Sharing the Nation

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 34
Chapter 1
Chapter 8
Chapter 30
Chapter 33

Chapter 2

— ✶ —

Twilight was looking for a way to avoid knocking on the door of a pony she’d been avoiding. Unfortunately for her, the door opened anyway. Twilight managed not to have a heart attack, though her surprise did leave her sitting there staring at Applejack for longer than appropriate.

One would be forgiven for thinking that Applejack was just a regular pony. Out of all of Twilight’s friends who had transcended their mortal forms, Applejack was the one pony whose everyday appearance hadn’t changed at all. This was almost certainly because she hadn’t wanted to be a demigoddess in the first place, let alone embraced the physical transcendence that had followed for each of them as a matter of course. Twilight wasn’t fooled, however; she had seen Applejack during the fight with Astri, and there was almost certainly something else underneath her skin.

Kind of like a fuzzy peach, but she wasn’t going to say that out loud; not with the look that Applejack was giving her.

Right, Applejack hadn’t wanted to be a demigoddess and it had been Twilight who had forced the issue. She’d also pointed the press and nobility at her as a sort of hazing for new immortals which she had been kind enough to pass on to Applejack after Luna had done it to her. That little exploration into slightly malicious hoof-pointing had resulted in a shifting of the local topography to keep the assorted public at a distance and had necessitated a change in name for the orchard from Sweet Apple Acres to Sweet Apple Mountains. Twilight wasn’t sure the knee-jerk reaction was actually helping, since it was now impossible for anypony in Ponyville to actually forget about the imposing landmass overlooking the city that drew the eye almost as much as Canterlot.

“…Hello, Applejack,” Twilight said, trying for a smile and not quite managing it.

Applejack’s answer was silence, her lips pressed into a thin line. It said as much as a buck to the face would have.

“Look, Applejack… I’m sorry for what I did. I don’t think it’s any excuse or consolation, but I think it should be clear by now that I was… not well at the time. That said, I’m the one who put myself in that situation, however unknowingly, so it’s all on me… and maybe Celestia a tiny bit… and I apologize.”

The only change in Applejack’s expression was a single raised eyebrow.

Twilight shuffled in place where she sat and tapped her front hooves together. “Well, I mean, Celestia is the one who taught me to remanifest and that’s where it went bad, so, yeah, tiny bit her fault. Mostly me, though.”

Applejack scrunched up her mouth, raised her hooves and—hugged Twilight. “Shucks, Ah don’t blame ya. You did have some points. ’Sides, you can undo it now that you’re better, right?”

Twilight stiffened. “Not… as such. No—let me rephrase that. Yes, I can take the stars back and I will if you want me to, it just… didn’t help much of anything when I did it to Rainbow and actually running your magic dry in that situation isn’t something I’m comfortable trying on a whim.”

“Ah’m gonna be honest,” Applejack said, still holding her. “Ah’m not happy about that. Ah ain’t got no need to live forever.”

Twilight wilted a little. “If it’s any consolation, it’s not like you’re immortal immortal. I’m a hundred percent certain we can end it if it comes to that. Killing alicorns is something we’ve had to figure out; immortals I myself made should be easy.”

Applejack pulled out of the hug, holding onto Twilight by her shoulders and looking her in the eyes. “Well, that’s comforting.”

“You know how I feel about it,” Twilight said, just a little sour and terse as she looked away. “I’m sorry I can’t muster up much empathy for talking about your desire to die someday.”

Applejack stepped back and let out a great, heavy sigh. “Fine, we might as well bury it for now, but Ah ain’t changing my mind.”

“Right. Great. Now come help me rebuild the palace; you kind of left a mess…”

— ✶ —

It took some convincing on Twilight’s part, but Applejack eventually caved to her request for help dealing with the massive tree that the farm mare had wrapped around the Ponyville Palace to prevent it from coming crashing down on the city. Originally, Twilight had had ideas about integrating the tree into the palace as an homage to her old home, but even after putting some significant effort into it, she still hadn’t come up with anything sensible.

Frankly, the biggest problem was so integral to the project that it was probably a lost cause straight out of the gate; it was a tree, and a giant one, at that. That meant that it had giant branches and a plethora of leaves. At the moment they weren’t so bad, but it would need to fill out in order to survive, and having all that hanging over the city was a mess and danger they didn’t need, let alone the little issue of blocking out the night sky. More and more, Twilight was putting her effort into finding someplace else to do a tree motif; they did still need to build a proper library for the city, after all, and with Applejack’s help, a small copse of trees should be entirely doable and more true to the inspiration.

That was, of course, if she could actually get Applejack into the city with any regularity.

“I can’t believe you haven’t come up with a solution for this yet,” Twilight grumbled as she walked with Applejack back in the direction of Ponyville. “You can’t possibly have Apple Bloom walking this every day to go to school?”

Applejack didn’t seem to agree. “If Ah made it easier, it’d make the whole thing pointless. Nah, Rarity has Sweetie Bell taking a pegasus carriage to school now, so they just swing by and pick Apple Bloom up.”

Twilight gave her a long look. “You do realize that picking up Apple Bloom is probably the only reason Sweetie Belle is taking a pegasus carriage to school in the first place, right?”

Applejack had to stop for a moment. “…Ah do now. Consarn it.”

“Really,” Twilight continued. “I’m sure it helped when everypony was beating down your door, but there’s been time to adjust. Anyone intelligent would just send pegasi, and I’m betting that annoys you even more. You were already a decent walk out of town to begin with; I doubt much would change if you put things back to how they were.”

Applejack looked like she was considering it, but shook her head. “Can’t. Already got all the paperwork done and bought all new crates, labels and signage for the Sweet Apple Mountains name.”

“I wasn’t aware you had all that to begin with,” Twilight said, somewhat baffled, then it hit her. “Rarity?”

Applejack nodded. “Rarity.”

Twilight shook her head, somewhat amused, but still insistent. “I’m sure there’s something we can do about it. I doubt it makes sense to have your house and barn at the summit like you have it now anyway, moving everything uphill to store it. Maybe just move the house down here next to the town, if that’s possible? I don’t actually know what you can do.”

Applejack gave a moody grunt. “Not like Ah can just rearrange the land all willy-nilly or float rocks all over the place. Ah just grow things like any earth pony; it just happens mountains are one of those things now.”

“Well…” Twilight gave it a little thought. “Even so, I think you might still be able to do it with the right process, but I’ll admit there are probably easier ways. I know you won’t want to just build a new house, so I won’t even mention that, but we can ask the forepony overseeing the palace construction if he has any ideas.”

“Ah suppose it wouldn’t hurt to look into it,” Applejack allowed, but her expression soon changed to a frown. “There’s just one problem with that.”

“Hm?”

Applejack motioned with her hoof at the pair of dragons loading a cart outside a tall wooden gate. “This ain’t Ponyville. Shoot, I was sure we were on the right road, seeing as there’s only one road to begin with. Ah didn’t reroute that gall dern thing, did Ah?”

Twilight couldn’t help but snicker as she motioned for the guards to raise the gate. “You haven’t been in town in the last week, have you? Yeah, it’s looking like we might have to change the name…”

As the two of them walked under the gate to enter the city proper, the meaning behind Twilight’s comment gradually became clear. Everywhere they went, there were dragons. It wasn’t a whole lot of them; just one or two per road, small ones ranging from Spike’s size to Big Mac’s and even the occasional wagon-sized young adult. Most of them were either cagey or strutting, and a few of them were even in the middle of arguments. They didn’t exactly fit in, but they were very much a presence in the city.

“What in tarnation…” Applejack absently declared as they made their way through the freshly cobbled streets towards the center of the growing city.

“You have no idea,” Twilight said, craning her neck to look back at Applejack. “This actually isn’t even the brunt of it; Canterlot Mountain and its surroundings are practically infested, and they don’t get along any better with each other than they do ponies. It turns out there’s a whole network of crystal caves up there that they just love, though, and of course, it’s close to the Celestias, so they all just have to be there.”

“The princess?” Applejack asked, cocking her head in question as they walked past a particularly knobbly-kneed young dragon hunched over a bag of quartz and eyeing every passerby. “What does this all have to do with her?”

Twilight gave her an incredulous look. “Wow, okay. Don’t take this the wrong way, Applejack, but we really need to get you coming back into the city more often or at least get you the paper delivered. Rarity already has the land purchased to give you a place of your own nearby—has since before the whole mess with Astri, actually—but I doubt you’ll use it much.”

Applejack grunted noncommittally.

“Anyway, about Celestia,” Twilight said, getting back on topic. “Have you at least looked up recently?”

Applejack was not amused. “Har-de-har-har. So, what, dragons like rainbows and came to show their appreciation for the new decorations?”

“Well, the short version is: before us, there were four alicorns of equal power, and that’s pretty much how it’s supposed to be, as far as we can tell. Looking at it like that, Celestia has been pulling close to double duty this whole time, so after Harmony sacrificed herself protecting Luna from Astri, she took it on herself to balance the scales. She took what remained of Harmony’s essence into herself and equally portioned the result back out into two new alicorns—hence the celestial changes.”

“Not far off what Ah woulda guessed,” Applejack remarked. “’Cept apparently we got two Celestias now, if Ah understood that right. Ah’m mighty thankful that we got two instead of losing the one we had, but Ah’m still not seeing the dragon connection.”

“Yes, well, there wouldn’t be one—” Twilight bit out, “—if Discord hadn’t had something of the same idea and put some of himself in the Seed of Harmony while Celestia was poking me at six in the morning asking questions about ancient history. He put his draconic essence into the seed, and Celestia took the seed into herself; I don’t think either one knew what the other was doing, if it helps.”

“Aw, son of a biscuit eater,” Applejack cursed. “Ah’m surprised we got dragons in the city and not candy cane rainbows.”

Twilight waved the idea off with her hoof. “No, no, nothing like that. Discord’s crazy chaos magic came from his connection to the stars that make up the desert of dreams, which I’d already reclaimed when he broke free. At the end, all he was was a twisted half-dragon of a sort, but that’s causing enough problems.”

“Huh, so we get a couple’a part-dragon princess, maybe they feel it some from the sun or whatever it’s called now and suddenly Equestria seems like a nice place to make home, is that it?”

Twilight rocked her hoof back and forth. “Pretty much that, but an order of magnitude more complicated to end up at the same place, yeah.”

— ⭗ —

The Celestia whose regenesis had given her the form of a rainbow ring around Equestria—Corona, she was calling herself for now—was not having a great day. It was one of a series of not-so-great days, but she was adamant to not let it show. Instead she took a deep, calming breath and reached for the teacup that was just in the process of being set down next to her.

The teacup was, unfortunately, not there when her hoof reached where it should have been. It was replaced, instead, by a short “Eep!” and the sound of shattering porcelain. A quick glance revealed one of the castle staff cowering beside her throne wearing most of the tea service and blubbering apologies.

This was one of the reasons she refused to let her mood show. She was, after all, not the only one who was not having a great day and any sharp movements, let alone the heinous crime of actually showing her displeasure would only make it worse for everypony else.

It had started when Celestia had burned down the Everfree fighting an ancient dragon that had followed Twilight and Luna out of the depths of Equus. Well, ‘burned down’ was downplaying it a bit; she’d turned it into a molten crater and still failed to kill the damn thing; it had been all she could do just to chase it off to a nearby canyon. Her little ponies had been understandably alarmed over the whole ordeal, but it had not been the first time she’d had to do such things to protect them and her actions would have eventually passed from threat into legend.

Then Twilight had pulled back the curtain and revealed to her little ponies that alicorns were not ponies after all, but mere avatars of celestial bodies. In truth—goddesses whose gifts ponies relied on simply to live and thrive. This, too, even coming as soon as it did after Celestia’s feat of destruction was not the end of the world. She had spoken true when she’d admitted that ponies had been ready to know the truth for some time, so she could hardly begrudge the fact, save for the timing.

Now, though, she feared that her new draconic essence might be the last straw. Previously, the palace staff had become timorous over the things they had seen her do. Their fears, such as they were, had been rooted in the knowledge of what she was capable of, and knowledge could be tempered with time and experience until they once again saw that she was their benevolent ruler and began to trust in her once more.

That was no longer the case.

Now they were simply terrified of her.

Instinctually.

This, she supposed, was karma and she would bear it. Truly, it would be the height of hypocrisy for her to complain, for at the very least she would not have to bear it alone.

— ✶ —

“Wait, if you took back what was letting Discord cause all that surreal hoey, doesn’t that mean you’d be the one to watch out for with the candy cane rainbows?”

“Uh… No—I mean, I don’t think… Huh.”

— ⭗ ✹ —

Corona couldn’t help but slam the heavy golden door shut as she returned to her chambers. The booming sound managed to get a wince out of her counterpart who had been reading on one of the sofas they had stolen from Luna. The entrance and the reaction were both quite out of character for them, but then, they were finding that after two thousand years of relative sameness, changes like suddenly shrinking to half their original size were having an effect on their confidence and demeanor. The irony was not lost on them.

“Shall I take your energetic entry to mean that the castle staff has not warmed up to us over the course of the day?” the other Celestia asked.

She took a moment to calm herself before shaking her head. “No,” she said, making her way over to her own seat. “Eight more of the castle staff have left, including three guards. I fear that at this rate, we shall have to begin hiring dragons.”

“Would that be so bad?” the other Celestia asked. “We do seem to have an excess.”

Corona was of a similar mind, but there were drawbacks. “True, but it might be early for that yet. Things are still up in the air, and very few seem actually inclined to behave, let alone serve tea.”

“Mmh.” The other Celestia turned a page in her book and made a thoughtful sound. “How about Parhelia?”

Corona blinked. “For a name? It’s a candidate, though it’s more of a collective name for what the two of us are. What about Prominence?”

The as-yet unnamed alicorn shook her head. “Too egotistical. I still say Corona would have fit me just as well. It’s a bit odd for a rainbow, isn’t it?”

“Coronas can have multiple colors,” she defended, though she wasn’t technically a rainbow either. That was a lost cause that she wasn’t even going to try to fight, however. “I’ll let you have Corona if you come up with something rainbow-related that’s not so meteorological, but coming up with something for you has to be easier. Aura?”

“I don’t hate it,” the other Celestia demurred. “But you’re right, there should be something more apropos that isn’t Nova or Flare. Are you sure you don’t want to be Dawn and have me be Dusk? They don’t have to be allusions to our celestial bodies.”

“We both agreed that it would be too close to Twilight’s name,” Corona reminded her. “For paired names I’d rather we be Aurora and Eos if it weren’t for auroras actually being Luna’s thing. I still don’t know where they got the idea that the sun caused them.”

“Actually,” the other Celestia said, picking up a different book with her magic and flipping pages by the dozen until she came to what she was looking for. “The science looks valid. It’s an interaction with Equus’ magnetic field, so we could probably have done it too, if we’d thought of it. Now, it’d be just me, I think.”

“Oh,” Corona said, processing that. “So it’d be me that’d have to be Eos?”

The other Celestia rolled her eyes. “Quite—and we’d have to ask Luna if she’d mind, which is a conversation I don’t think we want to have. Let her have her auroras; they go well with Twilight’s nebulae anyway.”

Corona’s eyes brightened up. “Actually, wasn’t there one that was paired with Luna from somewhere? Ah, yes, Sol. Hrm, not quite what I was thinking.”

“I’ll tell you what,” the other Celestia said, eyeing her counterpart. “I’ll be Sola if you use Suna”

Corona frowned. “What’s Suna? I’m not familiar.”

“It’s ‘sun’ with an ‘a’ on the end,” the other Celestia informed her cheekily.

Corona puffed up her cheeks in a pout of annoyance that made her more adorable than she’d been in nearly eighteen hundred years. “This really is harder than it should be,” she grumbled, throwing herself down stomach-first on the bed. “At least we have one down.”

“Actually, isn’t corona a beer company?” the other Celestia helpfully chimed in.

The alicorn previously known as Corona cursed. “…This was so much easier two thousand years ago.”

“Yes, I’ve found that being born with a name and letting the meaning come afterwards does have that effect.”

— ✶ —

“So… yeah, the whole thing is kind of a mess,” Twilight said, finishing up her explanation for Applejack. “At the moment, things could go any number of ways—especially with the dragons, since they all have their own individual situations and problems. They aren’t all following some great plan, so far as we can tell, so it’s impossible to turn around and plan around them.”

“Well, it’s no skin off my back who buys my apples so long as they’re paying,” Applejack says, watching as a tall pink dragon walked by.

Twilight winced. “They… might not be?” she admitted. “I’m not going to say they aren’t a hoof-full to make behave, even if they do end up having some ingrained respect for the Celestias, which we can’t prove one way or the other. The thing is, with the amount of earth pony magic you radiate just going about your business, you might not notice even if they were actively trying to put you out of business; the apples would just pop right back before you even noticed.”

“Ah… don’t know how Ah should feel about that,” Applejack grumbled. “Ah’m as far from greedy as Rarity in one’a her moods, but that ain’t right.”

“Now Applejack, be reasonable,” Twilight chided. “Pillaging the countryside is their culture, and if we need to subsidize this aspect of it so that these fine, upstanding citizens can be comfortable in our society, then we’re obligated to include and accommodate them to the best of our ability. It’s the pony way.”

“Please tell me you’re not serious,” Applejack drawled.

“Not in the slightest,” Twilight confirmed with a smile. “Although…”

Applejack grimaced. “Twilight…”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” she objected. “I’m staying the hay out of it, but from what Luna tells me, there are some leanings in that direction.”

“Let me guess—with Corn Subsidy at the head of it?” Applejack asked rhetorically, to which Twilight gave a look that said all it needed to. “Sometimes Ah wonder why we have laws against name discrimination at all.”

“Yeah, well, the problem with stuff like that is that it’s never as simple as it looks,” Twilight said. “Half of what the government does is spend taxes on public works, so it’s really easy for the ponies arranging things to corrupt the process, sometimes even without compromising the end result. As much as ponies are supposed to be able to bring grievances to court over stuff like that and alicorns are actually allowed to pass judgement on gut feelings alone, I don’t envy Luna’s job right now even if she is going into it with the intention of being heavy-hoofed. What’s worse, is that Corn Subsidy might actually have a point…”

“On his head?” Applejack asked, dripping scorn. “’Cause sometimes it embarrasses me that he’s actually an earth pony and Ah wouldn’t be too put out if it turned out he was actually a unicorn just pretending.”

“You do realize that in this situation, you’d be the one getting the subsidy, right?” Twilight asked, to which Applejack scoffed.

“Please, Twilight, Ah wasn’t born yesterday,” she said, shaking her head. “Ah know perfectly well how much they’d like to spend a pittance of somepony else’s money t’get cheaper apples for themselves—though honestly, much as Ah have pride in mah apples, Ah’m not sure Ah see them going to all the trouble just for them.”

“Well, you don’t just grow apples,” Twilight reasoned. “Though I doubt that your earth pony magic is going to have a huge effect on your pigs, cows and chickens. The thing is, though, if they have their way, it won’t necessarily matter what exactly you are growing.”

“Uh, care to explain that one, Twi?” Applejack said. “It doesn’t sound like Ah’m gonna like this.”

“The legislature is still up in the air, but there’s been some talking about classifying you five as something akin to alicorns, which wouldn’t be a terrible idea, exactly, except that back when Equestria was founded, Celestia and Luna weren’t in it for the profit. They came out of it with a lot of judicial power and prestige, but as far as raising the sun and moon went, after the whole hearth’s warming thing, Ponies wanted to be assured that they would all benefit equally and Celestia wouldn’t be able to hold the daylight hostage in order to browbeat ponies. It’s one of the only things that could actually get an alicorn called up on charges of treason.”

Applejack looked like she’d bitten into a rotten apple. “So, what—Ah’d have to go out t’all the farms and help them grow whatever they want? Carrots? Pears?”

Twilight noted the particular vehemence with which Applejack said ‘pears,’ but chose not to mention it. “Would that be so bad?” she asked. “You’d hardly be doing it for free, and the other farms wouldn’t be allowed to just abuse it in order to rake in bits hoof over fetlock.”

“Ah’d say that’d probably only make it worse,” Applejack retorted. “Ya’ll’re talking about the regulation of an entire industry, possibly only in a small part of Equestria since there ain’t no way Ah’m traveling around the country the whole year-round to work on other ponies’ farms. Do you have any idea what kind of mess that’d be? Shoot, Twi, mah special talent is running mah family’s farm, not… global agriculture.”

Twilight frowned. “You do have a point, which is, again, why I’m glad it’s not my job anymore. Rarity actually enjoys making sure everyone ends up happy with a deal and Luna enjoys tearing down the ones that don’t cooperate; I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Fair enough, Ah suppose,” Applejack said. “Though before recently, Ah would’ve assumed you’d be right up there with Rarity.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Twilight said, kicking a piece of gravel off the cobblestone road. “And the more and more I listen to Luna talk about what she’s doing, the more I realize that I never really listened to the lessons that Celestia was actually trying to teach me when I was her student. I like… systems, I guess, is a way to put it? I like things to make sense and be logical, even if that logic is strange and twisted at times. You’d think that I could put my skills to writing laws and investigating corruption, but it just frustrates me to no end to have ponies actively working against what I’m trying to accomplish, especially when those ponies are ostensibly supposed to be on my side to begin with.”

“Well, Ah suppose it’s for the best, then, that the Elements of Harmony walked off, became an alicorn, sacrificed themselves and then became a different draconic alicorn, ’cause—” Applejack seemed to just then realize what she was saying. “Err, sorry, that came out way worse than I meant it to. Just, you know, yer not exactly sounding very element-of-friendship-y and all. Sorry.”

“Thanks, Applejack,” Twilight retorted with no small amount of sarcasm. “Really touching. Look, I’m just… not a people pony, and I think that’s okay so long as I don’t build a tower and shut myself inside of it forever—more the latter, since I am planning on building a tower, obviously.

“Even if I were still the bearer of the element of magic-slash-friendship-slash-whatever, I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to not pursue a career that puts me in conflict with ponies. If there’s anything I have learned about friendship is that you can’t force it; it’s great if we can resolve a conflict with friendship and we should always try to, but it’d be naïve to expect that to be your whole job and mold everything around it.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Ain’t that basically what ambassadors do?”

“You’d think so,” Twilight grumbled sourly, not wanting to get into her experiences that said otherwise. “Thankfully, I’m the alicorn of the stars, not some nebulous concept like friendship.”

Applejack’s expression didn’t change one bit. “Aren’t nebulae your thing?”

Twilight whapped Applejack upside the head with her wing rather than dignify that with a response.

“Ow—hey! Careful of mah hat!” Applejack complained, fumbling around with her mane and iconic headwear. “Ah reckon Ah deserved that.”

“Yes, you did,” Twilight agreed with a hint of indignant petulance.

— ✶ —

“Come to think of it, how much’a that mess with the princesses is actually public, anyway?” Applejack asked as they neared their destination. “Ah wouldn’t want to let something slip if you’d rather it not get out.”

Twilight shook her head as she led Applejack around the temporary fencing around the collapsed palace. “You don’t have to worry about that; it’s pretty much all out in the open now. They were going to keep it hushed up for a bit like you’d expect, at least until things calmed down, but like when I took over the stars from Luna and her ethereal mane began to resemble the moon like it always should have, neither Celestia looks entirely like Celestia any more. It was only a day or two before any hope of subterfuge was rendered moot.

“Maybe if the rainbow-maned one had been out in public that day instead of the one that looks like her head’s on fire, then they could have played it off, but they probably wouldn’t have regardless since it would mean that only one of them would be able to go out. They’re being pretty tetchy about keeping things between them fair.”

“Fair’s good,” Applejack mused, not too fussed about the situation. “Not sure obsessing over it’s a great idea, but Ah ain’t never had a twin or a little sister who tried to—ah, actually, forget that second part. Anyway, Ah’m sure they’ll work it all out sooner or later; they are Celestia, after all.”

As they entered the blockaded area, Applejack’s eyes were drawn to the ruined palace hanging at an angle, wrapped in the winding trunk of a giant tree stretching high above the city. Most of the fallen rubble around the site had been removed, but there was still a lot of work to do. “Hooey, ain’t that a mess.”

“Less of one than there would have been if it had fallen across the city,” Twilight reminded her with melancholy appreciation. “It’s a miracle everypony managed to get out relatively intact. You saved a lot of lives. From me.”

“Yeah, Ah did,” Applejack said, prompting a hurt look from Twilight. “Which is why you don’t need to keep thinking about it. Nopony got hurt—not permanently, anyway—except for, well…”

“Harmony,” Twilight filled in.

Applejack nodded. “Right, but that weren’t your fault either. She made her choice, and the way I hear it, it was one she was looking for a chance to make in the first place. Point is, there’s no use dwelling on it. Fix what you can, and move on.”

“Yes, well…” Twilight shook her head and gestured at the ruined tower. “Case in point.”

Applejack nodded and turned her attention back to the tower. “So, what is it y’all actually want me to do? It’s not like Ah can just un-grow the darned thing. Doesn’t look too healthy, so it might be I could get what branches there are to come down with a good buck, but Ah imagine you could do it just as well and with more precision to boot.”

“Probably,” Twilight confirmed rather diplomatically. The truth was, since the project had been changed to simple demolition, Twilight could have erased the whole thing overnight the way she had the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, but both Luna and Rarity had objected. Their reasons were… reasonable… but Twilight expected that at least part of it had been to force her to talk to Applejack. “…But,” she continued. “The real danger is the tower itself falling apart. Crystal is hard, sure, and the type Luna used has plenty of compressive strength, but it’s not ductile. I’m going to be having words about that with certain ponies, even if she did yell at them already; Ponyville might not be prone to earthquakes, but it is prone to alicorns and demigods, which are arguably worse.”

Applejack tapped her hoof to her chin as she gave it a thought. “Well, growing the tree out to support it is something I can do. Hay, Ah can make the tree completely swallow it up if y’all don’t mind having to cut through it.”

“That sounds good to me,” Twilight said. “I’m sure we can find a use for all the excess wood, even if we just burn it next winter. Normally, we’d have to consider the effect that would have on the market, but there wasn’t a palace to heat last winter, so it should be fine. In fact, we might have issues with the sudden increase in population as it is, so it might turn out that we have to have you make even more. I’ll have to have Rarity look at the numbers and get back to you on that; if we’re going to need a bunch of firewood in six months, we’ll need to start drying it out… now, actually.”

Applejack looked like she wanted to object, but couldn’t come up with a proper reason to. “Well, Ah guess if y’all need wood and nopony else has it, Ah can fill the order so long as that’s all it is. Ah’m saying this now and you can tell Rarity, ridiculous ‘demigoddesshood’ or not, Ah ain’t about to let anypony claim mah work as a public service and tell me what to do—period.”

“Establishing a price is probably the best thing you can do to head that off, actually,” Twilight suggested. “Rarity would know.”

“Yeah, probably,” Applejack agreed and then turned back to the project at hoof. “So, that’s the wood, but what’re you doing with all the crystal rubble?”

“Well, conveniently enough, we’ve had a recent influx in customers interested in exotic crystals who find it incredibly amusing to get the chance to eat a pony palace…”

— ✒ —

Spike had barely shut the door when a feral turquoise blur snatched the grocery bags out of his waiting claws.

“Did you get it? Did you get it? Did you get it?” Ember chanted as she searched the bags, tossing aside vegetables, pastries and even some choice emeralds in search of her prize, which she eventually found, causing her slit eyes to light up in glee. “You got it!”

‘It’ was a bag of rubble that had once been part of either Twilight or Luna’s thrones, and she was already shoveling fistfulls of it into her mouth, making all sorts of indecent sounds as Spike distractedly cleaned up the mess she’d made in her mad pursuit of her request.

Spike tried not to stare, but soon enough he was just standing there holding a mango and watching her go at it like a starving manticore. “Has anyone ever told you you’re kinda w—”

The fact that she actually stopped to glare at him stopped Spike’s sentence in its tacks better than any words could have.

“…Nevermind.”

Chapter 3

— ⭗ ✹ —

“Ignia?”

“No. Fluoresca?”

“No. Candesca?”

The Celestia with the fiery mane stopped flipping through the book in front of her to consider that one. “Perhaps,” she hedged. “It’s not a bad name, nor does it lack the necessary regal touch, but I would have to put up with being called Candy by Lulu.”

“She would get over it eventually,” the other Celestia suggested. “And it would still be better than when she used to tease us by calling out ‘Celly Celly Celery Stalk.’”

The Celestia who might be taking the name Candesca took in a sharp breath as she recalled memories of her childhood. “I had forgotten that,” she mused. “Did we really take up drinking tea in order to convince her to call us ‘Tia’ instead?”

The Celestia with the brilliant rainbow mane looked down at the teacup floating in her shimmering magic and frowned. “I… think so? It’s been so long, I can hardly remember.”

They sat in silence, just reminiscing until the prospective Candesca broke it with a suggestion. “I shall call myself Candesca if you go back to Corona so we can be done with all of this. Corona and Candesca do match fairly well, after all.”

The Celestia who didn’t want to be called Corona grimaced. “But it’s beer,” she almost whined. Only almost, though, because Celestia’s do not whine. “It’s not even good beer, from what I’ve heard.”

“It can’t be that bad if it’s so popular; we’re both well aware that Fluted Glass is a bit of a snob when it comes to alcohol,” she countered. Their own opinions, of course, were skewed by how rare it was for them to partake. “Besides, it seems that ‘Corona’ is also a foreign chocolate company, a cut of cigar and a type of snail, I’ve discovered. They are words; we are just going to have to accept that people have used them for things before.”

The Celestia who was evidently going to be Corona after all eventually caved. “Very well, Candesca, although… perhaps there is a way to differentiate them.”

“Please do not suggest we spend another week looking for second names to add to them,” the potential Candesca begged, weary of going through books looking for names. “I would rather petition Twilight Sparkle to drop hers so that we all match; she hardly uses it in any case.”

“I actually had one in mind for the both of us,” maybe-Corona said, attempting to mollify her twin. “I think it would go over well, actually. Very traditional.”

Almost-certainly-Candesca’s eyes widened in recognition. “Corona Celestia and Candesca Celestia? True, that could indeed work.”

“Or Celestia Corona and Celestia Candesca,” inevitably-Corona suggested, turning them around. “I think that sounds better.”

“Yes, quite,” the now so-named Celestia Candesca agreed. Giving a nod of acceptance, she shut her book with a snap and put it away. “So…”

“So?” Corona prompted, glancing out the window to see that it was still several hours until dusk, and for a while, they sat quietly considering their next course of action.

Candesca pursed her lips in consternation. “Was one of us not supposed to be attending the environmental committee meeting this afternoon?”

Corona shook her head. “No, they politely requested that we not attend in the future,” she informed her counterpart, frowning. “Though now that you mention it, I do believe there is a dinner with the director of agriculture later tonight.”

That, Candesca had to shoot down. “Not any longer; he moved to Ponyville last week.”

“Candesca?”

“Yes, Corona?”

“Do we actually have any duties left?”

“I… don’t know.”

— ✒ —

“☑ Schedule the quarriers to begin excavating the tower tomorrow morning?”

“Check.”

“☑ Schedule the stonemasons to collect the excavated stone in the afternoon and take it to the staging area for the new roads?”

“Check.”

“Alright, so next we need to: ☐ Arrange a meeting with Pinkie Pie to see if she can grow crystals on the needed scale since she grew up on a rock farm and they can technically be considered party favors for dragons.”

Just when Applejack had been about to encase the ruins of the Ponyville Palace in wood, Twilight had had the brilliant idea to ask her to use crystal instead. The concept, as envisioned, had been for the farm demigoddess to produce useful material that could be utilized in the new tower; marble would have been okay, but what she was really hoping for was an entire crystal blank that could simply be sculpted into a new palace.

That… wasn’t quite how it had turned out, as evidenced by the massive, misshapen gray-brown slab which Applejack had actually produced. It would still be useful, but it was a bit of a disappointment. It wasn’t all bad, though. Honestly, the rock would be heavier to cart off, but easier to actually excavate than a solid mass of green wood would have been; they just had to keep dragons from trying to make caves in the conspicuously prominent obelisk in the center of the city, though that wasn’t an entirely new problem.

There had been an awkward moment when one of the dragons that Twilight had been giving a talking to had brought up Spike, who was clearly allowed on the demolition site, and neither he nor Twilight had been sure if he should defend himself or if it was okay for Twilight to do it. Ironically enough, it was the few days he’d had living with Ember that had convinced him that he didn’t have to stand up for himself; her continuous insults and barbs had ensured that he had a tougher hide and no longer cared one bit about the opinions of other dragons.

He was just glad to get out of the house.

Living with a hot dragon princess wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. It was incredibly trying, but actually also kind of vindicating. He felt no small amount of pride in discovering that his feelings weren’t so shallow or fickle that he would chase the first scaly tail of his own species that passed in front of him, and he would have been satisfied to come out of the situation all the wiser for it… except he wasn’t out of the situation at all. She was still monopolizing his couch and being a generally disagreeable lump, and, well, he didn’t actually like her much.

At all, really.

There. He said it. He said it to himself, in his own head, granted, but he’d acknowledged it, which was the important part. It was a bit of a relief, because it meant that he could maybe, sorta… try and get her to leave—somehow—and not feel like he was the stupid protagonist of a story who kept denying any attraction for the pushy love interest until the last chapter.

He had Rarity anyway.

Well, he didn’t have her have her, and things were hardly going well with her either, actually, but it was just… Rarity. Rarity, who he’d previously given up on but was now immortal, the price for which had been becoming an ever-shifting dress with a vestigial pony body sewn out of plush fabric, silk and other accoutrements. It was a very good plush body virtually indistinguishable from her old one in any practical manner, but still…

He’d been avoiding thinking too much about Rarity.

“…Spike? Spike! Are you even listening?”

Spike shook his head to clear it and looked down at the list he had been transcribing without thinking. He scratched out a few things that hadn’t been intended for dictation, but everything else looked right. “Uh, yeah, sorry. I was just wondering…” He scrambled in his mind for something to distract her with and came up with something rather quickly. “Where are you and Luna going to sleep tonight?”

Twilight blinked, looked up at the giant finger of stone towering above the city and facehooved. “Right. We lived there.”

— ✶ —

“I take it that your talk with the stubborn one did not go well?” Luna asked as she swooped down out of the night to land next to Twilight, who had by now created several small dioramas out of the rock on top of the small mountain that had grown to encase the palace. It had been nice to have a chance to do some small detail work with her unicorn magic after levitating giant rocks all day.

“What?” Twilight’s head snapped up, then relaxed when she saw who it was. “Oh, no, it went fine. Well, fine-ish anyway, aside from us agreeing to disagree on her mild suicidal tendencies and a very disturbing promise to kill her one day. No, our palace is a rock because of an idea that didn’t pan out. I was hoping for crystal or at least marble, but this is the best she could do. With any luck, Pinkie Pie will be a bit more open minded, though she’s been hard to actually track down. With the amount of power I’ve given them, they should both have the leeway to do almost anything an earth pony can, I think.”

“By that logic, should you not be able to do it?” Luna asked, walking over to sit and examine one of Twilight’s dioramas—a possible design for the new palace. “You do, after all, possess the gifts of all three tribes—or rather, the gifts all come from you in the first place, do they not?”

Twilight… hadn’t thought of that, so didn’t have a response. “…You have a point. I’ve really gotten distracted from my magical studies; I’ve still never even stretched my metaphorical wings to see what my unicorn magic can do with the amount of power I have now—aside from levitating rocks all day—let alone the amount I had when I was manifesting incorrectly and bringing my stars down to the surface.”

Luna looked up from her examination of the diorama and saw Twilight fiddling with her sparkling peytral. “Do you miss it?”

Twilight balked, jerking back as if struck. “Stars, no. It’s new, being manifest just from starlight, but even like this, it’s not like I’m ever actually separated from them like you and Celestia. Actually…” Twilight chewed her lip with some concern. “That reminds me of something that Applejack brought up.”

Luna’s horn lit as she made a few embellishments to Twilight’s diorama. “Oh? She had some insight into the matter?”

“Actually, yes,” Twilight admitted. “When I first explained the situation to her, she was concerned that the Celestias might have Discord’s powers as well as his draconic heritage.”

“Ah, when in truth that would be you?” she extrapolated, thoughtful of the possible ramifications.

“And wasn’t that a revelation,” Twilight agreed. “In spite of knowing what he was, we still don’t actually know how dreaming works—or his unique brand of magic, for that matter. We don’t know if he was just somepony with a lot of power and imagination who made up his own understanding of magic from scratch, or if his magic actually had a mind of its own running on the dreams of all the creatures of the world… or something entirely different.”

“Don’t tell me you miss him,” Luna said with a teasing smirk.

Twilight made a face. “Ugh, please. Same answer as for the stars. It’s just that he represented so much knowledge that’s now lost—not that we could have ever have trusted a single word if it were him speaking it. I just wish there was some way he could have passed on what he knew without resorting to his games—just the unvarnished truth, preferably in book form with an index and an extensive appendix.”

“Is there not?” Luna asked, appropriately playing Discord’s advocate. “He did have a star as any other pony, yes? A great number of them, if I understand it correctly.”

Twilight pressed her lips into a tight-lipped frown. “That’s just the thing. I’m not actually sure if he did have a star or stars like any other pony. He was born without one, certainly, but I don’t know if he took one into himself in order to gain magic or if he gained control of it remotely some other way, since whichever it was, he was able to create—and probably make use of every star in—the desert of dreams.” Twilight’s train of thought suddenly ground to a halt. “Note to self: check to make sure everypony and otherwise are all actually still dreaming since I took that over. That’s not a mistake I want to repeat.”

Luna winced at the reminder of how the age of the previous alicorns had come to an end. “Quite.”

“Anyway, even if there are stars that remember his life, first I’d have to find them, which is no small matter… though I do have some ideas about that.” Twilight gestured over to the diorama directly in front of herself.

Luna raised an eyebrow and got up to come settle down beside Twilight. “A large crystal tree?”

“It’s based off one of Rarity’s discarded ideas for our palace, though hers had a gaudy castle in the boughs like a treehouse,” Twilight explained, remembering just how awful the original had looked. “I’m not thrilled with it, but it would work better for this.”

“And ‘this’ is…?” Luna asked, leaning in to peer inside, which surprisingly had actually been furnished with tiny models of… books. “…A third library? You are already going to have one in the palace and another one for the public, let alone the countless others I gifted you with that you still haven’t been able to get rid of. Far be it for me to deny you as many libraries as you wish to have, Twilight, but I do wonder how many more you could possibly have a use for?”

“I’ll have you know they’re very countable,” Twilight insisted. “But you’re right, this isn’t a library for books. It’s a library for stars.”

Luna stilled. “You wish to… archive the dead?” she asked, sounding a little wary.

Twilight hesitated, only now considering what Luna would think. “Well… yes,” she said, looking away from Luna for fear of seeing something she didn’t want to in her expression. “Not publically available, necessarily, but for family and historic figures…? I’d at least like some ponies to help me organize them… and maybe they could transcribe the relevant parts? We could have an objective view of history for the first time ever.”

Luna nudged Twilight in the side, but she resisted the urge to look up, as she did with the following two nudges until she felt herself being lifted up and placed in front of Luna. A moment later, she was suddenly bowled over without warning, ending up on her back with Luna on top of her looking down into her eyes. “Okay.”

“…Okay?” Twilight squeaked, occupied by the open look of acceptance in those eyes.

Luna bent down to bury her face in Twilight neck and nuzzle her. “Yes, Twilight. Okay,” she reassured her, holding her tight for a moment until she sighed and lifted herself up to look into Twilight’s eyes again. “Anything you want to do, we can find a solution for. Please don’t ever be afraid to talk to me; I will always take your side, because that is where I belong.”

Twilight felt herself blush and tried to hide it by pulling Luna down and seeking refuge against her chest. “Okay.”

They continued to hold each other until the wind began to pick up, bringing a noticeable chill with it. The two of them had slept in worse conditions, but those conditions had not been a dull and dreary rocky plateau, so Luna slowly lifted herself up and helped Twilight up with her as she looked around. “Perhaps we should retire. I should like to see what manner of accommodations have been made of this chilly rock. No doubt, even an hours work should have produced something greater than that which the squabbling dragons would make of it.”

Twilight’s, flush, rosy cheeks suddenly drained of all color. “I… I was going to do that when I got caught up with …” She gestured to the dioramas that littered the plateau. She was mortified, but Luna took it in stride.

“Perhaps this is for the best; you have been known to overdo things when left unsupervised,” Luna teased.

That did it. Twilight immediate puffed up her cheeks in a pout and gave Luna a solid whap with her wing. “Fine; I’ll go round up some clouds while you make us a cave for the ages.”

— ✦ —

Somewhere in Ponyville, a peculiar wish was granted in a flash of light. Now, most ponies would judge the act to be peculiar for the simple fact that a wish being granted at all was not at all the usual thing. Stars, as a whole, were not known to be the wish-granting type regardless of what legends had been passed down through the ages; such things were the purview of myths and fairy tales.

Those ponies could not be more wrong. Stars were actually very much in the practice of granting wishes; they did it every single day, as a matter of fact, in clear, broad daylight, through none recognized it for what it was. For most, it was a cause for celebration; a defining day in the life of a pony.

That was, of course, the day a pony gets their cutie mark.

And every day after.

Clearly, these wishes existed and just as clearly, they were not all-powerful—but neither did they need to be. In fact, it was best that they were not, else they engender chaos rather than harmony. So too it was with this wish; though the wish was for the granter of wishes herself, it was neither all-powerful, nor did it need to be. In fact, all it needed was to be a book, which came very easily to the wish, as the granter of wishes loved books.

Unfortunately, though she had plans for three of them, the granter of wishes did not actually have a place to keep books at the time when she made her wish, and so, it went instead to the closest thing there was, and—perhaps—also precisely where it was needed.

— ✒ —

Spike was not having the best of mornings, most of which could be traced back to his having not had the best of nights. Several hours of laying in bed had not brought him any closer to figuring out how to get the freeloading dragon princess out of his spines, and from there his mind had gone off on a tangent, asking what he was actually supposed to be doing in general. It was great and all that he had his own space and a job, but going from the mayor’s office drudgery back to being Twilight’s assistant had reminded him what it was like to be around someone who actually had plans and things she wanted to do, and he… kinda didn’t.

Right now, though, he just wanted a nice cup of coffee with cream and two jaspers. Ember, of course, didn’t eat ‘pony food,’ which was a shame since she didn’t know what she was missing. He was just pouring her a bowl of hammerscale he’d gotten from one of the blacksmiths that had come into town with the construction boom when he realized that she wasn’t hovering over his shoulder and demanding he hurry up.

Spike stopped what he was doing and listened to see if he could tell where she was, but heard nothing. Huh. She was hardly stealthy, so he could probably take that at face value. Filing it in his head as nothing more than a lucky circumstance, he picked up his coffee and the bowl of bitter brown flakes—which were almost as bad as plain bran flakes if you asked him—and went looking for her in her usual spots; the couch, the other couch and the pile of rubble she’d made in the basement that had used to be a perfectly good wall.

Tartarus, she really was annoying. She was rude, overbearing, didn’t listen to logic and… reading a book?

Spike wasn’t so discombobulated as to drop the food he was carrying, but he did stand there for a while staring at her, take a sip of his coffee and wonder if she’d been replaced by an evil twin, and if so, how he could get her to stay. Evil, he could deal with, if it reads books and behaves like a reasonably well-adjusted member of society.

“Well?” she snarled, glaring over the top of the book at him. “Are you just gonna stand there and make me come get it?”

Ah, damn. Well, it was a nice fantasy anyway, he thought to himself as he walked over to where she was curled up in her second-favorite couch—built into one of the library’s bay windows—and dropped the bowl of hammerscale on the table next to her.

“So, I didn’t know you…” He gestured vaguely at the book, not quite trusting himself not to finish the sentence with ‘could read,’ or something that she could interpret that way. “Actually,” he added with a frown, looking around at the scores upon scores of empty shelves. “I didn’t know there were any proper books left in this place other than my stash upstairs, and that’s mostly comics. You didn’t find that in a hidden compartment behind the shelves or something, did you?”

Ember clutched the book to herself and scowled. “No, of course not. Obviously you don’t recognize it because it’s mine.”

Spike scratched his neck and shrugged. “Makes sense,” he said and gave it a closer look. It reminded Spike of the types of books that Twilight always drooled over when she could get her hooves on them—thick, brass-clad with heavy cork-leather binding and a jewel-encrusted dragon’s head on the cover. It also seemed awfully flammable for a dragon book, but he supposed she couldn’t very well be carrying around stone tablets.

Okay, so maybe he’d been a little unkind to her in his head. Now he felt kind of bad.

What piqued his interest, though, was just how new the book actually looked. Twilight took care of her books, but even they would gather a patina of shine, grit and the occasional scuff mark just from normal everyday handling, and books as serious as this one looked had rarely come to her new in the first place.

So, yeah, he was curious. He considered asking Ember more about it, but that would involve voluntarily interacting with her. As it was, she hadn’t gone back to reading, but was still holding the book to her chest and silently glaring at him. That was probably a sign that she was waiting for him to leave.

Well, what the hay? He’d learned by now how to ignore those signs—mostly learned it from her, actually—so instead he hoisted himself up into the bay window seat and sat sideways so he could look at her. “So, what’s it about?”

Ember clutched the book tighter and grit her teeth, no doubt about to say something nasty and require some cajoling to actually share anything, but that… didn’t happen. Instead, she backed off, looked down at the book with some uncertainty and then back at Spike as if searching for any sign of duplicity.

Spike, meanwhile, tried very hard to look innocent and friendly, which was only made more difficult by the fact that that was actually his entire motivation. He was just trying to be nice.

Eventually, Ember seemed to come to the same conclusion because she relaxed just a hint and finally let the book fall away from her chest and into her lap. “It’s… about the dragon empire,” she admitted, a little wistful; a little bitter. “From when there actually was a dragon empire.”

“There was a dragon empire?” he asked, immediately feeling stupid for it. “A—actually,” he stammered, wracking his brain for something to add. There was something on the tip of his tongue. “I think I’ve heard of that. There was something… What was—oh, right! The princesses actually have an artifact from some old dragon emperor that can change a dragon’s age.”

“The Primordial Ring of Ashmund?” Ember exclaimed, completely forgetting herself and gawping. Quickly, she flipped through the book to a specific page and turned it around to show him an etching of what Luna had called the Dragon Emperor’s Toe Ring. “The ponies have it?!”

“Yeah, they were gonna have me use it to send Astri’s moon to Tartarus, but that stopped being necessary when Luna blasted it into stardust,” he explained. “Actually, Princess Celestia left without arranging to return it to Canterlot, so it’s still sitting in a crate somewhere. They’re talking about the new palace actually having a proper vault, unlike the last one, so it might end up there instead.”

“What do you mean, ‘it’s sitting in a crate somewhere?’” Ember seethed, gripping the book in her claws. “Don’t they know what it is?!”

“Hey, hey!” Spike made a calming gesture with his hands. “Settle down. I just said it’s somewhere because I don’t know where it is. I’m sure it’s being taken care of properly; probably locked away in one of the unfinished towers. Rarity’s was the most complete before the palace almost came down, which is why they’re using it for all the official stuff. Last I heard, all the others are kinda on hold, so it’s probably in one of those, and trust me… nopony is going to risk pissing off any of them after Celestia made a crater out of the Everfree and Luna did the thing with the ex-moon.”

Once again, Ember looked like she was going to snap at Spike when she hesitated, looked down at the book, took a deep breath and calmed down. “…Fine,” she grumped. “It’s fine, really. It’s just that apparently there’s this powerful, ancient artifact, the use of which was a founding facet of all dragon civilization that prevented all the dumb brutes the size of mountains from throwing around their weight,” she yelled, raising in pitch and volume with every word. “And the ponies have it sitting in a crate in some pony’s unfinished house!”

“If it helps, it’s a demigoddess’ house,” he offered. “More of a small palace wing if they go with the bridges that are supposed to connect them all; I kinda liked that one.”

Ember continued glaring at Spike for a moment before taking another deep, long breath and turning away. “It does, a little,” she ceded, producing a frankly adorable pout. “I keep forgetting that even ignoring the burning rocks in the sky you still have all these ponies my size that can raise mountains, race sunlight and throw parties—and they’re apparently somehow all your friends? You’re… you! Even if you used Ashmund’s ring, I can’t see you dragging a moon all the way down to Tartarus.”

Spike cocked his head and shrugged. “I mean, it was a pretty small moon, so I probably could if I were the size of a mountain, but when I said the plan was to send it to Tartarus, I meant with my fire.”

“With your fire,” she repeated flatly.

“Yeah? You know; green flames, breaks stuff up into magic so you can do things with it?” Spike waggled his fingers to indicate things dissolving. “In theory, I could send things to anybody, but I mostly use it to send mail to alicorns since that’s basically like throwing a message in a bottle down a really big river.”

“Right,” she said in that same deadpan voice. “Your magic fire, which you use to send mail.” She pressed her lips into a line and then just… collapsed, slumping limply back into her seat. “I give up. Nothing here works like it’s supposed to, but it all seems to somehow turn out better, and…” With a sigh, Ember shut the book and ran one claw down the face of the dragon on the cover. “I guess I see why.” The next words out of her mouth took her a great effort, and it visibly pained her to say them. “Spike,” she said, saying his name for the first time that he could remember. “Would you… teach me magic?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, I guess?”

“And maybe help me conquer dragonkind a little?”

“Err, wait—”

“We’ve clearly been doing it wrong, and someone needs to do something about that.”

“Um—”

“We might have to steal the Primordial Ring of Ashmund, if it comes down to it.”

“I didn’t say—”

“T—thank you, Spike. It means a lot to me.”

Chapter 4

— ✶ —

Twilight was lost in thought as she swooped down to the ex-library to pick Spike up, though she was mindful enough to wait patiently at the door, both because this was his place now and she should respect that and so he could maintain the fiction that he was still living alone. He hadn’t introduced his girlfriend yet, so she wasn’t going to say anything.

It felt a little disingenuous not to tell him that whoever the turquoise dragoness was, she wasn’t nearly as good at sneaking a peek as she thought she was, but neither did she want to drag out all of his secrets and confront him with them. Frankly, she had lived here with Spike for long enough that it would have been embarrassing if she couldn’t identify the sound of claws on wood upstairs when she’d been talking to him, and sometimes that sort of arrangement necessitated a little bit of willful ignorance.

And sometimes it was a lot of willful ignorance. Twilight was very glad to be an only child; it had been bad enough growing up with ponies like her parents—mostly her mom, really—that she didn’t even want to think what it might have been like growing up with an older brother or something.

Still, her unwillingness to pry didn’t mean that she wasn’t intensely curious how Spike had acquired his own dragon immigrant on the same night she and Luna had been welcoming the others to the city, and she wished he’d open up to her.

Speaking of which, he seemed to be taking his time opening up to her in a more literal sense, too. She tapped her hoof, considered that it had been quite a while since she had knocked, and knocked again—with a little more ‘oomph’ this time, rattling the upstairs windows.

It wasn’t like him not to answer the door promptly. She wasn’t concerned quite yet, but if it had been nighttime, she might have considered taking a peek inside with her starlight. She’d avoided doing that so far since he had a right to his privacy, but it would have been better than actually barging in, which, if he didn’t answer, she might have to resort to just in case something had actually happened. It wasn’t likely, since there wasn’t much in a pony household that could actually injure a young dragon, but she’d be remiss if she didn’t at least make sure he was okay.

After a few minutes there still wasn’t any response, so she guessed there was nothing for it. She unlocked the door with her magic and stepped inside, assuaging any guilt she might have felt by telling herself that with the racket she’d made at the door, she wasn’t about to surprise anyone no matter what they were doing. There remained a niggling thought in the back of her head of what she might find at the end of her search for Spike and his girlfriend, but she dismissed the very idea as patently ridiculous. Admittedly, her perspective was skewed from multiple angles and she didn’t know very much about dragon maturation rates, but neither of Spike or his girlfriend were very much bigger than the egg that he had hatched from, so she was pretty sure she was safe on that front.

All the same, she took her time and made a lot of noise.

Without Spike to distract her, the old library felt… not quite eerie, but definitely empty. It was also, predictably, a little dusty, so she fetched a hoofbroom and dustpan from the closet with her magic and absently went about doing a little cleaning up as she meandered through the ground floor.

Not much had been done to disguise the fact that the tree had once been a library; empty bookshelves were built into the walls, and there were several round reading tables that were similarly a single piece with the structure, which had once been used to display several busts and artefacts relevant to the small rural town that Ponyville had used to be.

Actually, not much had been done—period. All of Twilight’s things—and a lot that she’d honestly had no claim to—had been removed from the ex-library, and very little had been put in its place. The kitchen, at least, seemed decently equipped and stocked, though she couldn’t say if any of the pots and pans were the same ones that had been there before, especially dirty and covered in spots of foreign metals as they were.

The messiness that went beyond simple neglect felt a little out of place, at first, but after a little consideration, she thought she understood. Spike had always been fastidiously clean, but he’s also never really had any choice not to be. It had been part of his job as her assistant, so of course there would be some pushback as he figured out what he actually wanted.

What she didn’t understand was the rest of it; the blandness, the emptiness, the impression that she’d just moved out only days ago instead of weeks ago. Rarity, at the very least, would have been all over this place picking out curtains and finding things to go on the shelves if she’d been given half the chance, no matter how busy she otherwise was.

Maybe that was the point, though. Rarity could have done it, and she could have done it to his design, but there was also some value in him figuring things out for himself, piecing together things that he discovered on his own, just one or two at a time.

Well, that was enough snooping—err, checking to make sure Spike was… alright, fine it was snooping, but only mild snooping; she wasn’t going to go looking in his room if she could help it. Unfortunately, just about the only thing she could say about that was that he probably didn’t sleep in the living room, kitchen or the bathroom, so she did what she admittedly should have done the moment she walked inside.

“Spike!” she shouted. “Spike, are you here?”

No answer.

For just a second, she thought she heard something from the basement, but she couldn’t be sure, and as the silence stretched on, she suspected she’d been imagining it. She was just about to check anyway, when the door to said basement indeed slammed open to reveal Spike, bent over with his hands on his knees, huffing and wheezing, out of breath and clutching a letter.

“Hey,” huff, “Twilight,” he said, greeting her in between breaths. “Sorry—I—took—so—long. I was running—up the stairs—from the basement—when I got a letter—that sent me—all the way back down into a pile of junk.”

“Oh, sorry about that,” Twilight apologized, though she was distracted by the letter. “Is that from the Celestias? I can read it if you’re—oh, I suppose I shouldn’t assume it’s for me any more, should I? I think Luna mentioned you sending a few letters back and forth with Celestia.”

Spike wordlessly shook his head, still recovering, and handed it to Twilight as it was indeed addressed to her. Well, technically it was actually addressed to her and Luna, which was both new and kind of nice, now that she was faced with it. They hadn’t actually done anything official about their relationship or even go on a proper official date yet, exactly, but, well, they also hadn’t been subtle about it either—the lack of Twilight making dramatic speeches at court every other day being one particularly obvious sign that they’d gotten over what Rarity had charitable referred to as their ‘little snit.’

In any case, she figured it would be fine to open her co-addressed envelope without the co-addressee, if only so she knew if it would be worth interrupting her schedule to go tell Luna about it. In theory, she should also worry about interrupting Luna’s schedule, of course, but Luna tended to actively encourage it in most cases.

The letter, as it turned out, was simultaneously interesting and disappointing. Disappointing because it wasn’t an actual letter at all, and interesting because it was an invitation. “Huh, the Celestias are apparently having a coronation and ‘naming’ ceremony. Was this the only letter?” she asked, checking the back of the invitation and inside the envelope out of habit learned from a couple of years’ experience with Pinkie Pie. “It’d be odd not to invite—”

BELCH!

“I should have expected that,” Twilight deadpanned, singed and covered in letters.

— ✶ —

Twilight and Spike made sure to check in briefly at the demolition site to make sure that everything was going as planned and would continue to do so without them for the rest of the morning. The quarriers and demolition workers seemed to be doing okay, with the biggest problem the massive racket they were making each time they chipped away sections of the stone to expose the wood and crystal underneath. After a short talk with the men doing the work, they had her sign an exemption or two that essentially allowed them to forward any complaints to the mayor’s office.

The same mayor’s office that they were excavating.

The form did not include a forwarding address to the temporary offices that had been set up in Rarity’s tower. An oversight, Twilight was sure.

Twilight double and even triple checked, but they insisted that the exemption was all they needed. They clearly knew what they were doing, having all the necessary equipment and even barriers to prevent the debris from exiting the immediate demolition area, but Twilight still had a hard time not stepping in. She was pretty sure she had a spell that could dampen sound in an area, but they shooed her off, insisting that they needed to be able to hear anything that was going wrong anyway.

It was hard not to do the whole thing herself like Applejack had suggested; her desire to experiment and cut loose had only gotten stronger after Luna had brought up her potential to do anything an earth pony could do—or anything Discord could do, for that matter. It made her want to just get in there, let her magic go and find out what she was actually capable of.

That, of course, would defeat the point. Not only was she supposed to be building camaraderie with the common pony, but like with the possibilities that Applejack represented, it wouldn’t endear her to anyone if she just swished her horn and did a job that would otherwise have fed the families of a dozen or two laborers. Frankly, she thought that there were long enough waiting lists for any construction being done in the city that they didn’t need to be spending resources cleaning up her mistakes the hard way, but this was how Luna and Rarity had agreed to do it, and she’d specifically recused herself from the decision-making process.

There were always her other projects, though. The new library was a project for the city that would no doubt go much the way of the palace, if not more so, but she could do whatever she wanted with the… ‘third library’ she’d talked to Luna about. It didn’t even need to be in the city, though close by would be a good idea if she was going to hire ponies like she’d said. Maybe the Everfree crater? It wouldn’t hurt to have one less reminder of an alicorn’s ability to reshape the face of Equus with raw power… though given that she’d be reshaping the face of Equus in order to erase it, maybe that’d be just a tiny bit hypocritical.

Not that it wouldn’t work.

After leaving the demolition site to the demolition ponies, Twilight chose to make her and Spike’s first stop Rarity’s unfinished tower.

Rarity’s tower was one of the three that had been started before everything had come to a head and the collapse of the palace had pushed the construction of all of them back, the other two being Applejack’s and Rainbow Dash’s. Rarity’s, of course, had been the first—started early on as sort of a proof of concept and because she’d needed a proper place to work her dealings, and as a result even in its unfinished state, it was large enough that you could have fit the old town hall inside with room to spare—though not quite as literally as they had been trying to do since they’d lost the palace, and certainly not without constantly stepping on Rarity’s hooves.

Applejack’s and Rainbow Dash’s towers, on the other hoof, had come next because they alone didn’t require any particular consent from the ponies in question—Applejack’s tower being on the location that had used to be Barnyard Bargains and Rainbow Dash’s was just somewhere vaguely in the general area below that which her cloud house frequented.

Lastly, Fluttershy’s and Pinkie Pie’s towers were still up in the air. Rarity had just assumed that they’d replace their current residents, but both had special considerations to take into account, unless Pinkie Pie wanted Sugarcube Corner on the bottom floor of her tower.

…

Okay, so Pinkie Pie probably did want Sugarcube Corner on the bottom floor of her tower. Why was this an issue, again? Fluttershy, too, could absolutely come up with something that would serve her needs—it would just take a little more effort to integrate than the others, but that was fine. Twilight would have to mention it to Rarity when she got a chance to see what the problem was—assuming that it hadn’t all already been taken care of.

She did miss being the center of everything that happened, sometimes, but she’d get over it.

Maybe it was a good thing she was playing mailpony this morning; it’d been a while since she’d checked in on all of her friends… assuming she could find them. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie in particular might have to wait until nightfall in case they were in Baltimare or low Equus orbit and she needed the starlight to locate them—not that even that was any guarantee.

Twilight, of course, took all of this into consideration and reached the only logical conclusion, which was to visit Luna first. Oh, and Rarity would be in the building too; she was being efficient.

That was the only reason.

— ✶ —

“Hello, Twilight,” Luna greeted her, amusement coloring her tone as she took in the sudden purple limpet attached to her side—and the limpet attached to the limpet. “Oh, and Spike, too, I see.”

Unlike Twilight, who had become quite inured to the dangers of flying after Luna had chucked her off their palace, Spike had not yet gotten used to the inclusion of Twilight’s wings in their daily schedule, so while his grip was quite different than the one that Twilight had on Luna, the emotions behind it were no less powerful and it took him a moment to realize they were on the ground. At Luna’s greeting, however, he cracked one eye open, then the other and breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, uh, hey, Princess Luna,” he mumbled quietly in response, silently urging everypony to look at anyone but him.

The ponies that Luna had been talking to seemed to have been put in a quandary that they couldn’t quite reason their way out of. On the one hoof, they had been quite abruptly interrupted by somepony who had suddenly appeared and latched onto the alicorn princess that they’d been discussing trade agreements with, while on the other, the pony who had progressed to almost indecently nuzzling said personage was herself an alicorn princess and one that most agreed it was unwise to cross.

…Or so Twilight assumed. Really, they just stood there gaping like fish, so she had to extrapolate a little. They seemed to moderately relax when Twilight loosened her grip on their diarch, though, so there was that, and said diarch was entirely unconcerned with the interruption as well. “So, what brings you here so early?” Luna asked, completely ignoring her previous guests. “It has been less than an hour since we parted this morning.”

That, Twilight answered by procuring the set of six invitations she’d received earlier and fanning them out. Spike had actually gotten one of his own, but there’d been no reason for him to bring it along. “We’re apparently being invited to a coronation and naming ceremony, but I’m guessing it’ll be the other way around. I’d like to see them try to get through an entire coronation without letting anypony use either of their names the entire time, though.”

“I imagine they will combine them and announce the names as they are crowned, Twilight,” Luna reasoned with a casual smile. “No matter how much the ponies of Canterlot may love their pomp and circumstance, the naming would likely fall a little flat in comparison if the two were—”

Luna was interrupted and everyone present caught off guard by a flurry of motion that resembled a tablecloth blown free in the wind. Twilight herself stumbled back as the invitations were ripped from her magic and she scrambled to catch them all, coming up one short. It was the keening “Eeeeeee!” that instantly identified the cause of the disturbance.

Out of all of Twilight’s friends, Rarity was the one who had most embraced her new inequine nature… in a manner of speaking. She went to great lengths to look like a flesh and blood pony with only a nip and tuck here and there for vanity, but what she held back in designing what was essentially a lifelike doll was completely unrestrained when it came to her attire. Rarity may have no longer filled the entire room as she had when she had first ascended, but she was no less extravagant and her presence hadn’t been hemmed as single inch. This morning she was a loose-fitting cream and powder blue dress with sweeping, rippled sashes and a healthy adornment of champagne pearls and cornflower-blue sapphires and just a tiny bit of lace here and there to draw the eye.

“Hi Rarity,” Twilight said, announcing herself to the demigoddess who wasn’t paying her a single iota of attention.

Rarity had already ripped open her invitation and was reading it as she responded distractedly. “Yes, yes, hello Twilight; Luna; Spike,” she greeted, only looking up from her invitation after she had read it what had to be three or four times. “Oh, I am sorry, dears, but I simply must get back to my workshop. This is such short notice and no doubt I’ll have to organize things on our end, too.” She didn’t so much run off as much as she coursed out of the room in a riot of formless fabric. “Cinders! Fluttershy! Come! We have coture to create!”

Wait, what? Twilight looked around for the ponies in question, but was only partially successful.

Cinders, she discovered, was apparently the tall, pink teenaged dragon who had just entered the room breathing heavily, grumbled something, and immediately turned around, walking out without a word.

Fluttershy, though, she didn’t see any sign of.

…Or at least, she hadn’t until a tiny yellow and pink hummingbird darted up to Twilight, stopped, nodded, plucked the letter out of Twilight’s magic and zipped off in a dash, following after Rarity and her assistant.

Right. Fluttershy was in the animals like Twilight was in the stars.

She was just gonna keep not thinking about that.

— ✶ —

Rather predictably, none Twilight’s suggested changes had been made to Sweet Apple mountain, nor any other solution to lessen the issues of having the Apple family all living so far out. Well, if that was how Applejack wanted it to be, Twilight supposed that it was none of her business. Flying high over the orchards, though, she spotted Big Mac and felt a little bad for him.

Unlike Applejack, who could probably now run the whole farm all alone without breaking a sweat, and Applebloom, who had the benefit of taking a pegasus carriage into school each day, Big Mac had to do everything the hard way if he wanted to get anything done or go into town—and that included hauling a cart of apples into town to sell, which she imagined was the most useful thing he had left to do. Even the finances, which had traditionally been his hidden talent was probably being handed off to Rarity now that she’d gotten her entirely metaphorical and benevolent hooks into Applejack’s business.

So, yeah, she felt bad for him, though he seemed to be taking it with his usual stoic aplomb, so maybe he was just doing what he was able and not worrying about it. It was a valid perspective, and Twilight endeavored to do the same.

Spike, on the other hoof, had precisely zero aplomb and was into the negatives for stoicism. “I know she needs help, but just picking up some random dragon off the street?” he whined, starting to gesture with his hands and quickly discovering that they were required safety equipment for Twilight’s flying.

Twilight rolled her eyes as she banked over to another row of trees, searching for Applejack. This was actually the first thing that Spike had said out loud, but his moodiness had been clear. “I can’t believe you’re jealous that Rarity hired a dragon assistant,” she said, teasing him lightly. “You did catch that it was a girl dragon, right? I thought you said you’d given up on her anyway?”

“I did—I mean—it’s complicated, alright?” he said, crossing his arms in a pout for half a moment before regaining his grip on Twilight.

“Are you alright back there?” Twilight asked, craning her neck to look at him and frowning. “Do you need a saddle? Because I’m not going around town wearing a saddle, sorry. I’ll have to look up a sticking spell…” She cringed when she remembered the fate of her books. “Maybe I’ll stop at the royal archives when we go to Canterlot for the coronation. It’s a good thing I never had the archives brought to Ponyville, though if I’d been setting it up, you can be sure as Celestia I’d have had every protective spell I knew on that library; tower collapse or not, the books would have been safe.”

“’Mfine,” Spike grumbled, continuing to clutch onto Twilight for dear life. “If you can do that, why not just cast the spells on the whole palace?”

“Don’t be silly, Spike,” Twilight chided. “These spells draw their energy from the erudite appeal of books, and can only be used to protect bookshelves.”

“Really?” Spike asked, bewildered and—good for him—more than a little suspicious.

Twilight let out an annoyed huff. “No, of course not! Yes, they should have been cast on the entire palace; do you think Canterlot just sits there on the side of a mountain thanks to the mystical powers of budget cuts and good intentions? I don’t blame Luna since she isn’t up on the latest protective spells and it wasn’t her job anyway, but somepony in the mayor’s office cut corners, and we don’t even know who to fire because half the records have been destroyed and the other half are a mess.”

Twilight made an effort to calm herself after her short fit of pique as she flew in silence and they’d covered another two orchards by the time Spike spoke up again. “It doesn’t have to be about…” Spike remembered not to gesture with his claws this time. “…That. The thing with Rarity, I mean.”

“Well…” Twilight hmmed, considering her words. “No, it doesn’t have to be about that, but it still is, isn’t it? I’m sure Rarity has needed help as much as Luna or me—or the mayor, for that matter. That help could have easily been you if you’d wanted it, but…”

“It’s complicated,” Spike concluded, seeing where she was going.

“If it helps, Spike,” Twilight added as she made another turn and finally spotted Applejack. “I’m sure Cinders is her second choice. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but all these new dragons…”

“Need some help? Yeah, believe me, I’ve noticed.”

— ✶ —

“So, this is just an invitation, right?” Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow at Twilight after having read the card inside the envelope. “Ah don’t actually have to go?”

The sentiment didn’t exactly surprise Twilight, but she was a bit flummoxed and offended all the same. “It’s an invitation from the Celestias, yes, you have to go!” she hissed out, though she quickly felt guilty and backpedaled. “…Well, okay, no, you don’t have to go.” She looked down and kicked the duff and detritus of the orchard floor with her hoof. “But you should. At the very least, it’ll give us all a chance to get together. I was going to take this opportunity to check in on everypony, but Rarity ran off before we could even talk, and a hummingbird took Fluttershy’s invitation. After you, that just leaves Pinkie and Rainbow Dash, and…”

“And they ain’t really the conversation type?” Applejack extrapolated.

“Well, yes,” Twilight said, glancing at the sky as if one or both of them could be up there listening. “But I’m also still kind of peeved at Rainbow Dash.”

“Yeah?” Applejack asked, ears perking up in curiosity. “What’d she do this time?”

“She was… insinuating things about my parentage involving Discord when I was not in the mood,” Twilight admitted unhappily. “It really wasn’t the best time for joking around; in fact, it… might, kind of be what made me snap, in the end, so long as we’re bringing it up.”

“Aw jeez,” Applejack said, rolling her eyes.

“Hey,” Twilight objected, a little indignant. “In my defense, I’ve read the kinds of things ponies write about Celestia and Luna—and me, for that matter, before I ever became an alicorn in the first place. Ponies might actually take something like that seriously!”

Applejack gave Twilight a deadpan look. “You do realize that ‘that sorta thing’ is actually what happened with the Celestias to make them half-dragon or whatever it is they count as, right?”

Twilight failed to respond to that, jaw hanging open for longer than she’d like to admit before snapping it shut in a scowl. “Applejack—I’m going to say this in the nicest way I can: Can you please, please stop coming up with these revelatory common sense insights about alicorns? It’s distressing.”

— ✶ —

The stop to deliver Applejack’s letter ended up taking less time than actually finding her had. Once Twilight’s piece had been said, Applejack had expressed her desire to get back to work, so she and Spike had left and made their way back to Ponyville, where Rainbow Dash proved no easier to engage in conversation, though in the pegasus demigoddess’ case it was her apparent absence that was doing the talking.

They first made their way to Rainbow Dash’s cloud house, then the weather station and even her favorite napping cloud, coming up empty-hooved each time. Twilight considered heading back to the cloud house and just leaving the letter there, but she wanted to talk to her friends, damn it!

…

Okay, so ‘wanting’ to talk to Rainbow Dash was a bit of an exaggeration, but that wasn’t the point. She wanted things to go as she’d planned and she didn’t want to not talk to Rainbow Dash because of what had happened, which was basically the same thing.

Twilight flew around awhile, thinking of places she could check and hoping to just run into her if all else failed, but even that failed and eventually it was clear that she was just wasting her time.

Fortunately, Pinkie Pie, would be much simpler to find, as she actually had a job with hours. She might not be at that job at right this moment—Twilight pretty much expected she wouldn’t be, given her track record—but the Cakes would know when she would be. The bell on the entrance of Sugarcube Corner tinkled merrily as Twilight walked in, followed soon after by Spike, who was stretching out stiff muscles after a morning of clinging tightly to Twilight’s back.

“Welcome to Sugarcu—OH!” Mrs. Cake gave a start as she saw who had entered her shop. “P—Princess Sparkle!”

Oh. Twilight’s heart sank as she wracked her brain, trying to remember if she’d seen the Cakes since she’d become an alicorn, but came up blank. She’d been to Sugarcube Corner at least a couple of times—most notably the very first day she’d been out in public after Rainbow Dash had thrown her out of the library without a disguise—but it had always been Pinkie Pie running the register when she’d stopped in.

Resigned, Twilight levitated Spike back up onto her back to present a more familiar picture, though it was probably a lost cause with her sparkling, ethereal mane and glimmering regalia. She missed the days when all she had were wings to hide. Well, day. She’d had six hours of it, anyway. Situations like this would be a whole lot easier if her divinity wasn’t staring ponies in the face.

“Hey, Mrs. Cake,” she greeted, lifting her front legs up onto the counter and propping herself up to see what was available, presenting herself as a customer instead of the celestial being who had recently had a part of herself split off and try to kill her. She really hated having to actively try to look harmless, as it felt like manipulation to her, but it was better than blatant.

…Not that she and Luna hadn’t made a habit—or even an art—of being blatant anyway, but they’d long since given up on trying to please everypony, and it was fun.

“I’ll have…” Twilight scanned the display and saw one thing that jumped out at her, not because of what it was, but for what Pinkie Pie had once suggested she use them for. “Huh. I’ll have some bear claws, actually. Give me an even dozen.”

Maybe visiting Rainbow Dash would be fun after all.

“O—of course, dearie! Right away!” Mrs. Cake squeaked in a tone that would have been more appropriate for Pinkie Pie than the plump mare who quickly turned and began filling a large, flat pastry box.

“So, Mrs. Cake,” Twilight began, causing the mare in question to drop and discard one of the pastries. “Any idea when you’re going to see Pinkie Pie again? I have an invitation for her that the Celestias sent through Spike, and I guess I could leave it here for you to give her, but I’ve got something else I want to talk to her about as well, and it’s also just been a while since I’ve talked to her.”

Mrs. Cake stopped boxing pastries and turned her head to look at Twilight with something nearing trepidation. “Did you say you have an invitation for her? As in… for a party? And she hasn’t picked it up?”

Twilight thought about that for a moment, then went to fish the invitation out of her saddlebags, suspecting she might find it missing, but no, it was there and she pulled it out to show Mrs. Cake.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Cake muttered in worried tones. “Oh dear, oh dear; I hope nothing’s gone wrong.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow at Mrs. Cakes’s reaction and put the invitation away. “Did she go somewhere where that’s a possibility? Last I heard, she was still visiting random towns and giving them the Las Pegasus treatment—without the crater, usually.”

Mrs. Cake quickly finished packing up Twilight’s pastries and brought them over to the counter. “I wouldn’t think so,” she said, glancing outside with concern. “Not too long ago, she took a cake and a box of party decorations and said she was going to meet her friend to celebrate once they made her a Wonderbolt. Oh, when I say ‘her friend,’ that’d be Rainbow Da—”

“Yeah, I got that,” Twilight interrupted, feeling a headache coming on.

There were not enough facehoofs in the world for what she was feeling right now.

Chapter 5

— ✶ —

Twilight left Spike with Luna for the rest of the day before taking off in the direction of Cloudsdale. He wasn’t happy with the decision, but that morning in particular had made it clear that the arrangement they had for him to ride while she flew—which was to say, none—wasn’t satisfactory. In hindsight, she probably should have let him choose, but all the same, she really doubted that he actually wanted the sore muscles and close calls that a ride all the way to Cloudsdale would involve.

At least, that was all assuming that Cloudsdale was still there after the Wonderbolts inevitably rejected the grandstanding demigoddess for being exactly that—not that Rainbow Dash wasn’t a team player, but neither did she exactly fit in… and Twilight doubted that the massive stormcloud on the horizon had been scheduled, so there was that.

Hopefully there was something left of the city; otherwise, Rainbow Dash was going to have to figure out how to handle weather across all of Equestria real fast, and Twilight did not want Rainbow Dash as a weather goddess. If that happened, Twilight would have to let her be on the goddess council, for starters, and that just wasn’t going to happen.

Okay, okay, calm down. Rainbow Dash would not destroy all of Cloudsdale, even if her heroes had crushed all of her hopes and dreams… just most of it, and almost probably not on purpose.

It took Twilight a while to actually reach the storm clouds, let alone Cloudsdale itself. She wasn’t much of a flier, and without being able to disperse into a swirl of stars like she’d been able to do as a result of her improper manifestation, she was limited to the speed and lift her physical wings could give her, augmented by the occasional—and occasionally not-so occasional—short-range teleport. Teleporting, however, was itself limited by her ability to push her magic ahead of her, especially against the sunlight… or… no, she wasn’t going to get caught up in what it was called now that there was no sun.

…Ringlight?

Anyway, it took everything she had to fly through the storm clouds, teleporting each time she was nearly blown into the dark thunderheads… which is to say they were barely moving and not dangerous at all, but she had precisely zero experience flying through weather and it seemed dramatic at the time.

She might be making a bigger deal of this than it actually deserved.

Sure enough, even though she had a moment of panic when she continued to fail to find any sign of the city in the clouds, this was an error on her part as she eventually found it below the cloud layer she’d been fighting—down where everything was relatively calm, and fine if you ignored the great swirling mass of clouds overhead.

She was never going to tell anyone about this.

Not even Luna.

…Probably not Luna, anyway.

Well, she’d try, but Luna knew where she was ticklish.

Of course, Cloudsdale being fine didn’t necessarily make her job any easier. Well, it made her job a lot easier because she wasn’t going to have to figure out what to do about billions of bits in damages, but what she meant was that Rainbow Dash probably wasn’t in Cloudsdale, so she was going to have to go back up into the stormy mess anyway. There was always a chance that the storm was just responding to Rainbow Dash down in the city, but Twilight doubted it. Most likely, she was up in the center of it all.

Then again… whatever was going to happen had probably happened, and nothing was being struck by lightning just at the moment. Twilight hesitated, made a decision and headed down into the city first after all. More specifically, she headed to the Wonderbolts compound and looked for a certain iconic fiery mane that, ironically, now would have looked a little plain and lifeless next to the Celestia with actual fire for a mane.

Spitfire had made herself easy enough to find by standing out by the compound’s main runway wearing her dress uniform plus sunglasses and frowning pensively up at the swirling storm clouds, though she was hardly alone in doing so. Twilight circled around to where Spitfire would see her on approach and glided down in front of her.

“Princess,” Spitfire greeted, crisply saluting with no visible sign of disrespect, though Twilight doubted she was happy to see her… or that she was actually in the military mare’s chain of command, for that matter. The military was a side of the government that she’d never had any experience with, and anything she did think she knew had equal chances of having come from her mother, whose books had creative ideas about what happened in locker rooms and captains’ quarters, so she resolved to keep this short.

“Captain,” she respectfully returned, followed by a glance up at the sky. “So, tell me, how badly did it go?”

Spitfire raised an eyebrow at Twilight. “You mean when your hot-shot friend came barging into my office and started telling me how she was going to ‘revolutionize’ the Wonderbolts and pitched a hissy fit when I told her to get in line and sign up for the academy? I don’t care if she can do a dozen sonic rainbooms or whip up one hay of a storm; if she thinks she can just fly in here and instantly be hailed as Celestia’s gift to the ’bolts, she’s got another thing coming.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Twilight told her with some snark. “Obviously she’d be my gift to the Wonderbolts—though I’d have wrapped her better if she’d talked to me first.” The humor quickly passed, and another glance up at the storm clouds got a sigh out of Twilight. “Well, it’s not as bad as I’d feared, but since I was picturing Cloudsdale scattered to the winds…” She rocked her hoof in a so-so motion. “That’s not saying much.”

Spitfire lowered her sunglasses with her hoof to look at Twilight. “Uh, come again?”

“I don’t suppose she claimed, in no particular order, to be immortal, the bearer of the constellation Draco, literally made of lightning and rainbows, the greatest pegasus who ever lived, on the goddess council, etc.?”

“Some of that?” Spitfire admitted uneasily. “I wasn’t really listening that closely to be honest. Ma’am.”

“Yes, well, she is absolutely not on the council,” Twilight said with some bite to her tone.

Spitfire stood there, expecting something more that never came. “And…?”

“Did I stutter?” Twilight bit back. Scowling, she looked Spitfire dead in the eyes. “Let me make this clear, captain; about a week ago, I created five immortal demigoddesses invested with the power of a thousand mortal mares. Good idea or not, there’s nothing I can do about it now… and you might just have broken one’s heart today. I can’t say you did anything wrong, but maybe the next time you have to let down an eager fan, a little tact wouldn’t hurt?”

— ✶ —

Teleportation, Twilight mused, was an excellent way to make a dramatic exit before things get awkward.

She didn’t feel much better for having expressed her displeasure with Spitfire. It hadn’t been her place to do so, nor did she want it to be, though she doubted the military mare had been terribly ruffled by what had likely been a mild rebuke by her standards. Regardless, Twilight had other priorities, so she put the matter aside and focused on making her way to the center of the swirling storm clouds where she expected to find Rainbow Dash and what exactly she was going to say when she found her.

‘Sorry, Rainbow; I knew that giving you power would go badly, but I was feeling spiteful and wanted to make a point? On the bright side, Rarity as a demigoddess is working out way better than I ever expected on that front; why can’t you be more like her?’

Yeah, that would go over well. Unfortunately, finding Rainbow Dash turned out to be far too easy and she hadn’t come up with anything before she spotted her… and Pinkie Pie… and Fluttershy, in a manner of speaking, presuming storm systems weren’t the natural habitat of small yellow flying squirrels.

Twilight hadn’t even known that flying squirrels could walk on clouds.

Pinkie Pie’s presence, she wasn’t even going to question.

The two ponies and the yellow squirrel were down at the center of what resembled an amphitheatre of clouds swirling around Rainbow Dash and hadn’t yet noticed her. Twilight took a deep breath to prepare herself. Well, this was it. Her friends were out there dealing with a problem she’d caused and she was going to help… or at least apologize.

Screwing up her courage, she shifted herself forward and—got a facefull of large, yellow seagull. Twilight balked and sputtered, taking a moment to understand that the seagull was holding a wing over her mouth and shushing her.

Backing off, Twilight yanked herself free from the seagull and spat the taste of feathers out of her mouth. While she was doing so, the seagull-Fluttershy landed on one of the clouds between Twilight and Rainbow Dash and made nervous little shooing motions with its wings.

Twilight’s shoulders drooped. “You… don’t want me to help?”

Seagull-Fluttershy flapped its wings to bring itself closer to Twilight again and… patted her on the head? The apparent consolation was then followed by another quick shooing motion as it glanced back towards the group of Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and squirrel Fluttershy.

She wasn’t going to lie; being rejected by a seagull was not going to be the highlight of her day. “…Fine,” she said, sulking. Listlessly, she pulled the letters for Rainbow and Pinkie out of her saddlebags and offered them to the seagull. “Do you want to just take them…?”

The seagull shook its head and made a triangle with its wings, which Twilight took to mean she should leave them at Rainbow’s and Pinkie’s houses. Dejected, she stuffed the invitations back in her saddlebag and turned to leave. “At least let her know I’m sorry?”

Seagull Fluttershy nodded its head and then, in a blink, all the yellow drained out of it. The plain white seagull acted as if nothing unusual had happened, turned its head with a quick jerk to look at something and flew off.

Was there even any point to coming out here?

Twilight’s flight back to Ponyville took a while.

— ✒ —

Spike was still feeling a little sour about being left behind by Twilight when lunch came around and she still hadn’t come back. No, he probably wouldn’t have enjoyed flying on her back all the way to Cloudsdale to head off Rainbow Dash being Rainbow Dash, but she could have at least made that his choice. He wasn’t a baby anymore!

Or so he told himself.

To be honest, his indignation fell a little flat no matter which direction he looked at it from. From what he’d been able to get out of Ember, dragons were never really supervised, but they were generally expected not to wander off from their parents until they had their wings—and even Ember didn’t have hers yet.

Even more damning, though, was what the matter looked like if you considered him a proper adult. This was, after all, his real, honest-to-Celestia job, here. It was actually entirely reasonable for Twilight to leave him someplace where he could be useful while she ran off to deal with a personal emergency, and complaining about it would be childish. It’s not like it was even any actual imposition, as no matter what Luna came up with for him to help with, it was still in an entirely different class than the comfortable but dull nine-to-five grind he’d been doing for the mayor.

Really, the only actual valid complaint he could come close to was that Luna hadn’t yet realized that it was lunch time, and the only reason he hadn’t said anything yet was because he didn’t want to be rude and interrupt her.

“Curious,” Luna said, glancing out the large window of the office she’d been borrowing from Rarity as she signed the cover of a report and put down her fountain pen. “I would have expected Twilight to have returned by now. Are you hungry?”

Spike was in the middle of praising Celestia, recognizing the obvious conflict and properly praising Luna when his stomach got tired of waiting for him to respond and did so for him with an audible “Grrblgrr.”

— ✶ —

The crater that Celestia had made of the Everfree had filled into a lake, but not enough to disguise what it was. The rim of the crater was a rounded slope that quickly became a sheer, hundred-hoof drop of smooth, black, technically-not-volcanic rock down to crystal clear water.

Outward from the crater, the black rock continued, turning fissured and craggy until it became burnt dirt and vegetation, dead vegetation, merely wilted vegetation and so on. The transition from one to the other was remarkably quick for the sheer size of the devastation—for Celestia’s sunfire, anyway. If it had been Twilight or Luna, they wouldn’t have singed a single tree beyond what had been completely vaporized, but that was just the nature of their respective existences.

In spite of it being the site of the most incredible destruction that Equestria had likely seen since its founding, it was actually quite peaceful. Twilight had been meaning to come out here and test some things with her magic, but it was a nice place to sit down and rest for a moment, too.

She tried not to concern herself too much with what had happened. It wasn’t that she wanted to be callous, but overthinking things had always been her biggest fault and she never wanted to feel so lost as she had when she was in the downward spiral.

Rainbow Dash would bounce back, Twilight was pretty sure. Rainbow was resilient; she was the type of pony who would freak out about the future rather than agonize over the past. She wouldn’t let being ‘too awesome for the Wonderbolts’ get her down for long.

It still didn’t make Twilight feel any better. Out of all the questionable decisions she’d made that she could second and third guess, this was one she didn’t really need to. She’d been actively spiteful when she’d made the choice to turn her friends into demigoddesses; she’d known perfectly well that it was likely to turn sour for at least half of them and she’d wanted that to happen so she could throw it in Luna’s face. She… did believe what she’d said to Applejack—that putting them on something of the same level as her would help them all relate to each other—but… well, like Luna had said just last night; they could make anything happen if they just gave it some forethought.

Identify the problems and correct for them beforehoof.

Or, in other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Funny how parables, proverbs and pithy sayings only seemed obvious in hindsight.

Twilight knew she shouldn’t dwell on what could have been, but she had to ask herself—what would she have done to prevent this situation with Rainbow Dash, other than just get her to go through the wonderbolt academy?

Honestly, getting her to just do the academy properly was a pretty good answer, and she tried to leave it at that—really, she did—but she had a hard time convincing herself that it would last.

One option, she supposed, would have been to leave Rainbow Dash immortal, but take Draco back so she’d be on more even grounding with the Wonderbolts, but Twilight couldn’t see her accepting that without going through a wake up call like she’d received today, and Twilight was trying to think of ways that could have been avoided.

The other option, she supposed, would have been for Twilight to do for the Wonderbolts what she had done for her friends.

She was pretty sure that was as terrible of an idea as it sounded.

Actually, Twilight wondered how Rainbow Dash would have reacted to the suggestion of empowering the Wonderbolts. The Wonderbolts meant something to her, after all. They were something she’d strived to emulate. Would she want them given power any more than they wanted a pony who had been given it?

Neither depowering Rainbow Dash, empowering the Wonderbolts or just letting them try to work together as they were was that great of a solution, she admitted. It was tough, but she supposed that sometimes the answer was to just talk to a pony and manage their expectations before it leads to problems… or at least not default to handing out power like it was cotton candy.

Actually, what would the Celestias have done? Probably pin a medal on Rainbow Dash and give her a title and a position that wouldn’t actually make her part of the Wonderbolts, but more of a special reservist that could still fly with them from time to time.

Huh, that actually wouldn’t have been a terrible idea. In fact, it was so not-terrible that it might still work if they handled it right. Oh, it would reek of nepotism, sure, but that ship had sailed—loudly and publically—and they’d get the Celestias to put the proper spin on it… and even then, it wouldn’t be any time soon. The Wonderbolts would need some time to cool off and Rainbow Dash would have to make a name for herself as a public figure in the meantime—but it was a way forward, if Rainbow Dash wanted it.

She’d just… maybe wait a little while before actually proposing it to Rainbow Dash, if the way Fluttershy had turned her away was any indication. It hadn’t felt good being told in seagull semaphore that her presence would only make things worse. She couldn’t have known that Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy would be there, so it wasn’t like she could have made any other choice at the time, but it still seemed like freaking out and flying to Cloudsdale had been not just a waste, but backsliding into the same mentality of freaking out that had caused so many problems before.

To be fair to herself, though—she had created demigoddesses. A little freaking out when they run into trouble wasn’t entirely unreasonable.

Well, the day was shot, the palace demolition would go on without her and Spike was with Luna. She figured she might as well distract herself from the events of the day and try to get something productive done. She’d wanted to talk to Pinkie Pie about rocks before actually doing anything with earth pony magic, but she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever be able to pin that mare down, so why not? She was already out here; what harm could there be in a little trial and error?

— ✒ —

“Woah, did you feel that?” Spike asked, frowning at the small hitch in what he’d been copying down.

Luna looked up from what she was reading. “Feel what, young Spike?”

Spike took the opportunity to sit up and stretch his back. “The tower shook a little; I think it was a small earthquake.”

Luna thought about it and shook her head. “Neigh, I cannot say one way or the other if I felt such an event, but the seat that the fair Rarity has procured for me is quite the marvel, so my lack of ability to corroborate is not surprising,” she said, rolling herself over so that Spike could see the plush office chair upholstered in walnut and indigo crushed velvet. “It even has wheels!”

Spike stared at the two-thousand-year-old goddess playing around with her office chair. He was attempting to formulate a response when his thoughts were interrupted by the revelation that it could spin, too.

“Whee!”

He wanted one.

— ✶ —

Ow.

Splash.

Gasp.

Splish-splash. Splash.

Ow.

The last time that Twilight had found herself taking an unplanned swim in a still, glassy lake like this, it had turned out to be her initial chance connection to her celestial body of stars. It had been, all joking aside, a truly magical experience. This was not that. Technically, any response to pushing magic through her hooves could be called a success, but in this case, success was wet.

Wet and painful.

Funny thing; it turns out that if an alicorn channels magic through her hooves with no particular direction or intent, magic comes out of their hooves with no particular direction or intent.

This, she decided just now—and she would never allow anypony to tell her otherwise—was why the bottoms of a pony’s legs were called the cannons.

Twilight slowly pony-paddled back to shore only to realize, as she was faced with a sheer wall of glassy black rock, that there was no shore. With a pained groan, she flopped backwards into the water and just floated there for a moment as she worked up the will to fly back up to the edge of the crater. When she was halfway ready and half resigned to just float around the lake on her back until nightfall, she suddenly remembered she could teleport.

Two seconds later, she also remembered that her legs were hurt—specifically, she remembered this when she attempted to use them for their intended purpose and they immediately buckled under her.

She really, really missed all the benefits of manifesting directly from the stars, like being able to remanifest during the day and refresh her body to a pristine condition. It wasn’t that she lacked power when manifest properly, it just wasn’t available to her in the same way. Technically, she did have less, yes, but it was comparing a river to a lake—or a library to a publisher—it was hardly the same thing at all.

Properly manifest, all Twilight was, was starlight; she didn’t actually produce any magic. Instead, her body and regalia—that is, her shoes, the peytral around her neck and the crown on her head—were all solid manifestations of the light she produced, with enough magic inherent in them for most situations. The regalia in particular was expressly for that purpose, being, as it was, not a natural part of the manifestation, but something that Luna and Celelstia had come up with and refined to the current configuration that had stood the test of time.

It was still all just a limited pool of starlight, though. If she demanifested… Well, starlight was starlight, and being light, it tended to escape—and do so very quickly. Even if she could catch and bend some of it around, she’d end up with less than she started with, if any. In order to remanifest herself in any useful manner, she would need an actual source of starlight to do it with, which wasn’t an option right now.

Taking a deep breath and holding it, Twilight gingerly attempted to stand, using her wings to ease herself up, but she was no natural-born pegasus with an entire life of muscle memory and hardly had the precise control she would have needed to do it properly. The sharp pain that shot up her legs the moment she dropped just a little too much, putting weight on them, quickly put paid to that idea.

Twilight winced in pain as she rolled over onto her side and got her legs out from underneath her. It was a relief, but they still ached and burned. Her hooves, she noted, were perfectly fine, protected by the shoes of her regalia, but her cannons were burnt and, more importantly, she had almost certainly sprained and cracked more joints and bones in her legs than she cared to count.

It wasn’t something she’d ever have associated with alicorns, but Twilight had gotten somewhat used to pain since becoming one. Even when she’d been able to remanifest, it still hurt to be injured or blasted apart, and yet it seemed to happen fairly regularly.

Admittedly, that was mostly because of other alicorns.

Fortunately for Twilight’s ongoing relationship with the mare who had been the leading cause of her demanifestations, there was a certain… distance to the pain that kept it bearable. That distance being about a hundred kilometers, give or take, plus whatever spatial shennanigans it took to reach the umbra during the day.

Still, while it was late in the day, dusk was hours off, and she would rather not lay here in pain for the entire time. She chewed at her bottom lip, considering her options.

No one would notice if she brought out just a few little stars, right? There’d be no harm in it; maybe she could even make it a regular thing…

Yeah, she didn’t actually believe that for a second.

You know what? The ground was kind of comfortable after all.

Wait—hold on—back up.

Twilight had been staring at the design of her shoe when it hit her—she couldn’t demanifest and put herself back together, but her regalia was ostensibly separate from her, wasn’t it? Admittedly, it was more a part of her than any normal armor or jewelry and the crown in particular seemed to simply remain on her head as a matter of course, but they weren’t actually attached or anything; she did take them off for bed, after all. Would it be possible to sacrifice one piece of her regalia and capture some of the starlight into her body? She didn’t see why not. Even if she lost ninety-nine percent of it, the recaptured one percent should be enough to fill in the damaged parts of her legs.

She wasn’t, of course, going to be stupid enough to use her shoes for it right after they’d saved her from even more pain than what she’d managed to inflict on herself. Instead, she took off her crown, which she took to be the least useful piece of her regalia. If this worked, she might consider adding more individual pieces to her ensemble, it would just be too useful not to.

Enough dithering, though. It was time to try it out.

…

It was curious that her regalia had manifested as a black metal when she was fairly certain that, unlike Luna and Astri whose moons had a dark side that nonetheless produced magic, it was only her stars that did so, not the black of night between them.

Okay, okay, none of that, Twilight scolded herself. She just needed to unravel—but it was then she realized that Astri’s moon had been a moon… as in—a moon like Luna’s with patches of dark and light, not a massive burning star, so how did that work? She tried to come up with an explanation, but nothing jumped out at her, and now she had a headache, too.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t actually eaten today. It was amazing what somepony could get used to in only a month or so of goddesshood. Not being able to refresh her body really sucked… and—no! Enough! She forced herself to get on with demanifesting her crown and think about the curiosity of Astri’s moon later.

She didn’t know why she was even stalling for this. It wasn’t as if it could actually go too wrong. She wasn’t going to bring her stars out in the day, so if she failed, she’d just let her body demanifest until dusk, then come back and grab her saddlebags, with the invitations for Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie.

Her very wet saddlebags. Oops. Why—why hadn’t she taken them off in the several hours she’d been sitting around on the craterside? She did her very best not to ascribe this, too, to her not manifesting directly out of stars, but the fact of the matter was, that Luna had taught her how to carry objects and ponies in the darkness of her demanifest form, so if the shoe fits… and her shoes fit very, very well, both literally and figuratively.

Once again, though, that was a problem for later.

Gently, carefully, Twilight finally managed to get herself to focus on her crown and the feeling of demanifestation. She wanted it to be as slow as possible so she could capture as much of the starlight as possible and refresh the damaged parts of her legs.

That didn’t happen.

Not only did the demanifestation spread exponentially, ripples of light consuming her crown in seconds, but the demanifestation spread—exponentially—and very quickly all that was left on the craterside was a pair of wet saddlebags.

The stars swore.

— ✒ —

Spike left Rarity’s tower with a pinch on the cheek from its owner and a nod of thanks from Luna, who was deep in her preparations for her dusk court. Twilight hadn’t shown up for the entire rest of the day, and while he wanted to say that it wasn’t like her… eh, it kind of was, especially nowadays.

He did suppose that she had a good reason this time, but then again, she usually did anyway. Hopefully the situation with Rainbow Dash had gone well. He knew what it was like for something he’d wanted for a long time to turn out to just… not make sense anymore.

Rarity was like that, for him. He liked her. He liked her a lot—flaws and all—and maybe that meant that he even loved her. It was weird that she was basically a dress waving around a pony-shaped doll now, but… he’d seen weirder. He’d even managed to spend some time with her today after she’d come back to deal with the official side of the Celestias’ coronation. She’d left ‘Cinders’ back at the boutique, so he’d been able to help her with the paperwork for a while, which was nice, and when all was said and done and she’d gone back to work on suits and dresses, he’d come to the conclusion that nothing had changed.

That was a bad thing, in case that wasn’t clear.

He’d already come to the conclusion a while back that Rarity saw him as what he technically was; a ‘baby’ dragon. It didn’t matter to her that he was mature, educated and self-sufficient for his age—all entirely Twilight’s fault, both positive and negative—Rarity just couldn’t see him that way, so he’d given up on her, knowing that she never would during her lifespan. When she’d become immortal, he’d thought that it would fix things—and he had to remind himself that it still might—but the concept of waiting it out wasn’t something he could wrap his head around yet.

Hopefully Rainbow Dash would have an easier time figuring out where she was going to go from here.

Spike stopped by the palace demolition site on the way home and picked up some more rubble—err—dinner. He wasn’t the only dragon doing so, but they were saving the rest of the thrones for him, and thus, for Ember.

He didn’t get it, but Ember insisted she could taste the narcissism. Spike preferred actual gemstones, but the black geodes were pretty good too even if nopony he’d talked to actually knew what they were. The clear crystals were some kind of quartz, mostly good as filler like hay or rice; it was impressive that somepony had managed to get it so optically clear, but it was nothing special aside from the sheer quantity that had been brought in. He picked some up anyway.

Naturally, heading home with a bag of rocks, his thoughts turned to Ember, her apparent change of heart and the book she’d had. He wasn’t stupid; he doubted she’d had that book when she’d invited herself into his life, but he also doubted it’d been in the library, and they weren’t likely to both be true unless she’d mail ordered it, and… yeah, no. Spike supposed he could believe that she’d had it, but only recently gotten bored enough to actually read it since the only thing he was sure of was that she hadn’t so much as cracked the spine until that morning—or sometime last night, more likely, considering how little sleep she seemed to have gotten.

Now that she had started to read it, her perspective seemed to have taken a heavy blow, and she hadn’t even tried to hide it. Well, she might disagree, but no matter her other flaws, the fact was that she didn’t have a dishonest bone in her body. He guessed that must come from growing up easily overlooked and dismissed by parents that were thousands of times your size.

The point was, he really wanted to know what could possibly be in that book that it could change a stubborn dragon like her so quickly. From what she’d been telling him, it seemed to cover a bunch of things, all centered around some old dragon empire that included ponies, zebras, griffons, hippogriffs, hippocampi and every other intelligent species he could name—and some he’d never heard of. He wondered if it could really be called a dragon empire if it had all of that, but supposed that when you’re a species of colossal fire-breathing lizards, things just tend to revolve around you.

Was it any wonder that Ember had such a problem with what she liked to call ‘giant, overbearing rockheads’? He had to admit, she probably knew what it was like to have everyone in her life constantly babying her just as much as he did, if not more.

Wait—no. Back up and unthink that right now, he scolded himself. He did not just empathize with her, damn it!

Except he kind of had.

— ✒ —

To Spike’s pleased surprise, Ember did not ambush him at the door to claim his bounty of slain chair to feast upon. This surprise quickly evaporated when he realized, of course, that it was because she would be reading The Book. Come to think of it, it didn’t have a title on the cover—just that jeweled dragon head—and she hadn’t ever referred to it by name, either. It wasn’t unheard of for old, one-of-a-kind books to not actually have a title if they weren’t intended for publication, he knew, so maybe it was one of those. He considered suggesting that they call it the draconomicon, but she wouldn’t get it, so what would be the point?

He found her in the basement right where he’d left her that morning, bringing with him dinner prepared in an actual bowl for once. He’d even left some in the pantry this time so she could be introduced to the magic of snacking outside of mealtimes. He was both absolutely certain that she would become enamored with the idea and highly doubtful that it would convince her to actually ration her food.

He suddenly wasn’t sure if it was a good idea after all.

It turned out, however, that Spike’s assumption had been wrong. Ember was not reading. She was asleep, curled up and clutching The Book protectively to her chest.

It was kind of adorable, mostly on account of her not being awake to ruin it.

He set the bowl down next to her on the literal bed of rubble that was spilling out into the room not too far from the bottom of the stairs. She’d made this little nest by burrowing through one of the walls and into the stone beyond, dragon-raised dragons evidently not used to wooden construction which—to be fair—had a tendency to catch on fire pretty easily.

That was actually why they’d come down here earlier that morning. Ember had demanded that he show her how to do dragon magic, but all they’d succeeded in doing was adding a few scorch marks in the area and warming up her bed. Evidently, after he’d left, she’d gone back to reading and her lack of sleep the night before had caught up to her.

He stood there and considered the whole situation: her, The Book and her declarations that the dragons she knew were ‘clearly doing it wrong,’ and that ‘someone should do something about that.’ Eventually, he started to feel weird just standing there watching her, so he… sat down and continued to watch her sleep instead. He wasn’t worried that she would wake up and see him since she had no sense of pony propriety or any idea why it would normally be considered creepy. In fact, he was able to see his expectations play out as she eventually woke up, spotted him, spotted the bowl and had eyes only for the latter, instantly brightening as she grabbed it and started shoving handfuls into her face.

“You—are—the—besht,” she told him in between mouthfuls of crystal.

Spike spent a moment just enjoying being appreciated, then sighed. He’d been thinking and thinking and thinking. He wasn’t normally the kind of dragon who spent a whole lot of time deliberating, but this was serious and he’d finally come to a decision. It wasn’t the decision he thought he’d make, either. In fact, he’d been adamantly against it from the start and only just recently started to see the possibilities. Even now, it wasn’t the most palatable of options, but he thought that Luna, at least, would understand. She knew more than most how he felt about his chances with Rarity.

Twilight… might or might not understand. She’d gotten much more casual about certain things since becoming an alicorn, but she still might object on principle if she found out on her own. Spike might be able to bring her around if he explained it and Luna would almost certainly be able to, but in the end it didn’t really matter anyway, since Ember didn’t want anyone to know about her presence—full stop, no exceptions.

“Ember,” he said, getting her attention; she stopped chewing and gave a curious look, cheeks full of crystal. There was no point in beating around the bush, so he decided to just say it.

“I’m sick and tired of being seen as a baby; let’s steal the Ring of Ashmund.”

Chapter 6

— ✶ —

Twilight returned to the craterside at dusk, renewed and refreshed, to retrieve her saddlebags, but ran into one small issue.

Her inability to actually find them.

It shouldn’t have been difficult. Locating the small patch of craterside where she’d spent the more pleasant majority of her afternoon was embarrassingly easy, actually, seeing as she’d rather permanently marked it by adding a new crater to the craterside. Next, she thought that maybe she’d just been thrown a ways when she’d fallen into the crater. This was a reasonable conclusion, as she hadn’t noticed the damage on her return to the craterside, so she had to have been some distance away.

That said, reasonable though the conclusion might have been, it wasn’t actually helpful in divining the location of her saddlebags. Fortunately for her sanity, night had come as a prerequisite to her return, so she could actually divine the location of her saddlebags, in a manner of speaking. Referring to herself as divine was a little odd, though, so it was simpler to just say that she searched the craterside through her starlight, still coming up empty-hooved.

It was a little vexing, but there was at least a small silver lining; with her ability to search the entire craterside as quickly as she could focus and on and process what she was seeing, she could at least be reasonably sure that her saddlebags were, in fact, no longer wherever she’d dropped them, so she didn’t have to spend hours looking for something that wasn’t there. Briefly, she considered asking Fluttershy if she’d seen what had happened to them. Heck, it was even possible that Fluttershy had recovered them for her. In theory, Fluttershy could see anything that any animal could see, but if it was anything like Twilight’s ability to see through the starlight, focusing on multiple things was another matter entirely.

You know what? No. She’d already spent too much time on this. There wasn’t anything special about the invitations; she’d just have Spike send a letter to the Celestias asking them for a couple of new ones.

With little more than a thought, Twilight remanifested herself over at the ex-library and was about to knock when she reconsidered. She was still doing her best to let him have his privacy and didn’t really want to barge in on whatever he was doing. It was just an invitation; why bother him? And why bother the Celestias, for that matter? She could have actually gone to them directly just as easily as she’d come here, but she hadn’t even considered it.

Forget it. It was a piece of paper and she was a princess; she’d just write Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash her own damn invitations… and maybe slip in a small note of apology to Rainbow while she was at it. That sounded perfect, actually.

She was just shimmering out of existence to go do that when she heard the latch on the front door of the ex-library click, and the door began to open. Out of reflex, she rushed to hurried the process, hoping she hadn’t been seen… though in hindsight, that was probably a lost cause, else there wouldn’t have been a reason for Spike or his girlfriend to open the door in the first place.

Oops.

Twilight had been hoping that Spike would introduce his girlfriend to her sometime soon, but maybe it could wait a little while until they forgot about this little embarrassment. Twilight didn’t want to be seen as the creepy, hovering pseudo-sister-mother who stands around outside the house without knocking. Is that a thing? That’s not even a thing; that’s just being weird.

Thankful that her stars lacked the ability to blush, she pointedly did not check back where she’d just left to see what they were saying about her prompt departure, instead heading straight on to her destination.

Luna’s court was already well underway when Twilight manifested next to her and interrupted proceedings with her obligatory nuzzle. Rarity was absent, which didn’t surprise her but was inconvenient, as she was Twilight’s first instinct as far as ponies who might have the parchment she needed went. Twilight had had her own stock with different varieties for everything from notebooks and checklists to the specific type of scrolls she liked to use for writing Celestia, but they had all been packed away somewhere when she’d been moved into the palace, and now who knew what had happened to them? They were having were enough trouble recovering all the boxes of actually important paperwork to bother with stationery.

Luna noticed Twilight’s wandering eyes and hugged her close with one wing. “Were you looking for somepony?”

“I was hoping to beg some invitation parchment and envelopes off of Rarity,” she admitted, managing to sound only slightly sheepish. “I had an… incident down at the Everfree crater and there’s slightly more crater there now than there was before.”

Luna’s eyes rose. “You were demanifested?” she asked, surprised. “We—that is, Spike and I—had wondered why you had not come back for him. In any case, you can no doubt find Rarity in her workshop preparing garments for my sisters’ coronation—or you can let her be and go raid the desk in my office. I do believe the second drawer from the bottom has some gilt and textured cardstock that shall do nicely.”

Twilight gave Luna one last nuzzle, hesitated, then added a peck on the cheek. “Thanks; I’ll do that,” she said, backing away from the throne and hopping down the small raised dais that was absolutely not a collection of apple crates with a velvet curtain draped over it. She was still getting used to the idea of actually being in a relationship, let alone engaging in public displays of affection, but she was making an effort.

Just as she was walking past, at the very instant she left his field of view, the pony at the head of Luna’s current crop of appellants spoke up. “Ahem. Now that the matter of the archlibrarian’s… arts and crafts project is settled, perhaps now we can get back to the matter of the spurious, anachronistic zoning ordinances?”

Twilight winced at the remark, but Luna bristled. Anticipating an application of the Royal Canterlot Voice and the rejection of whatever the pony in question was here for, Twilight turned with an audible clack of her sparkling shoes on the marble floor and took a closer look at the pony who apparently couldn’t resist getting in a jab at her.

The pony in question was a thin, older stallion whose defining features were sunken cheeks and a white mane tied back in a ponytail. Any mention of his demeanor would be superfluous, as he simply radiated—or perhaps oozed—self importance. Twilight didn’t have to guess whether or not this was a Ponyville native as he made even Filthy Rich look meek and modest.

“Anachronistic zoning ordinances, did you say?” she asked, feigning the perky interest she’d been known for as a bibliophile. “What a coincidence! I’m rather the expert on those, maybe I should stick around and lend an ear?” Actually, she wasn’t lying; Ponyville’s zoning had come up on several occasions, not the least of which was Winter Wrap Up, which she’d been preparing for before discovering her alicornhood.

The face of the older pony whose name she hadn’t even gotten made it very clear that he’d rather do almost anything else.

“No?” Twilight said, mock pouting before returning to a more dry, acerbic tone. “You know, it’s the strangest thing; ever since I stopped holding court, ponies seem to have gotten the impression that I’ve been… I don’t know, pacified? Defanged? Put to pasture?” Twilight made a show of thinking of it then gave a shrug. “Personally, I think it’s great if ponies see me as more approachable. I try to actually be approachable, as a matter of fact, and to treat everyone as an equal if they’ll let me. That’s why I stopped holding court; it was only making it harder for me to be the kind of pony—or alicorn, or goddess, if you prefer—that I want to be.

“That’s what makes it strange. I’m still all of those things, and if you think about it, I haven’t, as it so happens, given up any of my many powers—judicial, legislative or otherwise—either. I’m still a princess—still one of Ponyville’s official resident alicorns. I’m even still the archlibrarian of Libraropolis in spite of my attempts to rectify that. In fact, literally the only thing I’ve actually done is decide that ponies like you aren’t worth my time.”

She let that statement hang in the air for a moment before continuing.

“So no, I won’t be sitting in as you describe whatever longstanding fixture of Ponyville you’re trying to appeal the mere existence of using wordy legalise, as funny as that would be. I trust that Luna has it handled anyway. She actually enjoys crushing the dreams of upstart nobility who think they can twist her words so long as they just fill out the right forms in triplicate, and has the equanimity and perspective to do it without getting carried away. That might be you, it might not be; as I haven’t read your proposal, I can’t say one way or the other, nor do I care to find out. Frankly, sir, I have better things to do that are far more deserving of my time. They involve crayons.”

The slender stallion seethed—and as Twilight turned to leave, she felt… nothing, curiously enough. Previously in her alicornhood, ponies—having stars of their own as they do—were able to trigger a kind of atavistic fear not unlike that which the starbeasts had, or when she’d been certain that Equestria had wanted to eat her. She’d eventually mastered her reaction to the feeling through sheer exposure, but that sense of predatorial threat from ponies she came into conflict with had never actually gone away.

Except, well, obviously it had—either because there were none of her stars in her manifest body down here on Equus to actually be threatened, or because she was now invested into all of her stars at once, including the one inside of this cantankerous pony. It was the best news she’d had all day and she decided to celebrate it by doing… absolutely nothing as she walked away.

“As do we,” the pony muttered sourly, having to get the last word in. She let him have it in spite of having a great riposte involving an offer of crayons, preferring the heady freedom of being able to just walk away from the confrontation. She would have been gone in just a few moments more had he not gone for one final jab. “Power or not, your lack of attendance is most appreciated. We trust that the lunar princess will be quite fair, are thankful to be rid of you and your… kangaroo court,” he announced with a sniff of disdain, turning back to Luna assured of his verbal victory.

Twilight saw red, but she burned white, instantly remanifesting back to the center of the room to… poke him aggressively in the chest with her hoof. “You take that back,” she snarled at him. “The kangaroos had one bad ruler—one! They don’t deserve that reputation! King Hopsalot the Eighth was a single mediocre monarch in a long and distinguished line of kangaroyalty."

“Ah!” he cried, stiffening and looking down at her hoof burning with starfire. “I—I—I’m sorry, what?” he asked, unable to take his eyes off the threatening appendage.

“Not only is it blatant, racist stereotyping, but it’s blatant, racist stereotyping that doesn’t even have any basis in fact!” she lectured, driving him further back and back with each poke. “The kangaroos loved Hopsalot the Eighth. For a peacetime ruler, he was perfectly fine, and it was because of his unique approach to ruling that his sons were able to bring real prosperity to the enchanted lands when they took over.”

“I—I have no idea what you’re talking about!” he screeched, abandoning his dignity in favor of terror and utter bewilderment as he fell over backwards, scrambling away from Twilight’s hoof. “I had no idea that the kangaroos even had royalty! Or that there were kangaroos! I thought they were just anima—I’m not racist!”

Twilight sneered as she looked down on him. “Apologize,” she commanded.

“I’m sorry?” he asked, confused, then panicked when his lack of response only made the starfire flare up. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ll donate tw—fi—ten percent of my income to social programs benefiting orphaned joeys in the enchanted lands, wherever that is! J—just let me keep my magic, please!”

The starfire went out as if it had never been there. “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” she told him, smiling as she wandered off to find the parchment she needed. “The kangaroos were wiped out during the discordian era.”

“…What.”

— ✒ —

“Ember!” Spike shouted, running down the street after the cloaked dragoness. “Ember, wait! You don’t even know where you’re going!”

Wonder of wonders, that actually worked. The figure came to an abrupt stop, then turned and darted over to him, clapping her hands over his mouth. “What interpretation of don’t let anyone know who I am and stealing an ancient artifact of my people from the pony gods makes it okay to run around shouting my name at the top of your lungs, you dolt?”

Spike rolled his eyes and pulled her hand away from his mouth. “Yeah, because running after you yelling, ‘Mysterious cloaked figure! Hey, mysterious cloaked figure! Wait up!’ would have been so much better.”

“There’s no one else on the street!” she hissed, trying to yell at him and still keep quiet.

Spike threw his arms up in the air. “Fine! Whatever! Coming up with something else to call you is just one of the things we need to do instead of running off half-cast the instant I suggest something.”

“It’s not complicated!” she argued. “We go there, we find the ring, I put it on and turn into a dragon twice the size of my dad, go kick his tail, become the dragon lord and show everyone how to dragon.”

Spike gave her a dead flat look, said, “no,” turned and walked straight back in the direction of the library.

Ember stomped after him, silently fuming until they got back inside. “What the tartarus are you playing at? You said you wanted to do this!”

Spike stood his ground, crossing his arms. “You said you wanted to be like the dragons of the empire—to show dragons that there’s a better way than what they’ve been doing.”

“I do!” she insisted, indignant. “That’s why we need Ashmund’s ring!”

“So you can go stomp your dad,” he said.

Ember bristled, flexing her claws. “Yes!”

“And force everyone to do what you say,” he reiterated.

“For fury’s sake, yes!” she yelled. “It’s not a difficult concept!”

Spike had to bury his face in his palms. “How do you not see the problem here?”

“What—problem?!” Ember demanded, stomping her foot and raking curls of wood up off the floor.

Spike grimaced, not sure if he wanted to bang his head on the floor… or maybe bang Ember’s head on the floor. Instead of doing either, he sucked in a breath through his clenched teeth and slowly let it out. “Ember,” he said, speaking slowly for emphasis. “Would a civilized dragon of the empire… do any of that? No, they wouldn’t! If you actually want to be a better dragon, you have to actually do it. You can lead a dragon to civility, but you can’t just beat him over the head until he learns respect.”

“Sure I can, if I want him to actually listen!” she said with a sneer. “They’ve been doing it this way since my grandfather was a hatchling, Spike. Overwhelming strength coming from someone bigger, meaner and tougher is the only thing they understand!”

“If they don’t understand respect, honor and civility, then make them understand!” Spike pleaded, trying to get his point across.

“Exactly!” she declared with a grin, missing the point entirely.

“No, make them understand by using those things and showing them how they’re better!” he clarified, beginning to wonder if she was being obtuse on purpose. “If you beat them with strength, all they’ll learn is that you’re stronger than them. If you beat them through honor and… and… devoir, then they’ll see that those things have value.”

“I can’t beat someone into submission with devoir,” she said, putting all the contempt she could into the word. “I don’t even know what that is!”

“You don’t want them broken on the floor, Ember; there’s no point in that. You want them to change, so beating them in this means getting them to change. You beat them…” He struggled to put it into words. “…By being successful and building a life that you can be proud of—one they’ll crave and envy so much that their own greed and desire will change them for the better just for the chance to achieve something similar and surpass it. Pride—envy—greed—desire—you know what those are, at least. If you can’t even get those out of a dragon, then how can you say your way is really any better?”

“It’s not that simple!” Ember slammed the book down on the ground and pointed at it. “It was a way of life! The empire worked because it had the empire to back it up! All I have is me, and nobody is going to envy one small, little girl on the run from her daddy.”

“You have the book, don’t you?” Spike said, pointing at it in exactly the same manner she had. “You have what sparked that envy in you, and all it did was sit there and let you read it.”

Ember scowled unhappily. “Yeah, but—”

“And what am I?” Spike interrupted. “Chopped ginger? You have me—tartarus, you have an entire society here that’s not as noble and gallant as what you’re looking for, but it’s still an organized community that runs on leadership and cooperation ruled over by two ponies that were just reborn part dragon. And…”

“…And?” she prompted, merely simmering in her distaste and inability to refute his logic.

Spike hesitated, but had to begrudgingly finish his thought. “And for the rest, we’re going to steal the Ring of Ashmund—”

“But you said—”

“We’re going to steal the Ring of Ashmund,” he said, talking right back over her. “But for Celestia’s sake, Ember, we’re going to do so and use it intelligently and responsibly,” he emphasised. “You’re right that no one will listen to you at your age, but that doesn’t mean that bigger is better. They’re more likely to listen to you if you’re not too different from them.”

“Dragons listen to dragons that are bigger than them,” Ember argued.

“I don’t care what someone is—they’ll empathize with those who are like them,” he said, stressing the correction and moving on. “That’s what empathy is, and empathy is how you build a… rapport… I think it’s called? Look, I’m not exactly an expert on any of this. I don’t know all the steps to getting a bunch of lazy, disagreeable dragons to get up and build a society together, but I know the answer isn’t Godzilla arm wrestling children, and you have no idea how hard it is to put that feeling into words. Can you just… trust me on that? Please?”

Ember looked begrudgingly thoughtful, but slowly seemned to warm to the idea. “Godzilla. I like that. That can be my undercover name.”

Dragons were not known for their precognitive abilities, but all the same, Spike felt the inevitability of the future looming over him and whimpered.

“It’s perfect for you.”

— ✶ —

Twilight spent a good half an hour making up the new invitations for Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. This was in spite of them looking more like she’d spent five minutes on them and the other twenty-five spinning around in Luna’s chair. Fortunately for Twilight, her ethereal mane was proof against becoming disheveled, so there was nopony in the world who could have said otherwise.

The knowing smile on Luna’s face as Twilight stopped by the throne room on her way out begged to differ.

Twilight flushed in slight embarrassment at having been caught despite the fact that she wouldn’t have acted any different had Luna actually been there in person. Neither of them said anything about it out loud, though, and before long Twilight was gliding out over the city bearing her missives to their destinations.

It was only when she was faced with the darkened storefront of Sugarcube Corner that she realized her error.

Rather than knock and risk Mrs. Cake’s ire for waking the newborn twins, Twilight sighed and made do with dropping Pinkie’s invitation through the mail slot, all the while wondering how exactly they all managed to live in the same building without driving each other crazy.

Or crazier, in Pinkie’s case.

However they had been handling it, she doubted that it would have been sustainable for long, so it was probably a good thing that Rarity was going to be having a tower built for the immortal party planner before Pinkie Pie could come up with a solution of her own. Twilight could just imagine her excitable friend setting up a party planning lair up in a belltower or down in some cave like in one of Spike’s comic books.

With Pinkie Pie’s invitation now some manner of delivered—truthfully, Twilight suspected she could have put it under a rock and Pinkie Pie still would have received it somehow—she now had to address the matter of what to do with Rainbow Dash’s. After being rebuffed by Fluttershy, Twilight had planned to just leave the invitation at Rainbow’s home before she had a chance to get back, but she’d then gone on to make two small missteps in her execution of that plan.

One—Rainbow Dash was Rainbow Dash, and she could have beat Twilight to her home just by casually thinking about it, and two—Twilight had stopped outside of town at the Everfree crater and, in general, done not a single thing towards actually engaging in making any part of that plan happen. Now, Rainbow would almost certainly be at home unless she were staying over with Fluttershy. Twilight probably shouldn’t use her starlight to check, but…

…Well, uhh, that was a very large pile of yellow bunnies, wasn’t it? The, uhh, the kicker was, she couldn’t actually tell if Rainbow Dash was in there or if it was just Fluttershy seeking a little self-comfort. She could have checked Rainbow Dash’s house next just to make sure she wasn’t there, but Twilight wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

Ponies deserved their privacy.

— ✶ —

Twilight had ended up casting several enchantments on the letter before tossing it through one of Rainbow Dash’s windows and fleeing with all the inconsiderable strength she could beat her wings with. It wasn’t the most dignified solution, but Rainbow Dash was the kind of demigoddess that only checked her mailbox once in a while unless she was expecting something and her monthly issue of FlyFast wasn’t due for another two weeks.

Whatever. Delivered was delivered, and being accosted in the morning by a floating, blinking letter in her living room was the sort of thing that Rainbow would probably get a kick out of… eventually. It’d be funny in hindsight once Rainbow had her coffee, anyway, which was all that mattered because Twilight wouldn’t be there.

Her two-hour duty finally dispatched in just over twelve hours, Twilight spent a while just flying over the city enjoying the wind in her face and and under her wings. It was hard to believe that her mere presence had caused the city to swell and change so much in so little time.

The changes didn’t seem like much when you only looked at a small area; the roads were paved, the buildings a hodge-podge collection of old and newly remodeled, the city limits pushed out just twenty percent or so by what had originally been a ramshackle collection of structures but had now become not just an actual part of the city proper, but the cleanest part with the best infrastructure. Warehouses and other buildings devoted to producing and storing the massive amounts of construction materials the city was using had been pushed further out, as had farms, uprooting ponies from land that they’d tended their entire lives.

Early on, not much planning had been done to keep the whole thing under control, which was why a wall had gone up on the side of the city bordering Sweet Apple Mountain. The ponyville natives had rallied, put their hooves down and said, “Here, and no further” to the encroaching urbanization, else they end up pushed further and further out with each crop that was harvested and replaced with roads and buildings. It was early, but the compromise looked like it was going to work out, with all the other farms moving to that side of the divide as they were able.

Twilight was considering whether or not there was some method of transit they could use to bring the farmers into the city when a deep blue blur came down on her from above. They tumbled through the air with an entirely-dignified squeal and peals of laughter before impacting a slightly too conveniently-placed cloud with a fwumph.

Twilight found herself breathless and heart beating from the sudden rush, looking up at Luna against the night sky and wasted no time pulling her down into a kiss.

“Hey,” she greeted her marefriend once they had separated.

Luna was less winded and smiled brightly before asking, “Kangaroos? Really?”

Twilight broke into laughter again while Luna shook her head and rolled off to lay beside her.

“It’s—not—funny,” Twilight insisted between breaths, entirely ignoring the fact that it was her that was laughing. “I’ll have you know that I adored stories about kangaroos as a filly. I was legitimately angry, or there wouldn’t have been starfire.”

“Starfire?” Luna asked. “Is that new?”

Twilight shrugged. “A little of column A, a little of column B. I’ve been known to catch on fire on occasion for longer than I’ve been a proper alicorn, but this wasn’t quite the same thing. I’m not concerned, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Luna rolled up onto her side so she could look at Twilight. “Do you think that he at any point realized that by defending the kangaroos, you were thereby demeaning your own court?”

“I’m not sure if that would be much of a revelation?” she suggested. “I acknowledged pretty clearly at my final session of court that the whole thing had become a farce.”

“Sometimes the louder one speaks, the less they are heard,” Luna intoned with faux-wisdom.

Twilight leveled a dry look at her. “This, from the mare who routinely put her guards, seneschal and sometimes even petitioners into the hospital with nothing but her voice? Honestly; some day they’ll ask me just how I became so overbearing in court when I’d been such a sweet, innocent little student of Celestia before then and I’ll have to tell them that it was you. I learned it from you.”

“Ah, but have you not heard? I am reformed!” Luna playfully asserted. “The ponies flock to me now; it is quite disconcerting, actually.”

“Please,” Twilight scoffed, exaggeratingly rolling her eyes. “You’ve just gotten more subtle. I know full well that you’ve been tearing them down at every opportunity, considering you then come and tell me about it afterwards.”

Luna sniffed in seeming affront. “It’s not my fault that they need tearing down. You would not believe some of the loopholes I’ve come across that have remained under my sister’s rule because there simply wasn’t a better option. Would that I could audit their souls as easily as I can their bank accounts.”

Twilight gave a single chuckle, then frowned and eventually grimaced.

Luna cocked her head at the rapid change in Twilight’s demeanor, then it clicked. “Ah, I suppose you could do that, couldn’t you? You needn’t concern yourself, t’was only—”

Twilight shook her head. “I can’t do it anyway,” Twilight interrupted somewhat uncomfortably. “Not like you mean, at least. Just being able to see the quality of a pony by looking at them… I wouldn’t mind being able to do that—but all I can do is go back into their lives and see what their star remembers. It’s not comprehensive, and it’s not fast. Maybe in a hundred years when ponies have gotten used to my library we can use them for criminal trials, but only in the worst cases—no, only at their own request. I’m really not comfortable with anything else.”

Luna let out a huff. “I told you not to worry about it. We shall cross that bridge when we come to it. Now,” she said with a devious grin. “Tell me how you managed to disincorporate yourself this afternoon.”

Twilight felt a resurgence of her earlier frustration and embarrassment with the change in subject, but it managed to turn back the rising tide of melancholy and for that, she was grateful.

“Well, Applejack wasn’t helpful and getting ahold of Pinkie Pie is like trying to read a greased book with hooves—don’t ask me how I know—so I figured I’d…”

— ✒ —

Ember looked like her patience was being tried, but she was clearly trying, so Spike considered it a win. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ‘Never raid a phoenix nest twice when once will do?’”

Spike glared disapprovingly at Ember. “No, and I’ll thank you not to talk like that about phoenixes. I helped raise one until he could go back to his parents.”

“No need to thank me; I probably won’t do it,” she said from where she sat on the floor, dismissively picking wood shavings out of her claws. “So tell me again why you want to steal the Ring of Ashmund twice? Sounds like failure talk to me.”

Spike wiped his palm down his face in exasperation and groaned. “Okay, look. We want to steal the Primordial Ring of Ashmund, which is an ancient draconic artifact capable of changing the age, size and physical maturity of any dragon, including the wearer. Now, I shouldn’t need to say this, but stealing is against the law and means we don’t want to get caught.”

Ember grunted unhappily and Spike thought that she’d leave it there when she spoke up. “What happened to not winning by betraying the tenets of the cause you’re trying to advance?”

Spike gave her a long, weary look. There were several ways he could justify it since he’d gone through all of them himself, but what he actually said was, “You know the word ‘tenets’?”

Ember snapped her hands back like she’d been caught with her hands in the cookie jar. “Of—of course I do!” she insisted, looking away. “Shut up! It was in the book!”

“Anyway,” Spike said, skipping over the issue of theft. He still wasn’t happy with it, but also strongly suspected that the reaction if they got caught would be along the lines of ‘Why didn’t you just ask?’ He’d considered actually sending a letter to Luna about it regardless, but whatever else he felt about Ember, he wasn’t going to betray her like that when she’d been so explicit about it—in more ways than one.

— ⭗ ✹ —

Corona was going through the various correspondence for the upcoming coronation when something began niggling at her mind. Eventually, it came to her. “Come to think of it, it’s been a while since young Spike sent us any letters, hasn’t it? I take it that you haven’t received any?”

Candesca looked up from the book of tablecloth samples and shook her head. “No, I would have mentioned if I had, of course. Do you suppose he has forgotten us?”

“I more expect he’ll have sought support closer to home,” Corona suggested diplomatically. “Perhaps with things having settled down for Twilight, she might be making herself a part of his life again?”

Candesca frowned. “That would be for the best,” she admitted, remembering when they’d made a much similar decision about Luna. “I suppose it hasn’t helped that we’ve been fairly out of touch since our regenesis. I don’t imagine he would know which one of us to send a letter to if he did. We’ll have to touch base with all of them after the coronation.”

“Because we’ve been so very busy recently?” Corona queried sarcastically. “You know as well as I do why we haven’t been down to Ponyville.”

“Are they still calling it that?” Candesca asked. “It’s not much of a village anymore and it’s more and more looking like it’s not going to be all ponies at the next census either.”

“Stop changing the subject,” Corona said, frowning at her twin. “If I can admit that acting like Celestia did feels stilted and awkward but I have no idea how else to behave, you can, too.”

Candesca let out a huff. “You can’t even explain it without sounding stiff and formal. I hardly think it is something we should just come out and say. Besides, you are the one changing the subject. We could just write to Spike, you know.”

Corona hesitated. “I’m sure he’s fine. From the sounds of the letters he was sending before, it sounded like he was heading towards a simple, quiet life, and I doubt much about that has changed.”

— ✒ —

“Anyway?” Ember needled, calling attention to the way he’d drifted off in thought.

Spike shook himself out of the rabbit hole he’d been digging into. He supposed that he could just leave Ember out of things when talking about the subject, but the possibility of actually talking to Luna about it revealed significantly less trust in her reaction being positive than he’d thought he had.

“Anyway,” he said, doing his best not to think about his previous train of thought. “If we steal an age altering artifact and then I suddenly show up for work the next day looking years older, they’re going to notice. Twilight’s not stupid—she is, in fact, the absolute opposite of stupid. She’d be under ‘stupid’ in the thesaurus as an antonym… and I would never have been able to make it halfway through that sentence if she was watching, so I think we’re safe.”

Ember gave him that ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, so hurry up and make this relevant,’ look that was her default expression.

“But if we sneak into wherever it’s being held and use it to make ourselves just old enough to be listened to, we can just say it was part of the… what did you call it?”

“The molt?” Ember said, clearly uninterested, but beginning to see the point.

“Right,” Spike agreed. “Tell them it’s part of the molt, and then, days or weeks later when the ring actually disappears, nopony will actually give us a second thought.”

Ember scrunched up her face in a scowl before finally giving up. “Fine! We’ll do it your way!”

Spike let out an incredible sigh of relief that she wasn’t going to fight it. “Thank Celestia,” he muttered to himself. “Trust me, it’s better this way. We’re going to need the extra time to figure out the second problem with actually stealing the ring anyway.”

“What’s that?”

“The fact that it’s the size of a wagon.”

Chapter 7

— ✶ —

Twilight suddenly lifted her head off Luna’s side, having settled there in a two-pony pile on a cloud as Luna told Twilight about her day. “Hey, wait a second,” she said, staring out into the distance, thinking for a moment.

Luna used her wing to pull Twilight down beside her so they could see each other and cocked her head curiously. “Unraveling the secrets of the universe?”

Twilight made no reaction to being marehandled, instead taking advantage of her new position to thrust her hoof up under Luna’s nose accusingly. “Just because earth pony magic comes from me doesn’t mean I’m the only alicorn capable of it! Why am I stumbling through this when you could tell me how it’s done?”

Luna’s eyes turned downwards a hint and she shook her head. “Do you recall that first night on top of the palace tower when I told you the fillytale of Nightmare Moon and then discovered that you had been remiss in practicing your pegasus magic?” she asked.

Twilight sent her a flat look and responded dryly, “You mean after you chucked me off the palace tower?”

Luna smiled in fond recollection. “Yes, that would be the one. I believe that earth pony magic also came up,” she reminded Twilight, who frowned in thought.

“All you said was that it was boring,” Twilight countered, but Luna didn’t disagree. In fact, she seemed to think that was all there was to say on the subject. It took Twilight a moment to understand what Luna wasn’t saying, and when it clicked she let her head drop back onto the cloud with a light whuff. “Seriously?” she asked with a groan. “Two thousand years and you couldn’t be bothered to even try?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Luna assured her quite avidly. “I did try. We both did.”

“But?” Twilight prompted.

Luna shrugged, unrepentant. “But it’s boring.”

“I literally blew myself out of a crater into another crater,” Twilight reminded her with a huff. “How is that boring? It’s not like it should be slow to show results with the power we have.”

Luna favored Twilight with an affectionate look. “You do have the uncanny ability to fail in the most interesting of ways,” she said, shaking her head with a wry smile.

“Hey!” Twilight objected, slapping Luna’s shoulder lightly with her hoof.

Luna shook her head and asked, “Do you really wish for me to explain?” with a little more seriousness. “It might or might not be conducive to what you are trying to do.”

Twilight hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yeah—you’re not my teacher, remember?”

“True enough, though that’s not precisely the right sentiment, since you are asking for a lesson on earth pony magic, is it?” she teased, though followed it up with something of a sigh. “Though there remains not much to say. Doing something with earth pony magic is easy; doing something useful with it is more difficult, and doing something specific with it is all but impossible.”

“So I’ve been wasting my time?” Twilight asked, growing annoyed. “I wish you’d told me before I injured myself trying.”

Luna bent closer, looked Twilight in the eyes… and booped her on the nose. “I am not in the business of telling anypony, least of all you, what is impossible. Not only am I often proven wrong, but it makes me look a fool for having done so. My intent is to explain why it is a feat that my sister and I abandoned, regardless of its potential—and it does have potential; you only need look to the things your friends have already done for proof of that.

“The feat that you asked of your friend Applejack, of encasing the palace in crystal or creating a blank to sculpt from? Though neither Tia nor I ever progressed past the ability to form small gemstones—the larger ones always fractured for some reason—such acts are, in fact, entirely possible, and if that is your goal, then I assure you, it is achievable.

“What it is not, is a whole solution. If you wished to grow a palace fully-formed, or that crystal tree that came from dame Rarity’s discarded designs… That is where you would run into problems. Earth pony magic is at its most efficient when it is merely supplementing a craft or skill, which is why that is what you see in most earth ponies. To use it more overtly not only requires a great amount of power, but requires that you let it free, reducing the control you have of the end result. Even were you to master the art to such an extent that you could grow a palace of crystal from a single carat of quartz, you would not be choosing the floorplan, and even so you would expect to have to practice, because—”

“It’s boring,” Twilight repeated, slumping deeper into the cloud. “Yeah, I got that.”

Luna tsked, looking out over the city. “I truly do not wish to dissuade you, Twilight. You should know better than to trust the word of a novice practitioner of an art, and need only look at the pink one to know that earth pony magic is not truly hamstrung or limited in any way. It simply has… not precisely a mind of its own, but a connection to the natural way of things that only grows more powerful with the more power you use. For my sister and I, who neither desired to learn every craft nor devote many hours to corralling our magic into useful action, earth pony magic has simply long since fallen out of mind.”

Twilight shot Luna a queer look.

“Did you seriously just suggest that what Pinkie Pie does is in any way natural?”

— ✒ —

“I don’t like this plan,” Spike protested as Ember dragged him back out of the ex-library. “This is a terrible plan.”

Ember shot him a glare without stopping. “You came up with this plan,” she reminded him, throwing her only free hand up in frustration and yanking Spike further on with a jolt.

“So I should know, right?” he insisted. He was trying to wiggle free of Ember’s grip, but as slim as she might be, she was still a head taller than him and in much better shape. “Em—” He had barely started to get her name out when she snapped back and clapped her hand over his mouth. She glared fire and sulfur at him and he stubbornly glared back. She pulled her lips back into a snarl and he rolled his eyes and sighed.

Slowly—warily—she began to pull her hand away.

“E—” he began again, but stopped before she could do anything. He fought with himself over it, but eventually gave in. “I can’t believe I’m going along with this,” he grumbled. “Look—Godzilla—you still don’t know where you’re even going. Just let—” He grunted, trying to pull his hand free of hers. “Me” Grunt. “Go.” Grunt. “And I’ll show you the way.”

She eyed him, probably judging if he was going to run off or try and use her name again. Eventually, though, she relented and released her grip. Spike spent a moment just rubbing and flexing his hand, but an impatient look from Ember got him moving, heading down the street in the direction of the site of the old Barnyard Bargains that had become the beginnings of Applejack’s tower.

“I don’t see why you’re so against this,” Ember said, pulling her hood down as much as she could to ensure her anonymity. “It’s like you don’t trust me to steal the Ring of Ashmund without you.”

Well, that was easy to explain. “I don’t.”

“See, Spike? You sounded like a normal dragon just then,” Ember told him, entirely serious as far as Spike could tell. “That’s completely unlike you, and it worries me!”

Spike resisted the urge to roll his eyes since she wouldn’t see it anyway. “It only worries you because you don’t like being told ‘no,’” he asserted, and she didn’t deny it.

The problem with having Ember living with him—as if there could ever be just one—was that he’d gotten much freer about what he dared to say since no jab or insult seemed to phase her at all. It’d probably have been fine if it had just been the insults—though sooner or later he was going to say something to Twilight that would get him in trouble—but he’d also taken to grumbling his thought process out loud on occasion, too, which was what had gotten him into this new mess.

He’d remarked that, ideally, they’d steal the ring on the night of the coronation when most eyes would be elsewhere. It hadn’t been a serious suggestion, let alone something that could be called an actual plan. In fact, he didn’t even know what the coronation schedule would be, since the invitation hadn’t gone into any great detail; it was entirely possible that the whole thing would be over and done with by noon, which would probably make this whole thing pointless… though admittedly, it was at least unlikely to be any worse than any other day if it came to that.

So yes, if they had to do it, that night would be the best choice.

Except for—you know—the fact that Spike would be attending the coronation.

There were just so many reasons that this was a terrible idea, chief among them that, yes, it would involve actually trusting Ember alone with the Ring of Ashmund, but also the fact that—again—she just was not as sneaky as she thought she was. Combine the two and Spike feared the worst. Ember probably wasn’t out of touch with reality enough to try and hide behind a mailbox after using the ring to make herself the size of a bear… but he could picture it, so he wasn’t going to consider it entirely out of the question either.

The bigger problem would be if she went completely off the script and decided to actually take the ring. He thought that he had impressed on her the importance of doing it in two stages, but he could never be entirely sure with her. The fact that she was still calling it ‘stealing the Ring of Ashmund’ and not ‘surreptitiously using the Ring of Ashmund in secret’ was kind of a bad sign.

She even had him doing it, but in his defense, the latter was a mouthful.

He supposed, if there was a bright side, it was that this way he wouldn’t actually be involved in doing anything illegal; he’d just show Ember to the two unfinished towers that the ring might be stored in and that would be that. It would mean that he himself wouldn’t actually get to use the ring, but… well, no, there was no ‘but’; it was actually a significant flaw in the plan that kind of made the whole thing pointless, since using the ring on him was the whole point of not stealing it the first time to begin with.

Again, this hadn’t been a plan; Ember had just latched onto the first thing he’d said.

“Is this it?” Ember asked, looking up at one of the old-style Ponyville houses that had yet to see any remodeling. “It smells like a distillery.”

Spike blinked, realizing he’d stopped in front of Berry Punch’s house. He shook his head and shushed Ember. “No, just… hold on a second, Em—Godzilla,” he told her, then continued walking a little more sedately anyway since there was no reason not to continue on while he tried to think of a way to solve this.

The simplest and most expedient solution would be to just use the ring tonight, coronation be damned. He doubted Ember would actually complain about accelerating their plans; in fact, her eagerness to wait another few days and go without him was more than a little suspect. That said, he’d have liked to have at least another day to prepare, but it wasn’t as if there was anything to actually prepare except himself.

Alternatively, he could let things keep going the way they were and Ember would probably just steal the ring while he was at the coronation—as in actually steal it. If she did that, then Spike would have an alibi, at least, and it wasn’t as if anypony knew that Ember was staying with him—or that she existed at all, for that matter.

Not for the first time, he wondered if stealing the ring was actually a good idea at all. He’d talked himself into it out of a desire to no longer be seen as a baby and the faintest sense of empathy for Ember over the same, but was this really how he wanted to solve that? Surely when Ember of all dragons had pointed out that he was being a hypocrite, he should have taken that as a sign.

If it were up to him, he’d at least leave out the whole theft aspect entirely, which had been the point of relegating it off to ‘sometime later’ in his original plans. For Ember, though… The ‘Primordial Ring of Ashmund’ was a fixture of the old dragon empire, so she needed it for the new one and that was that. He thought she should probably focus on basics like putting together an actual list of things she wanted to change before she went about performing covert operations against neighboring countries.

Really, though, there had to be some way simpler and more legal to do this if he could just think of it. Whatever it was, he’d change his plans in a heartbeat—even if it involved introducing Ember to Twilight as ‘Godzilla’.

Spike hesitated. Well, maybe not that. Ember’s horrifyingly accurate nickname really shouldn’t be a justification for committing crimes, but he was pretty sure he’d actually be less embarrassed if they just caught him trying to steal the damn ring.

Well, he’d better decide what he was going to do soon, because there’d be no going back if he actually led Ember to one of the unfinished towers. She wasn’t stu—well, she wasn’t… hrm. Okay, fine, she really wasn’t stupid, just… some combination of ignorant, naïve, prone to anger and—okay, none of that was actually the point. The point was, if he showed her one of the unfinished towers, she’d probably be able to spot the other one since they were pretty much identical and picking out matching pairs of objects was something even the Cake twins could do.

“You didn’t say this place was going to look so delicious.”

Spike blinked, realizing that he’d stopped walking again and expecting to find himself in front of Sugarcube Corner this time. To his significant dismay, however, nothing Ember would have called delicious would have appealed to a pony’s tastes.

It was too late; they were already there.

It was also under guard, no doubt on account of its deliciousness. He didn’t know what he had actually expected—that they could just walk in and use and/or steal the thing?

…Yeah, pretty much, actually. This was Equestria, after all and having grown up in Canterlot Castle, it hadn’t really occurred to him just how many royal guards there now were in Ponyville. He’d been so preoccupied with whether or not they should steal the Ring of Ashmund that he hadn’t stopped to think if they could steal the Ring of Ashmund.

Maybe this wasn’t so great of an idea after all. He’d managed to mostly skip over his second and third thoughts about stealing the ring, but his fourth thoughts on the matter were finally gaining some traction. He suddenly felt very exposed hanging around in plain sight of a place that they were intending to break into in the near future.

Oh, and Ember was drooling, which didn’t help.

Mirroring their earlier situation, Spike grabbed Ember by the hand and yanked her along. “Hey, come on, Godzilla. Don’t stop; you’re making the guards nervous,” he told her in his best mundane scolding tone, trying not to look guilty. He’d had a lot of practice in not looking guilty. Was he good at it? Not in the slightest—but he had practice, which should really count for something.

Ember, to his great relief, allowed herself to be led off, though she didn’t make it easy for him and it wasn’t long before they were out of sight of the guards. Once they were in the clear, Ember yanked her arm free and—self-conscious and unsure what to do with it—clutched it to her side as she followed him.

Okay, so, with the addition of guards that were specifically looking out for dragons to keep them from munching on the architecture, they weren’t going to be doing anything tonight, that was for sure. That… he wasn’t sure if that complicated things or if it simplified them. Well, obviously things were more complicated now because they were going to have to deal with the guards somehow, but unless he could convince Ember that the ring was too well guarded, it also didn’t leave him with a whole lot of choices. Now that she knew where one tower was and what the other would look like, he didn’t doubt that she’d try to steal the ring eventually with or without him.

He wasn’t sure which would be worse; if she got caught trying to steal the ring, or if she got caught succeeding at stealing the ring.

He had no desire for the name of Godzilla to prove prophetic.

Not seeing any point in keeping it from her at this point, Spike led Ember on and showed her the unfinished tower intended for Rainbow Dash before the two of them made their way back home, Spike keeping an eye on Ember the entire way to make sure she didn’t run off and do something he would regret.

Unfortunately, his preoccupation with her didn’t leave him much time to figure out what they were actually going to do.

— ✶ —

As unhelpful as Luna had been on the subject of earth pony magic, Twilight was still grateful for her support, even if it had been a little late in coming. Content, she snuggled deeper into the comfort of Luna’s warmth behind and around her as she waited for sleep to come.

It would be easy to just give up, she mused. She was no stranger to hard work, but she would be the first to admit that she heavily favored sciences over arts. Learning a subject by rote before she ever put magic to the task just appealed more to her than disciplines whose execution came primarily down to practice. Unicorn magic was a little of both, true, but it was definitely more science than art. Still, science or art, she wouldn’t let herself be dissuaded, because when it came right down to it… Err…

Raising mountains was just really impressive?

She was embarrassed to admit, that was kind of the long and short of it. Just a few hours after Twilight had made Applejack a demigoddess, her stubborn friend had turned around and used that power to change the entire countryside—just to give herself some privacy. Even more impressive in Twilight’s eyes was that she’d done so without damaging anything on the property. Sure, she might be able to create a mountain with unicorn magic in several ways if she really tried, but they would all be messy and few of them permanent.

Creating a palace out of transmuted crystal? Not a great idea. There was a reason that Unicorns had traditionally left building and growing things to the earth ponies and it wasn’t just the muscle.

Unfortunately for Twilight, neither of her earth pony demigoddess friends seemed actually inclined to use their demigoddesshood to their full potentials. Pinkie Pie, she couldn’t really blame since the party planner was at least doing what made her happy, but getting Applejack to do anything interesting or inventive was like pulling teeth even when there were things she was responsible for that were desperate for improvement. Sure, she hadn’t wanted demigoddesshood in the first place—nor had Twilight wanted to give it to her—but what was done was done, and to just ignore it was just… such a waste.

…Not that the others were doing so great either. Just about the only one of them who actually seemed interested in pushing her boundaries was Rainbow Dash, and they’d already seen how that had panned out. Rarity was more interested in the self-expression afforded by her immortal form than actually using any magic, and Fluttershy…

Twilight really needed to go actually talk to Fluttershy and see how she was doing. She doubted it was any coincidence that her immortality had manifested in a way that allowed her to be around ponies without the pressure of actually being capable of speech. There was no way that was healthy.

Maybe she should go ascend some ponies that would actually make use of her gifts, she thought not at all seriously. Wouldn’t that go over well? Would her friends get jealous…?

…

Idly, Twilight wondered what The Great and Powerful Trixie would do with demigoddesshood; it would balance out the number of demigoddesses she had of each tribe, at least.

Twilight wished she hadn’t thought of that; now she was going to have nightmares about it.

Trixie as a demigoddess, that is; not having an uneven representation of demigoddesses—though come to think of it… Hrm. It was a pity that Sunset Shimmer was fictional. Twilight really didn’t have any unicorn friends that would actually put demigoddesshood to use properly.

“Are you still awake?” came Luna’s quiet voice, her whisper from behind tickling Twilight’s ear and causing it to twitch as a shiver ran down her spine.

“Mmhm,” she murmured. “Just thinking.”

Luna squeezed Twilight tighter. “About?”

“Making Trixie a demigoddess,” Twilight told her, half asleep.

“Is she not the one who precipitated the matter with the ursa minor…?”

“Mmhm.”

“Twilight?”

“Yes?”

“I know that I said I would support you in anything, but… no.”

“No?”

“No.”

— ✶ —

Twilight dreamt.

She dreamt of a blue mare—not the midnight blue of her fellow alicorn of the night, but the blue of a clear sky, with a pale cerulean mane. She saw this mare wandering the countryside, rejected and dejected. Her possessions destroyed and her reputation in tatters, she had nothing.

That’s how She found her; destitute and desperate, ready to be remade in Her image. She had everything the mare had ever desired—power; prestige; immortality—and a drop of each the mare was granted, Her only command to use it and use it well.

Five minutes later, there was an ursa minor pulling an ornate golden litter with a cackling mare on top.

…

“This is stupid,” Twilight remarked and walked straight out of the dream.

It was only when she found herself back in the Desert of Dreams that she’d realized where she was, what had been going on and what she’d actually done, and for just a moment, ice ran down her spine as she feared that she might have cut herself off from the rest of her stars in her sleep. To her eternal relief, however, she found the rest of them right where they should be.

The Desert of Dreams was exactly like she’d remembered it; a shining desert of luminescent, sparkling stars canopied by an open, blank, black sky. It felt much less ominous now that it was an actual part of her, but even so it retained a certain eerie quality that was difficult to pin down. Part of it was seeing her stars acting under the weight of gravity when they were otherwise entirely immune to it, she supposed. Even when she’d been bringing them down to Equus to manifest from, they had drifted off in the wind and returned to the sky afterwards. Now that she knew what to look for, though, there was also a sense of… unreality to it that was not unlike the dreams that were transpiring beneath its surface.

It was also—strictly speaking—not a real place, which was why she hadn’t previously known how to access it. Much like the place where Twilight had had her final confrontation with Astri, it was more a representation or perhaps recontextualization of the parts of her that went beyond the physical. It would be simpler to claim that it was her inner mind or some such, but she was in the unique position that there was far more to her metaphysical self than just her mind.

Actually, that was an interesting distinction. Twilight had first recontextualized her stars as a library after coming here to the Desert of Dreams and losing herself in the stars below. At first glance, it seemed peculiar that the two had remained separate even then, but it actually made perfect sense, as that had been precisely the problem with her incorrect manifestation to begin with—that she had remained separate, even from stars that she had ostensibly ‘claimed.’

What was far more interesting than how they were separate was how the two might actually have been connected. Rather, she wondered if coming here to the Desert of Dreams had been the catalyst that had shown her on some subconscious level how to do the recontextualization that had saved her from losing herself to the memories contained therein? She would probably never know, but it was fascinating to consider.

…For about five minutes, then she got bored.

The sudden hissing of shifting sands made Twilight jump and turn when the stars behind her suddenly sank to fill in the void left by a pony-sized shape of one of the dreamers. Likely, it had been whoever’s dream she’d arrived from… though she wasn’t sure if that quite fit. Given the direction her thoughts had been going in before she’d fallen asleep, the dream couldn’t have been anything but her own, could it? Twilight shook her head, dismissing the correlation. It was more likely that the two were unrelated; the arrival and departure of dreamers was a constant thing that kept the stars shifting, so having one disappear from nearly right under her hardly meant anything.

Alternatively, though… it might have been both; she might have been dreaming for that pony as Somni and Fati had once dreamed for all ponykind. Curious, she approached one of the other shapes in the sand and looked closer. She was pretty sure this one was another pony. Like most of the shapes, it didn’t actually break the surface of the desert, remaining instead a suggestion of a form just beneath the surface. Carefully, she brushed some of the stars aside with her hoof to get a better look.

She had been right, it was a pony—a pale green earth pony with a rich orange mane. Twilight didn’t recognize her, of course, as the chances of her knowing a random dreaming pony selected from across all of Equus was slim to none. That was unfortunate, as she would have liked to compare the mare’s dreaming self to her physical body. As it was, her coat luminesced in a similar manner to the stars that covered her and Twilight suspected that her actual form and features were likely abstracted or idealized in some manner.

Never one to let the unknown stay unknown, Twilight decided to engage in the most basic of scientific discipline.

She poked it.

— ✶ —

Twilight was entirely unsurprised to find herself pulled into another dream as that had been her intent. The feeling was reminiscent of when she’d touched Astri’s star and found herself viewing the events as they happened in the real world, though the result in this case was quite different from the stark reality of armored alicorns fighting and dying in the sky over Ponyville.

It started, as many dreams do, of flying. Twilight had often argued with Spike before becoming an alicorn that dreams of flight were a natural part of pony psychology regardless of whether the pony in question was unicorn, earth pony or pegasus and she still maintained this even after her own experience had to be stricken from the record on account of her sudden onset of acute alicornification. The fact that that her first dreamwalk had the earth pony dreamer shooting through the air under her own power made her smile with vindication.

Her smile faltered. On second thought, how did she tell if she was dreaming this or if the other pony was? Was there a difference? Actually, would it invalidate her point or prove it if she was technically the one who was dreaming for everypony through their stars?

…

Wait—this mare was falling, not flying, so never mind all that.

The mare was also terrified, which was a strange thing for Twilight to feel through somepony else. She had called what she was doing dreamwalking after a popular idea in fiction, but that wasn’t accurate. She hadn’t entered this dream, exactly; she wasn’t walking around inside it looking around and talking to the dreamer. She just… was. She was sure now; she was the dream—or she was dreaming the dream, anyway. Looking at it that way, she was the dreamer and the green mare was the dreamee.

She was going to have to start writing down all these things in a book or she was going to start forgetting them.

Lost in trying to remember any other words or abnormal conjugations she’d come up with to explain how her alicornhood worked, Twilight was once again startled out of her reverie—this time by a piercing scream and an urban cityscape rushing up to meet the dreamee. In a blind panic with no idea what else to do, Twilight reached out to catch the mare, forgetting that she hadn’t manifested a body in the dream, if she even could.

The cobblestone road bent and gave to catch the dreamee. It was soft as a baby’s blanket and curled up around her making cooing noises.

Oh.

Oh no.

It was a coddlestone road now.

That was terrible.

Twilight yanked herself back out of the dream in horror.

— ✶ —

Twilight regretted everything, cursing her curious nature back in the Desert of Dreams. Out of all the mysteries that had remained unanswered, she’d had to stumble across the one that she hadn’t even acknowledged that she’d been avoiding—the hows and whys of Discord’s magic. Some might consider her to be jumping to conclusions, but turning a cobblestone road into a coddlestone road was just so… perennially Discord that she had little doubt—or hope—that it could be a sign of anything else.

Worse, she’d done it without even thinking.

She didn’t think that she was being unreasonable in not wanting to be connected in any way, shape or form with the so-called ‘spirit of disharmony.’ She hadn’t liked him as an ambassador in Somni and Fati’s memories of the days approaching the end of the world, she hadn’t liked him as an all-powerful megalomaniacal villain and she still hadn’t liked him as a feeble, impotent noodle whose last act in life had been to cause more problems for everypony involved—and even then, at least nopony knew the connection between Discord and the Celestias’ draconic features.

Alright, that was enough. Twilight took a deep breath of nonexistent air and attempted to calm down. Just because her control over the dreams she dreamt for other ponies resembled Discord’s magic didn’t mean she was even capable of doing it in the real world. If it was that easy, she would have run into it already. All she had to do was leave the Desert of Dreams and never come back. Everything looked like it was running fine without her input, so there should be no problem if she just ignored this aspect of her alicornhood and let it take care of itself.

Amazingly enough, as she held her breath and readied herself for anything, no great disaster sprouted into existence to prove her wrong.

Crisis averted, she was going to count that as a win.

…And yet, she still found herself standing there scratching at her jaw, not actually leaving the Desert of Dreams like she’d said she would.

It wasn’t that she was curious. Maybe there was a small part of her that itched to experiment, but that wasn’t what kept her here. Instead, it was the fact that she didn’t trust ignorance any more than she trusted Discord. There were so many things about her alicornhood that came down to feelings and interpretations that it would be foolish not to get a handle on this one when the opportunity arose, if only so she could ensure that it never reared its head at an inopportune moment.

She was going to have to learn how to do it anyway, wasn’t she?

Wonderful.

It didn’t escape her notice that there were additional layers to the irony of the situation, too, because for all she’d been having difficulty finding the time and place to practice with the aspects of herself that she was actually interested in mastering, like her earth pony and unicorn magics, she had all the time in the world for this one since she could do it literally in her sleep.

Sometimes there was no justice in the world.

— ✒ —

Sometimes there was no justice in the world, Spike thought to himself over a bowl of cinnabar and sulfur oatmeal. He’d hardly slept, his harried thoughts having kept him up as he tried to think of a way to either get his plans for the Ring of Ashmund back on track or somehow convince Ember to hold off on doing anything until he could do so.

Yeah, as if that was going to happen.

Ember, of course, hadn’t slept at all, having previously ruined her sleep schedule thoroughly reading The Book, but unlike him, she didn’t have to go to work in an hour.

It was times like this that Spike really felt like a… a sidekick. He had common sense and good handwriting and that was about it; he didn’t actually have any real capacity to do anything or even solve problems. He hadn’t often felt too badly about it with Twilight and her friends since they were all national heroes and now a goddess and demigoddesses, but it was more than a little depressing falling into the same routine with Ember, who he didn’t even like, let alone respect.

…Well, maybe he could respect her vision and drive just a little—the new Ember, anyway. It was really still too early to put any faith in her or her new outlook, but she was headed in a vaguely decent direction so far.

Still, improving or not, it wasn’t as if she was going to come up with a solution on her own, so he took another bite of his oatmeal and went back to trying to figure out what he could do to keep Ember from ending up in front of Luna’s court clad in chains by this time next week. He was so lost in thought that he fumbled his spoon when Ember shouted up from the basement.

“Hey, Spike! Come help me with all this magic fire tripe—I think I got it to work!”

Chapter 9

— ✶ —

Twilight found herself lingering behind at the Hayburger House for a second, third and fourth milkshake before eventually deciding to head out and get on with her day. She’d finally managed to get some time to herself, after all, and while she didn’t feel great about manufacturing a reason to avoid Spike, she wasn’t going to waste it. It was with a melancholy mood that she stacked her cups, crumpled up her assorted wrappers and took her tray to the bin, doing her best to ignore all the looks and stares she was attracting.

As she took to the air, she felt more and more that she hadn’t been handling the day very well. Even ignoring how her discussions with Fluttershy had gone, she had to ask herself why she’d even felt that she couldn’t tell Spike about her concerns about dream magic. She’d never shied away from confiding in him before, and while Luna might have supplanted him as her primary confidant, that shouldn’t mean that she trusted him any less.

Honestly, she had maybe… sort of… overreacted to the whole thing. Probably, if she’d confided in either one of them to begin with, they’d have told her not to worry about it.

That was, typically, the advice she got from just about any of her friends, actually.

“Twilight,” she said to herself in a poor mimicry of Spike’s voice. “You’re making a big deal over nothing. Most ponies never even saw Discord use magic.”

Her sigh was lost to the wind as she passed over the brown eyesore that was even now being deconstructed without her. Imaginary Spike was right, of course, and the fact that Twilight had been fighting her natural inquisitiveness to reject it was a clear sign that she should have gotten a second opinion or just listened to her first one. It was just… Discord was still a sore spot for her. Even if she accepted that nopony was likely to actually connect the two of them, she still didn’t want anything to do with him or his magic.

Honestly, she should probably just go back to helping excavate the palace ruins just to take her mind off it all instead of overthinking it to death, but she’d never been very good at not thinking and she’d already arrived at her destination anyway.

On the outside, Rainbow Dash’s unfinished tower wasn’t much different from Applejack’s, where Twilight and Spike had spent the morning, the most obvious difference being the lack of several dozen workers shuffling boxes around. Truthfully, Twilight wasn’t entirely sure what Rainbow Dash would actually do with a tower, as her cloud house was fairly large and extravagant and still only the size of a house, but they could hardly exclude her. If the most important point hadn’t been to make them feel at home, it would have made a lot more sense to just give each of her friends a suite in the palace.

Really, there were several issues with the whole thing, and Twilight supposed that that was another thing to look into while she was in Canterlot for the Celestias’ coronation; some kind of transportation magic to connect not just the towers, but ideally something to bring Applejack into town, too. Spells for portals did exist, so it should be possible, though she’d never properly researched them because they were something of a white elephant from a practicality standpoint. That said, with the power inherent in the ponies that would be using it, there was a good chance that they could make it work.

It wasn’t until Twilight was gently landing in front of Rainbow Dash’s unfinished tower that Twilight realized exactly the direction her thoughts had been taking her. “Ugh,” she groaned, facehoofing. “I’m really bad at this whole friendship thing, aren’t I?” she asked the empty street. “The coronation is going to be the one day when we’re all going to be able to get the group together and here I am planning to spend it all in the Canterlot Archives when I could do it literally any other time.”

The empty street made no comment.

“…And now I’m talking to myself because I didn’t want to tell Spike about dream magic,” she groused, making her way into the unfinished tower.

The unfinished tower that had a pair of guards at the door.

“I’m… just going to pretend that didn’t happen and and keep my monologuing internal for the foreseeable future,” she announced to nopony in particular and slunk inside, closing the door behind her.

Where Applejack’s tower had been a network of rooms packed solid with large boxes and furniture salvaged from the ruined palace, Rainbow Dash’s had a large, open space in the center that would connect what counted for floors in the structure. This tower, too, had been filled with boxes of odds and ends, though in a bit of irony thanks to the smaller back streets, the larger space had been packed loosely with items on the smaller end of the scale, none larger than a pony.

Twilight’s eyes lingered on the boxes. The larger items in Applejack’s tower had been nothing special, but here… She didn’t have the itemized inventory on hoof, but somewhere mixed in among all these boxes would be what remained of her books, notes and other personal items. She hadn’t been through here at all so far, and there was a part of her that suspected she wouldn’t like what she’d find if she did.

Still…

No, she’d come here for a reason, and she did her best to push all her idle thoughts one way or the other out of her head. It was time to do magic.

No—wait—it was time to hopefully not do magic, the first step of which was to only sort of do magic, which meant—

Okay, fine, she wasn’t fooling anypony, least of all herself. Intent was a significant part of magic anyway, so lying to herself about it would have a good chance of invalidating the whole thing. She’d just have to try her best and talk to Luna about her misgivings later once she actually knew if there was anything to have misgivings about in the first place.

Exploring the tower a little, Twilight decided that the ground floor wasn’t really suitable for her purposes. True, it was only loosely packed, but that was actually a mark against it, as it meant that no matter where she went, there’d be potential collateral nearby. Writing the ground floor off, then, all it took was a few flaps of her wings to take her up through the center area to the second floor, which she discovered to be not only empty and untouched, but unfinished besides, not being so much a room as a perimeter of outer walls with waxed canvas tied over the top, protecting it from the elements.

This was much more like it, she decided. Picking a spot out in the open, she sat and prepared herself. While the concept was simple and she’d become quite adept at manipulating her magic inside of an area before for the sake of teleportation, purposely flooding an entire space with it wasn’t something she’d ever actually had cause to do.

Slowly, at first, but ramping up quickly, Twilight lit her horn as if she was going to cast a spell, felt the thrumming in her skull, let her magic pour out and… waited. That was the best word for it. She wasn’t pushing it out or shaping the magic as it left her, and in fact she had to hold herself back from doing so. Instead, it was actually more like holding her breath or halting in the process of popping her ears accompanied by a shiver along her spine as if she were yawning.

That… wasn’t a bad comparison, actually—yawning. There was a part of her that was stretching wide to let the magic seep out of her, and it was slowly ceasing to resemble spellcasting at all. The glow of visible magic around her horn faded, but the amount of magic flooding out of her only grew. It wasn’t often that she actually got to appreciate the amount of power that she actually had at her disposal now, but as the familiar feeling of magic began to spread throughout the room, saturating it over the course of minutes to a point that would take an average unicorn years of regular living and then surpassing it, she couldn’t help but get caught up in the sensation of it.

It… caught her by surprise, a powerful feeling of home having crept up on her in ways that she hadn’t expected. It wasn’t the sort of thing that ponies consciously recognized, let alone set out to do, but with the amount of magic that she was flooding the room with, pushing it deep into the crystal around her, the difference was like night and day—literally—and it triggered in her an overwhelming nostalgia. She hadn’t even realized it, but that comforting atmosphere of home was something she’d been missing. For a while she just sat there, soaking it up, basking in the memories and emotions that had been stirred up.

She was reminded her of her old tower in Canterlot, of course, and a little bit of the library… but there was also that morning she’d woken up at the site of the old castle after she’d wiped it off the face of Equus by bringing down the stars. From there, there was the hole that Luna had made and how it had led down into the Desert of Dreams. It was all connected.

Twilight opened her eyes to find the entire space transformed around her, and she had to admit that no part of her was actually surprised. On some level, she’d known exactly how this would go, all of her caution and wariness breaking through the denial she’d been so carefully cultivating.

That said, transforming the expanse of crystal into a replica of her old library sprinkled with bits and features of other homes she’d had in the past had not been what she’d intended.

She was about to scramble to put things back to the way they’d been when a curious thought stayed her hoof.

Those weren’t real books on the shelves, were they?

— ✒ —

Spike was still trying to work his head around what had happened when a bleary-eyed Ember wandered past him and began shuffling around in the kitchen getting herself a glass of water, but it wasn’t until she was on her return trip that she actually noticed him. “What are you doing here?” she asked, eyeing Spike with suspicion. “I thought you were supposed to be working?”

It took him a moment too long to decide how to answer, and he defaulted to snark. “I decided that you were right.”

“Of course I’m right!” Ember asserted with pride before taking a sip of her water. “What am I right about?”

“That stealing is bad and that we should leverage the benefits of pony society in order to get what we want,” he explained, reminding her of her sarcastic comment from the night before.

Ember deflated. “I don’t wanna be right about that.”

“Are you sure?” Spike asked, raising one eye ridge at her.

“Yes!” Ember huffed, throwing her arms up in the air. “What does that even mean? How in the rockslide are we supposed to ‘leverage the benefits of pony society to blah blah blah. What do we actually do?”

Spike couldn’t resist delivering his next line with a smirk. “Well, the first step is clearing this place out, because they’re delivering it at sunset.”

Ember gave him a disbelieving look. “Okay, but seriously, if you’re not gonna help steal it, you’ve gotta come up with some other actual solution or I’ll do it without you.”

Spike fell into a bit of a sulk. “I’m being serious, here! I did the leveraging thing and Twilight gave me the Primordial Ring of Ashmund, totally legally legit and above-board. All I have to do is burn the invoice the next time I’m in the records room and no one will ever know.”

Ember kept giving him that uncertain look. “Really, actually seriously?”

“Yes!” Spike insisted. “Really, actually seriously!”

“Wait, if you’re serious and it’s all legal, why would you need to burn the proof?” she asked.

“It’s totally legal!” Spike insisted. “It’s just that nobody actually knows it happened—it’s called bureaucracy.”

Ember took a long moment considering Spike before she seemed to give in and believe him. “So… that’s it? No raid under the cover of night? No danger—no daring escapes?” Crossing her arms, she looked away and scowled. “I don’t think I like bureaucracy.”

“I don’t think anyone likes bureaucracy.”

— ✶ —

To Twilight’s incredible disappointment, no, the hundreds upon hundreds of objects she’d conjured up to fill the shelves of her library simulacra were not real books. Oh, they looked like books and they smelled like books, certainly; they were even filled with print. The text was perfectly formed and legible, with chapters, sections, paragraphs and sentences. Subjects performed verbs modified by adverbs and adjectives were attached to nouns in chains like so much hearth’s warming tinsel, and all of it strung into something that even resembled a collection of narratives. The subjects of those narratives might even have been taken from her actual books.

It was unfortunate, then, that it all amounted to so much nonsense. Worse, it had taken Twilight half of a chapter on the magical capabilities of hercules beetles for her to realize it.

In her defense, they did appear to have horns if you squinted hard enough.

Twilight tossed yet another book into the growing pile of useless paper and let out a huff of annoyance. What had started out as a comfortable memory of home had turned into something more resembling a nightmare. This, she decided, was worse than a room full of her mother’s books, and with a stomp of her hooves, every last one vanished, leaving behind an array of empty shelves.

So… was that it, then? Hypothesis confirmed, time to get back to work? Once again, she was about to return the room to how she’d found it when she found herself hesitating, eyeing the empty shelves.

Thirty seconds later, she was downstairs opening boxes and casting them aside, looking for her real books.

Rainbow Dash wasn’t using this place anyway.

— ✒ —

Spike had spent the afternoon clearing space for all the things that were due to be delivered at the end of the day and managed to drag Ember along in the process. Unfortunately for Spike, since the whole excuse for the situation revolved around his lack of furniture, there wasn’t actually that much to do, meaning Ember got to stand around feeding him snark for the most part.

“I still can’t believe you spent most of your life sleeping in a basket,” she said, giving the offending accessory a kick. “That is so demeaning, even for you.”

“That would mean more to me if you weren’t literally sleeping on a pile of rocks in the basement,” he shot back, nudging her out of the way of his sweeping. “It’s not like I don’t have a spare bed.”

“Sleeping on piles of things is what dragons do,” she retorted offhand, not allowing herself to be distracted from the subject of his old basket. “Hey, you don’t use this thing any more—do you care if it gets burnt?”

Spike gave the basket a look, considering the question. He wasn’t really attached to it and he’d let it get dusty, but… “Are you just going to burn it out of misguided offense, or is there an actual point?” he asked, eyeing her warily. “I’d rather not have a scorch mark on the floor, so if you’re going to burn it, take it down to the basement.”

Ember made an annoyed grunt and snatched the basket up off the ground. “Oh come on. You act like I’m some wild animal that’s going to mess the carpet. Just because you live in a stupid flammable tree doesn’t mean I can’t be trusted not to burn it down. Look, I’ll hold it up in the air while I do it; I just want to practice.”

Spike looked at the basket she was holding aloft, then at the light fixture right above it and raised an eye ridge.

Ember followed his gaze to the light fixture and scowled. “Ugh, fine,” she said, tossing the basket away with a huff. “Aren’t you supposed to be all encouraging and grit? You are the worst magic teacher in the world.”

Spike winced just the tiniest bit. He’d gotten used to ignoring Ember’s insults, but maybe she did have a point, there. He glanced around the room to make sure there wasn’t anything that really needed to get done, but there really hadn’t been anything to begin with, so he set the broom aside, dusted himself off and made his way over to pick up the basket. “If you want to practice, we can do that—but downstairs.”

Ember ripped the basket out of Spike’s grip and grit her teeth, looking like she was going to snap and yell, but she managed to keep ahold of her temper. “I can do it myself,” she growled out, but instead of storming off, she just stood there looking at him. Slowly, she seemed to calm, but her scowl didn’t fade. “You know, I’m the one who grew up with my mountain of a father trying to keep me from ever doing anything interesting, but somehow it’s you who can’t seem to escape someone’s shadow.”

Spike stood still and attempted to unpack Ember’s unexpected eloquence. “What?”

“Spike,” she said, exasperation building into frustration. “Look at yourself! You grew up knowing how to do magic and only ever learned to do one thing with it! For Tartarus’ sake, you live in a wooden house, but you never even learned to un-burn things! Even I know that’s like… step two, and I only learned step one this morning. It doesn’t take a genius to guess why you never bothered.”

— ✶ —

It was like sorting through a graveyard. It was a mess; a massacre of paper, cardboard and cork boxed up and filed away for her perusal. Books, it seemed, did not respond well to the kind of sudden shocks that were involved in the collapse of a building, and it seemed all the more senseless for how random the destruction was. Volume seven of the Encyclopedia Bitanica had come out of it all but pristine, while volume six resembled nothing more than a cabbage after Applejack’s pigs had gotten to it.

It was heart-wrenching… and she wished she’d done it sooner. Just sitting here going through books and other odds and ends that had been recovered felt like coming home. She had to admit that the magical saturation was part of it, but even so, this was something she’d been needing. It wasn’t happening quickly, but as she hunted through the boxes downstairs, picked out the ones with books in them and brought them up to properly sort through them, the shelves were slowly coming to look like a proper library, if one with a heavily abused collection.

Looking at the small collection of books she had recovered, it was easy to see why it hadn’t been a priority. Logically, it was hard to say whether or not there was really much point. Much like the furniture from that morning, even what was technically salvageable would probably just be replaced as a matter of course.

All except one.

Twilight ran her hoof over the torn cover of The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide. It was a book that she’d discovered had not had an entry in the library’s lending catalogue. She’d never brought the matter up with Celestia, but Twilight suspected that the elder alicorn might have penned it herself and placed it here specifically for her to find. Later, Discord had added a box to the front page where he had hidden the elements themselves, though there was no sign of it now. That last part wasn’t something she bring herself to be too torn up over, though it did bring up a point—could she restore books with dream magic?

Her immediate answer was no, considering the replicas she’d recently vanished. She gave the issue a second look, though, and… the answer was still no. Even if she took a book that was otherwise intact, with no missing pages, there was no guarantee that a word here and there wouldn’t be changed. Maybe something that had been smudged would seamlessly be replaced with nonsense, or perhaps it would be more insidious and passages that she disagreed with would be ‘fixed’; there was no way to know, and therefore she couldn’t trust it.

It was annoying, using magic that she didn’t entirely control.

Twilight stopped, stared out into nothing as she replayed that thought in her head, and blinked.

“Oh, come on.”

— ✒ —

Spike had just finished sweeping out the kitchen and was considering going downstairs to explain to Ember that there was nothing wrong with having other aspirations than magic when there was a knock at the door, which could only mean one thing.

They were here.

After a brief conversation during which he had assured them that they had the right address, Spike brought the stallion in charge inside and showed him where things needed to be; the writing desk that had started this whole situation needed to go upstairs along with a filing cabinet and a shelving unit, while the rest would go in the main library area. The two of them were just coming back down the stairs to talk about that when Spike saw the workers outside beginning to open up the crate with the Ring of Ashmund in it, and he panicked, scrambling outside to stop them.

“Wait, wait!” he shouted, waving his hands in the air. “Leave that one in the crate!”

Everypony on sight gave him funny looks. “Yeah? You wanna explain how you want us to get it inside otherwise?” the stallion in charge asked, leaning on the door to the ex-library and giving the doorjamb a knock. “Unless you got a loading dock out back, we ain’t got a choice.”

Spike looked at the crate, then at the door. He was right; there was no way they could fit it through the door. Tartarus—he’d never seen it, but he doubted the Ring of Ashmund would fit even if they took it out of the crate, and even if they did, what had he planned to do? Hide it under the new coffee table? The door to the basement was even smaller!

“No, uhh…” Spike delayed, searching for an answer. All he could come up with was a half measure, though the more he thought about it, the more he could see possibilities of how he could make it work,. “It’s fine, just leave it out back; we’ll deal with it later.”

The stallions all glanced at each other and their boss, wordlessly asking if anyone was going to challenge it, but in the end shrugs all around seemed to be the consensus. “Alright, sure, but you’re gonna want to get a tarp over it before next week. I hear they’ve got a decent storm planned.”

Spike barely heard him and waved off the issue, watching the stallions get to work. He, unfortunately, didn’t have until next week. Twilight was going to be by tomorrow to pick him up again, and he suspected she’d notice a giant, wagon-sized crate out back behind the ex-library.

Thankfully, considering what the crate contained, he had options.

— ✶ —

Twilight had tried to go back to sorting her ruined books and other possessions, but her mood had been soured by that one thought.

What was the difference between what she’d been calling ‘dream magic’ and the earth pony magic that she’d actually wanted to learn?

Magic… was magic. She was pretty sure about that. The only difference between the magic that unicorns used and the magic that earth ponies used was in the body of the ponies in question. Unicorns had horns and could shape the magic as it left them, while Earth ponies had a different set of internal channels for the magic and the ability to channel that same magic through their hooves, albeit with less control.

What, then, did it mean to channel magic through her horn without shaping it only to impress her will on it after it had left her? Tartarus, she’d stopped using her horn halfway through, so really, what difference could she even claim? At no point had she suspected that earth ponies had any control over magic after it left their hooves, but it made sense in hindsight, didn’t it? Earth ponies worked the land, dedicating years of their lives to family farms, workshops, stores or what have you; wouldn’t it only make sense that they were investing actual power into those things as well, not just providing the occasional infusion of magic into crop or craft?

It fit. It all fit—far too well to be ignored. In fact, just about the only thing that was puzzling her was Luna’s insistance that earth pony magic was difficult or boring. Luna was no slouch in magic. Was it possible that the difference in their experiences could be blamed entirely on a difference in approach, or was there more to it? Twilight had experienced firsthoof how badly things could go if she assumed that earth pony magic involved casting through her hooves, and the advice of a mortal earth pony was unlikely to be any help given the timescale that would be involved in forging a connection to the land, but she couldn’t rule out a deeper reason, either.

So, where did that leave her, then? She supposed that she could say that she had solved earth pony magic, but the mixed nature of her realization had kind of spoiled her enthusiasm and it would take a great deal more trial and error to properly feel out what she could use it for… and that was the other question.

What was she actually going to do with it?

— ✒ —

It was a little jarring, Spike thought, to have things change so suddenly. The stallions that had come to deliver furniture and one excessively large ancient object of power had been good at their job, and hardly twenty minutes had gone by before the ex-library was empty again, save half a dozen new additions.

Spike had to distract himself from obsessing over the crate out back behind the library. He wasn’t sure exactly how he’d deal with it, but the specifics would have to wait until after dark when he and Ember could open it up and see how it actually worked. With any luck, he’d be able to use it to make himself twenty or thirty hooves tall and just press it down into the soil while still leaving it usable. Having a sort of magical circle that allowed anydragon who stepped into it to change their size and age would be ideal and keep the actual source of the power a secret, but who knew what actually counted for ‘wearing’ something you could fit an entire team of hippos through?

Even if that didn’t work, though, the fallback option wasn’t terrible. If worst came to worst, they could use their increased size to dig a hole down to the basement and put it there, and that wasn’t even all that bad an idea; it would certainly keep Ember from abusing the thing too much if any size she took had to fit through the basement door—though that said, it would also cause some logistical issues when it came to filling in the hole, which wasn’t ideal.

Well, no, the worst case scenario would be if they couldn’t get the thing to work. That… would be awkward. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, though, since Celestia and Luna had shown little doubt that he’d have been able to use it. Still, it’d be negligent not to consider what he’d do if it came to pass since he had nothing better to do right now.

His thoughts, unfortunately, were drawn to magic like a lodestone. Spike had never really gotten a handle on using his fire to send things to arbitrary places, but Ember, he was forced to admit, might be able to create a hole down to the basement with just her magic, and if she could do that, then she could fill it in again.

That was fine. It was good, even. They had a solution, even for the worst case scenario. Twilight would be proud.

Well, she’d be proud that they had a solution, anyway. As for the fact that he would have to rely on someone else to actually do it… that was just friendship, right? There was nothing wrong with people who are good at different things helping each other; in fact, he was pretty sure he’d dictated that very thing in one of Twilight’s friendship reports. Spike had always pictured himself becoming a knight one day, and while that didn’t make much sense in Equestria, it sounded like something that would fit right in whatever it was Ember wanted to build, so that was just fine.

That said, all of the speeches on friendship and self-esteem in the world couldn’t counter the memory from just a few hours ago of Twilight venting to Fluttershy about how none of the ponies she’d made demigoddesses of were living up to their potential.

Okay, so… maybe she’d be disappointed with him, he supposed. Maybe she’d always been. The idea didn’t freak him out like it would have, her, but he could imagine how enthusiastic she would have been if he’d actually been able to talk esoteric magic with her growing up. That… might have put him off it if it had ever come up, if he was being honest—Ember was wrong about that much—but, well… it wouldn’t hurt to have options, and if Ember got this over him, she’d never let him live it down.

There was plenty of time until nightfall and he’d listened to Twilight ramble on about magic for years; there was no way he wouldn’t be able to figure it out first.

Chapter 10

— ✒ —

Unburning things, it turned out, was an especially difficult thing for Spike to learn. Mostly, this was because he’d trained himself not to burn things in the first place. As a young dragon, he’d learned the singular ability of sending things to Princess Celestia through his fire, and he’d practiced it until it was second-nature. So second-nature that he even instinctively did it when he sneezed. Trying to unlearn that reaction was like trying to unlearn the hiccups, and explaining to the Celestias why he’d yet again sent them an old boot or similar was something he wanted to limit as much as possible. All in all, his determination to get one up on Ember by learning to unburn things before she did weakened rather quickly with each failure.

Still, he’d kept at it… sort of. With the goal of avoiding sending things to the Celestias, his only other option was to take a step back and focus first on not doing that. Actually learning to do other things would have to come later. It wasn’t too bad, really. He wasn’t inexperienced with using just his fire, as he did use it to cook most every day. That said, actually putting magic into it without making it a sending was what continued to fight him.

Slowly, though, it became clear that retraining his learned instincts wasn’t going to be the work of half an afternoon, and he was running out of testing materials, too. It was a bit of a relief, then, when he began to hear the sounds of Ember doing something downstairs, and if she hadn’t immediately come up to shove her success in his face, then it probably meant that she didn’t have anything to show either. He briefly felt guilty about that, but he wasn’t quite mature enough to not appreciate the fact that he hadn’t lost yet.

Satisfied that he wasn’t going to face too much ridicule, he cleaned up his burnt and partially burnt test subjects, waited a few minutes so he wouldn’t seem too eager and went down to see what Ember was getting up to. He found her out back behind the library, just standing in the grass looking at the crate containing the Ring of Ashmund. Shrugging, Spike walked up beside her and for one brief moment, both of them were in sync, reflecting openly at the enormity of what the crate contained.

It didn’t last. Between one blink and the next, Ember was clawing her way up the side of it and attempting to pry the top open with her claws. “Hey, let’s get this thing open, yeah?”

It took a moment for Spike to get his mind back on track. “Hey! Wait!” he called up at her, shuffling in fretful nervousness but not actually willing to climb up and stop her. “We should at least wait until it gets dark.”

To Spike’s complete surprise, Ember actually stopped to consider his objection. “I thought you said your glitter-rock princess is some kinda omniscient about anything under the stars? Then shouldn’t you want to get this dealt with before dark?”

Spike facepalmed and let out a groan. “Did you forget that forty percent of Ponyville is made up of pegasi?” he asked incredulously, gesturing wildly at the sky where there were at least five such winged ponies in sight at any one time. “I’d rather risk the selective omniscience of one pony than show it off to dozens of excitable rubberneckers. Do you have any idea how much pegasi gossip?”

Ember poked her head over the side of the crate. “Okay, I can see that, I guess, but what’s ‘gossip?’”

Spike was tempted to make a sarcastic remark, but he supposed it was an honest question. “Gossiping is… a kind of bragging where ponies show off by sharing information that’s either new or secret.”

Ember cocked her head to the side. “That’s dumb. The more people you tell a secret to, the less value it has. That’s like showing off how sparkly your hoard is by pouring it into a volcano.”

“Well…” Spike scratched at the back of his neck, choosing his words. He wasn’t the kind of person that gossipped, but he’d spent plenty of time around Rarity, who very much was. “Gossip is mostly things that don’t have directly exploitable value like that. If you tell someone the combination to the princess’ safe, that’s treason, not gossip. If you tell someone that Princess Celestia keeps an emergency cache of donuts in her safe, though, that’s gossip. Nobody is going to steal the princess’ donut cache if they know what’s good for them, but it’s still something that ponies get a thrill out of knowing.”

“But… if nobody actually steals the donuts, how does anyone know if they even exist?” Ember asked, frowning. “I don’t even know this princess, and I could tell someone that instead of having a donut stash, it’s actually a secret pile of bacon. That would make much more sense, anyway.”

“Congratulations,” Spike drawled. “You’ve managed to understand in two minutes what most gossips refuse to accept in two centuries.”

Ember scowled down at Spike. “Maybe I don’t understand all the little details about ponies, but there’s no need to be sarcastic about it.”

Spike was briefly taken aback. “Uh, no. I wasn’t being sarcastic. Lots of gossip is just whatever ponies want to hear, and not a lot of it is very nice.”

Ember took a moment to process that. “Seriously?”

“Also, what’s bacon?” Spike added.

“Seriously?!”

— ✒ —

Ember’s rant about bacon ultimately rendered moot the question of whether or not to open the crate before nightfall. Given a choice between the two, Spike would have rather argued about the crate, as he’d actually been winning that one.

“I just can’t believe you’ve never had bacon!” Ember cried in dismay, her head hanging limply off the edge of the crate as she beseeched the emerging stars for an explanation of this travesty. Spike wasn’t entirely sure if she was aware just how appropriate her actions actually were. “Or ham, or sausage, or cracklings!”

“Look, I get it!” Spike responded from his position laying down on the grass. “Pigs are apparently delicious! How many names do you really need for different parts of the same animal? They can’t possibly all be different things!”

“The sad thing is, you actually believe that!” Ember bemoaned. “I cry for your tragic childhood. Metaphorically. I’m not actually crying. I don’t cry.”

“And I reiterate—how on Equus could you possibly come up with that many things to do with a single animal? I’ve had fish! There’s meat, bones and organs—and that’s it! You either cook it or you eat it raw. It’s not complicated! Did someone lock you in an underground vault for a decade with nothing but a thousand pigs and a food diary or something?”

“Dragons as a whole? Basically, yeah,” Ember shot back. “Look, do you have any idea how hard it is to find an animal worth eating that ponies won’t get all bent out of shape about? Sheep! Goats! Cows! They have talking cows now! Talking! Cows! What’s the point of teaching a cow to talk if all it’s going to do is sit there, chew grass and let ponies milk them? They’re not even smart enough to milk themselves!”

“What? You want to eat cows?” Spike asked, scrunching up his face in disgust. He’d met cows. They were boring, sure, but they were still people.

“We used to!” Ember exclaimed without shame. “Not me, specifically, but dad’s generation and further back all talk about it. Constantly. I’ve had to listen to literal fossils go on and on about the relative benefits of cuts—skirt steak over flank steak…”

“They didn’t talk, but they had skirts?” Spike asked, shivering as he imagined a cow in a skirt.

“…Porterhouse or prime rib…”

“I’m pretty sure ribs all come in pairs, so how can one of them have primacy? Or, wait, are they prime-numbered ribs? What’s the point of that?”

“…T-bone or ribeye…”

“Rib… eye? What kind of freakish mutant cows with eyes on their ribs are we talking about here?”

“…Strip or round…”

“…I’m not sure if a cow stripping is worse than a cow in a skirt or not.”

“…Rump or loin…”

“I seriously do not want to know about either of those things.”

“…Brisket or shank…”

“Okay, I know dragons aren’t very cultured, but shanking a cow seems needlessly cruel, and so is naming a cut after where you shanked them.”

“…Chuck or—”

“Stop! That’s enough!” Spike shouted, interrupting her. “Tartarus, Ember. The rest were bad enough, but I draw the line at names.”

“What?”

“I know cows named Chuck,” Spike told her. “Bulls, anyway.”

“Chuck is a name?” Ember asked, perplexed. “That’s weird. I wonder why? I’ve never seen a cow chuck anything.”

“…Actually, a lot of bulls seem to be named Chuck,” Spike reflected, thinking back. “Almost as many as are named Angus.”

“You know, I’m actually impressed,” Ember admitted. “Living your whole life on a pony diet, I expected you to stop me sooner.”

“It’s not like I’ve never seen a griffon eat,” Spike objected. “And I told you, I’ve had fish.”

Ember hmmed as they watched the sky darken. “Are you sure that’s all?”

“Well…” Spike demured. “There was that time when the minks got into Fluttershy’s chicken coop, I suppose. Harry and I ate pretty well that week.”

“Alright, so you’re not completely on the pony feed,” Ember allowed, sounding like she approved. “Still, fish and poultry can’t even begin to compare to bacon.”

— ✒ —

“Okay, it’s dark and I haven’t seen any nosy pegasi for, like, five minutes,” Ember announced, getting impatient. “Also, watching the stars is really weird when they might be watching you back.”

“They really probably aren’t,” Spike said, attempting to reassure her. “Not unless she’s looking for something specific. Twilight isn’t really the kind of pony that just sits around watching people. She usually has better things to do.”

“So, we’re good?” Ember asked, perking up.

Spike hesitated, searching for a reason to put it off, but nothing actionable came to mind. “Okay, yeah, I guess we should go ahead and open it already, just in case things take longer than we think. If we can’t get it working, we could be up for a long night.”

Ember whipped her head around to glare at him. “Don’t even joke about that!”

“I’m just being realistic!” he hastily defended. “We’re talking about an artifact of a long-lost pre-discordian draconic empire. What are the chances we just stick our arms into it and just instantly know how to make it work?”

Ember stared at him.

“What?” he asked, getting uncomfortable under her glare.

“Nothing,” Ember eventually responded, dismissing it with a wave. “Just trying to figure out how you managed to start with pessimism and then turn it right around to tempting fate in our favor.”

Spike paused, then asked, “If it’s in our favor, would it be tempting fate, or baiting fate?”

Ember had already gone back to prying at the top of the crate with her claws. “What’s—nnngh!—the difference?” she grunted.

“Forget it,” Spike grumbled, watching Ember at work. He wasn’t quite sure how to point out that she was trying to lift something she was standing on. What he eventually settled on was to ignore it entirely and go inside to get a crowbar. One might not expect crowbars to be standard fare for library equipment, but frankly, the need for a crowbar tended to come up much more often than any of the things that Pinkie Pie had squirreled away here and there around Ponyville.

While Ember devolved into gnawing ineffectively on the crate, Spike made his way over to the side of it and jammed the crowbar between the rough planks of wood. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t any more effective than anything Ember was doing. Suddenly, he was very glad that she wasn’t actually paying him any mind.

Another trip inside to go find a hammer improved matters drastically, but even a drastic improvement wasn’t enough to make up for the inherent lack of strength in his stubby baby dragon arms. He kept trying, but eventually had to stop to catch his breath, which in turn caught Ember’s eye.

Spike looked at the corner she’d gnawed off, while Ember looked at the crowbar wedged into the wood. Both of them looked away, avoiding each other’s gaze.

“This is kind of sad,” Spike admitted.

“Fire?” Ember suggested.

“…Fire,” he agreed, but he didn’t like it. “But can you at least be careful? We don’t want the attention we’d get if the whole thing went up like a bonfire.”

Ember puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. “Oh, for pity’s sake! You always act like I’m one sneeze away from arson! Yes, I’ll be careful! I haven’t burned down your stupid tree yet, have I?

“Not for lack of trying,” Spike retorted under his breath, earning him a glare from Ember. “Look, I'm not stopping you, I'm just saying I'm going to go get a bucket of water just in case.”

Ember continued to glare at him, but he didn’t let it stop him from doing exactly as he’d said. Ember, in turn, didn’t let his leaving to get a bucket of water stop her from getting started immediately. By the time he returned, she’d already burned a large scorchmark into the side of the crate with her coral-colored fire.

It was only when she finally burned through the wood that Spike realized the problem. As it was, he was very nearly too late.

Splash.

Ember was not amused. And wet. “What the—?! Spike! I was doing fine!”

Instead of responding, Spike dropped the empty water bucket, walked up beside Ember and began pulling at the charred wood, widening the hole. Ember continued stand there building up to a potential tirade until he started reaching inside the crate to pull out… smouldering straw?

Ember paled. “Oh. Oh spit.” Whatever else Spike could say about Ember, she wasn’t one to just stand around. As soon as she realized her error, she jumped right in to help. With her taller, more wiry build she was able to break more of the half-charred wood free to make room for another set of hands pulling straw out by the armful. “I’m never going to live this down, am, I?” she grumbled.

To their shared dismay, the more smoking straw the two of them pulled out, the more they found behind it. The longer it went on, the more it became clear that they weren’t going to be able to outpace the spread of the fire. Spike slowed, taking a moment to stamp out the piles of burning straw strewn about the lawn as he tried to come up with something else he could do.

Or something Ember could do.

“Ember!” he shouted. “Send the straw somewhere with your fire!”

Ember pulled her soot-covered head out of the hole just to give him an incredulous look. “Me? I’ve only managed it a couple of times! You do it!”

Spike winced, but now wasn’t the time for pride. “I… can’t,” he admitted. “I’ve only managed to send things to ponies, not places, so unless you think it would be a good idea to dump a load of flaming straw on one of the princesses, it’s gotta be you!”

Ember looked at the smoke billowing out of the hole in the crate, and for the first time since he’d met her, Spike saw a flicker of self-doubt on her face. “I… well, fine! But you’d better go get another bucket of water or ten because it’s not like I can send it to a lake somewhere! I can only send it somewhere I can see!”

Spike didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed the bucket and raced back inside to fill it. The closest, fastest source of water was the ground floor bathroom, and every second he spent filling the bucket seemed like one second too many. He did not want to have to explain anything to the pegasus fire patrol.

Fortunately, when he finally got back outside, there was a great big pile of straw between the crate and the ex-library.

Unfortunately, that pile of straw was on fire. Ember was digging up the lawn to throw dirt on it and making progress, but it was still a very big pile of burning straw. Spike tried to spread the water out and use it sparingly, but he was soon running back inside to fill the bucket again.

Another agonizing minute of bucket-filling later, he returned running only to find the fire completely guttered out. Spike slowly came to a stop and put the bucket down, breathing heavily.

Oddly, he didn’t see Ember anywhere.

“Spike?” came a voice from ten feet up and to the side.

Spike jumped in fright and tripped over the bucket, drenching himself. It took a moment to reorient and spot the five pegasi hovering nearby with a couple of heavy rainclouds. He cringed. “Uh, hey, Thunderlane. Nice night for roasting marshmallows?”

— ✒ —

The talk with the fire patrol was very strange. The situation pretty much explained itself, they said. Clearly the crate had been unloaded earlier in the day, the packing straw set aside to be disposed of, and some small accident had set it alight. As far as they were concerned, there was no sign that the straw had been stored close to anything else flammable, so all Spike would get was a warning.

Spike spent most of the conversation nodding and apologizing, doing his nervous best not to contradict the story or give them any reason to check inside the crate that still contained the Primordial Ring of Ashmund. That would raise questions he didn’t want to answer.

Except, as it turned out, the crate did not still contain the Primordial Ring of Ashmund. Indeed, the reason the fire patrol had deduced that the crate had been emptied earlier that day was because it had, in fact, been emptied. The side of the crate with a small hole burned into it looked like it had been pried off, and the Ring of Ashmund was nowhere to be seen.

Spike barely noticed the fire patrol leaving as he stood in the dark staring at the empty crate, trying to picture a string of events that were even remotely possible in which Ember was able learn how to use the ring and escape with it at what must have been a truly massive size without being seen by the fire patrol, all in the time it took him to fill a bucket of water.

It just didn’t seem possible. He wasn’t even angry. He just wanted to know how she’d done it.

Eventually, Spike realized that he was just standing around in the dark not doing anything and began to quietly clean up. Half an hour later, things had been restored to a modicum of order and… that was that. For once, no one harassed and insulted him for it or got in his way, and it was… Well, he didn’t know what it was.

Ruminating on that, he went back inside and fixed himself a cup of plain old hot chocolate and wondered if Ember had any intention of coming back, or if she would just take the Ring of Ashmund and run. As much as Ember had seemed to improve in the last few days, she was still somewhat… single minded. Spike honestly didn’t even know if his own desire to use the ring had registered at all to her. If so, then why would she bother coming back? Maybe it would be better if she didn’t—if she just took the ring, went and beat up her father and never saw Spike again. That would drastically simplify things for everyone involved.

Even so, the ex-library seemed awfully quiet that night.

— ✶ —

Twilight was in the middle of rereading one of her old books on applied theoretical magics when Luna found her.

“Aha! So this is indeed where you have holed yourself up,” Luna remarked, her head poking out from under the tarp roof into Twilight’s makeshift library. After some brief shimmying, the lunar princess spread her wings and glided down into the center of the room, which had only gotten cozier with the addition of several rugs, lamps and other creature comforts.

Twilight looked up from her book and blinked at her marefriend. A second glance through the stars confirmed that, yes, it really was that late, and then the content of Luna’s greeting finally registered. Twilight’s ears folded back in embarrassment. “…Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to make you come looking for me.”

Luna shook her head as she paced around the room inspecting it. “Neigh, it was no great difficulty. I knew that you were to organize one of these towers today, and the light from your lamps are quite clear from the sky. I must say, this is quite nice. It feels… different in some nebulous way than my attempt at a temporary domicile.”

“Your attempt was a rock with a hole in it,” Twilight deadpanned, though her smirk quickly broke through it. “Actually, you’re not imagining it. I poured a lot of magic into the area. It’s pretty much saturated with… me, I guess. It’s had some… unexpected effects.”

“Oh?” Luna said, idly running a hoof over one of the bookshelves. “It does feel lived in, now that you mention it, and not dissimilar from the site of the old castle after you erased it from being. Were you practicing with your earth pony magic, then?”

Twilight chewed nervously at her bottom lip. She did promise herself that she would talk to Luna about it. “That’s the thing. I’m not actually sure.”

Luna raised an eyebrow at that and waited for an explanation.

“Well… see for yourself,” Twilight said, then she clapped her front hooves together and a couch flashed into being underneath Luna, bouncing her up to make room for it.

Luna opened her mouth, closed it, tested the cushion underneath her with a wiggle and blinked. “I admit, I wouldn’t have expected you to explore Applejack’s suggestion that you would have the other half of Discord’s powers so soon.”

“Yeah, well…” Twilight vacillated, then went on to explain about her dream, exploring other ponies’ dreams, dream magic, her concerns about the similarity to Discord’s magic, hiding her experimentation from Spike, then finally her success and being broadsided by the obvious connection to earth pony magic.

As she was wrapping up the story of her day, Luna shook her head and sighed. Twilight felt herself shrinking inwards at the awkward silence and was taken by surprise when a milky white glow of magic lifted her up and deposited her with Luna on the couch, where she was summarily engulfed in a warm, feathery hug. “You worry too much.”

Slowly, Twilight began to relax. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

— ✒ —

Spike was only an early riser inasmuch as he was generally the first person in the house to get up and start the day, which wasn’t much of a challenge when those people were Twilight or Ember. Compared to actual morning people like Applejack, though, he practically slept through half the day, so given the opportunity of an empty home, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to sleep in a bit.

He should have known better.

The second time Spike awoke, it was to the sound of giggling. At first, he thought the sound must be some sort of bird that had decided to spend the morning just outside his window. Of all the great many sounds that Spike had woken up to over the years, giggling had not yet made the list. Twilight was not prone to giggling, nor had Ember been. In fact, out of all of Twilight’s friends the only real giggler in the group was Pinkie Pie, and like most ponies, Spike had the common sense not to risk sleeping in her vicinity.

And yet there was giggling.

From more than one pony.

Actually, come to think of it, there was one collection of gigglers that he knew, and he hadn’t heard of them causing any problems recently so they were overdue: the Cutie-Mark Crusaders.

Maybe if he ignored them, they’d go away?

On second thought, the giggling didn’t sound like the Cutie-Mark Crusaders. It sounded cute, but less… squeaky, and it seemed to be coming from above him.

Eventually, it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, so he rolled over onto his back, raised his arm to shield his eyes from the sun and squinted at the shapes surrounding his bed.

There were five of them, tall and… slender? Slowly, Spike’s eyes adjusted to the light and they came into focus.

…

So this was one of those dreams. Odd, he didn’t feel like he was dreaming, but it was more likely than waking up to a tall, sexy Ember and four similarly jaw-droppingly beautiful friends. Really, that proved it right there. Ember? Friends? As if that could happen.

With a huff, Spike turned over again, pulling the blanket over his shoulder.

Odd. Suddenly his tail felt cold, and it was accompanied by another round of giggling. Annoyed, Spike craned his neck to see what was up with his blanket. On closer inspection, it seemed to have shrunk, along with his bed, the room and—okay, he wasn’t stupid, even at this time of the morning. It was him that had changed. He uncurled, sat up in bed and got a good look at himself.

He was… He looked… good? He was as lithe and wiry as the girls were svelte and curvy. There wasn’t a single hint of baby fat on him and his stubby little arms seemed to have shot out like weeds. Just stretching his arm out in front of him gave him a feeling almost like vertigo.

The giggling continued, and this time he noticed that it was heralded by chittering whispers behind delicate clawed hands. Ember was not participating, preferring instead to just stand there with her arms crossed, looking smug. If nothing else, he felt a little vindicated over his earlier conclusion that she wasn’t the giggling type.

Finally, he realized what they were giggling about. They were looking at him. And giggling. Was he… did he look as sexy to them as they did to him, or was it the other way around? Were they laughing at him? He didn’t know how to feel, and he didn’t like it. Suddenly, he felt very self-conscious and reached for his blanket to cover him up. It didn’t do the job very well, which only triggered another round of giggles.

This wasn’t how he’d expected things to go when he’d suggested that they steal the Ring of Ashmund.

Author's Note

Seconds ago, I posted a one-shot titled The Dragon is in the Details. If you enjoy my writing, give it a shot.

Chapter 11

— ✒ —

Surrounded as he was by five beautiful dragonesses, Spike couldn’t decide where to look or what to think. He had been raised from a very young age not to stare too much at mares, but Ember’s lack of modesty had been teaching him that dragons had different ideas about such things, and now he was suddenly on the other end of that paradigm.

So he stared back.

In addition to Ember’s turquoise, his vision was filled with scales of red, orange, green and black. They had all been changed with the Ring of Ashmund to match the same template, which he didn’t think was one that existed in nature. The ring, he remembered, had been said to be able to change the size, age and maturity of any dragon, and from what he was seeing, it could change each one of those independently.

Yesterday, Ember had been a head taller than Spike, barely eye-to-eye with an adult pony. Now she was nearly twice as tall as she’d been before, maybe as tall as Princess Luna standing upright. Unlike the dragons that size that Spike had met before, however, the dragonesses surrounding him were a lot more… developed. They weren’t quite full adults that had been shrunk down, but they would definitely deserve a second look if they were placed side-by-side with somedragon else the same size.

Oh, and they all had wings.

Spike glanced over his shoulder. He had wings. He wiggled them.

So that was what that felt like.

— ✒ —

The distraction of waking up with wings didn’t last very long with five girls surrounding him watching him play with himself. Eventually, the awkwardness reached a critical mass, and he tossed the bedsheet aside, mumbled something about fixing breakfast, swung his legs off the bed and proceeded to throw himself face-first onto the floor.

His second attempt at locomotion was wobbly, but marginally more successful. He still toppled over once on his way out of the room, but rather than flop, he managed to catch himself on his arms… or, perhaps they were his front legs, as they seemed to function just fine in that role. Another two steps and he was upright again, slamming the door behind him.

Hoo boy. He had to stop at the top of the stairs just to take a breath and collect himself. It was more difficult than he’d expected it to be. He thought that living with Ember had desensitized him at least a little to that sort of thing, but the fact that he was tempted to take a peek back into the room for another look trampled all over that assumption like… a big stompy thing his brain didn’t have the room for right now on account of all the images of scaled curves that were driving him to distraction.

Ironically, it was only looking back that he realized that Ember had been wearing a ring. The ring, obviously. It had to be the Ring of Ashmund, if only because it was something of value and she hadn’t eaten it yet. Part of him wanted charge back into the room to demand answers… and for only that reason… but in hindsight, all he was likely to get was a deadpan look and a sarcastic comment. After all, why wouldn’t a ring with the power to reshape its wearer also reshape itself to fit? That wasn’t really the important thing.

The important thing was that she had it at all. It was good that she’d managed to hide it before the fire patrol had shown up, but he barely trusted her with a bowl of soup, let alone an artifact of power that would allow her to rule dragonkind more certainly than any crown. Ideally, he would have been the one to hold onto it so there would be at least some checks and balances to prevent her from just doing the first thing that crossed her mind, but as evidenced by the crowd of dragonesses in the next room, that ship had sailed and was halfway to Zebrabwe. If Ember ever gave the ring up willingly, Spike would eat Applejack’s hat.

— ✒ —

Spike wasn’t exactly sure how he’d gotten roped into fixing breakfast for five dragonesses, but at least they weren’t giving him those weird looks any more… much. Once in a while, one of them would poke their heads into the kitchen and giggle, but he tried to ignore it.

The easy thing about cooking for six dragons was that there didn’t actually need to be any cooking if you were feeling lazy. In most situations, making a good first impression to four drop-dead gorgeous members of his own species wouldn’t be the time to be lazy, but this wasn’t most situations. He wasn’t in the mood, the pantry was nearly empty, the ‘first impression’ he’d made probably involved sucking his thumb in bed and as much as he couldn’t get the sight of them out of his head, he was feeling contrary and wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to encourage them in the first place. It was all just too much.

It took three uncertain trips to load the table up with various gems, crystals, rocks, ores and metals to feed the lot of them, the last of which was a bucket of rebar offcuts that Spike dropped next to himself. “Okay,” he said, retrieving a piece of rebar and chewing on it like a candy cane. “Explain.”

Ember had already claimed the bowl of gems and finished half of it. “Explain what?”

“Really?” Spike asked, unamused. He made a show of looking around the table. “You can’t think of anything that needs explaining?”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Ember said with a mouthful of colorful gems. “This was your idea!”

Spike stared at her, unblinking. “What.”

“Oh come on!” Ember groused. “You don’t even pay attention to what you’re saying when you talk to me, do you? You said we’re supposed to show dragons by example that cooperation and honor and all that grit is better than rule of the biggest asshole, so I went out and got us some dragons to cooperate and do honor with! There’s gonna be so much honor in this tree that every dragon in the entire city will be jealous!”

There was so much to unpack in that declaration that Spike couldn’t even think where to begin. Quickly, he felt a headache coming on and decided that it wasn’t worth it. “Close enough, I guess,” he said, suppressing a groan. Looking around the table again, he shook his head. “I guess we’re starting a magic school, too?”

Ember blinked. “Oh, yeah! We should totally do that!”

— ✶ —

Twilight was having the best morning she’d had since the destruction of the Ponyville Palace. Admittedly, that wasn’t the most challenging metric to overcome, but that didn’t make it any less of a relief to be home and she very much wanted to hold onto that feeling.

“Come now, Twilight,” Luna chided with a well-intentioned chuckle. “You must eventually release me.”

“Dunwanna,” Twilight mumbled, sleepily rubbing her cheek into Luna’s side as she held on with a death-grip.

Luna let out a fond sigh, lightening up on her struggles in order to run a hoof down Twilight’s mane. “Really, now. There must be somewhere you have to be this morning, given your usual schedule.”

Twilight hesitated to say anything, but that was enough to get Luna’s attention

“Is there something wrong?” Luna asked, continuing to pet Twilight.

“I just feel so useless working on the palace,” Twilight admitted. “And it’s just going to be worse now that I could actually just dream the whole thing up in a day.”

“Well—” Luna began, but Twilight kept talking.

“I know that being productive isn’t the point and I get along with the ponies okay, I guess,” she continued, rambling a little. “And having this place set up relieves the immediate pressure of actually needing somewhere to relax, but I just… don’t think it’s the kind of ‘connect with the populace’ work that’s right for me.”

Luna hmmed. “Well, it is ultimately your choice. What about…?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. With how things are going, I don’t think we’re going to be able to drag Applejack any further into it either. We can’t get her used to the palace by including her in the project if we can’t even get her into the city.”

Luna blew a wisp of her ethereal mane away from her face with a huff. “Well, that is a pity, but it is what it is. Is there something else you’d rather do aside from lay abed all day?”

“Well…” Twilight gave it some thought. “Honestly, it might not be branching out as much as I probably should, but I liked being a librarian. It was a comparatively social job, and letting ponies come to me seems like a better choice overall.”

Luna remained quiet for a moment before she finally asked, “Can I please fire that damned mayor?”

“It’s an elected position,” Twilight casually reminded her. “But if you really want to, I think there are provisions for it. Even if you get rid of her, though, it won’t make much of a difference in the here and now. We don’t actually have a library any more and building a new one is a ways down the list of city projects.”

Luna tapped her chin with one hoof, thinking. “Is that a city project, though? I would think that, as you have yet still failed to actually dissolve the librararchy, such a project would fall entirely under the purview of thy nation.”

Twilight rolled her eyes at the mention of the librararchy. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would a new library have anything to do with the librararchy? It’s not like I own the blanket concept of an Equestrian library.”

Luna gave her a curious look with one eyebrow raised. “Did you think that I enumerated them? I believe the wording on the paperwork was ‘all the libraries in perpetuity.’”

Twilight returned Luna’s curious look with an incredulous one. “‘All the libraries in perpetuity?’” she asked. “You actually worded it like that?”

“That is what I said,” Luna confirmed.

Twilight curled up on the bed, burying her face in her hooves. “You’re telling me that my nation is founded on sloppy grammar?!”

“Is that really any different than it being based on sloppy lawmaking, as it already was?” Luna asked.

“…You might have a point,” Twilight admitted, relaxing and rolling over onto her back. “So, you think I could just raise a library?”

“You could, yes,” Luna sumized after some thought. “But I would not recommend it. In the end, a library is a public place and thus, belongs as much to the people as it does the nebulously legal foreign governmental entity that operates it. Getting the community involved would not be a bad thing.”

Twilight let out a huff of frustration. “Well, that just brings us back to square one, then, doesn’t it?”

Luna gave her a strange look with a hint of a smile. “I wonder if I haven’t spoiled you a little too much.”

Twilight blinked back, a little indignant at the accusation after her previous issues. “What do you mean?”

Luna pursed her lips. “Perhaps it is just a blind spot, then. Twilight, why not just select a temporary location for a library? In a normal, existing building. Perhaps one of the warehouses that are due for remodeling. Not everything must immediately be a unique, purpose-built building.”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, then continued, abashed. “In my defense, I’m friends with Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Applejack.”

— ✶ —

As much as Twilight would have liked to keep Luna in bed all day, she eventually had to let go of her so they could both get started on their day. Even with the decision to give up on helping with the palace, it didn’t actually free up her immediate schedule. If anything, she’d have even more to do that day in order to put things in motion for her absence.

Even so, she still spent a good hour or so trying to come up with a way to have running water in her temporary home so she could have a nice long soak. It was good practice and more of a challenge than she’d expected. Creating simple, static environments seemed to be the dream magic equivalent of unicorn telekinesis. Creating things that not only behaved in a certain way, but actually behaved while so behaving was more work now than it had been in her dreams.

In the case of her attempt at indoor plumbing, getting the water running was actually the easiest part of it. Creating either an endless waterfall or shower both turned out to be equally easy, but it only seemed willing to exist in a constant state. If she shut the water off at the faucet, for example, it seemed to break the underlying dream logic, stopping the water entirely. She doubted this was an actual limitation on dream magic, so it must be the actual dream logic that her visualization was invoking, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what she was doing.

That said, working around that particular quirk was easy enough. Any mechanical assembly she could picture seemed to work fine, so all she had to do was divert the water to bypass the showerhead when the shower was ‘off.’ With that solved, the only thing left was coming up with somewhere for the draining water to go, and that was where she spent most of the hour trying to come up with something simple, clean and safe.

The little pocket-sized black hole she came up with was at least two out of three. She guessed she’d have to warn anypony mortal that the event horizon might eventually creep up past the shower grate, but that seemed like a minor issue at the moment. She’d figure out something better later on. She wanted to figure out portals pretty soon anyway.

— ✶ —

Something seemed different about the ex-library as Twilight approached it from above. It wasn’t the pile of burnt straw out back, though that was odd. No, there was just a certain kind of feeling telling her that something had changed.

Specifically, the feeling was in her ears, because whoever was inside was being quite loud and she could hear a number of them.

Not for the first time, Twilight was tempted to snoop, and it was all the more difficult this morning for how blatant they were being. It could always be a Pinkie Pie party, but from what she remembered of her records, those were fairly rare at nine in the morning.

Well, there was one perfectly honest and valid way to find out.

Twilight knocked.

A dragon answered.

She stared, the blood draining from her face. “Spike?”

He scratched the back of his neck like he always used to. “Yeah?”

She couldn’t help but fall to a seat in shock. “Luna is going to kill me,” she mumbled, looking up… and up and up and up at her once-baby dragon assistant. “I—I must have accidentally slowed time inside my bubble of dream magic.”

Slowly, five more heads poked out of the door to get a look at the goddess having a breakdown on the doorstep.

“And he has a harem now!” she whined. “I never even got to meet the girlfriend he was hiding and now there are five of them!”

One of the dragons frowned and asked, “What’s a harem?” while Spike covered his face and blushed.

“Well, ponies called them herds, back when that was the traditional thing,” Twilight automatically explained. “I don’t know what dragons call them, but… oh, Spike… I suppose it’s something to be proud of. How—how long has it been?”

Spike looked like he was in pain, which only made her worry about the answer even more. “You let me off early after lunch yesterday, so about twenty hours, I guess?”

Twilight cocked her head to the side and blinked. “Err… what?”

— ☾ —

Luna was startled by a flash from under her desk. Curious, she wheeled her chair back to find… “Twilight?” She felt herself blush at the idea of having her marefriend under her desk as she worked, though that probably wasn’t what Twilight had in mind.

Then again, she did look embarrassed, bordering on mortified, so Luna supposed that she couldn’t say for certain that she hadn’t been taken by some strange mood. “So, ah… what brings you to my office today, Twilight?”

“Oh, you know…” Twilight said, attempting to sound casual, her expression looking rather fixed. “I just decided that maybe I don’t really need to ever interact with this generation of ponies ever again after all. Or this generation of dragons. I’m just going to sit here and pretend I don’t exist for a thousand years.”

Luna tsked. “Come now Twilight, you should know better than that,” she chided. “A thousand years is not nearly enough time to outlive a generation of dragons.”

Twilight considered that for a moment. “Moon colony,” she suddenly declared.

“No!” Luna instantly rebuked. “Do not even joke about that! I’ll not have ponies walking all over me, treating me like a… a planet. I am no field to be ploughed!”

Twilight squirmed in place, chewing at her bottom lip. “So… how about just me, then?”

Luna’s blush returned, stronger than ever. “Twilight,” she said with a sigh. “I truly doubt that whatever happened is actually worth abandoning pony society for a far-off future.”

“I congratulated Spike on his harem!” Twilight blurted out.

Luna blinked. “Well, I suppose it is something to be proud of,” she reasoned.

“That’s what I said!” Twilight declared, vindicated if not for the fact that she was apparently embarrassed about it.

“So, what is the problem, then?” Luna asked. “Were you not eagerly awaiting the day that he introduced you to his housemate?”

“Well, yes, but…” Twilight went on to explain her mistake and the short exchange thereafter. “…So then I came straight here. Oh, he must be so—hey! Quit laughing!”

Indeed, Luna was having difficulty keeping her snickering to a minimum. “Ah, sorry, Twilight,” she said, not terribly apologetic at all. “Though this does remind me more of the sort of lighthearted problem you used to have when you were still writing my sister, which is preferable to the more recent sort.”

“Is it?” Twilight asked doubtfully. “I don’t recall ever having to deal with relationship problems before I—err—sorry, that came out wrong.”

The reminder stung, but Luna did her best not to let it show and it was becoming easier with each passing day. “I am curious, though. That is quite a change you described, even for a molt.”

Twilight perked up. “You’ve heard of it, then?”

“Mostly recently,” Luna clarified. “Though I vaguely recall it from the past, too. I wonder, though…”

Twilight looked curious. “You think you can explain the sudden change?”

“Well,” she said, considering it. “You said that there were several there, all the same age, yes?”

“I think so?” Twilight answered, a little uncertain. “It was a little hard to tell with how varied dragon morphology is, and I mostly saw their heads, but they all seemed to match pretty well, so that would be my guess.”

Luna nodded along as Twilight spoke. “Well, we know that the molt has a pheromonal component that normally functions to drive away competitors while the molting dragon establishes themselves, which predators have unfortunately adapted to seek out in search of vulnerable young. Pheromonal reactions can be strange at the best of times. What do you think might happen if, by some quirk of timing, biology or evolution, there was a sympathetic reaction instead?”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “Six dragons, molting together, likely confined to a small space. Production of the hormones involved in the molt might go through the roof!”

“Yes, that was my thought as well,” Luna agreed.

Suddenly, Twilight’s ears flattened in distress. “Oh no. If that’s the case, who knows what other effects that mix of hormones could cause? If the molt is partially a nesting instinct, they might actually be bonded into some sort of harem that just formed overnight. They must be so confused! And I probably embarrassed them terribly! I… I have to go apologize!”

There was a flash, and Twilight was gone.

Luna blinked the spots out of her eyes.

Well, there wasn’t even the slightest amount of proof that any of that was what had actually happened, but hopefully it was close enough.

It was the sort of nested logic and blind guessing that had worked for figuring out Twilight’s ascension, after all.

— ✶ —

Twilight didn’t even knock this time, choosing instead to burst right through the front door into the ex-library. She was a little disappointed, then, to find only Spike, cleaning up what appeared to have been a large breakfast of decidedly non-breakfast items. Twilight chose to ignore all of that and flew forth to lift him up in a big hug. “Oh, Spike!” she cried out, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you in front of your awkward new harem!” It wasn’t until she was done apologizing that she realized that no actual lifting was happening. Slightly abashed, though nowhere near as much as she was for her previous behavior, she pushed herself back to leg’s length so she could get another look at him and guess at his response.

Mostly, he just stood there like a statue. Then he blushed. “Twilight! It—it—it’s not like that!” he insisted, backing away and glancing at the basement door. “They’re not—I don’t have a harem!”

Twilight drooped at his response. “Oh dear, I did it again, didn’t I? I’m sorry, Spike, I know that this is new for you. I mean, I know that now. I wish I’d known it ten minutes ago, or I wouldn’t have made such a fool of myself. It’s okay. You can call your multitude of live-in life partners whatever you want! I just want you to know that I’m here for you. I mean, how my relationship with Luna got started isn’t exactly something to emulate and I pretty much have my hooves full figuring out my own life, but I also unlocked my true power as a goddess yesterday, so if there’s anything you need, just ask!”

“…No, seriously,” Spike said. “It’s not a harem.”

“Right. Of course it isn’t,” Twilight agreed with sympathetic understanding. “In order for it to be an actual harem, there would have to be things involved that you might not be ready for, and that’s okay. It’s good that you’re taking things slow, though it’s also important to remember that you are an adult now and things can happen if you aren’t prepared. It’s no longer my place to tell you what you can or can’t do, but please, promise me that you’ll be responsible.”

Spike’s only response was a befuddled, “Uhh…” and his continuing blush.

“Good,” Twilight said, taking the slightest grunt for an agreement as parents are wont to do. “Now, like I said, I don’t actually have much romantic experience, but I do have experience being a relative introvert surrounded by five other mares, which I think is similar to your situation. The truth is, they’re probably going to push you into doing things that you never thought you’d do. That’s not a bad thing. It’s important to have people in your life that expand your horizons, but you also don’t want to let yourself get caught up in things that you’ll regret in hindsight. The best way to cope, I’ve found, is to not fight it. If there’s something you’re not ready for, then the best way to regain control is to be ready for it…”

— ✒ —

“…And that’s why it’s important that you be extra careful about hygiene now that you’re living closely with others. Showers are nice, but they really don’t compare to manifesting your entire body at least once a day. You can’t do that, obviously, but I could set you up with a perpetual lava pit in the basement if you like, which should be almost as good so long as you remember to wash behind your frills…”

Spike was in tartarus, he decided. He must be, or he wouldn’t be stuck listening to—”Wait, did you say you can set up a lava pit in the basement?”

Twilight had already moved on, but she quickly backtracked, recalling what she’d just said. “Oh, sure,” she confirmed. “That should be easy, I think. It’ll produce a lot of heat, but I should be able to deal with that somehow.” Suddenly, she visibly winced. “Worst case, I suppose I can use a—eugh—heat sink to keep it from getting out of hoof, but I’d really rather not resort to puns if I can help it.”

“Okay, hold on,” Spike said, not sure if he heard that right. “I’ve listened to you rant about magic for my entire life. Math, physics, biology and philosophy have all come up over the years. Theology, topology and archaeology too. There used to be books on a hundred different scientific fields on these shelves. ‘The Power of Puns’ was not one of them.”

“I think it was, actually, come to think of it,” Twilight said, tapping her hoof on her chin. “I never read it, but Pinkie Pie did. It was probably just a joke book, but with Pinkie Pie involved…”

Spike facepalmed at the scatterbrained response. Then he realized that it might not be so scatterbrained. “Twilight, did you… figure out how Pinkie Pie Pinkie Pies?”

Twilight blinked then glanced away nervously. “Well… I guess? But only technically, in a roundabout way. I told you ten minutes ago: I figured out how to goddess things properly, weren’t you listening?”

“How to… goddess things?” Spike asked, slack-jawed. He hadn’t thought that he could be any more surprised or distressed by anything this morning, but he’d obviously underestimated Twilight. “Are you… feeling okay Twilight? Do I need to go get Luna? Because goddess isn’t a verb, and the Twilight I know would never use it as one.”

“I’m a goddess,” Twilight declared primly, still looking away from Spike. “If I can make you a lava jacuzzi, I can turn words into verbs if I want…?”

“Really?” Spike asked, not having missed the slight questioning tone at the end of her declaration.

Twilight flushed slightly. “Fine,” she relented. “I just realized at the last moment how silly ‘unlocked my true power as a goddess’ sounded and I had to come up with something to replace it.”

It took a few minutes for Twilight to explain about what she was calling dream magic, and for once in his life, Spike was not only listening to what she was saying, but actually paying attention.

“So, you just flood the area with fi—I mean, magic, and then you can just do whatever you want?” he asked, making tentative connections to his own recent experiments with magic.

“Pretty much,” Twilight confirmed. “We didn’t have enough time this morning to figure why Luna has so much trouble with it. It might just be that she was using mortal earth pony methods, but that doesn’t feel right to me.”

“And it’s not because you’ve basically seeded the entire world with your magic by having stars buried everywhere, creating a hostile environment that actively rejects the magic of the other alicorns?” Spike asked, curious.

Twilight opened her mouth, froze and remained that way for several minutes.

Spike went to the kitchen to make himself a soda.

Chapter 12

— ✶ —

It took most of the morning for Twilight to free herself from her already loose obligations to the deconstruction effort, but it was a welcome distraction from the events earlier in the morning. Part of her was happy to move on, but the rest… “I just feel like it’s giving up,” she told Spike, bent over a desk in the depths of Rarity’s tower, triple-checking the paperwork.

There was a distracting flash of orange fire before Spike responded, but a quick glance revealed that the fire was constrained to a small metal trash bin in the corner.

“Well, I don’t know about the whole exposure-therapy side of things,” Spike said, glancing nervously in Twilight’s direction as he continued filing copies of the work orders she’d just finished. “But ignoring that, I don’t see the problem, really. The fact that they weren’t letting you do what you can actually do means that the job that you were doing is easily replaced, right?”

“Well, I don’t know about easily…” Twilight prevaricated.

Spike waved his hand in dismissal without even looking at her. “Sure, maybe you were doing the work of a dozen ponies lifting rocks, but I know for a fact that we have a dozen ponies for lifting rocks, since you just passed me the hiring orders.”

“Yes, but—” she began, but Spike interrupted her.

“—And it’s a dozen blue-collar ponies, too, not the three or four university-trained mages we could have hired instead,” he added. “And since you’re better than any regular mage…”

Twilight gave up with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” she said, checking a few last boxes on the next set of forms and passing them on to Spike for him to sign for her. “If you look at it like that, though, I’m wasted everywhere. It’s not like I can do a better job than twelve librarians.”

“That just means you can do whatever you want, though,” Spike reasoned. “And it sounds like you’ve got that covered?”

“I suppose. I do like the idea of getting a new library up and running,” she admitted. “I just wish it didn’t feel like a step backwards.”

Spike just shook his head, took the next stack of papers and continued filing. “Sometimes I’m reminded why it took a royal decree to get you to move out of the castle and make some friends.”

— ✒ —

“Well, at least that’s done,” Twilight remarked, stretching her legs out as the two of them left the temporary government building.

“Do you feel better about it now?” Spike asked. Listening to Twilight waffle over things hadn’t been as good of a distraction as he’d have liked. Sure, it had kept him too busy to dwell on the details of his own mess, but the subject matter was a little too close to home to let him completely forget about things.

“You know what? I think I do,” she answered after some thought, sounding more content than she had in a while. “In fact, that gives me an idea.”

Spike winced, muttering under his breath, “Please don’t say anything about harems… please don’t say anything about harems…”

Twilight lifted her hoof and pointed dramatically into the sky. “Let’s go see how Rainbow Dash is doing.”

“Oh thank Celestia,” Spike said, relieved.

A moment later, there was a familiar flash of teleportation, and… Twilight disappeared, leaving Spike standing in the street blinking.

A moment later, there was another flash, and Twilight was back again. “Huh. That’s never happened before,” she said, looking up and down his tall, wiry form with curiosity. “Well, dragons are fairly magic-resistant, but that was more what I’d have expected from somedragon ten times your size. Maybe excessive magic exposure as an infant and the accelerated molt caused a multiplicative adaptation?”

Spike shuffled in place, trying to look like he had no idea what Twilight was talking about. He found it exceptionally easy, as he had quite a bit of experience with the real thing.

“Oh well,” Twilight said, lighting up her horn again, twice as bright as the last time. “I’ll have to look into that later. For now, I’ll simply adjust the power.”

Before Spike could express any concerns with the phrase ‘more power,’ the world went white and he smelled smoke. This, he also had plenty of experience with. The thundering echo was new, though.

Spike spent a moment brushing soot off his scales. By the time he was done, there was an irate, bleary-eyed Rainbow Dash at the door. When she and Twilight finally came face-to-face, they both hesitated. Spike had gotten the general gist of the story of what had happened with Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts from Luna, which was enough to convince him to stand aside, keep quiet and watch.

Eventually, the tension slipped away. “Hey, Twilight. Um. How’s the work on the palace going?”

Twilight glanced off to where the large brown slab remained in the center of Ponyville. “I quit, actually,” she said, dredging up a little of her remaining guilt. “They wouldn’t let me really do anything and it was getting frustrating.”

Rainbow Dash just stared at her. “Okay, that’s a bit contrived, even for you.”

Twilight blinked in confusion and Spike was right there with her. “What do you mean?”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and led Twilight into the living room of the cloud house. Spike hesitated, then bent his neck to fit through the door, trying not to draw attention to himself.

“Come on, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said, throwing herself onto the sofa where it looked like she’d spent a considerable amount of time lately. The place was a bit of a mess, littered with takeout containers and several boxes from Sugarcube Corner. “You can’t really expect me to believe that you just happened to come to an appropriately sympathetic epiphany of your own while I’ve been grumbling about how much I screwed up my chances with the wonderbolts.”

Twilight was flummoxed. Spike was just surprised to hear Rainbow Dash use a phrase like ‘sympathetic epiphany.’

“Err, now that you mention it, I suppose the situations aren’t too different,” Twilight admitted, mostly thinking aloud. “The wonderbolts probably wouldn’t appreciate being shown up in their shows, but that’s why I was thinking we’d need to build up your reputation as a goddess first.”

“Build up my reputation as a goddess?” Rainbow asked, continuing to be suspicious. “You… really didn’t come here to convince me I’m better off without the wonderbolts and write a friendship letter about it?”

“Well, honestly, you probably are better off setting your sights a little higher…” Twilight demured, receiving a sour look from Rainbow Dash for it. “But actually,” she continued, “I just wanted to see how you were doing and bring you something that I thought would cheer you up.”

Spike frowned. He didn’t think that Twilight had brought anything with her. Maybe she meant that she was bringing some kind of news that would make Rainbow Dash happy? He was still trying to puzzle it out, when he was surrounded by a pink glow and levitated out into the open.

“Ta-da!” Twilight sang, holding him aloft like a piñata.

Rainbow Dash casually turned from her position on the couch to see what Twilight was doing and did a double-take when she saw Spike’s floating form, reflexively taking to the air to bring herself level with him. “Woah!” she exclaimed, then turned back to Twilight. “Does Spike have an older brother?”

“Nope!” Twilight beamed. “This is Spike!”

Rainbow Dash backed off, frowning, then proceeded to give Spike’s miniature adult body a more thorough examination than he was comfortable with.

“Twilight…” Rainbow Dash groaned, wiping her hoof down her face in exasperation. “Please tell me you didn’t decide it would be a good idea to shove a bunch of stars inside your assistant.”

Twilight was about to respond when Rainbow Dash continued, interrupting her. “Or let him eat them, or find some other way to make your own draconequus without the -equus.”

Twilight clicked her open mouth shut then pursed her lips in consternation. “You know, you really don’t seem to have much confidence in me today, do you?”

“Nope!” Rainbow Dash said, popping the ‘p.’ “And since you didn’t say no…”

Twilight stomped her hooved with a huff and also managed to plant Spike halfway into the clouds that made up the floor of Rainbow Dash’s house in the process. “No,” she emphasised, glaring at Rainbow Dash. “I did not do anything of the—” Twilight paused, looked at Spike and her eyes went black for a second. Apparently satisfied, she continued as if nothing had happened. “I did not do anything of the sort.”

“Well, then what happened?” she asked, gesturing at Spike in all his adult Spike-ness.

“Well, as it so happens, dragons apparently go through a process known as The Molt,” Twilight explained, then went on to regurgitate some bullshit story she’d apparently come up with about him going through some sort of heightened molt that had resulted in his becoming bonded to his harem of five dragonesses.

Spike only managed to keep his mouth shut because it being complete and utter nonsense made it no less embarrassing. In fact, having his life cast into the mold of some sort of teen fantasy drivel was probably worse.

Spike froze as things finally clicked.

For the first time in his life, Spike fully understood that Twilight Sparkle really was her mother’s daughter.

— ✶ —

Rainbow Dash looked at Twilight. Then she looked at Spike. She looked at Twilight then at Spike again, her uncertain look making it all too clear just how much Twilight had damaged her relationship with all of her friends. Eventually, though, she shrugged and stepped forward to offer Spike a hoof bump and said, “’Grats on the harem, I guess?” glancing at Twilight for direction.

Spike raised a resigned claw into a fist and accepted the hoof bump, all the while doing his best impression of a porcupine with a stomach ache.

“So, uhh… Is that why you came, then?” Rainbow Dash asked, at a loss for words. “I mean, I’m glad for him, but I don’t see how it’s supposed to cheer me up.”

“Oh, right!” Twilight said, perking up. “Yes and no. Sorry, we got sidetracked on the harem bit.” Lifting Spike back up in her magic, Twilight stretched out one of his wings to what was actually an impressive wingspan. “I figured some flight lessons would help you take your mind off of things.”

“Wait, what?” Spike balked, twisting in Twilight’s magic to look at her.

Rainbow Dash scratched under her chin with one hoof as she considered it. Finally, a smile came to her face. “Yeah, okay. You got me. Hay, you could use a few more lessons, yourself.”

Twilight’s cheerful smile faltered. “Why? I can fly just fine.”

“Twilight, what you do isn’t called flying. It’s falling with style, just without the falling. Or the style.”

— ✶ —

As much as she wanted to, Twilight couldn’t really say anything against Rainbow Dash’s method of teaching Spike to fly by dropping him off a cloud and waiting for instinct to kick in. It was, after all, the way that Luna had taught her, and Luna hadn’t even bothered to catch Twilight when she’d failed.

Assigning Twilight the task of catching Spike as part of her practice, on the other hoof, was a lot harder to excuse. Naturally, Twilight had expected that if she missed, the fastest pegasus in the world would be there to make sure no one got hurt. That might have been the intention, had Rainbow Dash managed to pay attention.

It was a good thing that dragons were as immune to rocks as they were to fire. It was true that even pegasi rarely lost a fight with the ground to any great detriment, but Spike was heavier than any pegasus and left a sizable crater comparable to some of Rainbow Dash’s greater failures just by existing. Very suddenly. At ground level.

Twilight wasn’t entirely sure that the term ‘no harm, no foul’ was appropriate in this context.

Three hours into their improvised game of lawn darts, they were made aware of something they’d overlooked when the rumbling failed to stop after Spike ran a furrow into the ground trying to do one of Rainbow Dash’s simpler tricks.

“I guess we are a bit late for lunch,” Twilight admitted, lifting Spike up out of the ground.

“Is that what that was?” Rainbow Dash remarked, swooping down from above. “Dude, Spike. I heard that from two hundred feet up!”

“Err, well… I’m a growing dragon?” he said, hunching over in embarrassment.

“Yeah, yeah, enough of the meek little dragon act,” Rainbow Dash said, standing in front of him and eyeing him up. “Look at you! You’re, like, several ponies’ worth of lean muscle now! Stop trying to make yourself look smaller—it’s not gonna work, and you just look silly trying. You’ve gotta stand with confidence!”

“But… I don’t have any?” Spike whined, attempting to stand straighter only to wobble a bit. “I have more experience flying now than I do walking around like this. Maybe I should just go quadrupedal.” Annoyed, he dropped down to all fours and slouched, craning his neck to look back over himself. There was no question he was built for it just as much as he was for standing upright.

“Yeah, no, that’s not gonna work,” Rainbow Dash said, circling him. “Upright or on all fours, you’ve still gotta hold yourself right. Lift up your head. Straighten your shoulders. Bring up your haunches and bend your back like this.” With each comment, she pushed and pulled him into position, nudging him back into place when he tried to relax. “There. Like that, see? Now you look good. Sorta like a lizard panther or a griffon with bat wings.”

“Or a dragon?” Spike deadpanned.

“Aheheh,” Rainbow Dash laughed, scratching the back of her neck. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, there are dragons and then there are dragons, you know? I’m not used to seeing you as the cool kind of dragon, you know? I mean, seriously! Have you seen most of the chumps bumbling around Ponyville lately? You’ve gotta be the luckiest dragon alive to somehow skip all those awkward years and not even come out the other end of it with a pot-belly like a pregnant walrus. I mean, I know dragons hibernate and all, but it’s such a waste when…” Rainbow Dash finally ran out of words and just gestured at Spike in general. “I mean, look at you!”

“Are you… hitting on him, Rainbow?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow in question.

Rainbow Dash balked. “Wha—no!”

“You do remember he’s got five dragonesses at home, right?” Twilight reminded her.

“That is not what I was doing!” Rainbow Dash shouted, her cheeks flushing. “Actually, that’s a good point,” she continued, changing the subject with brute force. “Even if he walks the walk, he’s gonna look really weird on all fours next to these dragonesses you say he has. I mean, uhh, some ponies are into that sort of thing, but he’d get looks.”

“Looks?” Spike asked, not really following. “Why would I get looks? What’s wrong with it?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re—err—I guess you are older, aren’t you?” Twilight said, not entirely prepared to explain innuendo to the little dragon she’d raised from an egg. It was only recently that she’d really properly come to appreciate it beyond facts and figures herself.

Rainbow Dash was less concerned, yet somehow more circumspect than Twilight would have been. “Think pets and collars, Spike,” was all she said, leaving him to fill in the blanks to in whichever direction his mind took him.

However he took it, it made him blanch and quickly stand up again. “Right! Um. So, we were talking about lunch, right?”

— ✶ —

They decided to let Rainbow Dash pick where to go for lunch and ended up at a small deli on the outskirts of the city. It was a nice, quiet place, not really what Twilight would have expected of Rainbow Dash, but then again, she probably came here with Fluttershy.

Of course, even a minimal number of ponies was still enough to stop and stare at Twilight. Honestly, it was getting old, but she supposed that anything like this where ponies were staring at her counted towards getting them used to her, at least in theory. The concept was simple enough, but with the city growing at the rate it was, the idea that they’d all get used to her if she just sat around in public places seemed hopeless.

“So, you’re really giving up on rebuilding the palace?” Rainbow Dash asked as they sat down to eat. Spike, while technically pony-sized if one was being generous, had to make do without a chair, but it was workable.

“Well, I gave up on helping,” Twilight clarified. “They’re still going to rebuild it, but that’s been the problem all along, really. If they weren’t making so big a deal of it, I’d have it done by now.”

“Yeah? How does that work?” Rainbow Dash asked.

So Twilight told her, mostly focusing on how she’d been limited to doing the job of a crane and a team of workhorses when she had dozens of spells that could have made short work of the entire project. “I mean, I’m part of the reason the entire thing was destroyed in the first place. Or part of me is the entire reason it was destroyed. Whatever. The point is, I could have wiped the whole thing off the map two days after I became an alicorn.”

“Oh yeah, the castle in the Everfree, right?” Rainbow Dash remembered. “So why’s it a rock now? That seems kinda backwards.”

Twilight pressed her lips together, not sure if she should repeat yesterday’s rant about the rest of her friends not living up to their demigoddesshoods. Given Rainbow Dash’s recent experiences, Twilight decided not to bring it up.

“I was hoping for a big slab of marble or crystal, but Applejack seems stuck on making mountains,” she said, making light of it. “It’s still an improvement over the deathtrap it was before.”

“Yeah, but weren’t you living in that deathtrap?” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “Where are you living now?”

“Your tower, actually,” Twilight said, already fond of the little space she’d made there.

Rainbow Dash cocked her head to the side in confusion. “My what, now?”

So Twilight spent the rest of the meal explaining to Rainbow Dash about Rarity’s plans to give each of them their own tower and connect them all in some way. Rainbow Dash seemed ambivalent about the actual idea of owning a tower, but she would hardly say no to having a giant monument to her awesomeness rising up above the rest of the city.

They were just about to get up and leave when a great big red dragon head pushed its way through the door, scanned the room and… left, leaving half of the ponies in the room shaking and the rest, who weren’t facing the door, blinking in confusion.

One of the ponies of the shaking variety happened to be their waitress, a sun-yellow earth pony mare still eyeing the door as she brought them the check, chewing her bottom lip in worry. “Oh Princess Sparkle,” the mare pleaded. “Isn’t there anything you can do about them?”

Twilight glanced at Spike and shifted a bit in her seat. “Uh, well, he didn’t actually do anything wrong that I saw. Has somedragon been causing trouble for you?”

“Well, not specifically,” she admitted, sitting and clutching the order book to her chest. “But that’s the third one like that that’s stuck their head in the door today! I’m all for not judging ponies—err, and dragons, I suppose—for things they haven’t done, but all it’d take is one sneeze to clear the room in a pretty permanent way. I’d rather not see this place and the ponies inside go up in flames because a startled pony dropped a pepper shaker.”

Twilight winced at the thought. “Well, you do have a point.” Glancing at Rainbow Dash, she said, “I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to go give him a talk and see if there’s anything we can do to make his visit shorter?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Sure, I’m game. Not like I have anything to do.”

Twilight considered that for a second. “Actually, don’t you have a job?”

“Well…” Rainbow Dash said, drawing out the word. “About that… You see, since I was going to go become a Wonderbolt and all, I might have sorta… said some things to the chief weather coordinator that are not really things that you say to ponies in polite company. Or really rude company, for that matter. Think of it like a magic spell that instantly creates an employment exclusion zone around the caster. It was—”

“I get it, Rainbow,” Twilight interrupted. “I get it.”

“So… yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, fidgeting with a napkin on the table. “Speaking of which… um, about the check…”

Twilight rolled her eyes, not terribly concerned about the check. “Yes, fine. Spike—”

“Actually,” Spike interrupted. “With how things went this morning, I didn’t bring anything with me. So the expense purse…”

Twilight pursed her lips, tapping her hoof on the table as she considered her options. Well, what could it hurt? “Ugh, fine,” she grumbled.

Concentrating, she lit her horn and focused her magic on a spot on the table in front of her. That was probably enough, but then she had another idea. She pulsed her magic and formed a small shield bubble to contain her magic and keep it from spreading out. Finally, satisfied with the rising concentration of magic inside the shield, she pictured a pile of bits and clopped her hoof on the table, creating a pile of bits with a teleport-esque flash.

“Spike,” she said, collecting a portion of the pile while leaving a sizeable tip. With a second tap of her hoof, she made a small bag to put the bits in. “Here. Take these and make a note that I minted fifty bits.”

Spike took the bag with some trepidation. “Is that legal?”

“It is if I do it,” Twilight said with confidence, though she wasn’t entirely certain herself. “Look, don’t worry about it. If it’s a problem, I’m sure Luna will… uhh…”

“Make it legal?” Spike suggested.

“Well, I suppose,” she allowed. “I was just trying to think of a way to say she’d handle it without sounding too cavalier about it, but it might be a good idea to get a legal grounding in the works now if I’m going to do stuff like that from time to time. It shouldn’t matter as long as the books balance in the end.”

“I guess?” Spike said. “About that, though…”

Twilight gave him a level look, quickly guessing the point. “You didn’t bring any quills or scrolls either, did you?”

Spike just shook his head.

Twilight looked back to the table where her little bubble of magic had been. Most of it should have dispersed by then, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to judge, nor did she know how much was actually needed. Shrugging, she tried tapping her hoof on the table, and three scrolls, a quill and an inkwell flashed into being.

“Well… there you go,” she concluded, motioning for Spike to collect them which he did.

“Err, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked, reminding Twilight that she was there. And she was staring. “Did you just Discord up fifty bits and a caligraphy set?”

Twilight’s eye twitched. “Don’t be silly, Rainbow. Of course not,” she declared, teeth clenched.

“Oh, okay,” she said, sounding a little relieved. “It’s just that it sounded—”

“It was just a regular writing set,” Twilight said, talking over her. “We’re taking notes, not writing invitations—oh! You did get your invitation to the Celestias’ coronation, right?”

Rainbow Dash blinked. “Err, yeah, but back up a second—”

Twilight shot Rainbow Dash her best menacing glare. “Ixnay on the iscorday agicmay,” she ground out without moving her jaw, glancing at the waitress who was standing there dumbfounded.

Twilight facehoofed. “I swear, Rainbow Dash. If this gets out because of you, I will… rrrrrrghhhhh.”

Quickly, Twilight turned her full attention to the waitress, forcing a fixed smile onto her face. “Sorry, miss. My friend here has extremely poor taste in jokes and doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. As the alicorn of the stars, magic is a natural part of my being, and I am continually exploring multitudes of new and varied methods for expressing it. What you just saw is simply one of those experimental methods, which, I should say, has absolutely nothing,” she shot a nasty look at Rainbow Dash. “Nothing to do with Discord. Who, by the way, is dead. Actually, maybe don’t mention that last part to anyone since I don’t think we’ve said anything about it yet. No, wait, don’t mention any of it. Um. I’m not going to threaten you, but just… don’t.”

The waitress gave a miniscule, jerky nod. If she had been any paler or more petrified, she could have passed for a statue in the gardens of Castle Canterlot.

Twilight’s face fell. “Ugh, now look what you’ve done, Rainbow, you made me scare her. Um… Oh! I know!” Twilight clopped her hoof on the table, creating a large bar of gold, which she quickly levitated into one of the mare’s saddlebags, the heavy weight making it hang awkwardly low. With a frown, Twilight clopped her hoof again and levitated a second gold bar into the bag on the other side, evening things out. “There!” she declared with a smile. “For your trouble.”

Spike scratched his chin in thought. “I’m not sure if that’s considered bribery or—”

Twilight waved it off, turning back to the others. “Don’t be silly, Spike. It’s a tip.”

Spike raised one eye-ridge at the mare, who was still standing there motionless. “You’re really claiming that was just the tip?”

“Actually,” she said, considering it more fully. “Gold bullion is considered a trade good, not currency, so I’m not sure it could be counted as either one.”

“I’m fairly sure bribing someone with apples still counts as bribing them, let alone that,” he said, taking care not to shout any more than necessary that the waitress’ saddlebags were hanging low with twenty-five kilograms of gold.

“Fine,” Twilight said. “But bribery implies I’m trying to get her to do something illegal, immoral or contrary to her contractual obligations. Asking her not to mention Rainbow’s slip of the tongue so people don’t get the wrong idea isn’t illegal or immoral, and if anything, keeping customers’ private conversations private is arguably an implied part of her position. I’m basically paying her extra to encourage her to do an exceptionally good job of her job, thus, it’s a tip.”

Spike scrunched up his face, doing his best to follow her logic. He eventually seemed to decide that it checked out, though, because of course it did. It was perfectly logical. “Alright, but you’ve gotta admit, Blueblood would be proud of you for that one.”

“Wha—?” Twilight thrust her hoof in Spike’s direction. “You take that back!”

“Uh, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash interjected before things could get heated. Pointing at the spot on the table where the various objects had come into being, she asked, “Can you do that with anything?”

Twilight took a moment to switch gears. “Basically, yeah,” she freely admitted then her eyes widened as she remembered something. “Oh! That’s right! Spike, make sure we still have some of those bits at the end of the day and set them aside for monitoring. They shouldn’t be any more likely to evaporate than earth pony gems or the big rock Applejack made of my palace, but you know what they say: scientific rigor doesn’t end until rigor mortis.”

Okay, now everyone was staring at her for some reason. “What? I can’t be the only one who’s ever heard that.”

“Anyway…” Rainbow Dash said, drawing the word out as she glanced around the table. “Um. Yeah. Um. Right. Bill is… handled,” she said, glancing at the waitress. “So we should…”

“T—the dragon?” the waitress suggested, showing the first sign of life in several minutes as she stiffly backed away from the table, the heavy weight in her saddlebags not doing her any favors.

“Yes!” Rainbow Dash said, slamming one hoof on the table and pointing at the mare with the other. “Thank you!” Getting up, Rainbow Dash flew over to Twilight and started dragging her to the door of the deli with Spike following cooperatively along in her wake.

“Come on, Twilight!” she encouraged, dragging the confused alicorn through the door and out onto the street. “We’ve got to go find a dragon!

“And maybe a new place to get lunch for a while?” Spike suggested.

Rainbow Dash visibly winced and looked back to her favorite deli with a certain amount of pained longing. “…Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

Chapter 13

— ✶ —

The dragon was easy to find in spite of the delay caused entirely by Rainbow Dash opening her big mouth. She probably should have figured that it would be Rainbow Dash of all people who would shout out to the world that Twilight’s entirely natural expression of magic somewhat resembled that of the deceased draconequus on account of it being the same thing, but she’d have hoped that Rainbow Dash would have learned her lesson after the last time.

You know, the time when a piece of Twilight splintered off and decided that everypony with a star needed to die so she could be whole?

Yeah, that time.

Anyway, the dragon in question was rather difficult to miss, considering it was bright red, large enough to block the street and was slowly plodding along, blocking traffic and occasionally sticking its head into buildings or peering into windows.

“Hey, blockhead!” Rainbow Dash shouted from the air, getting the attention of the dragon as well as everyone else on the street.

Slowly, the dragon pulled his head out of yet another building and leveled a flat look at the floating eyesore with the rainbow mane.

“Yeah, you!” she shouted, pointing her hoof at him. “Could you maybe not go around scaring ponies? Normally it doesn’t take a genius to realize that businesses only welcome people who can fit through the door, and I’m pretty sure you’re breaking some privacy laws with those second-floor windows.”

Twilight cringed a little at Rainbow Dash’s aggressive attitude, but she wasn’t wrong. In hindsight, it really should have been Twilight to take charge of the conversation, but it was a little late now and she wasn’t exactly eager.

The street rumbled as the dragon spoke. “I care not for your social niceties. I search for the dragon lord’s daughter. All else is inconsequential.”

For some reason, Spike let out a groan. Twilight quietly flew over to the rooftop where he’d settled, still not having gotten the hang of hovering, and asked him about it, leaving Rainbow Dash to talk to the larger of the dragons. “You don’t sound happy about that. Do you know this dragon lord, Spike?”

Spike looked like he wished she hadn’t noticed. “I’ve heard of him from—” he hesitated. “…Tinder, one of the dragonesses that—err—well, you know.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the word harem, Spike,” Twilight encouraged him. She wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t seem to help.

“Uh, anyway…” he continued. “I really haven’t heard much except that he’s, you know, about what you’d expect from an Ursa-Major-sized dragon warlord.”

“So… he’s a jerk?” Twilight surmised, remembering her last encounter with an irate dragon.

“The phrase ‘giant flaming rockhead’ was used,” Spike clarified.

Twilight frowned. “Err, how literal should I take that?” she asked, a little concerned. “Because the last big shouty dragon I had to deal with was literally a volcano. You remember Em—”

Spike surged to cover Twilight’s mouth with his claws. “Shhh!” he said, glancing over in the direction of Rainbow Dash and the dragon. “Don’t say that name. Dragon Lord Torch is Emberstoke’s son.”

“So…” Twilight said, peeling Spike’s claws off of her mouth. “Very literal, then?”

“I’m… not sure,” Spike admitted. “I don’t think so? I think it would have come up.”

Their hushed discussion was interrupted by the flash of what sounded like the mother of all bug-zappers going off. Twilight and Spike quickly took to the air to see what was going on.

What they found was the dragon down on the street curled up and cradling his hand. Rainbow Dash was just floating there looking a bit more ruffled than normal.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight scolded. “Please tell me you’re not bullying him just because he’s being obstinate.”

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Rainbow Dash said, defending herself. “All I did is float here. He’s the one that tried to flick me. It’s not my fault I’m made of rainbows and lightning.”

Twilight facehoofed.

“Specifically, it’s your fault,” she added.

“Yes, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight grumbled. “That was implied. Believe me, it’s something that I regret daily.”

“Hey, uh, Twilight?” Spike shouted up from the ground. “This guy isn’t looking good.”

Twilight blanched, quickly whipping around to join Spike at the dragon’s side. “Is he at least breathing?”

“I think so?” Spike answered as Twilight began to cast diagnostic spells on the unconscious dragon. The first few of her spells sent her into a bit of a panic until she remembered to overpower them for the size and resistance of her patient. The signs she got from the overpowered spells were a big relief.

“His heart and lungs are fine,” she told Spike, who let out a breath at the word. “His hand is badly burnt, as is everything down that side of his body to where the lightning left his body through his foot.”

“Umm… oops?” Rainbow Dash said, hovering nearby with nothing else to do.

“Well, he did technically assault you,” Twilight tempered as she continued to check on the dragon. “But in the future, it would really simplify things if you just dodged.”

“What happens now?” Spike asked.

“Legally? Probably nothing,” Twilight predicted. “He has no recourse since he’s the one who escalated to a physical confrontation and Rainbow can’t be written up for excessive force since her elemental nature is something she has no control over. Even if she could have likely avoided it, she wasn’t obligated to do any more than a royal guard is obligated to prevent ponies from throwing themselves on their spears.

“Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, could press charges for the assault, but since there was no lethal intent, it’d almost certainly go down as ‘lesson learned.’”

“That seems a little far fetched,” Spike said, eyeing the unconscious dragon uncertainly. “Assuming he actually learned his lesson, I mean.”

“Nevertheless…” Twilight remarked and turned to address Rainbow Dash. “Did he at least tell you anything more about why he was going around sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong? Spike and I were distracted.”

“Not really,” Rainbow Dash said with a shrug. “Just lots of talk about how he had to find this Ember girl and he wouldn’t let anypony stand in his way.”

“Ember, huh?” Twilight said, thinking. “Isn’t that—no, wait, that was Cinders, wasn’t it? And the one you mentioned, Spike, who told you about the dragon lord, that was Tinder, right?”

“Um. Yes. Tinder,” Spike stated. “That is what I said.”

“Right,” Twilight said, doing her best to remember all of these dragons. “I suppose I can’t blame a fire-breathing species for staking out a monopoly on fire-related names, but it can get confusing.”

“So… you said what isn’t going to happen,” Spike reminded Twilight. “But you never actually answered the question of what is going to happen.”

“Well, right now we’re waiting for the paramedics,” Twilight explained. “So far as I can tell, he’s okay, but I’m not a licensed doctor.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Spike agreed. “Someone should call them.”

Twilight looked around. There were plenty of bystanders standing around corners and peeking at the unconscious dragon. “You don’t think anyone has? I know the city’s becoming more urbanized, but I’d still expect the average pony to call the authorities when someone gets hurt.”

“Well, err, the thing is… who are you gonna call? It’s a massive, giant fire-breathing dragon, and I remember pretty well how useless doctor Horse was with just a reasonably-sized dragon.”

Twilight grimaced. “That’s a point. We don’t have the facilities to take care of him. Or to jail him if it came to that. I kind of wish… no, nevermind.”

“What?” Spike prodded.

“It’s nothing,” she deflected. “I’m being silly. I just couldn’t help but think that things would just be a lot simpler if we could shrink all these dragons to pony size.”

“Um… yeah,” Spike responded flatly. “That would be great.”

Twilight glanced at Spike, attempting to guess at the reason for his stilted response. It quickly came to her. “Oh, you know what I mean, Spike. You’re pony-sized enough. You’ve got a good balance of traits, actually: you’re a reasonable size, you have wings, you’re fit for bipedal or quadrupedal locomotion… if all dragons were like you, we’d have a lot less problems.”

“Couldn’t you at least shrink this one down, though?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking up from her gruesome inspection of the dragon’s injury.

Twilight rejected the suggestion with a shake of her head. “No, that wouldn’t be a good idea,” she said and went on to explain, “Any traditional shrinking spell I could use would only be temporary. A dragon this size… if he woke up and panicked, there’s a good chance he’d be able to throw it off, which would be… bad.”

“Yeesh,” Spike said, making a face. “Yeah, And non-traditional spells?” Rainbow Dash asked. “You know, like what you were doing back at the deli? You seemed pretty sure you could do just about anything and that it would be permanent… which, actually, I don’t get because you were able to reverse anything Dis—”

Twilight shot Rainbow Dash a harsh glare.

Rainbow Dash’s ears flattened, and she corrected herself. “Okay, okay, you were able to reverse anything that guy did with just one spell, even if it was only in a small area.”

“Not anything he did,” Twilight corrected. “Restoring you all to your right minds took something special beyond the typical failsafe spell. If I had to guess, knowing what I do now, it would be because he never intended for any of his mischief to be permanent, so it wasn’t. Otherwise he’d have had to remember how something was previously in order to put it back and try something new, and I can’t see him doing that.”

“I… guess that makes sense?” Rainbow Dash said, not entirely seeing it her way, but not really invested in it. “So anyway,” she said, getting back on topic. “Can you?”

“Can I? Probably,” Twilight guessed. “Am I willing to test dream magic for the first time ever on a living subject on an unconsenting dragon in the middle of the city? No.”

“Okay, well, for the third time, then, like Spike said, what happens now?” Rainbow Dash asked, getting a little peeved.

“Well, we do know one pony who’s used to taking care of a variety of animals, and taking him to her would even get him out of the city…”

“You can’t mean…?”

— ✶ —

A pegasus, a unicorn and a very large dragon appeared in a blinding flash in the field behind Fluttershy’s house, sans Spike who had been sent to the hospital just in case they’d actually acquired somepony or somedragon who would have something to contribute to the dragon’s care, as unlikely as that was.

“Are you sure about this, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked, keeping her voice to a whisper. “You do remember that Fluttershy and dragons don’t really get along, right?”

“You don’t know?” Twilight asked, surprised. “I thought you two were spending time together lately?”

“Know what?” Rainbow Dash asked, not having the slightest clue what Twilight was talking about. “I mean, she’s been hanging around a lot as a bird or squirrel or whatever, but she hasn’t said anything. She can’t. What, did she make friends with some teenaged dragon or something? I can’t see her dealing well with anything larger than Spike is now…”

Ah, well, this was awkward. Twilight only then realized that maybe the whole ‘dragons are eating me’ thing was something that Fluttershy didn’t want spread around. Or maybe she’d be offended again that Twilight was treating her less than the demigoddess she was.

Well, better safe than sorry. “No, no, nothing like that,” Twilight said, then reconsidered. “Actually, something a little like that since Rarity has that new dragon assistant and Fluttershy has been hanging around the two of them by proxy. It’s not just that, though. There are dragons all over the place these days, and she has… acclimated, I guess?”

“Really?” Rainbow Dash said, sounding doubtful. “Well, good for her, I guess.”

“Well, thank you, Rainbow Dash,” came Fluttershy’s quiet voice from behind the two mares, startling Rainbow Dash into the air.

“Oh, uh, hey Shy,” she said, doing her best to casually land again like it was no big deal. “I didn’t see you or your… uhh… two giant yellow bears, there.”

Indeed, when Twilight turned to greet Fluttershy, she found her accompanied by a pair of large, yellow bears who were already inspecting the injured dragon.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” Fluttershy apologized. “I needed Harry and Boris to bring my large animal medical supplies.” She looked concerned, though at no point did she actually turn to look at what the bears were doing. “What I have might not be enough. Even my largest supplies are sized for bears and manticores. A full-sized dragon is a little beyond what I’m prepared for.”

Twilight’s ears drooped at the news. “I’m sorry Fluttershy. I wasn’t sure where else to bring him.”

“Oh, no. You were right to bring him here,” Fluttershy insisted, correcting her. “Nopony else was prepared for something like this either. Um. Spike didn’t find any help at the hospital, so he’s going to go check in with Princess Luna.”

It took Twilight a few moments to remember what Fluttershy’s level of omniscience really meant. In fact, she’d probably seen the whole thing as it was happening. Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof, only understood the generalities of Fluttershy’s power, so the concept that the occasionally timid mare knew what was going on half a city away came as more of a surprise to her.

Not that she ever let something like that stop her. “Well, it’s a burn, so all you really need is gauze and disinfectant, I guess? Just lots of it?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“For now, yes,” Fluttershy agreed. “There are also some specific burn salves for scaled animals that I think would help, but that isn’t urgent and having Zecora make up a batch might not be possible with the Everfree gone. Right now, Preventing infection is the most important thing. Alcohol would work for disinfectant, but I don’t know where we can get that much sterile cloth on short notice.”

Twilight frowned. It was a bit of an issue since cloth didn’t come off the loom sterile to begin with. Rarity would have plenty of cloth on hoof, but they’d have to sterilize it and Twilight wasn’t familiar enough with the subject to know what would be sufficient. Could they just soak it in the disinfectant first? Rainbow Dash was looking expectantly at Twilight, but she didn’t have a quick answer.

“Well?” Rainbow Dash said, her look of expectation rapidly becoming something else.

“What?” Twilight said, backing up slightly at the intensity of Rainbow Dash’s glare. “Why are you looking at me like I can just magic some up out of nowhe—oh. Err, right. I can just magic some up out of nowhere.”

Thirty seconds and a large pink bubble later, there were two outsized rolls of gauze and a wooden barrel on a pallet next to the injured dragon. Rainbow quickly immediately made for the barrel and popped it open, immediately recoiling at the smell.

“Eugh! Twilight!” she shouted, stumbling back with her foreleg over her nose. “What kind of alcohol is this supposed to be? It reeks like a hospital!”

“It should be pure isopropanol,” Twilight explained, walking over to see if there was a problem with it, though the prevalence of the acrid smell meant that she didn’t need to get too close. “It smells right to me,” she judged. “We’ll have to mix it with thirty-percent water to use it as disinfectant. I figured the less complicated I made it, the fewer chances there would be for something to go wrong.”

“Isopropawhatanol?” Rainbow Dash asked before it came to her. “Rubbing alcohol! That’s the smell!” Somehow, this explanation didn’t seem to cheer her up very much, especially when she seemed to realize what she’d just said.

That’s when it clicked for Twilight. “What, did you expect me to make drinking alcohol or something?”

It was very clear by the red creeping up on Rainbow Dash’s cheeks that yes, that was exactly what she had been expecting.

With Rainbow off sulking and the two yellow bears doing their best to clean the dragon’s wound, Fluttershy took the opportunity to quietly ask, “Um. How long have you been able to use Discord’s magic?”

Twilight was surprised at first that Fluttershy hadn’t already known about it, but then, there probably hadn’t been any animals in the deli itself. Then she processes the actual content of the question and she had to do her best not to get angry. “Please don’t call it that,” she pleaded.

Fluttershy shrunk back. “O—oh. I’m sorry. It’s just that it looks a lot like his.”

“It’s just magic,” Twilight insisted weakly. “Pure magic, really, though I’ve been calling it dream magic. It’s… not unlike what he could do, but it’s also not unlike what Pinkie Pie can do.”

“I… see,” Fluttershy said, clearly giving it some thought… though also clearly using her two bears to shift the injured dragon over so she could wrap his leg. “Um. Twilight?”

Twilight snapped her attention back to the pony Fluttershy. “I’m sorry, did you say something, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “Twilight, about what you said yesterday… about the rest of us not living up to our potential as… as demigoddesses.”

Twilight winced. “I didn’t put it that rudely, did I? I mean, I said I knew it wasn’t a fair complaint, and I’m sorry I unloaded all of that onto you.”

Fluttershy was looking at the ground shuffling in place nervously. “Thank you?” she offered. “But that’s not why I brought it up. It’s just… if you really think I can do more than I am… what you just did… do you think I could learn it?”

Twilight blinked. “Learn it?”

Fluttershy nodded silently but vigorously.

“You, Fluttershy, want to learn to bend reality to your will?” she asked, still not quite believing what she was hearing.

“Oh yes,” she said, beaming. “It would be so very nice to be able to do so.”

Twilight struggled to come up with a response. “But… of all the things you could learn, why would you pick that?”

“Oh, but why wouldn’t I?” Fluttershy asked a little dreamily. “I love taking care of my animals and I always do everything I can to make them comfortable, but with how many different kinds there are, coming up with the right accommodations and supplies for them has been all but impossible. It’s not as if they sell crutches for squirrels in town, and there’s only so much I can do with hooves.”

“Um. Okay,” Twilight said, letting that sink in. “That’s… actually a very good reason.”

“Then you’ll teach me?” Fluttershy pleaded with hope in her eyes.

“Well… I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try?” Twilight said with uncertainty. “Two days ago I would have said that it was earth pony magic, but with what I know now, I think it might be possible? You have to understand, Fluttershy. I only figured any of it out yesterday afternoon.”

“That’s okay Twilight, I—oh dear,” Fluttershy went pale. “That isn’t okay at all.”

Again, the concept of Fluttershy’s multiplicity took a moment to remember, then Twilight quickly looked over to the injured dragon. “Is there a problem? Is he going to be alright?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No, it’s not him, it’s—”

“Uhh, hey, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash interrupted, braking heavily from a long dive.

“You’re interrupting, Rainbow,” Twilight snapped.

“Well, it’s just… the thing is, there are two more dragons the size of this one that were circling around above the city until a second ago, and I think they just saw this one, ’cause they’re headed this way.”

Twilight looked back to Fluttershy, who was nodding frantically.

“Oh, swell.”

— ☾ —

It was only when Luna could finally get her latest petitioner to leave that Spike made himself known. It was rather ironic that the obsequiousness manner that made him easy to identify in spite of his older appearance was the one thing she would have wished he could exchange with the rest of his race.

“Welcome, young Spike… or, I suppose I cannot call you young any more, can I?” Luna mused aloud. “Not when you stand before me in such a fashion and the favor of five awaiting you at home.”

Spike slapped himself in the face and groaned. “Not you too…”

Luna cocked her head in question. “Is there something wrong with my recounting of your situation?”

“Look… please believe me,” Spike begged. “I don’t have a harem. I don’t even know four of them and I don’t even like the one I do know.”

Luna frowned. “So they are taking advantage of you and your shared circumstances?”

“Shared circumstances?” Spike asked.

Luna nodded. “Yes. This whole matter with the shared molt that has resulted in your advanced maturation.”

“Oh. Right. That…” Spike shrunk in on himself, showing his reticence through fidgeting. “The law requires that I answer ‘no’…?” he suggested, then mumbled under his breath, “…or at least it does if I want to stay on the right side of it…”

“O…kay?” Luna said, perplexed at the odd statement but gathering that there might be more going on that he didn’t want to talk about. “In any case, Spike, if it is your desire that I not presume your relationship status with the five attractive females with which you share a domicile, then I shall respect your wishes and refrain from doing so.

“However, as we have talked at length in the past about matters of the heart, I would say that I know you well enough to suggest that if nature is pushing you together with these five dragonesses, then it would not hurt to at least consider the possibility.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Spike grumbled. “You and Twilight are made for each other. Me and these girls aren’t.”

“That may be,” Luna acknowledged, nodding solemnly. “Though you did say that you didn’t even know four of them, did you not?”

“Err, yeah, I guess…” Spike admitted.

“Listen, Spike,” she said, doing her best to present herself in a sympathetic and understanding manner. “It is important to remember that Twilight was not the first pony that I attempted to court.”

“You call what you two did courting?” Spike asked.

“Shush,” she chided him and went on without comment. “As I was saying, she was not the first pony… or even the first mare. It is not always easy to know what the heart wants, and many times I thought that I had found somepony that I could love, only to have it slip through my hooves. Little did I know that it was my own nature that I was fighting.”

“So, what, I don’t get a choice?” he asked rather petulantly, pacing back and forth. “I should just lie back and think of the empire?”

Luna shook her head. “Quite the opposite. Though my search for a partner was ultimately fruitless, it was also necessary. Had I not searched—had I not fought my nature—I would never have come to terms with it and I would have suffered even more than I did. Your nature, as I mean it, is more than what your body reacts to, though that is an important aspect of it. You are lucky in that it is a comparatively easy box for you to check in your circumstances, yet you are not the type to let it lead you completely.”

Spike took a moment to follow Luna’s logic. “So… that’s a lot of words to say I should give it a shot because I might not know what I want?

Luna hmmed. “Yes, that is about the gist of it,” she surmised.

“You could have just said that,” he told her.

Luna raised an eyebrow at him. “I believe I did. At the very start, in fact.”

Spike was tracing the conversation back in his head and coming to the conclusion that, yes, she had told him to ‘consider the possibility’ when there was a rumbling thunderclap in the distance.

“Odd,” Luna remarked, looking upward. “That is the second such thunderclap in a very short time on a day when no weather is scheduled. I wonder if something is going on at the weather storage facility.”

Spike made some indeterminate gurgling sound and Luna dropped her gaze back down to discover that he appeared stricken with guilt and a small amount of fear.

“Was there, perhaps, something that you came here to tell me?” Luna guessed.

— ✶ —

Twilight admitted it. She was impressed. The combined thump and grinding rumble of two massive dragons coming to a sliding stop, tearing up the grass was fairly awe-inspiring, yet Fluttershy stood her ground beside Twilight and Rainbow Dash. Yes, she was shaking, but she was still there, and that was what counted.

Of the two new dragons, one was blue and the other was purple. Both were big and meaty, standing twice as tall as Flutteshy’s cottage at the shoulder, and neither one looked entirely pleased.

“Who are you…” the purple one boomed, his voice shaking the windows of the nearby cottage. “What have you done to our brother…” His claws curled, making great furrows in the ground. “And… how?”

Twilight was quite unprepared for the sheer incredulity in that last demand and had to collect herself before answering. Thankfully, Rainbow Dash seemed to understand that it might be best for Twilight to handle this one.

Twilight cleared her throat, considered her words, and as a last-second inclusion, slipped into the Traditional Ponyville Librarian Voice. “I am…” she cringed, but decided it was best to use her full title. “…The alicorn of the stars, Princess Archlibrarian Twilight Sparkle, and these are my demigoddesses, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Claiming to be under the remit of your dragon lord on a search for his daughter, this dragon was causing a disturbance and violating the privacy of citizens of Equestria. We—”

“You think that gives you the right to—”

“It gives us the right to warn him that his behavior was unacceptable, yes. Which is all that we did,” Twilight shouted back, silencing the objection.

“And I suppose your warning is why he is lying there beside you covered in burns? Burns! On a dragon!” he cried, shouting his disbelief to the sky. “It is an outrage!”

Twilight had to struggle not to roll her eyes. “Yes, well, that is what happens when one flicks a demigoddess composed entirely of rainbows and lightning,” she said, gesturing at Rainbow Dash.

The large, purple dragon raised himself up and slammed his claws down into the ground on both sides of the small group of ponies, bending in for a closer look. “This?” he asked, lifting one hand out of the ground to point at Rainbow Dash, who seemed to have no problem being pointed at by something the size of her house. “You are claiming this little blue one is the cause? Preposterous!” he roared.

And then he flicked her.

The crashing boom of Rainbow Dash’s physical veneer being stripped away to reveal the overpowering indifference of a force of nature grounding itself through several hundred tons of meat and bone was blinding and deafening from two feet away.

Twilight wished very much that she had blinked, but she really hadn’t expected such a long-lived creature to be quite so stupid. The thump of the massive creature impacting the ground next to his brother was proof enough to put the lie to that assumption, even though Twilight was still recovering her senses. Ears ringing, she was blinking her eyes, struggling to see past a green spot right in the center of her vision when she felt a continuous, rhythmic thumping through the ground and looked up to see the last of the three dragons bearing down them with rage in his eyes.

Twilight leapt aside and took to the air, lighting her horn with magic in preparation to do… something.

Rainbow Dash, for once, actually followed suit, ducking around the charging dragon’s mass in the blink of an eye, likely angry over having two dragons injure themselves on her without even giving her a choice in the matter.

Fluttershy… ran, and she didn’t run fast enough. Seeing the opportunity for what it was, the enraged dragon shot out with his claws and struck her down with such force that her body just fell apart… into approximately forty-six squirrels.

Twilight didn’t think that Rainbow Dash saw that part, or there probably wouldn’t have been a third immense flash of lightning and a third unconscious-or-worse dragon crashing to the ground.

Twilight wished she hadn’t seen it. She was glad that it happened, certainly, but her seeing it just happened to preclude her from seeing where she was flying, which turned out to be the side of Fluttershy’s cottage as fast as her desperately flapping wings could propel her.

Thump.

Chapter 14

— ✶ —

Ever since her ascension to alicornhood, Twilight was used to seeing stars a little more literally than usual. Dazed as she was from her impact with Fluttershy’s cottage, however, she had to admit that the trio of small, yellow birds circling around her head was a new one. She followed them with her eyes for longer than she’d have liked to admit before properly recognizing them for what they were.

Twilight shook her head clear. “I’m fine, Fluttershy,” she said, waving them off. The small starling-sized birds bobbed in acknowledgement and obliged with the dismissal, darting back in the direction of the dragons. Soon, what had been forty-six squirrels but had at some point become an entire menagerie of different small animals all converged as a flock to become a single familiar yellow pegasus.

Twilight had so many questions, but it wasn’t the time for that. Fluttershy had the two bears checking on the second downed dragon while she checked on the third personally. With her pony body, anyway.

Twilight was flying over to see if there was anything she could do to help when Fluttershy’s voice rang out, half urging and half reprimand, “Rainbow Dash!”

“It wasn’t me!” Rainbow Dash immediately answered. Half a second later, the mare made of rainbows and lightning was at Fluttershy’s side, looking over the third dragon saying, “Okay, yeah, technically this one was me.”

As Twilight came in for a landing, she could see that unlike the first two dragons, the third had been struck straight through the chest. That was… bad. True, the dragon had tried to kill Fluttershy and he would have succeeded if her demigoddesshood hadn’t proved to be more effective than any of them had expected, but it had all been over a misunderstanding and it was always best to de-escalate a conflict whenever possible. Worse, though they hadn’t known it at the time, the fact of the matter was that none of them had at any point been in any actual danger.

Probably. Twilight wasn’t sure what would have happened if the animals that Fluttershy had split into had all been killed, but she suspected that she’d still have existed spread out over the rest of the animals in her expansive range. How exactly her remanifestation would work in that situation, though…

So many questions.

“You want me to what?!” Rainbow Dash shouted, pulling Twilight’s attention away from the still body of the dragon.

“Get up there,” Fluttershy said, pointing at the dragon’s chest with a sternness that was no less than the situation deserved, “And start jumping. We can still restart his heart.”

“Yeah, but…” Rainbow Dash’s attention shifted back and forth between Fluttershy and the dragon. “That’s what got us into this in the first place!”

“You’ll just have to use less power,” Fluttershy reasoned.

“How much less?” Rainbow Dash asked, halfway from pleading to incredulous.

“Start as low as you can and work your way up!” Fluttershy insisted, growing flustered. “If it doesn’t happen soon, it won’t matter anyway!”

“I—well fine!” Rainbow Dash said, giving in. In the blink of an eye, she was on top of the dragon. Taking a deep breath, she bent her knees, jumped and came down with a crack of thunder and a lingering smell of ozone.

The body of the dragon twitched, but remained still.

Rainbow Dash jumped again.

And again.

Slowly, the smell of ozone was being taken over by the sulfuric odor of burnt scales. Fluttershy had her ear pressed to the dragon’s barrel, but before too long, she removed it and shook her head.

“That’s enough,” she said, joining Rainbow Dash on top of the dragon. “I don’t think you’re getting through the scales, and any more power is just going to do more damage.”

“So, what?” Rainbow Dash asked. “That’s it? You’re saying I killed him? Twilight!” she shouted as Twilight landed next to them. “You can do something, right? With your… you know?”

Twilight briefly balked at the idea, but steeled herself. “I don’t know how it’ll work on a living creature—especially a dragon—but if there’s no other choice…” Twilight looked to Fluttershy for confirmation.

All of the certainty that Fluttershy had had in the heat of the moment was gone now. She looked away, trying to work up the courage to make the call. Slowly, she took a deep breath and said, “I have something I can try first,” before quickly ducking out of sight off the other side of the dragon.

Twilight and Rainbow Dash shared an uncertain look before following at a slower pace. By the time they caught sight of her again, Fluttershy was next to the dragon’s head, prying it’s eyes open.

“Uh…” Rainbow Dash interjected. “Is she going to… stare it back to life? I didn’t think that was even magic.”

Twilight shrugged, not quite sure herself. Sure enough, though, Fluttershy took a deep breath and locked eyes with the dying dragon.

All at once, Fluttershy’s presence filled the area like the world’s gentlest tidal wave. The dragon remained still as Fluttershy pushed harder, the pressure growing heavier and heavier.

Idly, Twilight thought that teaching her to impress her will on the world with dream magic might not be terribly difficult.

Finally, something happened. Twilight wasn’t sure what exactly she had expected, but it wasn’t for the dragon to twitch and…

…Turn…

…Yellow.

Twilight fell back on her rump and stared.

Well… it was breathing now, at least.

— ✶ —

Luna and Spike flew in from the direction of the city while everyone present was still recovering from the excitement. Even the two bears that Fluttershy had been using as medics had gone docile while she sat and collected herself.

Once it had become clear that the third dragon was no longer in danger of dying, Fluttershy had released whatever hold it was she’d had on him, and the yellow had receded… slowly and incompletely. What had previously been a strictly monochrome purple dragon now bore a jagged yellow starburst on its chest where Fluttershy’s power had filled in the wound.

“It seems as though matters have escalated since Spike was sent for medical aid,” Luna observed as she alit near Twilight with Spike coming in more heavily behind her.

“Not my fault!” Rainbow Dash shouted from where she was sort of but not quite next to Fluttershy in a vague show of support.

“No one is blaming you, Dash!” Twilight shouted back, then turned back to Luna. “There really wasn’t much we could do,” she explained. “Two of them did it to themselves, and the last one actually got violent. You have no idea how relieved I am that Fluttershy turned out to be more immortal than expected… or that she was able to save him afterwards. I don’t blame Rainbow for what she did.”

“Nor would I.” Luna tapped her hoof on her chin and hmmed. “In fact, I believe the standing response for such a situation is to knight the pony in question.”

Twilight winced. “That might be a little politically awkward at the moment, don’t you think?”

Luna raised an eyebrow at Twilight. “Not really, no. You grew up at my sister’s side. Did you ever encounter a dragon ambassador?” Twilight opened her mouth to respond, but Luna interrupted to clarify, “And Discord does not count.”

Twilight paused to think about it. “…Good point,” she admitted, then frowned. “Actually, come to think of it, we just suddenly have all these dragons running around, coming in from places we don’t even have diplomatic ties with? That seems…”

“Believe me, Twilight, the subject has come up,” Luna said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve now had to dismiss several proposals that we build a wall.”

Twilight blinked. “A wall,” she stated.

Luna nodded.

“But…” Twilight had to struggle to articulate herself. “They’re dragons.”

“I did mention that,” Luna confirmed.

“We don’t even share a border with the dragonlands!”

“Technically,” Luna mentioned, “They do migrate here on occasion.”

“To a caldera surrounded by mountains!” Twilight exclaimed. “If fifty thousand hooves isn’t tall enough, what makes them think another twenty is going to do anything?”

“Well, obviously the wall would have to have guards on it at all times,” Luna said, dryly citing the arguments she’d encountered.

“Oh, of course,” Twilight said clopping her hoof on the side of her head. “The guards who are capable of turning back a tide of dragons. Those guards. We have plenty of those.”

“Actually,” Luna said, considering something. “My sisters’ last letter did mention that they were considering hiring some of the dragons cluttering up Canterlot Mountain. It seems that they are having difficulty retaining staff. Sending them off to guard the borders seems like as good a job to put them to as any.”

Twilight groaned, massaging her temples. “I think we’ve officially gone around the bend from the absurd, through complete nonsense to the point that we’ve actually wrapped around to the plausible again. Okay, enough of that.”

“Enough of the plausible?” Luna asked with a teasing tone.

“Well, it would be what we’re used to,” Twilight reasoned. “Where were we?”

“The suggestion that we might knight Rainbow Dash?” Luna said, thinking back.

“That wasn’t part of the nonsense?” Twilight asked, dubious.

“It would be at most ridiculous, as you yourself said that that is where we started,” Luna countered. “Personally, I would argue it to be merely brazen.”

Twilight frowned. “You don’t think it would be a little disrespectful?”

“It would only be disrespectful if somedragon had died,” Luna said. “Well, the kind of disrespectful that actually matters. The kind of disrespectful that Rainbow Dash is, on the other hoof, we would be communicating in spades.”

“Irreverence?” Twilight suggested.

Luna nodded. “That and a hint of flippancy.”

Twilight glanced over in Rainbow Dash’s direction with a frown. “Well, you’re not wrong, and if worse comes to worst, I suppose we could do worse than to give them an immortal demigoddess of rainbows and lightning for a target. In fact, I was even just thinking of giving her a title that would provide some public visibility. A knighthood wasn’t my first choice, but it would work as a first step.”

“Ideally, the spreading of such information would be to prevent situations such as this from occurring in the future,” Luna corrected, adorning a certain level of officiousness as she did so. “Not to give them a target.”

Twilight gave her an incredulous look. “It’s Rainbow Dash,” she said as explanation.

“Yes, but it’s generally inadvisable to form policy around the presumption that the other party will suffer from poor judgement,” Luna explained, and then added, “…Officially, anyway.”

Twilight facehoofed. “Right.”

“In any case,” Luna said. “It is all moot if she objects. She did not seem happy about the situation.”

Twilight waved off Luna’s concerns with a hoof. “Pff. She just doesn’t want to get in trouble,” Twilight said. Quickly, she cupped her hooves around her mouth and shouted, “Rainbow! You okay with us knighting you for this in order to piss off the dragons?”

“I guess?” she responded. “You’re sure we’re all immortal, right?”

“You’re made of rainbows and lightning, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight responded. “What do you think?!”

“Alright, I get it! Geeze!” Rainbow exclaimed, grumbling. “But are you sure it shouldn’t be somepony a little less likely to be lethal? I don’t wanna know what happens if the next one tries to eat me!”

“Are you a demigoddess or not?!” Twilight asked. “You’re gonna have to learn not to arc through everything that breaks your manifestation!”

There was a moment of silence before Rainbow Dash responded. “I don’t think that really makes getting swallowed sound any better, Twilight!”

Twilight was rolling her eyes and getting ready to make another comment when Rainbow Dash shouted again, sotto voce this time. “Uhh, Twilight? I think all your shouting might have woken up old yellowheart here.”

Surely enough, moments later, the massive purple dragon began to move and groan, raking its claws across the yellow on its chest. “What? What have you done to me?” he bellowed, bending his neck to look down his front.

Luna was quick to cut him off, a few strong flaps of her wings lifting her up so she could land on his discolored chest. “Done?” she asked, using the Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice. “What we have done is save your life. What we have done is extend you mercy as you lay dying from an attempt to murder one of our kindest and gentlest ponies. Also Rainbow Dash.”

“I was there too!” Twilight shouted from the ground.

“You hardly count!” Luna shouted back in her normal voice. “I have thrown you off of buildings myself! ’Twould be folly itself to enter a nation ruled by immortal goddesses such as us and not be able to spot one by sight!”

“Ask him!” Twilight insisted.

Luna rolled her eyes and turned back to the dragon. “Well? Know you whose land you have entered and whose ponies you have attempted the unprovoked murder of?”

“Unprovoked!” the dragon shouted in outrage. He swept his arm at Luna forcing her into the air to dodge as he rolled up onto his feet. “Unprovoked, you say, when you have my brothers lying there covered in burns!”

“He didn’t answer!” Luna shouted down to Twilight from the air at dragon’s-eye-level. “He says he was provoked!”

“Okay, first off,” Twilight said, shouting back up at her. “If claiming I was provoked didn’t work in magic kindergarten when all the other foals were making fun of my manecut, then it doesn’t excuse attempted murder!”

Nodding, Luna glanced back to the dragon and said, “She has a point, you know.”

“And second!” Twilight continued, still yelling, still not putting any magic into her voice and still talking only to Luna as if the dragon wasn’t even there. “I informed him calmly and politely exactly how his idiot of a brother had nearly killed himself on Rainbow Dash and his idioter of a brother didn’t believe me and decided to try it out himself!”

Luna blinked down at Twilight. “Idioter?”’

“I know, right?” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Earlier, she used goddess as a verb! I think she really needs her library back!”

There was an earthshaking thump as the dragon slammed his fist into the ground, sending grass and sod flying. “Do you think this is a game?!”

Luna flew closer and snarled in the dragon’s face. “No, this is a trial and I am your judge, giving you all the respect that you deserve—none! For three counts of attempted murder, I would imprison you in Tartarus, but we learned long ago the folly of attempting to do so with dragons. Instead I shall give you a choice: do you wish to be made lame by land, by air or in sight?”

“You dare?!” the dragon roared.

Luna’s eyes began to glow with milky light. “There is no daring in a ruler passing sentence,” she spoke. “You have already been bested through the most incidental effort of the least of us—”

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash shouted, indignant.

“Now choose,” Luna’s voice boomed. “Two legs, a wing or an eye. You will lose one of these.”

“I defy you!” he roared. “You are not the ruler of this land! You are not the one whose power shines… from… the… sky?”

Suddenly, the dragon looked very confused and uncertain, though why, none of them could say for certain. Perhaps he had just realized who it was that he was talking to?

“If you wish to defy me, then you defy Luna, alicorn of the moon, goddess and ruler of this land!” she informed him. “By rights, I could claim one penalty for each of your transgressions if I so wished. If you would rather be judged by one of my sisters, however… We do not normally entertain such pleas, but if her presence is required to convince you of the gravity of the situation you find yourself in, then I shall make an exception.

“Mind, though, that if you think to get a lesser sentence from her, I would direct you to the lake over yonder where the everfree once stood. That, too, was a case in which a dragon attempted to kill that which it could not. It was quite similar to this, actually.” Thoughtful, Luna turned to Twilight, but was interrupted before she could say anything.

“Hey!” Twilight shouted. “Don’t look at me like that! Just because I was involved both times doesn’t mean I attract rampaging dragons! Also! The last one was probably possessed! Which is an entirely different thing!”

“That just means that the dragon was less deserving of righteous vaporization, does it not?” Luna pointed out. “The threat stands! Rainbow Dash, if you would fetch one of my sisters?”

Rainbow Dash made a fairly sloppy salute, considering she’d been intending to go into the armed forces, and disappeared in a blinding flash that left Twilight’s hooves feeling tingly.

Twilight shook her head and blinked the spots out of her eyes. She had never seen a rainbow ripple through the ground like that.

The dragon, who Twilight realized they still didn’t have a name for, seemed to have lost his steam, so while they were waiting for Rainbow Dash to find and arrange for the help of one of the Celestias, Twilight took flight and maneuvered herself next to Luna.

“Are you really okay bringing the Celestias into this?” she asked in not quite a whisper. “As angry as she can get when her little ponies are threatened, there’s a real possibility that she’ll go easier on him than maiming.”

Luna shook her head. “Believe me, Twilight. It does not take very many days of going through laws with a set of hedge trimmers to rid a pony of any jealousy they might have had for my sister.”

Twilight paused. “Wouldn’t pruning shears be the better metaphor?”

“A better metaphor, yes,” Luna conceded. “But too short in practice. A single snip sends a stronger message. Anyway, even if I had been feeling territorial of my judiciary decisions, I should very much like to see how this dragon acts in the presence of one of my sisters.”

Twilight’s eyes widened in realization and she glanced over at the dragon in question who was looking around as if he had just arrived. “That’s a good point. It would be nice if we could get the dragons all to behave just by parading one of them about once in a while.”

“Well, yes, but not enough to want to requisition one from Canterlot on any permanent basis,” Luna reasoned. “Where would it live? Who would feed it? What is the collective noun for a group of Celestias?”

Twilight whapped Luna on the side with her wing, which was an advance maneuver to accomplish while flying. She didn’t accomplish it. It took her a few moments to regain her lost altitude. “Enough of that. They’re still your sister…s.”

“Fair,” Luna allowed. “But on the other hoof, it is not as if I even know their names. It makes letter-writing a fair bit awkward when you don’t even know which one you’re conversing with.”

“Does it matter?” Twilight asked. “I mean, for normal twins, saying so would be rude, but they’re basically the same pony—or they were two weeks ago, anyway. It’ll probably take a while for them to really become different ponies.”

“Hence the need for a collective noun,” Luna pointed out.

“…Okay, you have a point,” Twilight begrudgingly admitted. “But collective nouns don’t even come into play until you have three of something anyway.”

“Is ‘pair’ not one?” Luna countered. “Besides, is it really worse than referring to them as The Celestias?”

“Isn’t it bad enough that they’re saying a group of alicorns is called an oligarchy?” Twilight asked.

“I hadn’t heard that,” Luna said, considering for a moment before declaring, “I like it.”

“Of course you do,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes with great exaggeration and getting distracted looking up into the sky. “Come to think of it, they sure are taking a while. We know Rainbow was there in the blink of an eye, and there’s always at least one of them that isn’t doing anything so why—”

Suddenly, the sky pulsed and two figures appeared, one in a flash of light, the other a flash of fire. Twilight squinted, but fortunately for her and her poor, abused eyes, the Celestias’ manifestations weren’t nearly so problematic as Rainbow Dash’s lightning.

She was just appreciating this fact when Rainbow Dash herself arrived.

“Gah!” Twilight grunted as she was left blinking spots out of her eyes again. “That is the fourth time today,” she grumbled to herself, though if she were being honest, this was a mild one.

“Interesting,” Luna mumbled.

“I’m glad my pain amuses you,” Twilight groused in response.

“Your efforts to entertain are appreciated, but that is not what is interesting,” Luna said. “Look. Our dragon seems not to have even noticed my sisters’ arrival.”

Twilight mumbled something about being told to look, but sure enough the dragon had wandered off to his brothers’ side, looking very lost and clueless. The Celestias had noticed this as well, and flew over to talk before jumping into things.

“This is the so-called murdering beast you wish to maim?” The fiery-maned Celestia asked, chiding and a little dubious.

“He certainly doesn’t look very scary,” the one with the long, flowing rainbow mane pointed out.

Luna puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. With a petulant huff, she declared, “He was not like this five minutes ago. He got very strange after you were mentioned—and not in the way you would expect, either. Twilight! Recite your tale so that I might be vindicated!”

Twilight blinked. “Err, what?”

“Stop staring at my sisters and tell them what happened,” Luna repeated.

“Sorry,” Twilight mumbled. “It’s still just so surreal seeing them… not quite my size, but not much bigger than you are.”

Luna rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, they are still fat even when split by half. The lizard bits are disconcerting, too. Can we get on with the corroborating?”

“We didn’t say that we didn’t believe you,” the fire-maned Celestia tempered. “Rainbow Dash was quite vocal about what happened. Very well, shall we go see what he has to say for himself?”

“…That really isn’t the same thing at all,” Twilight observed as the Celestias flew off.

“Rather the opposite, in fact,” Luna agreed.

“Though, to be fair,” Twilight added. “Your word doesn’t actually mean anything since you weren’t here for any of it.”

“That is not the point,” Luna insisted. “Ah, look. They have his attention.”

Twilight pressed her lips together in slight consternation. “I can’t hear anything, can you?”

Luna shook her head. “I rather expected her to use the Royal Canterlot Voice. The additional power helps greatly in adding definition to the lower tones that larger creatures rely on.”

“What?” the dragon roared, whipping his head around and putting his back to the bodies of his unconscious brothers.

“See?” Luna said, gesturing with her hoof.

“You just like yelling at people,” Twilight countered.

“That too,” Luna agreed with a wry smile.

“You lie!” the dragon snarled, digging its claws into the ground and taking an aggressive posture. “You cannot be them! I feel nothing!”

“Interesting…” Twilight commented.

Luna simply cursed, “Damn!”

“What?” Twilight said, cocking her head slightly in Luna’s direction. “I thought you’d be shouting about vindication about now? It’s not as if anypony here is in any actual danger.”

“No, it’s not that,” Luna said. “I was just hoping she would get his name first.”

Twilight turned further to give Luna a flat look. “You mean you wanted to see if he could get their names.”

Luna blinked. “No, I actually did not even think of that. Double curses, then! It sounded like they did so, if we could only have heard it.”

“Speaking of which, is the rainbow one still talking?” Twilight said, turning back to the ongoing conversation.

“That, at least, hasn’t changed,” Luna commented. “When she gets into her lecturing mood, it can be difficult to get a word in edgewise—oh, look. It seems as if he is going to add another two counts of attempted regicide to his list of crimes.”

Indeed, the longer the Celestia talked, the angrier and angrier the dragon seemed to get until he stomped and raked the ground. “You are a liar and a fraud, and I shall prove it!” he cried out before lunging teeth first at the pair of alicorns.

The Celestias, already in the air, easily moved out of the way and the dragon came crashing towards Twilight and Luna, who, too, rose higher into the air to avoid the dragon’s tail as he whipped around to track his targets.

Locating the pair of shining white alicorns was not a difficult thing to do and the dragon raked the ground again, spreading his wings and preparing for another lunge.

Then he stopped, gave a low growl and turned his head as if he were listening for something. To everyone’s surprise, he seemed to find it, snapping his head in the direction of Fluttershy’s cottage.

Or, more specifically, Fluttershy, who had retreated there with Rainbow Dash when things had gotten violent again.

“You!” the dragon shouted and burst forth, surprising everyone with the direction of his charge. “It’s you!”

“Oh, you did not just say that,” Rainbow Dash said, raising her hackles and preparing to meet the dragon head on.

It turned out to be unnecessary as the dragon just… stopped. Or, well, his legs did. The rest of him came crashing down, peeling the grass up as he slid to a stop in front of the two pegasi.

Baffled, Twilight, Luna and the two Celestias all flew over to see what had happened. As they crested the dragon’s bulk, what they saw was Fluttershy pressed up against her cottage, one foreleg held up in front of herself.

As they all watched, Fluttershy let her hoof relax… and the dragon who they all realized had been clutching his chest took in a great, gasping breath.

“Oh my,” came Fluttershy’s timid voice, louder than expected over the sounds of the wheezing dragon.

— ✶ —

The two alicorns, two lizard-alicorns and two demigoddesses had all arranged themselves around a large fold-out table in Fluttershy’s cottage while one exceptionally compact adult dragon served them tea so the rest could talk about the significantly less compact dragon they had chained up outside.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” the rainbow-maned Celestia began, setting her teacup down on her saucer with the faint tap of porcelain. “Fluttershy was able to save this dragon’s life by… possessing him, essentially. This is something she is capable of in normal situations with her willing animal friends, though in this case it required a great act of will. Upon taking control of the dragon, she was not only able to restart its heart, which was the intention, but as a side effect, also healed his burns, restoring damaged and destroyed flesh with a magically created substitute.

“When she removed herself from the dragon, however, she found that that which her magic had provided, remained a part of her, including large parts of his lungs and the entirety of his heart. This, she chose to keep to herself, not desiring to escalate the situation any further, or, indeed, exercise her leverage over him at all.

“Interestingly, some part of these events seem to have broken him free of the effect drawing dragons to Equestria. It is possible that this happened when Fluttershy mentally dominated him—”

Fluttershy shrank inwards at that.

“—But I believe it was the destruction of his heart. Shortly before Discord died, he showed me… or, I suppose, he showed Celestia his heart, burning with dragonfire. The way he talked about it, it seemed to have some special significance, and I believe it is that part of him that he passed on to us which frightens ponies and attracts dragons.”

“Wait,” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “Attracts dragons? Like, attracts attracts?”

The fiery-maned Celestia frowned. “I am not entirely certain what—”

“No, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight interrupted, annoyed at the tangent. “The dragons have not come to Equestria in an attempt to score with twins.”

“Probably,” Luna added.

Twilight mentally stumbled on Luna’s addition. “Probably?”

“It seemed like the sort of qualification you would add for accuracy’s sake,” she explained. “After all, we cannot know the mind of every dragon. Simply comprehending the hoofful we’ve had to deal with this afternoon has been a practice in futility.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” Twilight whined. “No, I am not going to entertain the idea that the dragons have come to get laid.”

Luna turned Twilight to face her and placed her hooves on her shoulders. “Twilight. Believe me, I realize how repulsive my sisters are and how disturbing it must be to think of your old mentor in that way…”

For some reason, the Celestias both winced, seeming torn between indignance and something else that Twilight couldn’t identify.

“…But if there is anything that I have learned about courting in my many years of life, it is that twins conquer all. Think about it, Twilight. Not too hard, of course, but still. Twins.”

Twilight couldn’t help it. She felt a blush creeping up her cheeks. “That’s mean,” she declared, turning away from the closeness of Luna’s face and back to the table. Seeing all the faces looking back at her, only made her blush further. “You know why that’s mean,” she grumbled, shrinking in on herself.

The rainbow-haired Celestia cleared her throat. “If that is all…?”

Luna opened her mouth to say something, but Twilight preempted her. “Yes, let’s please get back to the matter at hoof,” she said, glancing coolly at Luna. “It’s fun to joke around, but just think about how you must have made poor Fluttershy feel with your lewd suggestions.”

Suddenly everyone was looking at Fluttershy, but all Fluttershy was doing was sharing her confused look with Rainbow Dash. “Uh, care to explain that one, Sparkles?”

“What?” Twilight said, looking around the table. “Am I the only one here who heard the dragon denying that any of us were ‘the one whose power shines from the sky’ until he got to Fluttershy? Ipso facto, if replacing his heart has supplanted that connection, then implying that dragons want to get it on with the Celestias implies the same of this dragon and Fluttershy.”

It took everyone a moment to follow Twilight’s logic to the inevitable conclusion, but when they finally did, she was met with several facehoofs and one very deep blush.

Luna, on the other hoof, was just nodding along. “You do have a point,” she conceded.

“Waitwaitwaitwait,” Rainbow Dash interjected. “Back up a second. That’s not the important thing here.”

Now, Rainbow Dash had everyone’s attention. In an almost identical manner as Luna had earlier, Rainbow Dash placed her hooves on Fluttershy’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes.

“Fluttershy… after everything that’s happened today, the way I thought you were dead… but you came back. I can’t believe I only now realized it.

“Fluttershy… are you twins now?”

Twilight, who had been leaning forward, slipped and banged her head on the table.

“I’m just saying. You control dozens and dozens of animals at once, right? Why not be two ponies at once? That would be so—uhh…” Rainbow Dash suddenly seemed to remember that the rest of the table was present. “…Cool,” she finished lamely. “Um. Yeah. It’d be… cool.”

There was a thump as Fluttershy fell out of her chair, having fainted.

Chapter 15

— ✶ —

Rainbow Dash found everyone looking at her with varying levels of exasperation as she propped Fluttershy’s unconscious body back up in her seat. “What?”

The rainbow-maned Celestia cleared her throat. “Moving on,” she primly said. “I think we have cleared up the chain of circumstances that has brought us here. We have two injured dragons and one violent offender who is inexorably tied to one of his intended victims. The question is, where do we go from here?”

For a moment, no one said anything, so Twilight decided to get one thing out in the open. “Just to be clear, Fluttershy did nothing wrong and shouldn’t be punished.”

“Punished?!” Rainbow Dash squawked. “Why would she be punished?”

“I just said she shouldn’t be, Rainbow,” Twilight rebuked.

“I’m not certain that I understand,” the fiery-maned Celestia said. “Are you saying that you believe she normally would be punished for something, or are you saying that this burden of dominion over a dragon that tried to kill her not once, but twice, is a punishment that she should not be required to bear?”

“The former,” Luna surmised, looking to Twilight for confirmation, which she got. “She did, after all, force her will on another, but the fact that she did so in a medical emergency mitigates almost all of this.”

“Almost?” Twilight asked.

Luna nodded. “I would say that, given the situation and the knowledge she possessed at the time, her actions were entirely justified. Now that we understand the true ramifications of her actions, however, I would not rule the same way a second time.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Twilight guessed, glancing at Fluttershy, who was slumped over onto the table. “I very much doubt that she’s in any way happy with this, which leaves us with the problem as was mentioned, that she should not be required to be this dragon’s jailer.”

“It won’t be a problem,” came Fluttershy’s thin and reedy voice from the figure on the other side of the table, curling her forelegs around her head. “I… I won’t ever do it again.”

“That may be for the best,” the rainbow-maned Celestia said with quiet solemnity. “Though as Twilight said, that leaves us with what to do going forward.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Fluttershy all but whispered.

Luna and the Celestias immediately all glanced in the direction of the window, though there was nothing to see from their angle. Twilight took a little longer to understand that something had happened to remove the dragon from the equation. “Oh, no.”

Suddenly, half the table was in the process of getting up, when Fluttershy said with a wheezy voice that Twilight realized meant she had been crying. “Don’t. Please don’t go outside. I’ll… I’ll clean it up.”

“The hell with that!” Rainbow Dash shouted and shot up out of her seat, only to have Fluttershy grab her by the foreleg.

“No,” Fluttershy insisted, pulling with both hooves on Rainbow Dash’s foreleg, forcing her to sit or risk hurting Fluttershy by losing control of her manifestation. “There are some things you can’t unsee, Dash.”

Rainbow Dash wavered, looking uneasily at the window, but she rallied herself. “Well, you shouldn’t have to, either! Look at you! You’re shaking!”

Fluttershy was shaking… but she was also shaking her head. “It’s not… that,” she said, gesturing outside with her head. “I don’t mind the blood. It’s that he did it because of what I did to him. I put him in a position where he had to decide between his life and his autonomy.”

“You can’t think like that, Shy,” Rainbow Dash insisted. “You wouldn’t be you if you were the kind of pony to just let someone die if you had the ability to stop it.”

Fluttershy turned away. “At least he would have died naturally.”

“By taking a lightning bolt to the face?” Rainbow Dash asked, then corrected herself, “Chest. Heart. Whatever.”

Fluttershy let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, Rainbow Dash. By taking a lightning bolt to the face. There aren’t very many ways to die that I wouldn’t choose over clawing my own heart out… or… not my heart, from his perspective.”

Rainbow Dash gulped, looking a little green as she took yet another glance at the now more ominous seeming window. “Is that… That’s really…?”

A white hoof descended on Rainbow Dash’s shoulder. It was the Rainbow-maned Celestia. “It is best you not ask. It truly is a sight that would not easily leave you.”

Fluttershy looked briefly startled, then she slumped. “That’s right. You can see anything the light touches, can’t you? You’ve seen it, then. I’m sorry.”

The other Celestia, the one with the fiery mane, had to walk behind the others to reach Fluttershy. Mimicking her sister, she placed her hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “There is nothing to apologize for. Believe it or not, I have seen worse.”

“Oh, I know,” Fluttershy said, calming down a little from the contact. “Nature is… nature. Like I said, it isn’t that that bothers me.”

“Be that as it may, there is no need for you to bear this alone, or at all,” she told Fluttershy. “I can deal with it in a much quicker and simpler manner.”

Fluttershy blinked, then flushed in embarrassment. “Oh. Yes, I suppose the other dragons wouldn’t appreciate it if the body was… um… scavenged. Do dragons cremate their dead, then?”

“Ah, no,” Luna admitted. “Not exactly.”

Twilight, for her part, winced. “Do you remember how the second two reacted to the lightning burns on their brother?” she prompted.

Fluttershy’s ears flattened. “Oh. Yes, I do. Um. Is this what you call… sending a message, then?”

“Is that the message we want to send, though?” Twilight asked.

The fiery-maned Celestia shook her head. “Actually, no,” she admitted. “But I believe it would be preferable to the message we would be sending if we returned to them the remains of a dragon who had clawed his own heart out.”

“Ah,” Twilight said, a shiver running down her back at the mention of his fate. “Good point.”

Fluttershy shuffled in her seat before speaking up. “If I can ask… how do dragons deal with their dead?”

It was the fiery-haired Celestia again, who answered. “For the most part, they do not.”

Twilight frowned, and said, “I don’t know if I can believe that. They might not have industry, but they aren’t animals. Even goats and cows honor their dead.”

“There are several factors to remember, Twilight,” Luna said, speaking up. “First, contrary to the events of today, dragons are, in fact, very difficult to kill, and simply do not die very often.

“Second, through not dying, dragons tend to grow very large, and the largest of them eventually become part of the landscape, trading flesh and bone for the rock and earth on which they feed. These ancient dragons sleep for longer and longer until eventually, they go to sleep and do not wake. It is not true death, but for those left behind, there is little distinction.

“It is quite understandable, then, that the practice of letting dragons rest as they died is as much a part of their culture as letting them die as they rest. Of course, it is also not uncommon to bury them or throw them in the nearest volcano, for those where such things are practical, but, again, such cases only rarely arise.”

Fluttershy closed her eyes, let her head drop and said, “I see.”

“Actually,” Spike spoke up from where he was sitting in a chair near the kitchen, holding his own cup of tea. “There, uh, might be another option?”

Luna frowned, clearly attempting to recall anything else she might have heard or seen. Apparently coming up blank, she glanced over at her sisters, but they shook their heads.

“Is this something that one of your harem mentioned, Spike?” Twilight asked, curious. Obviously, information directly from a modern dragon would be the most reliable.

The rainbow-maned Celestia cocked her head. “Spike has a harem?” she interjected.

“I do not have a harem,” he vehemently insisted.

Luna’s lips slipped into a smirk, “You do realize, Spike, that it is more normal for males to claim the existence of a harem and for others to disbelieve it?”

The rainbow-maned Celestia left Rainbow Dash’s side to walk over to him, apparently ignoring his byplay with Luna. “You have my congratulations,” she told him in a formal manner, dipping her head to him in the slightest of bows. As she lifted her head, she looked over him and frowned, commenting. “You are taller than I remember. Candesca? Can you…?”

Twilight’s eyes widened and Luna’s head jerked up at the sound of what had to be a name. As fast as she could, Twilight lit her horn and cast a spell, preventing anypony from making a sound in hopes of the clearly distracted Celestias letting slip the other one.

The fiery-maned Celestia revealed to be named Candesca quickly joined her sister by her side and just as quickly joined her in frowning. “He is,” she confirmed furrowing her brow. “Oh dear.” She looked back to the table of ponies, double-checking something. “Everypony here is immortal. I hadn’t realized… This must be at least a hundred years of growth.”

“At least,” the rainbow-maned Celestia agreed.

“This is bad, Corona,” Candesca said, sounding scared while Luna, with a glow of magic around her hooves, silently shot out of her chair, and celebrated. “Very bad. It would be problematic enough to lose a century, but searching my memories from before our genesis, I can’t think of anywhere the missing years could fit. They’re still working on Twilight’s tower, aren’t they?”

The rainbow-maned Celestia named Corona chewed at her lip. “Well, it is government work?” she suggested. “That probably wasn’t the best idea, in hindsight.”

“Vindication!” Twilight cried, breaking the silence spell and throwing her hooves in the air as everypony else’s muffled snickers and outright laughs suddenly became audible. Immediately, something else occurred to her, and she shouted, “Double vindication!”

Corona and Candesca turned to share a look, then craned their neck back to look at the table of laughing ponies. “Ah,” Candesca said. “I believe we have been had.”

“Double vindication?” Luna queried. “You are referring to your sour grapes about the palace deconstruction on the one hoof, I assume. What, then, is the second factor?”

“Proving that it’s completely normal to see Spike after his molt and assume that a hundred years have passed,” Twilight declared with pride.

Luna considered this for a moment before calling judgement, “Fair enough.”

“Would somepony please explain what is going on?” Candesca asked. “You’re saying that this,” she gestured at Spike, “is the result of a molt?”

“That is the only explanation we have,” Luna agreed. “We believe it has something to do with—”

“—The harem that was mentioned,” Corona concluded for her. “Yes, I can see how that might happen. A uniquely fascinating situation that would unfortunately not be sustainable for dragons as a whole.”

“Unfortunately?” Twilight Sparkle asked, curious. “I don’t recall you—or, um, Celestia?—ever promoting harems, no matter what ponies say about the Royal Guard. In fact, I think Celestia was generally against it.”

“In the general sense, I am,” Corona agreed. “At least, as most would describe it. Similar to responsibility, it is rarely the one who wants it that should have it, especially when such a person mistakes either one as a mandate to impose their own self-interest on others.”

Twilight considered that. “So it’s because he didn’t go looking for it that you approve?”

“Yes,” Corona confirmed. “I would not even say that Spike has a harem.”

“Thank you,” Spike exclaimed.

Corona smiled briefly at Spike. “Rather, it is a… Hmm. I am not certain what the appropriate collective noun for a group of dragons would be, and that is the problem.”

Twilight and Luna both stifled their private chuckles while attempting to maintain looks of polite interest.

Corona raised an eyebrow at their behavior but she continued to speak. “Dragons are largely solitary, but I have always believed that they would be better off with stronger family ties. I would be very interested to see how this… den of dragons develops.”

Spike froze, his previous relief turning brittle. “Uhh…”

Corona, however, was caught up in her thoughts, nodding to herself. “In fact, I believe that I would like to sponsor them in some manner, don’t you think, Candesca?”

Candesca, was not quite as enthused, but seemed to approve after giving it some thought. “Yes. It wouldn’t hurt to have a good example for other dragons to follow.” She scratched at her chin with a cloven hoof.

Spike gave a weak, “But…”

“Of course, I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you or any of the girls you have found yourself with, Spike,” Corona reassured him. “But I would appreciate it if you would at least consider broaching the subject to them? That is, if you think there is any chance that they would be interested.”

Spike grimaced. “I think I can safely say that… Tinder, at least, will be absolutely thrilled.”

“Ah, yes,” Corona said, her ears perking up. “You were going to mention something we might do about the… unpleasantness outside. Is it this ‘Tinder’ who spoke of it?”

“Um, yeah. Tinder,” he said, scratching the back of his neck and mumbling, “Not that I even know the others’ names…”

“We are open to suggestions, though I recommend we not delay too much longer. Corona has cast an illusion for now, but—” Suddenly, Candesca stopped mid-sentence, blinked and cursed, “Oh fie.”

Those words immediately got everyone’s attention. “Has something happened?” Luna asked.

Corona’s eyes went white for a brief moment, but she came back uncertain. “I do not see anything out of the ordinary. Candesca, what—oh.” In one breath, she deflated. “Fie indeed.”

Frustrated, Twilight turned to Fluttershy, but the demigoddess was clearly as clueless as the rest of them.

Ironically, or so it seemed to Twilight, it was Rainbow Dash that clued the rest of them in. “Their names,” she said. “They just realized they’ve been using their names for the last five minutes.”

“Indeed,” Corona confirmed with a bit of a sulk.

“Well, since that has been spoiled, I suppose we ought to do it properly,” Candesca said, standing straighter, though it was Corona who actually took the lead.

“Celestia Corona,” the so-named alicorn with a rainbow-mane announced with a bow.

“Celestia Candesca,” her fiery-maned sister followed.

Luna hmmed and said, “I approve,” before looking to Twilight to see her response. Twilight, however, was looking back at Luna with a certain level of consideration. “What?” Luna asked.

Twilight smirked. “Oh, nothing,” she assured her marefriend. “I’ve just realized that we’ve gone from me being the only alicorn with two names, to you being the only alicorn with just one.”

Luna gave a single breath of laughter. “I suppose that is amusing,” she agreed, though Twilight didn’t let her smirk lessen one bit.

Luna eyed Twilight with some trepidation. “What? Why are you—” suddenly, she stopped, then followed up with a flat, “No. Absolutely not. Twilight, I love you, but I am not taking your second name. You hardly even use it yourself.”

Spike loudly cleared his throat, interrupting their byplay. “So, uh… about the thing?”

Luna took the out gladly while Twilight put on a show of pouting—not that she had been at all serious.

“I guess you could say it came from Tinder…” he said, then hesitated. After a moment of visibly waffling over a decision, he shrugged and clarified, “She… actually has a book about some old dragon empire. Like, old old.”

Twilight’s eyes lit up at hearing that. “She has a book on the dragon empires?! Do you think she would let me borrow it?”

Spike’s immediate reaction of wincing dashed all of Twilight’s hopes. “She’s very… ownership-oriented?” he hedged.

“That is unfortunate,” Celestia Candesca said. “But that is a matter for another time. What is it this book says about the funerary arrangements of the dragon empire?”

“Well, it’s…” he really didn’t seem too fond of the idea himself. “Basically what Fluttershy was going to do? I mean,” he quickly amended, “I don’t know if they let animals do it or anything, but they basically strip it down to the bone and save the… uhh…”

“The skull?” Twilight provided, easily guessing the obvious. “That’s not too different from some of the old pony traditions, actually.”

“Sorry, it sounds really bad actually hearing it out loud,” Spike admitted. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just that Tinder has this way of getting super excited about the weirdest things, so it came up…”

“No, no,” Twilight reassured him. “I think it’s a good idea, actually. It can’t be more insulting than cremation, and it’s less fragile than an urn would be, too. I think we should do it. Anyone else?”

“It sounds reasonable,” Celestia Corona said. “But are we sure that Fluttershy can even do this? Dragons are truly resilient creatures, and their magic lingers even after death. I fear that even a team of bears would have little effect on a dragon this size.”

“I’m sure I could produce some tools that would do the job,” Twilight offered, though she was a little wary. Luna had warned her once about manifesting a weapon out of herself, and this was very similar.

Twilight paused at that thought. Actually, what was the difference between manifesting armor out of stars and manifesting other things out of her magic? Obviously, her stars actually produced magic but—

“Um… I don’t think there will be a problem,” Fluttershy said just as the room went dark and a low rumbling could be heard.

Everyone got up and slowly approached the window.

Everyone but Rainbow Dash, that is.

“Rainbow?” Twilight prompted.

“Nope!” Rainbow Dash said, crossing her arms and hunching down in her seat and maybe a little closer to Fluttershy, ironically. “I have enough nightmares about flesh eating beetles from reading Daring Do and the Scarab Scabbard. I do not need to see the real thing.”

“Rainbow,” Twilight said, exasperated. “We just learned that you are literally the world’s most powerful bug zapper!”

“I don’t care,” Rainbow Dash retorted. “I’m not looking and you can’t make me.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Alright, fine,” she said and joined the others at the window. When she finally got there, she stopped next to Luna and… stared. “Um. Well. Fortunately it’s not flesh-eating beetles?”

“So it’s something worse?” Rainbow Dash asked from her place at the table.

“Ehhh…” Twilight rocked her hoof from side to side. “Kinda?”

Rainbow Dash tried not to, but eventually gave in and had to ask. “Alright, what is it? What could possibly do… that… to a dragon?”

Twilight gulped. “Well, they’re…” she glanced at the others, hoping someone else would say it.

“Fuzzy,” Celestia Corona provided.

“Yellow,” Celestia Candesca added.

“Carnivorous,” Luna pointed out.

Leaving Twilight to finally say, “Parasprites.”

Rainbow Dash’s head hit the table and said, “I shouldn’t have asked,” she said. “I really should not have asked.”

— ✶ —

“This really is a mess,” Twilight groaned, slumped over next to Luna on a couch that smelled like racoons. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were still at the table, while the Celestias remained at the window, impassively watching the tail end of the… clean up.

“We spent so much time dancing around what to do with the… body and its condition… that we never actually addressed what it actually means,” she said, growing more uneasy as it really sank in. “Reduced to the bear essentials—we killed someone today. Someone who wasn’t even a danger to any of us.”

Luna pulled Twilight closer with her wing around Twilight’s back. “You didn’t know that,” Luna reassured her. “And more importantly, neither did he.”

“More importantly?” Twilight asked, slightly incredulous. “If he’d known what his actual chances were, he might not have been so eager to attack us.”

“Yes, but he did attack,” Luna explained. “And he did so violently and repeatedly. The fact that he believed to the end that he outclassed us, and he still did what he did, means that, though a non-violent solution would have been preferable, his death is also not a great loss. In fact, if this is the character and calibre of dragon that the dragon lord is purposefully sending into Equestria to search for his daughter, this might be a more serious problem than we’ve been treating it as.”

Twilight thought about it and realized, “You’re right. It’s only one… but the other two didn’t really act any differently beforehoof. What are we going to do when they wake up and become violent because their brother is dead? We need to make sure this stops here and now.”

“Okay,” Luna said. “How?”

Twilight’s head drooped. “I have no idea. Find the dragon lord’s daughter and return her?” she scoffed. “Even if we knew that to be the right decision, which I have doubts about, that would still leave us full up on dragons anyway. Things could get ugly very quickly.”

Luna reached up and bopped Twilight on the tip of her horn. “Don’t get all fatalist on me now, Twilight, it’s not nearly so bad as you’re thinking. It’s true that we have had some difficulty with the dragons that have come to Equestria, but as the pony whose job it is to mediate disputes and pass laws to prevent them in the future, I can tell you that, if nothing else, they are trying. Even if they were drawn here by my sisters’ magic, they are here because they want to be, and that goes a long way to smoothing things over. Far from being one day from violent unrest, many of them were quite dissatisfied with things back in the dragonlands are looking for a new start here,” she explained.

Twilight sighed, and then chuckled. “Aren’t you supposed to be the old, jaded one?”

“I was,” she admitted, leaning into Twilight’s side, leaving the rest unspoken.

They sat that way for a while, but Twilight inevitably gave in to the urge to plan things out. “I guess, if there’s anything about this situation to take from all that, it’s that we should definitely make sure we have a Celestia on hoof when they wake up, and you probably agree that we should leave the issue with the dragon lord’s daughter be?”

“To the latter, that depends,” Luna demurred. “Most likely, yes, but it would not do to simply assume a situation we know nothing about. It might be that some of those fleeing here have foalnapped her and are holding her hostage in order to prevent the dragon lord from acting against them. We know not her age, her temperament, her ideals or anything about her.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Twilight agreed. “Just because we know her father’s an asshole doesn’t mean she isn’t an asshole too. In fact, it’s likely.”

Across the room, Spike choked on his tea.

Luna weighed Twilight’s words for a moment before saying “Close enough” and following it up with a shrug. “As to having a Celestia on hoof when the dragons awake… actually, I am surprised that they have not yet done so, but dragons have a strange relationship with sleep at the best of times. At this rate, I think it will make more sense to do things the other way around.”

“The other way around?” Twilight asked. “You mean, make sure the Celestias have them around?”

Luna nodded in the affirmative. “Once dusk comes around, you should have little difficulty transporting them to Canterlot. It would be the smart thing to do anyway, as we will all be there anyway for the coronation tomorrow.”

Twilight froze. “Wait, the coronation is tomorrow?!”

Luna was perplexed. “Yes? You are the one who received the invitations, are you not?”

“There is a reason I make checklists!”

— ✶ —

In spite of Twilight’s panic over the date of the coronation having snuck up on her, there wasn’t actually much that she had to do to prepare for it. Or anything, really. All she had to do was be there, though there were a few minor issues of scheduling involved in going with the rest of the girls as a group.

None of this prevented her from panicking about it.

“Twilight, calm down,” Spike said, shaking his head. “You’re just going to Canterlot for a day trip. It isn’t as if you can even get worked up about seeing Princess Celestia since she’s right over there,” he said, pointing at the two white lizard-alicorns by the window. “Both of her.”

“Calm down?” Twilight repeated. “That’s easy for you to say! It’s not like you have five other…” Twilight’s eyes widened as she realized that Spike did have five others to consider.

Spike immediately figured out where her mind was going and he didn’t appear to like it one bit. “Oh, no,” Spike said. “Twilight, no. There’s no need for them to come. They probably wouldn’t be interested.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Spike,” Twilight chided him. “They’re dragons. Of course they’d be interested in the coronation of the ones whose power drew them here.”

“Twilight,” he said, putting his claws together as if he were praying. “I seriously don’t even know their names! This is a terrible idea!”

Twilight reconsidered. Spike’s opinions did usually turn out to be well-reasoned and she hated to push him into anything he didn’t want to do, but… “Spike, think of it this way. How would it look if I didn’t invite them? And I don’t mean to the public. Buck the public. Think of how it’d look to them.”

“I’m pretty sure they’ll understand I don’t have tickets for them for an event taking place a day after I’ve met them,” Spike deadpanned.

“So you’d rather start your relationship with them by lying?” Twilight asked.

Spike crossed his arms and looked down on Twilight, since he could do that now. “That’s low, Twilight. Why are you so invested in this, really?”

“Um… I really want to meet your harem—I mean, your den?” she tried, but her uncertainty ruined it before it even had a chance.

“And the real, real reason?” he asked.

Twilight puffed up her cheeks and pouted. “Fine! The more I worry about your problems, the less time I have to worry about my problems!” she admitted.

“You don’t have any problems!”

Chapter 16

— ∴ —

“My sister is a dress!” Sweetie Belle bemoaned, spread out over the floor of the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ clubhouse, high on the northern slope of sweet apple mountains.

“We know!” came the simultaneous response from the other two crusaders.

“It’s coming up on two weeks, Sweetie,” Apple Bloom said. “You don’t have to keep tellin’ us.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Sweetie Belle whined. “The only thing that happened to Applejack is that she gives lousy hugs now!”

Scootaloo attempted to speak up, but all she got out was a, “But—”

“Do not ask me about Rarity’s hugs!” Sweetie Belle interrupted, making a show of shivering.

“Yeah, well,” Apple Bloom said, leaning back in her simple wooden chair. “Don’t forget whose fault it is that Ah live all the way out here in the middle of nowhere on the top of a mountain now. It’s really nice of Rarity to hire us a pegasus carriage to take us around, but it ain’t exactly what Ah’d call an ideal arrangement.”

The clubhouse drifted into silence for a moment before Scootaloo realized that Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were both looking at her.

“What?” Scootaloo asked, somewhat oblivious. “Don’t look at me. None of my family turned into anything, Rainbow Dash is made of literal rainbows and lightning now and I get to ride around in a pegasus carriage every day just to go to school. I think things are fine!”

“It doesn’t bother you that we’ve gotta use some other pegasus to get around?” Apple Bloom asked.

Scootaloo looked longingly back at her underdeveloped wings for just a moment. “I mean, yeah, I’d rather be able to do it myself, but flying in a carriage is still better than buzzing around on the ground, and I still get to do that when I want anyway.”

Apple Bloom hmmed as she considered that. “Yeah, Ah guess Ah can see your point. There’s still no change?”

Scootaloo gave a scoff and a shrug. “Not that any of the doctors can tell. I’m not some weird hybrid or a changeling or anything they can come up with. My magic is just weak, and it’s not getting better.”

It was Sweetie Belle who had the idea. “I wonder what would happen if you got another star from Princess Twilight?”

Suddenly, it was her turn to be the center of attention while the others blinked at her. “What? Don’t either of you know how Princess Twilight’s friends all became demigoddesses?”

Apple Bloom was completely clueless. “All Applejack said about it was things Ah can’t repeat without getting my mouth washed out with soap.”

Scootaloo wasn’t much better off. “Rainbow Dash said something about starbeasts and werewolves, but she didn’t really explain.”

Sweetie Belle had to spend her one daily facehoof at that. Rarity had insisted that she cut back, stating that it had helped Princess Twilight a great deal, but given who Sweetie Belle’s friends were, she felt it was totally unfair.

Sweetie Belle wanted to explain at length about Harmony, starbeasts and everything she’d heard from Rarity about why they were all immortal now, but decided they’d probably rather she get to the point, so she did.

“Every pony in the world has a star inside of them, and that’s where their magic and cutie mark comes from,” Sweetie Belle explained. “And since Princess Twilight is the alicorn of the stars, when Rarity and the rest all lost the Elements of Harmony and were all… missing something, Princess Twilight replaced that something with a bunch more stars. Like, entire constellations of stars in the form of starbeasts like the Ursa Major that lived in the Everfree Forest before it became the Everfree Lake.”

Short attention spans though they had, neither Apple Bloom nor Scootaloo were stupid, so they seemed to pick up on things almost immediately.

Scootaloo was looking down at her chest, then back at her wings—no, actually she was looking at her bare, blank flank with a serious frown on her face. “But if you’re saying my star is too weak to let me fly… Does that mean that I might not get a cutie mark either?”

Okay, actually even Sweetie Belle hadn’t thought about that and now she felt bad. “I… maybe?”

“Well, that ain’t no good,” Apple Bloom said with a huff. “We’ll just go down to town and get her to fix it.”

“Do you think she can?” Scootaloo asked, buzzing her wings as she got excited, though she failed to lift herself off the floor for more than a second. “Do you think she will?”

“Well, sure,” Apple Bloom said. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“I’m not sure how to tell you this, Apple Bloom, but… it’s us. If there’s a pamphlet welcoming all those new dragons to Ponyville, it probably says not to give the Cutie Mark Crusaders access to bees, power tools or phenomenal cosmic power.”

“Aw, come on,” Apple Bloom said, unconvinced. “It ain’t like we’d be asking for anything much. All we’d want is to trade in Scoots’ bum star for one that works right. Right?”

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle shared a look. “Well…” Scootaloo said, thoughtful.

Sweetie Belle seemed to be of the same mind. “Actually… If a weak star can prevent somepony from getting their cutie mark, couldn’t a stronger star make it easier?”

“Yeah…” Scootaloo said, starting to grin. “Yeah. And after all these years not even being able to fly, why shouldn’t I get an awesome bunch of stars like Rainbow Dash.”

“Because Princess Twilight would say no?” Apple Bloom flatly reminded her. “Y’all just got finished pointing that out, or did’ja forget?”

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle both deflated at that. “Oh. Right,” Sweetie Belle said, lifting her head up off the floor and letting it fall back down with a dull thump.

“Who says we have to ask her, though?” Scootaloo said, perking up. “It’s not like they’re really hers, right?”

“They are literally a part of her,” Sweetie Belle pointed out.

Scootaloo didn’t think that counted. “Yeah, but it’s not like when you’re born your parents have to go to Princess Twilight and ask for a star.”

“That would have been kinda hard to do, seein’ as she only just got it figured out last month,” Apple Bloom said.

“Right!” Scootaloo said, starting to pace as she talked. “It’s like, Princess Celestia—”

“The Princess Celestias,” Sweetie Belle corrected. “Or the princesses Celestia, or…”

“Whatever,” Scootaloo said, huffing at being interrupted, but quickly gaining her steam back. “It’s like, the Princess Celestias technically own all of Equestria or something, but you can still pick a rock up off the ground and call it yours.”

Apple Bloom thought about it for a moment, but Scootaloo wasn’t wrong. “Ah guess?”

“Okay, but how do we actually get three more stars without asking the princess?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Finally getting used to the idea, Apple Bloom spoke up. “Well, Ah heard granny tell a story about how a cowpony once went to the dream world by lassoing the moon.”

“Does that work?” Sweetie Belle asked, dubious.

Scootaloo shrugged and said, “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER STAR WRANGLERS YAAAY!”

— ∴ —

“Are you sure about this?”

“Sure Ah’m sure. If we’re gonna have any chance of wrangling up some stars, we’ve gotta be as high as possible. That means the tallest tree on this here tallest mountain.”

“Why are all of us up here, though?”

“So that you can help pull.”

“I’m not sure…”

“Too late! Here goes.”

Rustle.

Fwip!

Snap!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

Clatter.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Crash!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Whump.

— ∴ —

“Well, that didn’t work,” Sweetie Belle said, rubbing a bruise on her sticky rump as she sat soaking in a large tub with Scootalooo while Apple Bloom stoked the fire. It was a setup they had lots of experience with after they’d been banned from clogging the indoor plumbing up with their tree-sap, and it was doubly necessary now since they didn’t want to have to explain what they were doing out and about at three in the morning during their ‘sleepover.’

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom agreed as she lowered herself into the tub. “Ah guess whoever that story was about must’ve been a real strong cowpony to throw a lasso that far.”

“Because that’s obviously what went wrong,” Sweetie Belle said, blowing a lock of messy hair out of her face.

“Isn’t it?” Scootaloo asked.

Sweetie Belle wanted to make a sarcastic comment, but… “Fine,” she said instead. “Technically, yes, the rope didn’t go far enough.”

“What if we asked a pegasus to do it?” Scootaloo suggested.

Sweetie Belle looked up to the sparkling sky, dubious. “I don’t think they’re close enough that just any pony can go up and take them.”

Apple Bloom followed Sweetie Belle’s gaze, tapping her chin. “Come to think of it, Ah shoulda known it weren’t gonna be that easy.”

“Well, who says we have to ask just any pegasus?” Scootaloo said, bouncing where she sat. “I bet Rainbow Dash could do it!”

“Ah reckon she could,” Apple Bloom agreed. “But Ah ain’t so sure she would, on the same reasoning we ain’t askin’ Princess Twilight.”

“Oh, right,” Scootaloo said, settling down.

“You know…” Sweetie Belle said, thinking back. “The sky isn’t the only place that has stars.”

“Sure, but Ah kinda doubt that’s gonna help us much,” Apple Bloom said while she went about scrubbing herself down. “At least, Ah don’t know how to get a star out of a pony and Ah’d really rather not find out what they’d do to us if Ah did.”

“No, not that, you dolt,” Sweetie Belle shot back. “Do you remember back when there was night leaking out of that sinkhole in the Everfree? And how there are craters in Las Pegasus and Baltimare now? Rarity told me there’s a bunch of stars underground.”

“Well, shoot,” Apple Bloom said. “Ah can dig a lot better than Ah can lasso, and there ain’t even no tree-sap underground!”

“Alright, but even if there are a bunch of stars down there, how do we find them?” Scootaloo asked, wary for several reasons, not the least of which being a dislike for small spaces that was common to pegasi.

“Hey, yeah,” Apple Bloom said, pausing in her scrubbing for a moment. “If there are stars down there, how come ponies aren’t finding them all the time?”

“Don’t they?” Sweetie Belle asked, cocking her head to the side in confusion.

“That seems like the kind of thing Ah’d’ve heard of if it were true,” Apple Bloom said.

Sweetie Belle scrunched up her face trying to remember. “But… aren’t all the well-known gemstones things like ‘The Star of Equindia’ or ‘The Black Star of Beansland?’”

“…Are they?” Apple Bloom asked, looking to Scootaloo for confirmation.

Scootaloo shrugged, only a little more sure than Apple Bloom. “It sounds right?”

Sweetie Belle nodded along with the confirmation. “I’m pretty sure that the stars in the ground are how gemstones grow without earth ponies and rock farms, too, so all we need to do is look for the biggest concentration of gemstones, and we should find some stars!”

“Okay,” Apple Bloom said and then asked, “How are we gonna do that? Because Ah don’t know if you remember, but Cutie Mark Crusaders Gemstone Miners didn’t go too well.”

“Er, w-well…” Sweetie Belle stammered. “Maybe I’ve gotten better with magic since then? I’m sure Rarity’s gem-finding spell will work this time!”

“Well, I suppose I ain’t got any better ideas,” Apple Bloom said and followed it up with a shrug.

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER STAR MINERS YAAAY!”

— ∴ —

Filthy and exhausted, the Cutie Mark Crusaders crawled out of the old abandoned Diamond Dog mines with full saddlebags and great big smiles on their faces.

“Ah can’t believe that actually worked!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, holding in one hoof a round sapphire with a sparkling star. “How do we get the stars out?”

“I don’t know,” Sweetie Belle admitted. “But I’m sure Rarity will!”

“Well, come on then!” Scootaloo shouted, rushing ahead. “Let’s go ask her!”

— ∴ —

Rarity was doubly busy with preparing for the upcoming coronation, but the Cutie Mark Crusaders were able to catch her in her workshop in the Carousel Boutique, so it wasn’t long before she was able to make time for them.

“Oh my,” Rarity said, holding one of the gemstones up to the eye of the lifelike fabric doll wearing the dress that she actually was. “Yes, these are some splendid star sapphires, girls. Very nice indeed. I must say, it is gratifying to hear of one of your little excursions going well for a change, and I’m especially proud of you for getting that spell to work, Sweetie. I know it can’t have been easy.”

All three crusaders were practically vibrating in place. Apple Bloom, as the most composed of the three, was the one to finally ask, “So, how do we get the stars out of them?”

Rarity’s doll looked up from the gem and blinked. “Pardon?”

“We tried just breaking some of the smaller ones open back at the mine,” Scootaloo explained, fishing some broken pieces out of her saddlebags. “But all we got is gem dust. No stars at all.”

The Rarity doll’s ear twitched, and her bifocals slipped askew. The crusaders were all sitting excitedly, leaning forward on the figurative edges of their seats with anticipation as they waited for the answer. It was a while before she removed her bifocals and finally spoke as she busied herself cleaning them. “Girls, I’m not sure how to tell you this…”

— ∴ —

It was a much more subdued trio of girls who found themselves at Sugarcube Corner fifteen minutes later.

“I can’t believe we did all of that for nothing,” Scootaloo said, incredulous.

“Ah can’t believe star sapphires and star rubies ain’t got no stars in ’em,” Apple Bloom grumbled.

Sweetie Belle took a long draw of her milkshake, then said, “I can’t believe we actually managed to get out of there without her asking what we wanted stars for.”

That got Apple Bloom and Scootaloo’s attention, their disgruntled faces turning to dawning horror. “Oh, mare,” Scootaloo said, pushing her milkshake away and sitting back in her seat. “I didn’t even think of that. The whole point was to not have to ask them.”

The small table rattled as Apple Bloom expressed her opinion of that particular instance of boneheadedness quite appropriately. She rested like that for a moment, then drew herself back upright and took a breath to say, “Girls, maybe we should just ask them after all. For Scoots.”

“What?” Scootaloo balked. “No, come on,” she wheedled, looking back and forth between her friends. “There’s gotta be a way where we all end up with awesome stars. There’s gotta.”

Apple Bloom gave Scootaloo a helpless shrug and picked her milkshake back up. “Sorry, Scoots. Ah’m out of ideas. Sweetie?”

“Too busy dying of mortification and dread over here,” Sweetie Belle whimpered. “This isn’t over. She’s gonna know.”

Apple Bloom shared a ‘what can you do?’ look with Scootaloo and moved on. “So, yeah, unless you’ve got an idea…”

“I’ll think of something,” Scootaloo insisted, proceeding to tap her hoof on the ground anxiously as she attempted to do just that.

“At least it ain’t all bad,” Apple Bloom said, trying to look on the bright side. “We did what we set out to, we got paid for them gemstones and we didn’t even get covered in tree-sap. That’s gotta count for something, right?”

“Yeah, but…” Scootaloo sighed. “I just know there’s something we’re missing. It’s just stars. They were all over the place back when Princess Twilight was fighting that other alicorn.”

“Wasn’t that just stardust?” Apple Bloom asked, pretty sure that it was.

“Stardust is still little bits of stars, right?” Scootaloo said. “It shines like stars do, and I don’t mean like those gems did. You can see a speck of stardust in the dark from a long way off.”

“Ah guess,” Apple Bloom conceded. “But that stuff all just drifted off back up to the sky. It’s gone now.”

“Yeah, but it came from Twilight to begin with,” Scootaloo said.

“Oh hay no,” Apple Bloom swore. “No way no how are we gonna try and steal stars right from the source. Ah’d be grounded until Applejack is old and gray.”

“I thought Applejack was immortal?” Scootaloo said, confused. “Doesn’t that mean she’s never going to be old and gray?”

“Exactly,” Apple Bloom exclaimed, throwing up her hooves.

Scootaloo wasn’t going to let it go that easily, though. “Look,” she said, lowering her voice so she wouldn’t be shouting things to all and sundry. “We already decided it wasn’t actually stealing, right?”

“That was before you started talking about actual literal treason,” Apple Bloom hissed through clenched teeth.

“Woah woah woah,” Scootaloo said, holding her hooves up in front of her. “I’m not saying that we should attack her or anything. Doesn’t she do that thing where she turns into stars and back pretty often?”

“Not since the thing with ‘that other alicorn,’” Sweetie Belle said, reentering the conversation. “And her name was Astri. Rarity said that Princess Twilight changed something about how she was manifesting back then, and now she can’t do it during the day.”

“Are you sure about this one?” Apple Bloom asked, wary. “Because we’ve been basin’ a lot on these things ‘Rarity said’ and it ain’t gotten us very far.”

“I swear, there really are stars underground!” Sweetie Belle insisted, crossing her forelegs over her chest and puffing her cheeks out in a pout. “Just… Probably really far underground. They power our dreams.”

“Riiight…” Apple Bloom said, drawing the word out and glancing at Scootaloo to see what her reaction was.

Scootaloo, though, refused to be distracted. “Okay, so maybe waiting until she does her sparkling thing isn’t a great option. What about her mane and tail?”

“Ah don’t think the stars in her mane are actually stars,” Apple Bloom said, doubtful. “No more than the moon in Princess Luna’s mane is the actual moon, anyway.”

“No, I mean… we know that any part of her that’s split off turns back to stardust,” Scootaloo said, getting excited again. “So we just sneak up to her and pluck a few hairs! We keep them in jars so the stardust doesn’t escape, and then we skedaddle!”

Apple Bloom let out a slight groan and took another long sip of her milkshake, just about finishing it off before she could bring herself to respond. “Okay. Well… that’s a plan,” she allowed. “But here’s the thing… do you even know if it’s actually possible to pluck… or cut or do anything at all to her mane?”

Scootaloo looked away. “Uhh, well…”

“That’s what Ah thought,” Apple Bloom said. She turned to Sweetie Belle to get her opinion, but she just mumbled something about bodies of starlight around her straw and clearly wasn’t cooperating.

Apple Bloom didn’t quite understand how, with Sweetie Belle abstaining, she still apparently lost the vote.

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER STAR BANDITS YAAY!”

— ∴ —

Once they were done finishing their milkshakes, the three Cutie Mark Crusaders stepped out of Sugarcube Corner onto the moderately busy streets. It was hard to believe that only a short time ago these streets had been wide open and fairly empty for most of the day. Now, while they were still nowhere close to the packed clutter of cities like Manehattan, the roads had all been re-cobbled with flatter, more regular stones, sidewalks and storm drains had been put in and buildings in every direction were in various states of being remodeled with additional floors. It was amazing, the feats of industry and ingenuity ponies were capable of.

“So, uhh,” Scootaloo said, looking down the street each way. “How do we actually find Princess Twilight, again?”

KRAK-A-THOOM!

Every pony, dragon, griffon and donkey on the street all flinched and recoiled, turning in the direction of that incredible, deafening boom of thunder. Immediately afterward, there was a clattering of hooves and claws as they all hurried off to be anywhere in the opposite direction of whatever that was, leaving the crusaders alone on a quickly emptying street.

“What in tarnation?!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, rubbing at her stinging, ringing ears.

Sweetie Belle was similarly indisposed, but Scootaloo hardly seemed bothered. In fact, she suddenly had that look in her eyes. “You guys!” she shouted excitedly. “I bet that was Rainbow Dash! We should go see—I bet Princess Twilight is even with her!”

“Ah don’t know if you noticed,” Apple Bloom drawled. “But every sensible person on the entire street just went away from the ear splittin’ thunderous crash. Even the griffons. Even the dragons.”

“So?” Scootaloo said, hopping and buzzing her wings. “When has that ever stopped us?”

Apple Bloom looked to Sweetie Belle for support, but she just shrugged. “She has a point, and Princess Twilight probably will be there if she wasn’t already.”

“Sometimes Ah wonder what it must be like to have a quiet life,” Apple Bloom reflected.

“So does everyone else in the city right now.”

— ∴ —

By the time the Cutie Mark Crusaders were able to find the location of the lightning strike, all that was left was a small patch of cracked and melted road and the overwhelming scent of ozone and burnt meat.

“Well, that’s a bust” Apple Bloom said as she circled around the small pitted crater and kicked a loose fragment of rock. “Ah suppose we could ask around, see if they know what happened and where they went if it was Rainbow Dash and Twilight?”

KRAK-BOOM!

The sound was much further off this time and not nearly as much of a danger to anyone’s hearing, but it still made all of the crusaders jump and cringe.

“You know…” Sweetie Belle said. “I’m beginning to think that maybe this isn’t the right time to—”

KRAK-BOOM!

“…So, tomorrow?” Sweetie Belle squeaked.

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo both nodded rapidly. “Tomorrow’s good.”

— ∴ —

‘Tomorrow,’ it turned out, was the day of the Celestias’ coronation. Normally this would be considered a good reason to put off plans for some other day.

Scootaloo, however, thought that this was instead the perfect time to get some of Princess Twilight’s tail hairs.

“Explain this to me again?” Apple Bloom said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She’d had to get up before dawn in order to make sure that she made it down the mountain on her own in time to meet up with the other crusaders and still catch the train to Canterlot.

“Think about it,” Scootaloo urged as she dragged Apple Bloom along to the train station with Sweetie Belle following blearily along behind them. “There’s no way we can get close enough to grab a few hairs on any normal day. We don’t even know where she disappears to at night!”

“Funny how you didn’t think any of that was important yesterday,” Apple Bloom said.

“Today, though?” Scootaloot continued on, ignoring Apple Bloom’s comments. “Today, we know exactly where she’s going to be all day and she’s going to spend a lot of that time in crowds and public places.”

While Scootaloo was extolling the virtues of her brilliant plan, however, Sweetie Belle was appreciating someone else’s ‘virtues.’

“Woah,” she blankly remarked, stopping in place where she stood in order to get a better look at… “Wait, is that Spike?”

Both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo looked to see what had caught Sweetie Belle’s attention.

“No?” Apple Bloom said. “That dragon’s way too tall to be Spike.”

“Really?” Sweetie Belle challenged, quickly backing off and dragging the other two behind a trash bin. “Then why is he talking to Princess Twilight and introducing all those other dragons to her?”

“Ah still don’t think it is,” Apple Bloom said, lowering her voice. “Why would Spike be introducing a buncha dragons to Princess Twilight? It’s not like he knows any other dragons, right?”

Scootaloo agreed. “Yeah, that dragon is way too cool to be Spike. Can you imagine Spike having all those girl dragons with him?”

Soon enough, though, the dragons and the ponies all turned to enter the train together and the Cutie Mark Crusaders got a good look at their faces.

“Told you,” Sweetie Belle crowed.

“Forget about Spike.” Scootaloo pointed in the direction the group of dragons and ponies were going. “We need to get on that train!”

It was a bit of a hustle, but with the money they’d gotten for the gems they’d dug up yesterday they were able to buy some tickets and make it onto the train with all the other ponies, dragons and others heading to Canterlot to see the coronation.

Scootaloo had been right about one thing. There were definitely crowds, but Twilight’s large group of ponies and dragons was not among them.

“Well, they didn’t just disappear,” Apple Bloom insisted. “They must’ve gone to one of the other cars.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Scootaloo said, pushing her way through the crowded aisle in the middle of the car. “Let’s go find them.”

Fortunately, finding them turned out to be fairly easy. They weren’t even ensconced away in a private car or anything, just a run-of-the-mill open passenger car with sets of alternating front and back-facing seats going down each side.

“So, uhh, Scoots?” Apple Bloom whispered as the three of them hid at the front of the car. “Exactly how are we supposed to get close enough to snag some hairs offa that there alicorn? ’Cause it seems to me that there’s an awful lot of ponies and dragons over there who know us and we ain’t supposed to be here.”

“Technically, we’re not not supposed to be here,” Sweetie Belle piped in, in a better mood than she was after their failed attempt to mine stars the day before.

“You really don’t think anypony is gonna have anything to say about us just hoppin’ a train to Canterlot?” Apple Bloom asked.

“We literally left town to dig around in an old abandoned diamond dog mine just yesterday and got praised for it,” Sweetie Belle reminded her rather flatly. “I doubt leaving town to go to another town for a ‘once in a lifetime educational experience’ is really that big of a deal.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Scootaloo said, ending the discussion as she took another peek at the ponies and dragons filling the train car. “Either way, Apple Bloom is right. We still don’t want to be seen.”

“Alright, so what’s the plan?” Apple Bloom asked.

Scootaloo puffed herself up to respond, but nothing came to her. “I have no idea.”

“Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom hissed in annoyance.

“Quiet!” Scootaloo hissed back. “Just—um—give me a second. I’ll think of something.”

“Uh, Scoots?” Sweetie Belle said.

Scootaloo turned around and said, “I said I’d think of something!” before she realized that they weren’t alone. There was a large uniformed stallion standing over the three hiding fillies.

“Tickets?” the conductor asked, raising an eyebrow at the three.

“I—uhh—we… left them in our luggage?” Scootaloo stuttered, trying to come up with some excuse.

Apple Bloom whapped her upside the head. “We have tickets, Scoots,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Here you go, sir,” Sweetie Belle said, levitating the three tickets up to the stallion with her mint-green colored magic.

The stallion looked the tickets over, nodding as he did so, then frowning.

“Everything seems to be in order,” he declared in a kinder tone, much to the relief of all three fillies which was immediately stifled by his next statement, “Except for one thing.”

The crusaders all gulped.

“These are first class tickets,” he noted.

The girls didn’t see what the problem was. “Yeeeees?” Sweetie Belle said, drawing the word out in question. She knew that since she had been the one to buy them, after all.

The conductor handed the girls back their tickets and said, “First class is towards the front of the train. You’ll want to hurry before you miss the meal you paid for. Come on, I’ll help you get situated.”

— ∴ —

First class, it turned out, were fairly spacious booth-style rooms with plush seats and a minibar that had had the alcohol removed and replaced with soft drinks.

Sweetie Belle was enjoying a delicate prench omelette with cheese and mushrooms, topped with chives on her own fairly robust fold-down table. “This is nice,” she said, sitting back and taking a sip of ginger ale.

“Yeah, it is,” Scootaloo agreed, appreciating her own fruit salad and oatmeal, which rattled as she banged her hooves on her table. “But Princess Twilight is on the entire other end of the train from here!”

“Sure,” Apple Bloom said. “But on the other hoof, Ah got hashbrown waffles, so Ah’m fine.”

“You have hashbrown waffles of failure,” Scootaloo shot back and took a bite of oatmeal.

It was fairly difficult to angrily chew oatmeal, she found.

“Nah,” Apple Bloom said through a mouthful of hashbrowns that she was thoroughly enjoying. “These’re definitely a success.”

Chapter 17

— ∴ —

Scootaloo was bored within the first ten minutes of the train ride. The food was good and the seats were comfy, but that wasn’t enough to occupy her. “So…” she began, trying to prompt herself into coming up with something to talk about. “…What would you do if you had a bunch of stars like all of Princess Twilight’s friends?”

Apple Bloom sat back and gave it a thought. “If Ah could do everything Applejack can do? Well, Ah’d… probably wanna move the house back near Ponyville, ’cept Ah don’t think she’d take too kindly to that.”

Sweetie Belle didn’t have a much better answer. “Well, I wouldn’t be a dress, at least,” she grumbled.”

“What about you, Scoots?” Apple Bloom asked, fully expecting a rant about flying and Rainbow Dash.

She wasn’t disappointed. “What wouldn’t I do?” Scootaloo beamed, recovering some of the excitement that recent setbacks had lost her. “First, I would go up as high as I could go and fly for, I dunno, a week straight. Then, I’d go find Rainbow Dash and we’d race each other for another week…”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle listened to all the things that Scootaloo wanted to do, including but not limited to flying, air soccer, flying, going to see Cloudsdale and also a great deal more flying. That, at least, put a smile on their faces, and Sweetie Belle couldn’t help but giggle at some of the crazier suggestions.

When Scootaloo finally wound down, however, she thought for a while and added one last thing. “And… I’d go up into the sky and grab some more stars to give to other ponies who can’t fly or cast magic or use their hooves because they’ve got weak stars, I guess.”

The sudden somber mood that statement brought hit hard, but it made Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle really think about it.

“That’s… huh,” Apple Bloom said, just thinking aloud. “We could do that, couldn’t we?”

Sweetie Belle wasn’t so sure. “I dunno. You’d have to be really sure somepony was a good person before you go giving them stars, or anything they do becomes your fault.”

Apple Bloom nodded along. “Ah guess that’s why Princess Twilight ain’t doing it any more than she already has.”

“It’s not like I’m saying I’d want to go around making ponies as powerful as Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo argued. “Just give them regular stars like everypony else already has. Nopony can complain about that.”

“Ah can agree to that,” Apple Bloom said. “It’d be worth doing.”

Sweetie Belle considered it a little longer. “If how powerful a star is really decides how easy it is to get a cutie mark… I guess we could help a lot of ponies.”

“Alright, enough about that,” Apple Bloom said. “You said what you’d do, Scoots, but no matter how much you like Rainbow Dash, you wouldn’t be made of rainbows and lightning like she is, so what would you be instead?”

Sweetie Belle opened her mouth, but Apple Bloom interrupted her. “Ah’m assuming ‘not a dress’ is our baseline.”

Sweetie Belle no longer had anything to say.

— ∴ —

By the time the train had finally rolled into Canterlot, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had all but forgotten why they were there in the first place, so when Scootaloo finally remembered that she was supposed to be stalking a princess, it resulted in a mad dash to the exit to be sure that she didn’t miss her chance.

Fortunately for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Twilight and her friends were still on the platform when they disembarked, so at least they hadn’t lost them.

Unfortunately for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Twilight and her friends were still on the platform when they disembarked, so they had to do some quick thinking to stay out of sight.

The crusaders were waiting in hiding when Scootaloo realized two things. One, the crowd on the platform was beginning to disperse as ponies moved on, and two, even if they weren’t, they all seemed to be giving Twilight, Luna, their demigoddesses and the dragons a wide berth for reasons that were obvious in hindsight.

Needless to say, sneaking up on a group of thirteen important ponies and dragons, who were just now acquiring a royal guard escort as they watched, was maybe… not going to happen.

“Hoo boy…” Apple Bloom remarked. “Do you reckon we oughta just get back on the train now and save ourselves the trouble of getting caught?”

“Nope, not a chance,” Scootaloo said, still determined. “Sweetie Belle already said it isn’t like we’d get in trouble for coming here on our own.”

It was only when Twilight and company were far enough away for the crusaders to follow them, that it became clear that the platform had emptied rather more quickly and completely than seemed entirely normal.

“Um…” Sweetie Belle said. “Does anything about the city seem… off, to either of you?”

“Ah know what you mean,” Apple Bloom agreed as the three of them crept along behind Twilight’s group staying out of sight in alleys and doorways. “How come there ain’t nopony else going this way?”

Scootaloo was dashing forward ahead of the other two, about to duck into the next alley when Apple Bloom’s statement proved patently wrong as someone stepped out in front of her.

Someone bigger than all the rest of the passengers from the train combined.

The girls all froze as they looked up… and up and up at the massive dragon walking down third avenue… and they kept looking up even as the dragon passed, because the roofs of the buildings were all covered in dragons, some of them crawling along, but many just lined up silhouetted against the blue sky.

“That… is a lot of dragons,” Sweetie Belle squeaked.

Apple Bloom whistled. “You ever notice how quiet like dragons actually are for being giant walls of muscles and teeth?”

— ∴ —

Distracted by the dragons that were practically infesting the city, the Cutie Mark Crusaders very nearly lost track of Twilight and her friends. Well, ‘nearly’ wasn’t quite the right word for it. When the Cutie Mark Crusaders were finally able to look away from the rooftops covered in dragons, Twilight and the rest had been gone, but as it turned out, the road to Canterlot Castle was not exactly labyrinthine in complexity.

Not that this helped the Cutie Mark Crusaders any as they watched their target walk through the large golden gates to the castle and beyond their reach.

Apple Bloom was growing tired of sneaking around. “So… are we breakin’ into the castle now?”

“Is it really breaking in if everyone is doing it?” Sweetie Belle asked, pointing down the way where several merely large dragons were crawling over the outer wall.

“Yes,” Apple Bloom said. “More people doing illegal things doesn’t somehow make them not illegal.”

“But nopony is even stopping them,” Sweetie Belle pointed out, and sure enough, though there were almost no guards present, almost none was still some guards and they were all just standing at their posts trying very hard to pretend there were no dragons in Canterlot. “And there’s a public event going on, isn’t there? Are we sure we’re not allowed to break into the palace?”

Scootaloo abruptly straightened and glanced back the way they’d come. “Girls, quick! Hide!” she whispered crossing the road opposite the entrance to the castle to hide behind a bush.

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle immediately jumped to follow Scootaloo in hiding, then peeked back out to see what it was they were hiding from.

“What’s the big deal?” Apple Bloom asked, scratching her head. “Everypony already went inside. Even if there’s someone coming, it’s not like they’re gonna know us.”

It was sweetie Belle who pointed out the pink dragon dragging a luggage cart behind herself and looking a little disgruntled. “That’s Cinders, Rarity’s new assistant.”

“Spike’s replacement, you mean?” Apple Bloom asked.

“I wouldn’t say it quite like that…” Sweetie Belle prevaricated, then shrugged. “But yes, it’s exactly like that.”

“Yeah, but you did see how he looks now and the dragonesses he had with him, right?” Scootaloo said. “I don’t think he minds much.”

“Yes, Scootaloo, we saw,” Apple Bloom said, rolling her eyes. “We’ve only been starin’ at their tails for the last fifteen minutes following them.”

Sweetie Belle shushed the other two as Cinders got closer and the three of them got ready. None of them even had to ask what the plan was. As soon as the luggage cart had passed, they all zipped out and hopped on, hiding amongst Rarity’s many suitcases.

Under any kind of normal circumstances, this would be the most nerve-wracking part of the day, but they’d already almost been stepped on by dragons and the guards at the castle gate gave no more attention to Cinders or her cargo than they did any of the other dragons taking liberties with the castle security.

“Do y’all get the feeling that we probably coulda just walked right in?” Apple Bloom whispered as the cart was wheeled inside.

The others didn’t answer until they found an opportune moment to jump off the cart and hide, their hoofsteps muted by the soft red velvet rug running down the center of the hall.

“Isn’t that what I said earlier?” Sweetie Belle finally responded.

“You two wanted to break in,” Apple Bloom countered with a huff. “Totally different thing.”

“Forget about that,” Scootaloo said, interrupting before an argument could get started. “We’re inside and that’s all that matters.”

“Right,” Apple Bloom agreed. “So…”

“Where do we go?” Sweetie Belle finished.

— ∴ —

“Do you think that maybe we should’ve followed Cinders?” Apple Bloom asked after a few minutes of wandering around and avoiding everypony they came across.

“Why?” Scootaloo asked. “It’s not like she saw where everypony went.”

“Yeah, but she probably asked the first pony she came across where Rarity was,” Apple Bloom explained. “On account of having her stuff.”

“Oh,” Scootaloo said, seeing the logic in that. “Good point.”

They were heading down another empty corridor when they heard a pair of voices coming their way and hid, this time behind a plinth with a decorative helmet on it.

“Oh, I do hope they don’t mind us stepping out,” came the unmistakable voice of Rarity. “It is such a dreadful issue, and I am so glad that we don’t have such problems with the dragons in Ponyville. As they say, though, ‘the show must go on,’ and we must trust that it shall do so… or at least ensure that our customers are well-dressed in their disappointment.”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders waited, listening to Rarity narrate her life to Cinders as they passed by until, eventually, the sound of her voice faded enough for them to relax the breath they were all collectively holding.

Still doing their best to remain quiet, the three of them crawled out from behind the plinth only to run straight into Pinkie Pie with an “oomph” from all three of them as they tripped over each other and came crashing to the ground in a heap.

Scootaloo was the first to recover. “Oh, uhh, hey, Pinkie Pie,” she said with a fake smile as she rubbed a bump on the back of her head. “It’s… nice to see you here?”

Pinkie Pie gasped. “The cutie mark crusaders! Of course! I knew I felt an itchy two-hundred-and-seventeenth vertebrae!”

“Uhh.” Apple Bloom leaned closer to the others and whispered, “Sweetie, ponies don’t have two hundred and seventeen vertebrae, right?”

Sweetie Belle shook her head

“Yeah, but—” Scootaloo gestured at the pink pony. “It would explain a whole lot, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, come on, girls!” Pinkie Pie shouted from down the hall. “My Pinkie Sense™ tells me that you’re going to love this!”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders all hesitated. It was Apple Bloom that broke first. “If she says we’re gonna enjoy it, we might as well listen to her.”

Sweetie Belle followed soon after, saying, “If we show up with Pinkie Pie, not even Rarity will say anything.”

Scootaloo followed along just to keep from being left behind. “Fine,” she grumbled. “It’s not like we can find Twilight anyway.”

— ∴ —

Pinkie Pie led the crusaders to an area behind the throne room and closer to the residential wings of the castle. The crusaders weren’t sure that they were all supposed to be allowed there, but the guards that they came across all seemed to give Pinkie Pie a wide berth, which was only sensible.

Everything became clear when Pinkie Pie finally pronked them down a discreet passage that took them to the castle kitchens, which, though hidden away, were actually just as nice as the rest of the castle. They were wide, airy and got plenty of sunlight through the arched clerestory windows high up on the walls.

What also surprised the crusaders was just how busy the kitchens actually were. Throughout their entire, short time in Canterlot Castle, it had seemed all but deserted.

The kitchens, in contrast, were practically desserted. The kitchens had been equipped with enough space to prepare food enough for entire banquets and yet it seemed as if every flat space that wasn’t in use for cooking was filled with every dessert imaginable or the ponies who had prepared them.

It was no wonder that the castle seemed empty of anypony if they were all down here. It wasn’t even just the culinary staff that was packed into the room either. maids, guards and even what looked like some of the fancily-dressed guests seemed to have all come here either to help or just hide from the infestation of dragons.

Oddly, many of these ponies seemed to be quite comfortable in the kitchen, indicating that this might not be their first time bunkering down while waiting for their problems to go away.

“Isn’t it great?” Pinkie Pie said bouncing around the room checking on all the different things that had been and were being made. “The Princesses Celestia put me in charge of all the preparations for the parties today and wowzers, they are gonna be special!”

“Parties?” Apple Bloom asked, looking around the kitchen again and noting that, while the room was filled mostly with desserts, there were, in fact, several different divisions of styles present and even some small amounts of the regular sort of appetisers that were usually found in high-class events, at least as far as Apple Bloom knew. “As in, plural?”

“Yuppers!” Pinkie Pie beamed back. “This isn’t even all of it,” she said, hopping over to a pair of wide double doors on the other side of the room and opening them. “I’ve got at least another six kitchens in the back!”

The crusaders all winced as the sight through the doors did something weird to their eyes. It took a bit for them to focus, and Scootaloo was the first one to see what seemed to be another exact duplicate of the kitchen they were already in, complete with its own Pinkie Pie holding the door open to another kitchen… and another and another and another

Fortunately for the ongoing sanity of the crusaders as well as that of the rest of the world, there remained only one set of Cutie Mark Crusaders, who remained in the first kitchen and adamantly insisted that they remain that way. Sweetie Belle, who took the longest to get a handle on the weird space where the extra kitchens were, was the sole dissenter in this, as, when she did finally overcome her disorientation she ceased having any problems with it at all. Staring into the space beyond, she instantly expressed her desire to go explore it only to be shot down by Apple Bloom and Scootaloo in a hurry… though the other crusaders were admittedly curious about the giant banana cream pie that was being prepared several kitchens down.

“What are all these parties that you’re preparing for?” Apple Bloom asked, shutting her eyes and stumbling forward to close the door to the other kitchens.

“And that giant pie!” Sweetie Belle added, giving the door a hungry look even though it had been shut. It wasn’t entirely clear if she was hungry for pie or adventure, though given the great piles of sweets filling the room they were already in, Apple Bloom didn’t think it was likely that it was about the pie.

“I can’t tell you that, silly fillies!” Pinkie Pie chided them. “It would ruin the surprise! The pie is for a special guest, though!”

“Uhh, Pinkie?” Apple Bloom said, getting the distractible mare’s attention. “Do the Celestias know about any of these ‘surprises’?”

“Nope!” Pinkie Pie said, confirming Apple Bloom’s fears. Just as Pinkie Pie was popping the ‘p’ of her statement, the entire castle shook, knocking down delicately stacked piles of pastries, scones and other such things everywhere in the kitchen, though thanks to Pinkie Pie and the panicked flailing of the staff, none of it reached the floor.

“Whoopsie!” Pinkie Pie said, quickly piling pastries faster than the crusaders could count. Bouncing over to the door to the other kitchens, she said, “That’s him now!” and was gone, leaving the Cutie Mark Crusaders standing in a room full of desserts and nothing to do.

Sweetie Bell waited a moment, then proceeded to grab a tart with her magic. When nopony said anything, the other two followed suit.

“So, we gonna go see what that was?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Yep.”

— ∴ —

The Cutie Mark Crusaders had all finished their respective pastries in a few bites before they were quickly off, retracing their steps back in the direction they’d come and towards what seemed to be the west side of the castle where the commotion seemed to be.

As the three were running, though, something seemed strange to Sweetie Belle and she slowed down, gaining the ire of the other two.

“Sweetie!” Apple Bloom shouted from further down, once she realized that Sweetie Belle had stopped. “Come on! We’re almost there!”

“Girls, hold on a second and look outside!” Sweetie Belle pleaded, pointing out one of the castle’s tall windows.

As before, the buildings outside were covered with dragons as far as the eye could see, but out beyond and above that sight was the usual blue sky with its more recent additions of a rainbow ring, invisible not-a-sun and… stars?

Before either of the other crusaders could comment, they all stumbled as the ground seemed to jump out from underneath them for just a moment. Half a second later, the windows were blown open by a shockwave that knocked all of them off their hooves, though they remained impressively intact.

Somepony had really cut corners on Princess Twilight’s tower back in Ponyville.

Once the crusaders had recovered, they all ran over to the open window to see what had happened.

“No way,” Scootaloo exclaimed, her eyes wide.

Out on the castle grounds surrounded by a bunch of irate dragons who were also just getting back up, was a small crater.

And from that crater was shining the unmistakable light of a star.

“I’m gonna go get it,” Scootaloo said, staring breathlessly at what could be the thing that would allow her to fly.

The churning mass of dragons that were in between Scootaloo and the star disagreed, and so did Apple Bloom. “Do you really think that now is the best time for that?” she asked.

“Doesn't matter,” Scootaloo said, buzzing her wings as she lifted herself over the windowsill with her hooves. “Now is the only time!”

Leaping from the windowsill, Scootaloo hit the ground running as she focused on the light in the distance shining out between the mass of scaled bodies. The area immediately outside of the windows was walled in on three sides by wings of the castle, the enclosed area providing only a short amount of clear space between the building and the crowd of dragons before she was in the thick of it, dodging and swerving around the claws and legs of confused and panicking dragons, her speed and size the only things she had going for her.

It was only when she was finally nearing her goal that she realized that there was a particularly large and mean looking dragon between her and it, though it was looking the other way.

Preparing herself, she buzzed her wings and leapt onto its back running up and—it instantly twisted out from under her, nearly taking her head off as it snapped its jaws at the thing that had crawled up on its back, not even realizing that it was a pony.

Scootaloo hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of her lungs, but she forced herself up and kept running, not wanting to find out if the dragon would take another go at her.

Panting more from stress and adrenaline than exertion, Scootaloo finally neared the star, noticing that the dragons were actually shying away from it and the power that it was radiating. Scootaloo dove into the unexpected gap with no small amount of relief, hoping that whatever it was that was keeping the dragons back, that she would at least be able to withstand it long enough to get the star someplace safe. She had no time to pat herself on the back as the cold starlight washed over her to little effect, though, and she wasted no time in swooping down in her almost-flight to snatch up the hoof-sized celestial object.

She was just turning around to run back when she spotted another star shining through the chaos not too far away and she realized that of course there were more of them. Picturing a future where she would get stars for all of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, she barely hesitated at all as she changed her course and headed to the second star with the first one under her wing.

She was halfway there when it became clear that the dragons’ panic was not being made better by the star that she was carrying, and it was two gallops beyond that when she was struck in the side by the tail of one such dragon who was, ironically, turning and running away from the starlight.

Unfortunately for Scootaloo, the lack of any hostile intent on the part of the dragon had little to do with the outcome and she heard a crack as the very star that she had under her wing was pressed violently into her side, sending her flying.

She tumbled in the grass, crying out in pain and despair as the ground jolted her injuries and knocked the star from her grasp. She braced herself, then, for the expected trampling that would come from being prone in the middle of a dragon stampede, but it never came. Opening her eyes, she counted her lucky—hah—stars that the one that she was carrying hadn’t gone far and the dragons were still avoiding it.

Wincing at the pain in her side, Scootaloo crawled closer to the star and set her hooves on it again. She tried to tuck it back under her wing, but the pain that shot through her side when she tried precluded that option, so she switched it to the other side, which was bearable.

Wheezing and out of breath now, Scootaloo staggered and stumbled her way to the second star and picked it up.

Two.

She had two, now.

To her right, significantly further out and past any shelter of the nearby castle, there was another star in the morass of dragons.

To her left were more dragons, but also her friends and relative safety.

But she had two stars now and the dragons wouldn’t want to come near her.

But she had two stars now, and the dragons wouldn’t appreciate her running around carrying them.

And she had two stars now, one under her good wing, the other that she could carry in her mouth and no good way to carry a third.

She wasn’t stupid, she turned, not to the third star and not to her friends, but off at a slight angle to where the nearest part of the castle with an open window was.

It was excruciating, crawling up through the window with her injured side and injured pride, and when she finally flopped down onto the cold marble floor next to her two stars—only two—she just sat there for a moment and breathed.

Not long later, she heard the shouting voices coming up the hall outside of the room she found herself in.

“…aloo? Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom was shouting, opening the door to each room along the way and looking for her.

At least that made her smile.

She decided, then, what she would do and didn’t notice the small flash of light from behind, drowned out as it was by the light of the two stars on the floor next to her.

Moments later, the door crashed open revealing a panicky and distraught Apple Bloom. “She’s in here!” Apple Bloom shouted back to Sweetie Belle.

Coming in behind Apple Bloom in a rush, Sweetie Belle stopped to cover her mouth with her hooves in shock. “Oh my gosh!” she said and ran over to Scootaloo’s side. “Are you alright?”

Scootaloo smiled weakly and said “I’m fine” before pushing one star each over to her two friends. “I couldn’t get three, so… here.”

Apple Bloom whapped Scootaloo upside the head where she fortunately hadn’t been injured.

“You think we care about that?” Apple Bloom reprimanded as she went around to Scootaloo’s side and lifted her wing as gently as she could. Even so, Scootaloo hissed in pain at the movement. Apple Bloom grimaced and said, “That’s gonna leave a mark… though Ah guess you could say it already has.”

Sweetie Belle looked up from where she was studying the two stars and gasped. “Scootaloo! You got your cutie mark!”

“What?” Scootaloo said, shocked. She twisted around to look at her flank as she had many times before, but this time a sharp pain shot through her side.

Oh, and she had a cutie mark. It was a star with an arc intersecting it. At first glance, it could be mistaken for a shooting star, but on a closer look, there was also a dotted outline of the star at the midpoint of the arc.

“But… that doesn’t make any sense,” Scootaloo said. “I didn’t even get a star for myself. I failed.”

“Do Ah have to swat you upside the head again?” Apple Bloom threatened, then declared, “Failures don’t get star-stealin’ cutie marks.”

They all spent a moment just looking at it.

“…Do you think that there might be some repercussions to having a cutie mark for stealing things from a literal goddess?” Sweetie Belle asked at length.

They all thought about it for a second and shared a few looks.

“Nah,” Apple Bloom said, shrugging.

“Anyway,” Scootaloo said, moving on. She looked over at the two stars over where Sweetie Belle was and pushed Apple Bloom back over to them. “Even more reason for you to have them, then.”

Apple Bloom stumbled at Scootaloo’s push, but she went over to them just the same. “Or,” she said, giving them a cursory look, but she didn’t see why it wouldn’t work. Guided by her magic, Apple Bloom reared up and brought her forehooves down on both of the stars, breaking a piece off of each. She then took the two smaller pieces, picked them up and smashed them together. Several times. It took some effort, but in the end she had a third, somewhat misshapen star. Holding it up, there was a second flash of light in the room as she declared, “We could just share.”

Apple Bloom’s cutie mark was another picture of a star very similar to Scootaloo’s, only on hers, the arc intersecting the star was the swing of a hammer, with an anvil below it.

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo spent a minute oohing and ahhing over Apple Bloom’s new cutie mark, but soon their attention was drawn to Sweetie Belle, who was now the only one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders without a cutie mark.

Sweetie Belle, though, remained concerned only with the now three stars and said, “Don’t worry, I got this.”

Sticking out her tongue as she concentrated, Sweetie Bell lit her horn, lifting the stars up into the air. She then did… something… and a flash of light blinded them.

When the light was gone, so were the stars, but none of them could mistake where the stars had gone. Apple Bloom took a moment to get back to her hooves. “Ah felt that,” she said, rubbing her hoof on her chest. “Boy did Ah feel that.”

Sweetie Belle’s cutie mark was, predictably, a star the same as the other two, this time overlaying a burst of magic.

Overcome with emotion, Scootaloo grabbed Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and pulled them into a group hug, crying. “We did it. We finally did it.”

At some unseen signal, all three of them took a breath and yelled, one last time, “CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS—”

They were interrupted by an irritated Rarity clearing her throat at the door.

“…BUSTED,” the girls all finished in unison, sagging.

— ⁂ —

The crusaders—or were they ex-crusaders now?—all followed after Rarity and her prosthetic doll in silence. Not a word had been said by either party the entire time, and they were getting the feeling that they might be in real trouble this time.

Still, what was done was done, right? It wasn’t as if they could take their stars and cutie marks away.

Except Princess Twilight one hundred percent could take their stars and cutie marks away.

But she wouldn’t do that, right? Princess Twilight was a good princess.

…Well, she was an okay princess, anyway.

Rarity stopped at a set of heavy golden doors that was much like any other in the castle. “Well, girls,” she said, prim and stern. “I hope that you’re all prepared to get what you deserve.”

Afraid of what might be behind the door though they may have been, the Cutie Mark Crusaders all drew themselves up, standing tall and proud to meet the consequences of what they’d done as Rarity opened the doors.

Front and center was Princess Twilight Sparkle and next to her, Princess Luna and all of her friends, including a Pinkie Pie that was practically glowing amongst a large portion of very familiar looking party preparations.

Uncertain, the three fillies stepped into the room and several pops heralded an eruption of confetti.

A banner unfurled, reading:

Happy Cuteceñera

Cutie Mark Crusaders!

Chapter 18

— ✒ —

Never before in his life had Spike looked at the now-ex-library with such trepidation.

No, not even that time, with the cutie-mark crusaders and the potato salad.

Hesitating at the door, he found himself wondering what would happen if he just… left the library to them and found someplace else to sleep.

Twilight would understand, right?

No, not really. Not after the Celestias had declared their support for his den, as if the sitcom that was his life was something to celebrate and replicate.

And speaking of Twilight Sparkle… “You’re still here, Twilight,” he pointed out to the alicorn that was virtually vibrating in place behind him.

“Well, of course I am!” she beamed with excessive cheer. “You’re going to introduce me to your harem, aren’t you? Better now than tomorrow when we’re all hustling through the crowds to get to the coronation.”

Spike buried his face in his hands. “Twilight,” he groaned in put-upon aggravation. “I can’t introduce them to you because I don’t know their names! I know you want to ‘be supportive,’ but give me a chance to actually meet them.”

Twilight’s ears flattened and looked away, deflated. “…Oh.”

He immediately felt bad for snapping at her, but at the same time, he was really fed up with it all. “I’m serious, Twilight. It’s awkward enough that I don’t know any of these dragons I’m apparently living with. I don’t need you hovering while I’m trying to figure things out.”

“No, no,” she said, backing off. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be butting in. I just… sorry.” She shuffled in place for a moment, then lit her horn and disappeared in a flash of light.

Spike let out a heavy sigh at how that had gone, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it now and he had five other people to concern himself with at the moment.

He missed the days when all he had to do was snark about other people’s problems.

Steeling himself, he reached forward, opened the door and went inside.

Much to Spike’s relief, the main room of the ex-library was neither full nor empty. Dealing with them all at once, he was sure, would have been just like that morning, with awkward staring and nothing actually being said, while an empty room… Well, he didn’t want to think what an empty room could have meant, aside from the actually quite high likelihood that they were just all down in the basement.

What he actually found, were two of the new dragonesses that had installed themselves into his home. Specifically, they were ‘the orange and yellow one’ and ‘the green and brown one’… and that was about all he could say he knew about them. Ember was nowhere to be seen, which was an immediate relief, but it also meant that he had even less to draw on to actually break the ice.

Not that there actually turned out to be any ice.

The moment the door clicked open, the orange one perked up from where she was laying on the top level of one of the bookshelves built into the walls of the tree, and by the time the door had shut, she’d jumped down and was waving. “Hey! Spike, right?” she asked, rhetorically.

At least, Spike hoped it was rhetorical. He wouldn’t actually put it past Ember to have neglected to tell them anything about him, including his name.

Rhetorical or not, it was only a half beat before she was moving on regardless. “I’m Kindle, and lazy over there is Drift.”

The green and brown dragon waved leisurely from over by the window, though she was rolling her eyes. “Pfft,” she scoffed. “I’m not lazy, you’re just hyper.”

Kindle rolled her eyes and gestured in the direction of the alcove where Drift had ensconced herself. “You say that, but you’re still lying over there doing flack all instead of coming over and saying hi.”

“I said hi already, jeez,” Drift insisted.

Kindle disagreed. “You did not.”

“I waved,” she pointed out. “I’m giving him some space. Just look at the poor guy, he’s practically catatonic.”

Spike was struck rather speechless, though not entirely for the reason the one named Drift seemed to be implying.

“I’m just shocked you’re actually regular people,” he deadpanned, earning a moment of silence from the both of them, followed by an appreciative bark of laughter from Drift.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Drift shot back, giving Kindle a deliberate glance. “Though I guess compared to Carnelia and Slag, even Kindle could practically pass for a pony.”

Spike’s shoulders slumped at the implication that these other two were closer to Ember than sanity. “Do I want to know?” he asked.

Kindle shrugged, unconcerned. “From what I’ve seen, Slag acts like somedragon just told her what her name means in Trottingham,” she explained. “Carnelia acts like it’s her life’s goal to live up to it.”

“Rude, but accurate,” Drift commented with the mein of someone who didn’t really care if she was being rude or not.

Spike, however, was less concerned with the information or how it was phrased than the metaphor that was used to convey it. “You know how ponies in Trottingham talk?”

“Sure,” Kindle said as if it wasn’t strange at all. “I grew up around the mountains near the Griffish Isles, and Drift is from… all over, really, which should surprise absolutely no one, what with her name and all.”

“I… see,” Spike said, still processing that. In hindsight, he’d known that dragons were largely solitary creatures who laired up wherever they felt like it and only gathered for events like the yearly migration, but the idea that there could be dragons out there living on the periphery of pony society hadn’t really occurred to him. “So, are Carnellia and… Slag… from the dragonlands, like Ember, then?”

“Probably!” Kindle said.

“You never know, though,” Drift added. “There’s always the chance that somedragon is just a bitch regardless of where they come from.”

Spike wanted to groan at that. Kindle and Drift were not painting a picture that Spike was looking forward to. “Wait, you don’t know?”

“What, you think we all knew each other before today?” Kindle asked. “Well, Drift and I met a couple of times and came to Equestria together, but I’d never seen the others before Ember came up to us and was like: “Come with me if you want to be sexy.”

“…That was her pitch?” Spike deadpanned. “Really?”

“Are you saying it didn’t work?” Kindle asked, cocking her hips and shoulders in a sultry pose.

Spike swallowed, his mind briefly derailed, but he quickly rallied his sass. “Hey, just remember—you girls are the ones that were staring at me all morning.”

It would have had more effect if he hadn’t immediately cringed at the sound of the basement door slamming open followed by the clacking footsteps of the other three dragonesses.

Now that he had names to go with the other two new girls, he immediately pegged Carnelia as the red and… red one. Rarity would have said she had wine-red scales with more scarlet accents or something, but yeah, she was red and she walked like she’d had these proportions her whole life.

Slag, on the other hand, was definitely named for the forging byproduct and not the trottingham pejorative. She looked like she could be a blacksmith, actually, which was a feat considering Ember’s use of the Ring of Ashmund had brought her into very similar proportions as the other girls, and if Carnelia had taken well to it, Slag was almost the opposite, walking with a two-ton gait in a ninety-pound body with mottled black scales.

It was Ember, though, that was frowning as she looked Spike over and glanced around the room. “Where’s the food?”

Oh, damn. Honestly, Spike wondered if Ember hadn’t ever had to resort to eating rocks growing up for how spoiled she acted, but that wasn’t a subject to tackle right now. Instead, he produced the bag of bits that Twilight had wished into being at lunch and jingled it. “I figured I’d take everyone out to eat tonight?” he suggested as if that had been the plan all along.

Ember seemed to be considering it for a moment before she finally agreed with a smirk. “Alright, but we’re going someplace that serves meat. I don’t care if they put it on a salad; tonight, you’re gonna learn what bacon tastes like.”

“O… kay?”

— ✒ —

In spite of his theatrics, Spike made a point of swapping out the bits that Twilight had ‘minted’ for a sack of the more usual kind that he’d had hidden in his bedroom upstairs.

It was on his way back down that something occurred to him. “So, uhh, Ember. Now that you look…” he gestured vaguely at her pseudo-adult transformed body. “Are we allowed to call you ‘Ember’ in public? Because I refused to call you ‘godzilla’ with any level of sincerity. I told Twilight your name is ‘Tinder.’”

Kindle perked up at that. “I have a sister named Tinder,” she mentioned. “She’s an annoying little chit.”

“That’s… unfortunate?” Spike said, accidentally making it more of a question than he’d intended. “Actually,” he added, “Come to think of it, I should probably mention that there were some dragons looking for you. At least three of them. Big ones sticking their heads in shops and people’s houses.”

Ember grew deathly still for a moment before rounding on Spike in a fury. “You’re telling me this now?!” she all but shrieked and started asking questions without waiting for any answers. “Who was it? Where were they seen? Are they coming this way?” As soon as she voiced that last thought, she glanced at the door down to the basement, clearly considering sequestering herself underground until the threat was over.

Which, it should be mentioned, it already was, if only Spike could get a word in.

“Spit,” Ember cursed, shifting her gaze to the front door. “I think… we’ll probably be fine. It should be impossible for anydragon to recognize me like this.”

“What’s the big deal, princess?” Slag asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’ve got the ring. Somedragon shows up trying to drag you home, all you’ve gotta do is make yourself twice as big and kick their tail.”

“Uh… yeah.” Ember’s eyes dropped to the ring on her finger as if she was just remembering that it was there. “Yeah, you’re right. I can do that now,” she said, gaining confidence as she built herself up, though it was quickly tempered. “I… probably shouldn’t, though?” she said, looking to Spike for confirmation. “I mean, the ponies would probably throw a fit if I stepped on one of them. That would be… bad?”

“Yes, Ember,” Spike said, hardly able to believe she needed his input on this, but also relieved that she’d at least come to the right conclusion. “That would be bad. In fact, in my official position as Princess Twilight Sparkle’s vague sort of assistant, I’d like to officially request that if you do find yourself in the position of needing to use the ring to win a fight with somedragon, just make them smaller instead. Believe me, if it ever comes to that, Twilight and Luna will be ecstatic if all they have to deal with is a couple of chicken-sized dragons nipping at their fetlocks.”

That seemed to get a chuckle from Drift. Ember was a little less appreciative of it at first, but she seemed to be able to work her way around to the idea. “That’s… No, you’re right. That’s what the book says, too. That’s how they used the ring to maintain order and punish criminals in the empire. Alright. If they come for me, I’ll do that.”

“I’d hope that you’d at least consider hiding first, since we don’t want anybody to actually know about the ring,” Spike pointed out. “But fortunately, I doubt it’ll come to that.”

Ember considered Spike’s words and visibly relaxed. “Yeah. You’re right. Like I said, they shouldn’t even recognize me.”

“No, I mean because one of them is dead and the other two still haven’t regained consciousness,” Spike told her as bluntly as he could.

That got everydragon’s attention. “They… what?” Ember asked, thinking she must not have heard him right.

“They were idiots and tried to poke one of Twilight’s demigoddesses who is literally made of lightning and rainbows,” Spike nonchalantly explained. “Twice. Then the third one tried to kill another of the demigodesses. Twice. That’s the one that didn’t make it.”

They didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, and Spike remembered what Luna had said about it being rare for dragons to actually die. Well, maybe this would help them to take things a little more seriously.

“Look, all of you,” Spike said, gathering everyone’s attention. “Twilight, Luna, the Celestias and the demigoddesses… they’re all good ponies. They talked about the fact that these violent dragons were looking for the Dragon Lord’s daughter, and they’re even tentatively on your side.” He chose to avoid mentioning Twilight’s suggestion that Ember might be as much of an asshole as her father. “You’re going to meet them and maybe you’ll think that they’re soft, namby-pamby ponies… and they are. Proudly, because they have enough power that they can be compassionate and forgiving right up until the point when someone goes too far.

“There’s no reason to be afraid of them and you don’t need to bow and scrape in their presence, but… respect them, respect their laws and… that’s it. There is no step three.”

Ember frowned, thinking back. “The Pinkie Pie that knew about me coming here before I did… that was one of these demigoddesses, right?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Spike said.

“Right, so… don’t break the law,” Ember concluded. “That should be easy enough.”

“Says the one who had to ask if stepping on ponies is bad,” Kindle snarked.

“I didn’t mean it like that!”

Well, it was a start.

— ✒ —

Dinner went well enough. Spike earned some points with the girls by helping them with their flying thanks to the time he’d spent with Rainbow Dash earlier in the day, though he told himself that he still wasn’t sure if he wanted ‘points’ with them to begin with. He recognized it as sour grapes over the situation, of course, since there was nothing wrong with making friends and it was vastly preferable over the alternative, but unfortunately knowing and feeling were two different things.

That said, his ability to interact with each of them in a friendly, sensible manner was in no way equal. Kindle was always eager and maybe a little too aggressive, but in a friendly way. Drift seemed lazy and distractible on the surface, but never actually put anything off or failed to be paying attention. Slag… wasn’t actually all that bad. She was just there most of the time, occasionally ill-tempered and moderately violent, but mostly she seemed to want to be left alone.

Carnelia, on the other hand…

Spike didn’t know what to feel about Carnelia. In hindsight, he wished that Kindle hadn’t been quite so candid with her opinion of the provocative red-scaled beauty because now he was having trouble seeing past those preconceptions when, really, she actually reminded him a lot of Rarity.

It wasn’t just that Carnelia was beautiful, because all the girls were that, to some degree. Kindle was a little cuter, and Slag significantly more athletic, but comparing any of them would be splitting hairs they didn’t have. The difference with Carnelia was that she cared about how she presented herself and put the effort in to make the most of what she had. Out of all of the girls, she was the only one who had trimmed her claws and polished her scales in the short time since that morning. She was the only one who seemed completely comfortable in her new body and the slinky, very reptile way she moved did things to him that he wasn’t at all comfortable with.

And that was the problem, because as much as she reminded him of Rarity, he didn’t like her very much, which wasn’t a very fair comparison.

They were different people, obviously.

Carnelia was a very touchy, tactile person who seemed to delight in making Spike blush during their short impromptu flight lessons by brushing up against him, posing on all-fours and generally keeping him tongue-tied enough that he’d yet to actually talk to her properly, and it was very much intentional.

And yet… Spike had seen Rarity act that way on occasion, too. Just not with him. Sure, he tried to tell himself that Rarity acting flirty to attract attention or get something at the market wasn’t serious… but did that really make it any better?

Now that it was directed at him, and even more so now that he suddenly had a body that other dragons considered attractive and worth stealing looks at, he was very quickly coming to the conclusion that maybe that sort of behavior wasn’t something he actually liked being on the receiving end of.

Still, Spike wished that Kindle hadn’t put that name to it because no matter how much he told himself it was going too far, he also couldn’t forget the comparison and it bugged him for the entire rest of the night. Even as the six of them descended on one of the new griffon-run restaurants like a plague of scaly locusts and Spike got his first taste of bacon to the sounds of cheering and jeering all around, he found himself appreciating the fact that the rest of the girls seemed no less appreciative of him but were simply much more natural about expressing it, and conversely, less coy about receiving such attention.

Okay, maybe Ember in particular didn’t make a big deal of the attention she got from him and other dragons at the restaurant because her ego was just that big, but somehow he still preferred that over being sidled up to and winked at.

That was a bit hard to reconcile, if he was being honest with himself.

— ✶ —

“Are you done spying on your assistant who specifically asked for privacy?” Luna asked dryly over the top of her book from a purple velvet chaise lounge that Twilight had created for her.

Twilight, who had converted the entire open space in the center of the tower into some sort of scrying pool and had been looming over the side of it for the past hour or so had now rolled over on her back and was stretching until she remembered that it was night and she could just remanifest herself, which she then did, blinking over next to Luna in the process.

“Oh come on,” Twilight said, her tone threatening a pout. “He asked me not to get in the way and I did that. You can’t expect me not to keep an eye on him on his first date. I saw and heard nothing that I wouldn’t have if I was hiding in the bushes like Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Fluttersquirrel. Squirrelshy? Whatever. You get the idea.”

“Rather antisocial of you not to join them,” Luna observed. “Was Rarity truly not present as well?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I kind of stick out,” Twilight deadpanned, pointing at her sparkling ethereal mane. “As for Rarity, she’s ensconced herself in her workshop getting ready for tomorrow and that wasn’t one of her restaurants. I did see that pink dragon assistant of hers—Cinders?—there with a camera, but I’m not sure if she was actually on the clock.”

“And of course, Applejack remains a hermit and refuses to set hoof inside the city more than once each week,” Luna concluded, which Twilight confirmed with a sigh.

“Yeah, things really have backfired with her,” she said, feeling a pang of regret for how she’d handled things with the stubborn mare.

“She did forgive you, yes?” Luna asked.

Twilight shrugged. “She said she did, and she’s not the type for empty platitudes. She just doesn’t seem to have gotten over the initial wave of harassment from the press and political sharks looking to exploit her. I can sort of understand, since she can’t fly, teleport or pink, but even so, Fluttershy’s cottage is in town and nopony is banging down her door any more.”

“To be fair,” Luna said. “Fluttershy knows when they are coming and has bears.”

“Applejack didn’t seem to have any problems when she did come into town,” Twilight pointed out. “At this point, it seems that she just doesn’t want to be seen backpedaling after moving her farm so she’s being stubborn about moving it back. As soon as this whole coronation thing is over, I’m going to be looking into portals for the girls’ towers, but whether or not she’ll use it or even let me put one on her property is anyone’s guess.”

“You’ve mentioned before that she might be against unicorn magic, I believe, but have you not aided her with it in the past without issue?” Luna recalled, to which Twilight gave a weak sort of shrug.

“Yes and no? I’ve helped out several times on the farm with unicorn magic and it wasn’t a problem, but get it anywhere near her traditions like Winter Wrap Up and it seems like it’s another story. I honestly have no idea whether a permanent portal on her property is something that’ll rub her the wrong way or not, or how best to pitch it.”

“How do you mean?” Luna asked, curious.

“Well, there are any number of ways that a portal could function,” Twilight said. “It could be a simple wooden door that just happens to lead to her tower… or she might not want it in her house. It could be a freestanding toroid with runes to dial in a destination… but that might be too overtly magical. Or, with dream magic, I could probably just enchant the road to town to be shorter so long as the one walking it doesn’t harbor any ill will to the apples… but that might be too surreal.”

“You seem rather confident for somepony who has admitted to not even having brushed up on the subject as of yet,” Luna teased.

Twilight waved it off. “I remember enough to know that power is the limiting factor on portals, and we have that. All the rest is window dressing. Um. Literally, I guess. I should write that down. There could be a dream magic opportunity in that.”

Soon, she was doing just that while Luna chuckled. “I would very much like to see the expression on a young Twilight Sparkle’s face should she be told that her future self would willingly and of her own volition keep a pun diary… yes, like that, only cuter and even more horrified, if that is possible.”

— ✒ —

It was late into the night when Spike and ‘his’ five dragonesses returned to the ex-library stuffed full of smoked pork products and ready to go sleep it off and it was only then that Spike remembered that there was a subject that he had yet to broach.

Well, technically there were at least two, but he had already decided to hold off on talking to them about the Celestias’ offer to ‘sponsor’ the group of them as some sort of poster-dragons for Equestrian integration.

No. Unfortunately, the subject at hand was one that he couldn’t put off any longer, so before the girls all went down to the basement to sleep, he figured he’d just ask.

“So, uhh,” he began, then made an effort to stand straighter and stop prevaricating. “Did any of you want to go to the coronation tomorrow? I’m likely to be there all day, and I have an open invitation for the five of you from the princesses if any of you want to come.”

The answer, he realized, should have been obvious.

“What’s a coronation?” Ember asked, not at all sheepish about her lack of knowledge.

Kindle, who Spike remembered had mentioned growing up in griffon lands, of course knew. “It’s a ceremony where they make a big deal about putting a crown on someone’s head.”

Ember scrunched her face up as she thought back. “Right, I think I’ve read about those, but who are they crowning? They’ve already got, like, four alicorns and I’ve lost count of the ‘demigoddesses.’”

“I think…” Carnelia spoke up, her voice soft and sibilant, “It is possible that they are re-crowning the one who has twinned and changed species, in which case… yes, I believe that I shall attend.”

Sure enough, per Twilight’s prediction, once they all understood that it was the Celestias that they would be able to see crowned, they all decided to come. Even Slag, who didn’t tend to talk much, wasn’t willing to let herself be left behind in this.

“Well, alright then,” Spike said to himself as several of them went on talking about it without him. “I guess we’re doing this.”

— ⭗ ✹ —

“I’m not certain why we thought that bringing two injured and one dead dragon to a mountain infested with even more dragons seemed like a good idea,” Corona lamented, shutting the large, golden doors of the chambers she shared with Candesca behind her.

“It does seem like something we should have thought of,” Candesca agreed, walking ahead of Corona and tossing herself onto the bed.

Corona chose instead to sit herself on a couch and open the doors to the balcony. “What is done is done, I suppose. I continue to be both surprised and concerned at how this draconic nature of ours holds influence over them.”

“I find myself more concerned with the similarity it holds to the effect we have on our own little ponies,” Candesca observed from the bed. “While I’m doubtful that there is anything that we can do or could have done about either situation, it does feel like we have done our ponies a disservice by forgetting truly how pervasive the effect can be.”

“If only our dual nature weren’t causing such problems for the ponies…” Corona mused. “Or that it was enough to prevent news of those dragons’ injuries from spreading.”

Candesca shook her head. “We both know that there is no stopping gossip. I shall count our blessings that we avoided a riot by explaining the situation. Is there anything still to do for the Coronation tomorrow?”

“I’m guessing not,” was Corona’s cryptic reply.

“Guessing?” Candesca asked, craning her neck up to look at Corona.

“When it came time to delegate the preparations for the event, Pinkie Pie appeared before me.”

“Ah.”

Chapter 19

— ✶ —

Twilight, Luna and their inviolable bubble of personal space which nopony would enter arrived early to the Ponyville train station, though Twilight in particular was feeling antsy even so.

“Be calm, Twilight,” Luna said, running a wing down Twilight’s mane and back. “You granted them immortality and something close to godhood, you can trust them to be on time for a train.”

Twilight sighed, leaning into Luna’s side. “I know, but I haven’t talked to Applejack since I gave her the invitation and her response at the time was… lacklustre at best. I’d just feel so much better if I could go over there and drag her back myself.”

“I hardly think that will be necessary, Twilight,” Luna observed. “If only because you have two other friends who are likely even more invested in this event than you are.”

“Rarity, sure,” Twilight said, recalling all the extra time she’d spent on both sides of things getting ready for this. “Pinkie Pie too, I suppose, at least in theory. It’s not like I’ve been able to actually pin her down and talk to her even once since I gave her capricorn.”

Fortunately for Twilight’s nerves, Applejack was a morning pony and arrived not too long after Twilight and Luna. Fluttershy was there, too, at that point, though nopony present could say when exactly she’d arrived. Rainbow Dash, for her part, at least wasn’t the last pony to arrive, and then finally there came Rarity accompanied by her pink dragon assistant, Cinders, carrying a pile of suitcases in a familiar manner, with Pinkie Pie pronking backwards alongside the two.

Rarity waved Cinders along to deal with the luggage as she greeted everypony present, though she focused on one pony in particular. “Rainbow Dash! It is good to see you again. I heard about what happened with the Wonderbolts.” She tsked. “You look like you’re taking it decently well, though, which is good.”

Twilight devoted a considerable amount of effort into pretending that Rarity was the lifelike doll she presented herself as, not the airy summer frock the doll was wearing.

As for Rainbow Dash, she just floated there, flapping her wings and blinking at being called out. “Uhh, yeah,” she said. “I’m okay, I guess. All the stuff that’s happened has taken my mind off it?” She hesitated a moment, but she had to ask. “Uh, no offense, but why are you talking to me?”

Twilight facehoofed.

Rarity was soon sharing Rainbow Dash’s confused look. “Ah… Pardon?”

Rainbow Dash was quick to backtrack. “Not like that!” she said, waving her hooves in front of her. “I just mean, it seemed like you just ignored everyone else and came straight to me.”

Understanding finally lit Rarity’s features. “Ah, I see,” she mused. “Well, you are the only one that I haven’t talked to in a while.”

This clearly surprised Rainbow Dash. “Really?”

“Indeed,” Rarity confirmed. “I have been working with Applejack on rebranding Sweet Apple Acres and with Pinkie Pie on this coronation. Fluttershy, of course, is around in some form quite often and we still manage to fit our spa days in somewhere, and even Twilight is in and out of the tower on occasion in spite of her recusing herself. Spike is quite helpful as well on the days he attends Princess Luna.”

“…Huh,” Rainbow Dash said, a little flabbergasted. “Weird, I thought it was you that was just never around.”

Rarity accepted this explanation graciously, though she was distracted by something she seemed to be looking for. “Ah, speaking of Spike, I don’t see him. Is he coming?”

“He should be,” Twilight said, checking the time. “Though to be honest, I’m not surprised he’s running late since he isn’t coming alone.”

Rarity’s eyes widened and began to sparkle. Twilight was decently sure there was magic involved. “Oh my. Little Spikey-wikey has a date, does he?”

There were several snickers amongst the group of friends, but Twilight decided to give Rarity a break after how busy she’d been. “Ah, well. Actually he’s not so little any more.”

“Really, now?” Rarity said, only more interested. “Has he had his molt, then?”

“Something like that,” Twilight said, not sure how far into it to get here on the train platform. Regardless, the matter was taken out of her hooves when Rainbow Dash exclaimed, “Here they come now!”

It was quite a sight, watching the six colorful dragons swoop in to land just a short distance away. They weren’t all that graceful, but being able to land on all fours and then rise up into a bipedal gait went a long way to making a good first impression.

Applejack whistled in appreciation. “Well, now. Ain’t they a tall buncha scarecrows.”

Rarity was caught a little more off-guard. “Ah… Spike?”

“And harem!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed.

The turquoise one frowned and said, “No, my name is ‘Tinder,’” while several of the others looked amused and, in the case of the red one, a little predatory.

Spike was quick to interrupt that train of thought, though, and stumbled forward to introduce everyone. “Girls,” he said, addressing the dragonesses. “These are Princess Archlibrarian Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna,” he said, beginning with the highest rank, then proceeding with the others by some combination of age and relative standing. “And their demigoddesses, Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash.” Each of them bowed in turn as they were introduced, then Spike moved on to introduce the dragonesses. “Princesses and demigoddesses, these are Tinder, Slag, Kindle, Drift and Carnelia.”

Twilight noted that Spike had put Tinder first and wondered if that meant that she was the oldest, or if she actually had a position that put her above the others. If she was remembering correctly, that was the dragoness that Spike had known beforehoof. The one who had a book on the old dragon empires. Twilight was eager to get a moment with her to talk about that, but the group was moving on, and there were other things for Twilight to concern herself with right now, like watching Rarity try not to react to the name ‘Slag.’

Damn. Twilight wished she had a camera, or at least some popcorn.

— ✶ —

Everything past the initial introductions of the two groups was cut short by the need to actually get all seven ponies and six dragons onto the train, which wasn’t entirely a matter to be taken for granted. In fact, while the word of two princesses was more than enough to soothe any fears of allowing the dragons onto the train, it was fortunate that they were able to get the dragons on the train at all. As far as dragons went, they were all positively petite, but crammed into a train made for ponies, they were about as tall as they could be without it being insultingly awkward to get around.

In other words, they were pretty much Discord-sized, though Twilight of all ponies wasn’t going to actually say that. They didn’t actually resemble the so-called spirit of chaos all that much anyway, she told herself. They were tall and thin, yes, but they actually had physiques, unlike the noodly anatomy of chaos incarnate.

After making it clear to the conductors that the two groups were not only together but wanted to remain that way, they were led by one of the conductors down the train to one of the more normal passenger cars so that they could spread out to their heart’s content without being cut off by separate rooms or privacy barriers.

To Twilight’s disappointment, Tinder didn’t seem to be too sociable and she wasn’t able to find an opportunity to talk to her about the book that Spike had mentioned. All of the dragons seemed a little stiff around Twilight and her friends at first, but Tinder in particular seemed extra wary and had her own little group in Carnelia and Slag, with the former doing most of the talking for her. Rarity was trying to engage her regardless and had dragged Applejack and Cinders along for the support, but in the end, Rarity and Carnelia turned out to be the ones doing most of the talking.

Spike… had an odd reaction to that. He seemed annoyed for some reason and was apparently doing his best to pretend they didn’t exist.

Twilight remained at Luna’s side, of course, as she tended to do these days, and the two of them took the opportunity to finally get caught up with Pinkie Pie and everything she was doing.

Which was pretty much ‘everything.’ The pink party pony had apparently been taking Twilight’s directive to ‘go forth and pink,’ quite seriously and been all across the continent arranging parties, including much of the reception for the very coronation they were about to attend.

Twilight hadn’t expected any less, and was glad that she was at least happy.

Eventually, though, Luna dragged Twilight and Pinkie Pie over to the remaining group of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy talking to Kindle and Drift and Spike, which had actually turned out better than expected. Between them, Kindle and Drift had a wide range of experiences and stories to share that was enough to make Twilight forget about Tinder and her book for the time being.

“You’ve really been to austailia?” Fluttershy asked Drift at one point. “I’ve heard there are so many different kinds of animals there that aren’t found anywhere else.”

“Ah, well, it definitely has that going for it, yeah,” Drift said, though she didn’t seem too enthused about the subject. “Though with the ’roos died out in ancient history, it’s mostly asses now, and donkeys just don’t have the same way with the animals or the weather, so it’s pretty inhospitable on both fronts. I swear it’s the only place I’ve been to where even the handful of ponies that live there are completely on board with a barbeque.”

It was, ironically, Spike who didn’t quite understand. “What’s wrong with a barbeque?”

Luna cleared her throat. “A traditional barbeque is centered on the preparation of meat, Spike. What we consider a typical Equestrian barbeque would hardly be worth the name in many parts of the world.”

“Though that might be changing, if the number of places serving meat in Ponyville is any sign,” Twilight said, not mentioning that she’d watched Spike and the others visit one such establishment the night before. She’d already told him that if he had ever wanted to eat meat, he’d just had to say so, so it was good to see him exercising his dietary freedom.

Kindle seemed to find the idea amusing. “Would you let that happen, Princess? It’s hard to imagine Equestria ever losing its dietary superiority complex. The rest of the world would cry ‘changelings!’ and suggest that you’ve all been replaced.”

Twilight rolled her eyes at the mention of changelings. “That’s ridiculous,” she said with a scoff. “It would make much more sense to suggest lizard people. It’s even true to some extent.”

Luna nodded at this. “Indeed. I have always considered dragons to be both lizards and people, though the only replacement taking place is in percentage points on the census.”

“That too,” Twilight allowed. “But I was referring to the fact that two thirds of our nation’s ruling triarchy has been actually replaced by lizard ponies.”

“There is that,” Luna agreed. “Though should it not be half that has been replaced?”

Twilight rocked her hoof in a ‘so-so’ gesture. “If you only consider Celestia and you, yes.”

“Are you suggesting that one of the Celestias is a lizard person who has replaced you, then?”

“It’s only logical,” Twilight said. “Admittedly, she’s not doing a very good job of it. It’s been nearly two weeks now and there hasn’t been a single public announcement telling the public to buck off.”

“Fair,” Luna assented. “Though consider: she manages the same thing just fine merely by existing.”

Drift leaned in closer to Spike to half whisper, “Do they do this all the time?”

Spike’s answer was to sigh and say, “You have no idea,” before the conversation moved on to giraffes in zebrabwe.

All in all, it was a pleasant train ride. It wasn’t quite the reunion of all her friends that she had been looking forward to, but plans change, and getting to know these dragons was as good a reason as any.

— ✶ —

Canterlot was not quite the city that Twilight remembered. Though it was common knowledge that many of of the larger dragons had taken up residence in and on Mount Canterlot to enjoy the crystal caverns and be close to the Celestias that had drawn them to Equestria, it was much stranger to see so many of those large dragons traveling the streets on their way to the coronation. Compared to Ponyville’s younger crowd, far more of which were living in the city itself, there was a much darker atmosphere in Canterlot, more like a city under siege… at least from the ponies’ perspective.

Whether picking up on this unease or simply returning to their own comfortable status quo, the ponies and dragons from Ponyville all fell back into their own groups as they disembarked the train.

Interestingly, Twilight noticed that the aloof Tinder actually gravitated to Spike over anyone else and filed that information away for later.

“I now wish that I had come in person to check on things here sooner,” Luna confessed. “If only to know how much of this is simply because of the coronation and how much is representative of the ongoing problems.”

“I’m surprised that they’ve let it get this bad, even on a day like today when it was inevitable that the dragons would all come out of the woodwork,” Twilight said scanning the buildings for the sight of ponies. “But at the same time, I’m also… kind of not?”

“Oh?” Luna asked, hanging back with Twilight as Rarity took charge and engaged one of the royal guards to lead the group of ponies and dragons to Castle Canterlot where the coronation would be taking place.

“Not that I’m saying that I would do better, since I absolutely wouldn’t,” Twilight hurried to clarify. “But in hindsight, it seems like these dragons need a firmer hoof. There’s no reason for them to be down here in the streets except to scare ponies, but I can’t see the Celestias—” Twilight had to stop and reconsider what she was saying. “Okay, admittedly, we’ve already been over the fact that Equestria doesn’t have guards capable of enforcing traffic control on dragons the size of houses, so I guess the Celestias need to start hiring dragons or making more ponies into demigods.”

“That… might be difficult,” Luna said, looking up to the two celestial objects of the daytime sky. “I rather doubt a pony would last very long if you did manage to put some of it inside of them.”

“Hiring dragons was the real suggestion,” Twilight said. “…Though, again, it doesn’t help to hire them if you have nopony who can enforce discipline. I really don’t want to be Equestria’s source of super-soldiers, though.”

“I must admit that I am less than comfortable with the idea of parting with any of myself,” Luna said, looking guilty for desiring to dodge the responsibility. “You are uniquely suited… in more ways than one, now that I think of it.”

“Sure, it’s the perfect story,” Twilight said. “Give it five years and I’d be known as the apolitical one who has recused herself from the running of the nation so that she might protect it from a position of perfect neutrality, not to be swayed by kith, kin or coffer.”

“As opposed to the one who has recused herself from the running of the nation in order to be lazy and run a library?” Luna suggested with mild sarcasm.

“Exactly!” Twilight proclaimed. “I should get at least one mortal lifetime of that before I have to be responsible!”

“Correct me if I am wrong,” Luna said. “But you were already planning on curating a cabal of ponies to be placed under heavy restrictions and answer only to you, correct?”

Twilight fidgeted. “Well, yes, but—”

Luna cleared her throat and continued. “Ponies who would be charged with rooting out objective truth, to the point that you had envisioned them one day taking part in the equestrian judicial system?”

“Librarians and historians!” Twilight insisted, slightly peeved.

“So make them librarians and historians,” Luna said with a shrug.

Twilight gave a huff. “There’s a big difference between vetting a selection of ponies to catalogue my stars and using them as some sort of library-themed police enforcer demigods.”

Luna considered this for a moment before admitting, “Alright, you have a point.”

“Thank you,” Twilight said with a sigh of relief. That really wasn’t a road she wanted to go down.

“Perhaps we can get Rainbow Dash to command a cadre of dragons,” Luna mused. “She ought to be able to keep them in check.”

“…I guess?” Twilight said, thinking about it. “She is the one who wanted to join an elite air force wing… though I’d wanted her to get some notoriety so that she could fly with them, not give her a bunch of dragons so that she could make them look like a bunch of chumps.”

The voice that answered wasn’t Luna’s. “Why not both?” Rainbow Dash asked from over Twilight’s shoulder.

Twilight blinked, realizing just how close Rainbow Dash was. Two seconds later, she realized that Rainbow Dash wasn’t the only one whose attention she had. “Err, how long have you all been listening?” she asked, just then realizing that they had entered the castle at some point.

“Well…” Candesca said, coming up from behind Twilight.

Corona came up on Twilight’s other side. “We will take it under advisement that we bring a stronger hoof to bear with the dragons, but as you say, it is not so simple a thing to arrange.”

That… entirely failed to process. That was the entire conversation, but Twilight refused to believe that the Celestias had been with them ever since the train platform, even if the sight of massive dragons squeezing their way through her hometown had been rather distracting. “…How?” she asked, getting a tittering laugh from Corona.

“Just because we are not always watching doesn’t mean that we never are, Twilight,” Candesca admitted with a warm smile and a wink. “Now, I believe some introductions are in order?”

Twilight stepped aside and watched as Spike did the introductions again. Most of the stiffness that the dragons had displayed upon meeting Twilight and her friends had mellowed out, but there was a different kind of tension with the Celestias—not that this surprised anyone.

“It is good to meet you all,” Corona said with the same perfect diplomatic mien that Twilight had gotten to know while growing up under Celestia’s wing. “I realize that for some of you, this is all very sudden, so we shall try to be accomodating. Now, if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to the location of the event.”

That was… odd. Twilight shared a quick look with Luna to see if she had any idea why the Celestias would be doing this personally when they had a coronation to be preparing for, but she seemed just as much in the dark.

A short walk later, Candesca spoke up,seeming to project slightly less than Corona and with a slightly warmer expression, but Twilight doubted that anypony else would notice, except, perhaps, Luna. “The west castle courtyard overlooks one of Canterlot’s larger boulevards,” the alicorn with the fiery mane explained as they led the ponies and dragons in the direction of said courtyard. “We were hoping that the extra space would allow more of our ponies to witness the event. As you’re about to see, however, we were… optimistic.”

Corona and Candesca both lit their horns to open the doors to the courtyard. Doing so, they revealed… dragons. Just… solid dragons from wall to wall and beyond. Twilight had to take wing to see over the mass, but all that did was reveal more dragons perched on the rooftops like a multicolored flock of crows, too numerous to count. What ponies could be seen were all gathered in rooms and walkways on the second and third floor of the castle, dressed in finery and not terribly amused.

Twilight flew higher and higher looking for an end to the crowd, but it seemed as if every dragon who had taken up residence in Mount Canterlot had decided to come see the event, and when many of those dragons were the size of carts and houses, spaces tended to fill up alarmingly quickly.

“So, you see, Twilight,” Corona said as Twilight came back down. “I’m afraid that the current situation is beyond even what order a firm hoof can enforce. “Candesca and I could, of course, go out there, start yelling and blasting dragons who refuse to listen, but I venture that there wouldn’t be a Canterlot to hold the event in—or for—afterwards. At this point, we are just glad that the ponies are staying inside and the structural enhancements protecting them and the city are holding.”

“At this point,” Candesca said, looking out at the hoard. “I am of a mind to suggest that we simply cancel the whole thing. The entire point of this was to reassure the ponies, and in that, we have already failed.”

— ✒ —

Having heard enough, Spike and the rest of the dragons ducked back inside the castle and through a side door to a room that didn’t appear to be in use while Twilight and the rest of the ponies discussed the situation.

“Is it bad that I kinda wanna see the yelling and blasting thing?” Kindle asked, injecting a little levity into things.

“I’m pretty sure that’s just being a dragon,” Drift answered and the rest of the girls nodded.

“Okay, yeah,” Spike agreed a little less wholeheartedly. “But—and I’m not trying to beat a dead bush about it—you did see the perfectly round lake out in the valley, right? A few weeks ago, that was a forest.”

“You say that as if you think it will discourage us,” Carnelia observed, amused.

“You keep telling us that they are powerful and dangerous,” Slag commented in a rare moment of verbosity, looking out at the group of ponies. “But there are some things a dragon just has to see for themselves. Even the ones whose power we can feel just seem… I don’t know. It’s not the same as Lord Torch, that’s for sure. What happens when he uses the scepter?”

“Scepter?” Spike asked, this being the first he’d heard of any scepter. “What scepter?”

“Oh, uhh…” Slag looked to Ember, who had been remarkably quiet so far.

“Ember,” Spike said seriously. “What scepter is she talking about?”

Ember crossed her arms with a huff and looked away, yet she didn’t mince words when she spoke. “The bloodstone scepter that has the power to command dragons.”

Spike simply said, “I… see,” and proceeded to take a few measured breaths.

“It is not the nicest thing,” Carnelia admitted in perhaps the most normal thing she’d said since Spike had met her. “But it also is not as if he is a horrible tyrant—just one who likes to be listened to.”

Spike continued to focus on breathing regularly and fully coming to terms with how upset he was about this.

“This is why I didn’t tell you,” Ember said, her cross-armed posture shifting from petulant to patronizing. “It’s not a good feeling having that hanging over your head. I figured you’d react badly.”

“React badly?” Spike clenched his teeth and stomped up to Ember, really appreciating that he was now able to face her eye-to-eye. “You think it’s my head that I’m worried about?” he asked, fuming.

“Shouldn’t you be?” Ember asked, answering Spike’s sudden aggressiveness with some of her own. “Don’t tell me the ponies have ground out all of your self-preservation, too?”

Spike facepalmed and had to take a moment to appreciate that statement. “Ember, believe me. Self-preservation is exactly where I’m coming from when I say that I am far more worried about what would happen if someone were able to control them,” Spike growled, gesturing at the two literal goddesses outside who were now part dragon.

“Oh,” Ember said, having not thought about that. “That would be bad, yeah?”

“Yes, that would be bad,” Spike confirmed. Turning around, he said, “I’ve gotta tell them.”

“I’m not going to stop you,” Ember said. “But is this really the time for that?”

Spike turned back around to ask, “What could possibly be more urgent than the possibility that there’s a dragon tyrant out there who might be able to control the princesses?”

“I dunno,” Ember said. “Maybe the dragons that are actually out there?”

Spike had to shift mental gears to understand, though it was actually quite obvious when he did.

“I can solve this whole thing right now with a snap of my fingers,” Ember explained, confirming his suspicions.

“Sure, and announce to everyone that you have the Ring of Ashmund!” Spike countered.

This time, though, that argument didn’t seem as persuasive as it had before.

“Would that be so bad?” Ember asked.

Carnelia backed her up. “It sounds as if they would be grateful.”

Spike struggled to come up with a response. “Yeah, but…”

“We didn’t take the Ring of Ashmund just to use it once and never again,” Ember said, frowning at Spike. “Or at least, I didn’t.”

Spike internally winced at that, because that had been essentially what he would have preferred to do, and yet it was times like these when she actually wanted to do things for the good of dragons and ponies that he actually saw her as a tolerable person.

“It’s not that I don’t think we should help,” Spike said and it sounded weak and spineless even to his ears. “But are you sure that this is the right time?”

“How should I know?” Ember all but shouted in frustration. “That’s why I’m asking you! I’ve been trusting you to tell me how to deal with these ponies, but if all you’re going to say is ‘keep it secret, keep it safe’ until the end of time, then you’re not really helping! So tell me, Spike, is this the right time? Because I think it is.”

Spike hesitated, but Ember had a point. She had a lot of good points, actually. She was right, he admitted. There really wouldn’t be a better time than this, he was just holding back out of shame for what he’d done.

“Yeah. Yes. You’re right,” he finally admitted, then added, “Considering the interest they showed in you yesterday, the timing is actually perfect.”

It was precisely that moment when an absolutely immense crash shook the palace.

— ✶ —

“Before you cancel everything, we do have options,” Twilight said, not yet sure what those options were, but certain that they existed. “We could change the venue, for one.”

“We have considered that,” Corona said. “But there is no place in Canterlot that we would not have the same problem, many of them without any dragons even needing to move.”

“Well, what about outside of Canterlot, in the valley?” Twilight suggested. “Or even out in the air? It wouldn’t be too difficult to project an illusion of the proceedings where everyone in Canterlot can see it.”

“We… could do that,” Candesca admitted. “Both Corona and Luna have the necessary aptitude for illusions, but what message would it send? That we are treating this situation as normal?”

“Well, that’s… up to you, I guess?” Twilight said. “Ignoring the implementation details, you can either ignore it, cancel the coronation, use force to get your way, or, my particular specialty: go out there and yell at them. You don’t need us to tell you that.”

“Yes, well…” Candesca said with an uncharacteristic show of uncertainty.

“We disagree,” Corona explained, to the shock of everyone. “It started as a small difference of opinion. We both believe that this has gone too far and that a message needs to be sent. Candesca, as you have heard, is leaning towards cancelling in protest, while I believe that this needs to be said more directly.”

“And before you say anything,” Candesca chimed in. “We have, of course, considered giving them a stern talking to and cancelling the event.”

“The real problem is that there is a chance that any direct confrontation with them could quickly grow out of control,” Corona admitted. “…Though the same might be said for pulling the rug out from under them and then leaving them to their devices.”

Corona sighed and sat down, weary. “We were used to making hard decisions as Celestia, but at least when we made them, they were made. The step of deciding was done with and we could focus on the next step. Now that there are two of us…” She shook her head sadly. “In truth, even without any disagreements, we realize now that we have gotten exceptionally little of note done in the past two weeks, precisely when we should have been organising a response to this ostensibly friendly invasion.”

Luna briefly looked like she had tasted something sour. “I have been doing so, though most of my effort has gone towards assimilating the younger, smaller dragons, as represents the situation in Ponyville. I—”

“You need not apologize, sister,” Corona said. “It’s true that you have taken over the bulk of our duties, but as you say, this is a problem unique to Canterlot. Candesca and I should certainly be able to handle the affairs of a single city on our own.”

“But you are not alone,” Luna stated. “Which is your problem.”

“Yes. Thank you, Luna, for repeating it. It might not have been clear enough without your excessive bluntness,” Candesca said, her frustration showing through.

“Okay…” Twilight said, stepping in before things got derailed. “Let’s see if we can come up with any other solutions. For example… going out there and kicking dragon ass for ruining your special day is only a problem if it threatens the safety of the ponies sheltering in their homes. Maybe we can work with that. Somehow.”

“Uhh, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash said, sounding a little worried.

“We’re all friends here, Rainbow,” Twilight said, turning around. “If you have any suggestions, we’re all ears—and that goes for all of… you?” To Twilight’s surprise, the space behind her was remarkably less crowded than it had been not too long ago.

“Yeah, uhh, that’s the thing,” Rainbow Dash explained. “Cinders came and got Rarity for something, and that’s when I noticed Spike and the other dragons were missing, but then I found them and they’ve just talking right inside, so that’s no big deal…”

“Get to the point, please, Rainbow,” Twilight said.

“I was just getting there,” Rainbow Dash insisted. “Anyway, that’s when I realized there was an empty pink space in our lineup.”

Twilight leveled a flat look at Rainbow Dash. “An empty pink sp—” was as far as she got in her chiding when she had to swallow her words on account of there actually being an empty pink space next to Applejack. And it was blinking.

Twilight winced and covered her eyes with one hoof, regretting having looked. It was only as she was turning back around so she wouldn’t have to look at it again that it hit her.

“Pinkie Pie is missing,” Twilight stated.

“Yep,” Rainbow Dash agreed.

“In the middle of an ongoing mild to moderate crisis which is threatening to cancel one of her parties,” Twilight further extrapolated.

Rainbow Dash’s, “Uh-huh,” was, if anything, even less concerned.

“So, a fifty-fifty chance that she either makes everything worse or solves the whole thing by breaking into the royal cake reserve,” Twilight concluded.

“You got it,” was Rainbow Dash’s final confirmation.

“Wonderful,” Twilight groaned and asked, “Do you want to do the countdown or should I?”

“Go for it,” Rainbow Dash decided. “I’ll watch.”

Twilight hadn’t even started counting when there was a deep, bone-shaking whump from above and behind as a massive dragon came down on the palace overlooking the crowded courtyard and shouted, “Where—is—my—daughter?!”

“That isn’t Pinkie Pie.”

“I should hope not.”

Chapter 20

— ✶ —

Twilight wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but as she backed away from the castle to get a better look at the dragon towering over everyone there was only one thing going through her mind.

“I thought he’d be taller.”

“The armor is a nice touch,” Luna pointed out, though she was still of a mind to agree. “But yes, he is a bit of a runt for a dragon lord, isn’t he?”

“What do you mean?” Rainbow Dash shouted. “He’s huge!”

“His father is a volcanic mountain,” Twilight pointed out quite reasonably. “This so-called ‘dragon lord’ is just a moderately large lizard.”

Luna glanced skyward. “And yet you are bringing out the stars in the daylight to deal with him.”

“I’m doing more than that,” Twilight said as the sounds of stars crashing into the ground could be heard from all around and her magic began to flood the entire city. “But I’m less concerned with one well-fed reptile than I am about the crowd that outmasses him a hundred times over. Eesh, they aren’t happy about it, either. In fact, I might have just made it worse.”

“Does this mean that you are not going to be our designated yelling-at-people alicorn for the day?” Luna asked.

Twilight’s face went slack for a moment as she saw something through her stars, then she scowled. “Oh for—you have got to be kidding me!”

Luna cocked her head in question then shrugged. “I suppose it is their party, as they say,” she said, looking over to the Celestias, who were having their own hurried conversation.

“Not that,” Twilight said, waving the matter off and scowling, though Luna wasn’t wrong. “Sorry, apart from reinforcing the structural spells keeping the city together, it’s apparently also my job to keep the Cutie-Mark Crusaders alive, because one of them seems to be trying to get herself killed in a draconic mosh-pit.”

Luna wasn’t sure what to say about that, but Dragon Lord Torch was getting impatient. “Well?” he shouted from his perch atop the castle. “Answer me!”

“What is a mosh pit?” Luna asked as the Celestias took flight to address the dragon lord face-to-face.

“Imagine if you replaced all the grace and style of dancing with energy and aggression, piled a hundred ponies into a thirty-pony space and told them to go wild.”

“Ah,” Luna said, paused, then apologized. “My apologies. I had no idea that the way you danced was best performed in a group.”

Twilight was saved from responding to that by the Celestias finally addressing the dragon lord, the word “Who?” echoing across the courtyard.

Well, that was one way to answer, Twilight supposed. It wasn’t as if any of them actually had any idea—

“Me!” shouted the much less booming voice of ‘Tinder’ from next to Twilight. Huh. At some point she had missed being surrounded by dragons, possibly due to having already been surrounded by dragons from dozens of perspectives.

Wait, why was Scootaloo limping now? Twilight guessed that she must have missed something but at least the damn foolish filly was getting to safety now. She was having difficulty splitting her focus between all the things that needed her attention.

“Ember!” the dragon lord shouted upon seeing the dragon who Spike had introduced as Tinder. To the young dragoness’ visible displeasure, though, the dragon lord quickly turned back to the Celestias and accused them, “Your denials fall flat, little pony dragons. It was foolish of you to steal my kith and kin away with your siren’s song of magic.”

“Timing, Spike,” Twilight said with a facepalm and a groan. “You need better timing.”

“Nah,” Spike casually rebutted. “She’s got this.

With a vindictive smirk in place on her face, Ember lifted her hand up in front of herself as if to show off the ring that she was wearing. Now that Twilight was seeing it up close, she noted that it was old and impossibly intricate, almost as if it had been engraved by a dozen skilled craftsmice.

Not that craftsmice were a thing.

Just when Twilight expected something to happen, however, Ember hesitated and Twilight could just barely hear her say to herself, “Right. Smaller, not larger…”

Twilight wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but whatever the cause of Ember’s hesitation, it allowed the dragon lord the time to continue his gloating. “You should know better than to challenge the command of the dragon lord,” he said, retrieving what appeared to be a small purple toothpick from inside his thick metal breastplate. “Your weak allure is nothing next to the might of the bloodstone scepter!”

“Oh no,” Spike said, going pale. “Ember, quick!” he shouted, but he was too late.

There was a blood red flash from the tiny scepter pinched in Torch’s claws and as one, every dragon in the city of Canterlot began to glow from within, and with a second flash, they all froze in place, motionless.

For the first time that day, Canterlot was silent.

The Celestias shared a look.

“Was that supposed to do something to us?” Candesca asked.

“What?!” Torch yelled. “But—”

He was interrupted by a pie to the face. Not a regularly-sized pie, either, but one proportional to the dragon lord’s stature and launched from clear across the city by Pinkie Pie with a trebuchet.

Who had given Pinkie Pie a trebuchet?

Oh, right. It probably came with the unlimited power, so that would be herself.

Whatever else Pinkie Pie’s intentions, the giant pie to the dragon lord’s face caused him to drop the bloodstone scepter. Ember wasted no time in lifting her hand up to her father and doing… something.

The ring flashed and the dragon lord… disappeared.

His armor did not.

The ponies and dragons in the courtyard all scattered as the massive breastplate and other accessories crashed first into the castle roof where he had been standing and then into the courtyard below, followed soon after by the tumbling pie tin still containing the remaining half of a banana cream pie.

Already airborne from dodging Torch’s armor, Twilight scanned the courtyard with her eyes and other senses to make sure no one had been hurt. “Does this count as Pinkie Pie making things worse or solving the whole thing?” Twilight asked Luna, who was hovering nearby.

“That… remains to be seen,” Luna said, directing her attention further out at the large masses of dragons who were looking bewildered and lost after the sudden disappearance of their lord. “After all, as you said, the dragon lord himself was never the issue.”

— ✒ —

“Slag, go get that scepter!” Ember ordered, and the black dragoness flew off without hesitation.

“What about your dad?” Spike asked, eyeing the pile of banana cream and armor in the center of the courtyard.

Ember shook her head and said, “Forget him. He’s no longer important. Without the scepter, he can’t do anything, and that’s the worst thing you can do to him.”

“Well… alright, then, I guess.” If that's what she wanted, it wasn’t as if Spike wanted to go digging through a mound of banana cream searching for him. Spike couldn’t really imagine feeling that much spite for the person who had raised him, but then, he supposed from the few things that Ember had said about him, there might not have been much actual raising involved.

“One down, thousands more to go,” Carnelia reminded them. “The time will come to gloat, but it is not yet that time.”

“Right,” Ember said, looking up from the ring on her finger to the crowd of shocked dragons that were quickly recovering. “Spike. I can use the ring if all I’m going to do is yell at some dragons, right?”

“Err—”

“Yeah, I wasn’t actually asking,” she said as she took off and started to grow.

Spike was briefly apprehensive, but it was out of his hands now and all he could do was follow Drift and the others—sans Slag—up to the roof of one of the wings surrounding the courtyard and watch Ember grow larger.

It was Spike’s first time seeing the transformation properly and he was surprised by the fluidity of it. He was used to magic happening in bursts and flashes of light, but Ember’s transformation was not a regimented process with a set beginning or end. She could stop at any point… or she could keep growing and growing and growing.

Before long, Ember’s slow growth brought her to the size of the previous dragon lord only for her to keep growing. Spike rolled his eyes, but there was no harm in it. She’d at least pretended to ask if she could do this, so he was… less annoyed at her than usual. Finally, when she was fully double the size that her father had been and four times as imposing, she stopped and addressed the crowds of dragons.

“Dragons!” she all but roared, getting their attention. “For thousands of years, under my father and his father before him, our race has followed the rule of not the greatest or the most worthy, but that of the biggest asshole.”

Spike facepalmed, then frowned. Vulgarity aside, there was something strange about Ember’s voice. It didn’t sound like it was coming only from the immense dragon.

“But it wasn’t always like this,” she continued. “In ages long past, in the time before there were stars, a multitude of empires spanned this world we now call Equus. But was it Equestrians that ruled these Empires? No! It! Was! Not!

“It was us!” she shouted and Spike tried to cover what passed for ears on a dragon at the sheer volume of it, but no amount of coverage helped. He wasn’t alone, either, though the crowd still all cheered when she reiterated with the deafening boom of, “Dragons!”

Spike had to admit, no matter her difficulties with ponies, Ember apparently knew how to work a crowd of dragons, at least. He should have expected that ‘be louder than everydragon else’ would be a core aspect of it. He was beginning to suspect that loudness wasn’t all that was going on, though.

“For longer than ponies have had magic, it was dragons that ruled this world.” The crowd cheered again and Ember let them, but she clearly wasn’t happy.

“It sounds great, doesn’t it?” she asked rhetorically. “The greatest race on Equus on top where we belong, all others bowing before us. That’s what you’re imagining, isn’t it?”

Now, the crowd was picking up on her contrary mood and looking uncertain. Spike, on the other hand, just wanted to know if Ember was ever going to let anyone else read that damn book. It really sounded interesting.

“We could do that,” she said, making a show of looking over the ocean of scales and wings arrayed out before her. “Look at us! We are legion! We stand here in the heart of Equestria, uncontested! There is no nation on this world that would not let us simply do as we please—and why? Because they can do nothing to stop us!”

“I realize that she’s just winding them up,” Drift quietly observed. “But I really don’t think the princesses appreciate her pointing that out.”

Spike had to agree. The Celestias both remained politely stoic, standing at attention as they watched from the roof across the courtyard from where Spike and the rest had gathered, but they definitely weren’t smiling.

“So tell me, then why is it called Equus?” Ember asked the crowd. “It hasn’t always been this way. This place, this world, used to be named not for the ponies that live on top of it, but for the dragons that make up the land itself. So why did that change?

“History. Society. Civilization,” she said, snarling each word like it was a curse. “Ask any dragon and they will tell you that these are weaknesses. Pony nonsense. But it is exactly these things that make an empire! Pony nonsense? No! We! Had! Them! First!

“Look at us! We are the kings of this world, but we are kings who do nothing! We laze about and allow the world to pass us by simply because we can. We build nothing when we could have kingdoms! We stagnate when we could be building marvels and legacies for all the world to remember!

“So why don’t we?” she asked them. “Why do we sit and use other people’s words and live in other people’s cities and enjoy other people’s food?

“It’s because letting yourself be ruled by the biggest asshole with a mind-controlling toothpick is a fucking stupid idea!”

Spike cringed. This definitely was a speech aimed at dragons, not for pony sensibilities. He supposed that was fine, though, if it worked.

Not that he imagined that Ember was going to give them any choice in the matter.

“No more! Dragon Lord Torch is dragon lord no longer. His age, his size and his power have all been stripped of him, never to return. Not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years. The scepter will be destroyed and the position of dragon lord… abolished.

“I will be taking his place, not as a dragon lord with a small stick, but as the empress and arbiter of a new empire… with this,” she said, raising up her hand once again, the back of her hand towards the crowd to show off the ring.

“Ah, the old, ‘the king is dead; long live the king,’ routine,” Kindle observed.

“This is the Ring of Ashmund,” she explained. “You’ve probably never heard of it.”

For some reason, Drift snickered at that, earning a curious look from Carnelia and Spike and a roll of the eyes from Kindle.

“But you’ve seen what it can do,” Ember continued. “Where the bloodstone scepter was able to control the minds of dragons, this controls the body. It was this, not the scepter, that was used to bring order and honor to the dragon empires, and it is with this that I will be remaking the dragon race.”

Before anyone had fully realized what Ember had just said, the ring lit with a light more blinding than the old sun.

“In the days of the old empire,” Ember oarated, speaking through the blinding light. “The Ring of Ashmund was used to reward those of great achievement with the stature and power that you have all come to take for granted, so as you feel yourself growing slowly smaller, you might think that I am punishing you.

“You are wrong.

“I will not be passing out years and inches like treats. A dragon is already tougher and deadlier than nearly any other creature its size, so what is the point in growing larger than can be accommodated for? What is the purpose in needing twenty pigs and their weight in gold to feel sated? What good is there to living forever when it’s with your eyes closed and your name forgotten?

Ember finally lowered her hand, the light of her ring dying to a glowing orange band on her finger, and in the wake of her power was left… a much less massive crowd. Roofs that had once been crowded with two or three dragons fighting each other for space now had room for a Pinkie Pie party with an entire mariachi band. The dragons left behind were now close to pony-sized, similar to Spike and the rest, but with more variety and little to no changes to the handful of younger dragons.

“Like it or not, we live on Equus. We lost the right to call it anything else when we left behind an entire age of history for barbarism and ignorance. I wish we had something to show for the thousands of years it’s been since the last dragon empire fell, but we don’t. I wish we could build ourselves up from nothing without leaning on the ponies for help, but experience is against us. If you want to try, I won’t stop you.

“I’m not like my father. I won’t force anydragon to follow me. If you want to go out into the wilds and build your own empire, go ahead. I wish you luck.

“But if you’re going to stay with me here in Equestria and beyond, I’ve given you the chance to do it properly. You might not like the sound of that, but I’ve seen it happen down in Ponyville; dragons taking jobs and being productive, and you know what they get for it? Acceptance! They have restaurants serving meat, full of dragons enjoying themselves! Does that sound like dragons becoming like ponies? No! But when was the last time any of you had a rack of honey-roasted ribs? Is the life of a feckless vagrant what you want, or is it what you’ve settled for for lack of steakhouses that can fit your chubby asses through the door?

“And, well, if you don’t like it? Then tough. You didn’t do anything to earn being born as a dragon, so you’re just going to have to accept that being born as a dragon just means something else now.

“You know what I didn’t change, though? The ability for every last one of you to do magic! If you really want something to lord over your fellow dragons, put some Tartarus-damned work into it and bring back a form of power with actual dignity to it! Use that to get ahead of everyone else, it’s only the most powerful force in the world!

“Tread carefully, though. I may not be my father, but I’m also not going to stand by and let a few dissenters ruin things for the rest of us, and I’ve been told that the ponies would prefer it if dragons were the size of chickens.”

— ✒ —

“Well, that happened,” Spike said, the echo of Ember’s threat still hanging in the air.

“Do you think she really got everydragon with that?” Drift wondered, flapping her wings to get a little more height to scan the rooftops with. “Because that’d mean there are going to be a lot of confused dragons who didn’t show up today.”

“I don’t think there will be,” Spike said, thinking. “Did you notice how it didn’t matter if you covered your ears?”

“You mean everydragon heard that?” Drift asked. “How would that even work?”

“Well… she said the ring controls dragons bodies, right?” Spike suggested, though he had to admit it sounded far-fetched. The rest looked dubious, too, but they didn’t really have a better explanation for it.

“How do you expect the princesses to respond, Spike?” Carnelia asked, in her slightly hissing accent.

Spike squinted over at the alicorns, still on the other side of the courtyard, but all he could really tell was that the Celestias were whispering to each other while Twilight and Luna kept to themselves.

“I think it went alright?” Spike said. “Though if Ember thinks she’s done talking for the day, she has no idea…”

— ✶ —

“Well… that was a thing that happened,” Twilight observed, having landed on one of the castle roofs while Tinder… or rather, Ember, was making her speech. “Do you think she got all the dragons with that?”

Luna hmmed. “If it is anything like the bloodstone scepter, then quite possibly. I was not aware of the scepter’s ability to take complete control of dragons, but it has long been used to call them from across Equus. It is a good thing we have secured it.”

“Well, technically we haven’t,” Twilight pointed out. “Empress Ember’s empire has.”

“Is that all it takes to create an empire?” Luna asked. “Just to say it out loud?”

“Isn’t that how it’s always worked?” Twilight asked back.

“Well, yes,” Luna admitted. “But if you’ll recall, I had to sign papers for yours.”

“Sure, but I don’t have an empire,” Twilight argued. “Empires are a different animal altogether.”

“Fair,” Luna allowed. “Though in truth, neither does she.”

Twilight frowned. “I’m not sure if having a normal country and calling it an empire and its leader an Empress is better or worse than having a Librararchy and Archlibrarian. I feel like it’s worse on account of it being wrong.”

Twilight and Luna were interrupted in their banter by the looming figure of Empress Ember suddenly bending down and leaping off of the castle, setting off a minor panic below before she was abruptly her normal size again. On closer inspection, she seemed to be in a hurry, dropping down to a black figure on the opposite side of the courtyard directly below where Spike and the others had been watching the speech.

“We should probably go see what that is,” Twilight said, to which Luna nodded and the both of them took off to glide down to the commotion below.

“He bit me!” Slag was shouting as Twilight got closer. The muscled young dragoness was seated against one of the walls bordering the courtyard and holding her tail. “That vicious little bugger nearly bit my tail off!”

“…Slag?” Spike said somewhat warily, looking around the area as he floated down from above.

“What?!” she snapped as more of the dragons reached the scene. Twilight didn’t blame her. She hadn’t been exaggerating; there was a hoof-sized chunk missing from her tail about halfway down that was bleeding quite badly.

“Oh geeze,” Spike said, cringing when he saw the blood. “Sorry, I—sorry,” he apologized, looking anywhere but at the blood. “But you had the scepter, right?”

“Yeah,” Slag grunted through her teeth as Fluttershy pushed her way into the crowd and Twilight began forming a small bubble shield and filling it with magic. “Yeah,” Slag repeated. “It’s right… here?”

It was not right there.

“Oh spit.”

— ✒ —

Ember’s hackles raised on hearing those words. “Find him!” she shouted, leaping back into the sky almost before she’d even landed. Her form stretched and twisted with each flap she took until she was long and thin with a wingspan as large as the courtyard she’d just taken off from. She wasn’t as large as she had been during her speech, but she could definitely fly.

Kindle and Drift followed soon after, while Carnelia hesitated a moment longer to reassure herself that Slag was being taken care of.

Spike had something else on his mind. Twilight, Luna and the Celestias had all heard what was happening and Fluttershy was taking care of Slag, but where were the rest of Twilight’s friends?

Stretching his wings, Spike launched himself up into the air and searched, not just for Torch and the scepter, but anyone who could help. He immediately wrote off Pinkie Pie since she’d been across the city with a trebuchet five minutes ago, meaning she could be anywhere in Equestria right now. Rarity, similarly, had been missing since before Torch had shown up and to be honest, wouldn’t be very much use in a search.

Applejack was easy enough to find leaning against the wall in the courtyard below where the alicorns had been, but Rainbow Dash, who Spike was really looking for, was nowhere to be found.

Spike hurried his landing next to Applejack and stumbled down to all fours before he could stand up again. “Applejack! Where’s Rainbow Dash?”

“Huh?” Applejack grunted, clearly unaware of what was going on.

Spike quickly looked behind himself and confirmed that Torch’s armor made it impossible to see Slag from there.

“Sorry, Dash was watching up with the princesses,” Applejack explained, stepping away from the wall and stretching. “What’s going on?”

“Torch got the drop on Slag and made off with the scepter,” Spike quickly explained. “We’re looking for him, but…”

Applejack halted in her steps at that. “By ‘Torch,’ you mean…” She gestured with her eyes up to where the dragon lord had originally made his entrance on top of Canterlot Castle. “Of course you do.”

“Torch doesn’t matter,” Spike told her. “But we need that scepter back. It’s… really not something we want someone else to have.”

“Ah never would’a guessed,” Applejack said in a rare moment of snark. “The phrase ‘mind-controlling toothpick’ sounds so harmless.”

“Yeah, well, do what you can and let Rainbow Dash know if you see her,” Spike said, spreading his wings to take flight again. “Hopefully she’s already looking.”

— ✶ —

It took longer than it should have for Twilight to get the whole story about what had happened. The eventual consensus was that Torch had crawled out of the banana cream at the end of Ember’s speech and immediately made a bid for the scepter while everyone was distracted. This seemed obvious in hindsight, but Slag had only caught a glimpse of him running off, and everyone who had actually understood the situation had quickly flown off.

That didn’t mean that Twilight and the rest of the alicorns hadn’t participated in the search, however, just that it took a little longer to get them organized.

Rather than take wing, Twilight had searched through the light of the stars that she had seeded the city with, though the interference from the daylight made it more difficult than it would have otherwise been. As she searched, she repaired the damage that had been done to the city, cleaning up and removing places where a small dragon with an uncomfortably powerful artifact could hide in the process. One by one, she also returned her stars to the sky and by the time she was done, it was fairly clear that Torch had made good his escape.

According to Ember, who had come back quite impressed with Rainbow Dash after several passes around the mountain, she had taken his wings when she had de-aged him, but she also admitted with spitting distaste that that didn’t mean much when he had the bloodstone scepter. Twilight wasn’t happy with the idea that somedragon in the crowd had been commandeered to be used like a cart for his escape, but there wasn’t much that any of them could do about it right now.

The Celestias, too, came back empty-hoofed, having the same limitations as Twilight in only being able to focus on one thing at a time. Out of all of them, only Fluttershy had the ability to look through more than one set of eyes at once, and while her range was painfully large, it didn’t span the entire valley.

Torch was long gone.

Twilight let out a heavy sigh as she went about putting the last of her stars away.

“You’ve already expressed your displeasure with the ex-dragon lord’s escape,” Luna said. “Something else on your mind?”

Twilight plucked back one of her stars just as it was rising up into the sky. “I’m a little disappointed with myself,” she admitted. “I made a split-second decision to bring down the stars, and I think I helped, but it wasn’t nearly as useful as I’d imagined it’d be. Half the damage I just cleaned up was in the form of craters that I made.”

“You don’t sound that torn up about it,” Luna observed, to which Twilight shrugged.

“Damage can be repaired, especially with a star… or… two…?” Twilight drifted off in the middle of her sentence as she just realized something. “Okay, this is completely unrelated to anything that happened today, but I suddenly feel like an idiot.”

“You are anything but,” Luna consoled.

Twilight shook her head. “It’s just… you do remember me complaining about the limits of manifesting from starlight, right? Back when I blew myself up and demanifested myself experimenting with earth pony magic?”

Luna looked at Twilight, then looked at the star she was holding. “Ah.”

“Yes, ‘ah,’” Twilight said. “I don’t even need to integrate it into my manifestation, just…” Rather than explain it, Twilight brought the star closer and used its light to remanifest her peytral around it. “There. Voila. All the starlight I need. Still think I’m not an idiot?”

Luna answered by way of a wing over Twilight’s back. “If anything, I think the events of today have made clear that one cannot think of everything.”

“I know what you mean,” Twilight agreed. “In fact, now that you mention it, I feel like there’s something else I’m missing.”

“There’s plenty about what happened that we are going to need to discuss, but I can’t think of anything that’s urgent,” Luna said. “There may still be a coronation, but it won’t be today. We will need a few days at least to coax the ponies out of their homes for such an event, which is to say nothing of dealing with a city full of previously-stout dragons that are feeling confused and vulnerable.”

Twilight waved those things off, since it was something else that was on the tip of her tongue, and that’s when she remembered.

Scootaloo and the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

— ✶ —

“This isn’t what I meant when I said we had to go deal with them,” Twilight deadpanned, standing underneath a banner reading:

Happy Cuteceñera

Cutie Mark Crusaders!

Chapter 21

— ⭗ ✹ —

Sitting with her twin sister on the sidelines of a children’s party, Celestia Corona felt as if she’d lost control of her life. “What are we doing here, Candesca?”

“You are the one who delegated the entire matter of the event organization to Pinkie Pie,” Candesca reminded her.

“I rather think that dealing with everything that just happened takes precedent, don’t you?” Corona said.

“Yes,” Candesca admitted, sipping punch out of a paper cup with yellow, orange and red balloons on it. “But I’m informed that one does not go back on their word with Pinkie Pie, and you have to admit, the fact that there is cake and a definite lack of hooves to shake automatically makes it more pleasant than most of the events in my memory.”

Corona let out the weary sigh of someone who just… what was it the fillies say these days? Ah, yes. She could not ‘even.’ Giving in, she levitated a small plate over from the desserts table, stabbed the sponge cake with a plastic fork and took a large bite.

“You realize, of course, that it is not the party that has you upset,” Candesca asserted. “We could be discussing any number of things right here. It doesn’t take a stuffy room and twenty ponies to make a plan of action.”

“No, but it takes ponies to enact them,” Corona grumbled, stuffing her face full of more cake.

“It does say something about us that we have been in power for so long that we’ve forgotten how to get anything done without resorting to orders and royal decrees,” Candesca mused, to which Corona gave a huff.

“It’s more than just that!” she snapped, crushing her empty paper plate in her magic and grabbing another one. “We aren’t talking about things one can do with their hooves. Every day, more ponies flee at the sight of us. Do we even lead this country anymore? How can we claim to do so when our castle is all but empty?”

“We can only lead the willing, sister,” Candesca reminded Corona. “They may be few, but they do exist. Just look at the events of today. Things didn’t go so badly, did they?”

“Didn’t go—!” Corona stopped herself and took a deep, calming breath. “No, they did not go badly,” she admitted, settling down. “Yet it seems as if we have facilitated a coup of a foreign power without even ordering it.”

Candesca paused a moment in the process of sipping her punch. “Ah, you noticed that, did you?”

“The sudden appearance of a forty-story tall dragon was difficult to miss!” Corona quietly hissed, doing her best not to attract any attention.

Candesca was calmer, but no more happy about it. Still, she played discord’s advocate for her sister. “So it’s certain that it’s the same ring? She called it something else.”

“You recognized it just as well as I did,” Corona responded, rolling her eyes. “You’d have done so even if she hadn’t used it.”

“I didn’t, though, until she used it,” Candesca said, and asked, “Did you?”

Corona shook her head and grabbed another plate of cake. “I must admit that I was a bit distracted at the time, and hardly expected the difference in size.”

“I suppose that we will have to talk to Spike about it, then. That is not a conversation that I will be looking forward to.”

Corona’s face softened at that. “No, it isn’t. Theft is theft, and it would not be a kindness to let it slide.”

“And yet here we stand, celebrating a trio of star-stealing cutie marks,” Candesa reflected.

Corona prevented herself from looking too displeased by shoving nearly an entire slice of cake in her mouth. “Ahem. Indeed. It is fortunately not our place to get involved in that,” she said, looking over to where Twilight and Luna were talking. “Do you think that’s what they’re talking about?”

“What else could it be?”

— ✶ —

Luna was wearing a smile that looked like it had been left out in the sun to dry into a stiff mockery of the real thing. “I did not see you telling Pinkie Pie ‘no,’ Twilight.”

Twilight quickly copied Luna’s smile for a brief moment as the… ex(?) Cutie Mark Crusaders walked by with paper plates piled with cake. Once they were gone, the pasted on smile turned into a grimace. “You don’t ever tell Pinkie Pie that you don’t want to go to one of her parties. Besides, she has a point; a cuteceñera is a once-in-a-lifetime event. It’d be a shame to ruin it.”

“Wise words,” Luna said, looking over to where the mare in question was setting up a special game of Pin the Tail on the Pony for the trio of fillies involving their new cutie marks instead of the traditional tail. “And what of the cause for this celebration? I imagine it would rather ruin the mood if you suggested that they give back what they stole, and yet three fillies with that kind of power…”

That was, admittedly, an issue, and Twilight said nothing for a good ten seconds before she finally responded, “…I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Luna raised an eyebrow at that.

“Don’t give me that look,” Twilight said and proceeded to defend her lack of reaction. “At least this way they won’t have to hire a pegasus carriage to bring Apple Bloom into the city after Applejack moved her farm out into the mountains. I swear, that mare has only gotten more stubborn since I made her a demigoddess.”

Luna shook her head. “And I’m sure your arguments with Applejack over immortality have nothing to do with it.”

Twilight cringed. “Actually no. That’s not a conversation between the two of them that I want to be a part of.” Just from the look on Luna’s face, Twilight could tell that she agreed, at least about that.

“Still,” Luna said. “Are you really going to condone that set of cutie marks?”

Twilight looked over to the game of Pin the Mark on the Pony that the fillies were playing. “…It’s probably fine,” she repeated. “And even if it wasn’t, there really isn’t a whole lot that I could do about it.”

“You are the goddess of the stars,” Luna countered. “There is quite a lot that you could do about it.”

Twilight was silent for a moment. “Okay, point. There may be a lot that I can do about it, but there isn’t a little that I could do about it. My options are to either cripple or kill them, and those aren’t options.”

Luna grimaced. “No, but you could at least prevent them from becoming immortal.”

“Can I?” Twilight asked. “Because, again, Scootaloo has a cutie mark for stealing stars. I imagine if I took back their excess, she’d just go get more and that’s not a game I want to start playing.”

“If you leave her be, she will be stealing stars regardless,” Luna pointed out. “You were listening to her joyous ramblings, were you not?”

“I was,” Twilight said. “And she might have a point, you know.”

That seemed to surprise Luna. “Really?”

“You probably don’t know this,” Twilight said. “But for as long as I’ve known about her, Scootaloo has had a condition that prevented her from flying. Her wings are small, sure, but after years and years of trying, she more than makes up for it in beats-per-minute. The problem was always her magic.

“Look how light she is on her hooves now, though,” Twilight said, gesturing with her horn at Scootaloo hopping towards the picture on the wall, blindfolded, with Rainbow Dash cheering her on. “I don’t think she’s properly realized it yet, but she’s not going to have any problems getting into the sky any more. How could she, with as much magic as that star has?”

“That… is a much better answer,” Luna said, her eyes following the bouncing filly with a small smile.

“You changed your mind fast,” Twilight said, but Luna shook her head.

“I didn’t disagree in the first place,” Luna claimed. “They are your stars to do with as you wish. I just didn’t wish to see you forced into something you don’t want.”

Twilight chewed at her lip, looked over to her and asked, “Do you still miss them?”

Luna blinked in stunned silence at the question. “After everything we both went through over them, you ask that?”

“Feelings are complicated,” Twilight said. “You’re allowed to be conflicted on the subject.”

“I told you before, Twilight,” Luna said, laying her wing over Twilight and pulling her closer. “They’re right here.”

— ✒ —

Though it was actually fairly short, the party seemed to drag on from Spike’s perspective, though to his relief, it did eventually come to an end.

With the amount of power that Pinkie Pie had these days, that wasn’t actually a given.

Still, normally he would have felt guilty for wanting to skip out on a Pinkie party, but between Slag’s injury and Ember having just declared herself empress, he thought it was fair that his heart wasn’t really in it.

Just as he was excusing himself to go find Ember and the others, though, he found himself cornered by all four alicorns. Given his distraction, he could also be forgiven for forgetting that this conversation was coming.

“Hold a moment, Spike,” Corona said, placing herself between him and the door. “I believe we have something to talk about.”

Previously, he would have found four alicorns all looming over him rather intimidating, but eye to eye… actually, it didn’t help. He still felt like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and he wasn’t even sure what it was that they wanted to talk about.

“Would you care to explain how it is that a certain young dragoness appears to have come into possession of the Dragon Emperor’s Toe-Ring?” she asked.

“Come to think of it, it does sound like the artifact you described,” Luna observed.

“The Dragon Emperor’s what now?” Twilight asked, apparently not having been filled in on the subject of this conversation.

“The Dragon Emperor’s Toe Ring was something that was discovered in the mountains of the minotaur lands seven hundred years ago, still worn by the petrified form of its previous owner,” Candesca explained. “It was an intricately carved band that you could ride a small cart through, and according to local legend, possessed the ability for a dragon that was wearing it to be as old or as young as they desired.”

“A legend that apparently understated the truth of the matter,” Candesca added. “We had the ring rushed to Ponyville as part of a last-ditch effort to send Astri to Tartarus before you rendered the matter moot.”

“I see,” Twilight said, looking to Spike as she considered the situation before her attention shifted to Luna. “And I suppose that in all the mess surrounding the destruction of the tower, it got put away and forgotten with all the salvage?”

“I honestly couldn’t say,” Luna admitted. “But that does sound likely.”

Twilight shrugged. “Well, nothing we can do about it, I suppose.”

The Celestias stood blinking at the casual response. “What do you mean there’s nothing we can do?” Corona said, sounding oddly peeved for one of the Celestias. “The ring was stolen!”

“I doubt that,” Twilight said, causing Corona to sputter in disbelief. “I probably gave it to him.”

“You what?!” Corona asked. “What do you mean you probably gave it to him?”

Luna, who’d had her brow furrowed, suddenly perked up. “That’s right. I remember those papers passing my desk a few days ago. You gave Spike the pick of the salvage stored in site A, didn’t you?”

“He needed new furniture,” Twilight said, nodding in a self-satisfied manner as if that explained everything. “Though with the current situation, I can’t imagine they’ll be staying in the old library—oh! I didn’t think of that! I can build them a proper lair and then move back into the old library!”

Corona’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t reward him for this!”

“Why not?” Twilight asked.

Luna shrugged. “It was quite clever.”

“It’s not like we had any other use for it,” Twilight pointed out. “He’s pretty much the most trusted dragon in Equestria, isn’t he?”

Luna nodded.

Candesca placed a hoof on Corona’s withers to calm her down, but the rainbow-maned alicorn shook her off. “Twilight. He gave a powerful magical ring to a foreign national.”

Twilight was nodding as if this was quite the normal thing to do when she suddenly gasped. “Ohmygosh, you’re right!” she said, her eyes widening in realization as she turned to Spike and chastised him.

“Spike! How could you get engaged without telling me?!”

“I—buh—what?” Spike stammered.

— ⭗ ✹ —

“Please tell me that didn’t just happen,” Corona pleaded, massaging her temples with her hooves just down the hall from where the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ cuteceñera was still winding down.

“We taught them well, didn’t we?” Candesca said, pulling her sister up onto her hooves and leading her into a quiet side room.

“What do you mean?” Corona asked with a frown.

Candesca eyed her sister with a slight amount of disbelief. “You do remember being the one to instigate such games in the past, don’t you? We used to be quite playful in how we approached our duties.”

“That was different,” Corona insisted. “We…”

“We were the ones in control of the situation,” Candesca finished the thought for her. “It always is more enjoyable when you are the one having fun at others’ expense.”

“But—”

“Be honest, Corona,” Candesca said, returning her hoof to her sister’s withers. “If Twilight as a young filly had managed to requisition something in the vaults from right under your nose, how would you have reacted?”

Corona felt the corners of her mouth twitch up in the ghost of a smile before could force herself to keep a straight face. “I… maybe,” she admitted. “But if it was the hammer of Baron Gloryhoof and she gave it back to the minotaurs…”

“If she gave it to a young minotaur who was as driven to redeeming his race as much as that young dragoness is to see her people civilized, you’d consider it a fine time to let it back out into the world,” Candesca said and, well… she wasn’t wrong.

Corona sighed and didn’t speak for a while. “Candesca?” she quietly said.

Candesca’s ears perked up to better hear her sister. “Yes?”

“I feel like I am becoming the angry sister.”

“That’s…”

“I don’t want to be the angry sister.”

— ✒ —

Spike had eventually needed to leverage his concern for Slag to get away from Twilight and her teasing about his ‘engagement.’ It was hard to argue with her when he didn’t actually want to describe the very much unromantic series of events that had resulted in Ember taking possession of the Ring of Ashmund… or just about anything that had happened since then.

Well, dinner out had been nice, he supposed, and she’d probably enjoyed it too, considering she’d mentioned it in her speech.

Her speech in which she had taken over from her father.

Huh.

He guessed there had been a coronation that day after all, except for the lack of any actual crown being involved. They had Torch’s crown out in the courtyard, of course, but Spike kind of doubted that Ember would have any interest in wearing it even if it were her size or vice versa.

Spike quickly found his way to the castle’s medical suite. Compared to the last few days, there had been a strange reversal of fortunes in that he actually felt a bit of relief in getting away from Twilight and returning to Ember and the other girls.

It probably wouldn’t last, but the feeling was there.

The dragons, however, were not.

“What do you mean they left?” Spike asked the brown-coated nurse who was cowering away from him.

“Th—there wasn’t anything we could do for her!” the nurse squeaked out.

Spike sighed. He wasn’t trying to scare the poor mare, so he dropped down onto all fours so he wouldn’t be looming over her.

Unfortunately, it just made him look like a stalking animal and she backed away.

Spike really had to wonder how bad it had been up here in Canterlot if this was the reaction dragons were getting here. It wasn’t like this down in ponyville, but he supposed that being completely surrounded by dragons the size of the ones that had been searching for Ember was a different matter.

Still, it didn’t mean he liked it. “So you turned them away because they were dragons?”

“What?” the nurse said, balking, and hurried to correct him. “N—no! There really wasn’t anything more we could do! The injury was already sterilized and dressed just as well as we would have done it! They weren’t interested in staying here, so the doctor prescribed pain medication and a cold compress for the wound!”

“…Oh,” Spike said. That made a lot of sense, actually. No way Ember or Slag would want to hang out in anything resembling a pony hospital. “Um. I don’t suppose they said where they were going, then?”

“Out into the gardens?” the nurse guessed. “I think the yellow pegasus said something about it being the next best thing…”

With that information, Spike quickly apologized, excused himself and made his way out of the castle. It was amazing how quickly it was that just leaping up into the air and taking flight had become automatic, and soon enough he identified spots of turquoise, yellow, black, red, orange and green sitting underneath one of the larger trees.

As he came in for another slightly stumbling landing, he noticed that, contrary to his expectations, it was Ember that had her hands on Slag’s tail while Fluttershy sat by and watched.

Slag was doing her best to remain gruff and unaffected, but she was clearly in pain and uncomfortable with all the attention.

“I suppose there had to be something that that ring couldn’t do,” Carnelia hissed from where she was lounging in the sun. She really… didn’t sound sincere, but the way her tail wouldn’t stay still made Spike wonder if she was more shaken than she was letting on.

Or maybe that was just Carnelia, he thought as the flicking motion kept bringing his eyes back to said tail.

Fortunately, he had other things to keep his mind on track.

“Yeah, I guess,” Ember agreed, grumbling. “Maybe it’d go away if I could get rid of the tail entirely and put it back, but I can’t.” Belatedly, she also threw in a, “Hey, Spike,” which prompted a brief wave of welcomes.

Fluttershy, only moderately reticent, spoke up. “I have a suggestion, um, though you might not like it,” she said, looking apologetically at Slag.

“I don’t care what it is. If it’ll help, I’ll do it,” Slag declared in a way that reminded Spike of Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy was having the same thought, by the look of the faint smile on her face. “That’s wonderful to hear,” she said, then looked to Ember and held her hooves about a foot apart. “So, I was thinking that she should be about this big? About the size of a fat racoon.”

“Err, what?” was Slag’s bemused response. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Oh, not at all!” Fluttershy reassured her. “You see, the smaller you are, the smaller the wound is. Children also heal much faster than adults no matter the species, and you will be much easier to move if somedragon can just carry you.”

Slag looked unconvinced. “You know, on second thought… no. I can walk just fine.”

“How much faster are we talking about here?” Ember asked, rubbing her chin in thought.

Fluttershy looked the injured dragon over. “The difference in mass alone is about ten times, and a wound that small would be much less likely to leave any lasting sign.”

Ember gave Slag a long, significant look and the gruff dragoness eventually gave in. “Augh, fine,” she spat. “Get it over with.”

Looking a little too pleased with the opportunity to turn one of her friends into a whelpling, Ember raised her hand, but was quickly interrupted.

“W—wait!” Fluttershy said, waving her hooves to get Ember’s attention

“What now?” Slag asked, not happy about the delay after she’d decided to get on with it.

“Sorry,” Fluttershy mewled meekly under the dragoness’ unkind gaze. “The dressings will come off when she makes you smaller, so just let me get some fresh gauze ready,” she said, making her way as quickly as possible over to a pair of saddlebags with a red cross on them that were sitting next to the tree. It was only a few seconds more before she was sitting next to Slag with a roll of narrow gauze under her wing and medical tape in her mouth.

“Okay,” she said around the tape. “I’m Ready.”

— ✒ —

“This is humiliating,” the baby dragon said, scowling at the world from on top of Fluttershy’s back as the group walked back to the castle. “Can’t you at least give me wings?”

Ember hid a snicker behind her fist. “Sorry, Slag. You heard the pony; it’s important that you be young, not just small.”

“Great,” she grumbled, holding on tightly to Fluttershy’s back, not used to the mode of transport at all.

No matter what Slag said, however, there was no doubt in anyone present that any humiliation was a small price to pay for the result. What had been a hoof-sized chunk missing from Slag’s tail was now no larger than a peach pit, and with how adorably stubby her tail had become, it might even be possible to stitch it shut. That’s where they were heading now—back to the medical wing to get a second opinion.

“So, uhh, I talked to the princesses about the Ring of Ashmund?” Spike said, changing the subject.

This immediately had Ember’s full attention. “And?”

Spike scratched the back of his neck uneasily. “It went… okay? I’m not sure what to make of it, actually.” And that was entirely apart from the whole ‘engagement ring’ thing, which he was not going to even mention.

“They’re not going to try and take it away, are they?” Ember asked, fidgeting with the ring on her finger.

“No, that’s not going to happen,” Spike said with a fair amount of certainty. “Even in the worst-case scenario, they wouldn’t dare undermine what happened today.”

“Did it go that badly?” Ember asked.

Spike waves his hands in front of him. “Oh, no, no. Like I said, it went okay. Twilight and Luna took it in stride and they were the ones who actually have reason to be offended.”

“So it was the sisters who dissented?” Carnelia asked.

“Yeah,” Spike confirmed. “It was weird. Celestia—you know, before she was two ponies—she was always the kind, motherly type who would always bend rules and make exceptions. I mean, the whole country pretty much runs on the phrase, ‘Celestia knows best’… or it used to, anyway.”

“I never got the impression that pony moms condoned stealing, though,” Drift said.

“It’s not like they were even that angry,” Spike said, defending himself. “I didn’t exactly expect it to go smoothly in the first place, it’s just weird that they took it worse than Twilight.”

“The sparkly one?” Ember asked. “Why? She seemed pretty laid back. Is this about her being the one to suggest they go out and yell at dragons?”

Was it? No, not really. “No, she just used to be… strict, with endless schedules and checklists covering every second of the day. And she would completely obsess over any possibility that she would disappoint Celestia. Geeze, I’m making her sound bad.”

Drift hmmed. “Still, sounds like she’s changed a lot. That happens sometimes.”

“Yeah, she really has,” Spike said, letting the subject drop as they began to approach the castle’s medical suite once again.

A short discussion had all of the dragons sans Slag waiting outside while Fluttershy went inside with the now much smaller and cuter baby dragon, which took a moment for Fluttershy to explain.

Listening from the door, Spike was not terribly impressed by the doctor, but at least he was polite enough not to offend any of the touchier dragons in their retinue. What it boiled down to, though, was that he knew nothing about giving reptiles stitches, but had some adhesive sutures that would work just as well. They weren’t able to get the wound to completely close, but it was better than nothing and took next to no time at all.

“So, Empress,” Spike said once they were done and on their way. “What are your plans now?”

Chapter 22

— ✒ —

“We were hoping that we could speak to you about that,” said one of the Celestias approaching from deeper into the castle, immediately setting all of the dragons on edge.

“Oh yeah?” Ember said, discreetly fidgeting with the ring on her finger.

“You may relax,” Candesca said. “We have not come to antagonize you. We were previously unaware of how the ring came into your possession, but now that we have been so informed, we recognize its validity as well as its necessity.”

“Alright…” Ember hesitantly said, relaxing only a little and keeping an eye on the sister that hadn’t spoken. “What’s there to talk about, then?”

Corona took half a step forward, clearly conscious of Ember’s scrutiny. “To start, we have in our custody two unconscious, injured dragons who have proven to be violent. They are already much more manageable than they were yesterday, which we thank you for, but I believe that you made a statement during your speech regarding how such dissenters would be treated, and there is no time like the present to show them that you are serious.”

Ember silently considered the suggestion, and Spike figured that she would probably do it. Really, it was a good idea and he didn’t see any reason not to.

“Indeed,” Candesca continued, nodding in the direction of the small, black dragon riding on Fluttershy’s back. “And considering their injuries, it would even be the compassionate thing to do.”

“…Aaand you ruined it,” Ember said with a huff. “Fine, though. Might as well make an example of them.”

The Celestias made no comment on Ember’s seeming lack of empathy and led the group out to the castle gardens where a small group of royal guards were standing watch over two very large piles of gauze with two of what now counted as adult dragons sleeping on top of them.

Fluttershy passed an annoyed Slag off onto a somewhat bewildered Carnelia as she went to check on the unconscious dragons. Ember and the others were slower to approach, but morbid curiosity won out in the end.

The first thing that Spike noticed actually had nothing to do with the dragons’ injuries, but was instead their appearance. When Ember had changed Spike and the others, she’d had a very specific look in mind. They weren’t anything resembling twins, but they were all built to a fine degree of slender athleticism with their own individual qualities differentiating them.

That clearly wasn’t the case with the rest of dragonkind. They had still been de-aged to that special sweet-spot that would allow them to be either bipedal or quadrupedal, but everything else had much more in common with their original forms, which was to say, “They could use a diet.”

“Well, call me avocado toast, then, because I know the perfect way for them to lose ten stone,” Ember joked, cracking her knuckles and preparing to chickenify a couple of jackasses.

Everyone stared at her.

“What?” she asked self-consciously.

“How do you even know what avocado toast is?” Spike asked.

Ember looked at Spike like he was an idiot. “Avocados come from the dragon lands. That’s why they look like dragon eggs. Avocado trees sneak them into dragon nests to trick dragons into incubating them.”

Everyone continued to stare at her.

“Uhh, Ember…” Spike had no way to respond to that. “I don’t think…”

Ember rolled her eyes at Spike. “Oh, and I suppose you know the dragonlands better than me?”

Spike wanted to roll his eyes right back at her. Instead, he looked expectantly to Slag and Carnelia.

“Sorry, Ember” Carnelia hissed.

“Yeah,” Slag agreed from in Carnelia’s arms. “Someone was pulling your leg.”

Ember looked like she was about to continue being dismissive until she realized just who had chipped in. “Wait, really? You mean I—nevermind. Avocados still come from the dragonlands,” she told Spike, then immediately changed the subject. “Whatever. Let’s just get this done.”

Ember stepped forward and made a face at the burns running down each of the unconscious dragons. Even at this size, they were pretty gruesome.

Drift was right behind her. “You said it was Rainbow Dash that did this?”

“It’s more like they did this to themselves,” Spike corrected. “But yeah, Rainbow Dash is the one made of rainbows and lightning.”

“Isn’t that kinda worse, though?” Drift asked. “I mean, I feel like I should tell you to remind me not to shake her hoof.”

“She’s safe… ish,” Spike weakly insisted as the group watched Ember lift her hand and shrink the two dragons into infants.

Kindle shuffled uneasily as she watched. “These are the dragons that were looking for Ember, right?”

“Yes,” Candesca confirmed, politely neglecting to mention the third one, whose bones Spike didn’t see.

“Right,” Kindle said. “It’s just not pretty seeing whelps that young with injuries like those.”

She… had a point, Spike thought. For all the smaller their wounds had become, they were still twisted lines of burned flesh running down the dragons’ sides which would no doubt be very painful when the two dragons eventually woke up.

Fluttershy, oddly, didn’t comment on the now-infantile dragons or their injuries, instead choosing to busy herself cutting clean sections of the dragons’ previous dressings down to size. Candesca quickly stepped in to help her, while Corona turned to Ember.

“Thank you, Empress,” Corona said, dipping her head in a bow. She even made it sound sincere, title and all. “Rest assured, they will be taken care of for as long as their convalescence lasts. There will be no charges pressed in spite of the fact that their aggressive poking might very well have injured a normal pony, but a second offense will not be looked on so lightly. As we have already seen today, even a very young dragon can still be a great danger when properly motivated.”

“Not sure why I’d care, but okay?” Ember said.

“You have declared yourself as the leader of your race,” Candesca said, joining the conversation once she was done helping Fluttershy. “You are, at some level, now responsible for them. My sister is simply reassuring you that your people will be treated with honor and fairness both here and now and in the future.”

Ember straightened at the reminder of her position. “Err, right,” she said, going along with it. That might not be how dragons worked, normally, but it was how they worked in the empire.

“If I may ask, Empress,” Candesca said, changing the subject once again. “You’ve spoken of bringing culture and civilization back to dragonkind, which is a noble endeavour. How do you see yourself progressing towards that goal in the near future?”

Spike winced. That… was a bit of an abstract question for Ember, but so long as her answer wasn’t ‘with my eyes,’ it’d probably be fine. He needn’t have worried.

“Leading by example, of course,” Ember declared. “I suppose, with my father no longer an issue, I shall have to move out of Spike’s basement.”

Well, maybe a little worrying, Spike corrected, then his mind caught up with the actual implications of that. Ember moving out? This would be great! If he could get rid of Ember and the others, he could finally have some peace and quiet!

“Actually, you should speak to Twilight Sparkle about that,” Candesca mentioned. “She was thinking along similar lines and was looking forward to getting her library back.”

Goddammit.

— ⭗ ✹ —

Celestia Corona and Celestia Candesca spent a short while talking to Empress Ember about what her so-called rule would actually involve, making suggestions here and there. They would have liked to have talked longer, but Ember clearly didn’t have the patience for long discussions on statecraft just yet.

They would have also liked a copy of the book on the dragon empire that she kept mentioning, but she was insistent on keeping the one she had close to her chest and the Celestias had never heard of another copy. Given how old it would have to be to be a first-hand account, there no doubt wasn’t one. That was a shame, but it was only a curiosity. More important was what she actually intended to do with the information, and she wasn’t shy about sharing it.

It was… a work in progress.

That wasn’t what the Celestias were thinking about on their way back to their chambers, though.

“It’s not very subtle when you’re actually looking for it, is it?” Corona asked, rather disheartened.

Candesca reluctantly agreed. “No, it isn’t.”

“We have to do something,” Corona insisted. “This cannot continue.”

“What do you suggest we do that we aren’t already doing?” Candesca asked. “Things might get better now that the situation is at least partially resolved.”

“Do you really believe that?” Corona asked. “I fear we would just be putting the matter off until another day and we already know how that turned out last time.”

“That won’t happen,” Candesca said, attempting to reassure her sister with a casual bump of the shoulder.

It didn’t really work. “You can’t guarantee that. We shouldn’t ignore it.”

“Okay,” Candesca said. “If you have any suggestions, I’ll listen.”

— ✶ —

“I distinctly remember you chastising yourself for even suggesting this,” Luna said, having located her missing marefriend behind a pile of books in the Canterlot Archives. “Something about you being able to come here on any day of the week instead of wasting time that you could otherwise be spending with your friends.”

Twilight shrank into her shoulders at being caught, but she had her reasons. “Come on, give me a break,” she said, not terribly contrite. “I planned for a public event followed by a casual celebration and maybe an early private dinner. There’s only so much cuteceñera cheer and noise that I can stand before I need to take a break, and I’m not the only one who bailed early.”

Luna set herself down next to Twilight and leaned into her. “Yes, well, I daresay my sisters were not expecting us to be on Spike’s side. They seemed rather unsettled when they left.”

“I don’t see why,” Twilight said, taking the chance to nuzzle Luna back. “It’s just the sort of nonsense I used to get into as a filly. Admittedly, I don’t think I ever indirectly enabled a coup of a foreign power, but it all worked out for the better.

“They are stressed,” Luna reminded her.

“I know,” Twilight acknowledged. “But you’d think they’d be relieved.”

“It’s not always that simple,” Luna said. “If it were me that had been struggling with a problem only to have it solved by someone else for their own reasons, I can imagine that I would be quite disheartened.”

“I don’t think it was that,” Twilight said, trying to pin down the impression she’d gotten from the Celestias as they’d been leaving. “Well, you said it. They were unsettled, not depressed.”

Luna hmmed. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said. “Sister always was used to being in control and on top of things. Unsettled would fit her in this situation, especially on having her accusations rebuffed.”

Twilight thought about it and agreed. “Well, I hope they can reconcile those feelings. It would be a shame if they held it against Spike.”

“Ah, yes,” Luna said. “Those pesky little things called ‘consequences.’ I, too, feel that they are best avoided.”

“Ha-ha,” Twilight laughed sarcastically. “That’s fair, I suppose, but Spike is… Spike. He’s so earnest that I’d question whether he even knows the meaning of the word ‘mischievous’ if I hadn’t tested him on the flash cards myself.”

Luna was unconvinced. “Really?” she said. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him sneaking cupcakes from the break room.”

“That’s harmless,” Twilight said, defending him. “I’ve always let him manage his own eating anyway. Now, if he was taking other people’s food from the fridge, that would be a different matter.”

“If he were doing that, I might consider banishing him to…” Luna stopped to think. “Where do you banish a dragon to?”

“The center of the earth?” Twilight suggested.

“Yes, that,” Luna said. “Anyway, nonsense aside, I suppose I see your point, though you might still have a blind spot for him.”

Twilight shifted in place and admitted, “Maybe a little.”

“So, how goes the research?” Luna asked, reminding Twilight where they were and what she’d been doing.

Twilight looked down at the book in front of her and brightened. “Oh! Right! Well, I was right, of course. Portals should be doable, but I’ll be completely on my own in modifying them to suit my needs. It turns out that ponies willing to be so wasteful with their magic aren’t usually the subtle type.”

“Except for you,” Luna said, nuzzling Twilight supportively.

Twilight, though, feigned a pout. “Am I being insulted? I feel like I’m being insulted.”

“Feel free to defend your honor,” Luna told her.

Twilight hmphed and said, “Isn’t that supposed to be your job?”

Luna gave Twilight a long look and claimed, “Conflict of interest,” making Twilight blush.

— ✶ —

Twilight had had her break and found what she needed in the Canterlot archives, so it wasn’t long until Luna dragged her back out to find the rest of her friends. The one they ran into first, though, came with some baggage.

“Oh, for—! Not more ponies!” Ember griped aloud.

“I’m sorry?” Twilight said, not having expected this kind of reaction. She looked to Spike and Fluttershy for any sign of an explanation.

“Sorry,” Spike said, unintentionally echoing Twilight. “She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“Yes I do!” Ember insisted, crossing her arms.

“We just got done talking to the Celestias about…” Spike stopped to search for a word, eventually summarizing it as, “Celestia things.”

Having grown up under Celestia’s tutelage, understood instantly. “Ah, well, you’ll get used to it.”

“Get used to it?” Ember asked, incredulous. “Uh-uh. No way. We talked—I even listened—but that’s it. We’re going back to ponyville and staying there.”

That was unexpected. “Didn’t you come here just to see her?” Twilight asked.

By the look on her face, Ember had completely forgotten about that, but she just doubled down on her statement. “Like I said, we came and we saw, so we’re done now. They’re not that impressive up close anyway.”

That was interesting if it wasn’t just bluster and Twilight filed that information away for later. Actually, given the level of irritation and impatience Ember was exuding just standing there, later was probably a good idea for anything that wasn’t urgent.

“Alright, well, the original plan was for us all to be here until dinner, but I don’t see that happening since Rarity and Applejack will probably be dragging the crusaders back home as soon as they can get away,” Twilight explained, moving to make her way around the group of dragons. “Enjoy your trip and good luck on the whole… empress thing.”

Ember stiltedly thanked Twilight for the well-wishes and immediately seized the opportunity to leave.

Watching them disappear around a corner leading to the castle’s main hall, Twilight shook her head and shrugged. “Well, she’s kind of abrasive, but I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t give her at least a little slack for only being able to deal with other people for so long.”

“It’s good that you recognize that,” Luna observed.

Twilight thought about that for a moment and said, “…I feel like I’m being insulted again.”

“She’s really not too bad,” Fluttershy said, startling Twilight, who had forgotten that she was there and so hadn’t realized that she’d stayed behind.

“Gah!” Twilight shouted, jumping behind Luna.

“Ah, that’s right. You went with them to care for the injured one?” Luna remembered, draping a wing over Twilight to protect her from the scary yellow pegasus.

Twilight sheepishly blushed and shrugged the wing off. “Oh, yeah. How did that go? Come to think of it, I don’t think I saw Slag with the rest of them.”

“Oh, um, she was there,” Fluttershy said. “But she’s easy to miss.”

“She is?” Twilight said, confused. “I mean, she’s black, but dark colors don’t exactly blend in around here.” Twilight gestured around to the predominantly white and gold architecture and red carpets.

“I believe that Fluttershy was referring to the dragon in question being the size of a hoofball now,” Luna chimed in.

“Oh. How did I miss that?” she said, processing the idea. “That… That’s brilliant!” she exclaimed.

Fluttershy mumbled something that might have been the meekest, quietest, “Thank you.”

“Shoot,” Twilight cursed. “Now I’m wishing I went with you instead of getting dragged to that cuteceñera.”

“You were already wishing that anyway,” Luna pointed out perfectly reasonably.

“Okay, but still,” Twilight said. “I’d have loved to see that and take notes on the effects. I’m sure they tried aging her back up, and if Slag is still that size, that means that the wound came back when they did. Comparing the before and after at the same size would be fascinating. I’d expect to see a loss of detail, but what if there wasn’t?”

“That does sound interesting,” Luna said and looked back in the direction the dragons had left in. “But something tells me getting her to indulge you might be an issue.”

“You just caught her at a bad time,” Fluttershy insisted. “Really. She reminds me of Rainbow Dash.”

Twilight considered that and shivered. “No. If you gave Rainbow Dash her own empire, there would be a lot more dancing and preening.”

“So, Ember is more like Applejack, then?” Luna asked.

“What? No,” Twilight said, not seeing that at all. “Why would… okay, it still doesn’t fit, but the fact that you can compare someone as rude as Ember is to Applejack really shows how much we need to fix this thing with her avoiding the city. I mean, this is Applejack that we’re talking about! The mare who shakes hooves like a paint mixer and shoves apples down your throat at every opportunity!”

“What a flattering description,” Luna snarked.

“The meaning of friendship is in the mild psychological trauma that we inflict on one another,” Twilight fondly asserted.

Luna frowned. “I’m sure that I should be able to refute that, but I cannot.”

“…It sounds about right to me,” Fluttershy admitted.

— ✒ —

Having grown up in Canterlot, Spike found the absolute desertion of the streets eerie. Technically, the streets had been deserted on the way in, too, but with the dragons having crawled back into their holes it almost seemed like a ghost town.

The innumerable eyes peeking through curtains at them as they walked down the street put the lie to that, though. Rather than a ghost town, it was more akin to a city under quarantine in the wake of a plague.

A plague of dragons.

Spike believed that they’d done pretty well that day, but that was not the collective noun that he wanted for his race.

“So we’re just going to… go home?” Spike said.

“What else would we do?” Ember asked in turn.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It just feels… empty. You changed the entire dragon race today, but it doesn’t feel like we won.”

Ember scoffed and said, “That’s because we didn’t. We let daddy get away with the scepter.”

“Would he go back to whatever hoard or lair he has?” Spike asked. “We could go back to the dragonlands and look for him.”

Ember fidgeted with the ring of Ashmund as she considered it. “He might, but… he has the scepter,” she said, sounding almost disgusted with that fact, or with herself for letting it stop her.

“So we ask Twilight to do it?” Spike suggested.

Ember grit her teeth and looked back the way they came. It would be rather awkward going back now after Ember had all but stormed off, but this was kind of important.

Author's Note

After months of delaying, I've decided that I'm just going to let this one slide. At the time, I just ground to a halt at this point and refused to believe that Twilight and company wouldn't have already come to this conclusion, but also didn't want to deal with the amount of refactoring that that would have required, especially with the CMC, but, you know what? That actually explains it. They had other things going on, and the lost time doesn't actually matter, so what the hell—I'm posting it.

In the meantime, I've been putting my words into polishing up another old oneshot and starting another story, so go take a look at them (as soon as they finish publishing…):

With things as they are, Patreon is more important than ever for keeping things afloat, so I’d like to thank those who still manage to support me in times like these. Even small pledges add up quickly and help a lot.

Chapter 23

— ✶ —

Twilight was wandering the Canterlot Palace with Luna in search of her remaining friends, pondering how many of them would be heading back to Ponyville when she spotted five-point-one colorfully-scaled figures that had already done so, and had been quite vocal about it.

Twilight was so perplexed to see Spike and his friends back so soon that she immediately said what was on her mind. "I thought you'd had enough of ponies for the day?"

Twilight hadn't known Ember for very long, but she was pretty sure that the almost sheepish look on her face was uncommon for her. In fact, whatever it was that had her looking so conflicted was bad enough that it was Spike who spoke up.

"Yeah, it just occurred to—uhh, us—that even though we lost Torch, we might know where he's going." He glanced at Ember checking for her agreement. "I mean, he has a lair or something, I guess?"

Twilight blinked. "He would, wouldn't he?"

"The dragonlands are a fair distance, even by flight," Luna mused. "And it is doubtful that he is flying, or we would have spotted him against the sky."

"Well, he must have made his initial escape by flight, at least," Twilight reasoned. "Fluttershy said there was no sign of him in her range by the time we spoke to her, and it's pretty big."

"Hold on a second," Ember interrupted. "Isn't Fluttershy the yellow one that was helping us? What kind of range are you talking about?"

"Did you already forget that I introduced her to you as one of Twilight's demigoddesses?" Spike asked, rolling his eyes.

"No," Ember insisted, hotly, clearly lying. "But that doesn't tell me anything. All I actually know about them is that one of them is made of rainbows and lightning and another one is apparently pink and sees the future—who knows what this yellow one does?"

"Ah, well..." Twilight prevaricated, considering how to describe it without making it sound as bad as it was. "Fluttershy can see through the eyes of any animal in her range." she explained. "And control them. And she's kind of made of them too, or something? I didn't actually get an explanation for last time, she was attacked by one of those dragons we asked you to punish, and she kind of came apart into forty-six squirrels."

Ember took a long moment to process that. Eventually, she turned to Spike and said, "That's weird, right?"

Spike only nodded, while Twilight said, "Stars, yes. And also terrifying."

"Do I even want to know what the others do?" Ember asked.

"Well, Rarity is a dress, you've seen that," Twilight observed, feeling that that was hard to miss in spite of the lifelike ponyquin she used as a stand-in. "And I honestly have no idea what's up with Applejack. Presumably she's a mountain or something? I'm not sure that actually makes any sense with her cutie mark, though."

"Well, she is far too solid to be any kind of fruit," Luna opined.

"She might be some kind of hard and dense wood?" Twilight suggested, doubtful. "Though I think she's heavier than even that."

Luna hmmed. "Petrified wood, mayhap?"

"That... fits, actually," Twilight mused, thinking back. "I guess it's appropriate that she would be a fossil."

"Is it?" Luna asked. "I was under the impression that she was against growing old."

"It's the other way around, I think," Twilight said, a little uncertain. "She doesn't want to not grow old. We've agreed to disagree."

"Enough!" Ember yelled, burying her face in her hands. "Why is it that the only one of them that's a rock is the lamest, most pony-like out of all of them? No—that's not the point! We're supposed to be talking about sending someone to my dad's lair to head him off!"

Twilight blinked at Ember's outburst. "We did get a bit off-topic, didn't we?" she admitted. "But there's no rush. The point we were getting to was that we can watch for him, but it's hard to say how fast he's traveling and when he'll arrive, though it'll probably take him a while. Luna and I can spend the night there as well as anywhere, but we should go find the Celestias and get them to keep an eye on it during the day."

"Um," Spike interjected. "Is sending the Celestias after him a good idea, with the scepter and all?"

Twilight shrugged. "It didn't work on them today, either because of their alicorn half or some other difference between them and real dragons, so I don't see why not."

The dragons were less convinced, all looking uneasy. "That's not really all that reassuring," Drift said, speaking up for the first time that Twilight had noticed. "What if he just needs to direct it at the giant not-the-sun in the sky instead?"

That brought Twilight up short. "That... is very possible," she admitted with some hesitation. "We could send Celestia Candesca since her celestial body is invisible, but that may not matter..."

"Why not test it, then?" Luna suggested matter-of-factly, to the confusion of all.

"Test it?" Ember said, rolling her eyes. "If we had the scepter to test, none of this would matter!"

"No," Twilight said, realizing where Luna was going with this and looking down at Ember, or more specifically, her claw. "But we have the ring, which seems to be its equal."

Ember reflexively brought the ring to her chest clutching it warily. Looking down at it, she asked, "Do you think that would work?"

"It's worth a shot."

— ⭗ ✹ —

Corona and Candesca had been on their way to speak with the the guard captain about the new status quo when Twilight, Luna and the dragons found her and explained that they wanted to attempt to use the Ring of Ashmund on them in place of the scepter in order to ensure that they wouldn't be vulnerable to it.

"That is... an interesting suggestion," Corona said, sharing an uncertain glance with Candesca. "I agree that it is a worrying concern, but I must admit, your proposed solution makes me uneasy."

"It is not that we do not trust you," Candesca added, trying to be reasonable. "But I would be much more comfortable if it was one of us making the attempt."

Ember predictably didn't like that suggestion, but to the Celestias surprise, she didn't immediately object with the vehemence they expected. Instead, she fingered the ring while she considered it, staring the Celestias down.

It took a while, but after one deep breath of preparation, she made her decision. "Fine," she begrudgingly ceded, removing the ring, though she didn't hand it over quite yet, closing her fist around it instead. "But you're going to have to actually give me your word that you'll return it."

The Celestias were not appreciative of having their motives questioned, especially given how Ember had come to be in possession of the ring in the first place, but they graciously nodded, not particularly scandalized. "Of course, Empress," Candesca said, stepping forward. "I do so swear that I shall use it only as proscribed and return it post haste."

"And I want to hold onto your crown while you do it," Ember added.

"Ember!" Spike objected, but Candesca raised her hoof to quiet him while she considered the demand. Truthfully, it wasn't much of a concern at all, as her crown and the rest of her regalia was nothing more than manifested sunlight, but she did get the message.

"I understand," Candesca said, sitting and bowing her head so that she could remove her crown with her hooves. "The ring is your sign of office, so an equal exchange is required."

Ember nodded and took the crown, only opening her hand from the fisted grip she had on the Ring of Ashmund once it was fully in her grasp.

A normal pony might have rolled their eyes, but Candesca took the ring with care, if not quite reverence. The ring was, if nothing else, a powerful artifact and a work of art in its own right; made of bone banded with gold, every surface of it had been carved into an incredibly detailed relief of dragons on a landscape. No doubt the work had been done when the ring was larger, but it was impressive regardless.

Still, cognizant of Ember's general lack of patience, Candesca wasted no time in levitating the ring up and placing it over her horn, which it didn't quite fit due to the horn's tapered nature, nor did it change to accommodate the size of it.

For all the many years of experience with magic she had that weren't technically her years of experience with magic, she felt nothing. She tried concentrating on herself, on Corona and on both of their celestial objects with no luck.

Pursing her lips, she considered the dragons. Ember, of course, would likely not be any happier about Corona attempting to use the ring on her than the Celestias had been about the inverse, but there was an obvious candidate.

"Either the ring does not work on us or it does not work for us," Candesca explained, shaking her head. "Would you consent to my attempting to use it on you, Spike?"

Spike had been watching Ember fidget with Candesca's crown, but he quickly shifted his attention. "Oh—uhh—sure, I guess?" he said, producing an exasperated look from Ember.

The dragon empress needn't have concerned herself; Candesca felt no more while directing her will at Spike than she had anything else. Once again, she shook her head. "Nothing," she said, levitating the ring off her horn.

"I must admit," Carnelia spoke up, the quiet, hissing sibilance of her voice a surprise to the Celestias. "I appreciate that the ring seems only useful to us."

"Not that 'we' aren't a big enough problem all on our own," Ember added with a certain bitterness as she traded Candesca's crown back for the Ring of Ashmund, which she quickly donned, noticeably relieved to have it back on her hand.

Eventually, though, Ember's attention shifted back to the Celestias. "And that brings us right back to where we were," she said. "So are we going to do this or not?"

Corona and Candesca shared a pensive look. In truth, there seemed little risk left as the chances that the ring would affect them but not be usable by them was low, but even so, the risk was lower here and now than it would be when facing the scepter.

Just when Candesca was about to accept, Corona stepped forward. "Very well, Empress. You may make the attempt on me."

Before Candesca could even object, Ember furrowed her brow for just a moment and shook her head. "Nope, doesn't work," she quickly concluded.

"Very interesting," Luna said, scratching her chin in thought. "Though mayhap not entirely surprising, in hindsight, nor entirely reassuring."

"Oh?" Twilight prompted with interest while Corona and Candesca were still processing that the test had been done just like that and everyone was moving on.

"Yes," Luna responded. "They may have developed draconic features due to the heart's fire they inherited from Discord, but it would be questionable to claim their actual flesh draconic."

Twilight considered that for a moment. "So their inability to use the ring is the more important data point, then?"

Luna brightened at that. "Ah, indeed. Yes, that is indeed more reassuring, as it involves the magic directly."

"Still, though..." Twilight mused, considering Corona and Candesca, who were tempted to roll their eyes, but, of course, did not.

"We will, of course, be careful," Corona said, projecting unconcerned serenity as best she could—which was rather well if she didn't say so herself. "Retrieving the scepter will be our priority, and we may not even manifest."

"Nay," Luna interjected. "T'would be best if you do manifest, sisters. He has already failed to use the scepter on thy manifest forms; our main concern is that he might direct it instead to thy celestial ones."

The Celestias blinked. "Fair enough," Corona said, nodding and feeling that just maybe they were being a little overzealous over the matter. Then again, very little could be said to be too much preparation when faced with the issue of an artifact capable of mind control unlimited by sight or distance. "I suppose the only thing left is to head to the map room so that Empress Ember may show us where her father's lair is."

— ✶ —

It turned out that Ember had not done a lot of high-altitude flying before coming to Equestria. Under normal circumstances, this seemingly minor bit of information might never have come up, save for the fact that as a consequence, she didn't actually know what the dragonlands looked like from the sky and it took the whole group a significant chunk of the afternoon to actually find it. Eventually, Corona, as the alicorn of light, had put together a spell to show illusions of vistas from ground level so that Ember could narrow it down, but even that was not fast.

"Is something wrong?" Luna asked Twilight as the two of them left Ember and the Celestias behind in the map room once they'd finally located it.

Twilight pressed her lips together in consternation. "Not really," she said, then immediately contradicted herself. "It's ridiculous."

"Oh?" Luna said, prompting her to continue.

Twilight rolled her eyes, mostly at herself. "I'm just a little jealous—no—envious," she said, correcting herself, then went on to say, "I told you, it's ridiculous."

Luna raised an eyebrow at this. "Envious?" she questioned, curious. "Of my sisters?"

"Well," Twilight said, taking a moment to think. "Of Corona specifically, I guess. It's just... I wouldn't be able to do that spell myself since the stars don't produce enough light to make up a ground-level point of view from the reflections. I don't have any particular need to, especially since I could just drop a star somewhere if it was really necessary; it's just a random irrational thought."

"Irrational or not, your feelings do matter," Luna reminded her.

"I know, I know," Twilight said, trying not to be dismissive but not doing the best job of it. "Though come to think of it, I wonder what Candesca's celestial sight is like? Obviously she doesn't produce any visible light, but I don't actually know if she produces infrared or if it's entirely radiant heat, and whether or not the latter would contribute to her sight. It's her magic, so I think it would? Even if it does, though, I imagine it'd be pretty blurry."

"You could, of course, ask," Luna said.

Twilight waved the idea off. "Where's the fun in that?" she said with some humor. "If it comes up, maybe. Though speaking of things that came up..."

"Hm?"

"Ember said she hadn't done much flying in the dragonlands," Twilight reminded her. "That implies that she'd done some."

"That does follow, yes," Luna acknowledged.

"Spike and the others didn't go through some kind of hormone-enhanced group-molt, did they?"

"Ah," Luna said, understanding. "No, I imagine not. That is unfortunate."

"I know, right?" Twilight agreed. "It sounded so interesting!"

Luna nodded along. "And you were so proud of his harem, too."

"Well, of course I was!" Twilight said. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Luna turned her head to look at Twilight. "You're not going to stop, are you?"

"Nope."

— ✶ —

It took Twilight longer than she'd like to admit to remember that with Applejack and Rarity taking the ex-crusaders home, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy being pegasi with no particular appreciation for Canterlot and Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie, it was very possible—even likely—that none of her friends actually remained in the palace to be found.

"Should we just... go, then?" Twilight eventually asked, having ended up back on the balcony overlooking the west castle courtyard where the coronation had been supposed to happen. The ex-dragon-lord's armor was still there, covered in a mountain of banana cream pie that was being shoveled into bins by a mixed group of palace maids and royal guards. Out on the rooftops of the city, a few dragons remained, but at their new size they were barely worth the mention, most having gone off to no doubt make what they would of the new status quo.

Luna briefly took to the air with a few flaps of her wings to get a look around the skies of Canterlot, then touched back down next to Twilight. "We may as well," Luna agreed. "If I were to guess, I would assume that Fluttershy went to find Rainbow Dash after splitting up with the dragons and they left together. They are friends, are they not?"

"They are," Twilight confirmed, unfurling her wings and stretching. "I just feel silly losing Fluttershy like that when we'd just found her, but she's good at that. I'd feel awful if we left and she was still here, though."

"There is little danger in that, I feel," Luna reasoned. "If she is still here, then she shall see us leaving through the birds."

"Are there any birds?" Twilight asked, taking another look out over the rooftops. "I kind of imagine most of them have been displaced, if not worse—and now I'm remembering that whole mess again."

"A fair few, up on the mountain," Luna reassured her. "And I doubt that dragons so large have been hunting pigeons. I would be more worried about them eating the mountain itself."

Twilight blinked. "Well, that's a terrifying image," she said, stopping to think. "In fact, I'm going to mail her about it as soon as we get back to Ponyville."

"Would it not be simpler to go find her now?" Luna asked.

Twilight looked dubiously back into the empty palace. "We were lucky enough to find them once; I'm sure it'll be fine for a few more hours. Besides, we're going to need to have an early dinner if we're spending the night over in the dragon lord's lair."

"We do not actually need dinner, you realize?"

"Does that mean you don't want to go on a date?"

"You are right, the mountain shall be fine for a few hours more."

— ✶ —

The former dragon lord's lair was unimpressive, even with the recently added sunroof, Twilight decided. Oh, sure, it was a large cave full of gold and gemstones and there was even a pool of lava on the lowest levels large enough for Torch to have bathed in before being downsized, but that was just about it.

"You know," she said, trying to judge if the lava pool was natural or not. "I have to admit, Ember kind of has a point."

"Oh?" Luna asked. She'd had to stay behind at dusk for court, but she'd quickly caught up. "I believe she had many, a few of them even good."

Twilight considered that. "Well, I do appreciate that dragons are much more manageable at that size, but that's technically really not her idea, is it? It's from an old dragon empire—not that there's anything wrong with that."

"Not entirely," Luna debated, playing Discord's advocate. "I believe she implied that size was a sign of station in the empires. If she upholds her claim that she shall not be 'passing out years and inches like treats,' then that will be something worth crediting her for."

"That's fair," Twilight acknowledged, walking up to the lava pool. Even at a distance, she was shedding stardust from the heat. She definitely wouldn't want to be here in the daytime, though the star she'd put in her peytral earlier that day would prevent most mishaps.

"What I mean, though, is that she has a point about dragons not actually doing anything with all their power and immortality." She gestured at the cave, pool of lava and all. "I mean, look at this place; it's a hole in the ground—literally! It's not even a nice, comfy hole. It's a dry, bare, sandy hole without even a place to sit down and eat, and this is where the leader of the dragon race lives?"

"It does lack artistry," Luna agreed. "Though one cannot expect all peoples to place value in the same sorts of things, especially if they do not need them."

"I guess, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that that they do value," Twilight argued, stepping back from the lava pool and turning back to the rest of the lair. "Except food, maybe, and even that seems to usually be a matter of quantity over quality.

"It's not like I'm condemning them as a race or anything; it's all societal," she added. "Spike certainly has an appreciation for aesthetics and the Ring of Ashmund shows well enough that the dragon empires did too. I got the impression that the empires were really into that sort of thing, actually."

Luna nodded, having seen some of that herself in the star that Twilight had given her, though that was still a bit of a sore subject between them. "Yes, though remember: the dragon empires weren't just dragons."

"That is a point, for all Ember implied otherwise in her speech," Twilight mused. "Still, they were in charge and prideful to a fault; I don't think it's unreasonable to infer that they valued the arts."

"Perhaps," Luna said. "Though recall, they may have also been driven to differentiate themselves from the austerity of the alicorns."

"I suppose," Twilight said with a shrug. "Still, it gives me ideas."

"Oh?" Luna prompted.

"Well, your sisters did want to sponsor Spike and the rest to be a sort of group role model for dragons, and I called dibs on the construction," Twilight reminded her. "I can only assume that Ember's new title is only going to give the idea more weight."

"...'Dibs'?" Luna repeated. "I believe I understand the meaning in context, but dare I ask?"

Twilight paused mid-step just as they were reentering the main room of the lair. "Well, you can ask, but I don't actually know where that one comes from," she admitted, scratching her chin.

"That may be a first," Luna observed.

"Speaking of 'dibs,' though..." Twilight considered the massive piles of gold and gemstones that had been shoved out into the corners of the cavern. "Are we just going to leave all this here?"

Luna cocked her head to the side in question. "Were we intending to steal it?"

"Is it really stealing if it's the property of a criminal?" Twilight asked.

"Yes," Luna immediately answered.

"He tried to mind control your sisters," Twilight reminded her.

"Still a crime," Luna refuted.

"Is it, though?" Twilight said.

"Yes," Luna repeated.

"We don't actually know the laws of the dragonlands," Twilight observed.

"Stealing is generally a crime everywhere," Luna declared.

"You may be giving them too much credit," Twilight asserted. "Also, you raided Rainbow Dash's pantry back when we weren't talking to each other. This is basically the same thing."

"Rainbow Dash's pantry was in Equestria," Luna reasoned. "Therefore it was ours to begin with."

"By that logic, this is all Ember's now, then," Twilight countered.

"I do not see how stealing from the new dragon empress is any less stealing" Luna observed.

"I meant more that it should be confiscated on her behalf," Twilight explained. "I don't actually have any use for thousands of tons of gold and gemstones—which is a weird thing to say, but still true."

"Actually, given the influx of dragons, such a cache would be very useful to Equestria," Luna pointed out. "It is not a terrible idea."

Twilight blinked. "But you just said...?"

"That it would be stealing, yes," Luna acknowledged. "I did not say that we should not do it. Actually, I believe the term is 'looting' if done on behalf of Equestria, though there may be a more politic word for it now that I have not yet come across. There is just one problem."

"Just one? The aforementioned dragon empress?" Twilight guessed.

"No," Luna said, turning to gesture at the sheer volume of the hoard. "Actually getting it all back to Equestria."

"Oh, that's easy, then," Twilight told her.

"I know that I taught you how to store mass in your demanifest form before," Luna recalled. "But I wasn't aware that it still worked now that you manifest out of starlight or that it would work for quite this amount of lucre."

"I don't think it does," Twilight said, considering that. "Which is why it's a good thing I literally just looked up portals at the Canterlot Archives earlier today."

Luna hmmed. "That is fortuitous, yes, though on second thought, we would also need a place to put it."

"Funny how that works," Twilight mused. "We had one problem, solved it, and yet we still have one problem."

"That does seem to be the way of things, yes," Luna mused. "I am unsure if it is, in fact, possible to have zero problems, and I wouldn't wish it anyway."

"Oh?" Twilight, said, looking at Luna. "Why is that?"

Luna met her eyes with a smile. "Because it would mean not having you."

Twilight blinked. "That is both incredibly sweet and also a little insulting."

— ✶ —

Fortunately for their governmentally-sanctioned larcenous endeavors, Twilight and Luna had all the time in the world with nothing else to do at the former dragon lord's lair. Unfortunately for such endeavors, Twilight's experiments were not going smoothly.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I'm going to have to drop a few stars in here to get anywhere," Twilight concluded with a huff.

Luna found that hard to believe. "Really?"

"It seems like it," Twilight said, kicking over a pile of gold bits. "Have you noticed how stifling it is in here?"

"'Tis a bit on the warm side on account of all the lava, yes?"

"Not like that," Twilight said, lighting her horn and feeling the lair out with her magic. "This place has been the home of a single, active, powerful dragon for a long time. It's so full of draconic magic that I can barely get mine to stick—essentially the opposite of what I did to Rainbow Dash's unfinished tower the other night that made it so comfortable and enabled me to use dream magic there. It's not enough to interfere with actively cast magic, but it's enough to make teleportation harder and long-term things like portals are pretty much out. It's also probably why it feels so..." Twilight struggled to put it into words. "Not-home, even though it's night."

"Like someone else's territory," Luna suggested.

"Yes, exactly," Twilight agreed.

"And I suppose that you could create a portal inside of a shield as you've been doing for your dream magic, but having a portal inside of a shield is not useful."

Twilight rocked her hoof from side to side. "Pretty much, though I also wouldn't want to hold a shield for very long in this place. It really is quite strong—and I think it's sticking to the gold and gemstones in particular."

"Well, they are of the earth," Luna reasoned. "It might even explain why they are such an integral part of dragon diets. Curious, though..."

"What's curious?" Twilight prompted.

Luna waved it off and gave a shrug. "Just that Celestia's magic also seemed to favor gold as well, even before she became part dragon. Mine—or most likely both of ours, I suppose—works best with silver, which was an association that certainly did not help matters a thousand years ago when ten silver bits made one gold bit."

Twilight scoffed. "Silver's more generally useful anyway," she said. "It's antimicrobial and actually more electrically conductive than gold; the only reason gold is so popular is because it's colorful and doesn't tarnish and I just realized how that sounded as soon as it came out of my mouth."

"Quite," Luna said, shaking her head with the barest of chuckles. "Sadly, I could not enchant every silver bit merely for the sake of pride and image."

"Well, you probably could have," Twilight jokingly mused. "One tiny mote of stardust in each one would probably have done it."

Luna rolled her eyes. "Yes, because having stars in ponies has worked so well."

"I mean, it kind of has?" Twilight said, thoughtful. "It's awkward for me personally, but when you look at the big picture, even accounting for tribalism and things like that, I'd say that pony magic and cutie marks have done far more good than harm.

"Besides," she added. "I'd be much less shy about looking into the memories of a bit in order to settle a crime than a pony."

"Ah, yes, I can just imagine adjudicating a court case of Equestria vs. Five Hundred Bits for being involved in money laundering," Luna joked. "They would hardly be able to defend themselves."

Twilight blinked. "Wait, wouldn't that actually be a case against me?"

"I said what I said," Luna teased.

— ✶ —

"And now I've come full circle," Twilight observed, standing next to a pink-rimmed portal to the small slice of home that she had established in Rainbow Dash's unfinished tower in Ponyville that was sitting in the middle of three watermelon-sized stars.

"How so?" Luna said, looking up from writing in a notebook she'd asked Twilight to create as an initial test of using the stars for dream magic in the cave.

"Well," Twilight said. "I was just thinking that we wouldn't need to find someplace to put the hoard if I knew how Pinkie Pie gets half of Ponyville into a single house for her parties now. I started out trying to understand Pinkie Pie without even knowing that earth pony magic was a thing; now I'm an alicorn with more power than I know what to do with and understanding Pinkie Pie is still a pie-in-the-sky aspiration."

"That is not an aspiration, Twilight, it is a nightmare," Luna deadpanned. "The sky is the only place we are safe from her; please do not invite her to change that."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Nothing I say is going to... actually, given the power of puns and Pinkie Pie's association with invitations, I'd better not finish that sentence."

"Speaking of puns," Luna mentioned. "Perhaps one would be able to solve this?"

Twilight bit her lip. "Something about liquid assets, maybe?" she speculated, mostly to herself. "I'm not sure how that would help any more than actually dumping it in the Everfree lake would, though."

"It is unfortunate that Celestia obliterated it so," Luna said, thinking back to when they'd been followed out of the desert of dreams by an ancient dragon woken by the starless starbeast, Gemini. "Knowing what we do now, the site of the old castle would have no doubt been a very fertile bed for your dream magic."

"Or yours," Twilight pointed out. "You did just as much as I did there, after all, and the desert of dreams may be made of stars, but both the moons that went into making you had the same powers over dreams and nightmares."

"Do we know that that is actually required?" Luna asked. "Much of what you've discovered seems to apply to any especially saturated environment, and you did connect the phenomenon to earth pony magic."

Twilight puffed up her cheeks in a pout. "That's not how magic is supposed to work, though. There should be rules and logic to it."

"It might be how it works if you have enough of it," Luna reasoned. "Though technically, puns are a kind of logic."

Twilight pursed her lips in distaste, then sighed. "I'm not sure there's actually any distinction since all pony magic comes from the stars anyway," she said.

"It should be interesting to see what my sisters can do there, then."

— ✶ —

For all that they were on watch for the former dragon lord to show up at his lair, Twilight and Luna did still need to sleep, and they'd gotten used to a more normal schedule as of late. Somewhat ironically, as Luna was the one with the actual job, they decided that she should sleep while Twilight stayed up until dawn.

It was a few hours into the early morning when Twilight realized that they were all being stupid.

Yawning and bleary-eyed, Twilight went through her portal to Ponyville and grabbed the first guard she could find, which involved sticking her head out the door of Rainbow Dash's unfinished tower to speak to the guard that was on duty.

"Princess!" the guard saluted,

Twilight wasn't sure if the salute was strictly necessary since she still didn't think she had any kind of military rank, but she really didn't care right now. "Um—yes," she said. "Look, I need you to go to whoever's appropriate and get them to put together a squad to go through the portal inside and keep watch over a certain dragon's lair."

"Ah, yes, your highness!" the guard responded, then hesitated. "A—uh—dragon, you say?"

Twilight dismissed the guard's concern with a wave of her hoof. "It's no big deal," she said. "You know what Empress Ember did to the dragons yesterday, right?" The guard nodded. "Right, well, the one we're watching for is the old dragon lord, but he's only foal-sized. He might have other dragons with him, but all I really need is for someone to come let me know if you see him."

"Of course, your highness!" the guard said, saluting again before galloping away.

It wasn't long before the guard returned with ten more, half of them pegasi, which Twilight led through the portal and explained the situation to.

Within fifteen minutes, Twilight was levitating her sleeping marefriend up to the second level of the unfinished tower and slipping into bed beside her.

Author's Note

<Patreon Credits>

Extra Special thanks to Zervon Tora and pomegranate horsie for their support

Thanks as well to Katharine Berry, Jan Sterba, Trellmor, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Kali, Andrew Denton, Canary In The Coal Mine, BlueGenome, IamUnknown, SirHoli, djthomp, CvBrony, Kirishala, Andrew Pam and Nineite for sticking with me over the hiatus!

</Patreon Credits>

Chapter 24

— Spike —

Spike collapsed onto the floor of the ex-library the instant he crossed the threshold. He wasn't sure if Ember didn't notice or didn't care, but she proceeded to try to walk right over him, fail and join him on the floor, followed by the rest of the dragonesses who seemed to think that on top of them was as good a place to fall over as any.

"You wouldn't—" Ember said, desperately gasping for breath completely independent of the pile of dragonesses on top of her. "Think that—gliding down—from a mountain—would be—so much—work."

"Yeah," agreed Kindle, huffing and puffing just as much as Ember. "What's with that, Ems? Our new bodies are cut; that shouldn't have been that much work."

Ember didn't say anything for a while, until the silence was, not precisely awkward since they were all too exhausted to be self conscious, but very obvious. Finally, she admitted, "I don't know."

"Wish I had a camera," Slag said with a bit of gruff satisfaction, not tired at all. Having been turned into a baby dragon due to her injury, she didn't have wings and thus, had been spared the marathon flight by riding on the back of Carnelia.

"Shut up," Ember groused with something of a pout. "And get me some water." The rest of the dragon pile agreed.

While Slag was in the kitchen noisily dragging a stool over to the sink with effort, Spike spoke up. "...I might know what's going on."

A chorus of indistinct, inquisitive grunts followed.

"It's the magic," he explained, having noticed that the pile of dragonesses on top of him were all still heaving. Part of him was glad he was face-down, while the rest was still very conscious of the warm feel of scales on scales. "The Ring of Ashmund can only change the body of dragons, but if I've learned anything from Twilight, it's that anything as heavy as a dragon has to be using magic to fly, at least a little. That would explain why the rest of you are more tired than I am; I've built up my magic, at least a little. We probably just need some time for our magic to catch up to our bodies."

There was a rumbling of affirmation, when Ember swore. "Damn it, Slag."

"What?" the baby black dragon said, dragging a bucket of water in from the sink.

"You're the only one who was bigger to start with," Ember grumped, then pulled herself half an arm's-length out of the dragon pile and dunked her head in the bucket of water, gulping it down. Once it was as empty as she could make it, she pulled her head out of the bucket and flopped down next to it.

Spike wasn't sure if he should ask, but if he'd learned anything about dragons from Ember, it was to say things anyway. "What about the rest of you?"

"Carnelia's a bit older than me," Ember said, answering for them. "Drift is a bit younger. Kindle's almost as young as you."

"Huh..." Spike said, absorbing the new information while they all just lay there.

Slag dragged the bucket back and forth a few more times, giving each dragon a chance at it, though Carnelia had recovered enough dignity to refuse by the time it was her turn. She still didn't get up, though.

"Do you think they'll catch my father?" Ember asked out of the blue.

"You heard what the old princess did a few weeks ago, right?" Kindle asked rhetorically. "Basically liquified an ancient dragon and chased him into a canyon to the east? If he shows up, I'm pretty sure they'll get him. The question is if he'll show up, though."

"We assume that he will return to his lair to assess the situation and lick his wounds," Carnelia hissed. "But is it truly necessary? What assets will it give him access to?"

"Food?" Drift suggested. "Though I dunno how much that matters since he's been given the baby dragon treatment."

"I don't think there's any more ancient magical artifacts sitting in his hoard if that's what you're asking," Ember responded with as much of a thoughtful frown as she could manage with her face pressed into the floor. "I certainly spent enough time there that I'd have noticed... though if it's something like another ring, then maybe not. He never said anything about it, anyway; he was always too much of a rockhead to care about magic, except for that damn scepter."

"Speaking of magic," Carnelia spoke up. "That is a subject that deserves our focus if we are to ensure that we do not end up in this situation a second time."

"And speaking of food," Kindle added. "Food."

Spike could feel all the attention settle on him, regardless of his ability to actually see any of them.

— Spike —

Spike was already feeling sore from the flight from Canterlot as he returned to the ex-library with a huge load of palace crystal. To his relief and definitely not disappointment the dragon pile had dispersed somewhat after he'd wormed his way out from under it; Ember and Carnelia had chosen seats in the main area, Drift had settled herself into one of the window reading nooks and Slag could be heard rummaging around in the kitchen.

Kindle, on the other hand, remained on the floor, a dragon pile of one, though she'd rolled over onto her back. As she was apparently the youngest beside him and probably the one with the least magic, he didn't blame her.

With a heave, Spike set the two heavy canvas sacks full of crystal down, fished out an apple-sized chunk and set it on her chest.

"Thanks," she mumbled as she moved it to her mouth and started to nibble on it.

"How sweet," Carnelia observed, still sitting casually across the room. "Aren't you going to serve the rest of us as well?"

Spike rolled his eyes. "I wasn't planning on it, no," he said, making his way over to drop into the couch. He'd already eaten while he was out, himself, as it meant he'd have less to carry back.

Carnelia gave the slightest pout, then got up to take her pick of the crystals, followed by the rest of them. "I suppose you just like to see us stretch, hm?"

Spike did his best not to blush, or to look, or to not look as they all did exactly that, bending over to fill their arms with piles of crystal and take them back to their seats. It was a relief when Slag was the only one left, having been late coming in from the kitchen and unable to get access to the bags until the crowd had gone. She seemed to want to take as much as the rest, even resorting to holding a big chunk in her mouth as she adorably waddled away.

"Okay, so... magic," Spike said, doing his best not to acknowledge Carnelia at all, going on to explain his own history, what he could do, which was mostly sending things to alicorns with his breath, and what he'd been able to teach Ember to do, which was send things to someplace in line-of-sight with hers.

"So, it's all in the fire breath, huh?" Kindle asked, having finally sat up in order to pay attention to the lecture-slash-conversation. Crossing her eyes to look down her snout, she let out a small lick of sky blue flame with some curiosity.

"As far as I know, yeah," Spike confirmed, and worked with them all to get them to the point where they were sure they were breathing magic, not just fire. When the time came to show them how it worked in practice, though, Ember was surprised to find that she easily sent her practice stick across the room as well as the stone bust behind it.

"Woah!" Ember exclaimed. "That—that was easy!"

"I suppose that our exhausting flight was a chance coincidence of pushing too far too soon," Carnelia mused, tapping her chin. "If I were to guess, I would say that our magic seems to be adjusting to suit our bodies fast enough."

Buoyed by Ember's success, Kindle set a chair on fire.

It didn't go anywhere.

They were still going to need practice.

— ✶ —

Twilight woke to an empty bed some time around noon and availed herself of the comforts she had installed while practicing with her dream magic. Clean and awake, she checked in with the guards she'd set to watch over the former dragon lord's lair, and reassured them that the portal would remain open and then left to go about her day.

The first thing she did was, of course, check in with Luna and explain the situation. It hadn't been entirely necessary as the portal had been hard to miss, but Twilight didn't really need a reason to go see Luna.

Presumably, the Celestias had noticed the nearly a dozen ponies that had set up watch in the lair, though she couldn't easily confirm it.

After a short working brunch with Luna, Twilight headed off to the old library tree to check in with Spike, Ember and the rest of the dragons.

In contrast to some of the previous times that Twilight had knocked on Spike's door recently, she'd barely started to knock when the door was violently yanked open.

"Did you get him?!" demanded the teal dragon at the door who was, of course, Ember. The smell of smoke that accompanied her was new, but Twilight couldn't exactly say that it was unusual. Nothing seemed to be immediately on fire, so she decided not to mention it.

...Nothing was on fire, was it?

Twilight shook her head as she entered the tree. "No, sorry—uhh—empress," she said, stumbling over the slightly ridiculous title, though she had no right to throw stones given her own librararchy. "But you'd know better than me how long it takes a dragon to travel the distance. I've set up a portal now and sent a squad of guards through to watch it. They'll do a better job of it than we would and come get me if anything happens."

Indeed, nothing seemed to actually be on fire, though none of the other dragons were in sight and it was rather warm inside for a breezy spring day.

Ember immediately slumped at the news, though she recovered fast enough to ask, "A portal? Like, just step through and you're there?"

"Yes, fortunately I had reason to be looking into them," Twilight said. "They're not common because of how difficult and wasteful they are, but I'm an alicorn, so it's right up my alley."

Ember just said, "Huh. Which alley?"

Twilight sighed, sure that Luna would have laughed at that one. "No, no, it's actually at Rainbow Dash's unfinished tower, which I've been using while they clean up and rebuild the palace at the center of town. Obviously, I don't recommend you go through since the whole point is that we're expecting your father with the scepter."

"...Yeah, I'm staying the muck away from that place," Ember insisted with an instinctive snarl.

There was a moment of awkward silence until Twilight suddenly had a thought. "So, Ember; we didn't get around to it yesterday, but the Celestias were suggesting we set you up with something more appropriate in the way of housing as a sort of role model for the rest of dragonkind and now that you're their empress, it makes even more sense."

"I did talk to the... Celestias... about that, actually," Ember said, reminding Twilight that Spike had mentioned Ember being inundated with talk about 'Celestia things' by the daytime alicorns. "And I am way too tired of Spike treating me like I'm always five seconds from setting this place on fire."

"Great!" Twilight beamed. "And since nothing official has been done about it on the Ponyville side as of this morning, it means nopony has told me I can't do it yet."

Ember blinked. "Ponies tell you you can't do things?" she asked, dubious.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "You have no idea," she said. "I get that we have all these construction ponies, stonemasons, architects and all the rest that need the work, but you'd think I could at least clean up the mess I made of my own palace."

"And you want to do that?" Ember asked, incredulous.

Twilight didn't quite blush, but it was a close thing. "It's embarrassing still having it around, to be honest, and I could have it done in an afternoon. You don't need to worry about that, though, my loss is your lava fountain."

"...Lava fountain?"

— ✶ —

Unfortunately for Twilight's eagerness to outrun anypony who had yet to tell her she couldn't magic up a residence for the dragons and Ember's obvious interest in the term 'lava fountain,' their first stop had to be Rarity's tower again to figure out where, out of the land that was available, to do it.

Well, no, the first stop had been Spike insisting they all get washed up because they'd been practicing magic, which for dragons apparently meant a lot of fire.

Twilight was not jealous of the eagerness that Spike's harem displayed in reaction to the idea of learning magic in contrast to her own demigoddesses. Again, as with Corona's scrying spell, that was envy, not jealousy.

Minor frustrations aside, Twilight had gone ahead to Rarity's tower to get started while the dragons cleaned up from their sooty study session. By the time the six of them showed up—which was really quite quickly for six people to shower, actually, but she supposed they didn't have any manes or coats—Luna had finished with her immediate business and Rarity had prepared a large table covered in maps of Ponyville.

Or maybe the maps were just kept there; that seemed like something they'd need quite often, especially since some of the maps had been layered over with modifications on onionskin paper that had been pinned in place.

"Firstly," Luna said, taking the lead. "Is to ask what sort of environs you wish to inhabit." Twilight had noticed that her marefriend's diction tended to regress in more formal situations, so apparently she was taking this seriously.

It was cute.

"Alas, while it would certainly be easier and quite appropriate to put you up in one of the nearby mountains, the purpose of this venture is for you to be seen, so they are not quite nearby enough for our purposes," she explained, then added, "Nor do we wish for them to be. Sweet Apple Mountain has caused enough problems in shading crops that had previously been very productive. Though the ubiquity of light from the sky rainbow has ameliorated this, we still do not wish to exacerbate the issue."

Twilight nearly choked on her own tongue. "The sky rainbow?!" she asked.

Luna gave Twilight a mischievous smirk. "Yes, well, it has taken my sisters so long to name themselves that it seems to have slipped their mind that they also need to name their actual selves, so that is the best that I can do for now."

"Do I want to know what you're calling the other one?" Twilight asked, still recovering from her coughing fit.

"I am taking suggestions, but for now, Candesca is 'the great warm spot,'" Luna provided.

"...Anyway, yes," Twilight said, directing the dragons' attention to the maps. "We don't want you too far away, but out on the borders should be fine. I was thinking something on the Everfree side since ponies haven't expanded in that direction. There's even a river nearby for... let's say, emergency hydration purposes."

"I am perfectly capable of not setting things on fire!" Ember objected, crossing her arms with a pout.

"Are you, though?" Spike asked.

— Ember —

Ember would never admit it, but she was conflicted about having the pony princess just magic up a place for her and the others. It hadn't escaped her notice that they'd asked her what she wanted and then went on to add a bunch of limitations and rules that amounted to them basically having the area picked out already. They weren't wrong about any of it, but she'd had enough of being led around by the nose 'for her own good.' Getting away from that sort of thing was the entire reason she'd come to Equestria to begin with.

So no, she wasn't entirely happy about it, no matter how much the phrase 'lava fountain' bounced around her head like a squirrel on a hot rock.

More vaguely, she was also a bit uneasy about whether this made sense empire-wise. She wanted to show dragons that they could live better lives, yes, and part of that was cooperating with ponies like sensible people, but did being handed everything like this really show that?

Maybe not, but it had to be better than living in the basement of some dude's barely habitable tree. Tartarus, it was probably better than using the Ring of Ashmund to build something herself, which was hard to admit, but she didn't want to glorify the power and strength of being the biggest asshole, even if it was the only thing she really understood.

Spike would be surprised to know, but she did actually listen to him. Ever since she'd 'found' that book, she hadn't been sure what to make of it. It showed her things that she wanted—a society with dignity and culture ruled by those of actual merit—but like a wolf looking up at a bird, she didn't really understand how to make it happen.

The area that the pony alicorns led them to was greener than any place in the dragonlands, but that didn't make it lush or especially picturesque. It had been explained to her that ponies had been scared of the nearby forest until the alicorn of the sun had turned most of it into a crater. There was still a decent strip of forest on this side of the crater, but it wasn't something you could exactly get lost in anymore.

Having gone untended for so long, the area was mostly shrubland. There was plenty of greenery, but the ground was hard and kind of tired looking.

At least, it was until the most boring demigod alive arrived. At first, she'd forgotten that the pony with the hat was supposed to be one of the demigods, but she hadn't met that many ponies and the way she stomped her hooves and created an entire field of fluffy green grass was a clue.

Then, the one with the stars reminded everyone that she was the one who gave the demigods their power.

"This species grass is called emerald zoysia," she explained, producing a shining star from her neckpiece and even from a distance, Ember could feel it. It was like the feeling of the crown she'd held yesterday, only a hundred times more.

It was the feeling of raw, powerful magic like she'd never felt before, deep in her chest.

Then it changed; it crystalized, and so did the grass.

"...And now it's emerald zoysia, made of actual emeralds growing like grass," she concluded with half a smirk, half a grimace, as if she were both proud and a little ashamed.

Ember felt similar, but for different reasons. Pride, she didn't quite manage, but there was a definite jealous greed. It made her wince, though, because grazing like animals and ponies was beneath them.

Drift didn't seem to think so, and bent down to casually take a bite. "Hmm," she said, thoughtful as she chewed. "Chewy, but with a snap at the end," she judged. "Definitely emerald, though."

She'd always been one of the weird ones, having grown up near ponies. It didn't matter that that was what Ember was now going for—it was still weird. Shut up.

Moments later, there were also clumps of 'ruby grass' dotting the area, which got similar reactions. Ember didn't exactly get how the names of the grasses were relevant to Twilight being able to turn them into miracles, but the feeling of the magic and how it crystallized... that she was kind of beginning to get a feel for.

As everyone else began walking up to the proposed site, Ember bent over and picked a clump of the emerald grass. Checking to see if anyone was watching her, she fixed that feeling in her heart and blew her coral-colored fire over it, turning it into ruby.

"Woah," was all she could say, her eyes wide. Taking another quick glance at the group of mixed alicorns and dragons, she shoved the ruby grass into her mouth and hurried after them.

It tasted kind of bland and weirdly stringy for a gemstone, but it was definitely ruby.

Ember needed to feel more of this pony's magic.

— ✶ —

Twilight was a little concerned at the initial lack of interest from Ember in building her a... well, a palace, basically. She was a very closed-off individual, though, and seemed to be the most free with her feelings when she was being rude, so maybe it was fine?

Whatever the cause, it seemed to go away after the first few minutes. She was rather proud of the emerald and ruby grasses, even if she'd had to resort to puns to ensure they still grew. That seemed to be... not a rule, exactly, but a decent guideline, at least; it was simple enough to brute force the magic to make any natural, normal thing, but if she wanted it to behave differently than it normally would, she needed more weight of logic behind it.

For things that she knew how to do with unicorn magic, that was enough to let her do it with dream magic. For the more esoteric things, though, she hadn't found a more effective logic than puns.

Just having to admit that puns were a kind of logic was painful, but Luna was right about that.

Regardless, Ember remained stoic throughout the process—mostly—but she did at least become more interested and involved, almost to a strange degree, actually. The promised lava fountain got her interest, of course, but she also seemed prone to make frivolous requests. Twilight had heard Rarity complain about customers changing their minds before, but did she really need to go from granite to basalt to marble and then back to basalt and granite again? Twilight would have said that the dragon empress was yanking her chain just to test her patience, but rather than looking proud and smug, it was those moments when she seemed the most intensely focused, almost ignoring Twilight herself.

Also, Rarity was doing the same thing, the hypocrite.

That was fine, though. Twilight was enjoying having something to experiment with. Not everything she tried went exactly how she'd wanted it to and she'd had to teleport back to Rainbow Dash's unfinished tower to grab a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary from the crates of things recovered from the destroyed palace in order to do a few things, but it was incredible to stretch her metaphorical magical wings.

The one thing that kind of spoiled it was the little voice in the back of her head that reared its head every time she punned and created something unnatural, saying, 'what if this reminds somepony of Discord'. It was true that Twilight hadn't been in her right mind when she had gone off on Rainbow Dash about implying that Discord was her father, but she really, truly did not wish to be connected to the draconequus in any way, shape or form—conceptually, metaphorically or even in rumor.

...But apparently not enough to not use lava tubes in the plumbing.

If there was one thing that surprised her about the whole thing, though, it was how not at all instant the whole thing actually was. Setting aside the vagaries of working to someone else's half-formed ideas or having to go fetch reference books, even having a star on hoof to provide the magic was only barely sufficient for such a large structure and they all spent a significant amount of time simply standing around waiting for the magic saturation to grow dense enough for one thing or another.

Another unforeseen delay was, simply, the puns and the fact that Twilight was not all that great at them. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of many things, and her sense of humor had improved a lot recently thanks to bantering with Luna, but coming up with the right pun for a specific purpose was not easy.

All in all, it took Twilight most of the afternoon to finally end up with something the dragons were happy with, but even so it was vindicating to prove that she really could deal with the ruined palace in an afternoon as she'd insisted.

It did, of course, occur to her that it would have gone even faster at night, but the bottleneck of her single star had been unexpected and she'd wanted to get it done as fast as possible while working inside everyone else's schedules as well. In spite of all of Twilight's power and impossible creations, Applejack's help had been uniquely suited to the situation for not needing to engage in the brute force saturation method that Twilight was using; if she had to guess, she'd say that the logic that powered Applejack's magic was the self-reinforcing logic of her cutie mark.

That idea alone was worth ten afternoons of playing with magic, and it had hardly been a chore.

The end result was... well, it wasn't what Twilight would have designed, but Twilight wasn't a teenaged dragon or a fashionista. It was part castle and part manor house, all in polished dark gray stone with the occasional white trim and the occasional crystal, though for the most part it wasn't anything that would be too tasty to dragons.

Structure-wise, the central building was one big, long open hall flanked by four wings of rooms, two in the front and two in the back, ironically making something close to a dragonfly shape from above for any dragons that were flying, which might have helped in the creation it if she'd noticed it at the time.

And, of course, there was the lava fountain out front which was quite artistic.

Yes, Twilight would say the afternoon was well spent.

— Spike —

Spike was doing another walkthrough of the rather larger than necessary castle-palace thing that Twilight had been all too happy to just... magic up out of nowhere, apparently.

Yes, he'd been there when she'd tip-bribed that waitress for silence with two gold bars, but this was something else entirely.

It hadn't been more than fifteen minutes since Twilight, Luna, Rarity and Applejack had left when there was a crash from the central hall. Spike didn't even question it; he instantly knew it was going to be Ember breaking something.

To his complete lack of surprise, Ember was large enough to reach up and touch the ceiling of the hall, which was an easy estimation to make because that was what she was doing. More specifically, she was plucking some kind of gargoyle-looking thing off the wall and tossing it over her shoulder where it landed on top of another one.

This was strange, because Spike specifically remembered Rarity complaining that gargoyles belonged on the outside and had forbidden Twilight from including them.

The mystery was solved when the towering form of Ember took a deep breath and blew a plume of coral fire at the corner where she'd removed the last gargoyle, producing another one, though even from the ground Spike could tell it was misshapen.

Ember, too, noticed, so she plucked it off the wall and tossed it on top of the other two. Even expecting it, the crash was loud and he gave a slight hiss, covering his ear holes.

Ember paused, looking down at Spike, who had never seen such a large dragon looking so sheepish.

"So, it turns out that magic is easy, but making things look good is hard."

Author's Note

Commentary
Two and a half years since the last update? Yikes! Things got messy, I burned out and it's just been a hell of a thing actually getting myself to write, but here we are with a new serving of fluff and stuff—mostly banter and getting the story back on track. Forgive me if I'm still shaking some of the rust off.

Patreon News
I've gone ahead and turned my old Patreon tiers on their head. Pledging anything gets you access to polls, previews and early access stuff when it happens, while higher tiers are mostly about getting your name in the credits (though if you want your name to link to something, there's a tier for that).

There still isn't going to be patron-exclusive content, but there is a chapter of a Pony!Sunset-in-HP fic there that is currently indeterminate as to whether it'll be posted as a story or a snippet, so feel free to sign up if you want to see that now.

I also just wanted to say thanks to the patrons who have stuck with me over the long hiatus. Hopefully I can get back to actually posting things again.

<Patreon Credits>

Extra Special thanks to Zervon Tora and pomegranate horsie for their support

Thanks as well to Katharine Berry, Jan Sterba, Trellmor, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Kali, Andrew Denton, Canary In The Coal Mine, BlueGenome, IamUnknown, SirHoli, djthomp, CvBrony, Kirishala, Andrew Pam and Nineite for sticking with me over the hiatus!

</Patreon Credits>

Chapter 25

— Spike —

Spike was honestly impressed that Ember hadn't started out with her newfound skill in magic by trying to recreate the lava fountain. Nevertheless, he immediately set to pinching the bridge of his snout, expecting a headache from the currently two-story-tall dragoness. "Explain."

Ember had her arms crossed as she considered Spike from on high. Glancing at the newest gargoyle she'd created, she sighed and swatted at it, sending it crashing down into the pile with the rest of them.

"Fine," she grumbled, and began to shrink back to her normal size, or what passed for it nowadays anyway. Spike was still getting used to seeing the pseudo-adult forms of Ember's cohort, let alone having one himself, and he supposed he wasn't alone in that since it was roughly how every dragon in the world looked now, plus or minus some natural variation.

Come to think of it, it had been more than a day since that had happened and they'd spent most of it cooped up inside in one building or another. How were the dragons all taking it? And if Ember was going to put herself in the position of Empress of the dragon race, did that mean that she needed to make herself available to the public like Twilight and Luna?

Or, well, just Luna, now, since Twilight broke down and told them all to go buck themselves.

...

Yeah, no. Ember doing the talking would end up the same way eventually, if not sooner. 'Empress' Ember had already made one global announcement via the Ring of Ashmund; they didn't need to give her an excuse to make any more.

"So, it's like this," Ember said, then spat a ball of salmon-colored fire that turned into a kiwi-sized emerald skull right in front of his face.

Spike startled, then scrambled to catch the thing, which he managed. The emerald skull looked kind of melted on one side, but it was a fair bit better than the stone gargoyles there was a pile of in the middle of the room. Spike waited, turning the skull over in his claws out of idle curiosity, but it soon became clear that the only thing forthcoming was the smug look on Ember's face.

"This," he said, holding up the skull as if it were looking back at her, "is not an explanation."

"Oh, come on!" Ember said, throwing up her arms in exclamation. "It's awesome is what it is!"

Spike took another look at the emerald skull, then looked straight back to Ember. "I think Rainbow Dash would say it's 'rad,' actually."

"Well, maybe I should show it to her, then!" Emerald countered, getting huffy. "At least it sounds like she has some taste."

Spike blinked and reconsidered the emerald in his claws. "You know, speaking of taste, I don't think anypony has even considered what any of the demigods can actually eat. Or the Celestias. Are the Celestias getting their heavy metals? I know they talked about hiring dragons for guards and things, but no one said anything about cooks."

Ember snatched the emerald skull out of Spike's claws, clearly displeased. "Who cares if they're getting—what does that have to do with anything?"

"Oh, I thought we were just saying whatever was on our minds," Spike retorted, half serious in his frustration. "Because I swear I asked for an explanation."

Ember rolled her eyes and tossed the emerald skull into her mouth, the crunching and grinding echoing in the large room. "Does it matter? I figured it out."

"Yes, it matters!" Spike insisted. "Ember; not six hours ago, the only thing you could do was send a stick across the room and now you're conjuring emeralds like you're Twilight coming back from the future after a twenty-year library binge!"

Ember took a step back, shocked at Spike's vehemence. It took her a moment to decide how to respond. "Is that something that actually happened?" she finally asked.

"Not provably," Spike admitted. "The only time I know for sure that she actually went back in time, it only lasted a minute or two before she was pulled back."

"...Right," Ember said, adjusting her worldview once again. "Time travel is apparently another thing these goddesses of yours can do."

Spike blinked and said, "Oh, no. That was before she became an alicorn. Well, I guess she was always an alicorn? But it was before her powers came in, anyway. The spell came from a definitely-mortal unicorn regardless."

Ember once again had to stop to process that.

"Actually, if there's one of them I'd expect to do casual time travel, it'd be Pinkie Pie," he added, not entirely sure that wasn't something that had been going on since before he'd met her.

"You know, I'm just going to put all that under 'goddess grit' and ignore it," Ember decided. "Unless I actually see them do it; then it's fair game."

Spike immediately made the connection. "Wait, that's what's going on? You figured out how to do the things that Twilight did?" Spike thought back to the hours they'd spent watching Twilight create their new castle-manor and frowned. "Is that why you were being such a pain in the tail with what you wanted? So you could get her to show you things?"

"No," Ember reflexively said, looking off to the side so she didn't have to meet Spike's eyes. "Well, so what if it was? She didn't seem to mind it."

Well, that was true. "Yeah," he admitted, then pivoted. "But that's also kind of the point—you could have just said so and she'd have shown you whatever you wanted."

Ember looked doubtful, but before she could express it, they were interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the dragonesses.

"What's with all the yelling?" Slag asked, giving off the impression of a grumpy baby interrupted from her nap, which was, admittedly, pretty much what she was, having been regressed in age as a method of treatment for the bite that the ex-dragon-lord Torch had taken out of her tail.

"The yelling?" Spike asked, curious and also a little sarcastic. "Not the crashing noise of Ember disposing of her failed art projects?"

Slag barely glanced at the pile of misshapen gargoyles made of various materials. "Nah, that's just background noise," she said, dismissing it with a wave of her claw. "Kind of soothing, really," she added.

Carnelia nodded along with the statement as she entered the room. "Sensing such dissonance is significantly more stressful," she suggested in her slightly hissing accent.

"I'm gonna just go and say both are annoying?" Kindle chimed in, coming in with Drift from the other side of the hall, who didn't seem to have an opinion.

Ember, for her part, only got more excited with an audience. "Hey girls, check this out!" she shouted as she flapped her wings, did something resembling a backflip and breathed a line of fire across the room that opened a rift in the floor that immediately exploded into a shower of lava.

Ah, there it was. Spike knew the lava fountain was going to make an appearance. It was, admittedly, rather impressive, and it kept being impressive for five... ten... twenty seconds, until even Ember realized that they could only play The Floor Is Lava for so long before the room filled up.

"Spit!" Ember cursed wading through the growing, glowing carpet of lava. "Uh, how did it go again?" she asked herself, trying to bend over the rift in the ground without getting a lava facial, which Spike assumed was either actually a thing, or not a thing only because dragons didn't have beauty regimens.

Ember tried blowing flames down into the rift, but she either had the magic wrong or she couldn't get it down to where the lava was actually being created, because the unnaturally constant, steady eruption of lava continued without interruption.

Meanwhile, Slag was floating on her back, arms crossed behind her head like she was in a lounge chair.

"Hold on," Ember said, fretting about the lava-spewing rift like it was a spilled soda. "I got this—I got this," she insisted, clearly not having it handled. "I know! Spike! Send some of this lava somewhere else—not to one of your princesses! You got that figured out this morning, right?"

Spike had, in fact, managed to duplicate Ember's trick of sending things to not-princess places with his fire, but he hadn't yet managed to do it to anything that wasn't normally burnable, or send anything anywhere that wasn't immediately in sight. Still, it was worth a shot, he supposed.

It took him a moment to actually get close to the rift. The lava was up past his knees now, and it had cooled off around his legs, forming a hard shell of hot rock. At first, the shell of rock came with him like a pair of really crunchy stockings, but they quickly cracked and split, leaving behind a pair of leg-shaped holes in the lava.

Spike's first attempt at mailing the lava across the room was like spraying fire down a live volcano—pointless, and at best only going to make the volcano angry. Ember's grandfather wasn't present, of course, but from how things were going, their brand new castle-manor was going to inherit the appellation, 'The Eternal' long before Ember herself got a crack at it.

Breath after breath failed to set the lava on any more fire than it already was until, pouring all of his will into his fire to make the molten rock go away, something finally clicked and the molten rock started to disappear, consumed by green fire.

Two breaths later, he realized that the lava wasn't reappearing anywhere because he hadn't actually been focusing on sending it anywhere, just getting rid of it. What he'd cast—if that was the right word for dragon magic—was less a mail spell and more of a complete erasure spell.

That seemed like it might be a bit of a problem.

"Aha! Perfect!" Ember exclaimed as the green fire reached the rift, finally giving her a clear shot at it. Unfortunately for her, Spike's fire burnt out any need for her to do anything; the lava spewing out of the rift guttered out like a clogged sink. "Well, I guess that works too."

"Uh, Ember?" Spike prompted, trying to communicate the exact amount of panic and concern he was feeling, because the green fire was still slowly eating away at the lava, the stone floor and the earth below it.

"You know, I'm beginning to wonder if magic is actually worth it," Ember grumbled.

"I don't suppose you remember what Twilight's failsafe spell feels like?" Spike suggested hopefully.

"What the heck is a 'failsafe spell'?" she asked, backing away from the green fire that was slowly removing the lava from existence. Ember liked her existence just fine and didn't want it removed.

"It's a general purpose dispelling spell that—"

"Is it something she did earlier with her weird goddess magic?" Ember interrupted.

"Well, no," Spike admitted. "But—"

"Then no," she answered. "Figure it out yourself!" Ember, of course, wasn't going to rely on him and set to trying to breathe her own solution into existence. At first, she thought that smothering it with granite had worked, but the granite soon collapsed from inside, having burned the middle away without leaving a trace, which wasn't how fire or stone worked, but they were long past that point now.

Once again, Spike's first few tries did absolutely nothing, but panic was a good motivator, and that was especially true for both magic and dragons and after literal years of listening to Twilight go on and on about magic, he had a powerfully vivid image of what he wanted to happen, which made all the difference. Spike let out another wave of green fire and finally, this one managed to put the first one out without going on to burn anything else.

Everyone held their breath, waiting to see if another green flame surfaced, but everything was quiet and not on fire.

"Well," Kindle remarked, breaking the silence as she looked over the mess that had been made of the main hall. "That happened."

— Spike —

Once the excitement died down, Ember explained her discovery to the other girls, who were suitably interested. Kindle was holding an artless chunk of ruby that Ember had made as another example, and it seemed to pass muster.

"So," the orange dragoness said, raising her gaze back up to Ember. "This is like the ruby grass outside? Meaning it's edible?"

"Yep," Ember said with an absolute certainly that wasn't deserved.

Kindle took a bite out of it like it was an apple, looking thoughtful as she chewed the brittle, crunchy material, taking her time with it. "Huh," she mused. "It's not the same, though?"

Carnelia was nibbling experimentally on her own ruby, and cocked her head to the side in question. "How so? It seems sufficiently similar?"

"That's the thing," Kindle said. "The ruby grass outside is still flexible enough to work like grass; this is just your everyday ruby. What do you want to bet it doesn't grow like the grass, either?"

As the girls discussed the vagaries of copying magic from a feeling, Spike focused on the absolute mess that had been made of their brand new home. Knowing Ember, she might not even see the problem with it, but damn it, he'd been looking forward to having a place of his own that he could be proud of.

That was the problem with the old library tree and why he'd never really done much with it. It had been home since Twilight had come to Ponyville, but at the same time, it wasn't really his and it didn't really fit him.

So, Spike spend the evening burning rocks.

His first instinct, of course, had been to clean up traditionally, but it turned out that they didn't actually have a broom... or quite a lot of other household items that Twilight hadn't thought to magic up, if she even knew what they were.

Besides, pickaxes weren't things you'd usually find in a cleaning closet anyway.

No, this was more of a mess than he could clean up using any normal means. Having magic as a problem solving solution was—well, it wasn't weirder than having a whole new body, admittedly, but it was a close second, even though he only had the one new trick so far.

So, burning things out of existence it was.

Spike had spent enough time with Twilight that, absent an ongoing emergency, his next automatic go-to was to do as many safe, controlled tests as he could come up with. It was fine, though, he reasoned. It wasn't actually science if you didn't write it down, so his status as a normal, sensible person was intact.

Two dozen rocks later, Spike was relatively sure he could use the erasure spell safely. He had to concentrate pretty hard on the idea of making things go away to even get it to work, and that focused intent translated directly into what the spell affected.

It made him feel a bit better to know that he probably hadn't actually been in danger of erasing Ember and the others from existence, but not much. Glancing across the room, he could see that Ember was trying to teach the girls how to breathe gemstones into existence without much luck and instantly decided that, no, he wasn't going to be showing them how to burn things out of existence without getting to know them a lot better.

Not even Ember.

Especially not Ember, even if she could probably do worse with the Ring of Ashmund.

The more he thought about it, the less sure he was that it had been a good idea for Ember to remind dragonkind that they were magical, in fact. Sure, the world had gotten along just fine with magical ponies, but pony magic all came ultimately from Twilight and it wasn't impossible that that had an ameliorating effect in addition to being filtered through their cutie marks.

Also, they were ponies, which was pretty much an excuse all on its own.

"Huh," Spike absently mused. "Am I racist?"

"Yes—one-hundred percent," Ember instantly answered, the group having relocated closer than Spike had realized while he wasn't paying attention. "What are we talking about?"

"Err." Spike flushed, not having expected to be overheard. "Just that dragons—"

"Say no more," Kindle interrupted.

"It's not racism if it's dragons," Drift agreed.

Slag put it succinctly, "Dragons just suck."

"That's literally why we're all here," Ember reminded him.

Spike blinked. "Well... Okay, then?" He was briefly reminded of being told about Twilight and Luna's visit to wake up Emberstoke the Eternal—Ember's namesake grandfather—and how Luna had pointed out afterwards that 'Dragon's are jerks.'

There seemed to be something wrong with that logic, but he couldn't put his claw on it.

"Anyway," Ember said, brushing the matter to the side and moving on. "Spike, tell me if you feel anything, you know, magic-y," she instructed, then breathed her salmon-colored fire right in his face.

Spike couldn't help it; he flinched in spite of an entire lifetime of knowing that fire couldn't really hurt him—it didn't mean he wanted soot in his eyes, after all.

He didn't get soot in his eyes, but he did get a faceful of emerald—quite literally. Spike probed his face with a claw to figure out what she'd done, then removed the faceted green mask and took a bite out of it. "And just what was the point of that?"

Ember rolled her eyes as if she'd expected more from him. "I told you, I want to know if you can feel the magic. It was hard to miss when your star princess did it, but none of the girls are getting anything from it when I do it."

"It is certainly discouraging," Carnelia opined.

Spike went over that in his head, but to his surprise, the request actually made as much sense as he thought it did. "...I can't believe I'm going to say this, but—do it again," he requested.

Ember wasted no time spitting fire in his face once more, and Spike did what he could to feel for the magic in it as another mask formed on his face—ruby, this time.

"...I might have felt something?" Spike said, uncertain. "I think it's either that you're more sensitive to magic than the rest of us or Twilight is just putting that much more magic out. It's probably that, honestly, but here." He handed Ember the ruby mask that she'd just created. "Put this on."

Emerald immediately did what she was told. It didn't fit well, having been formed over Spike's face, but they were similar enough in proportions that she made it work. It was only after a moment that she began to consider why she was doing it. "Wait—"

Spike interrupted her with a blast of green fire to the face that completely vanished the mask in moments, leaving the perturbed dragoness unharmed.

It was a good thing that dragon magic was in their breath, because the look she gave him could have melted steel otherwise, which Spike did his best to return with casual indifference. Ember caved with a huff, then breathed another mask into being and put it on. "Do that again."

Spike took a deep breath and, in one sharp burst, vaporized the mask off of Ember's face.

Ember, for her part, just stood there, eyes closed, focusing on the feeling of magic that she'd gotten used to with Twilight. Eventually, she shook her head. "I think I get what you're saying; there's something there, but I can barely make it out."

"So it is the stellar princess who is the singular exception, then," Carnelia concluded. "Vexing, for such simple spell study to suffer such a stranglehold."

Spike shook his head. "Look, no, I already told Ember—there's no stranglehold. Twilight will be ecstatic if you tell her you were able to copy what she was doing. She will literally jump for joy and drag you back to whatever underground lair she's using as a lab right now in order to show you all the things."

The dragonesses all shared a look. "Solitary study it is, then."

Spike gave up and went back to what he was doing.

Burning the room back to a semblance of cleanliness continued to be a surreal experience. Spike was pretty sure he had a handle on only burning specific things out of existence—he was sure enough to spit the spell-fire in Ember's face, after all—but that didn't mean he'd mastered every facet of it. Twilight could never quite explain to him what casting unicorn spells was like for her, but from what he'd gathered there was a lot more formula to it. Dragon magic seemed to rely a lot more on will and intent than knowledge and understanding, which meant that instead of studying like Twilight, he needed to practice instead.

It was one thing to start a fire that only burned specific things; there was some value in that. Burning specific parts of things, though? That would be wildly more useful, and it went... well, it went. Spike spent the better part of an hour burning small patches of lava out of existence, trying for shapes, textures and anything that came to mind. Ember had been right, though; doing it was one thing. Doing it well was another matter entirely.

Eventually, though, the lava was all gone and he'd even managed to burn away the soot and small spatters on the walls and ceiling. Things actually looked clean again, save for the large holes in the floor where Ember's lava font had been removed which required Ember's help to fill in.

The end result was... remarkably okay.

— Spike —

The next morning started with something like déjà vu, though on further examination, the situation was completely different from the morning after Twilight's alicornification party. It started when, stumbling out of his new room after a fitful night of sleep in a new place, he found Kindle and Carnelia standing in the main hall, looking out the front window, both looking far too bright and chipper for the early hour.

Carnelia in particular looked like she'd already spent an hour filing her claws and polishing her scales this morning, but for the short time he'd known her, that seemed to always be the case.

Spike walked up next to them, dragging his feet in lethargy. "...Huh," he remarked, then took a sip of his coffee, which was one thing that Twilight hadn't forgotten to supply. As magically-created coffee, though, it tasted kind of one-dimensional. "Well, that's a thing."

The thing that 'that' was, was, of course, the dozens of dragons spread out on the front lawn grazing on the emerald and ruby grasses.

"Yep," Kindle agreed, following one dragon with her eyes as it got frustrated and flew off. "Kinda glad I'm not out there, to be honest," she said, popping an acorn-sized ruby in her mouth, which she had a handful of. "No offense to the princess, but it seems all flash and no substance, and kind of insulting."

Carnelia nodded. "I do wonder how Ember will take this. It is disrespectful to dragons, yes, but it is disrespectful specifically to those she considers subordinate to her, so she might savor the schadenfreude."

Spike looked at Carnelia and blinked.

"You must admit, she is... shall we say... less than respectful, most of the time," Carnelia added.

Spike went back to watching the lawn dragons. "No, I'm just surprised to hear the word 'schadenfreude' from you."

Carnelia shook her head. "Just because I was hatched in the dragonlands does not mean I am lacking in vocabulary," she said, which, well, was fair. Actually, Carnelia was probably the most well-spoken of any of the girls in her own way, though she phrased things oddly, sometimes.

All of a sudden, a wave of movement spread through the flock of lawn dragons. Spike scanned the crowd, but aside from several of them looking around in confusion, he didn't see anything out of place.

Then, it happened again, and Spike spotted dozens of small, red and green gemstones falling from above, bouncing off the heads and bodies of the dragons on the lawn.

The laughing from the roof was what finally clued him in.

"It seems that she has chosen schadenfreude," Carnelia dryly observed.

Indeed, flying up to the crenelated rooftop, they found Ember there with half a dozen buckets full of emeralds and rubies. As the three of them landed, they watched her scoop up a clawful and toss them out into the lawn like birdseed—or maybe like the rich throwing bits out into a crowd? Spike recalled Twilight talking about that happening in one village where they would heat the bits first, just to watch ponies burn themselves trying to pick them up.

Admittedly, the dragons on the lawn would find red-hot gemstones a nice, toasty snack, but he didn't want to give Ember any ideas. Unfortunately, they had given the dragons on the lawn ideas, and they soon had dragons crawling and flying up to the roof to the source of the gems.

"Hey! Just where do you think you're going?!" Ember shouted, chucking her current bucket at one of the approaching dragons. The dragon dodged, but followed the bucket down to the ground anyway. A few others nearby were redirected, going after the same bucket, but only a handful.

The first dragon to crawl up over the crenelations was not nearly as agile, and took a bucket to the face, sending him back over the edge. The thud that the dragon made on the front steps made Spike wince, but it was probably fine. Dragons were tougher than even ponies.

"Back off!" Ember snarled at the encroaching dragons.

"And why would we do that?" asked the next dragon to poke his head up over the crenelations. This one was ready, and dodged the expected bucket before pulling himself fully up onto the roof. He was large, red and beefy, which was saying something since all the dragons had been normalized. "You expect us to eat off the ground like ponies? Is this a joke to you?"

Ember cocked her hip to the side and set her hand on it. "I mean, kinda, yeah," she said, completely unashamed. "You did come here to my territory to eat my grass. I figured the least I could do is have a laugh instead of do something a little more drastic."

As Ember talked, more and more dragons made their way up to the rooftop by wing or claw, and they were starting to crowd the roof. Spike wasn't really worried since, you know, Ember, but he couldn't help but be a little intimidated.

"Drastic?" a weedy blue dragon asked, doubtful. "You? Look around; you're out here in the middle of nowhere surrounded. What are four girls gonna do?"

"Wh—hey!" Spike shouted. "I am a guy!" he whined unconvincingly.

The large red dragon took a closer look at him and scoffed. "Not much of one."

Ouch, right in the manhood. Spike knew that Ember had remade his body to be similarly lithe and graceful as the rest of the group rather than the haphazard way that she'd handled the rest of dragonkind based on their existing forms, but he didn't think she'd gone that far in making him 'in her own image.' The girls certainly seemed to like it, anyway.

Actually, that was a good point. "I mean, one: rude," Spike said, offended. "And two: I was literally made like this for the empress' enjoyment, so I have nothing to be ashamed of."

"Yeah?" he said, making a show of looking around. "Well, I don't see any 'empress' here, so I think you're full of shit."

"Spike?" Ember prompted, drawing everyone's attention. "On a scale from one to ten, how bad will it look to the ponies if I'm caught kicking babies?"

"Err—"

"Like, specifically, if I was punting them off a rooftop," she clarified.

Spike scratched at his jaw, thinking. "Well, I mean, if the paparazzi actually got a picture of it, they'd probably run the story into the ground for months, but otherwise... they already expect that sort of thing from carnivores anyway. There's still an article every once in a while in the skeevier magazines claiming that the Gryphon ambassador eats babies, and as far as I know, that was blown up over some hard boiled eggs."

"Great," Ember said with a vicious grin, and suddenly they were surrounded by baby dragons ready for punting.

There was a sudden clamor of confusion across the rooftop as the trespassing dragons all processed the situation, and it lasted just long enough for Ember to fashion herself some ruby slippers.

Well, they were more like boots, actually, but they did perfectly well at sending the lost children home.

When it was all over, most of the dragons having made like lemmings, Spike had his head in his hands. "I can't believe you did that."

"What?" Ember said, faux-defensively. "You said I could. Besides, de-aging criminals is literally the punishment your princesses and I agreed on and stuff. What was I supposed to do, not punt them?"

"Strictly speaking, yes," Spike said, not that he had thought for a moment that it would actually happen.

"Well, that's dumb," Ember declared, hands on her hips. "What's the point of punishing someone by making them puntable if nobody actually punts them?"

Spike blinked.

"Hah!" Ember exclaimed, pointing at him. "You just realized I had a point!"

"A very small one," Spike insisted.

"As amusing as this is," Carnelia chimed in from where she was bent over the ramparts, watching tiny colored shapes disappear into the distance. "Our greatest concern right now is recidivism."

This time, it was Ember that stared blankly without an answer.

"Making sure that they don't do it again," Spike clarified for her.

"Oh," Ember said, suddenly getting it. "Well, they'll be like that for a day, then go back to nearly what they were for, I dunno, a month or something before they're completely back to normal? I figured that was fine for the crimes of, you know, trespassing; making threats; not recognizing me, that sort of thing. "

"Or something?" Spike asked.

Ember gave him a flat look. "The ring doesn't come with a calendar."

"Anyway," Kindle said, getting them back on track. "We should probably be less concerned about those specific dragons than just in general. The lawn full of gemstone grass is less funny now that we actually have dragons coming here at way-too-early in the morning to trade their dignity for a bite to eat and getting greedy."

They all gave that a long thought, until Ember came up with a solution.

— Twilight —

Twilight had to stop on her flight to Spike's new place to double check that she was in the right place. Strange; she'd been this way just yesterday, and she didn't remember there being a giant, house-sized emerald hanging from a five-story tall post like the world's biggest, translucent green salt lick.

Author's Note

Merry Christmas everyone! Not the best chapter, but it's something and it's another step through the dreaded middle arc of the story.

A significant chunk of the will to actually get this out is thanks to Patreon, and a significant chunk of my Patreon is now being propped up by the sole effort of pomegranate horsie. Seriously.

Thanks also to Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Kali, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Dusk Star, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, BlueGenome and CvBrony.

Oh, and if you want more proof I have no idea what I'm doing, you can also go read the first two chapters of Sunset Shimmer: Crumple-Horned Snorkack, which I also posted today.

(Please excuse the lousy cover image; the decision to actually get it out the door for Christmas was last minute)

Chapter 26

— Twilight —

Twilight wasn't the only person discovering the giant emerald cube hanging from an oversized wooden pole taller than any building in Ponyville outside of Rarity's half-finished tower and, perhaps, the old palace, if it was still considered a building, being encased in rock and in the process of being excavated and demolished.

Even as she watched, more and more dragons were congregating to nibble on the imitation salt lick, and since dragons had all been reduced to near pony scale, the fact that it was hanging out of reach from the pole with a rope two ponies thick going through the center of it seemed... not cruel, necessarily, but certainly intentionally difficult.

Maybe Twilight was reading too much into it, though. Dragons had wings, after all—or they did after a certain age. It was probably just coincidence that half of the dragons attracted by the mysterious giant emerald were all toddlers of similar ages violently pulling, clawing and kicking anyone who tried to climb past them on the pole, though slick metal band twenty hooves up that that was stymieing their progress might have been another clue.

Maybe it was a traditional game? That still didn't explain where the giant emerald had come from, but, well, it probably wasn't her place to do anything about it, no matter how much she wanted to go down there and ask questions. She'd have to ask Luna and Rarity if they knew anything about the installation, since it must have been a significant undertaking.

Pushing the matter to the back of her mind, Twilight continued on to Spike's new home to check up on him and see if he was free to work today, or if he was still busy settling in.

From a distance, the manor with castle stylings was still not quite Twilight's taste, but the flat expanses of dark stone did resemble some of the new construction that was going on in Ponyville, though it certainly took it in a different direction. Considering that, her mind casually drifted to how she might style her own tentative projects as she came in for a landing on Spike's front lawn.

Twilight's train of thought was instantly derailed when the decorative metal shoe of her regalia slid off something in the grass, nearly causing her to twist her ankle. After steadying herself, she investigated and found a walnut-sized emerald in the grass, and it wasn't alone. The whole area was littered with them—and similarly sized rubies.

Strange. Had she done something wrong with the grass? Was it growing seeds five hundred times too large? On closer inspection, that didn't seem to be the case, as the emeralds and rubies didn't resemble seeds of any kind; they were just clean, raw emeralds as you'd expect to find in the ground. Maybe, being made of emerald and ruby themselves, the grasses were absorbing the underground gemstones as nutrients, only for them to expel the excess on the surface?

Well, whatever the case, she couldn't let herself get distracted; it could only be a good thing, she supposed. Dismissing the matter for now, she approached the manor door and knocked.

The panicked scrambling of claws on stone reminded Twilight of similar situations that had happened back at the ex-library, which made her smile. She supposed that it was still habit in spite of them no longer having anything to keep secret. Even the matter with the Ring of Ashmund had been settled, though perhaps they should write up some proper paperwork to formalize it above and beyond the simple transfer papers that Spike had arranged. It wasn't Spike that was holding onto it, for one thing.

Eventually, Spike answered the door, and it was still a bit of a shock to have to look up at him when he was standing upright. Nonetheless, the awkward smile and the scratch at the back of his neck was all Spike, so she was reassured that he hadn't changed that much.

Half a second later, though, the smell of smoke hit her, much as it had yesterday morning at the ex-library. Having lived with Spike ever since hatching him, she was used to the milieu of scents caused by dragon fire, but this was quite a bit more than the usual.

Probably.

It could have been that she'd just been used to the smell, and now she wasn't. Had she smelled like smoke for her entire time as Celestia's personal student, and no one had mentioned it to her? Given the fact that Celestia had once spent the entire day at court with a donut on her horn pretending nothing was out of the ordinary and no one had dared say a word, it was more likely than Twilight would have liked to admit.

Probably not, though. Rainbow Dash, at least, would have said something—and Rarity, too. Funny that Applejack, the ex-element of honesty, wasn't on her short list, but more because she probably just wouldn't think it was worth mentioning.

"Oh, hey, Twilight," Spike said, glancing quickly behind him with uncertainty. In the large, central room behind him, Twilight could see some, but not all of his 'harem,' including Ember. Of the black dragon who had been de-aged, there was no sign, and she had to think for a moment to remember the laid-back green one, who was also not present.

"Hey, Spike," she returned his greeting with a cheerful smile. "How are things going? Still settling in?" she asked, making a show of craning her neck to peek behind him.

Spike stiffened, took another look behind him and began to relax. "Things are... fine," he said unconvincingly. "Completely fine. Um. Come in?"

Spike backed into the room, and Twilight followed him in. Other than the smell of slightly sulfuric smoke, there didn't really seem to be anything out of the ordinary, so she wasn't sure why Spike was acting so nervous.

Twilight nodded to the dragonesses in the room. "Empress," she greeted Ember with a slight bow, then turned to the others. "And Carnelia and Kindle, if I'm remembering right?"

The dragonesses all returned Twilight's greeting with varying levels of interest, and Twilight took a look around the main hall of the manor. It was pretty much how she remembered it, of course, though with fresh eyes, she noticed that the floor looked a bit off.

"That's strange," she said, frowning at the floor. Curious, she walked out into the middle of the room, feeling the floor out with her hooves. "Oh, wow. The floor isn't even flat, here," she remarked, slightly ashamed of her work. "Sheesh. I must have been more tired than I thought I was at the end, there, yesterday. I'm sorry, everyone. I can fix it now, if you don't mind clearing out for a second?"

Spike and Ember shared a series of looks that clearly meant something, and it was Spike that eventually answered. "Yeah, sure, Twi. We didn't really notice, but you might as well."

That made sense, she supposed. No doubt the girls were all used to uneven flooring to begin with, and there was a good chance it wasn't as noticeable with their flexible claws anyway.

After some deliberation, the dragons all congregated around the front entryway where the floor looked fine and let Twilight get to work.

After spending all afternoon on it yesterday, it was a little easier getting into the mindset of using what she was calling her dream magic, though she appreciated the fact that she was doing this indoors where a random passing pegasus wouldn't see her and... somehow intuit that it was related to Discord's magic.

Okay, fine, it really was a silly fear, but nevertheless, it wasn't something she really wanted to call too much attention to before she was prepared.

In no particular hurry, Twilight took the star out of her peytral and let the magic flow out into the room, doing what she could to direct it into the dark stone flooring.

Strangely enough, the floor resisted. Oh, it was certainly working; her magic was overcoming whatever was causing the resistance, but that there was any resistance at all was strange for something that she'd created out of nothing just the day before.

Now that she thought about it, the whole room was lacking the feeling of familiarity that she associated with places that her magic had seeped into. Admittedly, there were six dragons living there and one of them had an ancient artifact capable of changing the entire dragon race across the globe, so it wasn't necessarily inexplicable, but it did come as a surprise.

Even so, Twilight's magic was a constant, overpowering force and soon enough, the ground was almost a part of her. With a thought, she flattened the surface, gave it a small amount of texture for traction and made sure that the stonework was evenly spaced.

Twilight also considered adding some reinforcement spells just in case, but they weren't necessary for a building this size, and if the dragons were putting off enough magic to overpower her lingering magic in a day, then those spells probably wouldn't last very long anyway.

Then again, these were dragons she was talking about and Ember might decide to impress guests at full-size, so maybe she ought to think of something.

...Any second now...

"Twilight?" Spike asked after a minute of two of nothing happening.

"I'm thinking, Spike," she said, sitting down and crossing her forelegs over her chest. "What's a visual sign of stupidity?"

Spike looked baffled. "A... bad report card?"

Twilight chewed at her lip as she considered it. "I'll give it a shot," she said, and magicked up a small index card. On it, she wrote a series of failing grades and tossed it at the floor.

Nothing happened.

"Yeah, I didn't think so... which is probably why it didn't work," she said, talking to herself. "I kind of wish Pinkie Pie were here; she'd probably have a suggestion."

Everyone in the room stood quietly, waiting to see if the most inexplicable of Twilight's demigoddesses was going to take the chance to show up, but of the pink party pony there was no sign.

"I think she's back to working at Sugar Cube Corner today, actually," Spike said, slightly uncertain.

"Drat," Twilight said, standing back up. Maybe she would pay her a visit there, though. It wouldn't hurt to get something to eat, and she could ask for suggestions at the same time. Something other than the bear claws, though. They were a little— "Aha! I've got it!" she declared.

She bent over, reached into the stone floor and pulled out a box of baking powder.

The floor shriveled up and deflated, which was not ideal, but understandable. Twilight was satisfied, in any case; she'd just have to repeat the process.

The dragons were all still completely lost, and looking a little impatient. "And... what was the point of that?" Ember dryly asked.

"Hm?" Twilight said, then realized that she had not quite explained herself. "Oh, well, I was trying to figure out a way to make the floor stronger just in case, but I didn't think any of my regular spells would last. I got stuck trying to figure out how to connect dense, meaning unintelligent, to dense, meaning the amount of mass per area of volume, but bringing up Pinkie Pie reminded me of baking, where things are made less dense if you add a leavening agent like baking powder. Conversely, removing baking powder made the floor more dense."

"O...kay?" Ember said, clearly not seeing the logic, which... Twilight was a bit envious of, honestly.

"Anyway," Twilight said, turning back to the room where, with a flex of her will she created another thick slab of stone on top of the first and acquired another box of baking powder out of it, causing it to sink by half, and since the surface was cracked and wrinkled like a fallen soufflé, she finished it off by smoothing it out as she had before, making adjustments along the way any time she spotted anything that wasn't quite right.

Once she was all done, she tapped her hoof on the ground. The sound that came back was notably muted and she nodded, satisfied. "That should do it," she gauged. "I don't know that that's really necessary, but it certainly won't hurt. The methodology leaves something to be desired if you wanted the walls or roof done, so I'll still have to see if I can come up with something better."

"Huh," said a slightly rough, squeaky voice from off to the side. Apparently Slag, in her tiny baby black dragon form, had shown up at some point and was testing the floor with her claws. "That's good stuff." Ember was less obvious about it, but after walking back out onto the repaired part of the floor, she did a similar test with one of the claws on her feet and nodded to herself.

"Great," Twilight said, glad to be of use. "Has anything else come up?"

The dragons shared a round of looks and Ember in particular looked like she was searching for something to bring up, but if there was something, it seemed to escape her.

"Well, if you think of something, let me know," she told them when no answer was forthcoming. "And in that case, Spike—did you have anything you needed to do today, or did you want to come help me with... whatever comes up. I'll have to check in with Luna and Rarity to see how things are going, first."

"Actually..." Spike said, slightly trepidatious. "I do kind of need to go back to the old library and bring my stuff back here—and there are some things we should buy, too."

"Oh," Twilight said, looking around herself and realizing that he was right. "Right. That should have been obvious. That's fine, then. Go ahead and pack everything when you get there and when you're done I'll have some guards bring it out here—oh, and I suppose the crown is covering this, so let me mint you some bits for your shopping."

The room was already full of Twilight's magic, so she didn't even need to expend any more or make a shield bubble to contain it in order to bring a hefty bag of coins into being. "No need to record it, this time. I'm heading over to see Luna now, so I'll let her know about it."

Spike looked exasperated and slightly resigned, and it was the red dragoness named Carnelia that actually picked up the bag, weighing it appreciatively and taking it over to show Ember.

"Please tell me this isn't going to be a thing, Twilight," Spike said, trying to shake his head and watch the dragonesses at the same time. "You can't just mint new bits every time you need to pay for something."

"I mean, technically, I can do that; I'm entirely capable of it," Twilight defended, slightly sheepish at having been called out like that. "It's a rounding error at best, anyway, but we are recording and accounting for it."

Spike rolled his eyes and said, "It's about how it looks, Twi. If ponies keep seeing you magic up gold here and there, they're going to get the idea that it's not worth as much—you know that."

"Yes," Twilight agreed magnanimously. "But in counterpoint: I didn't bring any bits today, so there. This is hardly public anyway."

"Fine, fine," Spike said, letting the matter go. "You should get going, though, so you don't forget to tell Luna about it."

It was Twilight's turn to roll her eyes, now, but she did agree. If Spike had his own things to do, then she needed to get going. "Alright, then," she said, turning to leave. "Like I said: just pack up your stuff and we'll have someone else do the rest. I'll let Luna know about that, too, since I don't know where I'll be today."

Spike acknowledged that, and they said their goodbyes.

— Spike —

Thirty seconds later, Ember had fashioned a surprisingly not terrible golden statue of Spike, which she then proceeded to take bites out of. "Om nom nom," she announced, chewing on it's shoulder.

Spike's face was buried deep in his hands, but that didn't stop him from hearing the sounds she was making.

"That was... interesting," Carnelia observed, completely unbothered by Ember's antics. Concentrating, she let out a small lick of flame and produced a golden flower that was, honestly, quite a bit better than either of Ember or Spike's efforts at detail and control.

"Great..." Spike said, grumbling to himself. "Just great... Now you've all got the ability to make gold. That's subtle."

"Aha heh heh..." Kindle laughed rather awkwardly. "I didn't catch any of that, actually."

Ember swallowed the mouthful of gold she was chewing and chimed in. "I couldn't follow the density thing because I had no idea what she was actually doing at the time. There's a reason I had to get her to do things more than once, you know."

"Same," Carnelia agreed.

Slag, though, had her little baby arms crossed and was frowning. "I only came in at the end, there, but I think I got it."

"Really?" Ember said, brightening up considerably. She put her teeth on the golden statue's arm, tore it free and tossed it over to where Slag was sitting on the ground.

Slag took the arm, which was longer and probably heavier than she was and held it standing on its end in front of her. Without overthinking it, she let out a stream of her blue flame and watched the forearm shrivel down to half its size.

"Hah! First try!" Slag cheered, then tipped the arm over and began to eat it. The golden claw was unchanged and went down just fine, but the dense, shrunken part gave her pause and she had to really chew it. "Oh, wow. That's gotta be what jerky is like to everyone else. This is really gonna really give my jaw a workout when I'm like this."

Naturally, everyone's attention shifted to Spike as the only one who hadn't yet chimed in with anything he learned during Twilight's short visit, now that they'd all been made aware of Ember's discovery.

Spike, unfortunately, had been far too nervous about keeping secrets from Twilight to really pay too much attention to what she was doing, though... "There was one thing I noticed," he said, scratching his chin. "But it wasn't just what she did; it was how she did it."

Spike looked around for something to demonstrate on, and standing just a few steps away was the obvious. The golden statue of him had lost its arm, most of its shoulder and half of its face before Ember's hunger had been sated. Actually, no, that was perfect.

Spike approached his golden doppelgänger, gave it a considering look, took a deep breath and let out a long, slow flame that lasted a good twenty seconds, though it took five just to figure things out.

What Spike had picked up was how Twilight had used her magic over a period of time to shape the floor. So far, virtually all of the dragon magic that they'd managed had all been in single, powerful bursts, but under the heat and magic of the small, relatively weak flame, the gold didn't quite melt, but flowed into a new shape, shifting from moment to moment as Spike corrected the image in his head, resulting in a significantly more true-to-life statue of Ember, aided by the fact that she was right there.

"Aw, you ruined it," Ember said, pouting as she looked over Spike's work. "I don't wanna eat my own face."

Frankly, Spike didn't know how he was supposed to interpret that, and maybe that was for the best.

— Spike —

It was nearly noon by the time they actually left the manor. First, they all wanted to get more magic practice in while things were still fresh in their minds, then Spike had to corral the girls to all shower, to which the general consensus was some combination of, "What, again?" and "Can't I use the lava fountain instead?", so Spike had to explain the standards of hygiene in pony society. Finally, when they were all pretty much ready to go, Kindle had go wake up Drift, and they spent another little while explaining everything that had already happened that morning.

Finally, once they'd all made it out the door, they took off and headed into town, only to stop at the edge of the property when they saw what was going on with Ember's distraction emerald. "Oh, for—I should have known something like this would happen," Ember grumbled, and immediately began to land.

What was 'going on' was a decently-sized group of dragons standing on and around the giant emerald charging other dragons twenty bits for all-you-can-eat access—or so the sign said. From the looks of it, not a lot of the dragons actually had bits, but there was also a pile of... not exactly valuables, but a number of odds and ends that might, possibly have been worth something at the local pawn shop. Spike wasn't quite sure why a dragon would have a blender, and he just hoped none of it was stolen.

Ember, of course, strode right up, pushed the weedy brown dragon minding the pile aside, and started rummaging through it.

"Hey!" the brown dragon shouted, his voice cracking. "What are you doing?! You can't—"

"What I'm doing," she said, pulling her claws out of the pile and standing straight up. "Is seeing if there's anything worthwhile here I can take for my cut."

"Your what?!" Another, slightly better built dragon with a similar look to him asked. "What makes you think you get a cut? Who do you think you are?"

Spike facepalmed and muttered, "Not again."

"Geez, Ems," Kindle chimed in, projecting her voice loudly for show. "You'd think these dragons had never seen their Empress before."

This time, the claim seemed to make the dragons a little wary, as more and more of the group noticed the altercation, but they still seemed doubtful. Ember decided to push her claim by holding her right claw up vertically, showing off the ring. The moment they saw it, she pulsed the power a little and spoke through it like she had during her announcement to all the dragons across Equestria. This time, though, it was only those present who heard her.

What she said was... slightly less empress-like.

"I know, right?" reverberated her voice, and then the moment was over.

Several of the dragons were cowering now, though the unimpressive brown dragon who had first objected actually impressed Spike by standing his ground. "Yeah, well... s—so what if you are?" he said almost convincingly, keeping an eye on the ring on her claw. "Is that how it's gonna be, then? You do this to us," he gestured at himself, "and then come around and take whatever we manage to scrounge up for ourselves? I should have known you were all talk!"

Spike suddenly felt very awkward standing there, trying not to watch the confrontation that was taking place, which was ironically in sharp contrast to most of the situations that Twilight had encountered on becoming an alicorn.

Twilight, though she was barely more than a pony as far as anypony knew at the time, had still had to fight to keep everyone from bowing and scraping on the sight of her, while Ember, who really did have quite incredible power thanks to the Ring of Ashmund, was perhaps a little too inconspicuous and coming off as kind of a bully.

Ember, for her part, had to visibly restrain herself, which was more than Spike thought she was capable of. "No," she growled out. "I am not shaking you down because I'm your empress—I'm shaking you down because that," she pointed back at the manor, which was barely visible in the distance, "is my castle, and that," she pointed up at the emerald, "is the emerald that I made to feed all the sorry dragons like you who are getting desperate because they've never done an honest day's work in their life and they're still figuring things out."

Spike blinked. Ember was being a little generous about her intentions behind the giant not-a-salt-lick, but Spike had to admit, she actually reminded him a bit of Twilight, there.

Was that a good thing or a bad thing in the context of public relations between an empress and her sort-of subjects?

The dragon looked at the emerald, then back at Ember, looking somewhere between doubtful and terrified. "You... made it?" he squeaked.

Ember clearly didn't like being questioned, but she controlled herself and her anger disappeared into an exasperated sigh. "Fine—I'll prove it," she said, and took off into the air.

Once Ember was a distance up, she used the Ring of Ashmund to grow to the massive size that she'd outdone her father with back when she was making her speech up in Canterlot. She didn't spend much time that way, though, letting loose a full blast of fire to form a large ruby apple nearly the size of the emerald salt lick. One flap of her wings later, she had shrunk down to only triple her usual size, adding a wooden stem and emerald leaf to the top of the apple to complete the look. Satisfied, she took a slide off the side and was completely back to normal by the time she landed back where she was, next to the rest of them.

The dragons were suitably impressed.

"Um—right," the brown one that had ended up as their spokesman said, barely even stuttering. "We'll just... go, then, I guess..."

Ember, however, had a look on her face that said that she had a different idea. "Actually..." she said, still working it out in her head. "Actually... no."

"No...?" the other dragon asked.

"Yeah, no," Ember said with more confidence. "The one that looks like an apple, you let people eat. The other one, you charge them for, but only..." she looked at Spike. "What's a meal usually cost for ponies?"

"Err—" Spike considered it for a moment. "Five or ten bits? But something like an apple or a tomato is around a bit—less when they're in season."

Ember looked back to the brown dragon. "You charge them two bits per dragon for the emerald, and you get to keep half."

"O...kay?" he said, looking to his friends to see if any of them understood the point, but they didn't look any less confused. Spike wasn't entirely certain himself, but he could guess that she wanted to get dragons used to actually participating in the economy rather than stay on the fringes as scavengers or even thieves, which brought up a point, actually.

"And," Spike chipped in, waiting until he had everyone's attention. Once he was sure that Ember didn't mind his interruption, he pointed at the pile of things that had already been traded for access. "You shouldn't be taking in anything but currency," he told them. "No barter. Pawn shops are monitored and have rules about what they can do so nobody abuses them."

"And by abuse, he means selling stolen items," Carnelia clarified significantly more sternly with an eye on the pile of items. "The empress does not wish for dragons to be seen as common thieves."

Ember tried to make it look like these additions were things that she had definitely already thought of; she really did. Spike hoped that it actually worked.

Slag agreed with a grunt and added her two bits. "Yeah. We oughta take that stuff to the... ponies who handle that sort of thing," she said. Unfortunately, her gruff mannerisms weren't nearly as effective coming from her tiny frame, which forced everyone present to have to look down to realize that she was even there.

In fact, everyone who didn't know that Slag was a big, tough adult aged down due to her injury thought the childish declaration was adorable.

Actually, it still kind of was.

"R—right..." the brown dragon asked, looking forlornly at the pile of items. "Of course."

— Spike —

Of course, it took a bit more than saying it to actually make it happen. Ember made a crate, for the confiscated items, and then they had a crate of confiscated items that Ember was frowning at.

"I'm not carrying that," she declared, arms crossed and looking away from it. The other dragons were giving them a wide berth now that everything was settled, so Ember could let a little of her petulance show. "How would that look? Me—the empress—carrying cargo."

Spike rolled his eyes, but she had a point. "That ring does work on dragons other than you," he dryly reminded her.

Ember brightened up. "Oh, yeah—I can just make one of you big enough to carry it," she said, then considered Spike. "Not you," she instantly declared.

Spike blinked, but wasn't terribly disappointed to not have to do manual labor even if he did wonder what it would actually be like to be properly adult-sized.

"Not Slag either, obviously," she added, continuing to verbally work through her options. "Carnelia might chip a claw and Drift lags behind enough as it is. Congratulations, Kindle, you volunteered yourself."

"Oh, no," Kindle deadpanned. "How horrible it is to be forced to be turned into the largest dragon in the world in exchange for having to carry a box."

Author's Note

I used a different BBCode exporter this time, so let me know if you spot any glitches.

Anyway... So, this was done a month ago, I just kind of... forget to post it here. This was not an intentional attempt to drive people to my Patreon, and I apologize for the delay.

On that note, though, thanks do go out to those supporting me on Patreon: pomegranate horsie, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Kali, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Dusk Star, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, BlueGenome and CvBrony.

Chapter 27

— Twilight —

Twilight took her time flying into Ponyville to take in the changing sights of the city. Things had calmed down since Ember had made her announcement and used the Ring of Ashmund to alter the dragon race, and it did seem to be an improvement. There were still signs that not everypony was quite happy with the dragons in their midst, but with the largest of them being only alicorn-sized now, there were far fewer disturbances than there had been when the only limit had been that they could squeeze themselves onto the streets—or thinking that they could squeeze themselves onto the streets.

On the construction front, progress was being made faster than it had been. The block of stone that Applejack had grown to support and scaffold the palace was half gone now, as was the palace and the tree winding up through it. Soon, that reminder of her previous problems would finally be gone and they could get back to actually having a library and a palace to put it in.

The area around the palace, on the other hoof, was in a strange place. The land had inevitably all been bought up and gentrified, many of the buildings all in the progress of being renovated to match the palace's style, but construction had stalled with the destruction of the palace and the resources being needed elsewhere. Now, even those that had already been completed and furnished were conspicuously empty, waiting for a reason to exist.

In contrast, Rarity's tower, which had been offered up as a temporary palace for Luna to do her governing from, had added several floors in the past few days, and the neighborhood around it was notably similar.

The rest of the towers had seen only a little work. There was a guard regiment stationed around Rainbow Dash's tower where Twilight and Luna had been sleeping and there was a portal to the ex-dragon-lord Torch's lair, and what there was of Applejack's tower was being used for storage, not much of a priority since the mare in question didn't seen to have any real desire to spend time in the city at the moment. Twilight made a note, though, to talk to Applejack about putting a portal to her farm there, if only for Apple Bloom's sake—or maybe she'd just ask Apple Bloom since she'd be the one using it.

The last two towers hadn't even been started yet due to the need to integrate them into Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy's existing homes—or so Twilight had thought. The tower that was now growing out of the top of Sugarcube Corner did look like it matched the rest of them and it was further along than Rainbow Dash's, but given how the structure blended from one to the other, Twilight suspected no traditional stonemason had been involved.

She was just going to... not point that out to anypony. Pinkie Pie could just go on being Pinkie Pie, and if Twilight wasn't allowed to put any contractors out of business with her magic, at least one of them wouldn't have to wait on the limited amount of crystal being shipped in from the Crystal Mountains and the skilled craftsponies to work it—not that they'd have been able to duplicate Pinkie Pie's unique feat of architecture.

Huh. Now, there was an idea. Nopony could argue that Twilight should let regular ponies do the work if she was the only one who could do the work, and Fluttershy's tower was going to need special attention. She wasn't even being facetious; there was a reason that nothing had been done yet about Fluttershy's tower, and it wasn't just the lack of crystal and equine resources. After getting her hooves wet with Spike's castle-manor, though, Twilight was thinking that she could really go wild with Fluttershy's tower—literally—and maybe something similar for Applejack.

Heck, maybe she could even come up with something big to do with Rainbow Dash's tower... Yeah. Yeah, it could work. The palace itself was probably too high-profile to get away with any such reasoning, but for the towers for her friends—her demigods—that were going unfinished anyway, coming up with special plans for them should be enough, and what do you know? Spike was off doing his own things and she had a full day and no pre-existing plans. It was perfect.

And that was when a giant orange dragon winged it's way into town and headed right for Rarity's tower, where Twilight was in the process of landing.

— Twilight —

It was a bit awkward levitating a large crate of gray-market goods down the stairs of Rarity's tower and into the throne room, but that just made it that much more satisfying to walk in on whatever it was Filthy Rich was discussing with Luna and dump the crate in the middle of the room before climbing the makeshift dais and giving her marefriend a nuzzle in greeting.

She was just turning around to see how her entrance had been taken when she heard a joyous, "Ah ha!" of triumph. Curious, Twilight finished turning around to see the brown-coated posterior of Filthy Rich sticking out of the crate, his legs wiggling for balance. An awkward dozen seconds later, he finally managed to leverage his way out of the crate with something metallic in his hooves that thumped heavily on the ground.

"Yes!" the stallion cheered. "This is it! This is my toaster!" Prostrating himself, he bowed obsequiously. "Thank you! Thank you, Princess Twilight! I didn't think that I'd ever see it again!"

Twilight stood there and blinked, this being a... not entirely new experience for her, but definitely not what she'd been going for or expecting.

Oh well; she supposed she couldn't win them all.

Once Filthy Rich was gone, Twilight turned to Luna and asked, "Did he really come to petition you in court over a toaster?"

Luna fell heavily back into her throne, rubbing her eyes. "Yes. Yes he did," she confirmed. "It was apparently his grandmother's, doubles as a space heater and was used to incapacitate his grandfather before the divorce."

Twilight took a moment to come up with a response to that. "...You know, I'd like to say that's unusual, but I've heard Applejack talk about a diesel-powered blender that they used to have; I think they held a funeral."

Luna seemed to be having trouble with that, scrunching her muzzle in thought.

"Blenders are the ones that have a large glass stein with a set of blades at the bottom that's spun by a motor," Twilight clarified with some cheek.

Luna felt it best not to dignify that with a response. "So, how did you come by Mr. Rich's long lost toaster, and am I to take it that you've brought me more such missing items?"

"Well," Twilight prevaricated. "I'm not sure how much of it's stuff that's gone missing, but apparently Spike and his harem ran into a bunch of dragons that were running a scam and these were some of the proceeds."

"What was the scam?" Luna asked, curious.

Twilight thought back, scratching her chin with one hoof. "You know, they were kind of vague about that, come to think of it. Something about charging other dragons for access to a public resource? Spike did say that they'd had to chase some dragons off of their lawn, but that can't have been in the time since I was there since it hasn't been that long. Maybe it was the giant emerald salt lick? I guess that might count as a public resource, and it's nearby. When did that go in, anyway?"

Luna blinked. "The what?"

— Twilight —

Five minutes later, Luna had joined Twilight on a cloud to the south of the city, overlooking the giant emerald salt lick that Twilight had described.

"You didn't mention the ruby apple," Luna pointed out, looking down on the scene with some interest.

"Well, it wasn't there twenty minutes ago!" Twilight defended, rather irked. "You know what this means, don't you?"

"That Applejack will have fewer theoretically stolen apples to report?" Luna offered.

Twilight cocked her head to the side in question. "Theoretically stolen apples?" she parroted.

"Yes, she said that you suggested that they might be regrowing before she could notice them missing due to her demigoddesshood," Luna reminded her.

Oh. Right. That. "She actually brought that to you?" Twilight asked, just a bit incredulous since it had been an offhoof comment.

Luna shrugged. "She wanted us to post some guards to find out for certain."

"Oh," Twilight said, reconsidering her opinion. "I guess that's not actually unreasonable."

"Unfortunately, Sweet Apple Acres is no longer considered to be within the city limits since its relocation to Sweet Apple Mountain."

"Oh." Twilight frowned. That was unfortunate.

"So, what does it mean, then?" Luna prompted.

Twilight took a moment to track the conversation back. "Oh, right." She gestured at the apple. "Well, I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? It's Pinkie Pie. She grew up on a rock farm, and these are even kind of like party games, though they're missing a sizeable lake if anyone's going to be bobbing for apple."

Luna nodded along, seeing the logic. "Yes, that does make sense. I shall have it marked down as an Act of Pink as soon as we get back."

— Spike —

Boxing up the small stack of comics that he had accrued during his time living in the once and future library, Spike felt a little bad, leaving the place in such a state. It wasn't that it was a dump, exactly, but Twilight had been moved out in such a rush that a bit of a mess had been made, and without her there it just never seemed quite as urgent to clean up.

And then Ember had moved in, of course. You wouldn't think that one dragoness tracking dirt and grit up from the additions she'd dug down in the basement could make much difference in the short time she'd been living there, but she had claws and on the occasion she wasn't lounging somewhere, she liked to pace.

"So, this is the infamous basket, huh?" Kindle said, pulling the slightly charred wicker basket out of the closet where it had been stashed after Ember had used it for magic practice. "Man, that's weird. You know that's weird, right?"

Spike rolled his eyes and took the basket from her. "It's not that weird," he said, giving it a fresh look. It was not in good condition and the charred bits were making a sooty mess.

Spike concentrated on the burnt wicker of the basket and breathed his evanescent fire over it. He still hadn't figured out unburning things as Ember had mocked him for, but it looked remarkably better with the charred surface gone.

"How is it not weird?" she asked, claws on her hips. "I grew up around ponies too, remember? That's not just any basket—it's a pet basket. For pets."

"It certainly seems offensive," Carnelia offered, giving the basket a derisive look as she came in from the stairs. "Though I cannot say that I have the same sum of experience."

"Ponies put their own foals in baskets," Spike pointed out, stuffing the basket in another box, plenty of which were left over from Twilight's move. He then took the box over to the bed and started packing up the various small knickknacks he'd accumulated that were on the shelf, there, occasionally cleansing them with fire where necessary. "And with how dragons age, I never really outgrew it until Ember came along."

"Oh, yeah," Kindle remarked, thinking back. "You were the youngest one of us, Ember said—practically a baby—not that I can talk. I didn't get that good a look at you before she changed you."

"It is easy to forget," Carnelia agreed, examining the things that Spike was packing away. "You do not seem so adolescent."

Spike scratched the back of his neck, bashful. "Well, I did grow up around Princess Celestia, and Twilight was always engrossed in her studying back then with blinders on for anything that wasn't involved in her current obsession, so I kinda had to be the sensible one." He wasn't going to mention the other reason he'd had to want to seem more adult—that being the crush he'd used to have on Rarity.

"Huh," Kindle said. "So, what you're saying is you came into this with prior experience wrangling difficult females."

Spike's hackles went up and he froze, instantly hyperaware of what he was being asked. "No," he said diplomatically. "I wouldn't say that."

"And that is why you are so successful," Carnelia sassed.

— Twilight —

"So, speaking of Acts of Pink," Twilight said once they had returned to Luna's makeshift throne room and delegated the matter of the questionably legal goods. "I saw Pinkie Pie's tower and it gave me an idea."

"That is a terrifying sentence," Luna pointed out. "Do go on."

"Well..." Twilight said, drawing the word out like a filly who was about to be in trouble. "I was just thinking about how Fluttershy's tower has been going nowhere because towers and nature don't usually mix. Me, though? I installed a lava fountain for Spike and his harem. I can make it mix. I have ideas—expanded spaces; a different biome on each floor; portals to places all across Equestria—it'll be great."

"Hay, yeah, that sounds awesome!" shouted Rainbow Dash, who was suddenly in the room, startling Twilight off her hooves and onto the nearest grippable object. "Now I want a tower!"

"You have a tower," said Luna, the nearest grippable object, who was suddenly sharing a throne with her marefriend. She didn't seem to mind. "Twilight and I have been living in it for the past week or so."

"What, that place with all the guards, recently?" Rainbow Dash asked, making the incorrect connection between the guards and the princesses living there but still managing to come to the right conclusion. "That place is lame! It's like, two floors—it doesn't even count as a tower! I want something big and magical, with portals!"

"Why am I not surprised that that is what gets you interested in the project?" came the voice of Rarity, who was entering the throne room from the stairs. She was a neat and tidy pencil skirt suit today, and the Rarity doll was nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

Fluttershy followed Rarity in, her eyes already looking in the direction of the throne before she rounded the corner. "That sounds lovely, Twilight," she said, a small yellow chickadee flying over from the corner to land on her head. "It's been a little concerning how fast the city has been growing."

Twilight was simultaneously glad that Fluttershy liked the idea and a little creeped out that she hadn't realized that she'd been watching them—which was more than a little hypocritical since she'd looked in on her friends with her starlight before. Still, she graciously accepted Fluttershy's thanks and turned to point something out to Rainbow Dash.

"Your tower does have a portal, actually," she pointed out.

"Huh?" Rainbow Dash looked doubtful. "To what, the Canterlot Library?"

Twilight considered that. "That's not a bad idea, actually—except it is, kind of, because the portal in your tower goes to the ex-dragon-lord's lair, and if something happened and he got past the guards, we don't want there to be any more places than necessary that he could end up."

"Um... Pardon me for asking, but I've been wondering... is there a reason you don't just put the portal in a cell at the guard house?" Fluttershy questioned, adding, in a tiny, whisper quiet voice, "That seems like it would make much more sense."

Twilight blinked.

Luna blinked.

"Well, I guess I have something else to get done today," Twilight said. "In my defense, I made the portal when Luna and I were the ones on watch, so it's really an inherited oversight."

"Speaking of inheriting—that's his lair, right?" Rainbow Dash said, rubbing her chin. "Like, with a hoard and everything? Doing a little asset forfeiture?"

"No," Twilight said at the same moment that Luna said, "Yes." They both turned to look at each other in confusion, which put their muzzles inches from each other since Twilight was still sharing Luna's throne and didn't have any immediate plans to change that.

"Just because we are waiting on a solution for holding the hoard does not mean that our plans for it have changed, nor do I see any reason to mislead anypony about it," Luna reasoned, looking to Twilight for an explanation for her disagreement.

Twilight's explanation was simple. "It's not asset forfeiture unless the assets in question are the proceeds or instrument of a crime," she pointed out. "Otherwise, it's just garden-variety theft."

"At least call it looting, please," Luna insisted, pouting.

"Fine," she said and turned back to Rainbow Dash. "Yes, looting it to the bedrock is in the plans, if only to deny it to him and so we don't have to devote quite so many resources to guarding it."

"Won't that make it less likely you'll catch him, though?" Rainbow Dash asked. "'Cause, you know, if he sees there's nothing for him there, he's just gonna bolt without getting too close, right?"

"That is true," Luna admitted. "It may be better in the long run to leave it there as bait, unless you can cast an illusion that will fool an adult dragon?"

Twilight shook her head. "Illusions aren't something I've ever spent much time on," she admitted. "And that probably won't change in the immediate future. You do realize that I could probably recreate his hoard easier than I could create an illusion of it? And it probably still wouldn't even work since it wouldn't have his magic in it and that's apparently something you can subconsciously feel."

"I know this is rich coming from me, Twilight, but yeesh," Rainbow Dash commented. "You started out bribing waitresses with gold bars and you've only gotten worse from there, huh?"

"She did what?!" Rarity asked, aghast. "Twilight!"

"It was a tip," Twilight insisted quite calmly.

"Well—I don't care what you call it—don't!" Rarity hotly insisted, getting ruffled—literally, she was gaining ruffles in her distress. "You'll do more harm than good if you go around doing things like that!"

Twilight let out a huff of displeasure. Yes, she was well aware of that and she understood the concept, but it was a little close to all the other things she was being told she couldn't do even before she learned to brute force magic. "Anyway, I didn't say I would, just that I could. It'd make no sense to cart it all off somewhere only to replace it with something less convincing in spite of being just as real."

"Well... good," Rarity said, slightly mollified. "Please, if you're going to be doing anything of the sort, at least do it with subtlety."

"Seriously, Twi," Rainbow Dash added. "For somepony who was freaking out about being connected in any way to you-know-who, you sure do seem to be jumping at any chance to use your 'dream magic,'" she said, making air quotes with her wings.

"Dash, do you want a tower with all the impossible magical bells and whistles or not?" Twilight asked, suggesting that her current line of inquiry wasn't entirely in line with that.

"Hey, I already said I wasn't the one who should have to bring it up," Rainbow Dash said, defending herself. "And besides, if it's coming from me of all ponies, you've gotta admit it means something."

"Look—just because it bears a resemblance to the way That Creature did magic doesn't mean it's not still magic," Twilight said, taking a breath in an effort to stay calm and reasonable. "Are you really surprised that I've gotten excited about a new kind of magic? —That I want to do things with it?"

That brought Rainbow Dash up short. "Well—no, but—c'mon, 'Shy, you agree that she's kind of overdoing it, right?"

Fluttershy blinked, not expecting the sudden attention. "Oh—um—no. Not really," she admitted. "Twilight wouldn't actually make a dragon's hoard of gold unless she was asked to, and I also don't want to be a hypocrite."

"I guess, but—" Rainbow Dash halted mid-sentence, her train of thought crashing into something she didn't have the context for. "Wait, why would you be a hypocrite?"

"Well, I did ask her to teach me how to do it," Fluttershy pointed out quite reasonably. "I've been hoping she's figured out enough that we can do that soon."

"Wha—but—you?!" Dash gaped, not having expected that in the slightest. "Wait, teaching it? Is that possible?"

Rarity, on the other hoof, had a bit more tact. "Fluttershy, dear, I'm not certain that that is a good idea..." she said, mincing her words. "I trust you, of course, but the fact of the matter is: the more ponies there are that know something, the more likely it is to get out—especially if Twilight works out how to teach it."

Twilight, meanwhile, tried to pretend she hadn't forgotten entirely about that request in all the turmoil since the coronation and Ember's announcement, especially since she'd been envying Spike for his harem's enthusiasm towards rediscovering dragon magic for the past few days—not that they seemed to be getting anywhere with it.

Fluttershy tilted her head. "Um—would this be a bad time for me to mention that Spike and the others seem to have already figured several things out just from watching Twilight?"

— Spike —

Spike was packing up the heavy-metal-tainted pots and pans from the kitchen of the ex-library when the tableware in the cupboards rattled. That hadn't been all too unusual since dragons had started showing up in Ponyville, but now that there shouldn't be any more unreasonably large dragons walking casually down the street, there could only be one dragoness responsible.

"Does someone want to go downstairs and see what's got the empress in a snit?" he shouted out into the library as a whole.

"Yeah, yeah," Slag shouted back in her squeaky baby-dragon voice. "Not like I can reach anything like this anyway," she grumbled, navigating the stairs.

Spike was carrying his box of kitchenware out into the main room of the ex-library just in time to see the small black baby dragoness reach for the doorknob of the door leading down into the basement, only to have it slammed open in her face, sending her across the room.

Spike winced in sympathy, having been on the receiving end of that more than a few times when working for the over-eager Twilight Sparkle, but what came through the basement door was no simple pony.

Ember didn't charge out of the door so much as she flowed into the room, squeezing through the door in the biggest size the room would allow—or slightly bigger, according to the cracked doorframe and the scales scraping the ceiling of the room.

Ember wasn't just angry or pissed, she was absolutely livid. Spike hadn't been entirely happy with the dragon princess when she'd come rudely into his life and they'd had a few arguments, but he'd never seen her so completely furious as she was at this moment—not even when her father, the previous dragon lord, had escaped with the mind-controlling bloodstone scepter had she been so beyond reason that he was actually scared of her.

Well, he was scared of her now, and if he backed into the kitchen just a little out of reflex, that was just a reasonable reaction to the snarling, gnashing force of scales and teeth that was taking up most of the room.

"Woah, woah!" Kindle shouted, holding up her arms as if she could ward off the dragon empress. "Calm down and—"

It was a mistake. The moment the orange dragoness caught Ember's attention, a monstrous claw shot out and picked her up. "Was it you?!" she snarled, sounding beastly and feral, her voice shaking the building. "Are you the one that took it?"

Kindle wasn't in much of a condition to respond, but she squeezed out an answer anyway. "I—have—no—idea—what—you're—even—talking—about."

Took it? Took what? Ember hardly owned anything, and she clearly still had the Ring of Ashmund. The only other thing was... "Do you mean your book on the dragon empires is missing?"

Ember dropped Kindle and turned to Spike. "Yes, the book!" she growled, and reached for Spike, who was suddenly glad to have the cover afforded to him by being in the kitchen.

"Hey!" he shouted, ducking out of the way of Ember's claw as she reached through the door. "Cut it out!"

Failing to find him, Ember pulled her claw back out through the kitchen door and things went quiet for long enough for Spike to consider peeking his head back through the door to see what was going on.

He needn't have bothered, though, because just when he was edging warily closer to the door, a regular-sized Ember came flying at him, picking him up by the chest, which was suddenly much narrower than it had been a moment ago.

"Wha—hey!" Spike squirmed in her grasp, flailing his suddenly little baby dragon arms at her. "Not cool! Not cool!"

"Where is it?" she demanded to know, holding his face close enough that he could feel her heavy, irregular breaths.

"I! Don't! Know!" he said, and swung his stubby legs up to kick her in the jaw, causing her to drop him.

Ember just stood there shocked.

"You kicked me," she said, dumbfounded.

"And you deserved it," he said with a sour note as he picked himself up off the ground. Fortunately, he seemed to be fine.

"Yes, but... it's you," she said, as if that explained everything. "You kicked me. You."

Spike wanted to do a lot more than that, to be honest, but he settled for leaving the kitchen to go check on Kindle and Slag.

Slag was on her feet and not significantly affected by her tumble, but Kindle had propped herself up against the base of the stairs and had her head between her knees, wheezing.

"Grit," Spike cursed, rushing over to Kindle's side, though he couldn't think of anything that he could actually do. "Is anything broken?" he asked, hovering over her. "Do I need to go get someone?"

Kindle shook her head and took a deep breath. "No," she wheezed out. "No, I'm... I'm good. Muck, that hurt."

Spike was distracted from Kindle by Ember walking into the center of the room. She seemed to have calmed down some, but she was still clearly incensed. With Carnelia and Drift coming down the stairs now that the commotion was over, Ember crossed her arms and announced: "The book has been stolen," eyeing each one of them as if one of them was responsible.

What in tartarus?

"Okay?" Slag said, still a bit cantankerous over having been thrown across the room by a door. "Are you seriously blaming one of us?"

"To suspect us makes... uncertain sense," Carnelia offered, sparing a glance and a frown for Kindle's condition.

"Don't think I haven't noticed the looks you all get when I'm reading it," Ember shot back.

"Well, yeah," Drift said with a carefree shrug. "You never even let us read it—"

"So it was yo—"

"—But that doesn't mean one of us is going to just go ahead and take it," she finished.

"None of us—have even been—away from you—since—we met," Kindle said, and Spike realized that that was true. Sure it had been less than a week since Ember had gathered the other girls, but ever since then they'd all pretty much done everything together. Well, except for—

"Except for Spike," Ember declared. "He's always going off with that princess of his."

Spike facepalmed. "Okay, first," he said, pointing up at her, the size difference more than a little daunting at his younger height. "That is my *job. Second: I haven't gone off with Twilight since the coronation. And third: No."

"'No' what?" Ember asked, peeved at being contradicted.

"No, you are not going to stand there with Kindle on the ground because you hurt her and continue to throw blame at me and the girls, hoping you hit the right target through sheer luck," he told her.

If there was one thing that Spike knew about Ember, though, it was that she did not like being told 'no', and this was no exception. The fire in her eyes as she stepped closer, looming over Spike brought back a little of that fear that he'd felt when she was tearing through the ex-library grabbing for whoever was closest, and that... that was not okay.

"And what are you going to do about it?" she asked, her voice full of menace.

That was the question, wasn't it? There wasn't much that Spike could do against Ember—at least in the here and now. Not with her having returned him to his original age, and probably not even if she hadn't.

He supposed the only option he really had was, ironically, to be adult and mature about it.

"The only thing I can do," he responded rather dourly, quite serious. Maybe it was a bit quick, but he needed to head things off before they became even worse.

He turned, said, "Not be here," and walked out.

— Spike —

Spike was frankly shocked that he'd gotten out of the ex-library without anyone saying anything, but maybe it was like when he'd kicked Ember, and she was really just that shocked.

Was it really that unusual? Did she really expect him to just stand there and take that kind of treatment?

Apparently.

Admittedly, they'd had their share of arguments—especially back when she'd first shown up and made herself home in his space, but there'd always been the fact hanging over them that he didn't really have any choice in the matter. What was he going to do? Leave?

Well, yes.

He'd be damned if the street didn't suddenly look intimidatingly large after having spent only a short while standing head and shoulders above the ponies.

Tentatively, he stepped out into the street and started going... somewhere, but the sound of the door behind him made him instantly wish he'd put some distance between him and the ex-library a bit sooner. To his... not much surprise, actually, since her pride would keep her from chasing after him, it was Kindle, one arm wrapped around her side and not too happy about it.

She didn't say anything or try to stop him; she just fell into mincing steps beside him. Well, if that was going to be how it was, he didn't blame her.

He felt really bad that he couldn't even help support her, though.

Then, suddenly, Drift was there, silently slipping herself between them and under Kindle's arm. That surprised him, but maybe it shouldn't have; she didn't seem like the type that would stick around where she wasn't wanted—and just when he thought he had her figured out, she looped her other arm underneath his and lifted him up onto her shoulder.

"So, where to, boss?"

Author's Note

This one jumps around a bit, but hey, things are happening again! If you're reading this on the day it's being posted, come back tomorrow for the next chapter, wherein more things happen.

Thanks go out to those supporting me on Patreon, pomegranate horsie, Sunny, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Kali, J T, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, fused, CvBrony, bloons3, Dusk Star and Ben Wilcox

Chapter 28

— Candesca —

Of all the things that Celestia Candesca had thought that she'd see in her lifetime, cute pink pony-sized dragons in maid uniforms had not been on the list.

Well, no, that was a lie. Of all the things that Celestia had thought that she'd see in her lifetime, cute pony-sized dragons in maid uniforms had not been on the list—and she'd been right. Candesca, on the other hoof, was another matter entirely, and in the short time since her genesis they'd been working towards—or at least hoping for—something like this.

She just hadn't expected the realization of that goal to come with a realization about herself, or for it to be so... eye-catching.

Apparently, though, being half dragon came with more than an off-putting appearance; it also came with hormones and the awareness that her appearance wasn't off-putting at all, nor was that of the new help.

It figured, really, that Discord's little addition to Celestia's attempt at balancing the scales in that regard had managed to change the stakes entirely.

Of course, it wasn't as if Corona wasn't also... not off-putting. She was certainly anything but, if she did say so herself—but that was just the thing; Corona was essentially herself, and it would be a while yet before she would be able to see her as anything else.

Besides, even if she did see Corona like that, it probably wouldn't help the current matter any. Really, though; yes, she'd been involved in the decision to put the dragons in skirts in order to make them seem less threatening, but who had decided to make them look so... whatever that was.

Admittedly, the first impression she'd had on first seeing one of them had not been any kind of terror, so maybe it was working.

What, precisely made the uniform seem so scandalous, Candesca wasn't quite certain. There was something, she was sure, but neither ponies or dragons typically wore clothes and it wasn't as if bits and saddles were involved, so she was coming up blank.

Then again, it might just be her.

Candesca's eyes were finally torn away from the dragon maid dusting the throne room windows by Corona storming into the room and then stopping mid-step, poleaxed at the sight.

Well, okay; it was not just her, clearly, though she wasn't certain that that counted.

Corona's wandering eye was shaken loose by the passing of a pony in armor, which wouldn't normally be something of note save for the fact that pony guards were few and far between in the castle these days, their numbers still recovering from the recent shocks, and the fact that this pony was not a guard, nor were they wearing the traditional golden plate of such.

No, the pony in question was another maid, this one wearing an armored petticoat in stark contrast to her draconic co-worker, perhaps as protection from her draconic co-worker.

Well, whatever it took to keep the castle staffed, she supposed.

Corona and Candesca met each other's eyes in essentially the same moment, no doubt having taken just about the same amount of time to come to the same conclusion, though Corona still had a look of displeasure about her.

"Is something the matter?" Candesca asked, making an effort to keep her eyes on her twin and not anywhere else in the room.

It wasn't nearly as useful for avoiding distractions as she might have hoped, given the places her mind had gone in the last few minutes.

Corona, for her part, didn't seem to notice and she resumed her irate strut, though it was somewhat subdued by the momentary preoccupation.

"Quite," she said, stepping up the dais and taking a seat on her recently commissioned throne, the pair of them having been made from melting down the previous Celestia's throne. "I was using my light to check on several matters, and what I saw was... concerning."

"You're more than concerned," Candesca observed. "In fact, I'd say you are quite heated over whatever it was. Has something happened at the lair of the once dragon lord?"

Corona shook her head. "No, no. That is one of the locations that I looked in on, but things there remain quiescent. It's news from Ponyville that has me worried and rather displeased. Specifically, that of Spike and his friends... and Ember and her friends."

Candesca took the meaning of Corona's phrasing immediately. "Oh dear," she remarked. The personal implications of such a rift were concerning, of course, but the personal problems of ones who decide to call themselves an empress tended to become problems for everyone—and this, right when they were trying to make her a role model for integration. "How bad is it?"

Corona couldn't seem to sit still, so she got up from her throne and began to pace. "Do you recall that time when Lulu couldn't find the harp that Princess Opal gave her, so she blamed me—or rather, she blamed us... That is to say, she blamed Celestia?"

Candesca winced, placing a hoof over her side where, of course, no scar remained, nor had there been for over two thousand years. "That bad?"

"Somewhere between that and Nightmare Moon," the sister with the rainbow mane deadpanned, earning her a raised eyebrow from Candesca since it was quite unlike them. "Yes, I suppose that is hyperbole, but seeing as she used the Ring of Ashmund and attacked them outright—though it was short-lived—you can see why I might be agitated."

"Is there something you think we should do?" Candesca asked.

Corona stopped to think, then shook her head and sat back down. "No, and perhaps that is the real reason that I am agitated," she said with a sigh. "Spike did the right thing to walk out, and it is heartening that he is not alone. Perhaps they will reconcile their differences once Ember has calmed down. Nothing unforgivable was said, so it may well be that nothing comes of this in the end. Still, it is... vexing that I cannot even send a letter of support."

"You're not Celestia, you know, and neither am I," Candesca reminded her. "You don't have to behave in every way that she did; we are different ponies, after all."

"We're hardly even ponies," Corona said, her eyes wandering very briefly to the very clear proof of that, which was bending over wringing a rag into her bucket. "But that is not the point. One does not have to be Celestia to know that such a letter out of the blue would imply things that are not entirely reassuring."

"But true," Candesca pointed out. "You do, in fact, spy on them quite often, after all."

"You miss it?" Corona asked, curious.

"To the extent that it's possible to miss something that I have technically never actually done," Candesca answered. "My celestial sight isn't that bad, but seeing through heat is... well, the subtleties are lost."

The dragon maid had progressed to rubbing down one of the plinths in the room. "How... unfortunate," Corona said.

"Still," Candesca started before the silence could get awkward. "There are many other ways that the information could have come to us."

"Less unsettling ways?" Corona leadingly asked.

Candesca shrugged. "When one of the parties involved is a self-proclaimed empress, there is no limit to the speed that word can travel."

"I am fairly certain that the physicists would have something to say about that assertion," Corona observed.

"They have something to say about most of the things we do," Candesca reminded her twin. "It's flattering, but I do wish they would stop, sometimes; it can't be healthy."

"I'm fairly certain they'd be right—this time."

"Observably not," Candesca insisted, asserting that, "I have heard of it already, and I did no such spying." She perked up, suddenly having an idea. "Perhaps I should send a letter, then," she suggested coyly.

"You go ahead and do that," Corona said, leaning on the armrest of her throne. "I am going to sit here and... think."

Candesca raised an eyebrow at her sister, then over at the tail of a certain maid swinging this way and that in the air.

"Right."

— Twilight —

The squabbling about the dragons having apparently picked up some magic from watching Twilight had only gone on for a few minutes, but it was already getting old.

"Yes, Rarity," she said, her exasperation showing in her voice. "I think that it's a good thing."

Rarity's ruffles were getting worse. "Twilight, there's a balance to these things. I'm all for helping ponies and dragons, but you can't just give random beings that kind of power, or you'll be responsible if they misuse it."

Twilight stiffened and Luna wrapped her wing around Twilight's back in response. "Rarity, stop," she sternly commanded. "Think about what you just said for a second."

Rarity was taken aback by the sudden drop in Twilight's tone, but remained resolute. "I'm well aware of my position, Twilight, but we are your friends, and even so, you know you weren't in the right mind when you made us demigoddesses."

Twilight shook her head. "No, Rarity, I'm not talking about you. I'm the source for all pony magic, remember?"

Rarity blanched, only then realizing how she'd put her hoof in her mouth. "Oh my, I—"

Suddenly, a great booming roar echoed through the throne room. Everypony present turned to the rear of the room to see a large yellow bear at least twice the size of a normal one. The bear managed to look sheepish, then split apart into the two bears it looked to have been made from and slipped back out the window.

Fluttershy cleared her throat in the silence that followed, and everyone turned back to her in question. For once, she met their gazes without hesitation. "We can discuss this later," she insisted quite strongly. "Something has happened with Spike, and Kindle is injured. I... I think it was Ember."

Every eye in the room widened, but it was Rainbow Dash who spoke up first. "Wait—I thought Kindle was what Ember was calling herself when she was hiding from her dad?"

"That was Tinder, dear," Rarity clarified.

Rainbow Dash was lost in thought for a second, thinking back. "Oh, right," she said.

Twilight only slightly reluctantly slipped out from under Luna's wing, already feeling a chill from the lack in the crystal-lined throne room. "Where are they, and—" she turned to Luna, "—are you coming?"

Luna nodded. "This could be important, so yes." Looking to the yellow chickadee that was still sitting comfortably on top of Fluttershy's head, she said, "If you'll lead the way?"

— Ember —

"That... that..." Ember stood in the middle of the ex-library, shocked and fuming. "He—he can't do that!" she insisted, fully aware of how that sounded since he had, in fact, done that, and Kindle and Drift had gone with him—and for what?

Ugh, no. Ember shook her head. She couldn't let herself get distracted. Spike would come back like he always did. Right now she needed to find that book—the book was everything! She didn't know where it had come from, but that book had put to words the problems she had with the dragon race. That book had shown her not only how things could be, but it had told her how to do it by telling her about Ashmund's Ring.

It was more than that, though. She'd had the book for weeks. Even with her less-than-stellar literacy, that was long enough for her to read any normal book and pick out the important parts. The book wasn't any normal book, though; it was more. She'd read it for days and days and it had just kept on going, going further and further into depth on everything from the politics and histories of the different empires to their laws and bureaucracies, and all she had to do to find information on a subject was turn to a random page while thinking about it.

That was why she had never let anyone read it. Yes, it was so dense and dry in parts that she needed as much time as possible to actually get anything out of it—information she needed if she was going to be a real empress—but she was also afraid of what would happen if anyone found out about how special the book was. If word got out about such a miraculous book, word might get back to whoever had had it before her and they would want it back.

She was not going to let anyone take that book.

Except, someone had taken it, and she didn't know what to do. "Damn it, why did Spike have to walk out on me now?" she cursed. He'd know what to do about tracking down whoever had taken the book, and then she'd be able to deal with them.

Ember wasn't stupid or blind. She knew how much she'd been leaning on Spike for help navigating pony society, and as an empress who had announced to the whole world that integrating with pony society was the way forward, that was pretty relevant. It was a good thing he was such a pushover, or she'd be worried that he might do a better job at this whole 'being empress' thing than her.

Was he, though?

Ember had been surprised by Spike before. Usually he seemed too timid to get anything done, like when she'd had to draw him out on whether it had been the right time to go public by using the Ring of Ashmund to challenge her father. Other times, though, he seemed downright devious, like when he'd used his position to get the ring in the first place and do it an a way that they hadn't been able to argue against it when they found out, to the point that the queens had actually apologized for getting angry about it!

"Wait."

Was this another one of those moments when the sneaky, devious Spike showed through? He'd had more reason to leave plenty of times before and he'd always stuck with her. Why would he leave now, unless. "...That sneaky little—I bet he did steal it! And those other two must be in on it!"

Without warning, Ember suddenly felt something strike her cheek and she found herself on the ground with Carnelia standing over her, arm out as if she'd just slapped someone.

Ember reached up to her face and winced at the throbbing pain as the wet, warm feeling of blood made itself known.

Getting slapped by a dragon's claw hurt.

"Wh—wha?" Ember stammered, trying to figure out what was going on. Was this... Had all of her friends turned on her? "So, it is a coup," she deduced, her expression darkening. "I see. He has the book, but you stayed behind to ambush me and take the ring."

Carnelia palmed her face in her bloody claw. "Listen to yourself," she hissed, drawing out her 's' sounds even more than usual in her agitation.

"No, you listen," Ember said, narrowing her eyes. "You shouldn't have wasted your chance." Wasting no time, she made a fist in front of her, using the Ring of Ashmund to reduce Carnelia, too, back into a baby dragon. "You won't get another."

Ember was struggling to get to her feet when she was struck in the back of her head, and everything went dark.

— Slag —

Slag stood over the unconscious Ember holding a heavy cast-iron saucepan that now resembled a conch shell more than something that would be used to cook food. She might have overdone it, but that was the kind of force necessary to knock out a dragon, and at her size she'd needed every muscle she had to stop Ember from doing something they would all regret.

"Oh, this is just splendid," Carnelia sourly stated, now equal in stature to Slag.

Slag dropped the saucepan, breathing heavy not from the exertion, but from the adrenaline. "Well, what did you expect me to do?" she challenged. "You heard her."

Carnelia rubbed at the bridge of her snout. "Yes. Still. This is going to strain things more than it already was."

Slag scratched at her jawline. "So, uh—you think we should take the ring so she doesn't, you know, murder us all when she wakes up?"

Carnelia let out a long, hissing sigh. "As much as I wish there was another choice, I fear we must... especially if she wakes while we are securing treatment for her face."

Slag stepped over Ember's legs and bent over to take a look at it. The dragoness was laying on her front, but her head was turned to the side and the injury was clear. Carnelia hadn't held back, and there were two deep gashes—one above her eye and the other below, digging into her snout. It was quite nasty, but the bleeding wasn't life threatening.

"Eh, she'll be fine," she decided with a shrug. She'd had worse fighting for scraps of ore in the dragonlands.

Carnelia looked at her through lidded eyes. "Perhaps," she allowed. "But I am uncertain if I would ever sleep soundly again should the empress's face scar. She does not seem to be the most stable of dragons."

"Yeah, what the heck was that about, anyway?" Slag wondered. "That was not what I signed up for—and it's nothing like she's been."

"Isn't it?" Carnelia wondered, though Slag wasn't sure if she was serious or just thinking aloud. "She has shown, occasionally, that she is the jealous sort; it has simply never been salient."

"Ehh..." Slag looked doubtfully at the unconscious form of their so-called 'empress.' "I dunno. I mean, yeah, she was pretty big on herself, but that? That wasn't jealousy—that was straight up paranoia. Something really has to have gone wrong that we don't know about, either with that book going missing or in her head."

Carnelia thought about it and hmmed noncommittally. "Nevertheless, we should secure the ring—and secure aid."

Slag wasn't one for delaying and she really did want to stay unmurdered, so she—actually, Ember was laying on top of her arm. Not to be dissuaded, she grabbed the arm and pulled, but Ember was ten times her size and it didn't budge.

"Hey—" she shouted over at Carnelia, who was watching. "Come over and help me lift."

"Certainly," she agreed, and came closer. With the two of them standing next to each other, it was clear that Carnelia was slightly taller and thinner, lacking the dense muscle that Slag possessed.

On one claw, this made sense because that was how they'd been before Ember had changed them. On the other, that was how they'd been before ember had changed them. Afterwards, they'd all looked very similar—closer to Ember's ideal—though none of them had really compared physiques beyond what had been immediately obvious.

"You get her legs," Slag instructed, and side by side, they heaved.

It took some doing, and Slag was definitely doing most of it, but with effort they managed to get Ember onto her back, revealing the claw with the ring on it, which Slag went straight for, not knowing how long Ember would be out for.

The ring came off easily and it felt heavy in her hand—more so than could be explained by the fact that it spanned her entire palm, being sized for Ember's claw. Slag had seen it from a distance plenty of times, but she'd never really gotten a close look at it. It was, primarily ivory or bone, carved with something like an impossibly detailed mural around the circumference that had no doubt been done when it was at a larger size. The rest of it was gold, which covered made up the inside and wrapped up around the edges, standing slightly proud from the surface of the bone.

It was a nice piece of work, but there wasn't much else to say. It might be nice to see the carving at full size, but she wasn't going to ask Ember to show it to her—not after how she'd reacted with the book.

Shrugging, she held it out to Carnelia. "Want to use it to make yourself a decent size again?" she asked.

Carnelia took the ring and seemed a bit more taken by it. Frowning, she considered Slag's question. "That depends..." she hissed, thoughtful. "...She may be substantially more incensed should she see her sanction reversed."

"Her 'sanction' was that she was going to kill you," Slag reminded her in a deadpan tone. "I don't think it's going to get much worse, and even without the ring she's still got physical strength, so if you're not going to, I will. This is more important than my tail."

"Sound reasoning," she agreed and placed the Ring of Ashmund on her finger, the ring shrinking to fit.

At first, nothing happened... then Carnelia hissed—not as a form of speech, but in pain, gripping the claw that had the ring on it. Slag was just about ready for Carnelia to turn evil or something, since it had been that kind of a day, when she realized whatever had happened wasn't ongoing and Carnelia was slowly returning to standing straight.

"Tartarus," Carnelia cursed.

Slag took a step closer, but hung back from actually approaching her. "...You okay?" she asked.

"Yes," Carnelia said, stretching her claw and scowling at the ring.

Slag took another step, trying to get a look at the ring on Carnelia's claw; underneath the gold, there was red, and as she watched, a line of blood ran down her finger and dripped onto the floor.

"Grit!" Slag swore. "You're not okay; what happened?"

"As I previously said: Tartarus," Carnelia stated as if that was a normal thing for Slag to assume. "I suspect, somehow, that his blood is the gold the ring is made from."

"What."

Carnelia raised her arm as Ember sometimes did when she was using the ring, and she started to grow—then her eyes widened in panic. "Wha—? No!" she shouted, and in haste gripped the claw with the ring, trying to take it off.

Slag was confused at first, but as Carnelia struggled, she realized that Carnelia hadn't been growing. At least, not all of her. It was just Carnelia's hand that had grown, and it had grown monstrous—jagged and spiked.

Closing the gap in an instant, Slag tried to help Carnelia remove the ring, but it was impossible; the scales of Carnelia's claw had grown into sharp plates, trapping it on her.

Carnelia continued to struggle as the transformation crawled up her arm while Slag stood there, unable to do anything. In her state, she probably couldn't even bite the arm off if it came to that.

Fortunately, it didn't come to that and the transformation died down halfway up Carnelia's forearm after a tremendous work of willpower.

"Curses," Carnelia growled. "It has rejected me."

"It?" Slag asked. "The blood of Tartarus?"

Carnelia shook her head. "No. The blood accepted me. It is the bone that did not, and it seems that it is the bone which provides control."

Slag blinked. "So, it's someone else's bone?" she concluded.

"Yes," Carnelia confirmed. "Perhaps it is the eponymous Ashmund."

"You seem to suddenly know a lot," she pointed out, and overtly looked askance at the unconscious 'empress.' "You don't suppose that Ember...?"

Carnelia looked troubled, but shook her concern away. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. It may be the contrast in sides that has given me insight. I do not expect that the ring fought Ember, so she may have sensed nothing from it."

Slag was trying to figure out where they were going to go from there when she remembered that they were supposed to be getting Ember some kind of medical care.

"Ugh," came the pained voice of Ember, sitting up and rubbing the back of her head. "What hit me?" she said, looking up at the two baby dragons. Her claw slowly moved from the bump on the back of her head to the wound on her face, still confused.

The moment when Ember spotted Carnelia's apparent age and her malformed arm was the same moment that she remembered what had happened before she'd been knocked out, and it was impossible to miss as her face twisted in apoplectic fury.

"Oh, spit."

Author's Note

Yep, I managed to go an entire chapter just showing reactions without actually progressing things on Spike's end at all.

Chapter 29

— Ember —

Thinking was not Ember's strong suit and the throbbing bump on the back of her head wasn't making it any easier—at least, not in the normal way. In actuality, though, it did make it easier, because in combination with the fact that sounds were muffled and her vision was swimming, the actual thinking needed to come to a conclusion was minimal.

She'd been attacked.

She'd been attacked from behind.

And standing in front of her was Carnelia looking younger than Ember had ever seen her, with a monstrous right claw wearing a very familiar ring.

Ember's fist clenched, the feeling of her naked claw clear.

A very familiar stolen ring.

Not the first thing that had been stolen today.

No, not much thinking was needed at all.

And this time, she wouldn't let anyone escape.

She leapt, tooth and claw at the one who she'd thought was a friend.

— Fluttershy —

Oh dear.

Oh my.

Oh dear oh my oh no.

Three demigoddesses, two alicorns and two alicorn-dragon hybrids all converged on Spike, Drift and Kindle, all at once. It was, perhaps, a bit much. Yes, admittedly, Kindle was hurt, but not badly. Not like what was happening with the dragons left behind. Fluttershy had missed the beginning of the altercation, not actually being in the habit of going out of her way to spy on everypony and everydragon, but now... now she had half a dozen sparrows, pigeons and a meerkat or two watching what was happening in the old library, which wasn't really enough to do anything.

Twilight leapt at Spike, lifting the once-again-baby dragon into a crushing hug with all sorts of panicked inquiries and reassurances while all the rest drew up around the trio making a fuss of them all.

There was essentially no chance that she'd be able to get any of their attention, so Fluttershy kept running, wishing she hadn't left her bear friends back in the throne room. They were too slow for a dash across the city, though, and she hadn't expected things at the old library to go downhill quite so quickly, so all she could do was run.

Run, and gather up as many of her little friends as possible.

A yellow tide gathered up around the old library, but Fluttershy held them back from actually sending them inside. In theory, her control of her animal friends would keep them safe. She had, after all, saved the life of one of the dragons that had attacked Rainbow Dash by taking him over. There were just a few eensy, teensy, tiny problems with that.

First, there was the fact that any of the dragons swallowing an immortal demigoddess pigeon would go poorly for either the dragon or the pigeon, depending on whether she removed her goddesshood from it or not.

Second, of course, was the fact that introducing scores of tiny animals to a fight was not really the sort of thing that calmed people down.

What else could she do, though?

She... she supposed that, like the dragon that Rainbow Dash had killed, she could use her goddesshood to take control of Ember, but...

No.

No, she just couldn't. Not after the last dragon had killed himself to free himself of her. Ember wasn't mortally injured, so she wouldn't have to make that choice, but it was still wrong to take control of someone against her will like that. She was just fortunate that so many of her animal friends were so accommodating.

That only left one thing that she could do, then. She'd discovered, back during the dragon attack, that she could come apart into approximately forty-six squirrels, and since then she'd experimented a bit with that sort of thing, like combining Harry and Claude into one giant bear back in the throne room, but it still made her... well, a tiny bit uneasy, no matter that it seemed entirely, safely reversible.

She still wondered what would have happened if she'd removed her demigodesshood from those forty-six squirrels, though.

Anyway, that wasn't relevant right now. What was relevant was the crashing and scraping sounds coming from the old library, which she could hear with her pony ears now, as well as the mass of small animals gathered up around the door and windows.

Two more strides and she leapt into that yellow mass, exploding into the old library in the form of... in the form of... the form of what? There were too many disparate animals in the mass to give her any real direction. Something intimidating, she supposed. Something that could separate them. Something that they would listen to.

Oh. Well, yes, that would work. It was kind of obvious, wasn't it?

— Ember —

It wasn't so much a fight as it was a wild fury of tumbling, scratching and biting that went on long enough for her to lose track of time—though maybe that was the head injury.

It should have been simple. Ember had size and initiative on her side, and Carnelia didn't seem to have figured out the ring yet, but Carnelia... Carnelia had numbers. Ember had forgotten about Slag, but Slag hadn't forgotten about Ember, or wasted any time in coming to Carnelia's aid, and for all that Carnelia was probably the most delicate of the six of them, Slag was absolutely the most tenacious, even as a gnashing, biting baby.

All of that ceased to matter when the furious form of a massive golden dragon appeared in the room and roared.

Ember froze.

That wasn't possible. Carnelia had the ring, she was sure of it, and—and it just wasn't possible. It was real, though, without a doubt. The gleaming scales and shining white teeth were one thing, but more than that, she could feel its gaze bearing down on her like a weight.

Then... it was over, she could breathe again and she was standing there, awkwardly on top of Carnelia, with Slag hanging from her mouth by the tail, which tasted of blood.

Ember's jaw went slack and Slag tumbled down onto the floor. The bandages were gone from the baby dragon's tail, and the small partially-healed bite that Ember's father had taken out of it was circumscribed entirely by her own savage attempt at removing the appendage.

Oh.

— Carnelia —

On second glance, the dragon that had interrupted the fight was more yellow than it was golden, which did explain things a bit, but the fact that it was the most mild-mannered of the demigoddesses being not so mild wasn't entirely reassuring.

The subsequent appearance of the rainbow-maned one who had nearly killed three dragons on her own entirely by accident definitely didn't lower the tension in the room any either, and Carnelia had a difficult time remaining calm and keeping a tight leash on the Ring of Ashmund. She'd already lost a bit more of her arm to the monstrous transformation during the fight and she would really rather it not go much further.

Nevertheless, Carnelia did her best to focus on the real problem in the room. "Are you sufficiently satisfied?" she asked Ember rather bitterly as she scooted herself out from under her 'empress,' though she was reconsidering the girl's suitability for the title—and not because the Ring of Ashmund was currently truculently stuck on her own claw. "It seems we have come full-circle."

Ember didn't answer directly, occupied entirely as she was staring at the overlapping bite wounds on Slag's tail. "I... I am not my father," she insisted, eventually standing and turning her attention to Carnelia. "This is your fault! You stole the ring!"

"Yes! I did!" Carnelia shot back, unashamed. "I was not going to sit and let your insanity sabotage everything we strive for before we've scarcely even started!"

"I am not insane!" Ember shouted, stepping threateningly towards Carnelia, keeping an eye on the great big yellow dragon in the room. "Give it back."

"I cannot," Carnelia simply said, gesturing at her monstrous arm. "And I will not. Not until you are past this senseless insistence on blaming whoever is closest. I do not trust—"

"Um," the great big yellow dragon demigoddess said, creeping slightly further into the room. "I know it's important that you communicate your issues and you're doing great at that right now, but I'm just gonna..." Slowly, carefully she reached in between the two dragonesses and plucked the injured and bleeding baby dragon up with two of her fingers. "...Take her to the hospital now. Sorry. I'll be going now."

Nobody in the room moved as Fluttershy backed her very large draconic form out of the library, carefully cradling Slag in her arms. Five seconds after everyone thought she was gone, she stuck her head back in the door. "Please, continue your peaceful discussion... and, um, Dash: please make sure it stays that way. Without nearly killing them this time."

Nobody said anything for a significant amount of time in Fluttershy's absence. "You know," Rainbow Dash said, breaking the silence. "I worry about her sometimes."

— Rainbow Dash —

With the giant yellow dragon gone, however, the previous hostile mood returned to the room, Ember eying the ring on Carnelia's finger.

Great. Just... great.

Not really having any other choice, Rainbow Dash sighed and stepped in, inserting herself between the two sides, keeping a particularly sharp eye on Ember. "Look, I am so not the right mare for this and I have absolutely no idea what's going on, except that things have gone pear-shaped enough that two of your group are hurt enough to need the hospital, half of you got shrunk, a different half walked out on you and these two are about five seconds from following them with the Dragon Emperor's Toe Ring, so everyone calm the buck down and one of you explain."

Ember was too preoccupied being defiant, so it was Carnelia who got a word in first. "Simply stated, Ember's book on the dragon empires has been stolen, and she seems speciously certain to an unreasonable degree that one of us is responsible, accepting no sound assertions of innocence, responding instead with violence to our denials. Spike did the sensible thing and stepped out, while Slag and I attempted reconciliation. Sadly, she refused to listen and we were forced to subdue her and separate her from the ring—though seeking to use it has so far been unsuccessful, as one of its components has refused me while simultaneously obstructing its removal."

Rainbow Dash blinked. "Did you swallow a thesaurus or something?" she asked, but didn't bother waiting for an actual answer. "Okay, so, stolen book," she continued, thinking out loud. "You know, weirdly, that's not a friendship problem we ever had to deal with, I think, but I can totally imagine Twi breaking bones over it if it did come up. Not so much with the biting, though, and only at the end of an entire day of hijinks finding out who it was." Of course, the list of things that Twilight would do at the end of a day of hijinks wasn't exactly a short one.

"Anyway," she said, turning to Ember. "So, that's one side of the story. You got anything to add? Or subtract? It'll have to be one or the other, because that's about the limit of my ability to do crime-math."

Ember barely even looked at Rainbow Dash. "It had to be one of them!" she insisted, glaring Carnelia down and taking another step closer. "They took the book—they took the ring!"

Not wanting a repeat of the last time a bunch of dragons had refused to back down, Rainbow Dash stomped her hoof before Ember could get any closer, producing a flash and a crack of thunder between the two, forcing Ember to back off. "Hey, hey," she said, "Back off, yeah? Look, forget the ring for now—that came later. What made you so sure before then that it was one of them that took it?"

"There is no one else!" Ember shouted, snarling in Rainbow Dash's face.

Rainbow Dash waited for the rest of the sentence that would explain that statement, but Ember seemed to think that she had made her entire point. "Um? You wanna use a few more words there, maybe throw in a concept or two? Because believe me—there are more people out there. It's getting to be kind of a problem, even if it's gotten a bit less crowded with the dragons since you did the thing."

Ember threw her hands up in the air in frustration. "No one else knew about it!" she insisted.

Rainbow Dash had to stop and think of a way to respond to that that wasn't pointing out all the demigoddesses and princesses that had been told about the book. "...Yeah, sure, but maybe they weren't after it specifically? Could be someone was poking around because this place looks half-abandoned already, and they just happened to see it."

"It's a book," Ember said, implying by her tone that she didn't think that anyone would steal a book. You'd better believe that Rainbow Dash had something to say about that, but before she could open her mouth, Ember specified that it was, "A history book."

"...I mean, okay, point, kinda," Rainbow Dash reluctantly admitted. "But I bet it was one of those big leather-covered ones with brass corners and something embossed on the front or the spine, right? Maybe there was even gilding on the cover or the pages?"

That drew Ember up short, as she clearly did not want to admit that any of that was true. "Nothing else was stolen!" she insisted instead.

Rainbow Dash walked over to one of the boxes with all of Spike's pots and pans and pulled out one with a mottled appearance that still had a thin layer of rainbow-colored bismuth crystals in spots on the bottom where they hadn't been broken free. "Yeeeah," she said, drawing out the word. "That doesn't surprise me. I mean, I get it; it's the kid's first bachelor pad," she said, then reconsidered since, you know, he'd been sharing it with six girls. "...Or, you know, close enough, anyway. Point is, there's not much here worth stealing."

Ember let out a groan of frustration. "Augh! Now you're just saying whatever makes it sound bad!"

"It does sound bad!" Rainbow Dash said, losing her patience out of exasperation. "Even if it did look like one of them had done it, they're your friends, aren't they? They should be the last people you accuse of something like this right off the bat! Don't they deserve the benefit of the doubt? Don't you trust them at all?"

Ember grit her teeth and looked away, silently avoiding meeting anyone's eyes.

The lack of an enthusiastic defensive response said all it needed to, which floored Rainbow Dash. "I guess not," she surmised, completely baffled.

The awkward silence was broken by a soft, deep, "Oh my," that still managed to sound delicate and feminine coming from the large draconic head that was poking through the door of the old library once again.

Fluttershy looked from Ember to Carnelia and back again, which was very noticeable when the head doing the looking was the size of an entire pony. Eventually, she seemed to decide that there wasn't any violence imminent, and quietly closed the door.

Moments later, there was a cacophony of wing flaps, scuttering, skittering and even a bark or two before the door reopened and plain, ordinary Fluttershy stepped into the old library, quietly closing the door behind her.

— Carnelia —

"In her defense, it has scarcely been a week," Carnelia allowed with uncertain grace. "Though I had assumed that a certain solidarity had started to spring—a supposition that I expect the others would substantiate—it seems we were mistaken."

Rainbow Dash looked like she wanted to say something about how 'mistaken' five out of six of them could be on the subject, but she visibly held back and gave a still rather doubtful, "Yeah, sure."

Fluttershy, meanwhile, had circled around the group in order to get a look at Carnelia's malformed arm and the ring that was trapped between the plates, and was nearly nose-to-knuckle with Carnelia. It took a moment for her to realize that the attention of the room had shifted to her.

"Oh... sorry," she said, taking a step back, though still glancing at the appendage in question.

"Apologies are unnecessary," Carnelia informed her, lifting her arm to look at it herself. "It seems passingly stable, though it is... decidedly stiff and strained—not sore, but there is a cyclical pulsing in step with the circulatory system."

Fluttershy gave Ember a brief, wary glance, then got closer again and laid a hoof on Carnelia's wrist, shaking her head moments later. "We should get you to the hospital, too," she said, nudging Carnelia towards the door and leading her out. "They'll be able to tell if this is putting too much stress on your heart or not."

That... was not something that Carnelia had thought of, and she suddenly felt that a visit to the hospital was indeed a very good idea. "...Do you foresee any way to separate me from this troublesome treasure?"

Fluttershy stopped and looked back down at the ring, biting her lip with concern. "There should be something, I think... It might be no worse than getting a hooficure, or it might need surgery; the doctor will know more... and if all else fails—um—there might be something I can do."

Well... if that didn't sound ominous. Carnelia wasn't sure she wanted to know the exact details of how the rather unsettling demigoddess would help her, especially if she was uneasy about it herself.

There was a commotion behind them, as Ember moved to follow and Rainbow Dash flapped over to stand in the way. "Hey, cool it," she said, pushing Ember back with her hoof. "Why don't you let them go deal with that and we can all calm down, yeah?"

"I am not letting that ring out of my sight," Ember insisted, trying to push past Rainbow Dash, which wasn't the wisest thing she could have done.

Fortunately, it took more than a simple push to break whatever force kept Rainbow Dash's body acting like flesh instead of lightning and she was careful enough to move with the motion, flapping back and putting some distance between them before landing with an intentional blast of light and sound leaving another black scorch mark on the floor of the old library.

"Yes, you are," Rainbow Dash insisted. "They're going to a hospital, not jumping the border."

Ember grit her teeth and looked like she was about to jump Rainbow Dash, but a glance down at the mark on the floor under her made her reconsider and all at once the fight simply left her and she fell to her knees.

Once it was clear that Ember had given up, Fluttershy and Carnelia moved to leave, and after a moment, so did Rainbow Dash, who apparently felt it necessary to make one last comment.

"I'd say you could come and visit her later on at the hospital, but if I remember right, that's reserved for friends and family."

— Twilight —

"You're sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" Corona asked Kindle, who was easing her way into one of the booths at the Hay Burger, one of Ponyville's few remaining fast food restaurants from before ponies and now dragons had begun flooding into the city, for all the distinction was actually worth.

The Celestias, of course, took significant pleasure in visiting these sorts of places, but what was surprising was that they looked openly eager to get their hooves on some hay fries, as well as being appreciative of the fact that the teenager at the counter was a dragon. Twilight, too, thought that it was a good sign, but the fact that the Celestias didn't seem to find it necessary to act the prim and proper princesses to the same extent really drove home how they—and Equestria—were different than their previous incarnation.

It helped, of course, that they were able to sit in a booth along with everyone else. Yes, they were still taller than even Luna, but not by much, and less so than most of the dragons when they were standing upright. Simply being able to be treated like any other pony in that regard was no doubt an incredible relief after so many years of needing special accommodations for the simplest of things. Twilight had never experienced that sort of thing herself, technically, but she had seen the extent to which it could twist a society in Somni and Fati's memories of Utopia.

"I'll be fine, really," Kindle insisted, easily sliding into the booth at her new smaller size. "I'm just bruised, honest—not that that makes it okay."

"Of course not," Luna agreed, sliding into the large, horseshoe-shaped booth on the other side. "I may have thrown Twilight off a building and a cloud or two, but it was all in good fun at the time. This is something quite different."

"What did happen?" Twilight asked, sitting next to Luna.

Kindle glanced at the front of the restaurant, where Spike, Drift and the Celestias were ordering for them. Fluttershy had disappeared almost immediately and Rainbow Dash had followed her just about as soon as anypony had realized that she was gone. Rarity had stuck around to make sure that Spike was doing alright, but had begged off lunch at the Hay Burger, leaving just the four princesses and three dragons, which was still a sizable group. "We should probably wait to really get into it, but the short of it is: Ember's book on the dragon empires was stolen and she freaked out. Like, major paranoid you're-all-out-to-get me vibes. It was weird."

"That is indeed troubling," Luna mused. "I didn't get the impression before that she was unstable, just driven. Is it possible that there is an external cause?"

"You mean like her father using the Bloodstone Scepter on her in secret?" Kindle asked, seeing what she was implying. "I dunno. I never got the impression that Dragon Lord Torch could even pronounce the word 'subtle,' but you'd have to ask Ember, Carnelia and Slag about that since they're the ones that actually grew up in the dragon lands. If it's anything like the ring, though... I haven't gotten the impression that affecting a single dragon is something it can do unless they can see the dragon in question, but I'm just guessing there."

They were interrupted, then, by Spike, Drift and the Celestias filing into the booth, and spent a moment explaining to them what they'd already gone over.

"Is it possible that it is the ring instead that has had an effect on her?" Candesca asked, though Twilight got the impression that it was just to cover all of their bases rather than any great suspicion.

"It seems a bit sudden for that," Drift observed. "And from what she told us, the ring is supposed to be how order was maintained in the dragon empires, so it would be odd if it had a destabilizing effect on the wearer." Twilight thought that it might be the most that she'd ever heard the most laid-back of the dragons say.

"Would it, though?" Kindle asked. "A little paranoia is probably appropriate when you're trying to keep multiple empires of dragons in line.

The simple nods that that statement garnered from the Celestias were telling.

"Or," Twilight said. "There's no external force making her crazy and she's just the kind of person who's perfectly fine until she isn't. The kind of person who, when things are going her way, or she's faced with something she knows how to handle, she doesn't hesitate, but doesn't know how to handle it when she runs out of options."

The table was silent for a moment as a mint-colored dragon in an apron brought them several trays of food.

"Not that I know anyone like that," Twilight added, slightly flushed.

"She has options, though?" Kindle countered, sounding rather doubtful. "I mean, we were all right there and she didn't even ask—just went straight to blaming everyone the moment she set eyes on us."

Spike, meanwhile, was availing himself of his non-hay-based nuggets, drumming his claws on the table and thinking. "You know—forgetting about Ember for a second—is it weird that Torch isn't overtly using the scepter? I kind of doubt that he's going to just disappear, but it's been a few days now and there's been no sign of him."

Candesca shook her head. "I think, no matter how much one is used to relying on brute force, that being shrunk to such an extent must engender in him a sense of vulnerability. We—" she gestured at Corona and herself. "—Are still coming to terms with aspects of our own transformation, and it is not so great a change, nor are we truly any weaker in most practical matters. Torch may not even remember a time when he couldn't fly, and he must know that if there is any sign of him, he will not escape from those of us who are not affected by the scepter."

"Of course, that is all the more reason to expect something of him eventually," Corona added. "Assuming this latest theft isn't him to begin with."

"Would it be so bad if it was?" Drift asked. "Reading it seems to have done Ember some good, from the sound of it."

"Well, we know it has information on the Ring of Ashmund," Kindle pointed out. "What if it has more information on the Bloodstone Scepter that tells more ways to use it?"

Twilight didn't much like that thought, and none of the rest of the table seemed all that enthused about it either. Imagining Spike being controlled like that sent a shiver of personal fear down her back like she hadn't felt since becoming an immortal alicorn.

Admittedly, that time when she'd thought that Equestria was out to eat her was a close second, but being afraid for yourself just wasn't the same as being afraid for someone you were close to.

"Right, well, that thought certainly makes this an urgent issue if it wasn't already," Twilight declared. "Luna and I will start with a visit to the guard station so she can get them on it and so I can move the portal to his lair into a cell there, which will free up the ones on this side to help out with the search. Spike?"

Spike scratched at his rounded jawline. "The girls and I could talk to people, I guess, but with kindle and I this size, I dunno how many people are going to listen to us."

"Do you think that Ember could be convinced to restore you?" Candesca asked. "I'm sure she wants this book found more than anyone."

Spike shared an uneasy look with Kindle and Drift. "I... really don't know about that."

"I think," Drift said. "That going back immediately will only cause problems."

Kindle agreed. "Yeah—I mean, there was a reason we walked out, and it wasn't because she was being reasonable. Maybe Spike or I can check in on her later, but for now I think she needs some time to think. Carnelia is the most eloquent one we have; maybe she'll be able to get Ember to see reason."

— Ember —

Ember sat alone in the old library, mostly because... well, what else was she supposed to do? Without the ring—without the book—what good was she? If she got into a fight, which she had to admit was fairly likely right now given her mood, nobody would even believe that she was this so-called empress that none of them had ever seen.

It was pathetic. really, and that patheticness was depressing. Even at his most oppressive, her father had never made her feel this... useless. This... small.

Tartarus—she even felt small, which was ridiculous. Carnelia wasn't even able to use the ring on herself, whatever that was about. It wasn't as if anybody had actually explained what had happened while she was unconscious.

Why would they? She wasn't their friend, she was their empress, which apparently didn't mean very much right now.

Ember blinked, looking at her claws. Was it just her, or did they look a bit smaller? Not as if she'd been reverted completely, but she would swear that they looked just a bit less fearsome than they were supposed to.

Slightly trepidatious, Ember got to her feet and made her way to the back of the library where the bathroom was. The bathroom mirror wasn't all that helpful, but she did look... not quite right, like she'd lost a few years and a few inches.

Carnelia. It must have been. She may not have been able to control the Ring of Ashmund, but it must have done this to her anyway.

Great. Just what she needed; to get some of her lanky gawkiness back. Now they definitely wouldn't believe she was the empress.

No. No. It was fine, she told herself. She was overreacting. This was only temporary. The terrifying yellow demigoddess had said there were several things they could do to get the ring back from Carnelia. Then, they'd give it back to her and she would go out and find the book.

If they gave it back to her, and if she was able to find it.

A single book in an entire city.

No—it had to be one of them. It just had to be.

She didn't even want to consider what it would mean if it wasn't. Not only would getting it back be all but impossible, but it would mean that she... that Spike and the rest...

No. It was one of them, and she'd prove it. The book obviously wasn't here—though she'd check all the boxes to be sure—so where else did that leave?

Ten minutes later, the old library was even more of a mess than before, and Ember was winging her way out of the city.

Author's Note

Thanks go out to those supporting me on Patreon and ko-fi, pomegranate horsie, Sunny, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, LD, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, J T, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, fused and CvBrony

Come back tomorrow for the next chapter!

Chapter 31

— Carnelia —

For all that Carnelia was the least rough-and-tumble of the dragons in their group and probably the most even-tempered of them aside from, perhaps, Drift, she didn't find sitting and meditating to come particularly naturally to her.

This was, no doubt, at least partly due to having only had the slightest hint of an idea what sitting and meditating actually involved, aside from the sitting part. That she presumed that she had sufficient experience with, though even in that she couldn't be certain.

Questionable progress aside, though, it was still a relief just to have a moment alone to put some distance between herself and the absolute mess that the day had become and what it meant for her going forward. She had not expected, at the beginning of the day, for Ember to turn on them all.

Perhaps she should not have slapped Ember. In hindsight, that was when things had gone from bad to unrecoverable, but hindsight never solved anything. Ember had already been lashing out at that point, but only at Spike, Kindle and Drift who were slightly lesser in Ember's eyes, having grown up around ponies rather than their own kind. It didn't make Ember's reaction okay, but Carnelia had expected her shared background with Ember to give her at least a little leeway with her estranged empress and shock her into realizing exactly what she was doing and saying.

Instead, Carnelia had only managed to paint a target on herself and ensured that there was no one left that might have been able to reign Ember in once she had calmed down...

If she calmed down.

It was entirely possible—likely, even—that if she had not acted and Slag had not knocked Ember out, they would all be wishing now that they had taken the Ring of Ashmund from her when they'd had the chance.

They did not need their so-called empress growing large enough to pick the roofs off all the buildings in Ponyville in search of her book, let alone whatever the pony princesses and their demigoddesses would do in retaliation to stop her.

Having to be the one to deal with the ornery ornament was a small price to pay, really—though it did leave Carnelia with the question of what she would do with the thing if she did manage to remove it.

It was probably wishful thinking to assume that returning it would calm Ember down.

Did they dare risk getting someone else to put it on, though? They knew that the ring had accepted Ember; they did not know if it would accept Slag, Kindle, Drift or Spike.

Carnelia was just thinking that her right arm might be feeling a small bit lighter when she was startled by a heavily-accented shout.

"Ah hah!" some pony or other yelled from behind her. "Ah knew it! Ah knew there were dragons stealin' mah apples!"

Carnelia twisted herself around to see who was bothering her, tempted to show her displeasure in the same way that she'd gotten the message across to the blue pegasus, but the realization of who exactly it was that was shouting and what it was that she'd said stopped her cold.

It was another one of the demigoddesses. One that she didn't know much about, except that her name was Applejack and the mountain that they were both on hadn't been there until she'd created it.

Normally, she probably wouldn't have thought much of it since the demigoddess had come off as mostly reasonable when they'd met on the train to Canterlot for the Celestias' coronation, but after learning what the shiest of them was capable of, being a down-to-earth country mare suddenly didn't seem nearly as reassuring as it had been before.

And Carnelia had already managed to anger her, just by being here.

She hadn't even eaten any apples.

"I—that is—" she stammered, starting to defend herself, when all the fight and aggressiveness seemed to drain out of the mare.

"Aw, shucks, you're just a little one, aren't you?" she said, relaxing. Walking closer, she grew concerned. "Shoot, you don't so much as got any wings. How'd ya even get up here, kid?"

Carnelia blinked, realizing that Applejack hadn't even recognized her, instead assuming her to be an actual baby dragon with a—well, her monstrous arm was slightly less monstrous, so maybe she hadn't noticed it from behind.

"Ah, well, recent events necessitated that I seek out serene surroundings to sooth myself and ease this troublesome transformation," Carnelia said, raising her comically large and malformed arm where the demigoddess could see it. "Rainbow Dash suggested this setting, and the sole apple I have touched was soft and used to express my displeasure at her incessant discourse, wherein she insisted on unnecessarily seeking to sell me on the virtues of this specific site."

It was Applejack's turn, then, to stand there and blink as she came to terms with the new influx of information, not the least of which was, apparently, Carnelia's identity.

"Hol' up there a second," Applejack said, holding up one hoof and getting a closer look at Carnelia. "The way you talk, with all of them hissed s's... yer not... one of Spike's friends—Carnelia?"

"Yes," Carnelia confirmed. "I am she."

Applejack sat down right where she stood, stumped. "Ain't you supposed t'be... you know... taller?"

Carnelia sighed with resignation. Getting up, she walked closer and plopped herself down right in front of Applejack with uncharacteristic gracelessness and began to explain.

"The situation... such as it is, is rather serious..."

— Spike —

To Spike's surprise, rather than disappear back to their duties in Canterlot, the Celestias had stuck around after lunch, seizing the opportunity to get some time on the ground in Ponyville and see how the city was integrating the recently-downsized dragons, though exactly how representative it was with both dragons and ponies stopping on the street to get a look at them was debatable.

With all the hullabaloo around Ember declaring herself empress, Spike had mostly forgotten the practical side of the fact that all the dragons had come to Equestria because of the Celestias, but by the way the dragons stopped and stared right alongside their pony counterparts, they had not forgotten—or if they had, they were now being reminded of the fact quite strongly.

Spike, for his part, didn't quite get it. He supposed that he had to admit that the Celestias' long, whiplike white-scaled tails were rather eye-catching in how they swayed back and forth, trailing fire and rainbows as they walked, but that was it.
He still didn't feel whatever ineffable draw it was that had brought all the dragons to Equestria, and he wasn't sure why.

The ponies, of course, didn't need any mystical force to get their attention, being, as they were, taught from a young age what that ethereal rainbow mane meant, even if it was brighter, sharper and richer on Celestia Corona.

Celestia Candesca, on the other claw, gave the impression that she was on fire, so it went without saying that she attracted almost the same amount of attention, even if it was of a slightly different type.

Eventually, their path took them to a park located just outside of the old city limits which had once been a potato farm and now sat as a barrier between the city center and the burgeoning industrial sector. Spike wouldn't think that a plot of land could be turned into a proper-looking park so quickly, but he guessed that with enough earth ponies, anything was possible—especially if it didn't involve crystal shipped in from the northern mountains.

"I shall not be so crass as to ask if something is bothering you," Celestia Corona said as they stopped to watch a group of foals playing alongside a dragon their age. "But I will ask if there is any way we can make this easier on you."

"Ah, well..." Spike scratched nervously at the scales along his once again chubby jawline. He briefly looked to Kindle and Drift to see if they had any input, but they seemed to be letting him take the lead. "I guess the immediate thing is that I'm not really sure where we should... go?

"I mean, we kinda decided to let Ember cool down, and hopefully Carnelia and Slag can talk some sense into her, but we left them at the old library, which is where we were living before, and I guarantee you that Ember thinks of the new place as 'hers,' so if we don't want to run into her, well..." he gave a shrug, suggesting that that didn't really leave them a whole lot of options.

Celestia Candesca let out a displeased huff that the original Celestia never would have allowed herself. "The entire point of that display was for all of you to set an example for the rest of the dragons, so I'd say that you have more right to it than she does, but I do get your point. Don't worry, Spike; we will hardly let you sleep on the street." She shifted her eyes to include Kindle and Drift as well. "Any of you."

Celestia Corona nodded along with her sister's statement. "Of course, there is one simple place to start, which is to check on them," she said, developing a faraway look in her eyes as she proceeded to do just that. "I doubt that once she leaves the library—which does seem to already be the case—that she will desire much to return." She paused then, reconsidering her words and growing slightly confused. "...Though you may not wish to either, as it really is quite the mess. When did lightning strike inside the library? Twice?"

"Err..." Spike thought back to the library as it had been when they had moved out, but nothing came to mind. "I mean, we were trying to do magic—dragon magic—so there might have been a few burns here and there, but..."

Celestia Corona shook her head. "No, no, they're definitely lightning burns," she said, frowning. "Right in the front room—and it appears as if ponies may have been struck, as there are hoofprints right in the center of each of them."

Spike took a moment longer to think about that, when he suddenly got it. "Oh," he said, openly relieved. "I should have thought of that. It was probably just Rainbow Dash; she's made of lightning, remember?"

"I've gotta say, though," Kindle interrupted, keeping a self-conscious eye on the Celestias. "I'm not that convinced that Ember won't go back there. She's kinda the type that I'd expect to go back and look again and again, just in case she missed something or it spontaneously returned."

"...Yeah, you have a point," Spike admitted unhappily. "Jeeze," he said, sighing as he looked at his small baby hands. "As if going back to this size wasn't bad enough, I feel like a coward running and hiding from her like this."

Kindle couldn't help but mimic Spike, stretching out her legs and wiggling the claws on her foot. "Yeah, but she has the ring and I really do not want to get into that fight."

Celestia Corona, who had been silent for a while, interjected at that point. "She doesn't, actually."

Suddenly, the rainbow-maned alicorn had the attention of all three dragons and her sister as well.

"She doesn't... what?" Spike warily asked, not sure if he wanted the answer.

"Ember does not have the Ring of Ashmund," Celestia Corona stated as plainly as possible, sending a thrill of something down Spike's spine. Whether it was relief or dread, he wasn't sure.

Celestia Corona's voice was softer when she continued, "She is curled up in the farthest room, alone, and seems to have made a worse mess of the manor than the library."

"Wait—she's alone? What about Carnelia and Slag?" Kindle asked, which, yeah, was kind of concerning, but not nearly as much as the idea of Ember breaking down after losing the ring, Spike thought.

Especially it was because her father had found her when she was alone.

"Slag appears to be in Ponyville General Hospital with another injury to her tail," Celestia Corona reported with a great deal of concern. "But Carnelia is nowhere I've looked."

Okay, that was worrying. "It sounds like ex-dragon-lord Torch has struck again," Drift said, coming to the same conclusion as Spike.

"I dunno," Kindle said, definitely concerned, but still doubtful. "If it was actually him, I don't think he'd waste any time returning himself to his usual size and announcing himself."

"I think," Celestia Candesca suggested, "that it will do no good guessing. Whatever has happened, the time for leaving her be has passed."

Celestia Corona, once again in the here-and-now, looked over the dragons present and decided, "Candesca and I will see to her immediately; it might be best if the rest of you head over to the hospital and see what Slag has to say about whatever happened. With her being here in the city and Ember out at the manor, it's quite possible they will have separate stories to tell."

That... seemed like a good idea. "Yeah," Spike agreed, understanding that Ember probably wouldn't appreciate their presence right now. "Yeah, we can do that—and we'll see if we can't find Carnelia, too."

The Celestia's silently nodded in acknowledgement, and abruptly demanifested, quickly fading away like a mirage.

Spike stood there for a moment, thinking.

Then another moment.

And another.

"You don't know how to get to the hospital from here, do you?" Kindle guessed.

"Look—I had wings this morning, okay?" Spike insisted.

"Yeah, that's fair," Kindle commiserated, glancing back at her own missing wings, which she'd had for significantly longer than Spike.

Slowly, the two of them turned to Drift, who was the only one of them who had retained her transformed size.

Drift rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as she lifted the two baby dragons onto her back.

— Carnelia —

"Well, if that ain't a right mess," Applejack said, shaking her head. "Ah can't say if I'da done the same thing, taking the ring, but Ah can't say you were wrong to, either."

"I suppose there is that, at least," Carnelia said, somewhat mollified to know that the pony demigoddess agreed. "I don't suppose you can suggest any procedure to extricate it from my person, though?"

Applejack crossed her forelegs and rubbed her chin with one hoof. At length, she shook her head. "Ah can't say that Ah do. Ah doubt that a jar of petroleum jelly is gonna help any, and that's about all I can offer you."

Carnelia cocked her head at the demigoddess. "I was speculating something more similar to a skill or a spell."

Applejack balked at that, flummoxed at the very insinuation. "Wha—? Why on mah freshly-tilled earth would you think that Ah have anything like that?"

Carnelia stared and blinked. Had she misremembered. "You are one of the princess's demigoddesses, aren't you? I was so certain, especially since you seemed to recognize me through Spike."

Applejack got a sour look on her face, as if she'd just bitten into a rotten apple. "Well, Ah guess that's what you'd call it," she begrudgingly admitted.

Well, now Carnelia was just confused. "...And your sphere, such as it is, is the earth, yes? Something that would seem to have a serendipitous intersection with the essence of dragons." Carnelia still didn't like the idea of a demigoddess getting anywhere near her essence, but she was at least willing to entertain the idea.

Something that the demigoddess herself was apparently struggling with.

"Look," Applejack said, disgruntled and uncomfortable. "Just 'cause Ah've forgiven Twilight for what she did doesn't mean that Ah want anything to do with it."

That... didn't make any sense, did it? At least, not the way that Carnelia understood things. "My apologies," she hissed. "I suppose I must have misunderstood the situation."

Applejack nodded, fiercely insistent. "Ahm am what Ah am, and Ah'm no more like to up and start casting spells than you are."

Carnelia lifted one claw and opened her mouth to point out the issue with that statement, then decided that actions spoke louder than words. Lowering her claw, she instead blew a lick of flame over it, producing a finely detailed golden apple over the course of several seconds.

Applejack jumped to her hooves out of surprise of the sudden flame, but then her eyes went wide when she saw what Carnelia had done and she stumbled back and fell onto her rump. "What in tarnation?"

"I am uncertain if you would call it a spell, but it is dragon magic," Carnelia said, though, on second thought, the essence of the method had come from Twilight, so maybe that wasn't quite right. "...or perhaps it is just magic, in the raw and primal way."

Applejack, however, didn't seem to like that explanation, if she even heard it, because she seemed decidedly spooked. "Ah felt that," she said, quieter than Carnelia had ever heard her, as if she thought that if no one heard her say it, it wouldn't be true. "Ah felt that in mah bones."

A stray thought made Carnelia wonder if Applejack still had bones and if it would make her the only one of the demigoddesses that did, but there were more important things going on at the moment.

Besides, Fluttershy still had bones; they were just optional or something.

The image of Fluttershy's hoof falling off and turning into a pastel yellow squirrel was one that Carnelia was not going to forget for a very long time.

Carnelia's brief distraction gave Applejack time to... not come to terms with the revelation at all, apparently, because she was just sitting there staring at the golden apple in Carnelia's claw.

Maybe it was suddenly becoming aware of a whole new part of herself, or maybe it was the earlier suggestion that she was no more likely to do magic than Carnelia, but when Applejack lifted her forehooves off the ground to stare at them like they'd betrayed her, two tiny saplings sprung up from the ground in their place, each of them weighed down by a single golden apple.

Neat.

Applejack didn't seem to think so, as she scrambled back away from the two saplings as if they were serpents. Then, all at once, her apprehension turned to anger. Fortunately, it was directed at someone who was not present. "Damn it, Twi!" Applejack shouted, slamming her hooves into the soil, which, of course, produced another two saplings.

"I am confused," Carnelia plainly stated. Confused was, perhaps, an understatement.

"What's there to be confused about?" Applejack angrily snapped, gesturing at the golden apples as if to say, 'this, right here.'

The gesture produced another several saplings around the first.

"Spike spoke about pony magic," Carnelia informed the unsettled demigoddess in front of her, thinking that if she explained what she knew, that Applejack would be able to tell her where her understanding had failed her. "He said that ponies all have stars inside of them, which gives them magic, and in order to use that magic, they developed those... 'cutie marks,' which are supposed to symbolize your 'special talent'—something singularly special which makes you you."

"That sounds about right," Applejack distractedly said, eyeing a sapling that was growing taller over her shoulder, as if she afraid it was going to pounce on her and she was going to need to defend herself from it.

Carnelia furrowed her scaly red brow in all her baby-dragon adorableness. "Then what is the concern with possessing more magic if all it does is make you more you?" she tilted and craned her neck to get a better look at Applejack's flank. "Why do the golden apples disturb you when apples are your thing?"

"It ain't me!" Applejack insisted and stomped her hooves on the ground one last time in anger.

This time, she was not comically beset with additional saplings bearing golden apples.

This time, starting out from her hooves, the entire area turned brown and gray, every sapling and tree withering and rotting until there was nothing left. Even the golden apples turned to a reddish-brown dust and crumbled into the ground, except for the one in Carnelia's claw.

Applejack was breathing hard, her barrel heaving as she looked around, stricken at what she'd done. Closing her eyes, she told Carnelia. "Ah'm an Apple. Ah'm a simple, hard-working mare with a family that pulls together when times are hard and gets together with all mah kin when they ain't. That's who Ah am. You can't just make that more.

"And now Ah can make golden apples!" Applejack yelled, throwing her hooves up into the air. "More bits than Ah could ever need! No need to work another day in mah life! Never buck another tree! That ain't me! What's the point'a an apple you can't even eat?!"

That was... a lot, but, "You're missing one thing," Carnelia told Applejack.

"And what's that?" Applejack asked dispiritedly, coming down from her rant.

Carnelia took a bite out of her golden apple, which was nice and chewy.

"They taste pretty great, actually."

— Candesca —

Corona and Candesca manifested on the front lawn of the manor that Twilight had magicked up from nothing for Spike and his not-actually-a-harem.

Come to think of it, it was a good thing that they weren't actually a harem, considering all the power dynamics and domestic violence going on.

Being magical twins who had been the same person up until a short while ago, the two of them stepped forward both in sync, only to be confused by the crunch of something gravelly underhoof, which got both of their attentions. The emerald grass was slightly stiff, but not enough to crunch under the shoes of their regalia.

On closer inspection, the lawn seemed to be dotted with hundreds of grape-sized emeralds and rubies.

Corona and Candesca shared a look, but they were clearly both equally puzzled.

Weird, but not really the matter at hoof right now, aside from the literal sense. In the literal sense, however, they both found it remarkably annoying walking over a lawn sprinkled in grape-sized gemstones.

It would have been undignified to fly the short distance to the front door of the manor, though, so they walked and bore with it.

On reaching the front door of the manor, Corona paused and looked at her sister. "Would it be too indelicate for me to say, 'I told you so?'"

For once, Candesca wasn't quite sure what her sister was talking about. Looking in the direction which Corona had described the young empress curled up and possibly crying, she raised an eyebrow. "I think, whatever you have to say to her in that respect, that it can wait until the immediate situation has been handled. In fact, that seems unnecessarily callous."

Corona rolled her eyes. "I don't mean her," she clarified. "I mean you—I told you that letting her keep the ring was a mistake."

Candesca rolled her eyes back at her sister. "This is hardly what you were worried about. Besides; if the ring has been stolen, then I dare say Ember would have put up more of a fight than the crate it was stored in."

"The crate which it was stolen from," Corona reminded her.

Candesca nodded, as her sister had just proven the point. "Exactly. Now, we really should focus on the present," she said, and proceeded to knock on the manor door.

Not unexpectedly, there was no answer, and Corona closed her eyes to check if there was any response that was at all encouraging from the dragoness inside. Evidently, there was none, as Corona proceeded to open the door and step into the foyer of the manor.

Candesca followed her.

It was Candesca's first time seeing the inside the Manor. Corona had, of course, taken a look at it through her daylight even before the immediate situation had come up, but for Candesca to see it, she would have had to make the trip, which, while not a time issue, would have been rather lacking in subtlety while the dragons were all settling in.

All in all, Candesca thought that the combination of Twilight and Ember had decent enough taste, though the lava fountain was a bit much and the fact that the whole place had been ransacked by one of the occupants rather brought the whole thing down.

Silently, Corona led them to where Ember could be found.

— Ember —

The hooves in metal shoes clopping down the hall was the first sign that Ember was no longer alone in the manor. That narrowed down who it could be since it ruled out any dragons, and probably all the demigoddesses, too, which was good, since she wasn't in the mood to talk to any of them right now.

Not that she was in the mood to talk to anyone at the moment.

It looked like she wasn't going to get that choice, though, since she sure as tartarus wasn't going to run away. She wasn't going to meet them curled up on the ground, either—or standing up like she was welcoming them—so she split the difference and got up just enough to sit with her back to the wall, facing the door.

Having ruled dragons and demigoddesses out, that pretty much just left the princesses or their guards that could be approaching from down the hall. It would be ironic if it was just a bunch of nobodies bringing Spike's things to the manor, but she kind of doubted it, so it had to be the princesses, then, and since the half-dragon ones lived up on the mountain, then it was the other two.

Great.

Ember didn't specifically dislike Twilight and Luna—they made slightly more sense to her than the Celestias, actually—but Twilight was practically Spike's sister.

And she'd definitely wanted a look at the book.

When the Celestias appeared in the open doorway to her ruined room, then, all she could do was blink and stare as suddenly all the reasons they might have problems with her ran through her head instead.

They hadn't wanted Ember to have the ring, had they?

They hadn't been happy about it, at least.

Now, though, they just stood there with the same unreadable look on both of their faces.

Were they waiting to see what she would do? Hmph. They may be half dragon, but they were underestimating the real thing if they thought she wouldn't sit here all day just to spite them.

"You're not hurt, at least," Candesca observed, sounding all soft and motherly.

Ember scoffed, while the other one eyed her more closely, paying special attention to her claws. It felt a bit vindicating until she realized that she was likely looking for the Ring of Ashmund, and the scowl returned to her face.

"And since you aren't hurt," Corona continued from her sister. "Nor are you snapping at the bit to do something about it, then... one of your friends took the ring?"

Ember was tempted to say something about not having any friends, but it would have sounded far too petulant, so she just glared as the two princesses slowly let themselves into the room, trying not to spook her.

"Slag doesn't have it either, so... Carnelia?" she concluded with some confusion. "Strange. I did not picture her as one who would start such a conflict."

"She didn't," Ember sourly admitted, only realizing after the fact that she'd said anything. "Slag got me from behind... but Carnelia sure wasn't shy about it afterwards. They were working together—all of them."

"I see..." Corona said completely neutrally, and the two of them stopped approaching before they got too close.

Candesca was more vocal. "Then, if I were to tell you that we just had lunch with Spike, Kindle and Drift, who were very much hoping that Slag and Carnelia would be able to reason with you, you would no doubt express a measure of disbelief, if not suspect me of outright fabrication?"

Somehow, Ember didn't have it in her to prove her right in just that moment. Maybe it was just that she was really at her wit's end and maybe it was that she was... slightly regretting the way that she had handled things, but the twin princesses also just had a presence about them—not the presence that had brought her and the rest of the dragons to Equestria, but a kind of knowing bearing that had a weight to it and made her feel small in an entirely different way to her father.

Ember hated feeling small, and she normally would have raged against anyone who made her feel that way, but it just seemed to go nowhere. It wouldn't make her feel any better about herself if she stood up and started proving that feeling right by screaming and yelling like a child.

Maybe it was because she knew, deep down, that they weren't really the ones making her feel small. Not really. It was something inside of her, and she just saw it reflected in their eyes.

"...Fine; maybe they independently betrayed me, then," Ember reluctantly allowed, still clinging to the idea that it was Spike and the others that had taken the book—the idea that it was someone she knew; someone she could find.

Corona sighed, and sat down in the middle of the room, followed shortly by her sister. "Do you know, for the longest time after sealing my sister into the moon for a thousand years, I blamed some external force for corrupting her?" she asked, and well, no, Ember hadn't known that because she hadn't known that she'd sealed her sister into the moon at all, let alone for a thousand years, and there seemed to be several things wrong with the concept.

Ember looked at Candesca, who was very much present. "...Weren't you split in two only recently?"

Corona blinked, then closed her eyes and chuckled with amusement. "Fair enough. I suppose it would be more correct to say that Celestia—the original Celestia—did so to her sister, who is Luna."

Oh. Right. Ember... probably knew that they'd been sisters. She guessed that Spike must have mentioned it.

"It was very different from your situation, of course," Corona acknowledged, which was certainly one way to put it. "You might say that it is essentially the opposite of it, in fact.... and yet, Celestia still felt that she did her sister a disservice, even though she thought better of Luna than she had actually deserved at the time. Do you know why?"

Ember really wasn't in the mood for thinking, so she shook her head, fully expecting the half-dragon princess to continue lecturing, only too happy to hear herself talk.

That isn't what happened.

"Really?" Corona asked, actually sounding curious. "Suppose you properly stole the Ring of Ashmund and managed to keep it a secret. Naturally, it means a lot to you, or you wouldn't have risked stealing it, correct?"

"...Sure," Ember said, easily able to picture the scenario and figuring the princess wouldn't get on with it unless she engaged with her a small amount.

Corona nodded as if Ember had given a long and considered answer. "Now, eventually someone is going to realize that the ring has gone missing and start pointing hooves. You're something of a public figure, and you've gone through a bit of a growth spurt recently, so a number of those hooves are pointed at you, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? You know for certain that there is no evidence linking you to the theft, and if feels good to get one over on them.

"Spike, though, is incensed at the insinuations, and defends you fervently. He insists that he knows you—you didn't do it—you wouldn't do it—you couldn't do it. He believes it completely."

"Bullshit!" Ember scoffed because, yes, it was bullshit. "Spike's a pushover, but he's not that blind."

"You'd think so," Corona said, nodding along. "But it's a good thing, isn't it? He's well-regarded in the city, so his entirely earnest defense can only help you."

"Please," Ember sarcastically remarked, rolling her eyes. "I never hid who I am from Spike—I practically rubbed his face in it and he was right there with me figuring out how to steal the ring. Spike knows me better than that."

Rather than being offended that Ember had rejected the narrative of her story, Corona looked pleasantly satisfied. "And that's why."

Ember thought back over what had been said over the last few minutes and followed the train of thought all the way back to Corona talking about Celestia thinking the best of her sister.

Because the immortal alicorn really should have known if her own sister would do something like that, right?

Just like Ember should really know if—no.

No. It wasn't the same. She hadn't even known Spike and the rest for that long. She still didn't know them that well yet.

But was that fair when she expected them to know her that well?

Enough that she'd object to it not being true in a stupid little story?

Author's Note

Ugh. I'm still not entirely happy with this, but it is what it is. The further I get into this story, the more I think I might have to go back and shift a few things around to make it flow better and fix a few things to make it more coherent. Serial fiction is hard, especially when you don't tend to plan things entirely out beforehand...

For anyone that saw the draft for this on Patreon three weeks ago, I've mostly just softened the last scene a bit, because it really was kind of overdone.

Thanks go out to those supporting me on Patreon and ko-fi, pomegranate horsie, Sunny, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, LD, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Денис, J T, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, fused and CvBrony

Chapter 32

— Twilight —

After reassigning all the guards that had been guarding Rainbow Dash's now portal-free tower, Twilight and Luna ended up back in the temporary throne room somewhat at loose ends. Luna, of course, always had things that she could be doing, and Twilight had Luna who she could be doing, but not when she felt that she should be doing something towards hunting down Ember's book instead.

Part of the problem was that she'd kind of lost Spike, the rest of the dragons and all of her friends. Spike, Kindle and Drift had gone off with the Celestias after lunch, Ember, Slag and Carnelia had disappeared from the old library at some point, and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had just kind of disappeared in all the kerfuffle.

Aside from flying up into the sky and scanning the city for anyone of note, she supposed that the best thing she could do just then was to stay with Luna where the two of them could be found if something came up. After spending the first half hour remodeling the throne room so that the throne was no longer sitting on top of several wooden crates with a rug draped over them, though, she was at a lack for something she could actually do.

"U—um—I'll... I'll come back... later," stammered a stallion, who had entered the room and made an immediate u-turn right back out.

Something that she could do other than terrify random petitioners by setting up a second throne next to Luna's and making it look like she was getting back into holding court, anyway.

Admittedly, she wasn't sure she could say what the actual difference between pretending and doing was, in this case, but she was sure there must be something.

Twilight tapped her hoof on the angular armrest of her jagged obsidian throne, considering her options.

Suddenly, she perked up. "What if I sent out a Libraropolan decree asking for another copy of the book?"

Luna looked up from the papers she was holding, raised an eyebrow at her and asked, "Is that likely?"

Twilight thought about it for a moment longer and concluded, "Considering I'm not aware of it even having a title, let alone an ESBN number... no, not very likely at all."

Luna frowned, momentarily lost in thought. "Is that for locating it in the card catalog?"

"...Close enough," Twilight allowed, entirely because Luna was her marefriend. "By which I mean no, not even slightly."

Luna hmmed. "You don't know any spells that could help you track it down?"

"If I had a ripped page, I could cast the Librarian's Vengeance, which would let me pinpoint it anywhere in Equestria—maybe—but all the ruined books in storage from when the palace collapsed would probably throw it off," Twilight speculated. "Mostly, scrying spells like that work the other way around; if I had the book, I might be able to find Ember with it."

"Unless the book is sapient?" Luna suggested.

Twilight blinked. "Why would the book be—I mean... maybe? Even if it was, I don't think a book would have treasured possessions, but it doesn't matter because the book is not sapient, or even sentient. Probably."

"Probably?" Luna asked.

"...Well, Spike did say that Ember changed, like, overnight when he first saw her with the book," Twilight admitted, thinking back and wondering if the book could be cursed, but curses weren't real. "The book is not sapient," she insisted.

"Probably," Luna amended.

"Probably," Twilight agreed, and they lapsed into silence.

After a while, Twilight threw her hooves up into the air and groaned. "Ugh! This is all such a mess! Why did it have to be stars? Why can't I have magic book powers? Just point my hoof and **bam**—a book on the dragon empires!" she shouted...

...and bam, a book on the dragon empires appeared in the air in front of her.

Twilight was too busy staring at the book to catch it before it fell and tumbled down the steps of the dais. The book sat there for quite a while, Twilight making no immediate move to go pick it up.

"Well, that is convenient," Luna blithely commented and proceeded to pick the book up in her levitation and casually flip through it. "It seems accurate," she commented.

Twilight continued gawking for another moment before she finally shook herself back to rationality. "No, that's not the point. I've accidentally made books with magic before, back when I was cleaning up Rainbow Dash's tower. They all looked right and you could even read them; they were grammatically correct and were structured as well as you'd expect any published book to be—but the information in them was all so much nonsense. It was like if you gave a filly a book and let them write whatever they wanted, so long as it looked good enough to pass at first glance."

Luna looked at the book that she was holding with disappointment. "Ah, well, I suppose it did seem a bit too good to be true."

Twilight shook her head. "No—no—because that..." she pointed at the object floating in front of Luna, "...is not a book."

Luna cocked her head to the side in confusion, then looked at the item again. "Is this about your objection to fiction again? Because I understand there is quite a lot of it that is entirely reasonable and not written by your mother about things that you haven't done."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "I don't have a thing against fiction—look, the point is, I'm not playing around. I felt it when I created it—that's a star."

Luna looked at the star rather doubtfully. She seemed to have several questions, but what she eventually asked was, "Is it sentient?"

"No—I—no, of course not," Twilight insisted. She did not want to get into the exact level of independence her stars might or might not have now that she was properly manifesting and not splitting herself off of them, and anything less than a starbeast was something she wasn't going to think about.

Luna flipped through the book again. "Are you sure?" she asked, honestly curious. "Because it appears to go to whatever subject I am thinking about when I turn the page."

— Carnelia —

Carnelia suspected that she might have broken the demigoddess of apples, because she was just sitting there staring at Carnelia's golden apple to the point that it was getting concerning.

Not sure if there was anything she could do about that, Carnelia took another bite of her golden apple, chewed and swallowed it with Applejack's eyes following every movement.

Shrugging, she breathed another golden apple into being and tossed it over to Applejack, who automatically caught it, successfully redirecting her attention to the golden fruit so that Carnelia could eat her own in peace.

Eventually, though, staring at the golden apple in her hooves ceased to be enough for Applejack, and she took a bite of it, which didn't exactly convince Carnelia that she hadn't broken the demigoddess. It worked, though, and the bite came off crisply between Applejack's teeth as if it was a real apple.

It still looked like it took an effort to chew, though.

"...Huh," Applejack said, surprised that that had worked, what with her not being a dragon and all. The fact that she was surprised at all made Carnelia wonder what had possessed her to try it in the first place, but maybe it was a sign that she was recovering from the shock.

The sudden return of greenery to the desolate clearing seemed to suggest that, at least.

"Ah wonder what a golden granny smith would taste like..." Applejack pondered.

Carnelia didn't know how they'd gone from fruit to relatives in one step, and frankly, she didn't want to. If Applejack wanted to make a golden statue of her grandmother and eat it, well... she wouldn't be the first one of them to eat a statue of someone they knew, so who was she to talk?

— Twilight —

"Do you think that this is the same as the book that Ember had?" Luna asked after the two of them had spent a while examining it and exactly what it was capable of. "Or rather, do you think that the book that Ember had was the same as this one?"

"...No?" Twilight said, not entirely sure what the logic there was. "Why would it be? Sure, they look identical—but I was picturing Ember's book when I made it."

"Well," Luna said, still fascinated with the book. "That is admittedly the primary reason I had wondered, but it would explain why it was so important to her."

"That seems like a stretch," Twilight told her, not really able to see it happening. "Where would it have come from in the first place?"

Luna raised an eyebrow at her. "You mean, aside from that time fairly recently atop the palace when you wished aloud that Discord had passed on what he knew—and I quote—'preferably in book form, with an index and an extensive appendix.'"

Twilight paused and looked down at the book that she'd just created, thinking. "...Well, now that you say that..." she mused, thinking aloud. "...And the dates... are close enough without asking Spike when Ember showed up with the book..." Eventually, she leaned back in her comically dark and edgy throne. "...Huh. A minute ago, I thought you were grasping at straws; now I'm not even sure that I can say beyond a reasonable doubt that they aren't the exact same book," she said.

Now it was Luna's turn to ask, "How so?"

"Well," Twilight said. "Because if I can summon the right star to me to make a book, who's to say I didn't grab the same star I did before—if that's a thing I did in the first place."

Luna thought about it and let out a huff of displeasure. "It will be very annoying continuing to search for something that may well have already been found, but we cannot guarantee that there isn't another copy, especially as that is what you set out to create—a copy."

"I think... the first thing we need to do is talk to Ember," she decided. "Because I now have several questions about that book."

— Spike —

It turned out to be more of a hassle getting in to see Slag at the hospital than Spike had expected. The mare at the front desk was just one of many ponies who were new to the city and had never heard of Spike, and when a demigoddess brings someone in bypassing all the usual procedures, they didn't tend to let just anyone in to see the patient.

Eventually, though, the commotion they were making at the front desk had managed to get the attention of Nurse Redheart, who was able to confirm that Spike was a dragon of status... or, at least, that he was Twilight's assistant. And Luna's assistant. Really, he'd spent enough time hanging around the interim throne room recently that he'd expect someone to have heard of him, but what did he really expect when he'd been demoted back to 'baby' dragon.

Then again, the dragons they'd run into that morning hadn't recognized Ember either, so maybe it wasn't just him.

"You know," Spike said as they were being led to Slag's room. "When things go back to normal, we've gotta get Ember to do some public announcements in person or something. I know Twilight would love it if she could make herself this anonymous, but it's embarrassing."

"You think things are going to go back to normal?" Kindle asked from the other side of Drift.

Spike scratched at his elbow while they walked. "I mean... I dunno. Twilight and her friends never fought that much, but when they did they always seemed to make up by the end of the day. I'm angry at Ember, but also kinda concerned? There's something really wrong there, and hopefully the Celestias will be able to talk some sense into her."

That was, ironically enough, the exact moment that they arrived at Slag's room and saw the state of their friend.

"Yeah, because that's worked so well so far," Kindle grumbled.

— Twilight —

Twilight wasn't sure whether she should be embarrassed about not realizing sooner that she could just flag down a passing sparrow in order to get Fluttershy's attention or about how unnecessary it turned out to be when the sparrow just led her to Spike and Ember's manor.

Both, probably, and guilty as well, as it reminded her that Fluttershy had just earlier brought up her desire to learn magic from her, which she'd forgotten to follow up on. Admittedly, Fluttershy mainly wanted to use it to create things, but Twilight was sure she could come up with something that would allow her to communicate better through her animals despite the demigoddess being self-conscious of her voice.

As they approached the manor by wing, carrying the newly manifested star-slash-book in a purpose-made saddlebag, the building looked fine from the outside, but as soon as Twilight had landed and walked through the door, that changed. She was stunned when she saw the absolute mess that had been made of the inside, and Luna had to squeeze beside her to get in through the door and see for herself what it looked like.

"...One would think that their hoarding tendencies would encourage dragons to take better care of their things," Luna remarked with joking sarcasm, but Twilight was not really in the mood for it.

"I'm... kind of surprised," Twilight said, stepping further into the room and looking around. "Not that this happened," she clarified, leaning into Luna. "But how much I'm actually kind of hurt. Not a lot, but I didn't expect it."

Luna leaned back, just being there for Twilight. "It's a thing you made for them," she stated. "It's not surprising at all."

Twilight slowly realized something, then looked over at Luna. "So, when I destroyed the palace...?" she suggested, not having really thought about how Luna would have felt about that, specifically.

"I'd hardly blame what Astri did on you," Luna said, and before Twilight could get too caught up in the level of culpability she had for it, added, "I won't say it wasn't a bit vexing, but I wasn't insulted in the way I expect you are, both because I only truly did a portion of the work, so it was less personal, and because the damage was not intentional or from carelessness, so it was, again, less personal."

"You don't consider the collateral damage caused by part of me trying to kill the other part to be careless?" Twilight wondered.

"Of course not," Luna declared with utter confidence. "A fight to the death is certainly more important than a building," she assured Twilight. "Even if only one pony was technically involved."

Twilight only had to think about it for a moment to decide, "...Yeah, that's fair."

— Twilight —

The manor was large, but not that large so Ember was not hard to find. All of the doors had been reduced to kindling, for one thing, and they could hear her talking which gave the two of them at least a little warning that Ember was not alone.

That wasn't unexpected.

What was unexpected was who Ember was not alone with.

Four princesses in the room all standing around the young dragoness felt like a bit much. "...Huh. If we'd known you two were here, we might have waited our turn," Twilight said, feeling a bit awkward.

Ember, though, didn't seem bothered—possibly because she only had eyes for the book that was a star, which was hanging at Twilight's flank until it wasn't.

"...Well, she sure can be fast when she wants to be, can't she?" Twilight commented with mild interest as Ember retreated back to the other side of the room after snatching the book right out of its saddlebag.

The Celestias both took a moment to realize what was going on, and then another moment to confirm that the starbook looked like what it looked like before turning back to Twilight with surprise on their faces. "You found the book?" Corona asked, not having expected that but delighted all the same.

"Not at all," Twilight said without giving the Celestias so much as a glance, only having eyes for Ember and how she went about checking the starbook's authenticity.

Sure enough, Ember wasn't satisfied until she had opened the book no less than three times, which was proof enough for Twilight that she was expecting the starbook's unique behavior. In theory, it wasn't impossible that Ember was simply being thorough and the starbook was showing her what she expected to see, but she didn't think so.

"No?" Corona asked with some confusion, because by the way Ember was hugging it to herself, she sure seemed to be satisfied that it was the real deal. "Then who did?"

Rather than explain, Twilight paused to feel out her stars and make sure she wasn't about to steal the star of a random pony somewhere. Fortunately, for what she was looking for, essentially any of them would do, and before the Celestias could ask what it was that she was doing, she pointed her hoof dramatically and—**bam**—produced another star book in the air between them.

This one had a castle in the clouds on the cover and Twilight managed to catch it in her magic before it fell to the floor. She took a moment to examine it, nodded, satisfied that she'd gotten it right, then passed it over for the Celestias to take a look at.

Curious, Corona flipped the book open and Candesca stepped in beside her to see what the big deal was. Both of their eyes widened in unison, and Corona flipped a few more pages, to confirm that it was a book on the civilization of the previous alicorns—Utopia. "Twilight, this...!"

"I," Twilight said, puffing her chest out with pride. "Am the princess of books."

The Celestias blinked. Corona looked at the book in her hooves, and Candesca looked at the one that Ember was still distracted with.

"If I'm understanding the situation correctly, it appears that you are the princess of two books," Corona asserted.

"Possibly three," Candesca allowed.

Luna hmmed. "They're right, you know."

"Don't you start!" Twilight said, dramatically pointing her hoof at Luna. "You're the one that gave me all the libraries in the first place; this just makes it metaphysical."

At some point, Candesca had taken the Utopia starbook from her twin and was doing her own flipping. "Twilight," she said seriously, getting everyone's attention.

"Yes?" Twilight said, cocking her head to the side in question.

"You know... Harmonia would not have approved," she pointed out, gesturing with the book. "She wanted Her forgotten."

Twilight folded her ears in slight shame when she remembered how the clockwork alicorn hadn't even wanted Solaria's name spoken. "Well, I'm hardly going to spread it," she self-consciously defended, plucking the book back out of Candesca's hooves with her magic.

"Luna and I talked about this already; there'll be limitations, but I think it's something worth doing," she said, stowing the starbook away in the saddlebag that she'd brought the other one in.

"We did?" Luna said, giving the impression that this was news to her. A moment later, she remembered. "Ah, yes. Your library of the dead. This will make that easier, won't it?"

"That is not what we're calling it," Twilight objected. "And it's not really important right now—but yes."

The Celestias shared a concerned look, but before they could go off on another tangent, Luna asked, "Twilight; didn't you say you had questions that you wanted to ask Ember?"

The four princesses all shifted their attention to Ember, who was backed in the corner clutching the starbook to herself looking like she might make a break for it before they could take it away.

"Well, I already got my answer to the main one," Twilight pointed out, considered things and sighed. "But this isn't going to work. Could you three give us some space? I want to actually be able to talk to her—not at her."

— Ember —

Ember had been distracted, not deaf, so she had absolutely sort of followed what the princesses were all saying while she was reassuring her that it was indeed her book.

Only, it wasn't her book, was it?

It was one thing to find something in a half-abandoned library, but it was something else to know for certain where it had come from and a third thing entirely to know that this wasn't even the same book after all—just another copy created by the princess of books... and possibly the dead?

Ember didn't entirely get that part and was going to pretend for the sake of her own sanity that it had been a joke.

Now, though, she was alone with the princess who she had apparently stolen the book from—twice—and who, again, as per her earlier concerns, was basically Spike's older sister.

And she was just standing there looking at Ember as if she was considering what to do with her.

Then the room started to fill with her presence... and two plain obsidian chairs came into being.

Twilight sat and waited.

Ember, who was caught off-guard in that she had been on-guard for something else entirely, mentally scrambled to remember what that magic had felt like, because obsidian was different from the smoky black crystal that had been used for a few things around the manor, and she wanted it.

That left Twilight sitting and waiting for Ember to actually take her seat, which eventually she did, not liking how exposed it made her feel.

Twilight sighed and started out by saying, "I'm not going to do anything to you, Ember; I'm not even going to ask for the starbook back. In a way, I made it for you in the first place."

Ember's only thought was, "That's it?"

"Well," Twilight said. "No. We're still going to have to keep looking for the other one, assuming it exists, because there's a lot there on things like the Ring of Ashmund that we don't necessarily want everyone to know too much about, as much as I hate saying that."

That was something that Ember could definitely get behind. More than that, changing the subject was also something she could get behind. "I still don't get the whole stars thing, but if it's a star, isn't it supposed to be a part of you? Can't you just tell where it is?"

"Yes," Twilight said. "But also no. There's a star in every single pony in the city and they usually just fade into the background, so unless I'm really paying close attention and see a book where I'm expecting a pony to be, it's not much help. The information in those books comes from before the stars were stars, so I can't even narrow it down according to what information they possess; it's something they all contain to some degree."

Ember didn't have anything to say to that, and eventually the change of subject wore off.

"Now that that's settled," Twilight said, leaning back in her chair and giving Ember a piercing look. "Let's talk about how you've treated Spike and the rest of your friends over this whole thing."

Ember didn't think that saying, 'how about no?' would fly with the princess, and tried to think of some way to get out of it.

Then, she thought of one.

— Corona —

Corona's hackles rose when she heard a commotion from the wing of the manor that Twilight was using to talk to Ember. Suddenly she wished that she had been watching in on the meeting via her light, but she had been respecting Twilight's desire for privacy in the matter.

The matter quickly became moot, however, when the three of them all heard a... squeal of some sort approaching from down the hall, and then Twilight was there, holding Ember out in front of her with her magic.

"Luna!" she shouted, a wide grin on her face. "You've got to see this! She did magic! Show her, Ember!"

Ember, who was completely discombobulated from being grabbed and dragged across half the manor, coughed, producing a small ruby from her mouth which fell and tumbled on the ground.

"Isn't that adorable?"

Author's Note

Thanks go out to those supporting me on Patreon and ko-fi, pomegranate horsie, Sunny, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, LD, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Денис, J T, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, fused and CvBrony

Chapter 34

— Star Glister —

Star Glister did not regret what he'd done, but all the same, it was arduous. Simply horrible, really, and if he didn't already have plans for ameliorating the issue, he couldn't say if he would have been able to bear it for long. He'd like to say that he was made of sterner stuff than that, but the truth was that he barely made it to a bench in the park to sit and come to terms with his new condition.

It wasn't fatigue or wariness, per se; his legs did not ache, nor was his mind fuzzy in any way. It was a unique kind of exhaustion that came from deep inside of him, like a hole in a part of him that he'd never known existed.

He had to remind himself that this was normal. Ponies were not supposed to have magic inside of them; they certainly weren't supposed to have somepony else's magic inside of them. This feeling... for all it felt like something important was missing, was entirely the opposite. He was in withdrawal, plain and simple, of something he was never meant to have in the first place.

Hm.

No, he didn't like that metaphor, however apt. It fit the story that he was telling, but it didn't fit with the fact that he fully intended to go to another source to replace it. No, his problem was not actually that having magic was unnatural. It might be, but he didn't really care about that. He had long gotten used to the practicality one needed to get ahead in life.

No, he did want magic; he just wanted that magic to be his own. Failing that—which he had already done by not being born an alicorn—someone else's magic would do so long as he could make it his own.

For now, though, magic wasn't the force he needed to harness. Quite the opposite. The power that would give him what he wanted was that very lack. Feeling inside of him, there was a hole like a yawning chasm and it ached for something. Anything.

That was the secret that he had found in that delightful little book that had come into his possession. In the story of the pony ambassador Couscous, who had lost the 'fire of life' granted to ponykind by Celestia's predecessor, the stallion in question had gone on to receive the fire of a dragon to replace it, and the process had been remarkably simple.

There had been some concern as to whether losing his star and his magic would be quite the same as losing the fire of life, as they were two different things and he presumably still had the latter gift, but in that moment, he was sure of it—because that metaphorical hole wanted nothing more than to be filled. It was a vacuum of significance and intent that could only hold one manner of thing, and nature abhors a vacuum.

Now he just needed the fire of a dragon and it would all sort itself out—almost entirely on its own, in fact. It was actually quite the volatile state, when it came down to it. Of course, it wasn't quite as simple as it sounded. He needed not just any fire produced by a dragon, but the heart's fire that produced it. He rather doubted that the dragon in question would enjoy the process—or possibly even survive it.

That begged the question, then, which dragon to do that to? It would have to be one that he didn't think would be any loss to the world, but that was just about all of them, so it didn't really narrow it down. There were ponies that he could pay to just grab one off the street—someone small and runty, who wouldn't be missed—but, well...

He found the idea rather repulsive.

This was going to be his magic for the rest of his life, which might be a very long time indeed. It was a pity that the story of Ambassador Couscous had ended prematurely; he would have enjoyed knowing beforehoof what sort of future he was looking at in the long run, but cataclysmic apocalypses tended to end stories and ponies both.

Ah well. He would just have to find out for himself.

So, whose fire would he take into himself? Who was worthy? Really, what dragons could he even name, let alone put any deeds worthy of note to?

There was only 'Empress' Ember and the father that she had deposed—and that father was a criminal, a failure and not presently available. Ember, now; she was headstrong, arrogant and, if rumor could be believed, now closely associated with one Twilight Sparkle.

Also, he knew where she lived, so the decision was fairly well made for him, really.

That said, there was one small problem in choosing Ember, which was that she could hardly just disappear. She would be missed if she were to go missing, but, well... given his criteria, that was rather unavoidable.

The slightly larger problem was that Empress Ember apparently possessed a ring with the ability to alter dragons, and that did give him pause. Really, looking out over the park, there were dragons here and there that would not be nearly so much trouble, but...

No.

No, Star Glister would not 'make do,' with a lesser dragon just for the sake of ease and expediency. He had devoted himself to Princess Celestia for his entire life—to being her student—her paramour. That was who he was, and he would not start cutting corners now merely to make life easier. The greatest prize was always the most difficult to obtain.

"Look," came the gruff voice of one of the dragons that Star Glister had just been watching; a fat, red, teardrop-shaped dragon rendered down into a size not much bigger than a pony who was walking along with two of his friends. "I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm just saying that if we'da found the princess a week ago, we wouldn't be in this whole mess!"

His friends—a blue dragon in slightly better shape and a weedy brown one that was on entirely the other end of the spectrum—didn't seem any happier about the situation. "Yeah," said blue, "Well, now she's gone and got rid of her da and we're stuck looking like scaled chipmunks! If I ever get back to my lair, I'm gonna have to dig a whole new entrance on account of I can't move the boulder I blocked it off with when we were sent off on this fool mission!"

"Yeah, why did we let the old dragonlord talk us into this, anyway?" brown asked. "This wasn't a great way to spend a season even before the princess turned everything on its head."

Red rolled his eyes. "Does the phrase, 'mind-controlling toothpick' ring a bell? Princess had one thing right; that thing was nasty and it's good she destroyed it. Even the threat of that thing is enough to get me to do a bit of scutt work, especially if it's across the continent from him."

"You think she really destroyed it?" blue asked.

Red shrugged. "She said she was gonna, and after being turned pony-sized from an entire mountain away, I'm gonna believe she can do what she says."

"Yeah," blue said, the group passing right in front of Star Glister's bench. "But if it was me, I'd say that and still keep it somewhere safe, just in case."

"...Yeah, maybe," red said, scratching his chin. "But that's almost as good."

"Right, so, why are we still here, then?" brown asked.

"What, you want we should just go home failures?" red said, incredulous.

Brown shrugged. "Does it matter if we failed if Torch isn't the dragonlord anymore?"

"I don't know about you, but I don't want to be tiny for the rest of my life," blue said.

"Yeah," red added. "She mighta had one good idea with the scepter, but I'm not calling her dragonlord or empress or whatever. There's gotta be some way we can get things back to normal."

Star Glister politely cleared his throat, standing just behind the group of dragons. "I might have an idea about that," he said, doing his best to project strength into his voice when he really wasn't feeling it.

The dragons were not at all impressed. They all turned, and red snorted at him. "Yeah?" red said, looking him over like a slab of meat. "We can't see as an old pony like you what can barely stand should have anything to say about it, can we, boys?"

The other dragons nodded, instantly belligerent, perhaps suddenly conscious of exactly what sort of thing they had been talking about in public.

"And that," Star Glister confidently declared. "Is why you are in the position you're in." Digging into his saddlebags, he pulled out a hoof full of gold bits and gemstones and cast it on the ground at their feet.

The dragons, obeying their baser desires, didn't even question the matter and made quick work of the windfall, only to run out all too quickly, then start eyeing him in hunger.

"You fail to see the value of things that are right in front of you," Star Glister informed them. "I am a stallion of means. Means which extend far beyond the contents of my saddlebags or even my bank account. I happen to know the ponies that your princess is associating with, and I can find out when she's vulnerable."

"Yeah?" the blue dragon said, wary and skeptical. "You got a way so we don't end up the size of chickens on account of that ring?"

Star Glister rolled his eyes. "Rings," he explains slowly. "Are things, and things can be stolen. Think of what you could do with something like that." Not that Star Glister would ever let them keep it. "And if your imagination doesn't stretch that far, well, I can find some other way to make it worth your time. There are always more gems, I suppose."

The dragons were all entirely unconvinced. They were also greedy, however. "Yeah, sure," the red one said, licking his lips. "You keep feeding us gems, and we'll see if you've got anything worth listening to."

— Carnelia —

Applejack stared at the golden apple.

The golden apple did not stare back because it was just an apple, which in and of itself was rather remarkable. If it had also been capable of staring back at Applejack, that might have been a step too far for the self-described simple country mare.

Applejack took another bite of the golden apple, still coming to terms with the idea that in an Equestria full of dragons, it represented more than just gratuitous excess—that it was really an apple in every way that mattered. Carnelia left her to it, and took it as an invitation to getting back to her meditation.

Honestly, Carnelia found it difficult to really empathize with the farm mare. It was fine and all to be willing to work hard, but to put so much of oneself into the idea that long-term prosperity had become a bad thing... it seemed self-destructive.

And Carnelia knew what self-destructive looked like.

There had been a time when Carnelia had fought tooth and nail for scraps like other dragons do. When she was younger, biting and gnashing and clawing with other dragons over someone's cache of gems had just seemed like the natural thing to do, and not coming out on top of a conflict was almost as bad as not getting those mouth-watering, flawless gems.

Carnelia didn't often come out on top, though, and one day when she was licking her wounds, she just had to ask herself... why? What did it really get her? Nothing, usually, and then she'd still have to scrounge up a meal somewhere else, so why not just skip it?

Carnelia wanted to enjoy life, and she'd done alright at it so far. She hadn't been the fittest or the fattest dragon before Ember had come to her, but she'd been healthy enough. She had, in fact, changed the least out of any of them when Ember had used the ring, and that... she liked that. She might have swallowed her pride, but it still burned inside of her, and Ember had vindicated that.

In Carnelia's view, Applejack was like those dragons from her youth, focusing more on the fight than what was actually important, wearing her pride on the outside and defending it with tradition.

Applejack would no doubt disagree, vehemently, and so Carnelia would leave it be. She didn't actually know the mare that well, or understand what really drove her. She knew when to hold her tongue and choose her words, and challenging Applejack would not earn her any friends.

Still, it was a reminder of where she had come from and where she was going. She had joined Ember because she wanted very much to see dragons get over themselves and all of their bullshit. Hopeless, perhaps, but it was something she felt strongly about and a goal for her to strive for.

And that, apparently, was just the mood that she was looking for, because it was in the midst of searching herself for a path forward with or without Ember, that she realized that she didn't feel the roll of chubby baby fat around her middle, and, in fact, she felt quite normal just then.

Her quiet reverie was interrupted when her heart caught up with her brain and she raced to yank the Ring of Ashmund off of her claw before the panic and adrenaline would twist her once again.

The ring came off, fortunately, and Carnelia was left sitting there, holding it in her claw, breathing hard and heavy like she'd just flown to the dragonlands and back in the half a second it had taken to remove the cursed object.

"What in tarnation?!" Applejack exclaimed, apparently pulled out of her own head by Carnelia's burst of motion. Applejack wasn't Carnelia's primary concern just then, though, and before she could answer her, Carnelia had to first take stock of what had actually happened.

The ring was gripped tightly in her hand. That alone was worthy of celebration, though after staring at it for a moment, she immediately turned her hand over and dropped the ring onto the grass, not wanting to even have it touching her, lest it respond in some way.

The rest of her, though... she almost dreaded to look, but she didn't really believe in self-delusion, so she traced her vision down her arm to her body and...

It was normal—not Ember's idealized form, but far from the baby dragon she'd been just moments ago. No, she was how she'd looked before Ember had used the ring on her in the first place; nearly as tall, just a little skinnier and less defined, but entirely respectable and worth having a little bit of pride for.

It made sense, given what she'd just been thinking about, and it was a significant relief.

"This is, essentially, as significantly distant from 'tarnation,' as it is possible to be," Carnelia informed Applejack, appreciating having her own body back. "I have been restored."

Applejack scratched at her chin. "Well, y'all are still looking a mite peaky," she said. "But it's fairly close."

Carnelia had to double-check herself before she quite understood the meaning behind Applejack's statement. "Ah, I see. No, this is, specifically, the shape that I possessed before Ember transformed us all, though I suspect that her selection in simulacrum being so similar plus a few embellishments is not a coincidence. The others were not nearly so close to their standardized forms."

Applejack was taken a bit off guard, but compared to everything else that had just happened in her own head, she took it relatively well. "You know, Ah should'a figured that, on account of how y'all practically looked like sisters." She paused. "Y'all ain't sisters, right?"

"I assure you, we are not," Carnelia assured her.

"Ah thought not," Applejack said. Considering Carnelia carefully, she added, "It probably ain't any of my business, but maybe it's for the best. Probably not the healthiest thing, using something like that for vanity."

Carnelia dug her claw into the dirt and lifted up the patch of grass where the ring sat. "Perhaps..." she said, staring at the ring with distaste. "Perhaps not. We shall see what happens with Ember, I suppose, though of the purposes that the ring can be put to, I consider vanity to be innocent enough and the least of our worries. You disagree?"

Applejack squirmed in place. "...Yeah."

Carnelia put the patch of grass back down where it had come from and patted it back into place. "You seem to disagree with a lot of things," she observed.

"...Yeah," she agreed, apparently not too happy about it herself. That made sense, though, since from what Carnelia had heard so far, her differences of opinion had become an issue with her friends more often than not in recent weeks. "Ah like things simple," she explained. "So many ponies spend all of their time with all sorts of nonsense spending an hour to save a minute and doing all sorts of things that just end up causing them a whole heap of problems in the end. It seems pretty obvious to me that all that scrambling to get ahead of other ponies just leaves the whole herd fighting in the mud."

"Our views are surprisingly similar in some respects, and yet, our stances could not contrast more distinctly," Carnelia observed.

Applejack raised an eyebrow at that. "Ya care to explain that one?"

Carnelia wasn't sure that she wanted to challenge Applejack's preconceptions, but she did ask... "You wish for others to dispense with the canny and shrewd," she mused. "Pursuits which you deem frivolous—assuming that success is straightforward and the process is wholesome; a sentiment that is mostly wasted on dragons."

Applejack frowned, but kept listening.

"What you are missing," Carnelia said, "Is that the simplest way of all to achieve success is to steal it from someone else—not through cunning and guile, but through force—and dragons are exceptionally suited to this. As such, dragons as a species only seldom approach anything like civility and the concepts of progress and development which you take for granted are starkly absent.

"For a dragon who lacks the very context, the simple work you espouse is something that would necessitate precisely the sort of effort in trading hours for minutes that you denounce. It is only now, after generations of that sort of struggle, that you can say that your life is simple. To simply stop progressing—stop strengthening yourself—so that you can live a life of simplicity, seems unwise.

"What is the point of working hard if nothing ever improves? Shouldn't your daughters and sons have an easier time of things than you? Shouldn't they be able to enjoy things that are actually frivolous like vanity?"

At first, Applejack had looked like she was considering Carnelia's words, but as she talked, she could tell that the mare was thinking less and less of what she was saying.

"Y'all may be right about mah family—Ah never thought about it like that—but the rest of it..." Applejack shook her head. "Maybe Ah owe it to a different kinda work than I'm used to, but we've got a good thing going here now, and a little hard work is good for the soul. You see it all the time, ponies who get a little too successful and raise kids who know they'll never have to work a day in their lives. Spoiled rotten, every time."

"I know dragons like that," Carnelia said. "Some of them are as you said, with sires who have massive hoards that let them gorge themselves day after day, but others are just the opposite, forced to scrape by with scraps, and they're remarkably similar. Can you say for certain that having an excess of possessions results in them being raised wrong, or is it just that they haven't really been raised at all?"

Applejack didn't answer that at first, then she frowned, and didn't answer it further, actually giving it some thought. Carnelia thought that she might have actually convinced her of something, but the truth wasn't quite so definitive.

"Ah don't know about that," she said, then followed it up with a, "Maybe. Ah'll think about it. But now that you've said that, Ah'm thinking about Apple Bloom. Ah've been all up in my head about this whole mess, and whatever else Ah might or might not think about what y'all've said, Ah definitely owe her more'n that."

Carnelia blinked.

Well, it was a start, she supposed, and as Applejack excused herself, her mind wandered back to the Ring of Ashmund and her own problems.

Ember, as the Dragon Lord's daughter, was certainly spoiled, at least to some extent. Ember was trying, though, and if she was to become any better of a person, she probably wouldn't magically do so on her own; she would need help.

That said, though, maybe they wouldn't give Ember the ring back quite yet until she'd proven that she'd grown up a little and wasn't going to tear anyone's faces off in retaliation for being slapped.

...

You know what?

She was going to find Spike and let him decide.

— Star Glister —

The red dragon's name was Ash, the blue one was Silt and the brown one was Thorn. That was the sum of the information that Star Glister had gathered about his... what were they, exactly? They were hardly co-conspirators, but even minions was a little too generous. Patsies? Cutouts? This sort of thing was not actually in his wheelhouse, but he knew that he needed both muscle and to not to be associated with whatever happened.

Well, whatever the dragons were, they were hungry, which was well enough. Star Glister's home wasn't small, having been acquired before Ponyville's big population boom, and he hardly wanted three dragons poking their noses about in any of his business.

No, it was better for them to be poking their noses about in a chest of gems and spare crystal acquired cheaply off the trains from the northern mountains. He'd never envisioned this exact scenario for it, but dragons had been flooding into Equestria for some time now and it always did to be prepared.

"You really think this guy is gonna be able to find the princess?" Ash asked his friends while Star Glister watched the group from the top of the stairs overlooking the small manor's entryway.

"He can take his time," Thorn, laying on his back at the side of the room, said, his hands crossed over his stomach. "I don't mind just sitting here and eating his gems fer as long as it takes."

Star Glister shook his head. Barbarians. It really was that easy with them, wasn't it? Briefly, he felt the hole inside of him ache and stopped to catch himself. It was hard, holding himself back for the greater prize. He had three dragons right here, stupid and naïve, who would do anything he asked so long as it sounded plausible. It would be so easy for him to just—but no. No. He'd made his decision, and the logic was sound.

He was not going to live the rest of his life with the fire of a thug in his heart. It was that simple.

Preparing himself, Star Glister descended the stairs, the clopping of his hooves announcing his presence. "I have exceptional news," he announced.

"Oh yeah?" Silt asked, his dubiousness lost in cheeks stuffed with cheap, cloudy quartz.

"Yes," he said, actually rather proud of how quickly things were coming together. "I've heard from certain associates of mine at the Ponyville Hospital..." As patients, admittedly, but it was better to imply he had influence with the staff, though he suspected the subtlety was lost on them anyway. "...That not too long ago, a certain red dragon of the empress' acquaintance came in with a most unusual malady. It seems that, through some series of events or another, she has ended up with the empress' ring and it has not gone quite so well as she might have hoped—trapped in the body of a child, the limb deformed and the ring unable to be removed."

"Which means the princess doesn't have it," Ash deduced in a startling feat of deductive reasoning.

"Hold up," Silt interrupted, and surprised Star Glister for a second time by pointing out, "If this other dragon has it but can't use it right, why don't we go after her first? That seems like it's something that'd be useful to have."

The thought had occurred to Star Glister, but, "No," he said. "First, if her malformed state is any indication, it seems that she is perfectly capable of using it but not controlling it, which sounds problematic for any dragons. Second, if there's some secret to controlling it, then I wouldn't count on any of you doing any better than the empress' right-hoof dragoness." Left unsaid was the fact that whatever the ring did require would no doubt be written down in the empress' book, and if it did seem workable, he would just have to find a way to acquire it that didn't involve dragons.

Maybe he could find a griffon or two.

"No," he repeated. "We'll leave that until later. We have no idea how long this state of things will last, so get ready; we don't want to miss our chance to bag ourselves an empress."

Apparently, getting ready meant shoveling more gems down their throats.

Star Glister struggled valiantly not to bury his face in his hooves.

Good help was so hard to find.

The hole in his heart ached.

— Spike —

Landing at the dragons' manor left Drift feeling like a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. That burden, of course, had been Spike, Kindle and now Slag as well who had all been latched onto her like lampreys—one of them quite literally.

"Three of you is a bit much," she stated, stretching out as the others recovered from their flight. "...And were the teeth really necessary?"

"...Sorry," Slag mumbled. "I was slipping."

Kindle was the last one to drop off, and the hiss she made as she did so got Spike's attention. "Oh, damn, Kindle! I forgot that you were hurt, too—and we were just at the hospital."

He went over to check on her, but she waved him off. "I'm fine," she insisted. "Just bruised—and what are they going to do about that?"

"Well, alright," Spike said, knowing when to back off enough to not be hovering. He supposed they did have other things to focus on at the moment. A few of them grabbed some gemstones out of the emerald grass, but quickly their attention was all drawn to the manor itself.

It felt a bit ominous, but Spike was sure that that was all in his head.

"So," he said, and asked them all, "How do you think this will go?"

"Terrible."

"Abysmally."

"Like flaming garbage."

Spike sighed. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Let's hope it doesn't get any worse than that." Leading the way up to the manor, he prepared himself for anything, then opened the door. His heart sank. "It's worse. It's already worse."

The inside of the manor was trashed. Every recognizable object inside had been reduced to flinders and even the detailing and embellishments had been clawed and gnawed into unrecognizability. "Ugh, what is wrong with her?"

Drift walked over to one of the columns to the side of the entryway which resembled an apple core or the work of a particularly industrious beaver. "Lots."

Kindle shook her head in disgust. "Did she really think that, what, the book was hidden somewhere in the walls?"

Spike went to answer, then reconsidered. "It wouldn't be the first time," he admitted. "And that was before some of us learned to breathe minerals. Some of the things we found when we were emptying out the Ponyville library were weird."

Eventually, the sort of mild fascinated horror at the ruined building eventually wore thin and there was nothing more to do than move on and address the cause of this whole mess.

"...Oh," Ember sourly remarked from where she sat in the corner as Spike let the group of dragons into her room. "Of course it's you lot now. This is why big rockheaded dragons have their lairs on faraway mountaintops; so they won't be constantly nettled by everyone who thinks they should drop in for a visit."

Kindle raised one scaled eyebrow at that. "Do you really think you deserve a cool mountain lair right now?" she asked, though Spike interrupted to head off the argument that would surely come eventually.

"I guess the Celestias have already been and gone, then?" he asked, pointedly observing the fact that the room explicitly contained Ember and little else.

Ember snorted in hollow humor. "Them and your other two princesses, too. I have had it up to here—" she motioned at her neck, "—with being talked down to today."

"Well, then maybe you should work a bit at lifting yourself up," Kindle remarked. "You're the one that said that dragons should be better." She made a show of looking around the derelict room. "Better than this."

Ember snarled, but stood up and forced a little more pride into her demeanor.

Drift, though, was distracted by something else. "So, you found the book," she said, pointing out the object that Ember was holding, which had been tucked away between her knees and body.

Ember looked down in brief surprise at the book in her claw, then made a half-hearted attempt to hide it behind herself before she realized what it was that she was doing.

"So, I guess you know now that it wasn't any of us?" Kindle taunted, a smug smile growing on her face. "Or maybe it was never actually stolen in the first place? Don't tell me we went through all of this because you misplaced five pounds of parchment and leather?"

"No!" Ember shouted, vehemently defensive. "And no, I don't know that. This isn't the same book. It's... It's new."

Drift looked doubtful. "...Really, Ember?"

"...Okay," Spike said, trying to keep things calm so they could at least keep talking things out at reasonable volumes for as long as possible, no matter how much Drift had a point. "Is... is there someone out there printing books on the dragon empires, then, and if so, where can I get a copy? Because I'd kind of like to read it and Twilight would one-hundred-percent do murder if they were available and I didn't get her one."

"One hundred percent, huh?" Kindle asked. "No doubt at all?"

Spike scratched at his chin. "Well, the old Twilight would have, anyway," he vacillated. "The new Twilight has a marefriend and I'm not sure if she's had time to pick up a book in weeks."

"She doesn't need one anyway," Ember retorted. "She's already got one, probably, since they came from her in the first place. The stars are the princess of books and the dead or some Tartarus-damned pony nonsense like that. I swear, I've tried to understand these pony princesses and I just can't. Whatever. The point is, she can magic-up books now or book-up magic now and I give up. I don't get it and I've had enough for today."

"Tough shit," Slag said, not at all sympathetic. "You're the one who decided to call herself an empress, so you've got to actually be one. You don't get to give up, and you don't get to go off on us like you did earlier."

Ember stiffened in outrage. "Who do you think you're—"

Spike decided to step in there. "Look, Ember," he said, literally stepping between them. "You know I'm not the 'tough love' kind of guy—but Slag is right. You put yourself into the role of empress and we're relying on you. That also means that you don't get to attack us out of the blue without proof because of some idea you got in your head. We won't stand for it."

"You won't stand for it?" Ember growled. Rounding on Slag, she reiterated, "You won't stand for it? I may not know who stole the book, but you did take part in stealing the ring!"

"You're Tartarus-damned right I did!" Slag shouted back, not cowed at all. "And I'd do it again if I had to. You did grow up in the dragonlands, didn't you? Did you expect everyone to just take your abuse with a please and a thank you without biting back? Who do you think you are? Your father?!"

"I am not like my father!" Ember insisted.

Slag grabbed her stubby little tail and ripped the bandages off, showing off the chunk which Torch had taken out of it which was circumscribed by Ember's own ragged bite. "Aren't you?!"

Ember grit her teeth in stubborn defiance, but her eyes were drawn to Slag's wound, and the moment dragged on.

"I'm not," she weakly insisted. "I can't be."

Author's Note

Merry Christmas everyone! :twilightsmile:

In the most subtle manner I have available to me, I'll now remind everyone that ~~one-time donations~~ Christmas presents can be sent through Ko-Fi /s

In all seriousness, though, Thanks go out to those supporting me on Patreon and ko-fi. Without these people, I've little doubt my inherent laziness would triumph: pomegranate horsie, Sunny, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, LD, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Jason Langford, Денис, J T, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, fused and CvBrony

Chapter 1

— ✶ —

Twilight Sparkle still wasn’t used to the new configuration of celestial objects in the daylight sky—though she supposed it was technically the old configuration. Very old, considering it hadn’t been seen since before ponies had had magic. Now that there were two alicorns of the day, though, a return to the old status quo had apparently been necessary.

As for what that status quo was, well, the great rainbow ring arcing across from horizon to horizon was a clue. That was the celestial object charged with providing light to the world. Sunrise and sunset were still a part of the celestial dance, though they were much more colorful as each band of light rose or set on the horizon in turn.

In contrast, the celestial object providing heat was at once both much more similar to what the sun had been, but barely visible as a shimmering in the sky. This half-sun orbited Equus in the opposite direction of its counterpart, going virtually unnoticed until it crossed under the solar ring at noon, scattering its rainbow light across the sky in a dazzling nova.

The whole situation was kind of ironic, actually, as it bore a striking resemblance to the form the night sky had settled into after Luna had blasted Astri’s rogue moon to pieces, scattering it across the dark backdrop as a sparkling band of stars and nebulae that flowed along its length like a river. Twilight could have fixed it, of course, but she wasn’t of a mind to, actually quite pleased with the look.

All the same, the new circumstances took some getting used to. Things had just been so much simpler when there had only been a sun in the sky. Take, for instance, her current situation; she was helping clear the rubble of what was technically still the Ponyville Palace, as she and Luna hadn’t actually stopped sleeping in it. Not being much of an outdoor pony, she had naturally gravitated to stand in long, looming shadow of the tower. This had been a mistake, as putting herself in the shadow explicitly meant she was no longer in the shade.

Those were two different words now. Her inner librarian was simultaneously fascinated and disturbed.

Truthfully, as an alicorn, the heat didn’t actually bother Twilight herself much, but the cognitive dissonance was distracting, and she certainly heard plenty about it from the rest of the ponies working with her on the demolition site. It wasn’t the only distraction, either, though the rest wasn’t actually bad; most of the differences were even improvements, if subtle ones.

The vast majority of the noticeable differences came, of course, from the solar ring. The unseen sun was simply that—unseen—and only really had the one effect, while the solar ring was hard to ignore, and quite unique besides. It’d be easy to that rainbows were a mundane, known quantity, but that actually couldn’t be further from the truth when you had one as your sole source of light.

Of these changes, the greatest by far was also the least complex, that being the simple property of how diffuse the light was in spite of providing the same general level of illumination. It might seem like a small thing, ponies being able to look directly into it without damaging their eyes—and maybe it was a small thing for the two thirds of the equestrian population whose only benefit would be in no longer being woken up by sunbeams in their eyes—but for pegasi and anyone else with wings, it was an incredible boon.

In contrast to its diffusion, however, the remaining properties of the solar ring’s light were, if anything, most unique in how they hadn’t changed. In spite of the illumination coming from separate bands of rainbow light, the net color those bands produced was almost the same as what the sun had—perhaps slightly whiter, slightly brighter, but only to the trained eye. Twilight considered it an improvement, but not terribly noteworthy. Instead, the real interesting aspect and where things began to get surreal was in the shadows. Not only were the shadows now smeared on one axis but they were also rimmed in rainbows on the other.

Twilight had dropped more than one load of rubble while distracted by them.

Crash!

This time, it was something else, however.

“Princess Sparkle,” sighed a gruff, dun brown earth pony with a hardhat. Stone Step had been the foreman for the original construction of the Ponyville Palace and he’d continued on to oversee the cleanup and repairs without a hitch after Astri had toppled it. It was for this reason that he was one of the few ponies on the job site that had no problem at all speaking his mind to the one who had kind of… sort of… cause the whole thing. “I realize that this is all on your bit, so it really doesn’t matter to me how long your expense report for property damage gets, but sooner or later all this spacing out is going to get somepony hurt.”

Twilight’s ears folded back in embarrassment. “Sorry, Stone Step, it’s just…” she gestured past the tower and the giant tree holding it up to the street on the other side where a tall, ochre dragon was walking down the street, hunched defensively over a map and checking landmarks. No sooner had she pointed him out than he was assaulted by an excited Pinkie Pie. Normally this would be a relatively mundane occurrence for Ponyville, except for the minor detail that said party pony been out of town this morning.

“Huh, would’ya look at that,” Stone Step remarked as he stepped up beside Twilight. “It’s not every day a dragon moves to Ponyville.” In the coming days, however, he’d be eating his words as more and more of the lithotrophic reptiles turned up. In fact, by the time Pinkie Pie had arranged a party for that first dragon, there would be two others attending it and one more avoiding it like the plague.

— ✶ —

It was unfortunate that the Ponyville Palace had been all but destroyed, because the crowd that gathered to get a look at Ponyville’s three new dragons was far too large for Sugarcube corner. This, apparently, meant nothing when the recently-empowered Pinkie Pie was involved. Sure, some of it had still spilled out onto the street, but only because the immortal party pony had discovered block parties when she’d gone to Las Pegasus.

“I don’t know if this should bother me or not,” Twilight told Luna as they entered the ballroom-sized Sugarcube corner. Twilight Sparkle was quite literally sparkling in her new regalia, her black crown, peytral and shoes all twinkling with the faint glimmer giving the impression of stars from deep within, each piece decorated with one of the stars from her cutie mark all in luminescent white. She matched Luna quite well, she thought, and though she might have expected her regalia to blend in with her ethereal, star-filled mane, the regalia’s black was actually so dark that it contrasted the blue of her mane, emphasizing and brightening it.

Luna, on the other hoof, was literally glowing, her ethereal mane white with the soft white of the moon. Celestia had teased her about it when the change had first occurred, soon after Twilight’s ascension, saying that she was going gray, but such was the way of sisters. It was actually quite the milky white, its gentle glow accented lightly by silvery patina and not overpowering in the slightest.

One could say that they were quite overdressed for the occasion, save for the fact that they were genuinely incapable of coming any other way.

Luna leaned in close to Twilight and nuzzled her side. “I see nothing amiss,” she informed her recently-acquired marefriend.

Twilight shivered at Luna’s touch, but did her best to stay focused. They were in public, after all. “Sugarcube corner isn’t normally the size of an entire hoofball field,” she said. “On the one hoof, it’s Pinkie Pie and part of me wants to run back home and hide under the bed… but on the other hoof, it also blatantly proves that it’s just magic—earth pony magic, but magic all the same.”

“One does tend to find it less surprising when a being of power performs great deeds,” Luna reasoned, easing up on her teasing of Twilight in order to survey the expanded space. “Verily. The acts which have been ascribed to the pink one were impressive before you granted her power.”

“Oh, well, there’s an explanation for that,” Twilight told her, idly searching the room for the bouncing form of the pink party pony.

“Truly?” Luna asked, perking up at the new information.

Not sighting Pinkie Pie, Twilight instead led Luna deeper into the room where she thought she saw a flash of ochre scales. “Yeah, Rainbow Dash told me just the other day; it seems she’s been like that the entire time.”

“‘Like that?’” Luna parroted, bemused. “As in…?”

“Yep,” Twilight confirmed, popping the ‘p.’ She was still pretty baffled by it herself. “Apparently she’d done the whole achieving-oneness-with-her-cutie-mark-and-transcending-her-mortal-form thing before she ever met any of us, and she just… didn’t tell anypony.”

“That… explains much and does sound like something she would do,” Luna admitted, then acquired a distinct pout. “Oh, fie—I should have liked to see the brash one’s face when this came to light. I am certain the cracking of her ego would have been glorious to behold, and I am shocked that they did not hear it in Canterlot.”

“My friends do have names beyond ‘the pink one’ and ‘the brash one,’ you know,” Twilight retorted with a mild huff and a roll of her eyes.

Luna wasn’t apologetic. “You do recall that it was she whose careless insults finally pushed you over the edge and created Astri, do you not?”

“She apologized,” Twilight said, weakly defending her friend. “…And I think we both know that my ability to function rationality was already circling the drain at that point anyway.”

Luna wilted at the reminder. “Was the apology at least sincere?” she asked, more subdued.

“Yes,” Twilight answered without hesitation. “Rainbow Dash might have a bit of an ego, but she at least owns up to her mistakes when she’s confronted with them.”

“Well…” Luna felt herself obliged to be magnanimous as they began to make their way into the room. “That is good, I suppose. I shall endeavor not to snipe at her overmuch when next we meet.”

Twilight had never been one for crowded rooms, so if there was any situation where she appreciated the instinctual reverence that ponies had for alicorns, making her way through a party would have to be up near the top of the list. They had little difficulty heading over to the dragons of the hour, only stopping a few times to say exchange words with ponies that Twilight hadn’t had the chance to speak to since she’d become an alicorn.

As for the dragons in question, her first impression was that they had no idea what was going on. They were in the densest part of the crowd, but were being given a wide berth. The ochre one she’d seen on the street was the tallest; standing upright, he towered over everypony else in the room and seemed to be practicing his looming—except, surrounded by a crowd, there wasn’t any particular individual to loom over and he seemed a bit lost for it.

In spite of his presence, however, the tallest dragon was not actually the largest or oldest present. Behind him, backed up against the wall was a slender red dragon who Twilight took to be female, shorter only by dint of being down on all fours. This one seemed more wary, the cause for which was clear in the curious younger dragon around her ankles. He—or she, Twilight wasn’t quite sure—seemed to be about Spike’s age or a little younger. Having only really spent any time around Spike, Twilight wasn’t terribly good at judging ages or genders except in the most obvious cases. If anything, her experience with Spike was probably a detriment, as her pseudo-sisterly-slash-motherly instincts tended to encourage her to see him as a baby at times and she would probably judge other dragons younger by association. The fact that Spike was perfectly capable of living alone and taking care of himself these days was hard to accept.

Come to think of it, she wondered if Spike would be attending the party. She didn’t see him and wouldn’t blame him if he’d just stayed home considering how his previous experiences with other dragons had gone, but it’d be unfortunate to let one experience sour his entire race for him. He was generally more outgoing than she was and would probably be feeling a little lonely by now, but if he hadn’t come, he hadn’t come. Either way, she should make an effort to go see how things were going for him.

“A hale and hearty welcome to our fine growing city, young dragons,” Luna announced, bringing Twilight back out of her musing to the present. “The moon and stars greet thee.”

The gruff, deep, “Whadd’ya want?” she got in response from the ochre dragon crossing his arms over his chest was jarring, but not, in hindsight, terribly surprising.

Luna’s gregarious smile became a bit fixed. “Why, to greet thee, of course, as I have already done, and to offer our sincere well-wishes to you on your travels. Praytell, I am curious as to thy names and what road has brought three dragons to us?”

“Name’s Brimstone. This just seemed like the place to be,” he said, followed by a glance over at the other two dragons and a scoff. “Them, no idea. It’s not like everydragon knows each other.”

Well, Twilight could already tell that this was going to be a bundle of fun. It seemed like Spike had made the right decision in not showing up.

If only she could have done the same.

— ✒ —

Spike yawned, stretching his arms above himself and sending a shiver of relief down his spine as he came out of the basement of what had once been the Golden Oaks Library, leaving the door open behind him.

It was a bit of a slog to get through all of the paperwork he was doing for the mayor these days, but at least he could do a lot of it from home. In fact, at the moment, with the palace a ruin and far too many ponies crammed into Rarity’s tower, working from home was all but required. Some ponies, he knew, liked to keep their work and home lives separate, but after growing up with Twilight, he didn’t particularly mind it. All in all, he felt good having a job and actually earning his own money for once. Even if he’d never truly wanted for much of anything—within reason—there was just something different about actually having money even beyond the ability to spend it on the occasional thing he would never have asked Twilight for.

The downside was, of course, that it was work—and pretty boring work at that. He’d done well with winter wrap-up and the Mayor had asked him to continue on with similar organizational tasks and some of the more mundane paperwork that bureaucracies always seemed to produce in an infinite amount. He’d assumed the skills would transfer over, and fortunately they had; he had no problem keeping up with the workload, but it was also much harder to stay enthusiastic about it when it wasn’t a real, tangible undertaking like winter wrap-up or one of Twilight’s numerous strange and bizarre projects.

Still, it was decent pay for doing a job he was good at and comfortable performing, so he wasn’t about to complain.

He was making his way into the kitchen, scratching an itch on his side when he spotted a pair of gem-encrusted cupcakes on the table in the middle of the room. A closer look revealed them to have been placed atop a pair of what looked to be Pinkie Pie’s usual invites, and a glance at the window to check how late it was revealed that whatever Pinkie Pie had going was probably already well underway. He could probably catch the end of it and pick up a few snacks, except he already had cupcakes, so maybe he’d just take it easy tonight; he needed a shower before going anywhere anyway.

Committing himself to a night of sloth, he sat at the table, pulled the invite from underneath the cupcake with emeralds and amethysts and read it out of curiosity as he idly nibbled on the cupcake. Contrary to his expectations, it actually wasn’t an invite at all.

It was an unvite.

Spike had to read it over several times in order to believe it, because he’d never, ever heard of Pinkie Pie doing such a thing.

Hey Spike!

You are hereby formally unvited to the official welcome party of Brimstone, Kindlemaw and Char. You are absoposilutely welcome if you actually want to come, but it’s not recommended. Please enjoy your conciliatory cupcake.

Regards,

Pinkie Pie’s back left knee, tippy tail and sinuses.

Huh. Well, if Pinkie Pie’s sinuses said so, who was he to argue? No doubt the legendary Pinkie Sense™ had become even more incredible and inscrutable after recent events… though perhaps he was overthinking it; the names ‘Brimstone, Kindlemaw and Char’ were a pretty big hint as to why he might have been unvited, after all.

A quiet night inside with cupcakes it was, then. As he was reaching for the second cupcake, though, he noticed something he hadn’t previously properly processed; the second cupcake had a second unvitation under it, this one addressed to Ember, whoever that was. Well, that was a bit disappointing, but he knew better from experience than to second guess Pinkie Pie or touch anything she’d labeled for someone else. Gratefully, he mostly knew this from other ponies experiences, but wisdom was wisdom, no matter how it was won.

He supposed that if he was going to have company, he might as well take that shower sooner rather than later.

— ✶ —

“Well, that was useful,” Twilight sarcastically griped as she and Luna left the party, the raucous sounds fading away behind them. “At least we tried, and the daffodil dumplings were pretty good.”

“I’m not so certain,” Luna mused once they had the streets to themselves.

Twilight cocked her head in question. “Not a fan of daffodils? Did they disagree with you?” That would be unfortunate if true, as they were one of Twilight’s favorites.

“No, the daffodils were fine, though I preferred the toasted anise,” she commented off-hoof.

Twilight puckered her lips in distaste. “Those were potpourri; I don’t think you were supposed to actually eat them.”

“It would not be the first time,” Luna admitted, quite unashamed of her culinary habits. “But what I had actually meant was that we might yet have learned something,” she continued.

“Other than ‘dragons are jerks’?” Twilight asked, curious. “Because this has to be the third or fourth time I’ve learned that one, personally.”

“A lesson I fear more of Equestria might be learning soon, if my hunch is correct,” she said, rather pensive.

“Oh—you mean if this is all the Celestias’ fault and they’re unintentionally luring them all here by bathing the world in their new partially draconic magic through the new celestial objects?” Twilight asked.

Luna looked confused. “I thought you said you didn’t get anything from meeting them?”

Twilight frowned. “I didn’t. That’s just one of the more likely hypotheses for dragons appearing so soon after Celestia’s… bilizardification. Their being cagey or possibly unsure of their actual reasons for coming here doesn’t actually prove anything one way or the other.”

“Perhaps not,” Luna said with a hint of mild exasperation. “But it fits, thus strengthening the argument.”

— ⁇ —

“It doesn’t actually work that way…” the pony with sparkly hair countered, not terribly put out by the disagreement, which confused the cloaked figure hiding in the shadows.

Well well well… wasn’t that an interesting conversation? The goddess of the sun had been… bilizardified? The figure decided that this was clearly the process by which a pony was improved by becoming two lizards and didn’t give it a second thought. More importantly, neither the sparkly pony or the glowing pony seemed too bothered by it or to think that it would be temporary. If the sun goddess was attracting dragons to this land like they’d said, it would explain a lot… but if the dragons that had arrived in town today were only the very tip of the vanguard, it would also complicate things incredibly.

Then again… all the chaos such a thing would cause might make it much easier for other things to fall through the cracks, and that could be very useful indeed.

The figure was about to leave quietly before another tidbit of information was dropped in its lap.

“What about Spike?” the slightly taller mare with the glowing mane and tail asked. “I did not see him at the party, but surely it would be worth seeking him out to ask him.”

The other mare stopped to consider that just as they were about to turn off the road where the cloaked figure was hiding. “Huh, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Well, that settles it; we should definitely go talk to him tomorrow. I’ve been meaning to pay him a visit and make sure he’s doing okay all alone in that old tree anyway. Even though he always took care of me more than I took care of him since we came to ponyville, it still just feels wrong to leave him all alone there.”

The taller mare let out a sigh. “I do wish you had been made part of the conversation, but…”

“I know,” the smaller one said, lowering her head. “I was half out of my mind, avoiding everypony and sneaking off to track down and eat pseudo-divine behemoths; not my proudest moment.”

“Twilight, please… You were far more than only half out of your mind; you assaulted the mailmare.”

“I did not assault her. I just… wanted her to know about the evil sleeping beneath our hooves. And she resisted.”

“She flies everywhere now—in case you hadn’t noticed—and no longer delivers to us.”

A very interesting conversation indeed.

— ✒ —

If there was one thing that Spike enjoyed about living on his own, it would have to be the ability to set his living space up for dragons rather than ponies. Not having to worry about heavy metals in the kitchen was one of those things, as was turning the water heater up as far as it would go and then asking Applejack if she could make it go any higher. If the tree had still been in use as a library, the thick, dense fog that billowed out when the bathroom door opened would have sent Twilight into fits.

It was only after rummaging around in the icebox for a cold glass of milk that he spotted something awry; the other cupcake was missing, and if he wasn’t mistaken, it had been taken by a slim, turquoise dragoness wearing a hooded cloak. This marvelous bit of deductive reasoning was only possible thanks to the fact that she was lounging on his couch licking the crumbs off her claws.

He would be forever grateful that his life around Twilight had warped his sense of normality so much that, while his brain was repeating ‘abuh?’ over and over, his mouth ran off and said, “You must be Ember, right?” instead of the other way around.

“Got it in one,” she confirmed, seemingly appreciative, then picked her own unvitation up off the sofa next to her. “But I guess you don’t get credit for that one. You gonna explain this… thing?”

“It’s Pinkie Pie,” he said as if that explained everything, awkwardly making his way into the room and setting his bottle of milk on the table. Belatedly, he realized he was wearing a towel after his shower and froze up.

“And who, or what, is a Pinkie Pie?” she asked icily.

The part of Spike that was functioning decided that it would be better to do nothing and accept whatever impression he’d already made rather than just suddenly whip off his towel. This was the correct choice. The part of him that wasn’t functioning had been given the job of explaining Pinkie Pie to a svelte, angry dragoness, and the only reason it managed anything at all was because the previously futile endeavor had become much easier in the past week. “Pinkie Pie is… the immortal demigoddess of parties. Literally. She probably bleeds either confetti or cotton candy and you don’t want to find out which. Normally, though, she’s harmless.”

“Hrmph,” she grunted and burned the unvitation to ash in a blast of coral-colored fire. “I’ll have to have a talk with her.”

“Riiiiight… You do that,” Spike said, searching for a subject change. Amazingly, he actually came up with one. “Hey, so, if you’re Ember, then is there any relation to Emberstoke the Eternal?”

No one said it was a good subject change.

Before Spike knew what was going on, he was being slammed into the ground with an angry dragoness on top of him in all the wrong ways. “Where did you hear that name?” she all but growled, her teeth inches from his face and smelling faintly of sapphires and frosting.

“Twilight and Luna woke him up something like a week or two ago to ask him about pre-Discordian history!” he blurted out.

Ember was caught unaware, not expecting an answer anything like that, but it wasn’t terribly effective in calming her down as her ire quickly returned. “You—woke—him—up?!”

“I wasn’t even there!” Spike squeaked, pulling back from her. “And what does it matter? Luna said all he did was be a jerk and go back to sleep anyway.”

Slowly, Ember got control of herself and backed off from Spike’s face, still on top of him. “This Twilight and Luna are ponies, right? How the rockslide did a couple of ponies even wake him up?!”

Spike blinked, scooting out from under Ember and sitting up. “They’re kinda…” he gestured vaguely with his hand. “Alicorns. Goddesses. Twilight is the source of all pony magic, and the one who gave Pinkie Pie her power. The way I heard it? She hit him. With a star. A big one. Several times.”

She stared at him, incredulous. “Wait, this is the one with the sparkly hair?”

Spike shrugged. “Yeah?”

“What the muck is wrong with ponies that the powerful ones don’t even get any bigger?!” she screamed in frustration. Standing up, she began to pace, muttering to herself.

Spike took the opportunity to get up. He felt a draft and discovered that he’d left his towel behind. With a shrug, he kicked it into the kitchen and headed back over to his bottle of milk, which he picked up and moved over to the opposite side of the table so he could keep an eye on Ember and the table between them.

Eventually, Ember looked like she’d come to a decision and Spike’s forethought was rewarded as she walked over and slammed her claws on the table. “Look—yes, Emberstoke is my grandfather and I was named after him. You don’t want to meet him. I don’t want to meet him. Dragon Lord Torch is my father. You don’t want to meet him. I don’t want to meet him. There is a pattern here. I came to this damn podunk pony town expressly so I wouldn’t have to deal with giant overbearing rockheads running my life and I will be very displeased if any word of my presence here reaches anyone important—pony or dragon. Is—that—clear?”

“Uh, sure?” That didn’t sound like such a big deal to Spike, and he said so. “This has been weird, but literally the only thing I know about you is what you just said. I don’t even know where you live.”

Ember gave him a look like he was thick, walked back over to the sofa, flopped down into it and said, “I live here now.”

Now, Spike was many things, and yes, noble and virtuous were two of those things, but he was also an adolescent male and Ember was… he didn’t know what she was, and that was part of the problem.

He never stood a chance.

— ✶ —

Twilight couldn’t help but stop outside the ex-library for a moment just to take the sight of it in. As much as the palace Luna had built for her had been both incredibly striking and a touching gift, she did still miss living in the old tree… though maybe part of it was the simplicity of being a small-town live-in librarian that she missed.

Hopefully, her taking a step back from the official side of things would allow her to recapture some of that carefree part of her life. Actually, that gave her an idea… Well, several, as a matter of fact, and they all involved building things, but maybe that wasn’t unexpected when she was feeling homesick. Regardless, she should have the time now, so making them happen shouldn’t be a problem.

Receiving a gentle shoulder-bump from Luna, she put those thoughts on the back burner for now, stepped up to the door and knocked.

The delay in any answer was not unusual. The sheer amount of clattering and scrabbling of claws on wood was unusual and not easily explained. Spike answering the door and not-so-casually leaning on the frame was downright suspicious. None of this mattered to Twilight the moment she saw Spike.

“Oh, uh, hey Twilight. Luna,” he said, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Um, come on in, I guess?”

Twilight did not go in. Instead, her eyes began to water as she walked forward and did her level best to crush him in a hug. “I am so, so sorry for not being here for you.”

Spike just kind of… stood there. “Uhh?”

“She is referring to her perceived abandonment of you when she moved into the palace,” Luna explained with some level of helplessness, as if she’d been over this subject before—which she had.

“But… you and I were the ones who arranged the whole thing,” he said, entirely befuddled. “And she’s come and talked to me here since then? Several times?”

Luna walked up next to Twilight and leaned in to comfort her. “She has been having a difficult time coming to terms with having not been in complete possession of all her faculties since becoming an alicorn,” she said. “She is prone to assuming the worst of her past actions no matter what I tell her, but I would be a hypocrite to judge her.”

Spike looked a little dubious, flagging a little in the press of the mare gripping him like a lifeline. “Could you at least get her to accept her imagined failings inside? Um… I have tea?”

Luna checked on Twilight, who had calmed down a little but still wasn’t letting go of Spike. Shaking her head in amusement, she proceeded to guide her marefriend into the ex-library. “Did you not previously come to the realization that all of your kitchenware was poisoned the last time you invited me to tea? True, I’ve been known to partake in such, but I generally stick to organic types rather than metals, and Twilight would likely prefer something more comforting.”

“Hey, I’m independent and responsible!” Spike objected, acting a little offended. “I’m perfectly capable of buying an extra tea kettle.”

Sooner or later, they did get Twilight inside, sheepishly holding a cup of tea in her hooves.

“Oh jeez, I’m sorry, Spike,” Twilight apologized, bringing her cup up to her mouth and taking a sip. “It just came up last night that I hadn’t really been a part of things back then; just one of a bunch of things that I’ve been feeling bad about, so when I saw you… it wasn’t even entirely about that; you just caught the brunt of the whole mess.”

Spike still looked uncomfortable, scratching the back of his neck and not looking at her. “It’s fine. Feeling left out was the last thing on my mind back then. We were worried about you, you know? You were really out of it when you came back claiming Equestria wanted to eat you.”

Twilight pursed her lips. “Spike, Equestria did want to eat me.”

“It was a network of buried stars which turned out to be the source of dreams that wanted to eat you,” Luna clarified. “And it was not actually capable of doing so. It tried, you’ll recall, and you came out of it intact.”

Twilight gave Luna a faux-glare. “And shall we remember who exactly was the one who woke it up?”

“I have come to terms with my failings,” she declared with a prim, unaffected air. They briefly faux-glared at each other before Luna broke into a smile, which in turn got a chuckle out of Twilight. Gradually, Luna’s expression became melancholy as she looked at Twilight. “I am glad that it is something that we can joke and laugh about now.”

“Well,” Twilight said, turning away with a bit of a blush. “I got over that part of it… not quite quickly, but before things really started going downhill and getting complicated. That one night when I finally told you what was going on is one of the few good memories we managed to make in the palace before it was destroyed.”

“It was, at that,” Luna said, wrapping a wing around Twilight’s back in order to pull her closer.

“Aaand this is why I’m glad I’m no longer your assistant,” Spike said, pointedly not looking at the two adults in the room.

Twilight started, self-consciously scooting away from Luna with burning cheeks. “Sorry,” she said, chewing at her lip in indecision. “Actually, Spike… would you like to be my number-one assistant again?”

Spike gave her a ‘what did I just say?’ look.

“No, really—hear me out,” she said earnestly, shuffling in place. “I… quit is a bit of an understatement since I made a rather spectacular fool of myself while doing so, but it’s accurate enough. The thing is, I might have been less than completely rational at the time, but even looking back at the whole thing now, I think I did have a point. The position they tried to put me in wasn’t doing me or anypony else any favors, and it wasn’t healthy, so… I’m not going back. That means that pretty soon now…” Twilight gave a heartfelt look at her marefriend. “Luna’s going to be handling most of the work of running Equestria, while I’ll be—”

“—Spending her money?” Spike interrupted with a smirk.

“Wha—no!” Twilight shouted, indignant and puffing out her cheeks. “I mean, technically yes, but no! I’m going to be helping out with building the new palace, the new library and a few other things I have ideas for, and I could use the help.”

Spike looked oddly nervous, glancing over his shoulder at nothing Twilight could see. “I—I dunno… I’ve only just recently started working for the mayor; it would be pretty rude to just up and leave suddenly.”

The mood in the room plummeted. “It would only be fair," Twilight said, crossing her arms and producing a petulant pout. Both Spike and Luna wilted further at that, and she felt a bit guilty for it. None of them had been particularly fond of the mayor since she’d fired Twilight from her position as the town librarian without warning.

Spike was still hesitant, though. “I’m not sure, Twi… I always liked being your assistant, but I also like getting paid and being able to take care of myself.”

Twilight blinked, unbothered. “If that’s what you want.”

Spike looked shocked. “What, just like that?”

“All you had to do was ask,” she said, then reconsidered. “Well, any time since coming to Ponyville, probably. You haven’t always been quite so responsible, though I probably should have been giving you something for everything you did for me regardless…”

Spike found himself glancing over his shoulder again, but cut the action short and steeled himself. “Okay, yeah, I’d like that, Twi.”

“Great!” she said, clapping her hooves together in happiness. “Though, even with everything I just said, I am going to be trying to take it easy once in a while, so I might let Luna borrow you from time to time if that’s okay?”

That was fine with Spike and the three of them talked a while about the specifics of the situation. In particular, Luna had managed to secure the job of informing the mayor. Twilight thought that maybe her marefriend would enjoy it a little too much, but she was staying out of it herself and while Spike was showing his independence, it wasn’t something he wanted to do either.

Once they’d covered everything, Twilight was all prepared to get on with her day when Luna had to remind her that they’d actually come here for another reason.

“Oh, right,” she said, sitting back down. “So, you probably already know since you didn’t come, but last night, Pinkie Pie held a welcome party for three dragons.”

“Yeah,” he said, motioning to the trash can. “I got an unvitation.”

“An unvitation?” Twilight asked, walking over and picking it out of the trash to take a look. Sure enough, it was exactly what it sounded like. “…Really?”

“The pink one does on occasion remind me not too subtly of Discord,” Luna mused. “Perfectly unpredictable until you count on her being predictably unpredictable.”

“Is it bad I kinda hope this isn’t a one-time thing?” Twilight asked, a little shy of speaking poorly of her friend. “As much as I like Pinkie Pie and her parties, it wouldn’t hurt for her to apply a little more forethought and, well, planning to her party planning.”

“Regardless,” Luna cut in, getting the subject back on track. “Pinkie Pie was likely correct to assume you would not have enjoyed the company, as the dragons in attendance were evasive and less than helpful on the subject of their presence.”

Spike mumbled something under his breath that nopony else caught, though Twilight certainly noticed.

“We have some ideas,” Twilight said, taking over. “But they’re hard to substantiate, so we thought we’d ask you.”

He seemed to be getting increasingly uneasy. “Uh… I have no idea why any dragon would want to come to Equestria in particular,” he hedged. “I don’t really know much about them?”

“Oh, no, not like that,” she explained, waving her hoof in dismissal. “We were actually suspecting that something might be drawing them here.”

“Specifically, we are blaming my sister,” Luna clarified, attracting Twilight’s ire.

“Luna!” she huffed. “You’re not supposed to tell him that; it contaminates the result!”

It only took her a moment to understand. “…Ah,” she said, slightly chastened. “Oops?”

Twilight ended up rolling her eyes before she got back to Spike. “Anyway, yes; we suspect Celestia has something to do with it. Have you noticed anything…?”

Spike gave it all due thought, but in the end he just had to shrug. “Not really? I mean, if you’re saying I should be treating her like some, uh, dragon lord that I’m drawn to serve, then I probably wouldn’t notice. I already live here, I already respected Celestia a bunch… and I don’t think I’m staring up at the sky in a daze any more than every single other creature on Equus ever since she decided she liked it enough to put a ring on it.”

— ✶ —

“Well, that was helpful,” Luna said in her best deadpan voice, echoing Twilight from the previous night.

Twilight took on a front of mock offense. “Speak for yourself! I got myself an assistant, thank you very much. Actually, I got us an assistant.”

“Fair enough,” Luna said, relaxing into an easy, pleased smile. “No matter the outcome of our query, I can tell that helped you in particular more than could have been expected.”

Twilight walked closer to Luna and gently nuzzled her side. “…Yeah.”

“Did we err in separating the two of you?” Luna asked, quietly sullen. “In the past half hour, you have been more bright and free than I have seen you in the past week combined.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, considering Luna’s words. “…No,” she finally said. “It wouldn’t have been fair to drag him around as a third wheel when we were spending all of our time together and it’s probably for the best that he wasn’t with me for the rest. Those weren’t the times when I was at my best.”

“Do you not think he would have been a stabilizing influence?” Luna asked.

Twilight hesitated. “Maybe,” she admitted. “But we can’t go there and it’s equally likely I could have said or done something unforgivable. It… worked out in the end—at least for him—and speaking of which…” Twilight glanced back in the direction of the ex-library with a half smile. “Do you think we’re well out of earshot?”

Luna glanced back as well. “Well enough,” she judged, curious as to why Twilight had asked.

In place of an answer, a sharp, keening squeal shattered the silence. “Eee! I can’t believe it! My little Spike has a girlfriend!”

“…What.”

— ✒ —

No sooner had Twilight and Luna left than Ember had come back downstairs and gravitated to the couch again. Spike was more than a little conflicted about that. He liked to think that he was savvy enough that he wouldn’t fall into the same kind of pointless drama that always made up the bulk of stories in books and comics, but, well, exhibit A.

The thing was, there were two different drama avoidance imperatives in play and they were at odds with each other. On the one hand, there was obviously the fact that having some dragon hanging out in his house hiding from the world and threatening him to stay silent was, obviously just a recipe for problems… but on the other, he’d never forgive himself if he ended up in the role of the put-upon normal guy who kept complaining about having his life turned on its head by a hot girl on his sofa.

“So, those two milksops are supposed to be ‘goddesses,’ huh?” Ember asked. “What do they actually do, again?”

Spike could only shake his head at the bravado on display; wasn’t he supposed to be the thuggish male? “One of them is the big rock in the sky; the other one is all the little burny bits,” he said with raw sarcasm.

“I know what the moon and stars are,” she snapped. “What do you mean they are those things? They raise and set them like your other pony princess does the sun?”

Spike pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “It’s literal. Their pony bodies are just little bits of them manifested on Equus so they can interact with the rest of the world.”

Ember actually turned to look at him. “Wait, really? So if you gut one of them…?”

“Pointless,” he told her, doing his best not to wince at the image. It was true enough, and he wasn’t about to tell some random dragon that an alicorn’s ability to manifest was limited by the time of day.

“Beheaded them?” Ember prompted, and this time the reaction Spike had to suppress was annoyance.

“Also pointless,” he told her again.

“Burned entirely to ash?” she continued.

“Still pointless,” he said, now only half annoyed and half curious how long she would keep at it if he let her. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the patience just at the moment. “They can literally demanifest and not leave a body behind. Unless you can fly up into the sky and punch the moon, there’s nothing you can do to them, and even if you could, I still wouldn’t recommend it since the last alicorn to try that got smeared across the night sky.”

“Huh,” Ember said, just staring ahead. “A giant rock. That makes way more sense; you should have just said that.”

Spike groaned.

This was his life now.

Why.

Author's Note

The cutie marks in the cover are care of adamlhumphreys and credited here.

Chapter 8

— ✶ —

Twilight wanted to give herself a good slap to get her mind back on track. She kept getting distracted, all nervous and jittery after spending the previous night practicing her… dream magic? Dream magic was a good, neutral name for it with no connection to Discord. The point had been for her to get used to it so that it wouldn’t cause her any problems; now, though, in the light of day, she still couldn’t shed the feeling that she was going to just reflexively do something with it out of the blue and then everypony would know.

A look around the virtually empty, unfinished tower gave her the impression that the world was rolling its eyes at her, as Spike was the only other person present.

Okay, well, Spike would know.

Spike was what actually made her want to slap some sense into herself; he was just as jumpy as she was, clearly having picked up on her mood. They hadn’t even flown here since she still hadn’t had a chance to look up a sticking spell, so it wasn’t as if there was another reason that he’d be nervous; all they were doing was planning out where in Applejack’s unfinished extension to store some of the furniture and equipment recovered from the ruined palace and marking down some of the smaller things to be moved to Rainbow’s since hers was harder to get to with the large objects.

She had to get ahold of herself. There had already been several instances where Spike had had to repeat himself several times to get her attention, and she’d had to do the same to get his attention while he was no doubt lost in thought wondering what she could possibly be worried about in some circular… nervousness feedback loop.

Unfortunately, there was only one real way that Twilight could think of to calm her nerves and it was the same logic that had gotten her into this mess in the first place. It wasn’t helping anything not knowing if she was a hair’s breadth from causing an incident; she had to know.

If she was being honest with herself—which she wasn’t—the things she could do in dreams weren’t even inherently as awful as she’d first assumed. Yes, puns were somehow one of the avenues of power that could be exploited, but it was more about… connections. Puns worked because they formed an abstract connection between two concepts, but they were hardly the be-all-end-all of dream logic. Animating things to do what they were intended to do, transposing traits from one thing onto another and simply conjuring things from thin air were all child’s play in dreams, so long as you had the right mindset.

Cultivating that mindset, on the other hoof… well, it was no wonder that Discord was the way he was if that sort of thinking was how he’d managed to suffer through the trauma, loss and loneliness of the end of the world. Twilight had had none of that to deal with and she still felt a little wobbly on her hooves, like the world today wasn’t quite the same as it had been yesterday.

Twilight stopped what she was doing and frowned at that thought.

She was going to have to tell Luna about this just in case it started to get the better of her, wasn’t she? Not that she had intended to keep it a secret, she just… hadn’t intended to actually say anything about it just yet. She knew that Luna would be accepting and even interested, but it was also a little weird, if not also questionable to be romping around in other ponies’ dreams.

Well, technically, they were her dreams, but she was dreaming them about other ponies, so, like with the stars inside each pony that were technically hers, part of what they had become very much wasn’t. That was why the issue of her potential archive was such a touchy one and it was why she’d tried to do most of her fooling around in nightmares doing what she could to ‘fix’ them, but nightmares were no less personal and she felt distinctly uncomfortable injecting humor into serious situations.

It went beyond simple matters of privacy, too; she also hadn’t actually found any particular way to identify nightmares other than their forms shifting fitfully in the Desert of Dreams, which had led to some very awkward situations when the tossing and turning turned out to be a sign of an entirely different kind of heightened emotions. The only reason she hadn’t completely sworn off the entire practice was the fact that it was practice, which she desperately needed, and the fact that the whole thing was almost entirely anonymous. In fact, if she stayed away from the dreams of ponies and dragons, there was virtually no chance that she could even run into anypony she knew, and visiting the dreams of all the other races could actually be quite fascinating if she could get over her various hangups.

“—ight? Twilight!”

Twilight blinked, balking away from the claw being waved in her face and flushed at being caught out again. “Sorry, Spike, what were you saying?”

“I said—I, uh—” Spike swallowed, his eyes flitting about nervously like he was looking for a way out of saying what he’d already committed to. “I could actually really use one of those desks and I was wondering if…?”

Twilight glanced over at the desks in question. They were heavy oak office desks and had been really nice, once, before a palace had fallen on them. The fact that they were still salvageable at all was a testament to how well they were built, but… “Are you sure, Spike? They’re pretty banged up and we’ll probably just auction off the lot or even have them broken down for firewood like the rest. I can just have them allocate one for you when the replacements come in instead?”

Spike shook his head rapidly. “No—no! One of these is fine—I mean, I want one of these. The damage, uhh, adds character, and you know it’s just going to get scratched up by my claws eventually anyway.”

Twilight tsked and shook her head. “Why am I not surprised you’ve gone back to scratching up the furniture without me there?” she asked, rolling her eyes at his destructive habits. “Alright then, mark down whichever set of moderately abused fine oak scratching posts you want.”

Spike glanced back at her as if to make sure, then jogged off to check them all out. His search quickly took him into the next room over, which gave her an idea.

“You know, Spike… I wasn’t going to say anything, but your place really does look pretty empty. If you see anything else that you’d like, just mark it all down and I’ll have the salvage workers take it over there at the end of the day. Nobody’s going to miss any of it.”

Twilight cringed at the clatter of several chairs falling over in the next room where Spike had wandered off to. She felt bad for intentionally distracting him, but he really did need some things and she needed a minute or two alone just to prove to herself that her dream magic wasn’t going to run amok on her.

— ✒ —

Spike looked up at the large, wooden crate that dominated the room. He looked down at his clipboard. He looked at the crate, its only identifying mark being a ten-digit lot number. He looked at his clipboard, full of nearly identical ten digit lot numbers. He glanced back at the door to the room Twilight was in. She seemed to be staying put.

Did he dare?

It might have seemed like a no-brainer—a gift from Celestia to solve all his problems—but aside from it actually being a gift from Twilight, it wasn’t as simple as it seemed. There’d be a record, for one, and while it might actually put him legally in the clear… the betrayal of trust might actually be worse.

Did he dare?

There was just no time to consider all the ways that it could go wrong. Spike didn’t think he was the type to agonize over problems, but these last few days had ratcheted up his uncertainty and paranoia. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it was now or never.

Did he dare?

No, he didn’t dare…

…but he did it anyway.

— ✶ —

Twilight quietly ducked out of the room, putting some extra space between her and Spike just in case she was actually able to do anything. She hoped it wouldn’t be needed, but she didn’t have time to worry about that.

She tried to calm herself as quickly as possible—a paradoxical attempt if ever there was one—and widened her stance, preparing herself to do… something. Set a broom to sweep up the place, maybe? That would be relatively simple, but it was something she could do with unicorn magic and a classic one for apprentices to let get out of hoof. Instead… Instead, she decided to go in the direction of her other recent interests and try to reshape the crystal.

She pictured the walls gaining a relief of a nature scene in her mind and… nothing happened.

Well, obviously not. She hadn’t used any magic, had she? She was tempted to leave it at that and rest secure in the knowledge that she hadn’t opened some pandora’s box by practicing dream magic… but her confidence came out wilted from the start. It hadn’t been a proper attempt, had it? In dreams, things just happened with the slightest flex of her will; normally she’d write it it all off as a purely mental exercise since it was ostensibly happening inside her head, but this wasn’t happening inside her head and she knew that Discord had clearly bridged that gap. There had to be more to it.

The answer was magic, obviously—and not just because magic was a basic requirement for doing magic.

That had sounded less tautological in her head.

In any case, she hadn’t thought about it at the time, but the entire Desert of Dreams had been saturated with her magic and she supposed that the dreams themselves must have been, too. Could it be that simple?

If Discord could figure it out while living in a cave after the end of the world knowing nothing more about magic than scraps and hearsay, it probably was that simple.

Derision for her completely unrelated predecessor in dream magic aside, she probably only had time for one more try before Spike came looking for her, so she’d have to hurry. Utilizing magic after it had been cast into the world wasn’t an entirely alien concept; it was at the heart of how teleportation worked, after all, so she should be able to make this quick. Taking one quick glance in the next room to make sure Spike wasn’t—

“Twilight, are you—”

“Yaaaiiieee!” Twilight yelped, jumping twice her height into the air, her heart lodged firmly in her throat.

Spike just stood there holding the clipboard and blinking at her. “…You okay?”

“Yes,” she insisted, alternatively gasping and huffing in turn. “Tartarus… Spike… don’t… do… that… to… me…”

“Uhh, sorry?” he apologized, sort of. “You disappeared on me. Anyway, I made a list, do you want to sign it now, or…?”

Twilight was still bent over, recovering from the scare that Spike had given her and shook her head mutely. “Just sign it for me like you always do, Spike,” she said, waving him off with a hoof. Tartarus; she guessed she’d have to be happy with what little she’d had a chance to do, for now. To that end, she did her best to focus on Spike.

Spike glanced down at the clipboard with some concern. “Are you sure?” he asked uncertainly. “It’d look kinda bad if somepony noticed.”

Twilight let a snort of laughter escape as she stood back up. “I’m pretty sure that the only way anypony would notice something amiss is if I actually signed it for once,” she said ruffling the spines on the top of his head and heading back out into the main room of the first floor.

Spike squirmed under Twilight’s ruffling and then had to run to catch up to her while straightening out his spines. “There’s no way that’s actually true. You have to have signed for something recently. You have a bank account here in Ponyville, don’t you? I didn’t set that up for you.”

Twilight stopped in place and turned away from Spike, abashed. “I… might have used a spell to copy my signature off of a Quills & Sofas order form for that,” she admitted.

Spike shot her a queer, disbelieving look. “Forget about me—are you sure you should be living on your own?”

— ✶ —

It wasn’t long after Spike had interrupted Twilight’s dream magic experimentation that the salvage workers arrived with the load of crates the two of them had been planning out the space for. The two of them stayed a short while to see things started, but once it was clear that everything was in hoof, it was off to the next item on the checklist—something about water permits that didn’t seem too urgent.

Twilight looked at the checklist and frowned. After a moment of consideration, she had Spike move checking in on Fluttershy up to the top of the list. Some things would just never get done if she didn’t make them a priority and she had a bad feeling about how Fluttershy was handling things.

Speaking of priorities, Twilight thought as she made her way out to the edge of town on hoof, Spike’s interruption had arguably been a better test of any hair-trigger powers she might have than any intentional use would have been, but she still wanted to run her tests sooner rather than later.

Twilight chewed at her bottom lip as she gave some thought to just trying something subtle out in the open. It went against every instinct she had, but even if it actually worked and somepony saw it, there shouldn’t be any sign that it had been her.

No, they’d just think it was Discord, which would be awkward since he hadn’t left a body; just a suspiciously large pile of ash that could have come from the sudden and unexpected disintegration of any old chaos god off the street.

Yeah, that would go over well.

Okay, so maybe her anxiousness was getting the better of her. She would just have to resist experimenting until she had another moment to herself.

If it was connected to how teleportation worked, though… that would make an alarming amount of sense for something that made so little.

Teleportation was in an odd situation as far as spells went. It was a spell like any other, and one that any unicorn could learn if they were dedicated enough, but it didn’t involve any manipulation of space no matter how fascinating that would be. It was movement through magic, and that quality brought with it a few small quirks. First and foremost was the fact that, for your magic to take you somewhere, your magic had to go—or already be—there.

For most users of the spell, this was an academic curiosity and nothing more. Simply through the act of casting the spell, the caster’s magic would reach out to the destination to carry them there. There was no magical shot or bolt to signal this part of the spell because it wasn’t actually part of the spell. Instead, it was just an amorphous wave caused by brute-forcing the spell and generally went unnoticed and undetected. If you wanted to calculate the relative range and effort of the spell, however, characterizing this surge of magic was of the utmost importance.

For some reason, Spike always seemed to disagree about that whenever the subject came up, as did anypony else lucky enough to get a chance to hear her lecture on the subject.

The point was that the requirement for the caster’s magic to be at the destination of a teleport was a loose one that could be fulfilled in a number of ways, most of them easier than the brute force reaction that happened as part of the teleportation spell. While it wasn’t possible to regain control of magic after letting go of it, the casting of spells, deliberate overflow and even breathing did spread magic out into the environment that, while otherwise useless, made teleporting around said environment vastly easier.

So, to sum it up, most unicorns who could teleport knew that it took less out of them to do so around familiar areas; very few of them actually understood why and even fewer cared when she tried to tell them about it.

You know what? Twilight hoped that teleportation was the secret to manipulating reality like it was taffy. Everypony who always rolled her eyes at her lectures would deserve it.

Wait, no, that didn’t make any sense because she didn’t want to manipulate reality like taffy; she just wanted to make sure she wouldn’t do it by accident.

That was her story and she was sticking to it.

If only she could get a chance to actually prove her theory.

— ✶ —

In what could be called a modern-day miracle, Fluttershy was out tending to her small vegetable garden when Twilight and Spike arrived. There was no emergency going on, no drama and not even a huge orchard to search. They just walked up to the pleasantly smiling mare, greeted her and were greeted in return.

It was nice.

Twilight had previously commented to herself that Applejack had seemed to be the least outwardly-affected pony of her demigoddesses and Rarity the one who had best acclimated, but just standing here looking at Fluttershy going about her business with the help of her animals as always, she could easily believe that Fluttershy had them both beat.

A small part of her objected on the grounds that Fluttershy spreading herself out over her animals was her physical change—and a pretty significant one, too—except that she didn’t even seem to be controlling them… much. Every once in a while, they’d turn yellow as she directed their eyes to something or showed them how the work was done, but it was only a guiding hoof here and there and none of them seemed to mind in the slightest.

“So, how did it go with Rainbow Dash, yesterday?” Twilight asked once obligatory hellos had been exchanged, hopefully adding, “I don’t suppose she’s bounced back yet?”

“Oh, well…” Fluttershy seemed to be trying to decide what to tell Twilight or how to explain something unpleasant, but her actual response was fairly bland. “Pinkie Pie took her to Las Pegasus to party it off. It went alright, I guess?”

Twilight let out a breath that she’d been holding and decided to go for broke. “She’s not too angry at me, I hope?”

Again with the hesitation, then it all came out at once. “You came up, but I don’t think she’s angry at you. Not really. That’s why I didn’t want her to see you. I’m—um—sorry for shooing you off, by the way. I was worried she might say something mean that she didn’t mean. For what it’s worth, I think that what you said to Spitfire was exactly the right amount to say, and—”

“Woah, woah, slow down, Fluttershy,” Twilight interrupted, taking a step back from the uncharacteristic chatter. “Conversations involve two people.”

Fluttershy flushed and hid behind her mane. “Oh… sorry… I just see…” She involuntarily grimaced. “…So much through the animals and haven’t had a chance to actually talk to anypony.”

Twilight winced in sympathy and concern. She… really wasn’t the right pony to talk to someone about getting out more, but the worrying part was what had been implied in that grimace. “I can see anything my starlight touches, but I can focus on anything from an area down to a single pony. Can’t you… not see so much?”

“Oh. Um.” Fluttershy pawed at the ground with her hoof, but her response had no such hesitance or uncertainty. “No.”

Twilight’s heart sank, her horror muted only by the foreshadowing from Fluttershy’s earlier grimace. “You see… everything? Everywhere?”

“Oh.” Fluttershy’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “No. It’s not quite that bad. I can focus on one area, just not one or two animals.”

“Oh, good,” Twilight said, letting out a sigh of relief. “I was worried there for a second. Still, it must be hard, experiencing all that, even if it’s just animals in your immediate vicinity.”

Fluttershy cocked her head in a somewhat birdlike manner. “My immediate vicinity?” she questioned, bemused, before the misunderstanding became clear. “Oh, no. It’s… hrm… About the distance from here, through Whitetail Woods to the far side of the Everfree crater… twice over?”

Twilight had no words.

Spike wasn’t nearly so limited, but he only used one. “Damn.”

“Spike!” Twilight scolded, resisting the urge to rap him on the head like she would Rainbow Dash. “Don’t be insensitive!”

Spike spread his arms in a melodramatic shrug. “I’m just saying—”

“Well, don’t!” she scolded him with a little too much sharpness.

Fluttershy set her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, getting her attention. “It’s fine, Twilight. I’ve… gotten used to it.”

“Gotten used to it?” Twilight asked incredulously, a horrible feeling rising up inside of her that she couldn’t stop. “You shouldn’t have had to—”

“Really, it’s… fine,” Fluttershy tried to reassure her, but failing completely.

Spike saw what was coming and stepped back just as Twilight teared up and latched onto her friend. “I’m—I’m so sorry!”

“Not again…”

— ✶ —

Twilight managed to maintain at least a little of her dignity by not actually breaking out in ugly crying like she had with Spike, but it had been a near thing and she still wasn’t letting go.

Fluttershy gave Twilight a pained, but wistful smile as she just stood there letting Twilight squeeze her to death. In an entirely unrelated coincidence, one of the nearby racoons turned yellow and continued working on the garden. “It’s really not that bad,” Fluttershy insisted, then frowned and had to correct herself. “At least, it wasn’t until the dragons showed up, anyway.”

Twilight had to loosen her grip on Fluttershy in order to look at her. “What do the dragons have to do with it?”

“Well, it’s… um… easier when one of my animals is responsible for preying on another,” she explained, taking a hesitant step back away from Twilight. “When it’s a griffon or dragon, it’s… worse. It can be a shock, actually, when there’s no warning.”

“Preying on…” It took Twilight a moment for the implications to click in her head and when they did, all the color drained out of her face and Fluttershy’s attempts to back away proved futile. “They… They…!”

They were eating her. Hunting her—catching her—killing her and eating her! Twilight couldn’t put her renewed horror into words. She hadn’t just burdened Fluttershy with the poisoned chalice of omniscience, she’d made her suffer. She’d doomed her to constant, unending torture.

What had she done?

Fluttershy let out a squeak as Twilight redoubled her effort to crush all the air out of Fluttershy’s lungs, only to pull in a long gasp of air as Twilight realized what she was doing and yanked herself away from the friend she was hurting. What could she do about this? How could she—“The dragons! I’ll—”

“Do what?” Spike asked, rolling his eyes. “Make them vegetarians?”

“They’re dragons! They can live on rocks!” Twilight shouted back before she realized what she was saying and who she was saying it to. “I mean—I—I didn’t mean—if you ever wanted meat all you had to do was say something and—”

Thankfully, before she could dig herself any deeper or fit any more hooves in her mouth, Fluttershy regained her composure from the attempted strangulation and interrupted, her hoof finding its way back to Twilight’s shoulder. “Um, please don’t blame them, Twilight. It’s just something that happens in nature.”

Twilight seemed to deflate. She’d come here to see how Fluttershy was doing and help her if she could, but now she seemed to be the pony who needed consoling. Breathe in—breathe out—think productively. Miraculously, something came to her. “Fluttershy, you’re still flesh and blood in spite of being immortal, right?”

Fluttershy looked perplexed, but agreed. “Um, Yes?”

“As in, a flesh and blood pony, not three beavers standing on each others’ shoulders under a trenchcoat?” Twilight clarified, this being a vital and important distinction for the idea that had struck her like a wagon in the night.

That seemed to stump Fluttershy for a moment. “…Why would I be beavers?” she asked. “Beavers are fine, but I’m really much more of a squirrel, um, if you have to say something like that, I mean.”

Twilight was getting impatient and a little exasperated. “Are you forty-six squirrels?”

“No?” Fluttershy answered tentatively. “At least, I don’t think so? …And do three beavers really equal forty-six squirrels?”

That seemed good enough for Twilight and she took a breath to prepare herself. “Fluttershy, I… I think… I think if I take back your stars—all of them—just temporarily—I think you’ll go back to normal. Do… you want me to?”

“Oh.” Fluttershy calmly shook her head. “That’s really not necessary, Twilight.”

“What? Why?” Twilight asked, as distraught as if she was the one it was happening to. “You’re the only one I think I could do it safely to and you’re having a horrible time of it!”

Fluttershy was notably not distraught, and she said so. “I’m really not…”

“Dragons are eating you!” Twilight vehemently insisted. “Right now! It’s like when Equestria wanted to eat me—”

“You thought Equestria wanted to eat you,” Spike interrupted to correct.

“—like when I thought Equestria wanted to eat me,” Twilight allowed, continuing to work herself up without acknowledging the correction. “But worse because it’s actually happening! You’re being eaten! By dragons!”

“And I’ve gotten over it,” Fluttershy reminded her.

“You’re terrified of dragons!” Twilight argued, raising her voice to a screeching that scared several flocks of birds away.

Fluttershy’s ears flattened at Twilight’s shouting. “They’re less scary from the inside,” she said, rolling her eyes.

She.

Rolled.

Her.

Eyes.

Twilight stared at Fluttershy as if she’d never seen her before. “You’re messing with me.”

Fluttershy flushed and nervously measured a small space in front of her between her hooves. “Um… just a little bit, but, um, they are warm and cuddly on the inside in a way, so actually… no?”

Twilight could hardly believe it. “Who are you and what have you done with Fluttershy?” she asked, only mostly joking.

Fluttershy shrank at being caught out. “You, um, have to admit that you were asking for it just a teensy bit, Twilight. I did answer you the first two times.”

Twilight considered the last few things she’d said and suddenly found new interest in the ground at her hooves. “I just can’t believe… Fluttershy… why? Why would you want to stay like this when it means you have to experience all the… the pain and death of every animal in the greater Ponyville area?”

Fluttershy’s response had Twilight thunderstruck. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Twilight all but whimpered. “I feel like that should be obvious. It’s pain! And death! I don’t get up in the morning and shamble to the pain and death machine for my rejuvenating infusion of pain and death to wake me up!”

“That’s what life is, Twilight,” Fluttershy told her, sounding almost motherly as she did so. “Animals live and they die. When I take care of an adorable little mousie… I know that they’ll only be around for a year at most… and sometimes it’s much less. Most of the time, they’ll just be gone one day and I won’t even know if they went off to start a family or to feed one. Now I know—and I can be there for them when it happens. Why wouldn’t I want that?”

Twilight was flummoxed. “Wait, you don’t save them, even from each other?” she asked, though soon felt foolish for it, her shoulders slumping. “I guess you can’t, or they’d starve…”

“Actually, I could,” Fluttershy said, lamentably dropping her head. “I could take control of every single animal in my range and they would never need to eat, sleep, age or do anything at all. I could keep them in their burrows where they’re safe and bring them out for tea parties… but I hope that if I did that then somepony would stop me, because that isn’t living… It’s not even life.”

That sounded horrible, but Twilight didn’t exactly like the alternative, either.

This time, it was Fluttershy that hugged Twilight. “Twilight… I think you did the right thing, making us all immortal.”

“What?” Twilight blurted, wishing she could back off and look at Fluttershy for some clue about what she meant but not actually daring to force the issue. “What does that even have to do with this?”

“I don’t mind, of course,” Fluttershy continued past Twilight’s confusion. “I was always going to live longer than most of my animals, and I don’t expect Mr. Tortoise to spend his entire life with me either.”

Twilight inwardly squirmed, but Fluttershy wasn’t letting go and she eventually gave up at just let the soft-spoken demigoddess hug her. “Okay? Great?”

“That’s why I wonder.” Fluttershy paused, her body tensing just slightly. “Has anypony ever told you that you’re… maybe just a tiny bit condescending?”

“What?”’ That wasn’t something Twilight had been expecting to hear from Fluttershy and this time she found herself being let go so the two of them could look at each other. “What do you mean?”

“Growing up with Princess Celestia and Spike, you’ve always wanted to be immortal,” she said. “It gives you a unique perspective, and I understand that. Really, I do.”

Spike looked uncomfortable at being mentioned, but Twilight was still just trying to figure out where Fluttershy was going with this.

“But… Everypony has stars,” Fluttershy reminded her. “If you had to share their experiences all the time like I do in exchange for that immortality… you’d still do it, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be worth it—for love—for friendship—for being able to live without fear of what might happen?”

“I—”

“I… like what I am, Twilight,” Fluttershy finally asserted. “I appreciate what you’ve given me. It may not be easy, but it’s worth it, and it makes me sad that you don’t think that I can handle the same things you can and make the same sacrifices you would if you were in my situation.”

“Fluttershy, I—I’m not—” Twilight stammered, trying to get the words together to explain that there was a significant misunderstanding going on. “I—that would be… Fluttershy, I don’t know if I could do that,” she admitted. “It would be a nightmare. I don’t think I could. Not even for immortality.”

Fluttershy blinked at her. “…Oh.”

— ✶ —

Fluttershy allowed herself to be dragged out of her tar pit of awkwardness and off to lunch, though the sentiment was a little lacking with now two yellow racoons directing the other animals and planting seeds in the garden that they were leaving behind. As far as Twilight was concerned, though, that was fine. She apparently couldn’t expect to have Fluttershy’s undivided attention any more and the real point was to get Fluttershy’s pony body out in public where she could actually talk to ponies.

…And maybe forget that that entire conversation had ever happened.

It went both better and worse than Twilight could ever have expected. As convenient as it would otherwise have been, Ponyville had not, as it so happened, changed entirely in the space of Twilight’s stop over at Fluttershy’s house, and thus, there were still dragons all over the place.

Twilight kept an eye on Fluttershy, but she didn’t even seem to notice. In fact, her almost unnatural serenity reminded Twilight of none other than Celestia, it was that complete. Twilight would almost call it a breakthrough for the traditionally timorous mare if it hadn’t come at the cost of what Twilight was still sure had been a horrifyingly traumatic experience.

Oh, and the fact that her seeming confidence crumpled completely when faced with the prospect of actually talking to somepony or somedragon new, so it was only half of a miraculous breakthrough at best. Squeezing past two adult dragons having it out on the street? Not a peep from her. Ordering lunch from an awkward teenager at the hay burger shack? Spike had had to do it for her. The teenager hadn’t even been a dragon; just a colt with particularly bad acne… though, admittedly, the two were more similar than it would have been polite to mention.

Yeesh.

“Have you considered wind manipulation?” Twilight asked out of the blue as she went about squirting a big dollop of ketchup beside her hay fries.

Fluttershy meeped and began to cough, heaving nearly inhaled a hay fry in surprise. Some distress and a glass of water later, her actual response was no more enlightened. “For—” Cough. “For what?”

“Well, you don’t want to go back to how you were and I can’t physically drag you into town every day,” Twilight explained, pausing to dip, chew and swallow a few fries. “So I was trying to figure out ways that you could communicate when you’re, uh, borrowing the animals?

“My first thought was that we could all learn Equestrian Sign Language, but that would only be us and not very practical. Next, I considered cloud writing, but if you have access to your pegasus magic, I think the power and control you have now should be good enough to create speech with direct wind manipulation. The fact that you sing so well should help, since it means you have practice with your voice—or it might even be your magic helping you in the first place, which is even better!”

Fluttershy shrank down in her seat. “I—I don’t know, Twilight. That sounds awfully complicated… and awkward. I can’t even imagine my voice coming from a big old moose or a tiny little squirrel and I’ve listened to Rainbow Dash enough to know that visualization is important in that sort of thing.”

“Oh, well…” Twilight’s mood sank so fast, she managed to give herself a face full of ketchup and greasy paper as her head dropped down onto the table. She stayed that way for a moment, then busied herself cleaning herself up with napkins and magic. “Figures she’d be another one,” she grumbled under her breath, but Fluttershy was more than used to interpreting the tiniest of noises.

“Another what?” Fluttershy asked innocently, not even realizing that Twilight’s grumbling hadn’t been meant for her ears.

Twilight’s first instinct was to clam up, but why? Fluttershy was her friend and it wasn’t like this was any big secret, so instead she let out a sigh and explained. “It’s just… I know you girls didn’t ask for this and you’re all making the best of it. Some of you are even thriving, I guess… but I just feel like you could be doing so much more with it—broaden your horizons—come up with something new—do something you wouldn’t have ever thought you could do…

“You’re probably… not the pony I should be saying this to,” she admitted. “You’ve actually embraced it—um, in your own way—but even so, you’re still just… doing what you do—and I know that’s not a fair complaint, but it’s how I feel. I don’t have enough time to explore all the options I have right now, so seeing you all just dealing with things as they come is a little frustrating.”

Fluttershy frowned. “Twilight… I don’t like repeating myself, especially over this, but… we aren’t you. Your cutie mark is magic, so of course you want to do everything there is to do with it, but that’s not who we are. We all have our own strengths, and just because they’re different doesn’t mean they’re any less.”

Twilight looked askance at the mare across the table from her. “Fluttershy, my cutie mark—my talent—isn’t magic.”

“Um, yes it is?” Fluttershy said, hiding behind a prodigiously large cup of soda that might have been ordered for just that purpose.

Twilight shook her head. “I grew up thinking it was, but it’s just the stars—just like Luna’s is the moon and Celestia’s is—the Celestia’s are—umm—well…” She gestured vaguely skyward. “You get the point.”

“That… still proves my point, doesn’t it?” Fluttershy asked, gaining a little more confidence in what she was saying. “If you’ve done all that without even a cutie mark in it, that’s still just who you are.”

“Well… maybe…” Twilight said, faltering. “I did say it wasn’t a fair complaint, but you might be giving me too much credit. I don’t have a cutie mark in magic, but I do have something that’s just as good.”

“What’s that?”

“Power,” Twilight said, clapping her hooves on the table and leaning forward. Belatedly, she was glad Rainbow Dash wasn’t there, because she probably would have gotten jumped for resembling a Daring Do villain just then. “There’s a saying—quality over quantity, but quantity has a quality all of its own—and it’s true with magic, too.

“The more power you have, the more flexible you are—the more you can do with it. You girls are still ponies, so you’re still limited to unicorn, pegasus or earth pony magic, respectively, but other than that sort of out-of-context problem, you can all do almost anything I can. Sure, I grew up with power and misconceptions about that power and that definitely colored my outlook, but you’re orders of magnitude more powerful than I was growing up and… It’s just frustrating, especially when you have problems that you could solve if you just tried.”

Fluttershy… Twilight wished she could say that Fluttershy looked convinced, but she just looked cowed instead, which wasn’t what she’d wanted.

“Look, I’m sorry. Just… think about it, okay?”

Fluttershy’s meek “Okay” felt like a buck to the gut and the conversation never really recovered.

— ✒ —

Spike had been let off early so he could go prepare things for the ‘furniture’ that was due to arrive at the end of the day. He made it all the way home before it really came back to hit him what he’d done and he began to shake, leaning back on the front door of the ex-library.

He was pretty sure that Twilight hadn’t noticed anything. She’d just been so trusting that it twisted him up inside what he’d done; how he’d abused that trust, and for what? To take a few decades off of his life and enable the haphazard fantasies of a naive runaway princess barely a few days into her conviction to change the world?

She was going to be so disappointed in him.

He chuckled.

He sounded like her, didn’t he? Except she’d never done anything that would actually have caused Princess Celestia the slightest amount of concern. Well, except that one time…

Suddenly, he remembered. Back when he was barely more than a hatchling, before he was officially her assistant, he’d still followed her around and helped her—but he’d had a different job, then.

Quick, Spike! Burn it! Burn all the evidence and never speak of this again! It never happened!

Right. He could salvage this. He’d left the most obvious of paper trail there was—an official one—but he could fix that.

With fire.

Chapter 30

— Carnelia —

If it was all the same, Carnelia kind of wished that Fluttershy had remained a dragon in order to fly her to the hospital. Failing that, she was pretty sure that Rainbow Dash was supposed to be the fast one, and she was almost small enough to be carried, but there was the small issue of her being accidentally fatal in the wrong conditions.

She wasn't in pain, exactly, but the Ring of Ashmund was responding to the dragons in the crowd and it was taking everything she had to keep control of it, and being walked down the street with the two most terrifying beings she'd ever heard of on each side of her was not helping her peace of mind. Oh, sure, technically the princesses were supposed to be even more powerful—the lake to the east that had once been a forest attested to that—but that power wasn't so near to the surface as it was in Rainbow Dash, or as creepy and deeply concerning as Fluttershy.

That said, the demigoddesses' presence did have one silver lining, which was the fact that their reputations preceded them, and the crowds parted around the group. If Carnelia had had to push her way through the crowds on her own, she suspected that at least some of them wouldn't have made it out of the experience unchanged.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before they came upon the Ponyville Hospital, which was a sight to see. Carnelia didn't know what it had originally looked like, but it was clearly in the process of renovation and expansion. She had never been inside of a hospital herself, but she understood the basic idea and supposed it made sense that one would be made a priority.

Fluttershy led the way and spoke with the mare at the front desk, who quickly directed them to a room, much to her blushing chagrin. It turned out that when two goddesses showed up, they got to jump to the front of the line, who knew?

Carnelia's first experience with a hospital was unremarkable. They weighed and measured her... and weighed and measured her... and weighed and measured her some more.

Rainbow Dash was quite sick of it after the first five minutes of this, but insisted on sticking around, just in case.

The problem was, her height and weight didn't seem to want to stay put. The nurse on staff scolded Carnelia, telling her that she needed to stay still so she could nail down her vitals, but no matter how much she tensed and held her breath, the needle on the gauge kept drifting up and down, and Fluttershy had to point out that this sort of thing was why they were there before she would accept it and mark down an average.

That pretty much set the pace for the rest of their visit. The doctors were on a whole flummoxed by Carnelia's condition, and even the old dragoness that they had recently hired wasn't entirely sure if the ring could be cut free without damage. Just about the only thing that they could tell them was that her heart sounded fine, and the ring might be responsible for that by actively taking up the slack.

Eventually, Fluttershy had no choice but to propose her own solution, which the hospital allowed them to commandeer one of their rooms for. Carnelia didn't have the experience to back it up, but she gathered that this was most likely another quite unusual case of pandering to the demigoddesses.

"Um," Fluttershy started off, not sure how to broach the subject. "You've seen the manifestation of my... my demigodesshood," she said, sounding distinctly embarrassed to actually call it that.

"Yes," Carnelia agreed. "As you explained during the search for Ember's sire, you possess the skill to see through the eyes of lesser beasts, and since then I have seen you steer their actions and assume their forms. Your felicitously scheduled presence at the library was also difficult to miss, seeing as it ceased a most unpleasant squabble, something for which you have my most sincere appreciation."

"Yes, well..." Fluttershy shuffled from hoof to hoof. "It isn't just smaller animals that I can assume control of," she admitted. "You might have guessed, since I was able to become one back at the library, but if I push... if I really need to... I can control dragons, too. I've done it once before, though I promised myself I wouldn't do it again—not after last time—and I won't. Not unless you let me."

Carnelia tried not to let the uneasiness get to her, because what was this terrifying pony demigoddess who apparently had something resembling the abilities of both the Ring of Ashmund and the Bloodstone Scepter entirely naturally.

After, perhaps, a little too long, she said, "I see..." and considered what this actually meant for her. "So, since I am powerless to control the ring, you suspect that you may be able to do so in my stead?"

Fluttershy tilted her head to the side in confusion. "Um, no. Actually, I was just thinking that I would..." She held her hoof in front of her, and then it fell off.

That is, her hoof.

Fell off.

Her hoof fell off and turned into a single yellow squirrel on the way down.

The squirrel, not at all miffed at being dropped from a height, stood up on its hind legs and looked at Carnelia.

Carnelia had to sit down.

Fluttershy... Fluttershy actually wasn't entirely much better, as she was staring at her slightly shortened leg with a faraway look.

"Woah!" Rainbow Dash said, taking a flapping hop over to get a closer look at it. "That's wicked!"

"Um, yes," Fluttershy agreed, flexing her stump and breathing very slowly and deliberately. Shortly, the yellow squirrel dashed up Fluttershy's other front leg, over her withers and down to the missing appendage where it curled up and turned into a hoof once more. "...Sorry," she apologized, setting it back down on the wooden floor with a faint clop. "I haven't really experimented with it much—Twilight would be disappointed in me—but, um, that's it. It should be very simple."

How, exactly, does one acquire a power like that? If it was a manifestation of her demigoddesshood and it was something she just naturally had, then did that mean it was her personality? How exactly does 'shy, retiring wallflower' equal... that?

What Carnelia actually said was, "...What happened to the last dragon you used it on that you swore never to do it again?"

Fluttershy visibly winced, but she did that a lot anyway so Carnelia wasn't sure that it meant anything. "...Oh, well... Yes, I suppose it wouldn't be right not to tell you, it's just... the last dragon I used it on was kind of... dead. Well, he was dying, anyway, and his heart was kind of... really very... incinerated... so I took him over, which healed him... and it worked just fine until I let him go and his heart was still a part of me, and he... and he..."

As she listened to the story, Carnelia's throat grew steadily drier, and she swallowed to wet it. She wasn't sure if it was the heart, but that was definitely the area that dragon fire and therefore dragon magic came from, which had disturbing implications—as if there was anything about this that wasn't disturbing.

"He... rejected it. Um, not like a transplant gets rejected, just, you know, he removed it. Physically. With his claws." With every word Fluttershy said, her quavering voice got quieter and quieter, which really wasn't fair, because it was making Carnelia feel bad about the most viscerally horrifying thing she had ever heard of, from the perspective of the one who had done it.

Suddenly, the walking thunderstorm was sounding like the less frightening of the two. Not the less immediately dangerous, of course—nothing made one step lightly like a lighting bolt in the shape of a pony looking for the first opportunity to break free—but it was now a toss-up as to which one she'd rather have angry at her.

Not that it really mattered, as the two seemed rather close, so what angered one of them would probably anger the other one anyway, in which case she should probably hope that Rainbow Dash got to her first.

Meaning that she had to be very careful with her next statement.

"...Can I get a second opinion?"

— Ember —

Ember roared in frustration, though the sound she actually produced wasn't quite the impressive earth-shaking bellow that she had intended. Slag's room was the last one on her search for several reasons, not the least that her lack of wings would have made it difficult to get to the old library and back, but as she flipped the bed on its side and tore up the mattress, she finally had to admit that, possibly—just maybe—it wasn't there.

It was a very close thing, but eventually, surveying the absolute mess that she had made of things, she decided that she hadn't really done a good enough job, and started throwing things out into the hall, one by one. If it was here, she'd find it.

It had to be here.

— Twilight —

The Ponyville guard station was one of the few buildings in the middle of the city that had been built entirely from scratch. Before Twilight's ascension, Ponyville had barely merited a single squad of guards and a small guard house, mostly for handling the aftermath of civil disturbances—which was a nice way of referring to half the things that had produced friendship letters during the first year of Twilight's stay in Ponyville.

With Twilight an alicorn and Luna moving to the city, though, and the resulting population boom, they had needed an entire contingent to keep peace in the growing near-metropolis and do things like stand guard over a mostly inactive portal to an ex-dragon-lord's lair. They were not technically royal guards, as they were assigned to the city itself rather than the city's pair of currently-homeless alicorn royalty, but they were essentially treated as such, especially with many of them being strangely eager to transfer in from the Canterlot Palace after Celestia-Celestia had vaporized the Everfree forest.

The new guard station, then, was a fairly large, blocky structure made of the same darkly-colored crystal that Luna had originally chosen for the palace, which had been spread to the rest of the town almost like an architectural infection.

"You know," Twilight said as she and Luna came in to land at the guard station after a short flight over their city. "I know there's a whole untouched wilderness in the Crystal Mountains to draw from, but If I'd known that things were going to grow to this scale, I think I'd have said to just use something more mundane for the palace. Or keep the crystal just for the palace. Or just found a new empire in the Crystal Mountains."

Luna raised an eyebrow at that. "I'm not sure it would qualify as an empire, especially if nopony moved there due to the cold."

"Exhibit A: The dragon 'empire,'" Twilight deadpanned. "Exhibit B... The dragon 'empire,'" she reiterated. "Is Ember even staking claim to Torch's old territories? Did Equestria even recognize the dragonlands as a country before she took over? How exactly does all that work when a significant chunk of Equestria may or may not be made entirely of dragons?" She spent a moment thinking about the various questions she'd just proposed, then added, "Also, I see ponies not settling in due to the cold as a feature."

"Now you see why Canterlot is located on the side of a mountain," Luna informed her, possibly seriously. "In fact, it seems like a missed opportunity, since I believe that there are, in fact, a series of crystal caves inside the mountain, yet they have not used it in construction of the city."

"I think it's a generally bad idea to mine the mountain your city is nailed to," Twilight pointed out quite reasonably. "The bigger the city got, the more, you'd be undermining yourself—literally."

Luna nodded quite agreeably. "That is, as you say, a feature."

They entered the guard station via the public entrance and explained that Twilight was there to move the portal from the ex-dragon-lord's lair to a secure location inside the guard station, while Luna needed the freed-up personnel to spread the word to be on the lookout for Ember's stolen book.

Before they split up to perform their individual tasks, Luna had a thought. "If it truly troubles you, would not a portal to the Crystal Mountains accelerate matters?"

Twilight blinked. "Can I do that?" she asked, not having expected to be allowed to actually solve something that was probably a significant aspect to the economics of the constructional boom the city was going through.

Luna hmmed, considering the matter. "I don't see why not," she concluded. "We do not wish to invalidate entire markets, but it is not necessary for you to completely recuse yourself from having any effect at all, especially in this case as the railways are maintained by Equestria and new routes are constructed as they are needed. When we build a new railway tunnel that saves time over the previous roundabout alternative, that is a good thing, even if it ultimately reduces the number of laborers required to run the trains."

"Huh," Twilight said, processing that. "I hadn't considered it like that, but that makes sense. I guess I'll do that, then." She glanced at the guard lieutenant that was waiting to lead her to where she needed to go. "At some point, I mean. When we're not doing national security things."

— Twilight —

The guard lieutenant turned out to be a pegasus mare named Lightning Dust, who, in the process of going to the back of the building and down one flight of stairs, managed to narrate her entire life to Twilight, informing her that she had been intending to attend the Wonderbolts Academy this season, but things had been thrown off because of some freak storm.

"Oh, sure," Lightning Dust was saying as they walked into the first basement floor where the light-security holding cells were located. "They said it was wild weather, but who's going to believe that since the Everfree Forest got between Princess Celestia and a dragon the size of Canterlot mountain? There's nowhere left that makes wild weather between here and the badlands anymore. I bet it was someone getting an order wrong at the weather factory again—happens all the time."

Twilight was fairly sure that it didn't happen all the time, on account of the lack of regular colossal hurricanes in the area, but she kept her peace, especially since she didn't really want to give anyone the idea that the storm in question was the result of one of her demigoddesses lashing out after having her dreams crushed.

"So," Lightning Dust continued, "I thought, 'what could a wicked-cool pony like me do in the meantime that would make me look good to the Wonderbolts next season?'—and then it hit me! There's all these dragons making trouble just by existing now, and the Ponyville guard is hiring, so why not? I get to fly, get some guard experience, maybe wrestle a few dragons on the job—and I look good in black! Come next season, the Wonderbolts will be begging to let me join!"

"Mmhm," Twilight acknowledged, nodding along with the story fairly naturally after so much experience with Rainbow Dash... and Rarity, and Pinkie Pie... and even Applejack once in a while. Oh, and Spike, of course. "And how's that going for you?"

"Oh, it's been great!" Lightning Dust said, absolutely beaming as they went down another flight of stairs. Waving her hoof around, she said, "See for yourself!"

Unlike the first floor, the holding cells on the second basement floor had an exceptionally spacious aisle down the center and were made of some sort of clear crystal which was presumably enchanted to withstand the teeth and dragons, of which there were a number contained in the cells nearest the staircase.

"...Huh," Twilight remarked. "You know, I'm not surprised you've had to detain some dragons, but somehow I hadn't actually considered it when I decided to put a portal to the ex-dragon-lord's lair down here."

"Oh, huh, yeah," Lightning Dust agreed. "It'd be an escape and buffet all in one, right in the cell next door, wouldn't it? Is that it, then? We going back up?"

Twilight pursed her lips, considering the problem. "Not necessarily," she said. "Let me think about it for a minute."

"Sure, sure," Lightning Dust said with the carefree attitude of somepony who is happy to stand around getting paid to wait on a princess.

"I could probably secure it well enough myself," Twilight mused. "But if I throw too much magic at it, it could interfere with the nearest of the cell enchantments."

"That's a thing that can happen?" Lightning Dust asked, surprised and suddenly alert. "Do we need to worry about bringing unicorns down here now?"

Twilight shook her head, waving off the issue. "Not normally," she said, then clarified, "Not with regular unicorns and regular spells. I just have a... brute force way of doing things."

"Hah!" Lightning Dust laughed. "They say the same thing about me."

Twilight blinked, filing that information away in her mind for later because that was kind of concerning coming from a guard.

"Riiiiiight," Twilight said, drawing out the word, then setting her mind back to the matter at hoof. "So, Lieutenant Lightning Dust. Is there a floor below this?"

Lightning Dust cocked her head to the side. "No, this is it—they're only holding cells, after all. The reason there's so many of them is because the walls can be removed to hold the larger dragons, but there's no need for that anymore, so now it's probably more than we'll ever need. Dragons or not, this is still Equestria. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, though, right?"

Twilight nodded along with the explanation. "Yes, that was my thought exactly, and I'm glad you agree. In fact, I'll quote you on that when they ask why I added a third basement."

Lightning Dust balked at what sounded like responsibility rearing its ugly head. "Uh—ma'am—I mean, your majesty—I'm just a lieutenant. That is way above my pay-grade. Maybe I should go get the captain?"

Twilight dismissed the lieutenant's objections with a wave. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't asking permission."

Lightning Dust started to panic, looking back and forth between Twilight and the stairs, as if she was asking herself whether she should risk leaving a princess who was in the mood to do architecture unsupervised while she went and got her superior.

"Sorry, that came out wrong," Twilight apologized. "You can relax. What I meant was just to clarify that it's something you don't actually need, which simplifies things on my end immensely."

— Twilight —

"So, how did it go?" Luna asked Twilight as the two of them met out in front of the guard station.

"I thought it went well," Twilight informed her.

"Oh?" Luna asked, plainly curious. "Then, that rumbling that the guard captain and I felt while we were organizing the shifts wasn't you?"

"I said it went well," Twilight defended herself in mock offense. "Not that it went perfectly."

— Carnelia —

It was refreshing to get out of the hospital and back out into the fresh air. It wasn't that the hospital had been particularly claustrophobic or oppressive—there hadn't even been the smell of antiseptics and medicines that she might have expected—it was just that there was no replacement for being able to see the open sky.

Odd for a race that tended to live in caves, that, but they did have wings.

Well, they had wings under normal circumstances, anyway. Carnelia was a bit lacking in that respect at the moment, which did spread something of a pall over her sense of relief.

Oh, and nothing had actually gotten done about the Ring of Ashmund which was still wedged tightly between the spikes and scales of her monstrous claws because she was skittish as a stray about letting the yellow terror into her body and mind.

"Soooo..." Rainbow Dash said, breaking the silence. "What now? I guess Twi might have some ideas."

Carnelia's arm throbbed at the thought of what the even more powerful pony princess might offer. She hadn't previously been overly concerned with the potency of the magics the ponies possessed, but the suggestion that was still hanging around in the back of her mind was a different sort of thing than the physical strength of the older dragons she was used to being outclassed by.

"If it is all the same," Carnelia spoke, quite unenthusiastic, "a place to rest and loosen the harness that this ring has placed upon me would perhaps be best. It seems to respond most strongly to my passions and sentiments, so I may be able to secure some sway over my metamorphosis, or suppress it absolutely."

"Oh! Yeah, sure," Rainbow Dash said, then did the exact opposite of what Carnelia wanted and swooped down to pick her up. "Hold on, I know just the place!"

In the next instant, Carnelia learned what it was like to be a cow in a hurricane.

On one claw, simply being touched by a demigoddess that could kill her instantly almost certainly doubled her heartbeat between one moment and the next and she had to clamp down hard on letting the ring react to the sudden jolt of stress.

But on the other, the whole thing was over in the same instant that it started and they had left behind the much more frightening of the two goddesses, which she could only approve of, even if she couldn't quite appreciate any theoretical relief it might bring until her heart calmed down.

The place that Rainbow Dash had brought Carnelia to was a small clearing at the base of a waterfall which was strangely overrun with enough apple trees that it had to be intentional. She had thought that farms—or orchards, in this case—were generally planted on flat, earthy plains, but what did she know about farming? The trees were clearly thriving well enough, though Carnelia was lost as to how one would get a cart through to actually harvest them.

For some reason, that tickled an idea in the back of Carnelia's mind, but she couldn't put her claw on what it might be reminding her of.

Nevertheless, as she stepped forward into the small river winding its way away from the pool at the base of the waterfall, she had to admit that it was, in fact, exactly the ideal kind of serene, isolated locale that would allow her to just sit, collect herself and maybe un-collect a certain piece of maliciously uncooperative jewelry—except for one little thing.

"So, how's about it, eh? Eh?" Rainbow Dash said, swooping out in front of Carnelia and holding her forelegs wide, presenting the place like a carnival barker would the latest show. "I found this place when I was feeling down about—well, that doesn't matter—the point is: it's great! You can take a little dip, then sit and relax in the sun eating apples and listening to the water! There's no way anypony—absolutely anypony—will interrupt you! Complete and total solitude!"

Carnelia was going to settle for the most withering glare that she could muster until she realized it looked like Rainbow Dash was taking another breath to continue her sales pitch. That was too much.

Carnelia expressed her desire for some peace and quiet with an apple to the face of the demigoddess.

Ember would have been proud.

— Ember —

If dragons were capable of sweating, Ember would have been rank. As it was, she was collapsed against the wall in her room, panting in exhaustion.

Every item in every room of the manor had been searched—anything smaller than an apple had been thrown out into the halls, and anything larger than an apple had been reduced to the size of one, or smaller than even that.

Quite a lot smaller, in some cases.

Ashes counted as smaller, right?

The book wasn't there. Not unless it had been buried in the walls, and sometimes not even then.

Damn it.

Damn it all.

Where else could it be? Where else could they have hidden it? Kindle had just come to town when Ember had found her, and Drift had said she'd been sleeping in an apple orchard and flying into town, so neither of them had any particular place they might have stashed it. Carnelia and Slag, on the other claw... she didn't know. She hadn't asked as many questions about them because they were proper dragons raised in the dragon lands and the questions she had asked had been about where they'd come from, not what they'd been doing since they'd come to Equestria.

That had been a mistake.

Then, there was Spike. Spike, who had been living in Ponyville for probably years, who knew all sorts of ponies including five demigoddesses and four princesses. Spike, whose signature magical spell since he'd been a hatchling was the ability to send things to ponies by burning them.

It ate her up inside to admit it, even in the silence of her ruined shell of a home but if Spike had stolen the book and hid it somewhere, then she wouldn't find it

If Spike had given it to one of the Princesses, then she'd never be able to take it back.

Not without the Ring of Ashmund, at least.

...But probably not even with it.

...

Suddenly, the idea that she had refused to consider—that it wasn't one of them that had taken the book—seemed a bit more appealing.

— Star Glister —

Star Glister was a bitter, cantankerous stallion, and every time he left his new residence in Ponyville, he grew ever more so from seeing each new building of crystal and how the mere presence of that mare—that filly playing at being a princess—was warping the city just by being present. It did not escape him that his own presence was due to that very same filly, but he was not above a bit of hypocrisy.

Star Glister had never approved of Twilight Sparkle, ever since she'd been a filly in truth standing at Celestia's side. It was not unusual for Princess Celestia to take students. She'd taken many of them over the long millennia that she'd been ruling Equestria. When Twilight had been chosen, however, it had been quite some time since her last one. More than three decades, in fact.

Long enough that the position had been empty since he was a colt.

It had been his oldest dream to be one of those students. He'd worked hard and devoted himself to the idea. Even his choice of career as an astronomer had been in part inspired by the particular longing that Princess Celestia had been seen to have when she stood out on her balcony and looked up at the night sky.

It was all for naught, of course. More so than he'd known at the time, since apparently that longing was for her lost sister, but also down to the fact that her previous student—still a young mare at the time—had died not long before he was five. It had seemed an opportunity at the time and he had always thought that if he worked hard enough, if he was good enough, that she would choose him to be her next.

He understood now, of course, as a stallion nearing his fifties, that it had been too soon to expect her to take another student so soon after the tragic loss of the last one, but his childish heart hadn't. Back then, a year had seemed like forever, and surely, surely she would be choosing another one soon.

That didn't happen, and Star Glister had eventually grown up and put his childish notions behind him... is what he'd like to say, but before one can be an adult, one must first become a teenager, and his obsession with Princess Celestia had grown with him, his innocent daydreams of being teacher and student growing into grand fantasies of one day courting her.

That did not happen, of course. It was an even more foolish notion than the last, for while Princess Celestia had had many students over the years, she had never in living history been known to take a lover.

This did the opposite of dissuade him. Being a teenager, with his head full of hormones and not much sense, he had imagined being the one. The singular exception who would claim the lonely immortal, virginal goddess.

With each year that passed, he would come to realize that things were not, perhaps, as easy and simple as they first appeared. In his twenties, he decided that, having lived for two thousand years, no, it was unlikely that she was actually a virginal goddess, and he thought himself incredibly intelligent and mature in deciding that his new notions were much more realistic and sensible, even as he worked twice as hard to raise in the ranks of the Astronomer's Guild, believing that surely, some day he would be important enough to stand out to the mare who had watched generations pass by like clouds in the sky.

Eventually, though, he received a shocking wake-up call in the form of 'his' princess taking on a new student.

Twilight Sparkle.

Oh, how he resented her. She was nothing special—and of course she wasn't. She was a filly; barely even a person at that point, but her very existence stuck in the craw of his fantasies. showing them for the ephemeral illusions they were and bringing back a powerful envy of what could have been.

Star Glister's dreams died a slow death over the next few years and maybe he could have finally put them behind him if the filly's mother hadn't started publishing those books.

The Twilight series, he felt, must have been his punishment from fate for coveting what could never be his. It was a series of stories about a young filly chosen to be Princess Celestia's student, going through all sorts of wondrous and fantastical adventures, fighting changelings, saving the world and routinely clashing with her sometimes-enemy-sometimes-rival, Sunset Shimmer, Princess Celestia's previous student turned villain.

The books were a disgustingly blatant exploitative cash-grab from a mother who had all but lost her daughter to the care of a mother much more deserving of the name, and he hated himself and the world around him a little more for each one that he bought and read.

And then, of course, Nightmare Moon had returned and that abominable filly had become a national hero in truth, not just in the pages of her mother's books.

He'd started drinking, then. Not that he hadn't before, but it became a habit for him to take each new piece of news about the oh-so-wonderful Twilight Sparkle with a shot of his latest fine liquor, paid for by his pointless work as an astronomer, his very cutie mark paying tribute to the wrong princess.

Really, by the time Twilight Sparkle had become an alicorn and taken over the night sky, Star Glister had been absolutely done with caring, and this newest revelation was surely, surely the final insult that would finish the joke that was his life, and for one fleeting moment, it almost seemed to be true.

Princess Celestia, overlooked since the return of her sister and the ascension of her student, had shown herself to be the perfect, superior goddess that she was, fighting off an ancient dragon, taking back the eye of the people and reminding him what he had devoted himself to for all these years.

And that's when whispered rumors of Princess Celestia acting like a lovesick schoolgirl started coming out of Canterlot, shortly after he'd had his star taken from his chest, revealed to be the rotten core from which his magic sprung forth.

At that point, Twilight Sparkle's subsequent tantrum wherein she uplifted all of her friends to divine status and the following false alicorn saga barely even mattered to him beyond it somehow being the catalyst for Celestia to split herself into two half-draconic twins.

On the one hoof, in a way, Princess Celestia—his Princess Celestia—was gone.

On the other hoof, it sounded like the new Princess Celestia Corona and Princess Celestia Candesca were both still her, but with a fresh new look at life.

Also twins.

No, Star Glister did not like Twilight Sparkle, but as he read the story of a certain ambassador of the dragon empires who had lost the favor of one goddess and had it replaced with the fire of a dragon, he thought, for once, that he saw a clear way forward.

Author's Note

Chapter 33

— Spike —

"So, wait," Spike said, holding his claw up to stop Slag. "You mean Carnelia has the Ring of Ashmund?" he said. "Not Torch or anyone who's actually... dangerous or anything?"

The little black dragon shifted in the hospital bed, scratching at the wad of bandages around her stubby little tail that had now been bitten twice by dragons of the same lineage. "I mean, things were still going on when this big yellow dragon that was apparently one of your pony demigoddesses pulled me out of there, but last I saw she had it, yeah."

"That's... good?" Spike said rather uncertainly, then decided, "Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I mean, it's definitely better than someone like Torch getting ahold of it, obviously, but also..."

"Also better than Ember having it," Kindle said, not afraid to say what they were all thinking. "For now, anyway."

"'Better' is a stretch," Slag argued. "Given she can't control it and what it did to her—might still be doing to her."

Spike didn't want to argue, but... "I get what you're saying, but you might be underestimating the damage that Ember could do if she really went off the rails and had that ring, and that's what worries me. I really thought you and Carnelia had a chance of talking her down. You were closer to her."

Slag waffled visibly as she tried to think of what to say about that. "I mean, kinda, but only because we all grew up in the dragonlands. Anyway, we never really had a chance; the only thing that happened after you left is she had fewer dragons to point her claws at. Once she decided we were against her, that was it, and everything went downhill from there."

"I'm not going to say I didn't want to take a swipe at her," Kindle said, "But where does that leave all of us? Ember doesn't have the ring, great. Like I said, I can get behind that—but Carnelia can't use the thing and can't get it off, so we're stuck practically as babies until we can do something about that, and let me tell you, I just got done with this garbage and I'm not looking forward to having to go through the molt again or crawling around on the ground until it happens."

Slag snorted at that. "You think that's bad? I was still getting used to being smaller since the first time Ember changed all of us. I mean, yeah, it had its benefits, but it wasn't easy, and now this?" She gestured at herself and her practically infant body. "I'm already sick of being carried everywhere."

"Mmh." Drift, as the only dragon in the room who had retained her Ember-given form, had a different point of view. "Am I the only one who's worried that the ring that Ember's been wearing has some sort of connection to Tartarus, then? Coming at it from the pony-raised side of things, that sounds like a bad thing."

Spike and Kindle naturally had similar preconceptions, and they all looked to see if Slag had another opinion.

"No, you're right," Slag said. "I mean, things are vague, but dragons do talk and Tartarus wasn't popular. It's ancient history, though."

"The ring can't be too bad, right?" Kindle said, looking for someone to agree with her. "Since they apparently used it just fine for however many years the dragon empires lasted, and it seems to me that given there's dragons involved, it was probably a pretty long time."

"I guess," Spike agreed. Kindle had a point, he thought, but there was a lot of wiggle room to it. "I kinda want to talk to Ember to see if she noticed anything like that, though. She never mentioned it, but she wouldn't have."

Kindle crossed her stubby little orange arms and gave him a dubious look. "Oh yeah? How well do you think that'll go over now*? 'Hey, Ems—I know you're still pissed off and paranoid about this book you think we stole from you... and this super important ring we did steal from you... but we just wanted to ask you a few questions about that second one. For reasons. You up for some Q&A?'"

Spike considered that for a moment. "Eh, it couldn't hurt, right? It can't make things worse, anyway. She doesn't have the ring anymore."

The rest of the dragons all shared a round of looks at that. "Spike," Kindle said, speaking directly. "Even small dragons have teeth and claws—a fact of which Slag has been very recently reminded of. If you're going to walk up to her bloodied-face and start asking questions like that... I want to watch."

Spike reconsidered. He really did. The thing was, in all the time that he'd been living with Ember, he thought that he'd gotten a pretty good handle on her moods. That was why he'd left so suddenly; experience had told him that nothing he could say or do at that point would have helped, so he'd removed himself from the situation.

"...I'm sure it'll be fine," he reassured them. "The Celestias went to check on her, and she'll probably be glad to get a break from them."

No one present looked entirely convinced, and out of the blue, Slag threw the hospital bedsheet off of her and started wiggling herself to the side of the bed.

"Wha—?" Spike said, rushing over to her bedside. "Slag, what are you doing?"

"I'm coming with you," Slag declared. "Because I've gotta see this."

— Star Glister —

The half-finished tower that was being used as a temporary government building was not to Star Glister's liking, but then, neither had he particularly liked the palace that it was meant to stand in for, which had been destroyed in Twilight Sparkle's tantrum. Nevertheless, he had business with the tower's mistress, so he schooled himself into an air of neutrality and strode into the door.

Actually getting a meeting with the so-called 'demigoddess' was, of course, trivial. Star Glister's standing in the astronomer's guild had taken a hit since his confrontation with Twilight Sparkle and the guild itself was on shaky ground, but he was still a pony of means and one whose name held weight.

He wasn't waiting long before a young pink dragoness led him into an office stuffed with an odd mixture of maps, papers and filing cabinets alongside ponyquins, bolts of fabric and a drafting table that was squeezed into the corner, and in the center of it all was a heavy, oak desk with a stuffed doll sitting in a velvet-backed chair.

The stuffed doll, or the dress it was wearing, at least, was the pony that he was here to see.

If she could still be called a pony.

He had his opinions on that, which he knew better than to mention in polite company.

"Star Glister," the dress that walked as a mare greeted him, though he could detect some suspicion in her voice. "To what do I owe the pleasure? I hope you realize that, while I may be generously providing my tower to the princess' use and may have my hooves in a number of business projects, I do not actually have any sort of position here. If by seeing me you are hoping to avoid having to meet with the princess, I'm afraid that there isn't much that I can do for you and the astronomers' guild."

"Nothing of the sort," Star Glister assured her. "My business is with you... Or, actually, my business is with your sister, and I was hoping that you could aid me by directing me as to where I might find her."

The Rarity doll narrowed its eyes, the previous suspicion growing to near hostility. "Is that so?" she asked. "And why, may I ask, is an older stallion such as yourself asking after a young filly? Your cold relationship with Twilight is fairly well known, so while I've never had any problem with you personally, I'm really going to need a bit more of an explanation, or that may change."

Star Glister shook his head. "Why, it's as I told you—business. Your sister and her friends have recently come into quite the unique set of cutie marks, have they not? After recent events, I find myself no longer quite as attached to mine as I once was, you understand. I merely wish to arrange for their services—to make a donation, if you will."

The Rarity doll frowned, leaning forward on her desk to look him in the eye, though for a moment she glanced up at his horn. Was there a point in that, or was it all theatre? "You are aware that it's not just your cutie mark, but all of your magic?"

Star Glister rolled his eyes at her concern. "Quite aware," he dryly responded. "I have, after all, experienced it already."

The Rarity doll sat back into her chair and let out a little huff of air, giving off the impression of being slightly bemused. "Well, that is true, I suppose," she admitted. "If anyone would know what it entails, it would be you. Still, this seems... rather extreme. Is whatever disagreement you have with Twilight really worth all this?"

"I don't think that's any of your business," he told her.

The Rarity doll made a show of sighing and shaking her head. "Well, I suppose that they'll still be there if you do regret it. I didn't think they would have much in the way of repeat customers, but there's a first for everything."

Star Glister did his best to mask his eagerness when he prompted her, "So...?"

The Rarity doll gave him another look, then, and said, "It isn't as if they are hard to find—or I should hope not, at least. If they are, then I may have to talk to them about it considering they're trying to run a business. Specifically, though, I believe they were planning to set up a wooden stand on Feather Street near the old weather office. Honestly, those fillies... You'd think they could do better than that. If they'd just talk to Twilight, she'd probably set them up with something more respectable—a real office, at least—but they get these ideas in their heads and won't listen to anypony else." The Rarity doll shrugged. "What can you do?"

Star Glister grinned, finally having the information he came for. "Yes, well... children never understand what they have until they've lost it."

— Ember —

This, Ember decided much too late for it to do her any good, was worse. Getting out of talking about her personal relationships with yet another princess was not worth being marehandled by magic and presented like a pet that did a trick.

"Fluttershy did mention Spike's cohort doing magic," Luna reminded Twilight.

"Yes," Twilight acknowledged, then confidently declared, "But we got interrupted and I forgot. Do you think it's more like unicorn magic or earth pony magic? Is it—"

"Twilight," Luna interrupted, then gestured up at Ember. "She is right there. Why don't you ask her?"

Twilight, blinked, looked up at Ember, then flipped her around in her magic and set her on the ground, grinning.

Ember gulped, and then the questions started. What was the first thing she learned? Sending. Does it make her tired? Not any more. How does it feel? Not that different from breathing regular fire. They went on and on, and Ember tried to answer, but only really had one or two words to say about anything, which was about as many words as she could get out before the princess moved on to the next subject.

"So, I assume it was Spike that taught you the sending, but what about all these other things?" Twilight asked, scanning over a list that she'd magicked up. "Rubies and emeralds and gold? Oh, Rarity is going to have something to say about that. How did you come up with—"

"It was you, alright?" Ember shouted, interrupting the princess, who stopped and looked back at Ember, blinking.

"What?" she said, not quite getting the message.

Ember looked away, slightly ashamed. "I learned it from you."

Twilight blinked again, then the bit dropped for her and she looked back down at her list, going over the items in it again. "Huh, yeah, that tracks," she said, then thought of something and brightened up. "Oh, that makes sense, actually! The way that unicorn magic works comes down to, well, me, so of course dragons wouldn't cast spells like that. It's really just raw magic."

It took Ember a moment more of Twilight's happy rambling before she realized that the expected explosion hadn't happened. "Wait, aren't you angry?" she asked.

Twilight cocked her head to the side in question. "Angry? Why would I be angry? This is great! I mean, we're going to have to deal with the whole gold thing, but I've been thinking about that and I already have some ideas."

"Because I stole it from you?" Ember said, not understanding why this wasn't a big deal. Admittedly, Spike had said it wouldn't be and that Twilight would do... exactly what she was doing... but powerful people didn't just brush it off when you learned their secrets... right? "I even wasted your time asking you to do things over and over so I could figure them out."

That didn't seem to have occurred to Twilight. "...Huh, now that you mention it, why is it only things that you've seen me do?"

"What?" Now Ember was the one that was lost. "That's how it works. I feel how you do it and I do the same thing. How else would it work?"

"Well, it's not like I learned it from anypony," Twilight informed her. "I just think of something and..." she clopped her hoof on the ground where she'd previously made her parchment, and another one appeared. "It just works."

"What do you mean, 'it just works'?" Ember said, growing annoyed. "That's not an answer! How can you just make something without even knowing anything about it?"

"Well, of course I know about it," Twilight self-assuredly declared. "It's parchment. Well, it's what we ponies call parchment, anyway—it's mostly plant fibers, really."

Ember growled in frustration. "Not that—how it feels," she insisted. "How do you know the feeling you need to make it."

Twilight stared at her and shrugged. "It just works," she repeated. "So long as there's a logic to it, I don't really have a problem with that. Puns work, unfortunately, but you saw proof of that this morning."

Ember was about ready to strangle the princess when the other one stepped in. "Perhaps you should come back to this another time," Luna said, playing the mediator. "I believe you had something else on your mind before you got distracted anyway?"

Twilight looked blankly at her co-princess. "What—oh! Right! Talking to her about Spike and the others," she said, then looked awkwardly over to Ember, who was unamused.

"Look," Ember said, ever truculent and not at all interested in revisiting that subject. "Can we just not? I've already been told several times today that I'm a lousy friend or whatever, so skip it."

The princess looked lost at Ember's rejection. "Um, but... you see... we have so much in common. When I first came to Ponyville I didn't want to make friends and..."

Luna set her hoof on Twilight's shoulder and shook her head.

"...Ugh, fine," she sourly conceded, and said, "Do better, Ember. You're supposed to be showing the rest of them how it's done."

"...I know," Ember begrudgingly said, and turned to go back to her room.

The princess didn't respond, but there was a complex sense of magic that Ember hadn't felt before and she spun around, expecting an attack. What actually hit her was several rolls of bandages, and a bottle of something or other that smelled like chemicals.

"You should really clean out those cuts on your face," she said. "You don't want them to scar."

— Twilight —

Twilight was still a little despondent when they got back to Luna's temporary throne room in Rarity's unfinished Tower. "Do you think I should have tried harder to connect to Ember?" she asked. "I probably shouldn't have gotten testy with her, at least."

Luna walked up the dais that Twilight had previously improved and turned to sit on her throne. "When it comes down to it, in matters like these, you can usually only help someone who wants the help."

"That sounds more like something Celestia would have said," Twilight pointed out.

Luna nodded in confirmation. "Yes, thank you, it was always a favorite of hers. If you want something more bespoke, then I'll just reassure you that getting testy with a dragon seems to be the minimum that it takes to get a message across."

"Is it, though?" Twilight asked. "The Celestias seemed to have gotten Ember to sit down and talk before we got there. Do you think we just got in the way?"

Luna shook her head. "No; we may not have helped the young empress with her personal matters, but we did get our answers and help settle things. Proving that the stolen property is almost certainly a starbook is useful, and providing her with a new one should at least keep her from stewing in doubt and paranoia overmuch."

"I suppose." Twilight sighed and made her way up to sit next to Luna in her own dark and jagged mock-throne. "But I still think I could have done more. She really does remind me of myself when I first came to Ponyville, you know. You never saw it, but I was tetchy, rude and standoffish, certain that the fate of Equestria did not rely on my making friends."

"I might like to hear about that some time," Luna said, "And it's possible that Ember will too... eventually. I think it was clear that that was not the time, however. Perhaps she will be more receptive once she has had the chance to calm down and accept that she is no longer missing her guidebook to making an empire."

"Maybe..." Twilight allowed, then jolted as she thought of something.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing, it's just... I guess that would make it a guiding star, then, wouldn't it?"

Apparently, once she had opened herself to the puns, they were not so easily ignored.

— Star Glister —

Star Glister had to admit that Rarity had been right; the fillies really could do better. In fact, watching them from down the street, it was hard to imagine them doing worse.

What the three infamous fillies previously known as the Cutie-Mark Crusaders had cobbled together was no different from a lemonade stand—a fact most obviously communicated through the fact that it had been a lemonade stand at one point, and only a coat of paint had turned the large wooden lemon up top into an oddly oblong shooting star.

A coat of paint that was still tacky if the plethora of smears and smudges on the fillies was any sign.

Actually, it was tacky regardless of whether the paint had dried or not, but that wasn't relevant.

Either way, they were doing the appropriate amount of business for such a shoddy stand—which was none—so there was nothing stopping Star Glister from striding forwards and introducing himself and his intentions.

"My name is Star Glister and I would like to arrange your services," he announced.

Scootaloo gave her friends a look. "Uhh, that's cool, mister, but we aren't really doing much business here, so we really can't hire anyone just to schedule things."

Apple Bloom reached over and clopped her friend on the back of the head. "No, you goof. Even ah know that means he wants to hire us."

Scootaloo scowled at Apple Bloom as she rubbed the back of her head. "Well, then he should have just said that," she grumbled.

Sweetie Bell cleared her throat to get his attention. "If you have a young colt or a filly that needs our help, you'll need to bring them with you," she informed him, then gave her friends a side-eyed look. "Though since my associates have already admitted that we aren't doing much here, you might be able to convince us to make a house call."

"Actually," Star Glister said. "The one who needs your services is me."

That got all of the fillies' attention, and Apple Bloom gave him a considering look. "You seem like you've got a strong enough star," she said. "As much as ah'd hate to turn away our first customer, ah think we're going to have to say no. Just about the last thing we want is to upset the apple cart and get the princess mad at us for passing out extra stars to ponies that don't need them."

"I don't want another star," Star Glister snapped, though he quickly regained his composure.

Scootaloo crossed her forelegs in front of herself, trying to figure him out. "Well, then, what do you want?" she asked, blatantly suspicious of him.

"I don't want another star," he repeated, more calmly this time. "What I want is to be rid of one."

"Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!" the fillies all shouted, horrified. Scootaloo fell off of her stool and Sweetie Bell was clutching her chest as if she had heart problems.

Star Glister rolled his eyes.

"Wait," Sweetie Bell said, instantly recovering from her non-existent cardiac issues. She leaned closer, eyeing him up, then pointed and shouted, "You're that stallion!"

"You don't mean... him?" Scootaloo said, leaning in conspiratorially. This earned her another whap from Apple Bloom.

"Quit it," Apple Bloom said, then addressed Sweetie Bell and asked, "He's who, now?"

"Hey!" Scootaloo said, whapping Apple Bloom back. "I was being serious! I actually know who Sweetie Bell is talking about!"

"Really?" Apple Bloom dryly asked, unconvinced.

"Yes!" Scootaloo insisted. "I can know things too!"

Apple Bloom narrowed her eyes at her friend. "Oh yeah?" she said. "Prove it. Who is he?"

"He's... He's..." Scootaloo stammered, trying to get her words together while Apple Bloom just looked smug. "He's that guy that Princess Twilight did her demonstration on!"

"Huh?" Apple Bloom said, baffled, then looked at Star Glister with new eyes. "Princess Twilight did a report on him?"

Sweetie Bell facehoofed. "No, you dolt! He's the astronomer guy who got Twilight so mad at him that she took his star!"

Apple Bloom's eyebrows rose in surprise, but only for a second before they immediately dropped and transformed into a squint. "Now ah know you're pulling my leg," she said. Gesturing at Star Glister, she said, "He's clearly still got his."

"Maybe he stole it?" Scootaloo said, not sure.

Apple Bloom shook her head. "You would know if you two hadn't made the whole thing up—and you really ain't got the room to throw stones, miss star-stealing-cutie-mark."

"Oh for—" Scootaloo gave Apple Bloom a nastier look than she'd given Star Glister up till then. "First off, I got the story from Rainbow Dash, so maybe she glossed over a thing or two—and second, that's low, Apple Bloom. We're the Cutie-Mark Crusaders; we don't make fun of people's cutie marks."

Star Glister cleared his throat to get the fillies' attention. As amusing as this was, he really wanted to get on with it. "I got better," he stated. "And I would like to have that corrected."

That didn't seem to quite mollify Apple Bloom, so Sweetie Bell spoke up. "Look, Bloom, Twilight obviously gave him his star back after she was done showing all the ponies at court why you shouldn't cross her. You know she's not actually going to just take somepony's star out of the blue like that, right? That'd be monstrous."

"Ah guess..." Apple Bloom said, though it then brought her attention back to Star Glister. "Not having a star would mean not having a cutie mark—but if that's so then why is he asking for it? You'd think he'd know better after the first time."

All three of the fillies looked to him for an answer, and he let out a huff of air before stating, "Miss Sparkle and I have... personal differences that we've agreed to disagree on, and if it's all the same, I'd really rather not have the power dynamics of a star looming over me. If I have to choose between not having magic and a cutie mark or having those things and owing her for them, then I would rather be free of them."

What he didn't say, of course, was that he very much intended to replace his star, and the very act of missing it was nearly all he'd need to do so.

The three fillies still looked uncertain, so he belatedly added, "...And allow the star to go to someone who needs it, of course."

Apple Bloom gave Star Glister a long, considering look before she finally nodded and said, "Alright. We'll do it."

Scootaloo's head whipped around to look at her friend. "You sure, Apple Bloom?"

"Yeah," Apple Bloom said, showing no doubt now that she'd made her decision. "Ah mean, it's just taking his star, right? What's the worst that could happen?"

"He could die," Scootaloo instantly deadpanned back.

Apple Bloom balked at that. "...Well, err..."

Sweetie Bell pulled a parchment, inkwell and quill out from underneath the counter of the stand. "I'll write up a waiver."

Apple Bloom's eyes widened in surprise. "You were prepared for this?!"

Sweetie Bell looked from her work on the up at Apple Bloom from where she was crouched over the waiver. "What?" she said, confused, then looked back down at the parchment. "Oh, this? No."

Apple Bloom let out a breath. "Oh, okay."

"This is from when we were running the lemonade stand," Sweetie Bell explained. "I don't know why, but Rarity suggested it after I explained our plan to put scoops of caffeine powder in the mix."

Apple Bloom thought about that, then shook her head. "Huh, weird."

Sweetie Bell took her time with the waiver and Star Glister took just as long reading it over, but he had to admit he was impressed with the thoroughness... at least for a filly. In the end, though, what else was he going to do but sign? It wasn't as if he was going to go to Twilight Sparkle and have that insufferable filly of a goddess remove his star. If nothing else, she would no doubt ask a lot more questions.

Star Glister had barely lifted the quill from the parchment when, "Yoink!" Sweetie Bell cheerfully announced as she pulled his star from his chest.

It was just as much a kick to the gut as the first time.

Taking a few breaths, he recovered himself and nodded appreciatively at the fillies. Whoever else their family and friends were, they had done as he had asked, and that was worth a little acknowledgement. He was about to leave, when Scootaloo stopped him with a hoof on his shoulder from on top of the counter.

"That'll be fifteen bits."

Author's Note

Merry Christmas everyone! :twilightsmile: