— 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!

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