Author's Note

Writing has become very difficult.

---ON THE SCENE LIKE MAGICAL HORSE MACHINES---

Early in the morning, royalty arrived. In force.

Richard was having breakfast with Twilight, Starlight, and a dragon he hadn’t quite caught the name of but which he assumed involved some variation of ‘light’, just for the sake of consistency. It was actually quite relaxed and pleasant, up until the point all of the regal clatter and fanfare from outside made itself obvious and they went to go and check what all the bother was about.

And found the forcefully arrived royalty.

“Someone’s been naughty,” Richard said, giving Starlight a significant look which, when she caught it, made her cringe.

“You joke…” she muttered.

“Oh! They’re early. Let’s - um - let’s go, shall we?” Twilight said.

There wasn’t much choice, given that the princesses down below - each of them at around Chrysalis’s size, Richard noted idly - had spotted them, making hiding and pretending they hadn’t noticed them arriving both pointless and rude.

And so down they went, Starlight, Twilight and Richard, out front to say hello.

“I wasn’t expecting you until this afternoon!” Twilight said.

“We are early,” said Luna, stating the obvious for those who’d missed it.

“So this is a ‘Richard’,” Celestia said with a low-key note of awe. It wasn’t often she got to see new things. He was so distinctive! So weird!

“Hello. Princess, princess, princess,” Richard said, greeting and bowing in turn to each of them (apparently briefly forgetting he’d been eating toast and swapping small talk with Twilight bare minutes previously) before turning back to Starlight. “Any other princesses?”

“No, this is it,” she said. “For now.”

“Hmm? Did you say something, Starlight?” Twilight asked.

“Nothing.”

Things here got awkward, as while there was certainly business to get down to no-one was sure how best to break the ice and get things going. Richard had an idea about this, however.

“Baklava, anyone? I got it for her majesty but, well, it’s not going to keep and I can’t abide waste,” he said, producing said baklava.

The eyes of at least one princess lit up.

“Ooh, baklava!”

“That isn’t-” Luna got as far as saying, but by then Celestia was already muzzle-deep in sweetened nuts and pastry, and it was too late. Luna sighed and turned her head back to Richard.

“Let us wait a moment, so we may all pay attention to what is said next.”

Celestia re-emerged enough so that her wounded expression could be seen, albeit beneath a fine layer of crumbs and smudged syrup.

“What? I can eat and listen at the same time,” she said through a mouthful. The struggle not to roll her eyes was visible on Luna’s face, but she held tough and managed it.

“Good to know. Whatever happened to being regal?” Luna’s attention returned to Richard. “Where has Chrysalis gone?”

“She ran away,” Richard said. He thought they knew this.

They did.

“We are aware of that, I am asking you where she has run to,” Luna said.

“Somewhere that isn’t here?” Richard suggested.

Luna blinked, stunned at the audacity of this useless non-answer, before her eyes narrowed, she took a step or two forward, and she got into Richard’s face. Or at least face-adjacent.

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” She asked.

He took a step or two back before answering. Face-adjacent was too close for him, at least with anyone other than Chrysalis. She could get closer than adjacent and he wouldn’t have minded. Indeed, she often did.

“I wouldn’t say obtuse but I would say that I have perhaps a certain level of reluctance towards answering that question,” Richard said.

“And why is that?”

“It feels like a betrayal.”

“Loyalty is a commendable virtue, though we might suggest on this occasion it has been badly misplaced.”

“We can agree to disagree on that,” said Richard.

Luna’s composure started to fray a tiny bit in the face of Richard’s stonewall of politeness.

“We are going to find her. It is less a question of if and more a question of when, and a further question of how frustrated we are when it happens.”

She did not need to elaborate on what the frustration might entail or what it might lead to. Her tone left very little wiggle room for possibilities, and the look on her face let Richard fill in the blanks. Frustration was not a good thing, and would lead to further bad things. Specifically for Chrysalis. Not what Richard wanted, ideally.

“I think you’re underestimating her majesty, but I do see where you’re coming from. Ah, hmm…”

Outright saying where she might have gone was out of the question, of course. There was no way he could do that without it feeling like the aforementioned betrayal. His fondness for the Queen wouldn’t allow it. However, there were ways to split the difference, to say without saying. To be helpful without being helpful. Richard like to think he often danced on this knife edge.

“I couldn’t possibly say where in the woods she might have ruin to. I mean run to. I didn’t say ruin. There’s no reason why ruins would be mentioned at all in relation to the woods in the context of this conversation.”

“Was that you telling us?” Twilight asked.

Apparently a little less subtlety was called for.

“Not at all. That was simply me clarifying that ruins and the woods have no relevance here and should not be pursued or followed up.”

“You should wink,” Starlight said.

“Ah yes, good point.”

He winked. Profoundly.

A second passed, then both Luna and Celestia reached the identical conclusion at the identical moment, looking at one another and saying in perfect unison:

“The ruins!”

(Twilight also said ‘The ruins!’ but perhaps a heartbeat too late, and quietly, in case she’d got it wrong.)

“Guards!” Luna said, sweeping about and flaring a wing. “We are heading into the forest, I want-” and here she descended into the various logistical details she wanted seen to for a smooth passage into Everfree. Within minutes the undertaking was underway.

Richard wasn’t an expert, but it looked like the core of Luna’s approach was just to go in mob-handed (mob-hooved?), which he supposed was one way of doing things. Guards roved ahead (and above), Luna, Celestia and Twilight followed a little behind the vanguard, Twilight’s friends tagged along a little behind Twilight, and Richard also attached himself, and Starlight followed with him.

Either the various creatures present decided that trying anything would be a bad idea - and it would be a bad idea, so they wouldn’t be wrong - or else it was just a monster-light day, as nothing troubled them overmuch as they marched through, Luna providing direction here and there as the guards reached various points where they had no idea where to go next.

At one moment Luna called a halt, raising a hoof.

“Do you feel that?” She asked Celestia, who cocked her head briefly. Twilight did likewise. Even Starlight did it, all of them sharing looks of mounting concern. Richard also cocked his head but he got nothing. He supposed it was a pony thing.

“Yes. We need to hurry,” Celestia said seriously.

Their pace quickly quickened.

“What was that about?” Richard asked Starlight as they all hustled along.

“Something magical is happening,” she said.

“We’re all becoming friends?”

“No, not that kind of magic. For once.”

“Ah,” Richard said, somewhat disappointed. Given the sudden burst of haste and serious faces all round it was probably something grave and important. Those rarely went well.

“I do hope this doesn’t end violently,” Celestia said, more to herself than to Luna, though it was Luna who replied:

“It will end however it needs to end.”

This was not a particularly auspicious thing to say, and Celestia’s face went a touch glum.

“If only she’d just stayed in the house…” She said.

“Hmm. Do you know what she might have had greater difficulty in escaping from than a house?” Luna asked.

Celestia knew the answer to this one. She didn’t like the answer, but she knew it, or at least was ninety-nine percent certain she knew. On the off-chance she ventured:

“A cell?”

“A cell,” Luna said with grim triumph, eyes set ahead of her, pace imperious.

Celestia had known the answer.

“Urgh…”

This would get brought up years from now, she just knew it. Forever.

-

Elsewhere in the woods ethereal gales blew, incandescent sparks fountained, crackling lightning arced as though questing for purchase on ruined and age-weathered stone, intangible pressure built, and Chrysalis was laughing. Again.

At times like this - times just prior to triumph - laughing was the appropriate response. It was how she’d always done it, and it came naturally to her. Or at least it used to come naturally to her. This time she stopped halfway through and glowered because it just didn’t feel right. It was feeling forced.

She ran through a variety of other laughs, but none of them seemed to fit the way the old one had, and that one hadn’t fitted in the first place. Nothing fit. This upset her. Ever since what had happened to her had happened to her - or rather, been inflicted on her by malign, plotting forces! - nothing had clicked, not the way it had used to. Things still worked, just in new ways. It upset her.

And not having Richard there to loudly assert at about how much it upset her only made it worse. Even if it was somehow all his fault, somehow. Him not being with her right that moment was definitely his fault. She’d make that clear later, once revenge had happened and everything was settled, and then he’d never leave her sight again. Leashes might have to be involved. She’d play it by ear.

It was a watertight plan.

“Yes! More power!” She cackled, forcing some fake enthusiasm as she poured more energy into the artefact. The thought was that maybe if she pretended hard enough, it might feel like the way it was meant to, back from before. It didn’t, but she kept at it anyway, cackling through her discomfort.

And then sniffing.

A smell tugged at her nostrils, or at least tugged at whatever it was that Changelings had that looked like nostrils but probably weren’t on account of their bizarre and inexplicable biology. It was a familiar smell, but one that had so little place in what she was doing right that second that her brain couldn’t click it into context. It was simply there, being noticed, but not making any immediate sense.

But then it clicked. Richard! She could smell Richard! Fresh Richard. Not his pillow this time!

Her concentration splintered. Partly it remained on what she was doing because what she was doing and, really, what she was doing was for Richard anyway, so this was just synergy. Enough of her concentration wandered though to make her quickly glance around. It couldn’t actually be Richard, that would be silly. Was it, perhaps, some article of his laying around nearby that she hadn’t noticed before she could smell? Maybe? Why else, why now?

Oh Richard. Once she’d made everything explode they’d be back together.

Wait. It couldn’t possibly be something of his around here. If it was her keen, flawless senses would have already picked up on it, so it couldn’t be that. And besides, the smell was getting stronger, which meant that whatever it was that smelt like him must have been approaching and getting closer. What could smell like him?

Wait. He could smell like him!

That took the rest of her concentration away immediately as she whirled around, sniffing. Unmistakable! She dashed away from the artefact and around a corner just in time to see Richard come strolling into view as casually as anything. The way his face lit up when he saw her made her fluid nodules flutter. All of her nodules, in fact.

“Richard!” She cried, launching herself over with a graceful and elegant blend of sprinting and flapping with occasional, short-range blips of teleportation mixed in - a mode of movement that was in no way frantic or undignified, like someone desperately attempting to avoid drowning by reaching the edge of a pool. It was not at all like that.

She was halfway between sprinting and flapping when she made contact, colliding bodily with him in her frantic haste - no, her measured eagerness - to make sure he was intact and healthy and happy and whole.

Bearing him (gently) floorward she didn’t even wait until he’d actually hit the ground before the kissing started. Indeed, she hadn’t even noticed that the kissing had started, it just had, flurries of the things pouring forth onto him unbidden.

That was normal for those in love, though, or so she assumed, so it was probably fine. She just let them happen. Why wouldn’t she? This was how it was going to be from now on, so why not let it get started now?

The feeling was wonderful, glorious. Love flowing freely backwards and forwards between the two of them. Not taken, but shared, and magnified in the sharing, feeding into itself and blossoming and expanding and growing warmer and sweeter and - oh, it was almost too much for her!

She had to break off the kissing. It was making her lightheaded.

“I missed you too, your majesty. It was a very long few hours,” Richard said, beaming up at her. This did much to quiet her lightheadedness and bring her back down to earth. And on earth she had issues.

“You’re never to leave me like that again!” She snapped.

Squashed beneath her, Richard managed a tiny salute.

“Understood, your majesty.”

It was only then that Chrysalis noticed all the others, and even then only because Luna cleared her throat. Chrysalis looked up, saw Luna, saw Celestia, saw Twilight and pals, saw the guards, saw the whole lot of them standing there, watching her with expressions ranging from grim determination, through bewilderment and to outright bafflement. They had all, after all, seen the kissing.

Immediately on seeing the scale of the forces arrayed against her Chrysalis lunged forward to interpose herself between them all and a still-prone Richard. Her posture lowered, her wings flared out, her horn lit up, and her teeth bared.

This changed the mood somewhat. Things got a bit tense a bit quick.

Scrambling to his feet Richard counter-interposed, dashing about so that he was now standing between Chrysalis and the others, his arms spread.

“Ah, yes, your Majesty. It appears I was followed. I can only apologise. But, ah-”

He got no further. Chrysalis had already decided what had happened. It was an imaginative and lengthy scenario with clear villains and plenty to make sure they were utterly beyond redemption, to boot. It had a few plot holes, probably, but what didn’t? She’d deal with those later. For now, villains.

“What did they do to you?!”

“Asked me questions, mostly,” Richard said. Chrysalis snarled.

“Questions? Questioning you? Interrogating you? Torturing you?! How dare they!”

Richard felt she was perhaps extrapolating a little bit from what he’d said. He dreaded to think how she might have taken it if he hadn’t volunteered to be the first one into the place. Badly? Probably. Very badly? Also probably. Extremely badly? A distinct possibility. Continued delicacy was needed. Crossed, perhaps, with a little bit of trademark Richard boldness.

Stepping in closer towards her so he was even more in her way he said:

“Your Majesty, I’m okay.”

It might not have sounded a lot to most anyone else, but to Chrysalis it was enough to waver her concentration and get her to stop glaring at the assembled multitude (of villains) and glance up at him. The look of genuine warmth he was giving her was sufficient to melt the rest of her concentration and cause her violent intent to waver. He then hugged her - that’d be the bold part he’d been building up to.

Chrysalis sagged, wings drooping, and allowed herself to be hugged. Her violent intent melted. Her train of thought - already straining at the tracks, so to speak - derailed and exploded. She felt very tired all at once.

“I want to go home…” she said quietly, so quietly only Richard heard. Then again, he was the only one who’d been supposed to hear.

“We’ll get there, your Majesty,” he said, unable to really say much else but feeling it’d do for now. It did. Chrysalis plopped down onto her haunches and wrapped her forelegs around his middle and, with surprising ease, let the raging torrent of worries and annoyances bleed out of her. Hard to let her bad feelings run roughshod over her calm when she was in his arms. A safer space.

This lovely moment was ruined by Luna clip-clopping past, ears pricked, look of concern on her face. Turns out none of what had been happening had stopped happening, and everyone else had got over the novelty of what they’d been seeing and decided to go investigate.

“What is that sound?” Luna asked no-one as she advanced. Chrysalis, annoyed again at once, broke the hug and lunged up and turned to remonstrate with her:

“Sound? What sound? The only sound here is your treacherous- where are you going?!”

Luna hadn’t stopped moving further in, of course, and Celestia had been going with her and it was Celestia who rounded the corner first:

“Lot of wind for inside a castle, what could - oh!”

“It’s Unspecified Magical Object number Forty Four!” Luna gasped, also having rounded the corner, at least enough to see what all the fuss was about.

“I did wonder what happened to that one,” Celestia said, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

“And it’s been activated!” Luna gasped again, though really this should have been obvious at first blush. Celestia swallowed.

“Oh dear.”

“Is it being activated bad?” Richard asked Starlight, who’d come to stand nearby. She looked concerned, too.

“It’s not good,” she said.

“Surprised this place wasn’t given an audit prior to being abandoned,” Richard said.

From around the corner the flashing and snapping and gusts of wind sharply increased and Celestia had to duck a sudden bolt of lightning that left a distinctly unfriendly scorch mark on the wall behind her. Gritting their teeth, the princesses forged onward and out of sight. Twilight followed, and so did Starlight.

“Not the time!” She called back at Richard.

“Stop! You fools! You’ll only make it worse!” Chrysalis cried, also following. This left Richard and a handful of very out-of-their-depth looking guards, none of whom looked particularly eager to do anything else but stand around looking out of their depth. He gave them an apologetic half-smile.

“Quite the day, isn’t it?” He asked, before heading towards the problem.

Around the corner, in the hall, things were kicking off. The magical artifact he had so lovingly hauled out of the basement (or the catacomb, as Chrysalis would have it) was still where he’d been told to push it, only it was a lot more exciting now than the last time he’d seen it. He’d even go so far as to say it was looking positively angry. It jiggled on the spot and sat in a swirling wind with little zips and zaps shooting out, interspersed with much bigger, nastier zips and zaps that shot out with what seemed to be a lot more intent.

A piercing and rising whine suggested that things hadn’t finished getting exciting, too.

The princesses (and Chrysalis) had arrayed themselves in a loose semi-circle in front of it, bodies slanted against the billowing wind, teeth gritted, horns alight.

“We can contain it if we work together!” Celestia shouted over the din. Seemed obvious to Richard. Teamwork did make the dream work, after all. Chrysalis didn’t look like she agreed.

“Your interference will only cause disaster!” She said, flinching only a little when another arc of magical lightning grounded itself between her forehooves.

“If we do not contain it it will explode,” Luna said. This didn’t seem to move the needle much.

“And kill Richard,” Starlight added. That did it. Chrysalis’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped and she sputtered something in half-formed protest before her own horn lit up and she took her place in the line.

Crafty girl, Starlight.

A lot of technicolour magical nonsense followed. Laserbeams and forcefields and the like. Lots of flashing lights and whirling arcane winds. All very exciting, unclear what any of it actually amounted to beyond looking expensive. Amidst the tumult, it became progressively clear that for all their efforts, they weren’t achieving what they wanted. Richard saw all of them forced to take at least one step back. Then two. Another chunk of ceiling fell, this one much bigger and, thankfully, not on Richard’s head this time.

“It’s approaching magical critical mass!” Twilight announced with every sound of dismay. This was an even that might as well be possible to exist, Richard felt. If magic, why not magical critical mass? Didn’t strike him as the sort of thing anyone would want to happen, however.

“I assume this is towards the bad end of ‘not good’?” He asked, taking a guess. He’d had to shout it into Starlight’s ear to make himself heard. She shouted back:

“Yes!”

And then she gasped in shock and surprise as a particularly forceful flurry of intangible, ineffable forces scooted her back across the floor a few inches, hooves scraping. Bad sign. Richard nodded to himself.

“Righty-ho,” he said (or shouted) before giving the hall a quick appraise. He looked up, he looked down. He checked the walls, the ceiling. He checked the floor. He nodded to himself. “Give me a moment,” he then said (or shouted), immediately turning and striding from the room with purpose and speed.

“Where are you going, Richard?!” Chrysalis bawled.

“I’ll be right back, your majesty!” He yelled before disappearing from sight. She would have given chase and given him a piece of her mind but even she could feel the roiling energies she was playing a part in containing, and knew in her bones (wherever they might be) that any proper lapse in concentration or reduction in effort would lead to an immediate and likely highly destructive results.

Although, even with all of them working together, destructive results seemed to be the inevitable result. The thing was simply out of control. If anything, it felt like it was feeding off their attempts to contain and deactivate it. The thing was practically hopping in place now, and were it not for their expertly-crafted magical protective fields they all would have zapped to a crisp.

“We need! To get! Everypony! Out!” Luna roared. Out of all the assembled princesses she had the most volume to work with. Only Chrysalis could rival her in the room, really. As if on cue a guard finally, meekly, poked his head around the corner to see what was happening and promptly wished he hadn’t (and promptly felt especially unhappy he’d drawn the short straw). Luna’s eyes locked to his “GET! OUT!”

He got the message and fled. Whether it would matter was unclear. Way things were going, probably not…

Then Richard returned. At speed. With a big stick. What looked like a big candlestick, in fact.

He was a man who had no business running with or without a big stick and yet that was what he was doing, and he did so straight at the big magical thing. Everyone was either so busy trying to subdue swirling magical energies or too stunned by the sight of a gangling alien zipping past that they could do nothing but stare as he charged in and whacked the thing full-pelt, producing a deafening clang and managing - in a singular moment of unparalleled strength - to actually knock it over.

Still spitting sorcery it toppled, as though in slow-motion, crashing to the floor hard enough to crack flagstones and jiggling rubble throughout the room. How Richard had managed to get so close and remain so close to the artifact none of the ponies (and singular changeling) present could fathom, but there he was, standing next to the thing that had pushed them all backward. And he wasn’t finished, either. Weathering the tumult with what appeared to be only mild annoyance he heaved his weight against it and, straining, got it to tip over again with another tooth-rattling crash.

No-one had any idea what he was doing, and no-one could make themselves heard over the gale to ask him. Even Chrysalis, a notable loud lady, couldn’t manage it, and couldn’t get close enough to haul him back to safety. She was caught alongside her hated foes, trying to contain the wild and rampant forces they’d tricked her into unleashing, helplessly watching her favourite idiot doing something stupid.

He did something stupid at least three more times, too, tipping and rolling the furious item at least halfway across the hall. A spurt of something spewed out and caught him a glancing clip on the shoulder, knocking him slightly off balancing and leaving a lightly blackened and gently smoking slash that he did his best to ignore as he rammed the extra-large candlestick underneath the artifact and levered it up and over. Again the flagstones cracked, only this time they sagged as well. The floor dipped.

With an uncharacteristically manic look of enthusiasm Richard clambered on top of the artifact and started jumping, flurries of sparks bursting forth every time his feet came down, floor dipping and sagging further, the crack of wood audible even over everything else. With one final, particularly weighty jump he brought the candlestick down at the same time, too, and got what he wanted. The dip achieved its final form.

Richard leapt clear as the floor finally gave way with a sound much like a tree toppling over, crossed with the additional sound of something much like several pallets of bricks being thrown down the stairs. He caught the lip of the expanding hole, scrabbled for purchase, found it, lost it, scrabbled some more, and then managed to haul himself out and roll clear, there to lay for a bit gasping for air like a dying fish.

Meanwhile, the artifact hit the basement. All of the magical huffing and puffing and whining and humming and zipping and zapping ceased. Dust settled. Then, after a moment of ominous creaking, broke through and hit the bottom of the sub-basement.

The silence that followed was a sucking vacuum after the sheer noise of what had come before. The princesses, physically exhausted and emotionally drained, all sat down, panting. Who could blame them? Only Chrysalis remained standing and that was because she had other resources to draw upon to stay upright. Namely, seething irritation at Richard.

“Richard!” She hissed, moving over to loom above him. He opened an eye and saw her there, looming, and smiled.

“Glad that’s resolved,” he said before heaving over and standing up himself, every movement accompanied by a quiet ‘oof’ of ‘ah’. Chrysalis felt no sympathy. Or rather she did, she just put it in her back pocket for later. Sympathy later, maybe, if he was lucky. For now, seething irritation.

“Why did you do that?!” She further hissed, pointing to the hole. He turned to look behind himself, just in case she was pointing at something other than the hole. She was not.

“Seemed like a good idea, your Majesty. Or at least the best I could come up with,” he said.

“How did you know it would work?!”

“I did mention the floor was in desperate need of repair, your Majesty,” he said, as though this answered the question perfectly adequately. He even sounded a little reproachful, as though he shouldn’t need to mention that he’d mentioned it.

And indeed, mentioned it he had. It had been in amongst many of his other reports of structural inadequacies present in the ruins, all of which Chrysalis had tuned out and so, in her mind, none of which had ever been brought to her attention.

“You have never once-”

That was as far as she got before the artifact detonated.