Twilight’s sun was slowly setting as the aforementioned Princess and Pearl left Convallarius' home. Twilight had spent the day learning about the Admirabilis accompanied by a bored Pearl. They were now trotting—or rather swimming in Twilight's case—to their previous camp for the night.

They were overall pretty happy with their day, Twilight especially. Both were more excited by the thought of meeting with Phos again and seeing what he'd learned on his own. Once they arrived at their camp site, there were unfortunately no traces of Phos to be seen. Unbeknownst to them, the cyan unicorn wasn't having a great day.

Pain. Not physical pain, the gems didn't feel much as their bodies broke, this was a mental pain. Still conscious, Phos saw various parts of his body being picked up by the Lunarians' unicorns. Was there music? Phos couldn't tell, maybe their instrument didn’t work underwater. Or maybe he lost his ear too and didn't notice?

Hurt, Phos watched the world happening around him with his remaining eye. He glanced at Ventricosus—the one who broke his trust—she was shouting something to the Lunarians above the waters. It all seemed too far away for Phos.

He eventually understood some of Ventricosus' shouting: "This is not what we agreed on! One full gem for the protection of my people. I will not help you capture any more of them if you don’t respect our terms!" She violently declared.

If there was a response, Phos didn't hear it.

"What about Pearl? You refused him at first, why would you want him now of all time! I will not endanger my people further by declaring war on an alicorn. Honour your part of the deal and save us." She demanded furiously, her voice still regal despite the anger. In a way, it reminded Phos of the Princess' voice.

The Princess… he disappointed her for sure. He didn't get any information and now he was being taken to the moon. Wait—they wanted to take Pearl? He couldn’t let that happen. He focused all his forces and tried to say something. “...me, leave… alone…” he weakly said.

It was enough to get the attention of Ventricosus. “Hum? Are you still conscious? Damn you gems are strong.” She muttered to herself.

Phos groaned and repeated himself, a little louder. “...take me… leave Pearl alone…” How he still had the strength to speak eluded even him.

Ventricosus blinked in surprise. She considered a moment then whispered to Phos: “I will try. I am sorry.”

Time continued to pass, and what remained of Phos was now being levitated to the Lunarians’ platform with magic. Ventricosus still talking loudly, this time about “saving the Admirabilis” or something. The sun had set and yet the moons didn’t rise yet, Phos began to finally lose consciousness when a bright golden magic bolt shot right past him and into the Lunarian platform. The energy emitting from the ray seemed to wake Phos up. Was that... Sunlight?

With new energy filling his body, he could feel himself sinking into the ocean as the Lunarians’ grip on him loosened and broke. He could almost see a very angry Princess somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.

With her royal voice, the alicorn shouted: “YOU SHALL NOT TAKE HIM!” Before she summoned more magic bolts with her horn glowing with all the might of the Sun herself.

The battle was over before it had even begun. However, the Lunarians’ platform managed to get away, fortunately without most of Phosphophyllite. The remains of the latter slowly hitting the ocean floor. Phos heard cries and shouting but his thought went to the sky, wasn’t the sun set already? Why is the sky still red? Or was that the water?

Near the remains of Ventricosus’ burnt body, Twilight stood, furiously staring at the already beaten corpse of the admirabilis. Pearl was going to be there soon, and this needed to be cleaned up. The Admirabilis needed to be cleaned up. Phos needed Rutile’s attention too. The latter was more important.

She started picking up the rest of Phos and the remains of the admirabilis in her magic before swimming as fast as she can to Pearl. They had a long walk back to the island ahead of them and couldn’t waste any time. Phos needed to be repaired. Twilight couldn’t afford to lose an element now. She quickly separated some bones from the flesh of the still fresh corpse and took them with her magic among Phos’ pieces.

Twilight arrived back at the island, exhausted, with a destroyed Phos on her back and Pearl in full panic mode. They were back early. She had stopped raising the moons and had seemingly been moving the sun alongside herself. It was Onyx who sounded the alarm, spotting the trio coming out of the sea from the southern beach.

All the gems gathered at the Great Oak, most of them helping Pearl calm down by keeping him busy. The rest were listening to Twilight’s ramblings about the events that occured, a slight tone of anger in her voice. Phos was left in Rutile’s care, along with the straight white bones the Princess gave her. It was stuff she’d never seen before, and the fact it sounded hollow in some place didn’t ease Rutile’s mind in the slightest.

It took her quite some time but after several days of intensive work, Rutile announced that the job was done as best as he could. Now, they just had to wait for Phos to wake up.

Light poured from the window in Rutile’s workshop. Its owner was sleeping near the window on some cushion. An unconscious Phos was on the work table in the middle of the room. Rutile had spent some days studying the new material the Princess had brought back from the sea. There was a lot of it and after breaking it up and reassembling it into more usable parts, Rutile managed to form something that was able to be integrated into Phos.

The gem currently laid on the work table was now a strange mix of cyan gems and white opaque material. While a good part of the body seemed to have been saved, it did now have three of its four hooves and an eye made of the opaque white material. It also lacked another thing: a horn.

Phos reacted to the sun shining in his eye and opened it. He was on his back, he could recognise the ceiling of the workshop. Had his hooves always been this hard to move or was this a really hard morning?

Eventually, Phos managed to roll himself to the side and immediately fell to the ground. He could feel the wood with one hoof the rest was still limp. Naturally, the sound of the rock hitting the wood managed to wake Rutile up. He got up in a hurry and immediately started examining Phos’ hooves.

“Phosphophyllite! Can you hear me? Can you see me? Can you move your hooves?” He asked in succession, nearly overwhelming the not-clever not-unicorn.

“That’s me. Yes, you’re loud. Yeah but you’re pretty blurry. Only one, the rest are sleeping,” Phos responded. “Can you help me with one thing though?”

“Please tell me, is anything wrong?” Rutile asked, a little panicked.

“How do you know my name?”

Written with rather messy horn-writing in a hurry by a certain doctor:

“With the help of the Princess, I have been able to reassemble Phosphophyllite. However, he has lost part of his body in the sea from a Lunarian attack. When he arrived, he was missing three of his hooves, his horn, and most of his face.

I managed to use the material the Princess brought with her, we identified it as ‘Compact Bones’. It has a hardness of around five, stronger than Phos. His body didn’t seem to refuse the material so we used it to rebuild his missing hooves and the part of his face he lost.

We were unable to make a new horn for him unfortunately, Compact Bones do not seem to possess any magical leylines and it probably just wouldn’t work. Until we get it back, or find a good enough replacement, Phos will not be able to use any magic.”

Author's Note

Things get more interesting as Phos learn that changes comes at a cost.