consuming force just beyond her brother’s shield. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what poor Shining Armor was experiencing at this moment, as she couldn’t even begin to comprehend what was going on.

Much to Twilight’s terror, she sensed the coin land upon its edge.

There was a floor beneath her hooves once more. Twilight couldn’t recall it being there a moment ago—but it was here now. She was young again, spry, and the world around her wasn’t on fire. Everything seemed… normal. Celestia was Celestia again, the beautiful alicorn princess pony. Twilight blinked a few times as she tried to recall what had just happened. The hammer and the skull had touched—but what had happened next?

She could not recall.

Of the draconequus demilich skull, there was no sign. Not even dust. There was nothing. Even the memory of it seemed hazy, and Twilight felt her brain rearranging itself, perhaps trying to convince herself that the demilich had never actually existed. Shining Armor was stammering something, words that would not take proper form. Celestia breathed, and the sound was like a blacksmith’s bellows.

Dim was gone.

Try as she might, Twilight could not make heads nor tails of what had just happened.

“Dim…” Celestia was almost, but not quite, frantic. “Dim! Luna will never forgive me! I promised to return home with him. His recovery is her recovery… they recover together. I was supposed to keep Dim safe!”

Twilight did not know what to say and she stood silent, an observer of Celestia’s distress.

“All because I wanted to comfort Moon Rose,” Celestia muttered to herself. “I let my feelings override my common sense. Focus… focus!”

A curious dweomer could be felt, a new magic quite unlike anything that Twilight was familiar with. Clearly, the full extent of Celestia’s spellcasting was unknown, an unexplored frontier. Twilight, somewhat humbled, remembered that her mentor was once the Element of Magic, and this was why. Attuned to her mentor’s spellcraft, Twilight tried to learn what she could.

Meanwhile, Shining Armor gave himself a good shake to restore his battered senses.

“The demilich cast Imprisonment and sent Dim away,” Celestia said, her voice hitching. “Twilight, I have to save him. It will drain me though. The spell causes a great deal of fatigue.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to pick up the slack,” Twilight replied, eager to please.

“Twilight Sparkle… my faithful student.” Celestia’s voice softened. “I’m about to cast a Freedom spell. See if you can learn it, Twilight. Pay attention to the ebb and flow of magic. I trust you to know dimensional magics. This will open new doors for you, Twilight. New possibilities.”

Twilight listened as Celestia began to speak in the strange language of magic…

Dim popped into existence and appeared to be covered in clay. No, not clay, Twilight realised with growing horror, but blood and ash baked into a hard shell. She could smell it, the foulness of it, as Dim’s flaming umbral form continued to cook it. Dim was clearly… not himself, but was now a creature of shadow and flame, cloaked in darkness. He was the destructive terror they all feared he would become.

“Stop doing your balrog impression and tell me you’re okay,” Celestia demanded.

“I was almost a God,” he wheezed.

“Dim! I’m not fooling around with you!” Celestia’s helmet opened, revealing her face, and she bent down snoot-to-snoot with the vizard in his transformed state. “Tell me this hasn’t progressed to permanency!”

“I have learned the sundry terror of the common banana,” he replied.

“So help me, Dim… stop talking crazy! At least try to look like a pony again! I can’t stand this! It’s like losing Luna to darkness all over again!”

Twilight wondered if a mistake had been made, taking Dim so far away from the Crystal Heart.

“Mere seconds after my arrival, they took offense to my skin—”

Mouth agape, her chin against the cold metal of her helmet, Twilight realised where Dim went.

“—and they sought to correct my blasphemous form. I arrived in the midst of a vast hive city… made of meat. They wished to rid me of my skinvelope. Grotesqueries… parodies of life… made of meat. So many of them. The city stretched from horizon to horizon. I began destroying them, but mere destruction was not enough. Sterner measures had to be taken.”

Dim transformed, slowly, little by little, and took on the appearance of a pony once more.

“I had to detonate my banshee bomb,” he said, continuing. “Millions, maybe billions of lives, all gone in an instant. The sound stretched halfway ‘round the globe, if my enchantments worked as I had intended. Beneath my hooves, I felt the planet itself shudder and groan, gasping as it breathed its last. I felt it die…”

Using her wings, Celestia began brushing away the baked clay made of ash and blood.

Twilight, shivering, shuddering, recalled the words said earlier. The progression. Dim had conquered the planet… the planet made of meat. A living planet made of flesh would be quite vulnerable to a banshee’s scream, and a scream heard halfway round the world would be a very bad thing indeed. Now, it would be a rotting hunk of meat, a dead world.

She wondered how long it would take for its door to die.

“I was almost a God—”

“You don’t get to be a god,” Celestia snapped. “Not now, not ever. You get to be a husband and a father. You get to be Luna’s hope. Is that not enough for you, Dim?”

Twilight failed to notice that she was holding her breath.

Dim’s orange tongue was the only colour to be seen on his ashen body. He licked his lips, which caused the baked blood and ash to fall away from around his mouth. After a moment, while looking into Celestia’s eyes, he nodded, and this caused the big worried mother hen to let heave a sigh of relief that almost blew Dim over.

“It is enough,” he whispered.

Celestia lifted her head high. “Moon Rose is close. She’s gone through a door and she is in a safe place. I wasn’t able to get much information, but she seems to be fine and free of her abductors. She took your advice, Twilight Sparkle, and made some new friends. Now, let us hurry so that we might get her and then make our way home.”

At long last, Twilight was able to take a deep breath.

Author's Note

Almost done.

Chapter 8

It was a magic lesson unlike any other. Twilight stood before a rather plain, nondescript door, trying to attune herself to its hum of magic. She was somewhat distracted, which didn’t help, but how could she not be? This whole adventure had left its mark. She had seen things, some of which could never be unseen. Plus, there was the fact that Celestia was trusting her with the safety and the very future of Equestria with this lesson in door magic. Celestia was trusting that she, Twilight Sparkle, would not betray her and all life on Terra Prime.

It left Twilight giddy.

“Once you are attuned to the door,” said Celestia in her most patient teacher voice, “you have to home in on Moon Rose’s magical signature and get a lock on it. That’s hard, Twilight, hard like nothing else, but you have to keep yourself in attunement with the door at the same time. If you slip up, even just a little, the end results could be worse than fatal.”

Twilight gulped and redoubled her efforts so that she might achieve perfect focus.

“It’s like trying to jump from one wagon to another while they are moving at different speeds, in different directions, at different elevations,” Dim remarked from where he sat on the floor.

“Why, Dim, that’s quite insightful.” There was nothing patronising in Celestia’s words, only kind, sincere praise. “Time moves differently as you jump from place to place. Part of the attunement process is making adjustments for the differences in time. Fail to make that jump from wagon to wagon, and it is possible to fall outside of time. Which is bad.”

Celestia was horribly distracting at the moment, Twilight thought.

Clairvoyant viewing was tough, Twilight realised, when one tried to focus across dimensions. She could sense Moon Rose, but could not see her. She had to find some kind of door that was near the filly’s location so that a portal could be projected there. Opening the door randomly might lead them anywhere on the world, including over or below the ocean. Or some vast, inaccessible distance from Moon Rose’s location.

Twilight had never quite discovered the knack for astral travel, which would make this so much easier, but she was determined that she would accomplish this somehow. This world wasn’t very magical, and she knew that when she did open the door, it would have to stay open so that a trickle of magic from this place would flow through, otherwise, well, Twilight didn’t want to think about the outcome.

“Celestia…”—Shining Armor sounded hesitant—“after some thinking, it seems to me that you’ve done everything you can to cut our world off from these other worlds. I get that isolation keeps us safe, but what are we missing out on?”

“The dangers and the risks are too great, Shining Armor. Already, great and terrible evils from our world have crept into the world of Sunset Shimmer’s exile. It is like a transmitted infection. That world is ill-prepared to deal with that manner of evil. As for our own world, think of the demilich. Imagine that coming to our world. The dangers that roam these halls come from unsecured worlds, Shining Armor.”

“But surely there are good things—”

“Those good things are not worth the risk.” Celestia’s tone went from soft to firm and by the end of her sentence, there was almost an unkind hardness. “When I was younger, I made mistakes. Our world paid for my mistakes, as did other worlds. Now I try to preserve lives, to make up for the ones I’ve inadvertently taken.”

Shining Armor bowed his head in submission, but said nothing.

“Why then, do we save Moon Rose?” Dim asked. “Why put so much at risk for just one life? How many worlds are we risking with this venture? Why do this?”

“I have my reasons.” Beyond this, Celestia did not elaborate. “Dim, you seem to be doing better.”

“My sanity is quite elastic,” he replied in a wheezy, nasal drone. “Though I worry if bananas and citrus fruits require a champion.”

Reality all around her stopped when Twilight touched a door…

With great caution, Twilight Sparkle poked her head through the door and her nostrils crinkled from the smell of hay and manure. The door swung open into a barn, overlapping an existing door in the barn. As magic flowed into the world, everything took on a distinct look, one of oversaturated, exaggerated colour. A few goats watched with great curiousity, dumb goats, mute goats that showed no real signs of intelligence.

“A horse,” Shining Armor said as he shoved his sister aside and plowed through the doorway. “It’s hideous—”

“Shining Armor, don’t be rude,” Celestia commanded.

In silence, Shining Armor stared up at the horse that was more than three times his size. Twilight kept herself from staring, but allowed herself a look. The horse wickered, a friendly sound, and Twilight, the Princess of Friendship, offered up a polite whinny in return. In response, the horse bellowed, and there were several loud thumps as it banged its hoof against the wooden floor of its stall.

“I feel kinda inadequate.”

“Why’s that, Shiny?” asked Twilight.

“That horse… is hung like a horse.”

Twilight felt her cheeks blaze and her brows felt twitchy. She tried not to look, but it was too late, her eyes betrayed her, and she was terrified by what she saw. Even worse, she could not look away, and she allowed herself to feel a very reasonable and justified hatred for her brother. For just a little while, at least. He did this; he caused this curse.

“That… is a magnificent penis,” Celestia said with bold appreciation. “Freckled.”

Somehow, Twilight tore her gaze away. The big barn doors were open, and beyond them, she saw what could only be a farmhouse. This was a farm, after all. What else could it be? It had a barn. In the corner, she saw a plow, and tack hung on the far wall. Moon Rose was here, probably in the farm house. At least, she wasn’t in the barn, which was rather a relief.

“I am reminded of the countryside of Fancy,” Dim said, wheezing and hacking out each word. “The plow is crude iron. See how the edge is notched? They are either very poor or they haven’t delved much into metallurgy. The farmhouse has a thatched roof.”

“Ponyville has thatched roofs,” Twilight said, suddenly defensive.

“Disgusting primitives,” Dim muttered with a sneer.

Fuming, Twilight ignored him. She stomped for the barn door, eager to find Moon Rose, and she was more than a little curious about this world. Chickens scattered before her, and some of them moved too close to the secured doorway. Magic touched them, transformed them. It made them brighter, gave them colour, and they became more appealing to the eye.

The sun overhead was quite unlike Celestia’s sun. It wasn’t as bright, for one. It was rather blue in the sky—a blue star served as the sun—and Twilight sensed that this world revolved around this pale blue star. The sky was still sort of blue, but also a little green. White fluffy clouds drifted by overhead, feral clouds that lacked magic.

“There is magic here,” Celestia said as she stood in the grass. “It is faint. Most of it is dream magic. This place is rich in dream magic, but not much else. I can sense two moons and the way they tug on one another generates strong magic, which is stored in this world’s tides.”

“I can sense Luna’s equivalent on this world.” Dim adjusted his goggles and the brim of his hat. “But not yours,” he added while angling his head upward in Celestia’s direction.

Squinting, Twilight glanced up at the sun, but did not look directly at it.

The farmhouse door opened with a squeak and Twilight—her attention turned on it now—watched as a tall, bearded hominoid figure emerged. He was pale, an odd colour, and nothing at all like the hominids that existed on the world of Sunset Shimmer's exile. He wore a blue, faded, somewhat dirty garment that covered most of his body. On his left hand, he was missing two fingers, the pinkie and ring fingers.

A woman came out next, and her skin was chocolate brown. She had colour—but did not seem magical. Her colour was not oversaturated like the hominids that Twilight was familiar with. She was more rounded, heavy-set, and visibly pregnant. Twilight could sense the life growing within her, and could also detect a faint spark of magic. Why that magic was there was anypony’s guess, but Twilight felt fearful about it for reasons she could not explain.

Then, Moon Rose came bounding out the door. She was a bit faded, her coat had lost some colour, but other than that, she appeared to be in fine health. The excited filly pronked about, and as she bounded to and fro, the kindly female stopped and smiled. Twilight, realising her face was covered, began the complicated process of opening up her helmet.

“Little Moon said you would come,” the male said.

His words were different, but also similar. Familiar enough to understand. His voice was pleasant enough, he sounded kind, and Twilight felt a delightful warm squishiness when he wrapped his forearm around his wife’s shoulders. Moon Rose was still pronking around them, bouncing through the grass, beaming splendiferously.

After much struggle, Twilight got her helmet to open.

“I am Caldus Brown, and this is my wife, Meridia Brown.”

“They’re super-nice!” Moon Rose shouted as she continued to bounce and boink about.

“I am Princess Celestia, of Equestria.” She bowed her head and then continued, “This is Princess Twilight, Emperor Shining Armor, and Prince Dim. We would like to thank you for your kindness. Words cannot express our gratitude.”

“Words might not, but these will,” Dim said as he pulled his hat off.

Twilight watched as he pulled something out and she realised it was the gemstones looted from the squid-headed monster. Caldus’ eyes went wide, and his wife’s did the same. Both stared in shock, and neither one of them moved. Celestia sighed, a soft, pleasant sound, and she caressed Dim with her wing.

“Take them,” Dim said to the Browns. “I mean, no doubt you could have sold her to some circus or put her on display. You turned aside from base greed and cruelty. Kindness is to be rewarded, just as greed and cruelty is to be punished. Otherwise, what balance is there?”

Caldus did not move, he didn’t budge, but his wife did. She came forward, plucked the gems from the air, and stuffed them into the pockets on her smock. As she secreted them away, she said, “These are bigger than the crown jewels!”

“She came about a fourth of a season ago,” Caldus said to Celestia. “The door opened, and there she was. It turned part of the house… different. Almost haunted.” Caldus scowled. “She said she needed a safe place. I told her she was safe here. I try to be kind to my animals.” The male blushed., and then reached up to rub the back of his neck with his two fingered hand. “Are you offended if I call you animals?”

“Not at all,” was Celestia’s pleasant reply.

“It was really very nice of you to take in Moon Rose.” Twilight watched as the female, Meridia, stuffed a ruby almost the size of her fist between her impressive, pillowy mammaries. “You have my thanks and my gratitude.”

“Moon Rose”—Dim pulled something else out of his hat and held it out to the filly—“I brought something for you, so that you might be comforted.”

It was a stuffed diamond dog, rather pink in colour, with big black button eyes and a toothy maw made of stitched yarn. Dim didn’t hold it for long, as Moon Rose snatched it away. Her magic was weak—feeble—but functional even if a little sparky. The little filly wept as she rubbed the stuffed toy against her cheek and Twilight felt the need to wipe her eyes.

“I saw that when I was searching your hat,” Celestia said to Dim. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to embarrass you. Who am I to judge what a vizard keeps in his hat? In a way, I was relieved that you had a pink stuffy to snuggle.”

In response, Dim sneered a truly impressive aristocratic sneer up at Celestia.

“Time to say goodbye, Moon Rose.” Shining Armor’s words were kind, but caused the filly to sniffle. “Dim, I’m telling Cadance about the nice thing you did—”

“Don’t you dare,” Dim snarled.

“You brought a stuffy,” Shining Armor said to Dim. “That showed remarkable foresight and kindness.”

“I packed a hat. Regrettably, I was surrounded by incompetents who did not pack a hat.” Dim was about to say something else, but Moon Rose’s sudden sobbing robbed him of speech.

Meridia knelt down to comfort the small filly and Twilight watched as her brother approached. The kindly farmwife gestured for Shining Armor to come closer, and then he too, was there to comfort Moon Rose, who sat in the grass, bawling whilst clutching her stuffed diamond dog.

“She’s leaking,” Dim grumbled, “fetch a plumber before the leaks spread like unbridled contagion amongst the rabblery.”

Such was the way of foals; happy one moment and melting down the next. Almost gushing, Twilight watched, uncertain of what to do with herself during this moment. Caldus appeared miserable, though it was somewhat difficult to tell. His face wasn’t all that different though, and sad eyes were sad eyes, no matter the species.

Twilight wished that Fluttershy was here, so that her friend might see that kindness was universal. Meridia hugged Moon Rose, fairly squishing the little filly, crushing her against her bountiful bosom. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Twilight noticed that Celestia held Dim beneath her wing, shielding him from the blue sun.

“Guhbye!” Moon Rose blurted out.

“She cries sometimes,” Caldus said whilst he stared down at the grass at his feet. “Misses her parents. I’m sad to see her go, but I am happy for her too. I would want my daughter returned to me.”

Meridia knelt, weeping and squeezing little Moon Rose, who clung to her stuffy. For Twilight, this was all the proof she needed to reinforce her belief that creatures were generally good. Sapiance had been respected here; Moon Rose had been treated with kindness and dignity. What Dim said held a grain of truth to it, awful as it was, and Moon Rose could most certainly been exploited as an oddity.

How different things might be, had they come here to find Moon Rose in a cage. Why, this world might be burning right now, purged in flames—or worse. Twilight knew from experience that no matter how vivid her imagination, it could be worse. But goodness prevailed, just as Twilight believed it would.

“May the Queen of Tides bless and keep you,” Maridia said to Moon Rose. “May you always know safety on your travels. May the seas rise to greet you, but never capsise you. May your journey be long, full of wonder, and may your companions on this journey be a blessing.”

“I don’t wanna go, but I hafta go!” Weeping, Moon Rose reluctantly pulled away from Meridia and went to Shining Armor. “I wish… I wish you could come with us.”

Twilight saw the terror in Meridia's eyes, but said nothing. It lasted but a mere moment, and then was sadness again, along with the pain of loss. They had to go. Twilight could feel the residual magic in her body slowly leaking out, fading, and if they stayed here much longer, the weakness would become significant. They would fade, just as Moon Rose had faded.

Shining Armor lifted Moon Rose and set her upon Dim’s back. Twilight had to think about why, and concluded that sitting on articulated armor might be mighty uncomfortable, and maybe a bit pinchy. Dim was almost clean after Celestia’s efforts to ‘scrub the balrog away.’ Casting her gaze upon Caldus, she saw that he was now holding hands with his wife.

“Twilight, escort us through the door, if you please.”

She nodded at her mentor and then waved at Moon Rose’s kindly caretakers. “Goodbye,” Twilight said to them.

Clinging to her husband, weeping unabashedly, Meridia waved goodbye one final time.

Author's Note

One more.

Chapter 9

The door was already dissolving. Twilight watched it as it became something less than nothing, and was thankful that Celestia carried a shortcut home. It had been quite a thrill to make magic together with her mentor, to be trusted with something of such importance. This, this felt more like equality than the snark and derision experienced in the Fortress of Egress. To know, to share such knowledge, it was rich and rewarding like nothing else.

Home at last, Twilight took a much needed deep breath and took a moment to collect herself. Moon Rose was bright again, vivid, her overly saturated colours had returned. Twilight could see that the young filly was eager to be home, and soon, very soon, she would be whisked off to be returned to her parents in Canterlot. Hazy Breeze and Soprano Summers would be ecstatic to have their precious daughter returned to them.

Celestia… looked tired. Her proud neck bent in an odd way that Twilight had not seen and her wings sagged against her sides. She moved slowly, but not gracefully. Even her mane and tail seemed sluggish, and hardly moved, offering only the bare minimum of beautiful flowiness. Twilight knew that Celestia would recover; she would go home and her many caretakers would pamper her, seeing to her every need.

“Moon Rose…” Celestia’s weary voice lacked its usual resolve. “I need to know who took you. This ordeal is not over. I need to find out who did this to you so I can send Kommissar Dim and the Wardens to apprehend them… if they can be found here, in this plane, that is.”

The filly shook her head from side to side. “Nopony took me.”

Celestia’s confusion and fatigue caused her princessly voice to crack. “What?”

“Nopony took me,” the filly said again.

With her hammer orbiting overhead, Celestia bent her neck so that she could look tiny Moon Rose right in the eye. Her helmet opened up, revealing a enervated, exhausted face in dire need of rest and relaxation. There was a deep rumble and the creak of metal as Celestia drew in a deep breath, and the sound of Dim’s unpleasant coughing filled the room.

“I was dreaming,” Moon Rose said, offering an explanation without being told to do so. “My dream magic, I don’t understand how it works, so I was playing with it. I found a door. The door was locked, or maybe it just didn’t want to open. Dreams are like that sometimes. So I made it open and I got sucked though. Slurped!”

The filly made a fantastically slurptastic sound to add emphasis.

“And Luna will still do nothing to teach you,” Celestia muttered whilst rubbing her muzzle with her wing.

“I was in a weird scary place. The magic was all wrong. Nothing felt right. I couldn’t go back through the door, because it vanished. So I tried to remember the lessons about lucid dreaming in school, and I thought really, really hard about a door, and not just any door, but a door that would take me to a safe place with no monsters to gobble my bottom.”

“And so you went to where we found you?” asked Twilight.

Moon Rose nodded.

Twilight found herself thinking of Celestia’s defenses. Things could egress, it seemed. Sunset Shimmer had left through the mirror, and Moon Rose had accidently exited through a door in the dream realm—but getting back in was almost impossible, at least for Moon Rose. Twilight was too tired to tell which direction her thoughts were going. Changes were needed, Twilight felt, but how or what was unknown at the moment.

“The door vanishing was my fault.” Celestia lifted Moon Rose from off of the floor and brought her up to eye-level. “I suppose I should have put more thought into that. When I created these defenses, I did not anticipate magic evolving in the way it has, changing, with magic diversifying the way it has.”

“It all goes back to Sumac’s Hypothesis.” Twilight too, looked into Moon Rose’s eyes, but had to look up to do so. “More ponies adapting to draw upon dream magic and other sources of magic as the available, ambient magic thins out from overuse and overdraw. You, Moon Rose, you’re really very special. I’m not sure any of us understand just how powerful you are, because by regular unicorn standards, you’re rather weak.”

“Changes will have to be made,” Celestia said as she turned to look down at her former student. “Twilight, Luna and I will need your help. Changes are long past due. Your insight and foresight is needed.”

“I’d be honoured,” Twilight replied.

“Getting Twilight into the dream realm will be tricky.” Dim stopped coughing long enough to make an interjection. “To enter as a dreamer is one thing, but to have power there—”

“We’ll find a way, Dim.” Celestia’s eyes glanced over at Dim, and then returned to Twilight. “Yet again, Twilight, you are trusted with more power as your rule extends from Equestria and into the dream realm. We shall have to come up with a clever title.”

Though Celestia’s words were silly, they were spoken with great solemnity.

“We need to find some way to make Luna do the right thing,” said Shining Armor. “This only further highlights the importance of getting Moon Rose the specialised education she needs.”

“Why won’t Princess Luna help me?” Moon Rose squirmed, wiggled in Celestia’s magic, perhaps tickled by the tingle, or uncomfortable by what she had asked.

“It’s complicated,” replied Celestia, who now gave the filly her full attention. “I want to tell you, Moon Rose, but doing so would be a betrayal of my sister’s trust. Do you understand?”

Wearing a profound frown, the filly nodded and then said, “I wanna go home.”

“Home it is then.” Speaking these words, Celestia vanished, taking Moon Rose, Dim, and Shining Armor with her.

Twilight was left standing all alone.

With her brother gone, Twilight struggled to get out of her armor. It was slippery, resistant to psychic emanations such as telekinesis. Yet, somehow, Celestia was able to grab it without difficulty, and somehow, Luna had forged it. Twilight wondered how, and she was curious if perhaps some other magic was involved, something strange and unfamiliar.

She needed somepony with fingers.

“Spike!”

Almost as if by magic, he appeared at the sound of his name. Poking his head through the door, he looked up at her with intense, curious, thoughtful eyes. His left claws were stained with ink. She was glad to see him, she was. Spike meant normalcy. He meant the adventure was over, and that she could finally let down her guard a bit. Just looking at him filled her with relief—and a profound sense of love that she had trouble putting into words.

“You’re back already,” he said.

“I know, I was gone forever! Feels good to be home, Spike.”

“You just left a minute ago,” he replied, shrugging. “I guess some weird stuff happened.”

“Can you help me, Spike? I’m stuck in this armor.” She offered him her best sheepish grin, and she saw him smile in return. When he waggled his claws, she found herself laughing, and it was a relief like no other. “I missed you, Spike. I kinda had an awful time. Now I’m kinda frazzled.”

“I’ll fix tea,” he offered, helpful as ever.

Twilight thought about his offer as he crossed the room, and when he drew near, she said, “No, Spike… we’ll fix tea together. And something to eat. I need the home routine—”

“You need a bath.” Waving his claws, the baby dragon tried to shoo away the stink.

With gentle mischievousness, Twilight wrapped her wings around Spike and gave him a hug. He squirmed, but could not escape. Spike was warm, like a tea kettle left off the burner for a few minutes, but he had cool places, like his frills. She could feel that reassuring warmth against her cheek, which she rubbed against him.

“You’re stinkier than Rainbow Dash after a workout.” Then, after a moment, he added, “I’m glad you’re safe. Every time you go away without me, I worry.”

“I’m sorry, Spike.”

“Sorry for smelling bad, or leaving?” he asked.

“I battled a demilich,” she said, changing the subject, refusing to think about how she might smell.

“Discord, Shining Armor, Big Mac, and I, we’ve battled a demilich.”

“Well, I fought a real one. Made some impressive saving throws, I think. Shiny’s shields are really getting powerful, let me tell you.”

Reaching around, Spike undid the clasps on her helmet, then the secret, hidden catches, and the helmet sprang into four pieces, which then fell to the floor with a terrific clattering. With her ears freed from their prison, Twilight gave them an enthusiastic wiggle-waggle and tried to shake her sweat-plastered mane away from her face.

It had been annoying her for hours.

“After some tea, and maybe a quick shower, do you want to go out for hayburgers?” she asked.

Spike hesitated to respond while he struggled with the heavy gorget around her neck. He pulled, tugged, and there was a clang as the gorget popped open. It was super-pinchy, and Twilight was grateful that it was off. Spike dropped it on the floor, where it clunked against the pieces of her full-face helmet.

“Are you gonna order one of everything off of the menu?” he asked. “It’s kinda embarrassing. The stares, Twilight. The stares. Ponies talk, Twilight.”

“Bah, let them talk.” Twilight laughed away the self-conscious sensation that crept up on her. “We could try that new place that just opened—”

“Pita Pan? The place that promises that you’ll stay young forever with their healthy menu? I dunno, Twilight, the tzatziki sauce—”

“What about it, Spike?”

“Twilight, ponies have to live in this castle with you,” he replied in a flat deadpan.

That deserved an epic eyeroll, and she gave it freely, without reservation.

“We could go to Wonton Destruction,” he suggested. “Spicy food—”

“That’s in Canterlot, along with a flock of paparazzi. I don’t want the annoyance.”

Spike appeared crestfallen, but it lasted for only a moment, as he held up one clawed finger and said, “Basic Kneads Pizza Parlour!” The baby dragon’s eyes darted to and fro in a devious, mischievous manner. “All you can eat pizza.”

“Say, that’s not a bad idea,” Twilight replied. “The Nosh Pit, they have an all you can eat bar too, but ponies are kinda aggressive and shove-y there. The food is so good it causes stampedes.”

Spike rubbed his chin, thoughtful.

“Marequis de Salade?”

“Twilight, you complain that you can’t get full on Fancy food. Plus, pimples—”

“Spike, the less said about those, the better.”

“Just Falafs has the all you can eat falafel bar, plus standup. I think Pinkie Pie is performing tonight—”

“Spike, get ready to eat falafels! We’re going out tonight!”

Author's Note

The end.