The Long Eventide

Chapters

Phobos
Deimos
Thebe
Adrastea
Metis
Ganymede
Callisto
Taygete
Ananke
Amalthea

Phobos

The earth pony trudged her way through the swampland, wishing desperately that she was of a species that could close its nose. Ears twitched this way and that, searching for sounds, but most of what she heard was the moist noises of her own hooves in the muck. Steely grey-blue mane stuck to her neck from the humidity, and her tail lashed at opportunistic flies, the long hairs looking more grey than blue in the moonlight that streamed through moss-covered tree branches.

Wetlands were an odd sort of place. So much of it was within her domain; there was life here, growing in the hoof-coating mud. The grasses, trees, and moss sustained a varied ecosystem, and it wasn't unheard of for herds of earth ponies to commune with such lands. But so much water led to an overlap with the pegasus domain as well. Often thought of as ponies of the sky, water didn't stop being theirs when it landed and soaked into the ground. There was an aspect of the swamp's magic that she would never feel, because the droplets could be guided by the earth, but not truly controlled. There were only two ponies who could feel the call of the earth and the water at once, and neither would dare set hoof in these lands.

But it wasn't those magics that the earth pony was focused on. There was something deeper, under its surface. A low, ominous note echoing in the undercurrents of an otherwise ordinary song, a wrongness that was woven so finely in that most could never detect it consciously, and instead feel it in fur standing up, a chill along the spine, a moment where they were certain they could see shadows in the corners of their eyes. Swamps were beautiful places where differing magics collided and coexisted, but this swamp held a foulness left to fester, one all the louder the farther she waded through it.

The things she did for her kin.

Movement in the water made her ears perk and head swivel, and she saw eyes peering at her from just above the surface. A head emerged as the beast surfaced, with narrow snout, round ears, and long tusks, followed by a neck where the fur of the head became thinner, forming a patchwork with fish-like scales, and it wasn't long before a hoofed-and-finned amalgamation was dragging itself onto the relatively solid land, hunger in its eyes.

The earth pony mare knew this creature. Water deer. True deer were sapient and could be reasoned with. These aquatic mockeries of the cervid form were nothing of the sort, and tended to use their tusk-teeth to grab anything they could find near the bodies of water they lurked in and drag it in to drown and eat. This one, however, found itself with more than it bargained for as the pony reared and planted a hoof in its face, sending it toppling back into the muddy water with a splash.

Iron shoes could weigh down a stroll through the mud, but they were useful all the same.

Ears turned backward at the sounds of more hooves on spindly legs pulling bodies out of water, and her similarly-shod back hooves struck out, catching another water deer's jaw with a resounding crack and splash. A toss of her head, which dislodged her sodden mane none, found her looking at dozens of those bright yet hollow eyes, the herd of water deer seeming more emboldened by their aggressive prey than deterred. A smile twitched at her lips at the sight, and she pawed the slick, sodden earth in challenge.

Hooves flew. They struck directly, flung chunks of earth, or took her the exact number of body lengths in any direction to slam into slender, scaly bodies or avoid snaps of long teeth. The deer let out high-pitched screeches as they went down, as if venting their outrage and spurring on the rest of the herd, and the sound rattled at the mare's eardrums. Yet, she never stopped smiling, even as more and more drew themselves out of the water, cutting off her exits as they surrounded her.

"Is this all of you, then?" she questioned creatures who could never understand her, pausing for an answer that would never come and chuckling when it didn't. "Good."

The earth pony reared. Shoes and hooves alike erupted into light, painting herself, the deer, and the swamp in a vibrant green. And then she slammed them down.

The screeching grew much louder as the water deer slammed into each other, forced backward by energy that pulsed and cackled as it rushed through earth, air, and water alike. Tusks gnashed at a danger solid enough to harm but not solid enough for them to harm back, and the noises and scent of blood told her that a few had bitten each other in their confusion as they were sent hurtling away in all directions. Cracking sounds of wood followed as they hit trees in their flight away from their target, battering the plant life and being battered in return.

And then, eventually, silence, save for residual crackles that danced up and down the mare's forelegs, along with a single snort. Good riddance.

The smile left her features as she looked up, however, noting how low the moon was in the sky, and the way the black of night was starting to turn to grey. The last of the green magic faded as she turned, the deer forgotten, her hooves now seeming to glide along the earth instead of sink as she took off at a gallop through the trees, back toward where she'd come.

Trying to outrun the sunrise.

The grand ballroom was just as extravagant as one would expect. Just taking the floor space into account, the nobility of the land could more than double in number, and there would be no need to expand to comfortably corral them. That was to say nothing of the ceiling, which was high enough to allow several lanes of flight traffic from winged guests and servants. The shape of the room had been designed with acoustics in mind, allowing the assembled musicians for the eve's festivities to be heard clearly no matter where an individual wandered, and the decorations, in line with the current style, involved a liberal application of silver, as well as an array of blue gemstones.

A unicorn stalked the ballroom floor, eyes and ears fixed on the crowd as the train of her gown shimmered behind her. So many had gathered here, but her mind was not on the assorted ladies and lords of long pedigree, nor the nouveau riche seeking a place among the aristocracy. Moving on silent hooves, eyes gliding over the assembled creatures, she was searching for the familiar presence of her own kin.

Her head raised. Her ears perked. Her gaze narrowed. She watched as a face of rusted red emerged from a cluster of laughing ponies, the rest of the distinctive coat having vanished under the grey suit, which complimented the steel blue mane far better than the pelt ever had. The smartly-dressed earth pony approached the unicorn, then bent slightly at the forelegs as she lowered her head in a bow. "Lady Masquerade."

"Gentlemare Honour Code," she responded with practiced pleasantness and a well-timed smile, tilting her head to allow her mane to fall just so. "A pleasure to see you on this night of nights."

Honour Code smiled back as she rose again, one just a bit too imperfect to be anything but genuine. "The night before the longest day, so they say." Her head bobbed toward the windows at the other end of the room, and the few guests milling about near them, looking out at the shining moon. "Though the significance is lost some in our corner of the map."

Masquerade followed her gaze briefly, than allowed a small shrug. "So it is, but significance or no, few will turn down an excuse to throw a party." She stepped forward, catching the faint scents of flowers and fresh soil from the pony before her as the size difference became all the more obvious with closeness; she was a small, slight thing, while the Honour Code was of taller, thicker-built stock, even by the standards of earth ponies. "Shall we dance, Gentlemare?"

That all-too-real smile came to her face again. "I would be delighted."

Taking to the dancefloor drew eyes from all corners, as was to be expected. Both were highly eligible ponies, and it was natural to find others taking curious, and envious, interest in their choosing to dance with one another. Few knew of their distant relation, and both would prefer to keep it that way; in a world where some would gladly meticulously plot out their entire family tree and recite it as justification for their sense of superiority, those of their blood would prefer to let their presence speak for itself.

And that presence did indeed speak. Sure-hoofed steps sent them gliding around the ballroom floor, not a single stumble to be seen, and eyes that had been drawn initially by curiosity became enraptured. They moved like a single pony, and Masquerade smiled a much more true smile as she laid her head against Honour Code's neck as a silent taunt to all those who had not had the pleasure of her doing so.

The scent was stronger with the closeness, that mix of floral aromas mixed with fresh-churned earth, and beneath, just barely perceptible, the smell of ashes. She felt the muscles of the neck against her face, felt Honour Code's pulse from where her horn lay, and all of it caused some of the tension she'd carried to unwind. Ponies were tactile creatures at heart, and contact like this helped reassure them they were safe, among the herd.

It was a comforting illusion that even Masquerade cared to indulge, now and then.

But illusions always shatter, and Honour Code's voice brought her back to reality. "Tell me, my lady, have you heard any news from our colleges in the Ebony Tower?" The words were soft, unlikely to be heard by any ears pointed in their direction. "They've seemed especially busy during this past year, and I've begun to worry for their health."

Masquerade held back the sigh at the true reason for their dance intruding upon the dance itself, and instead her whispered reply was slathered in faux scandal. "Gentlemare! What I am told, I am told in confidence. Do you see me as the sort of mare who would gossip about my dear friends that way?"

"Taking the proximity of your horn to my throat into account, I'll elect not to answer that question." The chuckle was far too mirthful, likely due to the fact that even if Masquerade had chosen to use such a natural weapon to her advantage, it wouldn't be nearly as effective as one would hope. "But you have been given news, then, of some sort?"

The dancing never lost a beat. It was flawlessly automatic, and left them able to continue the true dance with their words. "There is always news, Gentlemare." Masquerade flicked an ear out toward the crowd, briefly, then relaxed it again. "Such is the nature of life. There is always something new."

A snort was the response. "I'll take that as a yes."

"You don't trust our fellows?"

The two pulled back from each other as the music shifted, continuing their dance in a more distant style, circling each other as the notes twirled through the air. It allowed Masquerade to see Honour Code's face, and watch it morph through a number of expressions before settling on something more neutral. "I trust our chancellor."

And Masquerade knew that that was true. Which is why she pressed. "But not the others?"

There was a telling silence, filled only with music and the background murmur of other guests. "Do you trust me?"

Masquerade tittered, as if charmed by some witty remark. "I would, if you were not such a mare of integrity." She smiled her finest smile. "Those do make for unpredictable associates, you know."

Honour Code laughed, and the smile she gave afterward was just a bit too charming. "My apologies, then, my lady. I never meant to disturb your machinations with unpredictability. I'll be certain to keep my integrity in check when it comes to our dealings."

The music shifted again, and in turn, they stepped toward one another. Masquerade laid her head against Honour's neck again, enveloped in flowers, earth, and ash once more. "What a dear of you. Always so thoughtful."

The conversation lapsed, and it would be easy to assume that it had ended. Honour Code usually respected the deflections, danced the dance with her and accepted that Masquerade rarely gave a straight answer that she wasn't being paid for. This time, however, Masquerade could feel the tension in her distant kin, and in time, the words came again. "You feel it, though, don't you? There's a tension the air. I've been feeling it only grow stronger for moons."

Masquerade felt the fur along her withers stand up, and her tail give an involuntary lash, both hidden beneath the fabric of her dress. She gave another titter, one that dared to sound slightly forced instead of effortlessly false. "Perhaps your duties are taking their toll on you, Gentlemare. When is the last time you took a vacation?"

"Masquerade."

Ears involuntarily flattened at the sound of her name. Not many could get such a reaction, but there was something in Honour Code's voice that could make all manner of creatures pause like foals in the face of a stern schoolteacher. She forced her ears back into a relaxed posture, pretending it never happened. "Very well," she said evenly. "Yes. I've felt something. But I'm telling you the truth, Honour, when I say that I don't know what it's about."

She heard the intake of breath, the preparation to ask more questions that she likely wouldn't know the answer to either, when all words stopped. As if a cold wind had rushed through the ballroom, both gave an involuntary shiver that ran from ears to tails. Long-buried instincts rose to the surface, a fear unlike any that Masquerade had known, and as she jerked away from her dance partner, her horn lit up in vivid green in a bid to protect herself from an unknown foe.

Instead of a foe revealing itself, panicked cries emerged from the window, and both of their heads snapped up to look at the well-dressed pegasus backing away from it, every other creature that followed their gaze mimicking their terror. A glance was shared, and they moved toward the source of fear, Masquerade slipping through spaces in the crowd while Honour Code relied on the fact that other creatures tend to see an earth pony moving with intent and get out of their way.

Masquerade was the first of the two to see it, and she stopped in her tracks. She heard Honour Code similarly go still and gasp, but she didn't look back, transfixed on the sky. Since she was a filly, she'd spent much of her life looking up at the sky, spellbound by the sight. She'd found comfort in the moon, in particular; like many, she'd looked upon the craters that dotted its surface and picked out the shape of an equine face, with pointed horn, and had slept more easily with the Mare in the Moon looking down on her.

When she looked up now, the Mare was gone.

The room was candlelit. It did little for the shadows, walls of black stone seeming to absorb the light around the ponies at the table, but neither were bothered by the dim lighting. Two unicorns were arranged around a tea set, the elaborate patterns dancing along the pot and cups in all manner of colours, making it look as if they'd been drip-painted with rainbows, with a few flourishes added with gold or gemstones. An array of spicy scents wafted from their cups, one of several custom blends that had been commissioned specifically for the company entertained within this room.

Diamond Dust contemplated the mare before her, gently sipping at her spiced tea to try to make the observation look more casual. Lady Masquerade was a pony whose stock-in-trade was appearing harmless. She was small, especially for a unicorn of their blood, with slim legs and neck to make her seem all the more delicate, and she was pink, her coat firmly within the range of pastel and her mane and tail just a shade or two too dark to comfortably qualify. The only thing that stood out was her horn, which mirrored the style of Diamond Dust's own: long, thin, and unusually sharp.

If Masquerade noticed her fellow unicorn's scrutiny, she didn't show it. But then, Diamond Dust wouldn't expect her to show such things. Instead, she looked up at her host through her long lashes and spoke with a light, friendly voice. "Quite the curious news that's come from the capitol, hasn't it? From long exile, a princess returned."

Diamond Dust nodded, as green magic coiled around the teapot and poured more into her teacup. "Indeed. The second alicorn to surface within a single generation. Centuries with only Celestia, and now they seem to be coming out of the wordwork." A thin smirk worked its way onto her muzzle. "Much like termites."

A bout of giggling came from Masquerade. "Aren't they? We'll be overrun, at this rate." Her own magic took the teapot, pouring more for herself as well. "But in all seriousness, dear, you've seen the photographs from the Ponyville celebration, have you not? She's not quite what I expected from an ancient alicorn." Flicking three cubes of sugar into her cup, one after another, and seemingly entirely unaware of the irony, she added, "She better resembles an adolescent unicorn with set of wings. There is some extra height to her, but even Cadenza stands taller than she does, to say nothing of Celestia."

Recalling the photographs in question, Diamond Dust was about to speak, until an ear flicked toward the door and she fell silent. Her head turned, regarding the soot-coloured pony who'd entered, blending into the walls so easily save for bright yellow eyes. The servant froze, nearly dropping the biscuits carried in their magic, wilting instantly under Diamond Dust's stare. She then turned back to her cup, ignoring the other pony entirely, and remained completely silent until the treats were set down and they were hastily left to their privacy again.

Only when the tip of the dark grey tail vanished through the doorway did she speak. "There are rumours that the princess's..." Diamond Dust searched for an appropriate word, ears twitching. "Restoration... has stripped her of a significant portion of her power." Frustration set into her voice. "I have been unable to find more than rumours, however. She is being kept from the public eye. The single celebration and that is all."

Masquerade set her cup down, and leaned toward Diamond Dust, an intrigued gleam in her eyes. "How very mysterious. Not a hair or feather of her seen outside of the palace? Nothing at all?"

"Correct." Diamond Dust set down her own cup, but kept her own posture rigid. "And not for lack of searching. Not a single public appearance, not even at so much as a coffee shop or bookstore." A sigh escaped her. "What our eyes and ears in Canterlot have heard plenty of is talk of the changes to the palace itself, and the laws. It would seem that Celestia is restructuring to make our new princess a full ruler, handing over entire sections of Equestrian law to her domain and giving her equal standing within many others."

Then, knowing that this particular news would intrigue her guest all the more, the smirk returned. "There has also been a mass hiring of staff who are unbothered by the thought of working from dusk to dawn."

Masquerade gave a single tap of each hoof against her chair in a show of excitement. "Is that so? What a wonderful opportunity for many ponies. I've heard that it's a dream of many to work in the palace."

Diamond Dust held back her snort of amusement. Dream of many indeed.

Her mirth faded, however, when Masquerade gained a new sort of gleam to her eyes, waving one of her hooves in the air as if to shoo away the current topic. "But enough about recent events. Regarding upcoming, have you decided what you're going to choose for your disguise for Nightmare Night?"

In an instant, Diamond Dust looked as if she'd taken a bite out of a lemon, and she fetched a biscuit, saying nothing.

"Oh don't look at me like that." Masquerade was giggling. "There's talk that this may be the last one, once the princess sees what the celebrations entail." She gave the tip-tap of excitement again. "And we both know that the result of that is that some of finest costume parties are going to be held."

Diamond Dust's face did not change expression. "If I must entertain that holiday a year longer, I will do so in my most spectacular gown, not some elaborate facsimile of another creature."

Masquerade pouted, then levitated one of the tea biscuits toward her mouth. "Suit yourself. I intend to look like an absolutely fetching ophiotaurus."

Four ponies stood below the moonlight that night, at the peak of the highest tower in the city. A bored-looking earth pony examined her front hooves, a pegasus practically pranced in place, a unicorn regarded them with a calm, stoic gaze, and lastly, a second pegasus sat staring up at the Mare-less moon, watching her companions out of the corner of her eye.

"It would seem that our princess has resurfaced." Diamond Dust's words were not news, but still turned every ear toward her, and two sets of eyes.

Penumbra, for her part, continued to gaze skyward, her face blank and wings twitching slightly with the urge to fly. "So I've heard," she said with a similar sort of calm. "Showing up to collect her 'tribute' at the Nightmare Night celebration at that. And playing with the foals."

"And transfiguring a set of toy spiders into genuine ones," Diamond Dust added, the light that flickered around her horn something that Penumbra felt, in the faint static dancing through the air, rather than saw.

"And looking a lot better!" Blackbird Song paused in her prancing to take off, hovering above the ground with a few beats of her dark wings. Penumbra felt the resulting breeze blow across her fur and tousle her mane. "You see the photos?" She gave an impressed whistle, drawing an ire-filled look from Diamond Dust that Penumbra didn't need to see to know was there. "Now that is a mane. Looks just like the storybooks now."

An irritated snort escaped the last of their number, and Brandywine stomped the hoof she'd been looking at. "Yeah, yeah, so she's a big grown-up princess now instead of a little squirt and prancing around in public speaking Early Modern Equestrian." Penumbra felt the expectant gaze against her head. "What does that mean for us?"

They all knew the answer. She knew they did. But she said it anyway, because that made it official. "It means that we move forward with our plan." She turned away from the moon, finally, to regard her kin. Her most trusted kin. "The three of you, make sure that the creatures under your domain know about upcoming guests. We all need to be prepared for their arrival."

"Are you certain that this is wise?" Diamond Dust's protest drew Penumbra's gaze to her, and when their eyes met, the mutual stare held steady. "Welcoming outsiders into the heart of Eventide could come with significant risks."

"If we're successful, they'll no longer be outsiders." Penumbra broke the staring match to look up again, scanning the stars above. She opened her wings, letting the light dance over each feather. "And it's overdue for the Umbral Society to have its moment in the sun. Don't you agree, Secretary?"

There was silence, for a time, until the next words came with no hint of emotion, as Diamond Dust bowed her head slightly. "By your will, Chancellor."

Celestia wished that she could go back in time and kick herself for ever having the idea for paperwork.

Much as some ponies seemed to believe it, the millennia-old princess did not predate the written word itself, but she had, most regrettably, been present for the rise of bureaucracy. Populations had boomed, settlements had grown larger and processes more formal, and systems to keep track of it all had followed suit. And while Celestia would never claim authority over nations not her own, ageless alicorn of the sun or no, Equestria tended to invite imitators when they had a system that seemed to work.

So, over centuries, Equestria had grown from a place where she could make a declaration from the balcony of the palace, and send out town criers to spread it elsewhere, to a place where she was subjected to the daily assault on the ears of quills scratching against parchment, a sound that frequently followed her into dreams to torment her there as well.

This day, however, the endless scratching was interrupted by a pop that perked her ears in surprise as a letter landed on her desk. She was no stranger to suddenly-appearing letters, but those tended to be scrolls that appeared with a fwoosh of dragonfire. They were always the highlight of her day, since those were the letters from her faithful student, detailing her new life in Ponyville. This, however, had been a flash of light, and an envelope.

Sunlight-yellow magic picked up the letter, and when she flipped it over, Celestia nearly dropped it again when she saw the seal. Having been pressed into rich green wax, the image was of the sun half-hidden behind the moon, with the moon still wearing the Nightmare's face.

So. They had come calling.

A sweep of a foreleg pushed her paperwork aside, and she levitated over blank piece of parchment. Even before breaking the seal, she knew this would be nothing good, and by the time she finished reading the letter, Celestia wasn't sure if she'd been proven right or wrong about that.

Either way, she knew one thing. She was going to need her sister.

Deimos

Spike paused to give a shake before entering the library, and twisted to look at his back to be extra sure there was nothing there. Rarity had been skeptical the first time that Spike had demonstrated that his scales were ideal for acting as a mobile pincushion, but once convinced sufficiently that he wasn't being harmed, and any mark on the scales themselves would be gone after his next molt, she'd been appreciative of the fact that she didn't have to keep track of the fabric one that had a tendency to misplace itself, usually thanks to Opalescence's penchant for stealing it for use as a toy. However, as much pride as Spike felt in helping her, he always felt the need to double-check that he was pin-free before coming home; while Rarity had never failed to retrieve them all before, stress over a difficult order could lead to forgetfulness, and a pin that dislodged on its own became a hazard to the non-scaled.

Once satisfied that he wouldn't inadvertently cause an unscheduled game of pin-the-tail-on-the-pony, without the tail, he pushed open the door, to find a sight that set someone who'd known the other occupant of the tree since hatching on immediate alert. Twilight was pacing the floor, a book hovering close by in her magenta magic while bubbles of the same colour reached up to occasionally pull others off the shelf. A parchment and quill also hovered nearby, the quill scrawling out words in the kind of messy hornwriting that always came with writing from telekinetic feel instead of actually looking that the words. She was muttering under her breath, Spike unable to catch the words, but her mane looked normal and she didn't seem to be excessively twitching, and so he was certain he'd gotten here in time to avert disaster.

"Twilight...?"

The single, tentative word stopped the pacing, and Twilight turning and blinking at Spike in that owlish way told him that, from her perspective, he'd only recently left. "Yes, Spike?"

He again looked for signs of eyes twitching or the start of a fraying mane and, finding neither, glanced at the book she was holding so close to her side, its cover obscured by the haze of magenta, and asked, "What are you doing...?"

Which was when Twilight smiled, and Spike felt himself relaxing as her response was excited rather than frantic, in a single chirp of, "Research!" She then placed the book on the desk as she started gathering more off of the shelf again, which allowed him to clamber up onto the chair and get a good look at the cover, emblazoned with a sun symbol and title written in golden lettering.

"The Legend of Sunbeam Smiles?" The title was a familiar one to him; it was one of the stories that had been read aloud to him when he was barely hatched, though this volume looked a bit thicker than the version meant for foals. "But... this is--"

"An old pony tale?" Twilight hadn't looked back at him to respond, flipping through one of the other books in her grasp. She then trotted back to the desk, starting to pile her acquisitions alongside the Sunbeam volume, all of them having similar themes. Classic stories, anthologies of folklore, and accounts of dubiously-real historical figures formed a tower of pages that had Spike moving away just to be certain he wouldn't be buried should it topple. "That's the thing, Spike. So was Nightmare Moon. As far as anypony knew, the Mare in the Moon and the Elements of Harmony were just... stories." She turned back to the shelves again, leaving Spike to watch her retrieve several more books.

"I can't help but wonder, what other old pony tales are true?" she added as the next batch of acquisitions landed with a solid thump, and then Twilight's magic surrounded the original book again, flipping through it rapidly. "Sunbeam Smiles could harness solar energy to cast spells her natural magic wasn't enough for, and normally the only way around that limitation is for a unicorn to use an artefact--"

"Like the Elements of Harmony?" Spike asked, noting a complete lack of the Reference Guide among the book towers.

That made Twilight pause, missing a beat in her settling into lecture mode. "Well, I mean, yes and no? I was more thinking of a wand or amulet. The Elements are in a category all their own, really. I..." And then she stopped, the book in front of her hovering mid-page-turn, her next words half-mumbled to herself. "I wonder if the princess would let me borrow the Elements for a little while? I bet nopony's really studied them for their unique properties, since they were in that old ruined castle..."

Spike imagined Twilight experimenting on the Elements of Harmony, and the resulting rainbow-filled explosion in his mind's eye had him scrambling to change the subject. "Why don't you ask Princess Celestia about Sunbeam? She knew about Nightmare Moon. And she raises the sun, so she'd know if somepony could use it that way, right?"

Twilight blinked, looking back at the Sunbeam book hovering next to her, and shook her head. "She knew about Nightmare Moon because Nightmare Moon is her sister." Another thoughtful pause followed that, and more mumbling. "Well, kind of. Sort of. You know, I've never asked exactly what the Nightmare was. Emotion can affect magic, obviously, but jealousy and bitterness shouldn't be enough to cause that level of--" And before Spike's imaginary explosion could shift from rainbow-coloured to dark and starry, she shook her head, resuming the topic at hoof herself. "But the point is, Sunbeam Smiles was from Old Unicornia, before Equestria was even founded. Princess Celestia wouldn't even have been born yet."

There was silence then, from both of them. The kind of silence that tended to settle in when someone casually acknowledged the fact that the being who had been controlling the very movements of the heavens for a thousand years could be predated. For Spike, it was a bit like when he'd first been presented with the fact that his adoptive parents hadn't always existed and, indeed, had been foals once. The look on Twilight's face told him that, with her, it might be more than that.

"So!" Twilight's voice was slightly higher-pitched than it had been she broke the lingering silence. "Yes, um, I'll bring it up with her if I find something that looks promising, but I don't want to bother her with theories like this unless I have something to back it up." Nervous laughter escaped her. "It's thaumaturgy studies, after all. Not something like, you know, another thousand-year-old evil coming back to menace Equestria." Another bout of laughter escaped, and Spike restarted his careful watch of the state of her mane. "I really, really hope there aren't many more of those to worry about..." Her pitch jumped a few more notes. "But if there is, I will definitely tell Princess Celestia if I find it!"

Which is when Spike, practice honed from years as an assistant, launched the words that would hopefully pull his older sister away from the mental path of being overrun with ancient evils. "Twilight, did you eat at all since I left to help Rarity?"

The blinking started up again, followed by a slow, "Um..." Then her stomach decided to answer the question for her, with the low growl of long-ignored hunger.

Spike smiled, turning to head for the kitchen. "One daisy sandwich, coming right up."

"Thanks, Spike."

To truly understand Sunbeam Smiles, you must understand the differences of the time.

This was not an age where marks came in during childhood, a sign of the shift from young foal to adolescent. Such a thing could happen, but was exceedingly rare. In this age, marks could come late into a pony's life, and some may even live their life without gaining one at all. For Sunbeam, the fact that she'd reached adulthood and was still blank of flank was not a thing to be bothered about, or even all that notable. It didn't change her eligibility to join the other unicorns in raising and lowering the sun and moon, as she'd come well into her magical power by then. Not many spells to her name, but plenty of strength to offer the group effort of managing the heavens.

Old Unicornia needed that strength. The effort of raising the sun and moon was a monumental one, something that would leave the unicorns who'd contributed unable to even light their horns enough to pick up a quill for weeks on end. Even given time to recover, pushing themselves to complete the task too many times would damage their internal channeling paths and eventually burn them out with greater permanency. This, paradoxically, resulted in the true magical savants not being handed the task at all, for fear of depriving the nation of their greatest defense and leave them vulnerable to attack from monsters, or opportunistic strikes from the other pony tribes, with whom there was never lasting peace until the Windigo Winter a few generations later would force their hooves.

Sunbeam Smiles was the perfect middle ground, at the time, with raw energy but no marked talent for magic that would see her placed in a wizard's tower and sheltered from the unicorns' duties.

They would only know how perfect she really was the first time she touched the sun.

"You've really got to remember to have lunch when you're studying."

The tone in Spike's voice got Twilight to take another bite of her sandwich and other sip of her lemonade, and she didn't look him in the eye, not wanting to see the disapproving frown that no doubt lurked there for the fact that she still had The Legend of Sunbeam Smiles on her desk and was reading during lunch. She wasn't sure exactly when Spike had started looking after her rather than the other way around, but the reminders that he was the main reason she didn't pass out more regularly tended to leave her both grateful and guilty.

"I know, I know..." She jotted another note on her parchment, then went for another bite and sip. "There's just been a lot on my mind. And..." She trailed off, ears twitching as she considered her next words. "The solar-powered magic concept just feels like it has a chance to work?" Her eyes flicked to her mark, frowning at it. Trying to demand the collection of stars on her flank give her more than vague intuition was too much to ask, it seemed. "Lots of natural phenomena give off a form of magic, and the sun's one of them. It's just finding a way for a pony to tap into it that's--"

She froze when she saw the look on Spike's face. It was an expression she knew well, and with the wisdom gained from years of experience growing up with a dragon had her scooping up everything, food, books, and all, from the desk as a familiar fwoosh of green fire filled the space between her and her brother.

The fire was harmless, of course. The worst it might do was send her lunch to Princess Celestia by mistake. But Twilight both wanted to keep her daisy sandwich and not have the piece of correspondence land on top of it.

Once she'd set everything down again, her magic curled around the scroll, already feeling anxiety starting to tie her organs in knots. It had the royal seal--no surprise, as she knew of no creature who could use this method of contact outside of the palace--and already everything from invasions of ancient enemies to sudden pop quizzes were dancing around in her mind as possibilities. While she wrote the princess on a regular basis, for her to write Twilight...

Breathe. It wasn't always emergencies. Sometimes Princess Celestia sent well-wishes. Or gifts.

Memories of a set of golden tickets were not good for calming her nerves.

Twilight broke the seal and scanned the words. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Spike coming over to her side of the desk and peering at the parchment, though she knew he'd never gotten very good at reading through the glow of her magic--there was evidence that a unicorn's eyes were specially tuned to filter out the glow to some degree, and the fact that other ponies seemed to find it much more vibrant than she did, unless she was specifically using a light spell, lent credence to it--and as she scanned the words, she heard him ask, "What does it say? Does the princess need something?"

And Twilight, who was already turning the scroll around because, despite all evidence to the contrary, there had to be more to the message than just that, gave the correction of, "Princesses. This is from both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna." The scroll pirouetted in the air, both sides checked twice and then quickly scanned for any disappearing ink spells. "The girls and I are needed in Cantlerlot for..." She looked over the words again. "A diplomatic mission?"

Spike, who she had no doubt was already picturing some far off locale, peered more at the unreadable-to-him scroll. "Does it say to where?"

"No, but..." And there's when the hyperventilating started. "Spike, I'm not a diplomat! I'm a librarian and a student of magic! And of friendship!" She set the scroll down and hopped off of her seat, her hooves already making trotting in place motions. "And the girls aren't trained for this either!" Trotting in place turned into pacing. "Why would they want us?"

She saw Spike climb onto her seat and pick up the letter, reading it for himself, and saw as he, too, turned it over in his claws looking for more, before innocently suggesting, "Maybe it's a mission to a place that needs blasting with the Elements?"

Twilight opened her mouth to protest this, closed it, and conceded a, "Maybe," as her pacing intensified. "But, but, that's even more worrying! And why even call it diplomacy at that point? That'd be more of a... I don't know!" The words an act of war ran through her head and she was only dimly aware of her mane starting to fray as she whirled toward the library door. "Oh, I have to go get the girls and--"

Green and purple scales suddenly took up her vision as Spike raced into her path with impressive speed. A claw gently poked her in the snout. "Finish your lunch, Twi."

"But--"

"You don't want to faint in the middle of the palace. Again."

The image of entering the throne room to meet with the princesses and then falling flat on her face flashed through her mind, and had her reluctantly turning to retrieve her sandwich and lemonade. "Fine, but..." She looked back at Spike over her shoulder. "Can you go round up the girls for me while I eat?"

A smile and salute answered her. "I'm on it!"

It took some effort to settle back down with her lunch, her legs twitching with the urge to get up and pace again, or charge out the door even with Spike already acting as proxy friend-herder. A mouthful of daisies and returning her eyes to the open page in front of her helped calm her some, doomsday scenarios pushed aside for the moment in favour of the comfort of a book.

Sunbeam had stepped into place with the other unicorns well-informed of the aftereffects, trusting her brothers and sisters to help her when she needed it, and having spent the week before relearning to manipulate objects with her mouth instead of her horn so that she could handle the smaller tasks herself. She hadn't feared it, and instead welcomed her chance to do her part.

Lowering the moon was as she'd expected. She'd nearly had her legs give out from under her, never having tried to move an object so heavy in her life, and ended up leaning on one of the other unicorns for stability as she gave it her all to send the moon sinking below the horizon.

Touching the sun, however, had had the opposite effect. From the moment her magic met it, she felt energized. Every bit of power she poured into the sunrise, the sun seemed to send even more flowing back. The other unicorns were shocked, losing their own grips on the sun one by one as Sunbeam kept going, until she was the only one sending it into the sky where it belonged, doing the work of at least a dozen unicorns all on her own.

Only after completing this feat, feeling better than she ever had in her life, did she notice the sun-shaped mark now adorning her flank.

Twin thrones sat occupied.

There had been a lot of logistical issues in having a second throne commissioned, not the least of which was the fact that the vast majority of ponies hadn't know why Celestia would want a second throne made at all.

After the destruction of the castle at Everfree and her relocation to Canterlot, the palace had been designed with a throne room built around a single throne. The red and gold seat, emblazoned with the symbol of the sun--only the sun, because even though she had taken up her sister's duty in her long absence, she would never claim dominion over the night--towered over all who entered, not only for its height, but for the raised platform it sat upon. She'd silently accepted the grandiosity as an unfortunate necessity of the station while silently considering it overkill when she was already the tallest pony in Equestria.

The platform it sat upon had been made wide enough for a second throne to join the first, even if Celestia had never told those designing and building it about her reason for wanting it that way. The problem was, as the days, years, centuries had counted down to when she would have her sister back, she'd realized that getting something built before the day would have been ideal... but in the interest of neither causing panic nor rampant conspiracy theorizing--the rumours about secret trysts and resulting children that had started by adopting Cadence had finally died down--having the changes made to the palace, including the new throne, after the Summer Sun Celebration had proven the most practical choice.

The fact that this left her sister sitting on the platform floor during the early days of her return had resulted in many profuse apologies, but the new, silver, moon-emblazoned throne had at least made for a good surprise for after the Ponyville Nightmare Night celebration.

Right now, Luna was seated in that throne, by Celestia's side as she should be. As she always should have been, all these years. Unfortunately, due to current circumstances, she was spending the entire time glaring daggers at Celestia.

"Thou didst not tell me that it was still there, sister."

Luna's hiss was for no ears but their own, guards dismissed for privacy, and Celestia sighed, her wings fluffing out with nerves she allowed few ponies to ever see. She didn't correct the language slip-up, knowing that Luna was angry enough without nitpicking her pronoun usage.

"You had enough to worry about," she started, already knowing it was an excuse. "There were so many things to bring you up to speed on. Linguistic changes, magical and technological advancements, amendments to our laws, the--" She winced, remembering the all-too-recent Nightmare Night. "--Cultural shift. I didn't want to trouble you with--"

"Trouble me with what? Her legacy? My legacy?" Luna's wings weren't fluffed. They were open in challenge, and paired with narrowed eyes. "If the letter had not come, when would you have told me of it all, sister? In another year? Two? Ten?" With a brazenness no other pony would dare, she prodded Celestia in the side with a hoof to punctuate her words. "You have said that they rarely come calling. How long would you sweep them under the rug if permitted?"

The reminder of the letter had her giving another wince. It, and the letter that the two of them had sent to Ponyville in turn, had her resisting the urge to get up from her throne and pace. She was good at suppressing it by now, though the observant would be able to catch the way that one of her hooves would tap rhythmically instead, as if to an unheard song. "You're right, Luna. I'm sorry. I just--"

That's when the doors swung open, and in an instant, the two alicorns fell into a practiced false calm, Celestia wearing the welcoming smile she did every time one of her little ponies came to speak to her. The sight of Twilight racing in, toward the throne, calmed her anxious heart some, especially when the five other ponies that she owed an incredible debt to filed in behind her.

"Princess Celestia! Princess Luna!" Twilight skidded to a stop in front of the thrones, panting for breath. "We came as soon... as soon as we could!"

Celestia descended from the platform, then bent her knees and her neck, arranging herself so that she could lay her head across Twilight's withers. "It's good to see you, my faithful student." She felt Twilight nuzzle in, not unlike a foal greeting a parent, and felt some more of her nerves unwind, despite the somewhat uncomfortable position she was in. "I'm sorry for calling you and your friends here on such short notice."

As she lifted her head and straightened her legs again, she saw Luna come forward. While not so familiar as to greet Twilight in the same way, her sister lifted a hoof and offered it, which Twilight smiled brightly at before lifting her own to gently bump it. "I am happy to see you as well, Twilight Sparkle." Her voice was soft. It'd been so much softer when greeting their subjects lately that Celestia still could scarcely believe the change. "I wish that our first time speaking since the Nightmare Night celebration were not official business."

Twilight's smile faded to a worried frown, and Celestia followed her gaze as she glanced back at her gathered friends, clustered a short distance back. "That's what I wanted to ask about." She looked up at Celestia. "Princess..." She glanced at Luna again, correcting, "Princesses... what's going on that you'd send us to be diplomats?" The next words came a bit too hastily. "Not that I'm questioning your judgement! But um, Equestria has its own ambassadors, and your letter didn't even say where we're supposed to go."

"There..." The word was tiny, softer than even Luna's new voice, and Celestia followed it easily to Fluttershy, the petite pegasus seeming to be trying to hide behind her own mane as one wide turquoise eye looked up at her and her sister. "There isn't another prophecy coming true, is.. is there?"

Luna spoke up before Celestia could. "I assure you that it is nothing so dire."

Celestia nodded. "And I know this is an unusual request of you, but this is a unique situation." She took a breath, a deep one. A barrel the size of hers, with the lungs to match, could take truly monumental inhales. "The Chancellor of the Umbral Society of Eventide asked for the six of you directly, to attend a celebration of my sister's return."

It was second nature to scan the reactions. Twilight had the look on her face that she always got when processing new information that she wasn't sure what to do with yet. Fluttershy hadn't changed expression at all. Pinkie Pie looked excited, which, going by her faithful student's letters, was likely due to her use of the word celebration. Applejack looked thoughtful. Rainbow Dash looked completely baffled.

Rarity, meanwhile looked like she was going to explode with sheer force of giddiness. Instead she let out a high-pitched squeal that reminded Celestia of a teakettle, turning all of her friends' eyes onto her even as all ears flattened against the noise.

"Eventide? We're going to be in Eventide?" The room was filled with the clicking sound of four hooves rapidly tapping against marble as Rarity trotted in place. "Oh this is so exciting! The ponies from that city are so glamourous, so mysterious." She squealed again, a mercifully shorter one, and wiggled in a way that reminded Celestia of a puppy. "And being asked for directly! It's a good thing I brought my sketchbook. Oh the designs I could make..."

"Glamourous and mysterious?" Twilight repeated, confusion written over her features. "I don't know about that. There was a student from Eventide at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and she was mostly just kind of strange."

The trotting stopped. Rarity blinked rapidly and stared at Twilight. "Strange?" came the questioning of a mare who had had one too many fantasies break lately and didn't look keen to add another to the pile. "Strange how?"

Twilight went silent. Celestia watched the twitching of her ears and dove into her own memories. Contrary to popular belief, she didn't have every unicorn who had ever graced her school memorized, especially not the ones who hadn't been granted her own extra tutoring. However, students from that corner of the land were rare enough that they stood out, as she could count the number since the school's founding on only her hooves and wings.

Twilight's awkward, "Uh... well... um..." came at the moment that Celestia mentally located the filly in question.

This was immediately followed by a memory of Twilight coming in for her Advanced Transfiguration lesson with a fire-orange coat, still smelling of fur dye, and hooves painted with glossy polish, asking if there was a spell that she could learn that would allow her to teleport another pony to the other end of the school.

That was followed by the memory of Twilight relaying to her, via letter, how she and Rarity had met. Including her hasty flight from the Boutique, wearing a gem-covered saddle, while wishing for a similar spell once more, that would displace the overly-friendly fashionista to the other side of Ponyville.

She was about to speak up and save her student from her floundering, when somepony else beat her to it, in the form of Applejack. "I've got some kin out that way. Don't see 'em much, though. Be nice t' go an' visit, iff'n we have the time."

That immediately turned Rarity's full attention on her, and Celestia saw Twilight give a small sigh of relief. "Applejack! You have family in Eventide and never told us?"

Applejack rolled her eyes. "I've got family everywhere, Rares." She shrugged. "Ponies there love their apples jus' like anypony else." With a wistful sort of smile, she added, "My cousin Goldspur an' his husband have an orchard outside the city. They don't come t' the reunions near as much as they ought t', but they love t' talk 'bout it when they do. Never had the chance t' see it for myself."

That was when the conversation was interrupted, in the form of a long, frustrated groan. "Look, not that this isn't fascinating and all--" Rainbow looked at if the word were as far from how she wanted to describe the current situation as possible. "--But can somepony fill in the rest of us? What's the Umbral Society?"

Twilight opened her mouth, and Celestia saw some measure of her own lecturing expression fall over her student's features. "Well, it's..." And then the expression was gone as soon as it had come. "I... don't actually know." Her confused stare landed in Celestia's direction. "What is the Umbral Society? I thought that Eventide had a marquess, not a chancellor."

Celestia inhaled deeply again, steeling herself. She'd already had this conversation earlier, with Luna, and yet repeating it felt so daunting. They represented so many things. But if she was going to send Twilight and her friends into their domain, they would have to know.

She opened her mouth. Another voice, once again, beat her to it.

"Oh! Oh oh oh!" Pinkie was up on her hind legs, grinning widely, waving her forelegs around with a speed and vigour that had her friends ducking to avoid being knocked over. "I know that! Pick me!"

"...You do?" It took Celestia a moment to realize that the words were Twilight's and not her own.

"Pfff, of course!" She gestured wildly with just the one leg that time, until she finally lowered from her reared position. "Don't you know your history, Twilight? Eventide was founded by earth ponies! The first marquess was one!" She bounced in place upon sharing that information, and her cheery tone didn't change even as she continued; Celestia had been informed via letters that Pinkie Pie could form voice tones other than delighted, but she was still skeptical.

"But then one day a bunch of them got really mad at Princess Celestia--" She found the pink pony pronking toward her for emphasis. "--And decided that they'd have a chancellor and secretaries instead, like before Equestria." Then, rearing up again, Pinkie delivered the words in what was likely meant to be a dramatic fashion. "And now, instead, they have a marquess, but the Umbral Society is like the super-not-really-secret rulers who really run Eventide!"

The baffled looks were universal now, rather than just on Rainbow. Twilight sputtered and laughed a little. "That... that can't be right. It sounds ridiculous. Why would ponies ever decide they want to--"

"Actually, Twilight..." This time, Celestia got her chance to cut in. She wished she hadn't. "That's very accurate to what happened."

"It... is?"

And that was when Luna stepped forward; through her own attempts to gather herself to tell the tale, she'd failed to notice that her sister was doing the same. "The only thing that the story, as told, leaves out is how the feud began." Luna's wings drooped, and neck bent, carrying the weight of a guilt spanning centuries. "And the fault for that lies at my hooves."

Celestia shook her head, mouth forming words she'd said many times, in many different variants. "Nightmare Moon caused that rift, sister, not you."

"Regardless." Luna didn't look at her, simply continuing to speak to the marble beneath her shoes. "When Nightmare Moon--" The words were pushed out, sounding as if doing so were physically painful. "--Enacted her plan, she chose Eventide as the seat of her new reign, and overthrew the marquess."

That's all you need to tell them, sister.

"The Umbral Society was formed in the aftermath, to keep the city stable without a marquess," Celestia cut in, and pretended not to notice the way Luna looked at her. "But even after a new one was found, the Society never disbanded. They've been a political stone in Equestria's hoof ever since."

She sighed deeply, shutting her eyes, and behind them, she saw a parade of ponies. Some she had only known through reputation, others through a few letters, very few in the flesh, but she'd made sure to always know who they were, and what they looked like, just in case. "They're protected under the law. As long as Eventide stays, nominally, part of Equestria, and the ponies of the city support their existence, I can't disband them any more than I can keep Ponyville from having a mayor."

The mental line-up held many earth ponies, some unicorns, one of few remaining crystals of the time, and most recently, ended in a pegasus. A pegasus who had quietly taken the role, and had not uttered a peep to the Crown until the letter with the green eclipse seal. "This is the first olive branch they've extended in a very long time."

"It's a trap. Calling it." Rainbow met the stares of everypony around her with an incredulous look in return. "What? Come on! They're obviously in love with Nightmare Moon and are gonna try to do something weird and evil. They're like, writing it in clouds here!"

"Still..." Rarity ventured. "Trotting into a diplomatic mission with open suspicion is something of a faux pas, no?" Her gaze moved from Rainbow to Celestia. "Especially if the offer is genuine."

Celestia nodded. "Exactly. We can't afford to ignore this." Her horn lit, and she felt around behind her throne until her magic seized a familiar object. "The relationship between Eventide and the rest of Equestria has been strained for a thousand years, and now might finally be the opportunity to reconcile it."

The bejewel case floated through the air to rest upon the throne room floor, its lid flipping open before she withdrew her touch entirely. "Fortunately, we don't intend to send you in unprepared." Five necklaces and one crown lay sparkling, and Celestia let the pride of her smile hide the stab of longing.

Kindness. Generosity. Magic.

It was so good to see them as more than cold, grey stone, even if they no longer sparked for her.

She watched each little pony snatch up their respective element, and saw the shift in their body language. More confident, steady, focused, the sparkling representations of their virtues seeming to set in their minds that this was a mission, pushing away distractions and doubts. Celestia noted for not the first time that Twilight's crown looked a bit big on her, something she would need to grow into, but she still wore it with pride.

Luna nodded her approval. "And I will be accompanying you." Her wings opened and the tip of her horn sparked, her voice not quite becoming the Voice and yet still reminding Celestia of younger days. "If the Umbral Society does intend something 'weird and evil,' they will find that I am not the Nightmare any longer, and will oppose them with all of the magic that I can bring to bear."

Six ponies looked at each other, and shared a nod. Then, looking from one sister to another, Twilight uttered the words Celestia knew she would.

"You can count on us."

Thebe

While the Elements of Harmony, as they are best known, were only codified in the Early Celestial Era, after the end of Discordian Dark Age, the concept of qualities bestowing magic upon those who bear them is one with old roots. During the Pre-Equestrian Era, each of the three pony tribes believed in a sort of "spirit of virtue," a form of magic that had a rudimentary, if alien, will of its own, and would empower any pony found displaying the virtue it represented. For unicorns, the best known of these spirits are Sorcery and Beauty, for pegasi, Bravery and Hope, and for earth ponies, Healing and Strength.

Legends from that period frequently involve heroes who've gained the attention of one of these spirits and then made use of their power to protect their people, and sects within Old Unicornia, Old Pegasopolis, and Old Terra Firma who believed in reincarnation would occasionally try to connect these folk heroes together, as the same soul being sought out by this spirit to embody it over and over again. Despite each tribe having multiple spirits as part of their folklore, the concept of more than one bearer of these virtues working together would only see use in writings after Unification, where the idea of a group of six--typically two unicorns, two pegasi, and two earth ponies--with each bearing a spirit gained traction.

By the time the Discordian Dark Age had ended, these spirits had changed into a set of artefacts instead. Frequently depicted as a collection of gemstones in a variety of colours, they have changed from something that seeks out its bearer, to something its bearer seeks themselves in a time of need and, if found worthy, is able to activate. With the change in form, there was also a change in which virtues were focused on. This is speculated to be due to the cultural shift away from heroes who are intrinsically greater than the common pony, toward ones defined by the greatness they inspire in others, becoming a herd that is more than the sum of its parts.

The most agreed-upon elements from surviving writings are Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, and Loyalty, which take on qualities from the old spirits of Strength, Healing, Hope, Beauty, and Bravery, respectively, to varying degrees. The sixth element is not always named, but when it is, it is most known as Friendship or, marking it as a clear parallel to the old spirit of Sorcery, as Magic. A handful of stories would assign a seventh, identified as either Empathy or Forgiveness, but these never gained the popularity necessary to become the dominant depiction.

What, precisely, the Elements of Harmony are capable of magically would change drastically from story to story, but the most common threads are their ability to imprison monsters, and the ability to purify a place or pony corrupted by strange magic.

Penumbra closed the book. She shut her eyes, her face blank, her ears still, and sat motionless save for the breaths that came out in a series of heavy, frustrated snorts. The book sat there innocently on her desk, the cover emblazoned with, as the page had described, a set of six gemstones, five of them in long hexagonal cuts and the largest in the shape of a six-pointed star. It was one of several of its kind, filling the shelves that lined so much of the walls of this room. Books upon books about artefacts, legends, magical theory, and much more.

Sharing the shelves with the books were a collection of newspaper clippings, going back practically to the point when Equestria started printing newspapers. Articles about the once-only alicorn, then two, then three. From every possible source, including a few publications from outside of Equestria's borders detailing the times that these rare ponies had stepped onto their lands.

A few cases were visible, lined in gleaming metal and shining gems. Filled with curiosities that had made their way into the Society's grasp. A few produced a soft glow that could be seen through the boxes' seams. At least one occasionally gave a faint rattle. All of it was legal, at least once enough bits had been exchanged to acquire the proper permits, most of it things that the average pony would never know existed, let alone have the chance to see.

Useless, all of it.

With a flap of her wings, Penumbra launched herself out of her seat and landed on the floor with a satisfying sound of keratin on stone. Folding her wings again, she started to lift one front hoof and place it back down, then another, rocking slightly side-to-side as she formed a steady rhythm like a living metronome, never speeding up or slowing down.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Tension slowly dissipated, and eventually she opened her eyes, her calming motions ceasing. She'd been needing to do that more and more often, and she knew that it was no mystery why. Surrounded by this, all of this, the accumulation of knowledge and resources of all who came before her, who'd stood vigil over Eventide for a thousand years, and she was still dealing with speculation, guesswork, and the words of those who'd believed it was all just old pony tales.

She turned away from the books, the clippings, the artefacts of all shapes, and left her study behind. Once in the hall, she traded the candlelight of the room for moonlight, and automatically looked toward the window. Ebony Tower had very few windows; they were structurally unsound compared to the reliable, dark stone, and provided a look in from the outside, which creatures notoriously protective of their privacy abhorred. But ponies were also creatures with an appreciation for aesthetics, prone to sentimental whims, and so this was one of a few halls where enchantments to reinforce stained glass and hide it from outside gazes had been indulged.

Despite the stress weighing on her, Penumbra looked at the silver-coated unicorn mare standing among her peers, the subject of awestruck gazes, while she only had eyes for the moon high above her, and felt a small flicker of a smile at the sight.

She continued down the hall, watching the scenes immortalized in the enchanted glass pass her by. Pegasi chasing away stormclouds that dared to block the view of a starry sky. Earth ponies standing among a field of moonflowers, basking in their beauty. A pack of diamond dogs with muzzles turned skyward to sing their praises to the moon, while a gaggle of donkeys, mules, and hinnies surrounded them in a protective ring.

Then, the last.

Penumbra stopped and turned to look into the eyes of a dark alicorn in silver armour, wings outstretched to shield a crowd of creatures from the sun that beat its rays upon her back. The moonlight from the outside tinted the sun, making it look hazy, dampening its harshness, but did the opposite with the bright eyes, which held to her own as if the window were staring her down. Many who had been granted access to this hall would meet the Lunar Princess's eyes at first, then look away, shrinking beneath the judgement of the glass alicorn's stare.

Penumbra had been one of them, having hid behind her wings the first time she'd been shown the window.

Now, she stared back, demanding an answer from the unblinking eyes.

"What happened to you?"

As always, she was met with only silence.

Penumbra approached the window in careful steps, breaking the stare, and leaned her head against the glass. She sighed deeply, and the shiver that ran down her spine had nothing to do with the chill of the window's surface.

A thousand years.

She just hoped that she wasn't making a terrible mistake.

The palace had been a home to Twilight Sparkle for a long time. Throughout her foalhood, her parents' estate, her dorm at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and the palace had all shared duty as parts of what she called home. In adulthood, her tower had largely taken up that duty, but the palace had never truly given up its claim. She remembered nights falling asleep in the library, afternoons spent having tea with Princess Celestia or walking through the gardens, mornings showing up for lessons right after the sun had been raised. She knew the palace well, and could walk through it without any conscious thought, just letting her hooves take her where she needed to be.

Which was good, because her hooves were now having to keep up with an pony with longer strides than she had, while keeping up a conversation. Even with Princess Luna leading the way, being able to navigate the halls to the barracks mostly on automatic kept her from bumping into any walls or art pieces as she gave her walking companion what she'd come to start referring to as The Talk.

"There's probably going to be balloons," Twilight warned, glancing at Princess Luna's ears to make sure she was listening to each bit of crucial information. "And streamers. And confetti. I think she left the party cannon at home, but--"

That alone nearly got the taller pony ahead of her to stop in her tracks. Twilight almost wished she had, so she could have a brief break from half-trotting to keep up with her. "You think? You do not know?"

Twilight gave an apologetic smile. "It's hard to know for sure with Pinkie," she offered as an explanation. "I've tried to study her abilities but, well, um..." The smile turned to the grimace of a pony who had learned her friendship lesson that day the hard way. "...That didn't work very well."

"I see." It seemed like that may be all she would say, then she nodded and continued. "There are aspects of magic that are known to resist attempts to investigate them. I have noticed during my attempts to close the gaps in my knowledge that certain fields have had very few new discoveries over the centuries."

"Resist is a good word for it..." The grimace grew deeper, before she shook her head as if trying to knock away her memory of what a falling piano sounded like on impact. "But as I was saying, she's likely to bring balloons, streamers, and confetti, now that she knows it's a celebration. She also might try to start up pin-the-tail-on-the-pony--"

"That sounds painful."

"Oh! No no, it's not pinning on a real pony. You have a picture of a pony, and then a fake tail with a pin on it, and the one with the tail is blindfolded and has to try to put the tail in the right place."

"That also sounds potentially painful."

"Thaaaat... would be why we tend to switch the pin with something that's sticky, but not so pointy. I'll remember to double-check that with Pinkie."

That mental note made, the two lapsed into the silence, save for the impacts of hooves on marble, and a faint sound of Princess Luna rustling her wings. While Twilight felt that she had a better handle on what made the younger royal sister tick than most ponies, a single Nightmare Night didn't make her an open book, and alicorn body language was an amalgamation of different signals that she still wasn't sure she could read properly. It left her unsure if the silence was a comfortable or awkward one.

"Sooooo..." Twilight almost winced at the sound of her own voice breaking the relative quiet. "How many did you say were going to be in this honour guard?"

"Nine." The response was even. A bit too even. "Three earth ponies, three unicorns, three pegasi, all hoof-picked by myself and my sister. 'Tis a tradition that Celestia has maintained in the rare times she has set hoof into the city. A small force, equally balanced between the tribes."

Twilight turned that information over in her mind, and her eyes slid to the thick, dark book under one of Princess Luna's wings. She'd spotted the cover before it'd taken up residence there, and it was strange to her how quickly it had become unsettling to see images of the moon in its old state. Her ears twitched as she hesitated, then ventured, "And we're... only bringing the guards?" Princess Luna looked at her, but she still went on, "No diplomats, or...?"

"This is, officially, an invitation to a celebration, Twilight Sparkle." Her voice was still too even. "While the Crown is treating it as a mission, from the perspective of the Umbral Society, more than those invited and the expected honour guard would be--" There was a pause and sudden searching for words. "--I believe the modern parlance is 'party crashing.' They would be suspicious."

"But--"

"There is precedent for this. I have been made aware that the last time that a chancellor asked for an individual directly, and they attended with an entourage, they were nearly removed from Eventide's Ebony Tower immediately." Another pause, and she added, "I am, however, also to understand that that entourage included a mare who knew at least seven ways to kill most every sapient species, and so the accusations thrown were not entirely unfounded."

"If--"

Her voice wasn't so even anymore. "And before you inquire, the idea has been brought to my attention to place a trained diplomat within the honour guard, but anypony with experience with Eventide would also be likely to be recognized, even with the current chancellor being new to her position. And if not that, then an observant eye may note the lack of training in how they move and carry themselves. Being caught attempting deception would place us on even worse hoofing."

"Um."

The movements of her mane turned just the slightest bit more erratic, stars flickering. "Not to mention that the diplomat employed by the palace with the most experience with Eventide in this age is a donkey, which would be suspicious no matter how he were obscured, given the traditional composition of the honour guard. There are others with sparse connections, but at that point the risks far outweigh the potential benefits..."

"Princess Luna?"

"Yes?"

Before Nightmare Night, Twilight may have considered speaking the next words to a princess a kind of blasphemy.

"Are you nervous about the visit?"

Eight hooves stopped. The resulting silence was one that Twilight did not have any trouble identifying as awkward, until the so-ancient-yet-so-young alicorn sighed. "I am terrified." She nodded at the book. "I intend to read this written guide from cover to cover, and I would recommend that you do as well."

"I will." Twilight voice was soft, and the marble echoed the sounds of her cautious approach. Luna stiffened slightly when the smaller pony leaned against her, but didn't pull away. "You aren't doing this alone, Princess. The six of us will do anything we can to help this go smoothly."

Slowly, carefully, Luna's weight shifted, and Twilight felt her lean back. "And I am grateful, for both you and your friends, Twilight Sparkle." The moment was over entirely too soon, and she was striding through the hall again, Twilight scrambling to catch up. "We should not keep the guards waiting any longer. They are notorious worriers when royalty does not show itself when expected."

It was a clear day in the palace courtyard, and Twilight watched Princess Luna give the slightest flinch when they stepped into the sunlight. She'd done much the same when leaving the ruins of the Castle of the Two Sisters, though this time she recovered much more quickly. The smaller Luna had spent part of the walk back to Ponyville squinting, with Princess Celestia guiding her around obstacles with nudges of her wing, before she seemed to adjust to the light.

A group of guards were marching nearby, being put through their paces, while others struck at targets or sparred. The hum of projected magic, pounding of hooves, and impacts of practice weapons filled the air with sound, and Twilight looked away from the princess to sweep her eyes over the various ponies, seeking one set of armour in particular.

"Shining!"

"Twily!" A helmet lifted and tucked itself against Shining Armour's side, glowing with his magic, as he trotted over with a smile, at least until he got a few body lengths closer and he remembered himself, jamming the helmet back on with comical haste. "I mean--" He swiftly saluted. "Princess."

Twilight watched the amused smile come to Princess Luna's muzzle. "At ease, Captain. We are simply here to fetch the Lieutenant and my honour guard." As Shining lowered his foreleg, she nodded to Twilight. "I must complete a last-minute inspection of them, if you would like to catch up with your brother in the meanwhile."

Twilight, still wearing her embarrassed grimace from forgetting that guards couldn't afford the same casualness around royalty as she could, blinked in surprise. "Oh! Well, if you're sure--"

"I am quite sure." Still wearing that mildly amused look, she nodded to Shining. "Dismissed, Captain Armour." And with that, she turned toward a set of nine ponies going through their paces.

Twilight watched her leave, then examined the guards herself as best she could from a distance. She'd first seen the new Lunar Guard armour unveiled on Nightmare Night, and she noticed how similar illusions covered the unicorns and earth ponies as the pegasi. The tufts on the ears, feline-like pupils, and greyed-out pelts were universal, while the unicorns appeared to have slightly curved horns that came to sharp points. The stallion at the front of the formation, tall and bulky even for an earth pony, snapped off a quick salute, with the rest following suit, and said something to Princess Luna that she couldn't quite catch.

"Soooooo..." Shining Armour's voice brought Twilight out of her curiosity, and she looked back to her big brother's smiling face. "How's Ponyville been? I hear you're working in a library now?"

A smile split her own muzzle at the thought of her new home, already missing the familiar scent of the stacks of books, and she nodded. "Living and working. And it's been good. There've been a couple of..." She trailed off, as memories of ursa minors, parasprites, and her old Smarty Pants doll flitted through her mind. "... Small... mishaps, but I think we're settling in really well. I'm continuing my magic studies, and there's a lot of foals Spike's age around. I think it's been good for both of us." She glanced at Princess Luna again, before adding, "What about you? Any news with the guard?"

Shining Armour's smile turned to a wide grin. "Welllll... not with the guard, but..." He paused, looking thoughtful. "Well, I was planning to write you, but I guess now's as good a time as ever. It's about Cadence--"

For a mare who'd been on edge since the letter and only temporarily distracted from it, those last few words were the worst he could have said.

"What?" Shining blinked rapidly as Twilight was suddenly right in front of his muzzle, eyes wide with panic. "You two were really close when we left. Everything was good!" Wide eyes suddenly narrowed and her voice hardened. "You better not have done something stupid! B.B.B.F.F or not, Cadence is really sweet and my favourite foalsitter and she really loves you. She always promised me that I'd be a bridesmaid at your wedding-- Why are you looking at me like that?"

Shining Armour, whose grin had come back even wider, gave a chuckle. "I didn't say it was bad news. But since you bring it up, maybe instead of a bridesmaid... you'd consider being best mare?"

Eyes went wide again, but not from panic. "What? You--Really? Oh this is fantastic!"

"Hey, hey, I haven't asked her yet. That's why I was waiting to write. But... yeah. I picked out a ring and next time I--oof!"

A clang of metal accompanied Twilight nearly knocking him off-balance, slim forelegs locking around his neck in a tight hug. "I just know she'll say yes! Can my friends come to the wedding?"

Shining chuckled again as he hooked a foreleg around her to hug her back. "I think Cady would like that. She's been wanting to meet them, and so have I." They reluctantly parted, and he took a moment to lightly boop Twilight's nose with a shoe-clad hoof. "But remember, I haven't asked her yet. Don't go telling everyone we're engaged until it's official, okay?"

"Right. Yes. Okay." She laughed nervously. "Sorry, I'm just excited. I've been a bit stressed and it's nice to hear good news."

"I get you." Shining's eyes then moved to the honour guard himself, his smile fading as he took them in thoughtfully. "So... Eventide, huh?"

"Yeah. It's... weird." It felt like the only word to describe it. "I sort of figured that ponies might treat me differently after everything, but down in Ponyville they really... don't." The memories of the scent of books were joined by the memory of hooves walking through the door in search of items to borrow, and her own incredulity that she now enjoyed meeting so many new ponies. "They were right there for Nightmare Moon, and for Discord, but to them, I'm mostly just the new town librarian. So to suddenly get this... Society interested in me and my friends feels surreal."

Shining Armour shrugged with a knowing smile. "The curse of fame. Making captain had a lot of ponies talking to me who didn't even know my name before." He laughed a bit. "Mostly looking for dates for their daughters. Cady thought it was hilarious."

Twilight couldn't help but laugh too. "Oh wow. Good thing I haven't had to deal with any of that..."

The knowing smile intensified. "Yet."

Luckily, the following sense of impending doom from that single word was interrupted by the sounds of hooves. Princess Luna and the earth pony guard she'd been speaking to before were approaching, and as he drew closer, Twilight began to see the hints of his true coat colour under the illusion of dusky grey, fairly certain that he'd be some sort of light blue under normal circumstances, with a green mane and tail.

When they drew close enough, he snapped off another salute, and which Shining Armour returned, and the Princess nodded her approval. "I hope that I am not interrupting." She gestured at the guard next to her with a wing. "Twilight Sparkle, Lieutenant Morning Glory of the Lunar Guard."

Morning Glory gave a brief bow of his head. "An honour, Lady Sparkle."

Accustomed to exchanging pleasantries with guards, Twilight nodded back to him without hesitation. "Likewise. But just Twilight is fine."

"Of course, Lady Sparkle. It will be our privilege to escort Her Highness and yourself on your visit to Eventide."

Twilight glanced at her brother upon Glory's reply, and rolled her eyes at the sight of him visibly holding back laughter, before she placed the agreeable smile back on her face. "Glad to have you aboard. Now we just have to wait for..." A streak of rainbow colours caught her attention, and she looked up to catch a hint of a familiar pegasus speeding their way. "Looks like the girls are back!"

Luna followed her gaze, then smiled slightly. "Indeed. I suppose now we will know if Pinkie Pie has indeed brought her cannon to Canterlot."

Her brother and the lieutenant shared a confused, worried glance, and it was Twilight's turn to hold back laughter.

While considered a part of Equestria, Eventide boasts a diversity of population usually seen in fully independent city-states, instead of those with ties to larger nations. Unlike many Equestrian cities, which will have ponies making up ninety-nine percent of the population on up, Eventide, upon last census, had only eighty percent of their population identify themselves as a pony or a pony hybrid. This remaining twenty percent is primarily taken up by non-pony equine species, with smaller minorities of bovid, porcine, and cervid citizens, and a very small percentage of carnivorous species.

Even these numbers can be misleading regarding the size of pony majority, however, as there are several villages dotting the lands around Eventide, in the dense forests and swampland that surround the city on all sides. While not officially part of Eventide, those living in these villages have a strongly favourable relationship with the city, and are welcomed with a lack of the usual suspicion for outsiders. With this taken into account, the percentages of non-pony equines, cervids, and carnivores go up.

All of this results in a city with a blended culture very different from the rest of Equestria. For example, while all Equestrian holidays are recognized to some degree, the autumn season is more strongly associated with celebratory feasts surrounding the harvest than it is with Nightmare Night, which is typically only celebrated among the upper class with costume parties. The collection and offerings of candy are completely omitted, and most citizens will be baffled if asked about them.

Twilight turned a page in the book resting on her forelegs. It seemed rather obvious, from what Princess Luna had told them, why the citizens of Eventide wouldn't be fond of a traditional Nightmare Night celebration. Gathering an offering of candy for royalty they revered so much on the pretense that she would eat them otherwise was more than a bit insulting. But a moment of thought later opened up a question, because before Princess Luna's return, there'd been no known connection between the holiday boogeymare and the old pony tales of long lost royalty.

Did Eventide have slightly different common knowledge, that preserved the connection? And that left her wondering about there being such a gap in public knowledge in the first place, or why the holiday was allowed to exist at all. Knowledge being lost over time was less understandable when there was a witness to the events, and Princess Celestia had lived through all of it. While she'd encouraged Princess Luna at the time to play along and join in the fun, Twilight had never quite shaken the question of how Nightmare Night had become what it was.

As far as she'd been able to uncover, a holiday on that date predated the banishment, and the mythification of Nightmare Moon had blended together with it, but... why? Why had Princess Celestia allowed Nightmare Moon to become such a figure in the first place?

Twilight tried to shake the question from her mind, and glanced around at the other ponies inside of the train car. She, the girls, and Princess Luna had one entirely to themselves, the honour guard split between the car in front and the car behind. The princess had a bench to herself, spread out along it and staring out the window, while Fluttershy and Rarity had what looked like a fashion magazine open between them--she could hear a lot of sniffing and tut-tutting, and so clearly Rarity did not approve of what she saw within the pages--while Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie were engaged in a game of cards.

Twilight looked back to the book, about to launch into another paragraph, when everything went black. The sunlight from outside vanished, and she heard a scream from Pinkie not unlike the shrieks she would let out on Nightmare Night. Three horns lit, doors burst open with more light from the unicorn guards, and her friends were rapidly getting to their hooves, with Rainbow taking wing.

Princess Luna, however, remained seated. "So it does remain."

Twilight took a hoofstep toward the bench, aware of the tense-but-awkward energy from the guards as no enemies burst from the shadows to attack their charge. "Princess Luna?"

She finally tore her eyes away from the window, and it was then at Twilight realized that the stars she was seeing weren't just in her mane. "Return to your cars," Princess Luna told the guards calmly. "There is no danger. It is merely Eventide's Shroud." The guards lingered briefly, still eyeing the pools of shadows within the train car, but eventually withdrew. Afterward, slowly, Twilight's friends returned to their seats. Pinkie was the first to sit down, and Rainbow was the last.

Only when the doors shut and Twilight was the last pony standing up, did Luna sigh and stare out the window again. "This is Nightmare Moon's doing. I remember... only pieces of her existence, but I remember that she placed this. An illusion of an eternal night. A safe place to retreat, should she need it."

Twilight's eyes flicked to the book she'd been absorbed in. "I'd read about the Shroud, but..." The guide had mentioned the phenomenon as well, within the first few pages, but it wasn't the first time she'd encountered it. "I didn't know it was a spell. The books always chalked it up to being part of the area's natural magic. The nearby swamps and forests are magic-saturated and plenty of the plant and animal life is adapted to survive in moonlight..."

She froze.

"But... if it's a spell... spells decay. Everything weakens eventually..." She looked to Luna, searching for any sign that her conclusion could be wrong, but the alicorn remained silently watching the window as words from old lessons tumbled out. "Natural magical features are constantly fed by and shaped by the leylines, and artefacts can be built to draw in magic from nearby sources, but spells burn themselves out over time. The thaumaturgical structure breaks down without something physical to hold it. Even alicorns..."

"Even alicorns can not create a perpetual spell," Luna confirmed, her voice more quiet than Twilight had ever heard it, and her ears perked to catch each word. "You are correct. I still feel a hint of my..." A flinch. "Of her... magic, but as powerful as Nightmare Moon was, this would have faded within centuries without maintenance by a caster. Structures must be reinforced, energy fed..."

Luna's eyes tore from the window, and she stared at her hooves. "I believed that none of my subjects loved me, and yet, coming to them even... not myself all those years ago, the ponies of Eventide would welcome, would keep the Shroud, would come as close to defying my sister as they dare." Her eyes closed, and a shaking sigh escaped her, her head sinking as if the dark crown were weighing it down. "I craved such devotion, once, but after all this time... what have I done to deserve it?"

Silence. Twilight recognized the melancholy as something similar to what she'd seen on Nightmare Night, after Luna had cancelled the holiday and stormed off, and yet different, and she searched for something to say.

Instead, it was Fluttershy who slipped off of her bench again, slowly approaching Luna, her soft voice making dark ears twitch. "Well... you're coming here, now, to try to help make up for what happened. That's something, isn't it?" She reared up, planting her front hooves on the bench, and the surprised alicorn broke her hoof-bound stare to shuffle over and lift her wing to make room for the smaller pegasus to pull herself up. She tucked herself against her side, and eyes full of gentility looked up. "These ponies want to celebrate you coming back, so you just need to show them that you're going to do good things that are worth celebrating."

Luna blinked, slowly, and then a smile crossed her muzzle and she tentatively lowered her wing, the dusky feathers nearly fully obscuring yellow and pink, as if her new seating companion were a newborn foal. "I suppose you are right. Thank you, dear Fluttershy."

"I still think they're evil-- Ow! Hey!"

"No ruinin' the moment," Applejack hissed as Rainbow rubbed her freshly-kicked foreleg.

Princess Luna graciously pretended not to hear, focused entirely on Fluttershy. "I also believe that I should... apologise, for how I frightened you when last we met."

With a tiny smile of her own, Fluttershy shook her head. "Oh, that wasn't your fault. I was all wound up and scared over the festival. I was ready to run and hide from anything, not just you."

"Regardless, I feel rather... foalish over the entire affair, and I thank you again for your assistance with my voice."

"Happy to have helped."

Sensing that her intervention wouldn't be needed, Twilight turned back toward her own bench, only to notice, alongside Rainbow rubbing her leg and Applejack glaring at her, Rarity and Pinkie Pie were watching the exchange with rapt attention and wide grins. Rarity was leaning forward slightly, while Pinkie appeared to be vibrating in place. "Uh..."

Before Twilight could make more than that sound, two voices broke out in stage whispers in unison. "They make such cute friends!"

"...Right..." It seemed that Princess Luna was also graciously ignoring that, and so Twilight finished her walk back to her seat and book. She then wobbled on her hooves as the train slowed down to enter Eventide's station, and she quickly looked to the window opposite the princess's perch, catching sight of the platform under the illusionary moonlight. What she saw made her eyes widen, and she couldn't keep the, "Oh no..." from escaping.

"What is it!?" Rainbow was up in the air again in an instant, front hooves up in preparation of slamming them into a snout. "They send a bunch of goons? Monsters? We've gotta fight out way out of here?"

Applejack was already trying to yank Rainbow back down by her tail as Twilight groaned. "Worse. I said I went to the Gifted School with a pony from Eventide right? That's her."

Even under the moon, she could pick out that pastel pink hue, and there was nothing that would hide the unique shape of Masquerade's horn. A deep, resigned sigh escaped Twilight as she picked up the guidebook in her magic to tuck it away in her saddlebags. "If she comes at you with hoof polish, run."

Adrastea

It hadn't been just Penumbra for long. Her secretaries had joined them, one after another, taking what seats remained open at the table piled high with food. Chatter had quickly spread through the mingling group and... It felt strange, listening to them speak.

Rarity had not initially known that the rising starlet of her favourite foalhood film had been from Eventide, as the character being played by the actress had been a Canterlot-dwelling countess, but by the time she'd learned that, the accent had already cemented itself in her young mind as a signifier of elegance, and when she'd thought to adopt mannerisms worthy of the image she wanted to project to the upper class, she'd found it one that she could mimic almost flawlessly.

Not that Rarity wasn't a talented mimic in general. It came with the territory of her magic, which was much more complex than her single gem-hunting spell. That spell was simply the most obvious and most visible portion.

When it came to ponies, unicorns were nothing particularly special for senses. Earth ponies had stronger senses of smell, pegasi better eyesight--Rarity in particular had the not-at-all-uncommon problem of being slightly farsighted, something that tended to catch all unicorns eventually but had struck her relatively young--and while some unicorns would argue that their magic sense was the strongest, and argue it at high volume, that was nigh-impossible to measure across the tribal barrier, and so had no true evidence. At default, they were entirely average equines, and so was Rarity.

Until she wasn't.

Give her a moment to tap in and the world opened up to her. She could suddenly see a single loose thread in a mare's saddlebag as she crossed her vision once from across the marketplace, or tell exactly when a second can had been opened to continue painting a wall due to the miniscule difference in hue. Her ability to detect direction of sound was still limited to what was granted by being able to rotate her ears, but the range of pitch she could detect widened, and she could find all the little nuances within and, most importantly, commit it to memory. Give her time and adequate samples while her senses were open, and she would be able to reconstruct another being's voice as much as her own distinct vocal chords would allow. Accents? Were foals' play. She had noticed some subtle differences between herself and Masquerade at the station, but she doubted most ponies would catch them.

What left Rarity curious, however, was that Masquerade was the only one to sound like that. She could hear some of it in Diamond Dust's voice, but the rhythm of her speech was different. It danced in and out of Penumbra's, as well, but Rarity still couldn't quite tell if it was a natural accent that tended to wax and wane or if she, too, was a mimic. A subconscious one, one of those ponies who absorbed speech patterns like a sponge and let them do with their voice what they will. Honour Code hadn't had a trace, and neither did Blackbird or Brandywine.

City-states tended to have a few different accents among their members, divided by location or class, but it still seemed so strange, to hear so little of what she associated with the city's mysterious glamour among its shadowy leaders.

Rarity had to fight not to physically shake her head. Shadowy leaders. Clearly Rainbow's talk of evil plans was getting to her. While she would certainly not discount the possibility of ulterior motives, she felt that the Umbral Society, and Eventide by extension, was owed the benefit of the doubt. Politics were complicated, ones marred by an old tragedy and a thousand years of resulting tension even more so. The chancellor was young, and it did not seem out of place at all that she might see Princess Luna's return as an opportunity to start improving relations.

Right now, however, Rarity's attention was not on Penumbra, but Blackbird. The pegasus secretary had come in with slightly-dragging hoofsteps that spoke of thinly-veiled fatigue, and the scent of hot water and soap that indicated her having had a recent shower. While she was engaging with the conversation around the table--Pinkie Pie was currently regaling her about the parasprite incident--it was clear she'd been through some kind of exhausting ordeal lately.

In fact, that soap had a rather strong scent. It was heavily floral, made from a mix of plants Rarity couldn't quite recognize, and was the sort of thing one chose when one didn't want to smell anything but flowers. An odd thing to wear to lunch, as the scent of the food was a third of the enjoyment, the other thirds being its flavour and, of course, the company had while eating said food.

In fact, the scent was getting to be oppressive, and the scarf she was wearing was starting to itch. A sign that Rarity needed to send her senses back to baseline.

Blackbird wasn't touching the food much. The other Society ponies were eating, Brandywine in particular doing so with gusto, but Blackbird seemed a bit ill, and was cherry-picking--almost literally, as she plucked the cherry tomatoes out of her salad and chewed them during the moments when Pinkie was speaking, which was most of them--from her meal as if searching for the things that wouldn't upset her stomach further. Rarity's heart went out to her, as it was obvious that she was suffering one of the downsides of being a very important pony, the inability to simply cancel a meal with guests while unwell.

Pinkie Pie, while well-meaning, was also likely draining what remained of the poor mare's energy, and that was why Rarity cleared her throat, entering the fray at a moment when Pinkie proved that she did, occasionally, need to stop to breathe. "Secretary Song? May I ask you a question? There's something that has me terribly curious."

She watched a brief moment of tension as Blackbird pulled back from her meal, looking Rarity in the eye. And what dazzling eyes they were, a stark blue only a shade or two darker than the chancellor's, standing out against the sleek, black pelt and white mane. There were so many ways to potentially draw those eyes out with the right dress...

"Of course," she said in return, the warm smile adding a twinkle to those eyes. "But it's just Blackbird. Titles are for business. This is just lunch."

Rarity smiled back. "In that case, Blackbird, I wanted to know a bit more about your mark. Are you a musician, in addition to your duties to the Society?"

The tension faded, and Blackbird turned her head to regard one of her flanks. There was a splash of white across her hips, matching the mane and tail, that made for the perfect backdrop for the black violin. "Well, I do play, but it's a little more abstract than that. It's more a talent for..." She looked back at Rarity, and she could see the energy coming back; ponies couldn't help but perk up when given a chance to talk about their mark. "Lifting spirits and bringing creatures together. That can be with a good meal, a song, a rousing speech, whatever." She leaned down to nibble a bit at the lettuce, then continued. "I think my mark just latched onto the image of my violin because that's what I was playing when it first showed up."

"Ah, I understand entirely, darling," Rarity said with a nod, watching Blackbird's ears twitch a bit at the endearment. "My mark is for bringing out beauty, as if the world itself is a runway, but it first appeared when I found the gems within a truly massive geode." She looked at her own flank, smiling at the three gemstones as if they were an old friend. "The moment of epiphany never leaves us."

Blackbird looked thoughtful. "That's a good way to put it. The mark's not just our purpose, it's the memory of the moment that we figured it all out, so we never forget." She then grinned. "And with one like that, I'll bet you'll be the talk of the party."

Rarity shook her head with a titter. "Oh I wouldn't presume to draw attention from the true guest of honour." She inclined her head toward Princess Luna, who was currently chatting with Chancellor Penumbra and eating her food with the most gusto of all. "But with a mark like yours, I'd assume you're the one organizing the celebration?"

"Nahhhhh, the whole thing's Dusty's baby." She jerked her head in Diamond Dust's direction, and Rarity had only a moment to realize why Pinkie had not cut back into the conversation--how did that mare manage to be so bizarrely stealthy sometimes?--before Blackbird was speaking again. "There's going to be a lot of nobility there, and she's good at making sure they're happy."

"Ah, so she's the one with her hoof on that pulse--"

"Basically."

"--While you're more of a, shall we say, champion of the common pony?"

Laughter broke out. Loud, genuine laughter that reminded Rarity of the caw of a crow. "If that's your way of saying I don't have the same grace--"

"Not at all, darling! But a talent for bringing others together speaks to a way with the masses, yes?"

The laughter faded to chuckles. "You could put it that way. But it's a lot more than just the common pony." She briefly spread her wings, gesturing outward with them. "Everyone could use a little hope sometimes, you know?"

"Quite," Rarity agreed, though it turned to a soft sigh. "It's a shame little Spikey-Wikey couldn't come along, but I suppose a baby dragon would struggle to stay awake for so long."

Ponies tended to be surprised, when anypony in the group mentioned Spike's species. Shocked may even be the better word. The reaction to his presence could earn staring, startling, stunned questioning, fleeing, and reference alone would get the first and third of those, at length. Which was why it caught Rarity by surprise when all Blackbird did was let out another, cawing laugh.

"Probably for the best, yeah. But, wow, if you want to talk about stealing attention, a dragon..."

"They're so small..."

One corner of the large table was where Brandywine had staked out her territory, and around her played her fuzzy charges. The four kittens had drawn Fluttershy like a bee to a flower, and she was peering at them all with wonder while the earth pony mare devoured her way through her third slice of vegetable pie.

Brandywine was horribly intimidating, having trudged into the room alongside Blackbird when the two had arrived, and been looming there with the distinct impression that she would rather be anywhere else. It wasn't the fact that she had height and bulk that could make somepony wonder if she had horse ancestry--plenty of the larger earth pony families could trace branches back into the Saddle Arabian deserts, something that Fluttershy had learned from Applejack once during a discussion on how large and widespread her family truly was--because physical size rarely intimidated Fluttershy unless it was taken to full-adult-dragon scale.

Instead, it was the obvious tension. Brandywine would occasionally turn to look at Blackbird, narrowing her eyes. She would also look at Penumbra sometimes and audibly snort, and it was hard to not associate a pony snorting that much with a possible fight on the horizon. The inability to paw the ground with a hoof and then charge when sitting at a table did nothing to make it less frightening, because that meant that any altercation would be verbal, and Fluttershy found ponies shouting at each other infinitely worse than one charging. Charges could be dodged, while yelling was much harder to avoid.

Yet, she'd approached, because how scary could a pony really be if they took care of cats?

"They can't be any older than six weeks..." Fluttershy breathed, as one of the balls of fluff ambled closer.

"The vet actually guessed eight," Brandywine said, raising her head up from her meal to look at pegasus and kitten alike out of the corner of her eye. "They're undernourished and still catching up."

"Poor things..." Her chin was practically on the table as the curious creature wandered up to her face. "Can I...?"

A ghost of a smile tugged at Brandywine's lips. "Go ahead. The black and white one is really friendly."

Fluttershy lifted her head with a squeak of joy, and gently gathered the kitten up into her forelegs, earning a soft mew. "And the mother's doing alright?" she asked softly, never taking her eyes off the bundle of purring fluff.

Brandywine nodded as she pulled a fourth slice onto her plate. "Now she is. She's eating and catching up on weight too."

"That's good to hear." Fluttershy's ears drooped, the look in her eyes turning mournful. "The thought that somepony would just leave them..."

Brandywine's smile vanished, and she snorted. "It happens. Some ponies find little carnivores cute right up until they don't. Then you've got a cat just old enough to have kittens and just young enough that she shouldn't wandering around in the dark, not knowing how to feed herself, let alone a litter."

Applejack, her own plate loaded down with pie and a baked potato piled with fixings, gave a snort of her own to match. "I know what'cha mean. Everypony wanted t' see Winona when she was a lil puppy, but now that she's big, the more skittish folks in town think she's scary." She shook her head, the hat never shifting enough to risk falling from her head. "An' dogs are a lot easier for ponies to handle, dependin' on breed, so I reckon it's even harder on the kittens."

"Do you think you'll be able to find good homes for them?" Fluttershy asked, as she leaned down to nuzzle the purring kitten.

The smile came back, if still a thin one, and she nodded. "There's already a taker for the mother cat when the kittens are old enough. Nice griffon family. And there's been some interest in the fuzzballs, too. I just wanna be thorough with the background checks so it doesn't end up round two of the same."

That had Fluttershy looking up, and she gave an understanding nod of her own. "Some of the animals at my cottage are tame enough to be adopted, but I try to be careful too. It's always so heartbreaking if they need to come back."

"At least we can give them a place to come back to. Better than some get." The next snort from Brandywine was almost amused, paired with a slight roll of the eyes. "Some lunch convo, huh? I'm bringing the mood right to rock bottom."

"Oh no no no!" Fluttershy shifted closer, and found another kitten batting at the end of her mane for her trouble. "You aren't bringing anything down. It may be a sad story, but these kittens get a happy ending."

"I guess." Finally tearing her gaze from the plate fully, she turned and looked at her company directly for the first time, quirking a brow. "Should I be worried about you trying to smuggle one home?"

"Not until they're old enough." The brief grin disappeared as quickly as it came, and she looked at the purring kitten contemplatively. "And I shouldn't, really. I think my Angel Bunny would get jealous..."

This place could've really used some streamers.

It was something that had been on Pinkie Pie's mind since entering the tower. The torches on the walls could've made some amazing light patterns reflecting off streamers made of the right material, and it would liven up the gloomy halls and make them much more inviting for visitors. There were going to be lots more visitors now that Princess Luna was back, after all! They had a chance to show these ponies how fun it was to have somepony from outside the city come and party with them.

These celebrations could even become a whole new holiday, which meant that Princess Luna was bound to keep bringing guests here with her. All the new friends she'd make over the years would be able to come with her to Eventide, and soon it'd be just as big as the Summer Sun Celebration, or the Grand Galloping Gala!

Well, hopefully more fun that the Gala. All those stuffy traditions had made it so boring that even Princess Celestia didn't want to go anymore, and Pinkie didn't want that for Princess Luna. She'd have to get in right when history was being made and make sure their royal friend had lots and lots of fun on her big day.

It'd been with that thought in mind that she'd slid into an empty seat next to Diamond Dust, the dour-looking unicorn having been slowly making her way through a bowl of thick soup. "Soooooo..." The blooming grin on her face grew wider as the spoon coated in green magic lowered to the table. "Blackbird said you're the one planning the party?"

"Indeed." Diamond Dust turned her attention to Pinkie Pie fully, meal left untouched as she continued. "I have a knack for organization and logistics, and so the work of putting together such things often falls to me." Her ears twitched, and Pinkie watched tiny hints of expression on an otherwise stoic face give off a subtle signal of discomfort. "As there are no historical precedents for the celebration of royalty returned from such long absence, there are no traditions to follow, and so I will be trusted to... wing it."

Oh. She understood now. It looked like her expertise was needed even more than she thought!

"Which is hard when it's a party for somepony so special," Pinkie agreed, and with a sagely nod, added, "And it's extra hard to wing it without any wings." No laughter at that, but she thought she saw an almost-smile, and so she grinned in response, pouncing on the opportunity. "But it's easier with friends, soooooo... Can I help?"

"Pinkie no!"

She heard the hiss from the far side of the table, recognized Twilight's voice, and blinked. Then she realized that she'd put her hooves on the table in excitement while asking her question, and hastily pulled them back down onto the chair. That was good of Twilight, looking out for her table manners. She didn't want to make a bad impression on the Umbral Society, after all. Especially not the chancellor and secretaries, who were the most important of very important ponies in Eventide!

Pinkie watched a cascade of micro-expressions turn discomfort to surprise, then relief. "I am always open to new perspectives on how I might improve upon my ideas." Diamond Dust's ears then tilted forward and... Well, Pinkie wasn't sure exactly what kind of smile that was, but it didn't set off the alarm bells of a Discord kind of smile, so it was clearly a good one. "Especially when it comes from one of our honoured guests."

"Yayyyyyy!" Pinkie hopped onto her hind hooves, remembering to stand on the chair just soon enough to stop herself from leaping onto the table instead. "You won't regret it! We'll make this the best. Party. Ever!" She swiped her front leg along the space of table in front of her, scooping up several dinner rolls. "After all, we've got to make up for a thousand years of missed birthdays and Hearth's Warmings and a whole bunch of other things." She shoved several of the rolls into her mouth, barely noticing Diamond Dust levitating one of the ones still on the plate over to herself. "It's gotta be a bonanza."

"Pinkie no!"

Pinkie blinked again, then the realization hit her. Right, no talking with her mouth full. That was very bad table manners! She'd make sure to chew the food properly before she spoke again. She'd need to thank Twilight after lunch for helping her so much with making new friends.

Diamond Dust, for her part, dipped the roll in her soup and then look a bite, and she chewed, too, before saying anything else. "That is precisely where my mind has been." She gave a determined nod in Pinkie's direction. "Every stop must be pulled out to best honour our Lunar Princess, after such injustice." She then tilted her head to another part of the table, where Penumbra and Princess Luna were chatting. "Perhaps we can discuss the details tomorrow? To preserve some pleasant surprises."

Pinkie's eyes widened, and then she rapidly nodded. "Right!" She mimed a zipping motion across her mouth, her next words strung together as a muffled, "PnkiPiSpsPtyMd!"

Diamond Dust chuckled. It was a soft, low sound, and Pinkie Pie got the distinct impression that its owner didn't let the sound out very often.

Well, all the more reason to help with the celebration, then. She'd have Dusty rolling on the floor with laughter in no time!

Penumbra wasn't sure what she'd expected.

She knew the Elements, had studied them as much as she could from the scraps of literature she'd managed to find, but the current Element-Bearers had been sheltered from the spotlight, and so, other than the famous Lady Twilight Sparkle and her closeness to the princess's sister, she'd had very little to go on. Applejack had been the easiest, as the Apple clan had put down roots in Eventide alongside every other part of Equestria, and so she'd had a basic idea. Otherwise? There had been whispers about Rarity among Canterlot's elite, some talk of Rainbow Dash in Cloudsdale, but nothing substantial. Nothing to analyze and study, like the high profile individuals her predecessor would intensely study before engaging with.

She wondered what Moonshadow would've thought of what she'd done. She wondered if the former Society Chancellor would have called this reckless, or if she would have scoffed and said it was not reckless enough. Penumbra had more than once thought to bring Brandywine to her grave, to seek counsel, but she knew better. The echoes were not true souls, merely the imprint left behind, and when sapients left such echoes, there wasn't much of them that remained. The earth would remember that it was a unicorn's final resting place, but who she'd been was for the Unseen Place to claim and shelter beneath bone white wings.

She also wondered what Moonshadow would have made of Princess Luna, who was currently devouring her way through a bowl filled with dozens of different fruits and laden with sweet syrup. Numerous empty bowls and plates were strewn around her, having once been filled with various dishes that had since been laid waste to by the alicorn's appetite. Logically, Penumbra had known that an alicorn's larger size and greater magical power naturally led to needing more calories, but she'd not been quite prepared for the lunch spread to be so soundly devastated.

"How are you finding your fruit salad, Your Highness?" she asked, voice polite and calm, hoping that the question would conclude before said salad met its untimely demise.

"Most excellent!" Princess Luna paused in the merciless slaughter to smile. "I do not know how you became aware that I am so fond of pomelos."

"If I may be honest?" she asked, and the next words, as Penumbra found herself smiling back, truly were the honest ones. "A lucky guess. There is a citrus grower here who keeps several trees, and it is quite popular, especially among the local pegasi."

"Well, it also popular with the visiting alicorn. How I have missed such things." The Lunar Princess rolled her eyes. "My sister insists that grapefruit tastes just the same as pomelo, and I swear--" The spoon that was grasped in dark, starry magic stabbed at the air, still holding a few slices of pineapple. "--That her tastebuds have eroded over the centuries to come to such a conclusion."

"I'll have to be sure to send several with you after the celebration, then." Penumbra was already calculating the cost, and even the treasury having been tapped for both the party and other necessary investments, she would easily be able to send the princess's weight in fruit with her on the train. It would be the least she could do, after all was said and done.

"That will not be necessary." A shake of the head never once shifted the dark crown. "'T'would be terrible for your princess to deprive her ponies of such delights to sate her own appetite. I will simply see if this grower would be interested in expanding their orchard to in order to supply Canterlot as well as Eventide."

Now that was a thought. The location had its difficulty with agriculture, but earth pony magic often found a way, and even if she'd thought the endeavour too much, there was only one thing she really could say. "I'm sure he'll be honoured to have his fruits on the table of royalty, Your Highness."

Exporting produce. Working for something beyond mere self-sufficiency, and to make Canterlot into a customer at that. What would Moonshadow think of that?

Penumbra watched her princess return to her campaign to drive all food on the table to extinction. She remembered what she'd read about the dark alicorn next to her having once carried Honesty, Loyalty, and Laughter as part of her duty to her ponies, and looked at a vibrancy and zest for life that had never been captured in stained glass.

Sitting there, having barely touched her own fruits, she came to the realization that she liked Luna.

It was the last thought she had before the contents of the salad bowl hit her in the face.

Metis

"I'm so sorry, Chancellor. I--"

"Twilight, we've been over this. You can just call me Penny."

Two mares walked through the torch-lit halls. One had her horn lit in a minor light spell, partially blocked by the slices of cucumber speared on it. The other shed crumbles of feta cheese with each hoofstep, and a piece of tomato lazily parted itself from the gold and black mane to strike the stone. Chancellor Penumbra somehow managed to still look composed, her wings open at her sides as they shed the contents of the rogue salad bowl in a wide trail that would allow anypony in the tower to easily trace her steps.

"I..." Twilight stumbled in the dark, and then gave a sharp shake of her head. The cucumber remained unimpressed with her efforts to dislodge it, and she resisted the urge to paw at her horn with a hoof. While the obstacle did nothing to affect her casting, having something covering their horn was the kind of thing a unicorn could only tolerate for so long. "I'm really sorry about that, about all of that. Especially everypony joining in after Rainbow--"

One of the spread wings motioned in the air to hush her. "Everypony includes my secretaries. And the princess, who I recall looking delighted and cheering something about new royal traditions." She looked at Twilight out of the corner of her eye, a wry smile finding its way onto her muzzle. "If I may be blunt, I'm a public figure representing a pariah of a city-state. Having things thrown at me is something of a occupational hazard." A soft chuckle left her throat as another chunk of tomato and a few small pieces of onion vacated her mane. "My predecessor once took an apple pie to the face during the Grand Equestrian Pony Summit."

Twilight could only stare at Penumbra in horror. "But--"

"I can tell the difference between play and malice, Twilight," the chancellor said with a soft, smooth voice that reminded her of the all-too-recent time when Princess Celestia had reassured her that the Smarty Pants Incident wouldn't result in being sent back to Magic Kindergarten. "Everything's fine." She stopped walking, right before Twilight nearly went muzzle-first into the door in front of her. Penumbra nodded toward it. "You go in and get cleaned up, and I'll see you later."

Twilight turned her head and watched Penumbra follow the trail of shed salad fixings back the way she'd come. There was no sign that she had any trouble of her own in the dark, and Twilight found her eyes trailing to retreating flanks. The gold made for enough of a contrast that she could still see the mark on that side in the dark, and she found the fur on her back pricking with unease. The kind words couldn't soothe her, not when everything about the barely-a-mare seemed too composed, too unflappable, too... everything. All it did was leave Twilight waiting for the metaphorical clang of a dropping shoe.

For now, however, she was safe, and she turned back to the door, took a breath, and pushed her way in. Conversation that had been buzzing inside of the room died out as her friends turned to look at her, and Rainbow, wearing what looked like the contents of an entire blueberry pie, was the first to speak. "Hey! Where've you been? The servants here said they'd be starting a bath and we thought you were gonna miss it."

She could feel her teeth grinding, though it still wasn't as prominent a sensation as the cucumber slices refusing to vacate her horn. "Oh nowhere important," she growled as she advanced on a pegasus who she was reasonably certain had wings too gunked-up to fly away and escape. "Just apologising to the chancellor for you acting like a foal!"

The last few words were a shout, and the sudden escalation in volume had Rainbow hopping back, the instinctive flare of her wings showering Fluttershy and Applejack in pie crumbs. "Hey, Pinkie started it! She hit me with an alfalfa roll!"

Pinkie Pie, the sheer amount of food items trapped in her curly mane impossible to itemize, frowned at Rainbow's accusing jab of her hoof. "I didn't mean to hit anypony, Dashie. I was just showing Dusty how I could catch them in my mouth and I missed."

"Dusty?" Rainbow repeated, turning toward Pinkie and seeming to forget the furious unicorn right in front of her. "What, you're on a cutesy nickname basis with them all already?"

"That's what Blackbird calls her, and she didn't seem to mind."

"It's still way too friendly. You--Hey!" Rainbow hopped back again as Twilight was suddenly in her face.

"Even if Pinkie hit you with a roll, you didn't have to yell 'FOOD FIGHT' and throw a salad at the chancellor."

"I wasn't aiming for Chancellor Creepy. I was aiming for Princess Luna."

"That doesn't make it better."

"But it was really funny when it hit her." Seemingly obviously to Twilight's fraying mane--perhaps she mistook it for simply mussed up from the aftermath of the upturned cucumber platter--she started to laugh. "Did you see how the tomatoes got in her hair?"

Before Twilight could shout again, a tut-tutting came from Rarity, whose pearly coat was now splattered with olive oil. "Really, darling, that's terrible. It's clear that Chancellor Penumbra put a lot of work into making herself presentable to meet us. And she's being gracious enough to let us use her bathing facilities to clean up."

"But you threw a whole bowl of rice at--"

"An' laundry services," Applejack added with a huff, cutting off Rainbow's protests. "You got soup on my hat." The hat in question was pressed between her forelegs with an impressive orange-red splash pattern across it.

"Hey, no, wait a second, I didn't throw any soup! I don't know who did that."

"...That was me."

Applejack turned with look at Fluttershy with a raised eyebrow, and she shrunk beneath her mane with the weight of guilt. "You threw soup at me?"

"It was an accident. I was talking to Brandywine and the yell startled me. My wing hit it. I'm sorry."

Applejack shook her head with a small smile. "S'alright. Accidents happen, an' I'm real good at gettin' tomato stains out o' things."

"Just... just..." Twilight finally gave into the urge and started pawing at her horn, knocking the offending pieces of vegetable to the floor. Finally freed from the constant irritant, she looked around at her food-covered friends and let out a sigh that felt one-part frustration and one-part resignation. "Look, the big celebration is the day after tomorrow, on the Winter Moon. Can you all please please please behave yourselves until after it? We don't want a repeat of the Grand Galloping Gala."

A wave of cringes went through the entire room. "Geez, Twilight," Rainbow groused. "Unfair kick."

"I won't do anything to wreck the party. That's a Pinkie Promise." Pinkie reared onto her hind legs, making the appropriate series of motions to seal the words into a proper ironclad promise. She then grinned as she landed back on all fours. "In fact, I'll make sure it's the best Welcome-Back-From-Your-Thousand-Year-Banishment Party ever."

Rarity sniffed slightly, examining her hoof. "I fail to see where anything that went wrong during the Gala was my fault."

"Me neither," Applejack chimed in with a snort.

"But you have my word that I will neither try to court, nor violently splatter cake onto, any of our hosts, if it makes you feel better about the whole affair, Twilight."

"An' I won't try t' take over the caterin' this time without bein' hired for it."

"I'll... I'll behave..."

With the final squeak of agreement, Twilight stared at Rainbow, who drew back away again from her with a groan. "Uuuugh, fine, Promise I won't do anything to bring the tower down or whatever." She gestured with her wings, blueberry filling forming elaborate drip-patterns on the floor. "I'll even be polite to the obviously evil ponies and sit through boring meals with them without livening them up."

Close enough. "Thank you, Rainbow," Twilight said evenly, then looked at all her friends again, feeling her tension relax slightly. "Now let's go take that bath."

Penumbra was the last to enter the hall, and the stained glass window of the princess stared down on all four of them as she took in the disgusted look on Diamond Dust's face, Brandywine's near-perpetual frown, and Blackbird Song grinning like she'd had an all-expenses paid vacation in Las Pegasus. Rice surrounded Diamond like the droplets left behind after a rain, Brandy's mane had gained the extra volume of a platter of mashed potatoes, and Blackbird suddenly gave a full-body shake, pelting everypony around her with chickpeas. The assault had Brandywine's kittens huddling even closer, having hidden beneath her not long after the chaos had started and so had gotten through the ordeal unscathed.

"Well that went well!" Blackbird chirped, before planting her rump on the stone floor.

Both of her other two secretaries turned to stare at the chipper pegasus, and Brandy was the one to raise a brow and say what both seemed to be thinking. "Anyone ever tell you that it's really hard to tell when you're being sarcastic?"

"All the time," she responded, and Penumbra found herself nodding in agreement. Blackbird then shook her head. "But, no, I mean it. I can see why the princess likes them. They seem like nice ponies."

Diamond huffed a bit as the green glow of her horn went about plucking the stray chickpeas and casting them to the floor with the rice. "I agree, for the most part, but I suspect that Lady Rainbow Dash is trying to provoke us."

Brandy snorted and rolled her eyes. "Y'think? She chucked a Minoan salad at Penny. Unless outsiders have gotten extra weird, I don't think that was saying 'let's be friends.'"

"We expected there to be some amount of suspicion and hostility," Penumbra said with a roll of her shoulders, trying to ignore how much having cheese in her flight feathers made her want to incessantly twitch. "As close as they are to the princess, they also grew up in her sister's light. And we have a reputation." She gave a faint chuckle, even as one of her front hooves started to rhythmically tap. "We're lucky it's such petty hostility, really. Like a foal stirring up trouble because they resent where their parents have brought them. It's a far cry from an assassination attempt."

Play and malice. She hadn't lied when she'd spoken to Lady Twilight Sparkle. She did know the difference, as Moonshadow had laid out such with stories and scars alike until the young pegasus who was to be her successor knew and knew well what standing vigil against the burning sun would cost her. More than apple pies had menaced her predecessor, especially when she had taken some risks of her own with outsiders. The important part, however, was that some of such risks had paid dividends, and it was that fact that kept spurring her on.

"It is refreshing not to have meals that are so stuffy," Blackbird commented. "We'll have to look for more excuses to invite the princess and the Element-Bearers over. They really lighten things up."

"That assumes," Diamond responded, looking at Blackbird with a cold stare that didn't make her so much as twitch. "That everything goes according to this risk laden plan that we are putting in motion. You are certain that Zigzag will be able to handle their part?"

"They were pretty confident about it," she responded with a shrug. "It's not like I know anything about zebra magic, but it looked like the amulet was reacting."

"They are always confident, regardless of what is asked of them. It fails to fill me with any confidence of my own. And being able to attune to an artefact does not mean being able to use it correctly, or wield it to its full effect. We are putting our trust in--"

"Zigzag's personality quirks aside, they're more than competent," Penumbra cut in, meeting the redirected glare and returning it unflinchingly. "We can trust them to do their job when the time comes. As for us, we should focus on the celebration. I want to give our princess a party truly worthy of her."

The stare held, for a time, and she could hear Brandy snort at them as the silence stretched. Then Diamond bowed her head, words working their way out through clenched teeth. "By your will, Chancellor."

Warm water could do wonders for the mood, and Twilight Sparkle felt her temper soothing as she floated along the surface of the bath. It was big enough for all six mares and then some, more like one of the communal bathhouses in the older parts of a Canterlot that had slowly, one by one, been converted to other purposes. Group bathing was more likely to be done with immediate family and other smaller herds these days, and so most tubs could comfortably hold about four or five, with facilities at places such as Ponyville's local spa able to accommodate a few more. This was closer to the size of a pool, which Pinkie Pie seemed to be taking advantage of as she showed off all manner of swimming maneuvers.

Princess Luna and her guards--the guards being the only ponies who hadn't joined the mayhem either intentionally or accidentally, and whom had showed their training well in keeping all laughter internal--had been granted their own bathroom, and so she slowly felt the immediate pressure ease. No princess, no Umbral Society, not right now. She could finally have a moment to think.

As she looked around at her five closest friends, she knew what she needed most to think about.

Twilight took in a slow breath. "Okay, so the Winter Moon is soon and..." She paused to make sure the others were paying attention. It took an extra moment for Pinkie Pie to surface, having produced a snorkel from... somewhere. "We need a plan of attack."

Rainbow Dash's reaction was, regrettably, predictable. "Now you're talking! Let's--"

"Not that kind of attack." The chastisement sent Rainbow down the few body-heights necessary to land in the water again, and Twilight weathered the resulting splash. "We have time before the celebration, and I need to know how everypony is going to use that time."

She looked up at the high ceiling; extra light sources had been added to the room to make it more comfortable for them, and it allowed her to pick out a few details of what seemed to be a large painting on the stone's surface looming above them, if not enough to see what it was a painting of. It was almost more unnerving than it being so dark Twilight wouldn't have been able to tell it was there at all. "We're in unfamiliar territory, and we need to be smart about getting familiar, quickly."

"I'm gonin' t' go visit my cousin." Applejack always looked strange without her hat, or with her mane and tail undone, but she looked right at home in the water as she spoke with confidence. "Not only was I hopin' t' see him, but he might know some things. See what the hardworkin' everypony thinks o' this Umbral Society." She frowned a bit in thought. "After all, you heard Penny sayin' what she did t' Princess Luna, 'bout bein' the citizens' will. I'd like t' hear some citizens' opinions 'bout it."

Rainbow snorted. "You're calling her Penny now?"

"She did request so, Rainbow," Rarity cut in, pausing half-way through applying shampoo. Twilight still sometimes found herself surprised with how long Rarity's hair actually was, when mane and tail were too waterlogged to keep their artificial curls. "And as for my part, Applejack is right. We should look into what Eventide thinks of its rulers." She went back to her diligent cleaning, and Twilight could spy three other separate hair-care products sitting at the edge of the massive tub. "From my chat with Blackbird, before it was so rudely interrupted, she seems to be the secretary with the most connections to the common creature. I may be able to learn a great deal by cultivating a positive relationship."

"So you're just gonna spend the whole time... ugh..." Rainbow shook her head a bit, then zipped up out of the water again, pointing to herself with a front hoof as her flapping wings splattered water. "Well, I'm gonna check out the militia. See how good their training is and figure out what they're hiding."

Applejack raised a foreleg to keep the flying droplets from her face, while wearing a sly smile. "Right, an' you're not jus' sayin' that 'cause you want t' see Honour Code fight a hydra."

"You know what, AJ? You can--"

"I'm gonna help Dusty with the celebration!" Pinkie was suddenly at the same distance above the water as Rainbow, and she hovered there for a moment with no visible means of levitation before splashing back in. The snorkel wasn't anywhere to be seen for the entire sequence of events. "I'll make sure that the whole thing is a Deluxe, Extra-Special, Certified Pinkie Pie Party!"

That's what I'm afraid of. But there was only so much anypony could do to keep Pinkie from a party, and maybe she really had learned her lesson from the Gala. Twilight could only hope. "Okay, that's four accounted for. Fluttershy..."

"...I um... might've made plans... with Brandy..."

Twilight hadn't quite caught the words, over the sounds of the water, but Rarity seemed to have no such trouble as her ears perked. "Oh? What sort of plans, dear?"

Fluttershy's wet mane covered not just one, but both eyes as she rinsed it free of its own shampoo, and if the temporary blindness bothered her, she didn't show it in the slightest. "Well... we both do a lot of the same things, so..." One eye peeked out from behind the coral-coloured shield. "We wanted to talk, about maybe moving animals to her, or to me, when we have too many to handle, or when there's somepony looking to adopt and we think the other has an animal who'd be a good fit." The second eye slowly appeared as well. "Brandy doesn't have a talent for animals, so I can't send her the really wild ones, but--"

"I'm wonderin' jus' what her talent is," Applejack commented. "I've seen that cask mark before, but in my family it's for makin' cider." She looked thoughtful. "S'pose it could be for brewin' her namesake, but it's a real leap from makin' distilled wine t' all this shady political business."

"...I didn't ask," Fluttershy admitted. "She just mentioned that she had to learn animal care the harder way, because it's not her talent."

Twilight hadn't even thought to look at the secretaries' marks, having been so disturbed by Penumbra's, and so that information came as a relief. Ponies with the same, or extremely similar, marks clustering together in occupations was normal enough. Even with every individual discovering their talent under personal circumstances, it seemed that certain icons stuck out in the collective subconscious and found themselves repeating again and again. But for a repeating mark to be that mark would have been alarming.

Maybe she was overreacting. Nopony else was focusing on that, not even Rainbow Dash. She needed to focus on the details that were important, not get caught up something that stole all her attention from the goal of making sure this visit didn't end in disaster.

"Okay, so we've got scouting the militia, talking to some locals, and learning what we can from the secretaries." Twilight nodded at each of her friends in turn as she spoke. "I'm going to stick close to Princess Luna. She has her guards, but I think she could use a friend, too."

Rarity gave an approving smile. "That's a lovely idea, Twilight. The princess should never feel as though she's without support, and she no doubt feels much more secure with you around."

Twilight couldn't help the nervous chuckle. "Well, I mean, I don't know if I'd go that--Gah!"

All else she could say was lost in the splash of Rainbow Dash cannonballing back into the water, and before she could think to get it back, Pinkie Pie popped up with cry of triumph and sent a similar wave of water at Dash. The impromptu splash fight spread, consuming a reluctant Rarity, much more reluctant Fluttershy, and much less reluctant Applejack, and soon all five ponies were laughing as water flew.

Twilight watched this for a few moments, almost tried to raise her voice to stop them. As she was again splashed with a stray wave, however, she instead found herself laughing and joining in, reminding herself that there were no eyes from guards, princess, or the Umbral Society to judge them. She could afford a moment of fun.

She'd remember this, later. The moment when she'd let herself laugh, and felt like everything would turn out all right.

Diamond Dust and Brandywine had left to clean up. Penumbra remained in the hall, eyes locked on the silver, moonlit unicorn captured in stained glass, and feeling Blackbird Song's gaze equally locked on the back of her head. She'd grown very good at that, detecting the gazes of others when she seemed utterly distracted, a skill honed from when she would make conversation while muzzle-deep in a book.

"Are you alright?" Penumbra asked softly, without looking back, and heard wings rustle behind her.

"Nothing I haven't lived through before." A few hoofsteps ventured closer, enough that Penumbra could see Blackbird out of the corner of her eye. "All part of the Daywalkers' Duty, right?"

Penumbra snorted, giving a sharp shake of her head before she turned to meet Blackbird's eyes. "That's just it. You aren't a daywalker. I should've--"

An inky black wing fanned out, laid itself across golden withers. "Penny, it's okay." Blackbird's voice carried that soothing, melodious quality that could calm a crowd or lull a foal to sleep, and despite herself, Penumbra relaxed some. "I was the best we had and we're on a time crunch. I'll face the light however many times it takes to see this through."

Penumbra looked back at the window, but it was a different unicorn she was seeing. Even now, she could almost feel her predecessor's stern stare. "Do you think she's proud of us?"

"Moonie?" Blackbird paused for Penumbra's nod. "I think she's cheering us on, in her own way."

"Not calling me a fool?" Much like how her gaze tried to peer into memory, her voice sounded distant in her own ears.

"Nah, she'd see that this is..." Blackbird's free wing rustled again as she searched for the right word. "Necessary."

Eyes closed, head dipped, and Penumbra let out a deep sigh. "I wish I believed that. I keep thinking she wishes she'd left me in the archives where I belong."

"She picked you--"

"You know that I wasn't her first choice. Other factors--" Penumbra's eyes opened again, and she turned her head to regard her own flank, where the Mare In The Moon stared back at her. "...Forced her hoof."

"Horseapples." The force in the word made Penumbra look up, where Blackbird's eyes burned with fierce conviction. "That stubborn old mare would kick anything that tried to force her hoof right in the snout." A sharp stomp rang through the dark stone hall. "She wouldn't have put down your name if she didn't believe in you."

They held the stare, and in those moments, she believed Blackbird. In the time their eyes met, the doubts were gone, the way was clear, and she felt the full force of the faith that was being placed in her, a force that almost sent her to her knees. She felt not just purity of conviction, but, in that time, the idea that she could have felt anything but conviction seemed a distant imagining.

Then Penumbra snorted, broke the gaze in favour of glass again, and the world was back to its murky state. "It might not matter. If there's need for a scapegoat when this is over... If the princess and her sister need an example... I'll pay that price."

The wing across her withers withdrew with a start. "You said they..."

A golden wing opened, and settled atop Blackbird; she was gracious about not complaining about the feta cheese still stuck in the feathers. "They won't kill me," Penumbra reassured softly. "But I may be forced to step down. Or imprisoned. Or..." A wry smile came across her muzzle, and the chuckle held no mirth. "Drafted, perhaps. There is an Equestrian tradition of taking those too dangerous to let walk free, but too useful to squander, and pressing them into service to the Crown. I may qualify."

Blackbird stepped closer, and leaned against Penumbra's side. "You know we're not gonna let you go through that alone. Me, Dusty, Brandy, we go where you go." She smiled. "Besides, it'll all work out. I know it will."

The next chuckle was closer to a breath. "You really are the most dangerous one of us."

"Who, me?" The faux innocence made the third chuckle from Penumbra much more genuine. "Why?"

"Because hope is dangerous." She gave Blackbird the slightest nudge with her shoulder. "But I also wouldn't want to live without it." She slowly withdrew her wing and folded it at her side again. "You should get some rest, after you clean up."

"So should you."

"I have some reading to do."

"You and those old books." Blackbird reluctantly stepped away and turned in the direction of the baths. "Don't stay up too late with them."

"I won't. I promise."

Penumbra waited until she could no longer hear the retreating the hoofsteps, and then turned toward her office. She would clean up, but first she would need to prepare for a visitor of a different sort. The kind who indeed required a book, to able to visit at all. Someone that her secretaries were better off not meeting, or knowing he'd been here.

Moonshadow's contacts with outsiders had indeed been invaluable, but there were outsiders, and then there were outsiders. Desperate times made for unlikely benefactors, and so the burden of contact would be hers and hers alone, as Society Chancellor.

It would hardly make much difference for her, after all. She already suffered nightmares, every night.

She should have been reading the Eventide guidebook.

The room was quiet, as Twilight was the last awake. After cleaning up, they'd been informed that their hosts wouldn't be able to make it to dinner with them, but that they could ask the cooks for anything they'd like to eat in the comfort of their room, within reason. That "within reason" had been stretched to its limit, Twilight felt, between Rarity's exacting instructions and Rainbow's frustratingly vague ones, but there hadn't been the slightest complaint, and the resulting meal had been delicious.

Much like with the bath, it'd been Luna and her guards in their own royal suite, and the other six in their own room. The massive bed had Rarity at one far side and Applejack at the other, with Fluttershy curled in a tight ball next to Rarity, Rainbow laying with all six limbs spread out next to Applejack, and Pinkie Pie laying on her back with her legs in the air as she took up the middle. Twilight would have the room to join them as long she pushed one of Rainbow's wings out of the way, and she would, in time, but right now she was stretched across the floor's soft lounging rug, her head resting on a pillow as she regarded the book in front of her.

She wasn't sure why she'd brought the Sunbream Smiles book with her. It'd seemed silly to take the folklore compilation on a mission, and distracting herself from the task at hoof with her research wouldn't be professional of her either. Yet she'd found herself putting it in her saddlebags while preparing to go to Canterlot, and there it had stayed on the train ride to Eventide.

Twilight should have been studying the location they were in, hunting for clues of what they were in for, and potential faux pas to avoid. Yet as her friends had drifted off, it was Sunbeam Smiles she had pulled out, her eyes scanning the pages by candlelight.

Something about it kept nagging at her. It was a straightforward book, telling the tale of when Sunbeam got her mark, and then throwing together various adventures of hers into the author's best guess of a chronological order. Yet something felt off about it, something she couldn't quite put her hoof on, and she found herself skimming the tome for the third time, hoping to find what it was and settle her restless mind.

It was like any other book she had read about Sunbeam. Nothing out of place, every story that Twilight was familiar with accounted for.

So why did it feel like something was missing?

One of the first lessons had been how to properly meditate.

Penumbra was laying on the cold stone of her office floor. She'd requested a blanket the first time, and been told that the sensation was part of ensuring that she remained on the razor's edge between waking and sleep. She needed the cold, hard surface to help keep her grounded, else she may float away beyond the point where she would properly remember the meeting. Lucid dreaming had been another lesson, but it was best not to need it, as so long as she remained partly awake, she would retain the most control over the interaction.

Moonshadow had taught her much, and had supervised the first introduction. She had also written much down, and done so with a thoroughness of notes rarely seen. She'd been preparing for the future, for generations of linguistic drift, and so had written and re-written the rules and precautions in as many different phrasings as possible, trying to safeguard against a misunderstanding brought about by quirk of language. These were not creatures to contact lightly, nor to let one's guard down with.

As Penumbra found that edge between awareness and sleep, something changed. Not to any hypothetical observer who could have stumbled into her office--they would simply see a freshly-bathed pegasus on the floor with legs tucked under her body and eyes shut--but to gazes just outside of physical reality, the black in her fur, hair, and feathers started to overtake the gold, darkness swallowing light until not a single glimmer of it remained, only her mark standing against the inky tone. Then, while eyes remained shut in the physical world, in the immaterial, they opened, shining a fierce green.

No magic was necessary, for this summoning. All that was needed, once she was at the threshold of dreaming, was the will, and a name.

"Hypnos."

The shape of the creature that appeared from the shadows before Penumbra was something like a sloth, save for all the ways that it wasn't. The blue-silver body was wrong in every aspect of proportions, and faded off into wisps of smoke in motions that reminded her of the ripples in a moonlit pond. The candle in the room was no longer necessary, as blank eyes carried their own sickly green glow as they met her gaze, and the head moved too quickly when studying her, jerking left and right like a curious bird. And let it simply be said that the less said about what it had in the place of claws, the better.

Staring too long would lead to seeing something other than the not-sloth, and so she did everything possible to remember to blink, even if she technically didn't need to while like this. Then Penumbra took a single deep breath, also unnecessary, and spoke the words, "The Princess of Dreams has returned to Eventide."

The pegasus branded with the mark of the Society stood firm as lips pulled away from a maw filled with daggers, and the nyx before her smiled. "Good."

Ganymede

Even in a place where the sun couldn't reach, some part of Applejack knew to wake in the before-dawn.

It'd taken some time to remember where she was. She instantly recognized the snoring, as Rainbow Dash had the kind of noise that was impossible to forget, but that didn't give much of an indication of location. After all, the six of them had ended up asleep in a ponypile a few times, even after that ill-advised sleepover with Rarity. She mentally cycled through her memories of what her friends' homes, and floors, felt like, and when nothing registered as familiar, she opened her eyes to the sight of dark stone.

Right. Eventide. She remembered now.

Applejack looked over at her friends, still fast asleep, and smiled as she saw Twilight resting in the middle of the pile with a book tucked under her chin. Up late reading again, most likely. As for Applejack, a body that had never quite learned the meaning of the words sleep in was already twitching with the need to get up and do something, and lacking the chores of the farm back home didn't mean slacking off. She'd made plans, and she was going to keep to them.

She slid out of the bed, and the chill of the stone floor conducting through the soles of her hooves nearly sent her leaping back into it again. By Celestia, how did a single one of these Umbral Society ponies stand living in a home full of stone when that awaited them on a cold morning? One day of that and she'd be up and moving right back out into a wooden house with a roaring fireplace.

At least she'd be out of here soon and walking on sun-touched earth. Keeping the winces to a minimum, she moved over to where she and her friends had piled their belongings, and sought out her own. A snap of her teeth and swift toss of her head sent the hat soaring and then landing in its proper place, and then she slid into her saddlebags.

She felt the familiar weight, but still checked that her Element was in its place in one of them. The princesses had recommended that they keep the necklaces and crown on their person at all times, and she'd been in agreement. They didn't need anypony sneaking into their room while they were out and going through their things. They couldn't be too careful, in unfamiliar territory.

One good thing about being an Apple, however, was that unfamiliar territory tended to come with a familiar face or two.

Applejack turned toward the door, casting one more quick look at her sleeping friends before she pushed it open. It was time for a reunion with her distant cousin.

It would seem that the chancellor had had an additional guest the previous night.

Masquerade was not supposed to know about this, of course. She had been trusted with knowing that Hypnos existed, but was not supposed to be privy to his comings and goings. Nopony was, but Penumbra. It had been a protective measure. She would know where the book was and what do to if something went wrong, but only one pony was ever supposed to contact the nyx at a time, to minimize his potential influence. It left each meeting conducted in secret, to keep her shielded from the creature.

What her dear chancellor had failed to account for was that Masquerade was good at uncovering secrets. Equestrian society was nothing but a series of bejeweled masks placed atop piles of bones, and she had a talent for tossing the sparkling facades aside and assembling the skeletons beneath. Being a unicorn gave her a slightly closer relationship with the immaterial plane, and while she could not directly observe the nyx himself, she was aware of all of Hypnos's visits.

It would have been easy to "accidentally" stroll into Penumbra's office right in the middle of the meditation, but she'd refrained. Jeopardizing such a fragile alliance with the outsider for mere amusement would be the act of a foal, tempted as she was.

It would be so enlightening to speak to him herself at last, if she had the opportunity. It was so hard to acquire specimens from outside, much less those sapient and sane enough to talk in anything more than thoughtless echoes of the minds they'd touched. But no, it was better to keep it her little secret, and continue to watch the chancellor to be sure that she showed no signs of dark influence.

It was all fun and games until a pony succumbed to possession, after all. Dealing with such an incident tended to be... messy.

It was nearly dawn, and Masquerade had been up for several hours already. The wards in her workroom had just been freshly applied, the symbols still gleaming a wet crimson, and would need time to gorge themselves on the mana flowing in the leyline beneath her hooves. That meant spending several hours out of doors while the magic charged, and she would need to find a way to spend the time.

Masquerade fetched her scarf, wrapping it around her neck just so, and checked the mirror, her candlelit reflection giving her a dazzling smile. With a nod of approval, she turned toward the door, plans already falling together in her mind.

It felt like a day for getting a little bit of sun.

Applejack had never felt quite right in cities.

As a foal, in Manehattan, she hadn't recognized it for what it was, only that everything had felt wrong there. It was a lot like if she'd lost her sense of smell; an absence not as immediately apparent as hearing or sight, but still a piece missing from her full picture of the world. She'd felt dulled. Detached. Disassociation was the word she would learn for it, years later, that feeling of not being quite in her own body, nothing feeling quite real. Then she'd come back home, become whole again, and her mark had come to her to let her know that she was where she belonged.

She could handle it a bit better, now, as an adult, but being off her land still had a tugging in the core of her soul, trying to urge her back home. She had meant it, that talking to her cousin could lead to valuable information, but her decision had also been made because, in the absence the Acres, one of the things that could soothe the hollow feeling was family.

It was sunrise, but the sky didn't reflect it, and she continued to make her way through the cool grass below a false moon. The grass wouldn't be green much longer, and it was time for autumn to start transitioning to winter. Eventide was one of the warmer parts of the nation, and wouldn't get much snow, but the time for snow was coming, all the same.

Applejack's eyes went skyward.

Nightmare Moon had been defeated on the day of the Summer Sun, and now Princess Luna's return was going to be celebrated on the night of the Winter Moon. The choice had to be deliberate, but the exact meaning was likely layered in fancy traditions, perpetuated long after the meaning behind them had faded away.

Much like the meaning behind there being a Summer Sun and Winter Moon in the first place. Why have days and nights of different lengths, when it was clear that the only reason days and nights existed was because two ponies made it so? Much like the change of seasons, things being this way was supposedly good for the planet, but she couldn't help but wonder who had come to that conclusion, and if anypony had ever thought to question it and do more research.

It was easy to just assume that Celestia had been around long enough to know best. Only... Celestia had suffered a massive loss, a thousand years ago. One she hadn't been able to avert, and nearly cost her her sister. She was fallible. Celestia had her calculations on what the sun and moon needed to do for the good of the planet, but who checked her math?

Applejack shook her head slightly. Now wasn't time for the heavy existential thoughts. She had a mission, and family to visit. She continued her way through the moonlit grass, the city of Eventide growing further away, and soon she realized she wasn't alone.

Hooves. Light. Either they don't weigh as much as me, they've got a talent for light-stepping, or both. They're near silent. Near. Gait says unicorn. Could get a lock on location a little better than "behind me," but moving ears is a giveaway. Just keep moving forward. Should be getting close to the edge of that there Shroud thing.

Head stayed up, ears forward, and hooves didn't falter. The mystery pony behind her kept following, and soon were following her into daylight. It was a bit like watching the sunrise, the way the light and warmth would spread over her coat as the sun ascended, only it happened much more quickly. The transition resulted in a sharp inhale behind her, and Applejack chose that moment to slow to a stop.

She lowered her head, examining a nearby patch of grass. Seized a few blades in her teeth, chewed, and made sure her head was angled in a way that she caught a glimpse of pale pink. She turned fully, as if just noticing the presence, and saw Lady Masquerade standing there and blinking furiously in the light. "You goin' on a walk, Your Ladyship?"

The blinked ceased, and Masquerade instantly put on a friendly smile. "Ah! So it is you, Lady Applejack." Light steps had her strolling to Applejack's side with the fluidity of a cat. "I had been unsure from the back if it was you, or a local who shared your fashion sense."

Applejack raised an eyebrow. "Fashion sense?"

"Your hat, darling." Masquerade let out a titter. "I heard about what happened during the luncheon. It's good to see that the tomato soup didn't stain. It would be such a shame to ruin something that looks so lovely on you."

The eyebrow stayed aloft, and the corner of her mouth quirked. "Layin' the compliments on a little thick, ain't you, sugarcube?"

That earned another titter. "Well, that entirely depends." Masquerade leaned closer, drooping her eyelids to look at Applejack through long lashes. "Are they working?"

Her smile widened. "They might be, if'fn you explain what you're doin' out here."

"Oh, I'm simply on my way to visit with some acquaintances." Masquerade lifted a hoof and waved it casually. "They helped provide some of the food that you ate." A bout of giggles bubbled up. "And wore. It's tragic that I had to take my leave. I'm told that the sight of the princess hurling a blueberry pie at Lady Rainbow Dash was priceless."

Applejack couldn't help but laugh. "It was somethin' t' see. Princess Luna's got real good aim." She eyed the petite unicorn next to her thoughtfully. "Forgive me for sayin' so, but I wouldn'ta pegged you as the type t' enjoy a food fight."

"Oh quite the contrary." Masquerade smiled slyly, her eyes gleaming with mischief. "I've been to too many balls and garden parties to not revel in the chaos when somepony decides to liven them up."

Applejack started to trot again, and she paused to make sure she was being followed before she spoke again. "Then I wish you'd've been there when we went t' the Grand Galloping Gala. It'd prolly be your kind o' party when we were done with it."

"I had heard some very strange rumours coming out of Canterlot about that. What did happen?"

"Well, it all started when Twilight got a letter invitin' her t' the Gala..."

Two ponies walked through the sunlight grass of the early morning. And as they did, Applejack talked, weaving the tale of the Gala tickets, and then the Gala itself. She left out a few things here and there, of course, things her friends had sworn her to secrecy about, but it was still enough to have Masquerade laughing uproariously. Not the little polite giggles that Rarity would call "ladylike," either, but real laughter.

These Umbral Society ponies really weren't half as snooty as she'd thought they'd be.

"An' then as we're drownin' our sorrows in hot chocolate an' doughnuts, in comes Princess Celestia, merry as you please, an' she starts thankin' us."

She needed to sidestep then, to dodge the slim body pitching toward her in mirth, but Masquerade managed to right herself to keep from falling over. "Oh my, now that must have been a shock."

"My jaw hit the ground like a bucked apple missin' the basket," Applejack said through her own laughter at the memory. "But it's like you're sayin', too many of them parties an' you're lookin' for any way t' spice them up. An' she's been goin' t' them for centuries."

Laughter died down, and Masquerade gave a small hum of thought. "You know, I had never considered that. Being immortal must make everything terribly boring after a time." She frowned. "I certainly hope our celebration doesn't reduce our dear Princess of the Night to snores."

Applejack shook her head. "Nah, I think you'll be fine. Princess Luna seemed t' really like Nightmare Night down in Ponyville, once she got int' the spirit o' thin's."

"I was surprised to hear that she would make her first public appearance on such a night." There was a small giggle. "Though I'm sure the rumours of her prancing around in a Nightmare Moon costume--"

"Was more of an illusion, really. 'Cept for the teeth. We lent her some plastic vampony teeth."

This time, when Masquerade pitched to one side, it was with shock instead of mirth. "You mean... she really...?"

"I was as surprised as you, but Princess Luna seems t' really love entertain' foals, an' they loved it. One of them gave her a big hug after all was said an' done."

"Wonders never cease."

They'd found a path as they'd talked, and Applejack's hooves felt at home on the dirt road. She could see trees in the distance, and a farmhouse, ones she recognized from photographs. She eyed Masquerade, who showed no sign of looking for a way off the path. "If'fn you don't mind me askin', who're these acquaintances you're goin' t' see?"

A sly look fell over her features again. "Well, I believe you do know them. The baked apples happened to come from a very reliable source."

As they drew nearer, Applejack spotted the exact stallion she'd wanted to see. Goldspur had always been big and broad, only a bit smaller than Big Mac, and true to his name, everything about him was golden, from his coat to his mane to his eyes. Even his mark was hard to spot, the apple on his flank only being distinguished from the fur around it by being very slightly green-tinted. He was already hard at work, baskets all around one of his trees as he lined up his kick.

"There y'are, Gold! Come down here an' say howdy t' your cousin!"

Goldspur froze awkwardly mid-buck and let his hooves fall back to earth, blinking at the earth pony and unicorn pair with shock. "AJ!" His stunned look morphed to a huge smile as he trotted over. "What in tarnation are you doin' way out here?" He raised his hoof, which Applejack happily bumped with her own. "With Lady Masquerade at that!" He lowered his head briefly in a respectful bow. "Always happy t' see you, Your Ladyship."

Masquerade gave a friendly nod. "And I you, of course." She looked to Applejack with a smile. "We just happened to both be coming to see you, and met up for a lovely chat along the way."

"Me an' my friends were asked t' come along with Princess Luna for the big Winter Moon celebration the Society's throwin'," Applejack explained, puffing up a bit pride.

Goldspur gave an impressed whistle. "Fan-cy." He grinned at Masquerade. "If you're lettin' in non-members this go-'round, does that mean me an' the husband can come? I'll even wear a tux."

Masquerade gave a soft laugh. "I'd have to ask the chancellor, but given how incredibly fond she is of your apples, I don't think she would need too much persuading."

Goldspur blinked. "Wait, you're serious?"

"Entirely so." She gestured with a hoof. "This is a new age, darling. Our princess has returned at last. Time to do away with some of the stuffier traditions, wouldn't you say?"

"Well shoot, I better tell Pine the good news." He half-turned toward the farmhouse. "Either o' you ladies had breakfast yet?"

"Nope."

"A small bite, but I certainly have room for more."

Goldspur's eyes twinkled. "Then I say this calls for some pancakes."

Finally, inside the farmhouse and out of the light.

Well, not entirely, but what streamed through the windows of the cozy living room was... tolerable. Masquerade knew that she was fortunate, knew that being a daywalker opened doors, but enough time under the oppressive rays left her teeth on edge. Being beneath a roof again had her fighting to give a deep sigh of relief, as she could finally stop feeling the constant pressure on her horn as if under the gaze of a stern schoolteacher, letting her know she dare not light it.

She'd been welcomed into the home a couple of times, and it was exactly as she remembered it, save for some extra pictures over the fireplace. It had been quite a while since the last invitation, however, and she knew that the reason for that would be apparent very soon.

"Pine! Love! Put out extra plates an' fire up the pancake batter! We've got visitors!"

There was movement in the kitchen, and Masquerade put on her best smile as the petite stallion stepped out into view. "Visitors? Who is--" All words cut off with a mouse-like squeak, and his white coat seemed to go even paler.

"Howdy Pineberry!" Applejack burst out with a grin, seeming not to notice the way his eyes had formed red saucers. "Or I guess it's Pineapple now, huh? We got the letter with the weddin' pictures."

Masquerade continued to smile. "A pleasure to see you again, dear. Your berry jam last time was exquisite as always."

Goldspur nodded toward the two mares. "AJ's here with the princess for the Winter Moon celebration, an' Lady Masquerade came t' let us know that we've got an invite this year--"

"I do still have to run that through official channels. Technically."

"--So we're goin' t' celebrate! I'll get all the fixin's together if'fn you handle the batter."

Pineapple hadn't moved a muscle, still staring. If he were a cat, Masquerade had no doubt that the rich green mane and tail would have hairs standing on end.

Applejack blinked. "You alright, sugarcube?"

There was another squeak. "Pancakes. Yes. I'll do that." A rather festive-looking blur once again vanished into the kitchen.

Applejack blinked again, then looked to Goldspur. "Still a bit o' the skittish type, huh?"

Masquerade took a breath, and let out her finest suffering sigh. "No, dear, in this case I believe he is reacting more to me."

Goldspur, ever the kind stallion, spoke up as expected. "Now, Your Ladyship, it ain't..."

Masquerade held up a hoof to stop him, letting out another sigh. "There's no need to cover it up. It comes with the title for ponies to shy away from me. I'm accustomed to it."

Applejack scoffed. "Your title? Hay, I'm a 'lady,' too. All six of us are, thanks t' Princess Celestia givin' us titles as thanks for savin' her sister. Ain't nothing t' be--"

"Not that one, dear. My title as Society Archmagus." She studied Applejack's face for comprehension, and spotted none. "The highest ranked professional magus in the entire city, and the Society Chancellor's right hoof in matters of the arcane." She raised a brow. "You didn't know?"

Applejack's head tilted forward. The hat, as if acting on cue, slid down to partly hide her face. "Y'could say we were kind o' short on time for research." Head tilted again and the hat obligingly revealed her friendly smile. "But I'd be happy t' hear more. Always better t' get it right from the pony's mouth."

"Quite." Masquerade smiled back. "I'd love to speak more of my work, over breakfast."

She could hear Pineberry in the kitchen. The sounds of cooking almost covered up the sounds of hyperventilation, and she was sure that it would indeed be a delightful breakfast spread when all was said and done. A perfect time to talk to one of the Bearers of Harmony, without her friends to provide any distractions. Ponies were always so much chattier when conversing over the course of a meal, just as they were over a walk, and Applejack was such a forthright, honest mare.

This was going to be all too easy.

Callisto

Pinkie had always been early riser.

It'd started on the rock farm. Her father would be the first one up, and when she heard his hoofsteps going past her door, she would know that it was exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes before the sun rose. He'd be down to the kitchen, grab a quick before-breakfast snack, and be out in the fields before anypony else. Then, a quarter hour or so later, her mother would be trotting past her door as well, down to the kitchen, and the smells of food would start to tempt the hungry bellies of the little fillies still in bed. When Maud was still at home, she would be the one to get up and rouse everypony else, and when she'd left for school, the duty had fallen to Limestone. The routine would be the same every morning and Pinkie would be full of breakfast and out the door before Celestia sent the sun into the sky.

It'd continued with the bakery, when she'd followed her mark and come to live with Mr. and Mrs. Cake. Mr. Cake would be up first, and start bustling around in the kitchen, then Mrs. Cake would be up and following him. Pinkie, now the Maud of a house, would need to get herself up, and she'd hop, skip, and jump her way down to make the first, extra-big batch of morning muffins, and eat a few as an on-the-job breakfast, as the first rays appeared over the horizon.

Here, it was different, though. No matter how early or late she got up, the sun would never come out. How did ponies know it was breakfast time? They might just work and work and work on empty stomachs until they fell over! There were so many perplexing and perturbing things for a pink party pony to ponder about this peculiar place.

Pinkie gave a wide yawn as she rolled over, nearly rolling right onto Rainbow Dash and stopping herself at the last second before she disturbed her. Rainbow very much did not run on either a farmer's hours or a baker's hours and wouldn't be nearly ready for any wakey-wakeys, and so Pinkie carefully stealth-pronked out of bed on the very tips of her hooves. She wasn't surprised to see Applejack already gone, since she had a very similar internal clock, and so was probably already off to see her family.

Pinkie hoped that Applejack remembered to eat breakfast...

She shook the thought aside, and headed for their pile of belongings. It felt strange to grab her saddlebags and slide into them like this, but her Element of Harmony didn't like her Secret Super Special Pinkie Pie Hiding Place much at all, and wouldn't go into it no matter how many times she said pretty-please, so she couldn't stow her saddlebags away properly while they were carrying it and would just have to keep it with her all day.

That was okay, though, because she might just need a little help from the Element of Laughter to make this upcoming party the greatest ever!

Now she just needed to find Dusty.

So convenient to live where she did, where the time to sleep and the time to rise were not at the mercy of the sun.

Diamond Dust had been awake for hours already, and it was only now that the final scroll on her desk vanished in a puff of magic. Her ink was low, her quill in need of replacement, and she would need to buy more parchment before long. Being the primary pony in charge of the Umbral Society's information network, unfortunately, meant that most orders flowed through her, and with the chancellor--

It should have been me.

With the chancellor demanding perfection, it was up to Diamond to ensure that every gear in the automation that was the Society meshed together and turned at exactly the right rate. Nothing could go wrong, not the slightest thing could be delayed, or slip, if this celebration was to do everything it set out to do.

She still could not believe that the chancellor was choosing to trust that zony with the Stone of Severance. They were kin, yes, but barely, and far too unpredictable for her tastes. If pressure was applied in just the wrong way, she was certain that Zigzag was the gear that would slip and send the entire plan crashing like a derailed train.

Diamond pulled herself away from the desk, her stomach growling in protest for its needs being denied for so long. She would need to take a detour to the kitchens and grab a quick meal before resuming her duties, and her teeth ground in frustration at the limitations of her body. If only she could transcend--

No.

She shook her head, sharply. She could not think like that. To seek to be something beyond flesh opened a gateway not easily closed, and the last thing she needed when they were ushering Eventide into the new age was to trot down the path she knew would end in ruin.

I am Diamond Dust.

I am a unicorn, in blood, bone, and soul.

I am me.

And I will not seek to be more.

They all needed to hold on just a little bit longer, and then maybe the dark temptations would finally silence.

Diamond took a deep breath before she pushed her office door open. She needed to check on the celebration, and make sure it was a Winter Moon celebration worthy of Princess Luna. It would be their act of devotion, the baring of their hearts full of love for the long-returned royalty.

It would be a turning point for Eventide, the night that changed everything. She just hoped that the change would be for the better.

This tower really was empty.

It reminded Pinkie of the palace a lot, with the tall ceilings and wide halls, but the difference was that the palace always had somepony around. Even when the princesses weren't there, there were servants, guards, petitioners, other members of the royal family. It made the palace feel lively and bustling at all times. In comparison, the Ebony Tower had long stretches of quiet hallway, where the only thing that Pinkie could see were the green fire of the torches and the only thing she could hear were her own hooves and humming.

It made the place feel very... lonely. Like the tower itself was sad that there weren't more ponies in it.

Clearly the Umbral Society needed a lot of Pinkie Pie Expertise. If they liked her ideas for the party, maybe they'd also take some advice on how to liven up the tower. She could ask Rarity for help! Sure, interior decorating wasn't her specialty, but she'd done a great job with decorating Town Hall for the Summer Sun Celebration, and her boutique always looked inviting.

"--Like a mare possessed, I tell you! I'd think that she was with foal, with how much she ate. Our entire stock of celery, carrots, and parsnips, gone!"

"I told you not to get in between Secretary Dust and the vegetables in the morning, but you didn't believe me."

"Well forgive me for being skeptical that a mare of refinement and taste like her would stuff her mouth full of raw produce and trot off like a scholar too lost in their research to feed herself properly."

Pinkie's ears perked at the voices, and as she turned the corner, she spotted the pair of servants, an exasperated-looking pegasus and a shellshocked-looking unicorn, both with dark coats that blended into the tower's gloominess. Grinning broadly at the sight of other ponies, finally, she pronked right into their midst with a enthusiastic, "Gooooood morning!"

"L-Lady Pinkamena!" The unicorn scrambled back, then stood up straight like a guard who'd been caught napping on the job. "Is there something you need of us?"

The pegasus flared her wings and gave a hop back of her own. "We can have breakfast for you momentarily, if that is what you wish!"

Pinkie opened her mouth to speak, but a loud growling from her stomach beat her to it. "An itsy-bitsy bit of breakfast would be nice," she admitted, but then gave a few more excited bounces. "But I was also hoping you could help me find Dusty!"

Both servants blinked owlishly.

The pegasus was the one who spoke up first. "The Secretary of Sorcery will be starting into her preparations for the Winter Moon celebration--"

"Exactly! And I'm gonna be helping make sure it's the party of the millennium!" She reared and let silver and blue confetti fly as she waved her front hooves. "So that means I've gotta find her and start giving her all my expert party pony advice."

They both blinked again, and turned to stare at each other for a long second before looking back to Pinkie.

"I can show you to the Grand Hall, where the celebration will be," the unicorn offered. "Secretary Diamond Dust will likely be arriving there as we speak. And we can have breakfast prepared and brought there for you to partake of without interrupting your work."

"That'd be super-duper!" She paused in her bouncing, and allowed the confetti to fade back to where it belonged. "Lead the way."

"I am surrounded by incompetence!"

The creatures around Diamond Dust cowered back away from her stomping hooves and sparks of green magic as she ripped the banner from above the stage and reduced the cloth to tatters. An offending shred of it, emblazoned with an M, A, and half of an R, fell in front of her, and as she reared in rage, she sent one of her iron-shod hooves directly onto it on her landing.

"Do any of you empty-headed foals have any idea what you have done?!" she shrieked, the neigh echoing off the walls of the Grand Hall. "A banner proclaiming our devotion to the Princess of the Night, a return of the moon to its true mistress, the beginning of a new age, and you, all of you, would dare to throw her benevolence, her grace, her favour for her splendid Eventide, back in her face?!"

"Miss Dust, we don't--"

Diamond whirled on the creature who'd spoken, and the slight-build hinny froze under the force of her glare. "Of course you do not! Because none of you care to educate yourselves, when the information has been available for moons. Something as simple as our glorious princess's name." She turned away again, addressing the room once more. "All of you, together, could not scrape together enough of a mind to know not to address Her Highness Princess Luna as Nightmare Moon!"

She stormed up to a set of decorations emblazoned with the Mare In The Moon, and forgoing her magic, tore them down with her teeth, spitting them onto the floor as her stomping hooves continued to echo through a hall made to hold hundreds. "I ought to drag you all to the edge of the Shroud at noon and kick you into the sunlight one by one, to remind you how blessed we are!"

An empty threat. She knew it even as she spat it at them. She could never bring herself to be cruel enough to throw one of the creatures she was responsible for into the rays of the sun. Of course, none of them would know that, because none would be brave enough to call her bluff, and so they all cringed away, quaking. There was a flurry of apologies, all of them speaking over each other, and Diamond considered rearing again if only to make the sound cease its assault on her aching head.

"Have no fear, Ponyville's premier party pony is here!"

And with a single, new, cheerful voice, all was right with the world again. Diamond never thought she'd be so happy to see an outsider, but the sight of Lady Pinkamena Pie bounding over to the damaged decorations and gathering the pieces was like a healing balm. "I'll get all this up to Princess Luna quality in a jiffy."

Diamond Dust took a deep breath, and as she exhaled, tension left her as much as the air. "Lady Pinkamena. My thanks." She turned to glare once more at the trembling creatures. "Finally, somepony competent."

"Aww, it's not their fault, Dusty." Pinkamena popped back up into her field of vision, the faulty decorations having vanished... somewhere, and patted the still-shaking and now confused-looking hinny on the head. "They're trying their best. They're just not party ponies. But that's why I'm here!"

The next series of events that was one that Diamond Dust would need time, distance, and at least one obscure tome to fully understand what was done, and once she'd figured it out, she would be incredibly impressed with the mastery of rare magics. In the moment, however, she only had what her eyes told her, and the vague sense that magic had occurred.

There was a cannon. There were decorations fired from the cannon. And then there wasn't a cannon anymore.

Diamond Dust looked up at the banner that said Welcome Home Princess Luna, decorated with crescents, as the other creatures stared with wide-eyed bafflement. "That is..." She felt a content smile fall over her face, and nodded. "Excellent, Lady Pinkamena. Thank you."

"No problemo!" Giddy laughter was followed with a wide grin. "And just call me Pinkie! Everypony does."

Ah, yes, the Bearers of Harmony are new nobility who prefer informality. "Well then, Pinkie... If I may trouble you for some advice on entertainment?"

"Oh! Oh, I have just the thing. There was this game on Nightmare Night with spiders that Princess Luna just loved."

As Pinkie chattered, Diamond pretended not to notice the other creatures sneaking to the doors of the hall and fleeing through them. They were likely waiting for the shoe to drop, for her to fly into a frothing rage at Her Ladyship next, and the thought almost made her laugh.

"And we can do apple bobbing, and pin the tail on the pony..."

Pinkie was exactly the pony she needed, here and now, to ensure that this part of the plan went smoothly. Somepony who knew the tastes of the newly-returned royalty, and not only that, the fact that an outsider had been welcomed as part of the preparations would help them begin to push back against their isolationist reputation.

It was a reputation that would take time to unravel. Generations, even. She supposed, in that way, they and Princess Luna had something in common.

She hoped that the princess would see it that way, too, when all was done.

Taygete

It felt wrong, waking up alone.

Well, not alone alone. Her pony friends were here with her, and Rainbow's snoring was a welcome familiarity. Fluttershy just didn't have her animal friends, and everything felt wrong without furry, feathery, and scaly bodies huddling with her for warmth, with the most important one, soft and white with long ears, tucked against her chest. Reaching for the presences that weren't there, trying to find a companion to pet and only finding more sheets... The distress of it made it impossible to continue trying to sleep, even before she woke enough to remember that she'd made plans for today.

Fluttershy slid off the bed, careful not to wake the others, and flinched briefly at the cold stone before continuing on. While it was a slight shock to the system, she'd had worse against her frogs before, for temperature and for texture. Taking care of animals meant a lot of walking in the wilds, and tending to those animals in her home meant learning the hard way to watch her step. She saw that Applejack and Pinkie Pie were gone, and had both taken their saddlebags, and it was unsurprising, since they were the earliest risers of the group. Fluttershy was often also woken in the pre-dawn, and even here, without her animals...

She hoped they were doing okay. There weren't a lot of ponies who could handle them, and while she had a few regular substitutes that the cottage residents were used to by now, the lack of the proper mark meant that no stand-in would be perfect, and she always worried about the animals trying to tell them something important that would never be understood.

Harry may be able to bridge the gap, at least a little. He understood more Equestrian words than any other animal there, even Angel, and he was getting better at gesturing in ways that could be understood by ponies. The other caretakers were mostly unafraid of the bear by now, and knew that he often just wanted to help.

Bears were intelligent animals, so much so that they were almost not animals at all.

Almost.

Fluttershy, more than anypony, could see where the line of sapience was and tell at a glance if a creature was over it. Anything on the animal side was a friend, and anything on the other side was terrifying.

But even terrifying things deserved kindness, and could become a friend. She was making progress there, slowly.

Fluttershy grabbed her saddlebags, and a combination of wings, mouth, and careful shimmying had them settling into their proper place. Her Element provided a comfortable weight in one, and gave her that bit more confidence. She was going to be helping out another pony who made friends of animals, and one who did so without the help of a mark. Brandywine wasn't exactly like her, but she felt that the hulking earth pony may... understand, a little.

She was nervous. As good as the chat over lunch had been, Brandy still made her nervous. She couldn't help it. Other ponies were one of the scariest things in the world.

But being afraid of everything made for some experience in how to be brave.

Fluttershy glanced back at Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle still on the bed. Her friends, no less so for the fact that they were ponies. And she smiled before she headed for the door.

Brandywine would have been happy to never see another pony again.

Meetings, meetings, meetings. She hated them, and there had been too many leading up to the celebration. And now that it was almost the Winter Moon? Not just meetings, but schmoozing with a bunch of outsiders who she didn't know, couldn't be sure of the intentions of, and were the unknowing crux of Penny's plan. She hated it. It was the kind of thing that could make a pony want to throw off all trappings of civilization and run into the woods.

She knew she wouldn't get far. The screams of the dead in the forest would be too much. And once she reached the end of the Shroud, she would need to stop anyway.

Trapped. Trapped in this little star-studded fishbowl with too many other ponies.

She'd been meant to be a grunt. Another cog in the Society's clockwork. Complete a brute-force task once and a while, and then back to doing what she wanted. But no, Penumbra had to go and see potential, and now precious chunks of the clock were being reserved for so many things that were useless and stupid. She wasn't a noble, wasn't a scholar, and wasn't a bureaucrat. She was a hammer, and too many things placed in front of her hadn't been nails.

She was at her best among the animals, and she went through her daily chores like a wind-up pony, to enclosure after enclosure in turn. She was on the outskirts, when city started to turn to forest, still well-shielded from the sun and with the earth's screams a little softer, and she owned enough land to give her menagerie of wards plenty of space. The fences were necessary, to keep them safe, but after breakfast she would open the gates and let some of them roam the property to stretch their legs.

A night raven was following her, feathers a glossy purple-black. He'd been losing weight and Brandywine didn't know why, but he still flew after her in as much excitement to be fed as always. He didn't act sick, and the vet had found nothing wrong, only recommending that she up the amount of food she was giving him.

Useless. Hopefully, at least, the pony she was supposed to meet today should be able to help with that mystery instead.

Brandy didn't like ponies. She lived in protest of the fact that she was of a supposed herd species, raging against that fact at every turn. But there were ponies that she disliked the least, and Fluttershy was, tentatively, poised to move into that space.

That was dangerous. She knew it was dangerous to like these ponies. They were too close to the sun, and associating with them could get Brandy and her kin burned beyond recovery.

She just wanted to know what was wrong with the bird.

She just wanted some help.

It wasn't fair to have somepony who could help her end up being likeable.

Fluttershy felt a bit more at ease after she stepped off the streets of the city and onto the dirt road. There had been ponies and other creatures bustling around under the false moon, and she'd taken off into the air more times this morning than she was pretty sure she had all week, just to get some breathing room from the crowd, though she gave that up right after she accidentally flew right into a hurried griffon.

The griffon had been very polite and spoken very softly in the face of her apologies, and helped steady her when she nearly dropped her saddlebags. Fluttershy was just relieved that she hadn't been roared at.

She wanted to scold herself for that. Meeting Gilda had been bad, but not all griffons were going to roar at her, just like not all ponies were going to laugh and jeer at her. But it was hard. Sapient creatures were terrifying, because she couldn't understand them like she did animals and when it came to sapients that weren't ponies--

"I didn't know dragons could talk!"

--Fluttershy could be said to have a lot of gaps in her knowledge. She'd at least seen griffons before, in Cloudsdale, but even then, there was a barrier. The families grouped together, formed their own small community, and the children typically did the same. She had seen griffons, in school, in camps and at other children-focused events, but there tended to be species-specific clusters, with the chicks and foals hurling all manner of insults at each other and adults intervening when talons were brandished and hooves started pawing at cloud.

She'd never talked to one, or been talked to by one. She wasn't sure what had shocked her more about Gilda, that she was down in a ground-bound settlement like Ponyville, even for a visit, or that she and Rainbow Dash had been friends.

Yet that was still the non-pony sapient species she had the most experience with. She'd been fortunate that Spike had just been happy to be fussed over and he hadn't been upset by her saying something that insensitive, and then there was Zecora. At least everypony else had been just as bad about Zecora, but that didn't make her feel any less guilty about her treatment.

Eventide had a surprising amount of nonponies in the crowds, but no matter what they were made of, they were still crowds, and so once her hooves were on dirt and she was following the trail the way Brandywine had told her to go, she breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't long before she started to hear the tell-tale sounds of animals calling for a breakfast they knew was coming, and she picked up her pace with a smile.

She spotted Brandywine just as she kicked a basket, sending a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, insects, and hunks of fish spilling out as it toppled over, to the delight of a litter of young raccoons who clamoured to be the first to grab the tastiest bits. Then the smallest of them, part way through shoving a grape in their mouth, spotted her and raced to hide behind Brandy with a cry of alarm.

Brandy looked up, but any fury melted away when the two mares met eyes, and she gave a small smile. "Hey, you're here early."

Fluttershy's wings rustled with anxious energy. "I'm sorry. Is that a problem? I can come back later..."

"Nah, it's fine." She jerked her head a set of fences. "If you don't mind a walk-and-talk, I can explain the situation while I finish the morning chores.

"Oh, that's not a problem at all." She moved to follow Brandy as she moved deeper into the property, struggling a bit to match the larger mare's strides. "Is there something I can do to help?"

"Thanks, but I'm good." She led the way back to a cart, and pulled another basket down, this one stocked with fish and eggs. "I'm so used to doing it myself that it'd take longer to stop and explain how to help." She hauled down another, similarly loaded down. "I'm glad to have you here, though. I can do a lot of the grunt work of looking after animals, but--" She paused to seize a rope in her teeth and string it through the loops of the baskets, after which a bout of coordination had her wearing them like crude saddlebags. "--I don't have a mark that lets me ask them what's wrong."

Brandy led the way again, and Fluttershy could hear the sounds of excited otters who had heard the hooves of the pony who fed them. "I'm always happy to help." There was a pause, and then she hesitated asked, "Can... I ask a question?"

Brandy didn't look back at her. "What's the question?"

"Well it's just that... if it's not too personal... if you wouldn't mind... I was just curious..." Fluttershy stopped, took a deep breath. "What is your mark for?"

At first, there was silence. Then she muttered something under her breath.

"I'm sorry? I didn't quite--"

"Age." She came upon a fully-enclosed space, a foal-sized pool visible through the protective mesh, and a trio of otters hurried to the door and reared up on their hind paws. "Things change as they age. Wine... animals... ponies..." She cast a brief look at the barrel on her hip, then unlatched the door with her teeth and positioned herself so that one of the baskets blocked the doorway. She was more careful with this one, gently toppling it with a nudge of her shoulder, and the otters scrambled over each other to grab at the food. "I didn't really need the vet to tell me those kittens were older than they looked, or their mother was too young. I could already tell."

Brandywine seized the rope in her teeth again and started to drag the remaining basket as Fluttershy turned that information over in her head. "It must be strange looking at Princess Luna, then."

Brandy stopped and let go of the rope. "What do you mean?"

Fluttershy rustled her wings again. "Oh um well, it's okay if I'm wrong... but it just occurred to me that she's been around a long time, but she's spent so much of it in the moon. So... she must seem old and young at the same time?"

Brandy blinked at few times as she seemed to chew on the words. "She does seem weird when I look at her too much. Like there's a young mare there, but the longer I stare, the more the years show up." She cracked a lopsided smile. "Huh, didn't expect anypony else to think of that. You're pretty bright, Fluttershy."

Fluttershy blinked back, unsure what to do with the strange compliment. "Thank you?"

"Now come on, once I get this over to the fisher cats I'll introduce you to Oz..."

Brandywine watched Fluttershy talk to the bird, and knew she was in danger.

Night ravens were a rare bird, a magical cousin to more common corvids. The undersides of their wings were star-patterned, and they were near-invisible against the sky when they flew. Roused into flight during the day, in large enough quantities, they were said to make it look like the sun was being blotted out for a premature night, but she nor any of her kin were in a position to have seen it in action.

While technically nocturnal, the presence of the Shroud meant that it was easy for them to sync their internal clock to any schedule, because the moon and stars would always be there. And so Oz was woken up and fed with the rest of the animals, and was awake to converse with Fluttershy.

It was a strange conversation to watch, too. While the species was able to learn some voice mimicry, the farthest Oz had ever gotten in his vocabulary was "hello" and "peanut," and Brandy still wasn't sure how much he understood. And while Fluttershy was speaking a bit of Equestrian to him, she kept dipping into making birdlike sounds, which he returned with great excitement, and so she couldn't begin to follow the conversation.

Brandy was laying in the dirt, her legs tucked to make her into a pony-loaf, as she watched the conversation go on, and she couldn't help but observe how at ease Fluttershy looked. She'd picked up on the unease the slim pegasus had felt in approaching her--it was no grand feat; she was pretty sure a blind pony could have seen it--and there'd still been tension when she'd first arrived, but right here, right now, she was watching the mare in her element.

There was a beauty to somepony entirely engrossed in the work they were destined for that made other ponies instinctively want to stop and stare. Diamond Dust had it when she wielded the right magic, Blackbird did when she was working the crowd...

Admiration was dangerous. Friendship was dangerous. Especially with outsiders. But Brandywine respected a pony who wielded their talent with skill and confidence, and so the conversation was mesmerizing.

Fluttershy eventually nodded and cawed, a caw that Oz returned before taking off from the fence he'd been perched on, and as she turned and walked toward Brandy, she got back to her hooves. "So, what's the verdict?"

Fluttershy smiled. "He's not sick."

Brandy felt days of tension ease. "Thank the moon. The vet couldn't find anything wrong and nothing I was doing was helping." She tilted her head. "So why's he dropping off the weight?"

"Well... it turns out he's not eating all of it." She gave the softest giggle. "You've got another night raven nearby, and he's been taking her the food as gifts."

Brandy stared. Then her hoof struck her face with such force that a less sturdy pony would have heard their own bones crack. "That stupid... he's gonna starve himself over a crush?" She let out a long, deep sigh. "Can you ask him to get his ladyfriend to come here with him at mealtime? I can just put out enough food for both."

"She seemed a little shy of ponies, from how he was describing her, but I can ask him to try."

"Then can you tell him that if she won't come, then he can come back to the feeding spot after he's given her food and I'll refill it?"

Fluttershy nodded. "I will."

Brandy sighed and shook her head again. As smart as night ravens could be, it seemed they could still be about as dumb as ponies. "Thanks for your help, Fluttershy. I was getting really worried." She gave a breath of a laugh. "And I wouldn't have guessed he was giving away his food in a million years. He's usually such a glutton."

Fluttershy smiled at that. "Well, a special somepony--or someone--can sometimes bring out the best in us."

"I guess." Brandy looked away, staring out at the trees. She'd been so engrossed earlier in watching the bird and mare talk that she'd almost stopped hearing the earth, but the calls were coming again, distractingly loud. She still envied pegasi, for being unable to hear it. "I wouldn't know."

"Oh I..." When she glanced back, the smile was gone for Fluttershy's face. "I wouldn't either. I've never... I-it's just what ponies say--"

"Ponies say a lot of things. Usually it's just to hear themselves talk." She turned away, trying to force herself back in the direction of the city. "Anyway, now that the animals are fed, wanna go get breakfast? I know a place that's quiet. Won't have a crowd."

The smile came back, more tentatively. "I'd be happy to. Thank you."

It wasn't fair, her being so polite. Not even in the way that Mask or Diamond could be polite, in that they would say all the nice words and still make it clear that you were being insulted. She was just... nice. Why did she have to be nice?

It was going to hurt, later, doing what was necessary. But then, nopony had been under the illusion that she and her kin were the heroes of this story. Those touched by the night never were, they were just sometimes spared when the dust settled.

And so Brandywine broke into a trot, off to buy her enemy breakfast.

Ananke

It turned out that “fake it until you make it” was not something that ever worked when it came to being a morning pony.

Rarity held herself to schedule, because of the boutique. A business needed to be open during its posted hours, short of an absolute emergency–there were times when she’d started measuring the frequency of emergencies recently in lost business hours–lest she start to be seen as anything other than a reliable pony dedicated to giving her time and effort to helping her customers. After all, if she slept in and opened late, what if a pony who could have become a regular customer showed up, saw the windows dark and door locked, and then instead trotted away, never to return?

Her business needed to conform to a schedule. Her mind and body had other ideas, and between inspiration striking in the dead of night to send her into a flurry of sketching when she should be sleeping, and the times when a mind racing with every fear and anxiety sent her well into moonlit hours before she was finally too exhausted to think at all, she could find herself low on beauty sleep with few options to make up the difference.

Ponies often assumed that Ponyville’s master of napping was Rainbow Dash. Those ponies hadn’t seen Rarity’s penchant for midday stealth naps during the slow hours of her business, and because the key word there was stealth, they never would.

However, on a day when she didn’t have to open the boutique, Rarity’s body would greedily take all the rest it was due. It was why, when she woke in the Umbral Society’s generously-provided guest bed, she wasn’t surprised to find that half of her friends had already left for the day. She also wasn’t shocked over who was still there, as Twilight had likely only fallen asleep a few hours ago and Rainbow’s idea of “waking up on time” was waking up at exactly the time her body desired to and not a minute earlier.

She carefully extracted herself from the bed without waking her friends, hopped to the floor–

A lady does not shriek over touching cold floors a lady does not shriek over touching cold floors a lady.

–Gathered herself, and quietly made her way over to their collective belongings. Then she got to work.

She had reluctantly accepted that taking all of her cosmetics would be impractical, so she simply kept to the basics. Mane, eyelashes, and foundation that helped her pearly coat properly shine, and her favourite blue eyeshadow, and then she was finally in a state that she could stand to be seen in public.

She was going to be spending her time with a very important pony, after all. As humble as Secretary Song had been, it was clear that she would know best how the social lifeblood flowed in Eventide.

After putting away her cosmetics again and donning her saddlebags, one of them heavy with her Element, Rarity glanced back at her friends. Then she casually fetched a bit of parchment and a quill–she was sure Twilight would forgive her–and scrawled out a few short words. She then tucked the note next to Rainbow and, with a nod of approval, turned to lock her gaze on the door.

Time to do what she did best.

There were days when Blackbird was able to just let her body sleep as long as it wanted, and they were glorious.

She had collapsed into bed several hours earlier, and there she remained. She’d been told more than once by her cohorts that watching her sleep was uncomfortable, because if not for the steady rise and fall of her chest, the way she arranged herself usually brought to mind a corpse that had been unceremoniously dumped somewhere. Right now, her chin was resting on the pillow, legs and wings splayed out as she laid on her barrel, and the wild mess of her mane and tail was the sort of thing scary campfire stories were written about.

Slowly, the comfortable warmth of sleep faded, Blackbird’s head unfogging at its own, leisurely pace. Awareness of her own limbs came afterward, and she went through a mental role call. Hind legs kicked at the sheets they were tangled in, front legs pulled in and tucked themselves beneath her body, and wings showed off their full span with a long stretch full of popping joints, before she gave them a shake to dislodge any feathers that may have moulted in the night.

Then, all that accomplished, Blackbird pushed off the mattress, rolled to the edge of it, and oozed out of the bed like toothpaste from a tube. Only when all four hooves were on the floor did she have anything resembling proper pony posture, and she sauntered off to the mirror to have her daily fight to the death with her mane in preparation for the day.

She had to look her best, after all, since the Umbral Society had very important guests.

She’d enjoyed lunch a lot, even with the lingering sun-sickness weighing her down, and now that she’d slept off the worst of it, she was ready to really show these outsiders a good time. They’d get to see the city for its beauty, see that they weren’t so different from other ponies, and it would be the first step into a new age. Compassion and understanding was key.

Things would be better soon. Much better. They just needed to have faith in the outsiders, that they’d do the right thing when the time came. It was Penny’s job to prepare for the worst-case scenario, but it was Blackbird’s job to keep the conviction alive and remind them all what they were fighting for.

Confident that she looked presentable and saying a few kind words for her dutiful hairbrush, Blackbird headed for the door with her head held high, off to do some of the most important Society business of her life.

Maybe soon there wouldn’t even need to be an Umbral Society at all.

"Rarity! Just the mare I wanted to see!"

The foreign unicorn stood out like a cracked hoof against the tower’s black stone, like a speck of bright light in a sea of darkness, and so Blackbird didn’t wait until she was close to confirm that the pearly white coat she’d spotted belonged to the right mare. She’d been looking up at one of the tapestries that hung in the larger halls when she found her, illuminated by the green torches; it was one of Blackbird’s favourites, depicting the first chancellor standing before a crowd of all kinds of creatures.

The snowy white fur was a very Canterlot look, at least going by what she’d heard from Masquerade about Canterlot. The joke that often passed through private meetings was that the nobles there had been bleached so thoroughly by the sun that white coats had become hereditary. It had been accompanied by less kind jokes, ones she didn’t want to repeat, though both she and Penny were trying to curb that now and cultivate a better attitude.

Besides, Blackbird knew the supposed homogeneity of Canterlot ponies was an exaggeration. Twilight Sparkle was from the capitol, after all, and she was a very pretty shade of purple. If she stuck around, then Blackbird was confident that she’d have potential suitors coming around before long, once they got past her being from elsewhere.

“Oh?” Rarity said she turned, offering a dazzling smile. "The sentiment is mutual, darling. After our lovely chat I'd hoped we'd have the chance for another." The smile then faded into a look of gentle concern. "How are you feeling? You seemed a bit under the weather yesterday."

Rarity would have been popular, too, and not just because she spoke in an accent surprisingly close to one of the local ones. She had a charisma that Blackbird had recognized instantly, a pony who knew how to work the room, but was also charming speaking one-on-one. Somepony who would freely give her time and seem to truly care about hearing what the other creature had to say. If she’d been born here, she would have risen to prominence very quickly with those talents.

Blackbird liked Rarity, and that was good. The heroes of the story should be likeable.

“Oh much better,” Blackbird assured, and she gave a flap of her wings for emphasis. “It’s uh… kind of a chronic condition. Flares up sometimes if I’m not careful about the triggers for it. But a night’s rest always helps me reset and get back to work.”

She hated to lie to good ponies, even lies built out of carefully worded truth, but sometimes she knew that a white lie or careful spin was necessary to keep hope alive. And the Umbral Society had been choosing their truths and lies carefully for a very long time.

“A good rest does do wonders for all sorts of things,” spoke a voice with the wistfulness of the often sleep-deprived. Blackbird recognized it instantly. "I hope I'm not interrupting your work, then...?"

"Nahhh, like I said, you're just the pony I wanted to see." Blackbird casually waved off the concern with one of her wings. "Y'see, the celebration we're gonna be having is more for the bigwigs of the city, but the rest of the creatures here will be celebrating in their own way, and I thought, why not have one of the heroes who restored the princess walk about and get to know folks?"

It was an important part of the process. While the others focused on getting the big gears turning, they couldn’t neglect the ordinary creatures they stood vigil over. Those creatures had to understand that the bearers of the Elements of Harmony were their friends, and had done a good thing for Princess Luna, despite their closeness to Celestia.

Besides, Celestia couldn’t be all bad. She had done bad things, but the princess wouldn’t have agreed to rule together with her sister again if she were a bad pony. The sun, and its Avatar, didn’t need to be evil to have hurt anyone. Princess Luna had forgiven and, Blackbird believed, so should they.

“Oh that would be lovely.” Rarity gave another of her smiles. "Eventide is such a beautiful city, and it would be a shame to come here and not see more of it."

Blackbird grinned back. "Follow me, then." She nudged Rarity’s side as she walked past, and black and white fur briefly intermeshed. "I know the best place in town for a good breakfast.”

"As nice as this is, I do wish you had warned me the location was so... vertical."

The restaurant reminded her of more than one location in Manehattan, the stylish locales that she would see in photographs and make her long even more to go there. The seating was purely outdoors, and the tables, primarily a rich dark wood, had silvery flecks embedded in them that caught the light from the illusory moon above for a dazzling display. She’d asked about the tables immediately upon arriving, and Blackbird had told her that the flecks were part of the wood, which came from a tree that only grew in the forests surrounding Eventide.

The menu was vast, and around them were other patrons enjoying stacks of pancakes, a dizzying variety of egg-based dishes, and a griffon devouring several waffles alongside a chunk of breaded meat that Blackbird had noticed her looking at and clarified was chicken, which was one of a few carnivore-friendly offerings.

There… were quite a few griffons around right now, Rarity noted. Along with pegasi, including the serving staff. What there weren’t were any other unicorns, because self-levitation was an exceedingly rare talent and not everypony had a pegasus who had happily grabbed her in a pressure carry and soared straight up to reach the top of the building the restaurant rested upon.

The view was spectacular, from a vantage point nearly as high as the Ebony Tower. The railing was made of the same sparkling wood, and the lights from the building below made it look like there were stars below and all around them as well as above. It also served as a constant reminder that there was no convenient way down again unless she wanted to relive the Best Young Fliers Competition in the worst possible way.

Blackbird winced. "Sorry about that. If you're uncomfortable with heights, we can always go someplace else."

“No no…” Rarity waved a front leg to swat the thought of leaving away. “There was an... incident of sorts in Cloudsdale, and since then I have been slightly jittery." She flashed her most winning smile. "But a good meal with lovely company seems like a perfect step in becoming comfortable again."

“Cloudsdale?” Blackbird’s head tilted in curiosity as her ears perked. “Now there's a place I hear a lot about, but not usually from non-pegasi. What happened?"

“Well, you see…”

Rarity launched into tale of her first trip to the grandest cloud city in Equestria with gusto, describing the magnificent architecture, the wonders of the weather factory, and more to her eager audience. She lavished proper praise upon Twilight for her magical ingenuity in both mastering the wing spell and the cloudwalking one in such a short time, and of course praised Rainbow Dash on heroism.

There was no need to give every detail of the events, however, and so Rarity sliced out a few of the worst portions, trimming away the actions that she looked back on with the most embarrassment and leaving behind what, she felt, was the most important portions to understand how she ended up plummeting through the clouds on the way to a potentially gruesome rendezvous with the ground..

By the time she finished, Blackbird had her face scrunched up in horrified sympathy. “Ouch.”

"Yes well..." Rarity forced out a tension-relieving laugh. "Thankfully it didn't end as 'ouch' as it could have been, thanks to Rainbow. But you can see why that might give a lady a mild fear of heights."

“Yeah, no kidding.” Blackbird gave her own cawing laugh. "Still... it must have looked amazing, the light shining through the wings..." There was a deep sigh, and Rarity saw the wistfulness gleaming in those light blue eyes as dark wings opened slowly, as if to catch a gust of wind that only existed in her imaginings. "So close to the sun..."

“It was quite the light show, until, you know,” Rarity admitted with a small smile, but then her gaze went skyward. “Hmm…”

It was morning. Late in the morning, even, on that border that meant that some restaurants may have stopped offering breakfast at all. Yet, her view of the sky didn’t reflect it. Pinkie Pie may have been onto something, on how difficult it would be to properly keep track of time here. The sky said that it was the midnight hour, and had, since they’d all arrived.

No sunlight. Just the subtle beauty of moonglow.

"What's up?" Blackbird seemed to have snapped out of her own musings first, enough to question.

"I was just thinking that, here, I wouldn't have to worry so much," Rarity said, not taking her eyes off the moon. "The wings are still delicate, and I would still have to be careful, but...at least one hazard isn't a factor."

When she looked back down, Blackbird was looking right at her, her wings once again folded at her sides. "You're right. You'd always be safe from the sun here."

Blackbird was smiling, as she sat across from her, silvery light dancing through glossy black. And it was the single saddest smile that Rarity had ever seen.

Amalthea

The train station felt eerie.

Twilight supposed a train station in what looked like the middle of the night was going to seem eerie no matter what, but there was something off about it nevertheless. The book had emphasized the fact that citizens of Eventide rarely left home, spending close to their entire lives within the city. That could be true of ponies in general--there were residents of Ponyville who'd not even set hoof in Canterlot, despite the relative closeness--but the book's author sought to hammer into the reader that Eventide was its own world, more than a semi-independent city state within Equestria. Cloudsdale, which had the same status, could be alien, but plenty of pegasi from it went to ground, and plenty of grounders went up, even if the non-winged ones needed help.

Eventide had a train station, and yet, it didn't look like a very frequently used one. A bit like a foal's playset, still in the box, shiny and pristine. No wear and tear of hooves and claws walking across the wood, no paint flaking on the benches, no litter that had been missed during cleanup because there was always a candy wrapper or two that ended up left behind even by the diligent. Maybe Rarity's sharper eyes would have caught something, a twinkle of dropped bits in the moonlight or the signs of scuffs that had been painted over to hide them, but Twilight couldn't see anything.

The giant toy train station had barely any life. The seven of them, and the nine guards, were the only passengers getting off, and nopony got on. She could reason that the area had been cleared out for the sake of not crowding visiting royalty, but for what Twilight had to keep reminding herself was the middle of the day, it was uncomfortably vacant. Except for the two ponies there to greet them.

Please don't remember me please don't remember me please don't--

"Twilight Sparkle!"

Horseapples.

Masquerade came prancing up to her with such speed that Twilight momentarily feared being skewered on her horn. "Look at you, darling! It's as if just yesterday we were schoolfillies and now you're in the company of a princess! Oh! Speaking of which--" She paused to turn her attention to Princess Luna and bow. "Do forgive my overexcitement, Your Highness. I am Lady Masquerade. It is my privilege to welcome you to our city."

Has she always had a title?

Twilight couldn't remember. She'd spent so many of her interactions with Masquerade trying to get away from her. The little filly had been relentless in trying to chase her around with fur dye and hoof polish and at some point she'd gotten her magic around a box of ribbons and--

She's with the Umbral Society.

Her old Gifted School classmate was working with the secretive shadow-rulers of a city that she still wasn't sure was extending a genuine olive branch. Twilight tried to remember where in the class she scored, whether she was one of the ones who barely qualified or who was top of the class. She wanted to have an idea of how worried she should be, but she couldn't remember anything but the chasing and the very dexterous telekinesis required to tie seven ribbons around different parts of the same pony at once.

The earth pony mare had followed behind Masquerade, and now she was speaking, and something about her voice wrenched Twilight's attention away from her own thoughts, demanding she listen. She was inclining her head, and her tone was low and warm. "And I am Gentlemare Honour Code. I never thought I would see the day that I would be welcoming the Princess of the Night back into Eventide."

Twilight just barely noticed Luna's wince.

"Rise, both of you." Princess Luna gave a flowing gesture with her wings for emphasis, and both ponies rose at her command. "Your princess appreciates your warm welcome, and looks forward to seeing how this lovely city has grown in her absence."

Masquerade looked like she was suppressing a squeal. "Oh, you are just as regal as I'd imagined, Your Highness. Please, allow us to show you Ebony Tower. It was built... well, by the timescale of an alicorn, it was built quite recently. The stained glass windows are just to die for..."

Twilight missed whatever she said next, because her ears flicked backward when she realized that her friends were whispering, and the alarm bells were already ringing before she turned around to face a very amused looking Applejack in the middle of saying, "...Didn't jus' make up that accent out o' thin air."

Rainbow was snickering madly. Rarity, meanwhile, had her teeth clenched and her perfectly-coiffed tail gave a lash. "I can. Hear. Both of you."

That was when the high-pitched "Oooooooo" of Pinkie Pie had an idea reared its head. "Maybe we should all do a Rarity accent too? We'll fit in and make friends better!" A strangely passable mimicry of Rarity's voice, if Rarity had just inhaled helium, promptly provided a sample of, ""Hi darlings, let's party!" She then paused and shook her head hard enough to send pink curls bouncing in all directions. "No no, that's not right..." She stood up straight, puffed out her chest, and fluttered her eyes, the mimicry suddenly a few steps below helium, if still not quite Rarity. "Hello darlings, wonderful evening!"

Rarity had on a very strained smile. "Pinkie dear--"

But the false accent was gone and the topic was changing at the speed of pink. "But it's not really evening, right? The sun's still out there. We just can't see it. How does anypony tell time here?" A GASP interrupted the words, and it had never been for lack of breath. "If there's no days, how do you even know when your birthday is? There might be lots of birthday parties that should be happening right now and aren't!"

"They probably use clocks, Pinkie dear."

"But if a clock breaks, the sun's your backup! If the sun goes down, but your clock says it's still early, you know it's broken! There could be a pony in this city with a stopped clock who thinks it's still yesterday!"

"I imagine, in that case, they would check with a friend's clock and fix theirs."

"But--"

"They... didn't seem to want to talk to us very much, did they?" Quietly standing among the now-barely-keeping-their-voice down friends, Fluttershy was staring off at Princess Luna, Masquerade, and Honour Code, who were steadily putting distance between themselves and the six mares still on the train platform. Most of the guards were also with them, though two had stayed behind, making a valiant effort to not look awkward or to laugh.

"Hm?" Rarity looked in the same direction. "Oh! Well, I'm certain they're just a bit starstruck by Princess Luna. It's not every time that long-lost royalty trots into your city. That's all. They asked for all of us, after all. We're invited guests as well."

"Guests invited to a trap."

"You goin' t' harp on that the whole time?"

"They keep a big magical thing that Nightmare Moon put here, so yeah I'm gonna! Come on, AJ! They've got 'evil' written all over them!"

They were her friends. Honourary family. She loved every last one of these five mares dearly and would trust them with her life. And right at this moment, she was reminded why the idea of all of them being relied on to be diplomats had horrified her so much. "Just... don't insult anypony to their faces? Please? Now, come on. We don't want to get left behind."

One by one, six mares and two guards left the too-clean train station behind, heading toward the dark spire in the distance.

Brandywine could always tell exactly how far away she was from Eventide, from the volume of the screams.

The forest was calling, and she had to fight to keep herself present as she kept pace with Blackbird. Moonlight dappled their coats as it streamed through the canopy, shining off her companion's glossy feathers, and she tried to focus on the dancing of the light instead of countless voices that cried out with every hoofstep. Eventide wasn't silent, its cobblestone paths and cultivated gardens speaking in their own way, but here the magic was something very close to alive, enough to know she could commune with it, and enough to demand it, louder and louder, the deeper they roamed from the city.

She envied Blackbird. She could see some of the same distraction in her eyes, sometimes, on stormy days, but it wasn't nearly as strong even then, and the sky was clear today.

Hooves had trod upon grass, twigs, and leaves in silence for a time, with the two mares' eyes focused straight ahead on the barely-visible path, but Brandy needed a distraction, and so she spoke. "Train's probably getting here soon." She snorted. "I hope leaving Mask in charge of the welcome committee isn't going to bite us in the flanks."

Blackbird rolled her eyes, hopping to one side and half-turning toward Brandy without much slowing her pace. "Oh come on, she's very charming."

"She's charming in a nobility kind of way," Brandy insisted with another snort. "All of our intel says that these are small-towners, plus a scholar. They're going to want to chuck her out a window."

"She's adaptable," was all Blackbird could offer at first in response, and as a roll of her shoulders and flex of her wings sent more reflections of moonlight dancing across the undergrowth, she added, "Besides, Honour's good at keeping her in line."

"Somehow. Don't know how she does it."

"It's her voice. It's like a parent voice, and we're all her foals."

"Speak for yourself. Even if it works on Mask, it doesn't work on--"

They stopped as one, rocking back slightly as if something had physically pushed them out of taking the next step. Both were silent, unmoving, for a time, and to an outside observer, there would seem to be no reason for it. They were simply two mares staring out into the forest.

It would take time for someone to notice the distortion in front of them, something so subtle that it would be easy to subconsciously ignore, or to blame on the subpar lighting causing the mind to play tricks. It was a constant, slight bubbling in the air, looking as if it should be accompanied by the hissing of carbonated water and yet was completely, utterly silent. Many could easily walk right through, without even noticing.

The two of them, hooves planted, looked at each other.

"You don't have to do this," Blackbird said, not for the first time since they'd departed.

Brandy shook her head and stomped a hoof. "I'm not letting you go alone."

With the tone of mare accustomed to arguing with a brick wall and who already knew that each word would bounce off, she pressed on, "You can't follow, Honour and Mask are busy, and waiting to nightfall is calling it too close." Her voice softened slightly, "...I'll be okay. It's a short trip, and Zig's got stuff to make coming back easier."

"I'm still sending eyes after you." The next hoof-stomp came with sparks of bright green dancing up and down her leg. "The militia might've cleared the path, but new things blunder in all the time. The forest isn't safe." It begged the question of why, in all good sense, their destination had to be in it, but Brandywine had stopped thinking that this particular individual had any sense long ago.

She hated relying on those outside the Inner Circle. Even kin.

But they had orders.

"If you insist," Blackbird said with a sigh, then stared at the bubbling surface of the Shroud's edge, the whisper of a prayer on her lips as she opened her wings wide. "Moon's grace protect us..."

She went through in one single jump-turned-glide, that almost landed in a crash.

Brandywine watched the moonlight leave her feathers, but on this day, she wouldn't be allowed to see the sun replace it, see the way that Blackbird's feathers, coat, and mane shone with colours that could never be seen during the night. Instead, she just saw the harsh landing, watched four legs buckle in near-collapse, and heard the scream.

For a moment, it was all Brandywine could hear, Blackbird's pain drowning out even the calls of the earth beneath her hooves. And then, as the scream faded to heavy breathing and shaking legs straightened, Brandy turned her attention from her agonized kin, attuned herself to those voices, focused on the depths of soil and rock, and her soul dove.

Her abilities weren't wholly unique. There were stories of those similarly inclined, just not many, and scattered across the generations, plenty more of them pre-Equestrian than post-Unification. There were enough accounts, enough journals, enough knowledge locked up in the Ebony Tower for her to have learned some measure of how to handle it from long-dead tutors. She'd memorized the words as a filly, desperate to understand her curse, and the old lessons were branded into her mind.

The first was to never go too deep. The wild places had enough in the upper levels, impressions left of the world that could be anything from days to a few seasons old, and it was those who cried out to her, still remembering their mortal forms and driven to experience one more day of something that was almost life. Go further, and that was where the echoes were older, from years, decades and centuries, reaching impressions of beasts no living pony had ever laid eyes on, even the oldest mare in her shining Canterlot.

Things older than any pony.

Older than the concept of ponies.

Older than the ancient ancestor of all sapience.

Older than grass, older than trees, having been alive in only the most abstract of sense.

Dive too deeply into what the earth remembered, and you could forget yourself.

Brandywine kept to the surface, gathered the loudest voices, and her eyes shone green as the echoes of life took form once more. Blackbird no longer had to support her weight, as a spectral bear offered a shoulder to lean against. An owl, dove, and crow briefly circled above her, searching for anything moving toward them that heard the scream, and then landing when there was no sign of approaching danger. A rabbit and a squirrel scampered a short distance along the path before doubling back to look up at her with specks of dark where eyes should've been.

Blackbird turned and looked at her, with pain and fatigue and, despite their arguing, a glimmer of gratitude, and nodded her head. Brandywine, already feeling her own legs starting to wobble, gave a nod of her own. She watched Blackbird leave, the echoes following her, and then slowly lowered herself to the grass with a sigh.

She knew one thing for sure. This had better be worth it.

The Ebony Tower was exactly as described, and Luna stared up at the spire in uncomfortable silence. The dark stone stretched high into the sky, and she found herself trying to recall how far up Nightmare Moon had erected the Shroud. She had wanted significant height, to allow herself to fly, as well as grant space to the many pegasi who had joined her.

How many? I can't recall how many bowed to her. Swore fealty, believing she was me. Believing that their princess had come to them, had chosen them to usher in a new age.

It still felt like the tower must be close to the peak of the dome, unless the acts to preserve it also had included expansion, making it taller and wider to continue to contain the growing city-state. The thought that they might have done so disturbed her, as did her inability to remember how large the city had been.

They kept it. Why? To honour her? To exalt their new goddess even as she was exiled?

"Beautiful, isn't it?" It was Masquerade's voice. That awestruck, reverent voice in an accent that involved ages of linguistic shift, but still held a core of the unicorns who had bowed low, horns nearly scraping the ground, centuries ago.

It was beautiful. The shine of the stone in the artificial moonlight, the spikes that lined many of its surfaces, an apparent lack of windows that she assumed was an act of illusion, all of it things a young Luna would have gushed over, would have adored. She would have clammoured to be present as it was built, and would have celebrated its completion. It would have looked right at home as a monument to all things Lunar.

They said it was recent, by my timescale. This was built well after our banishment. They did this...

As she stared at the grand monument, a thought wormed its way through her mind, one that made the stars in her mane and tail dim ever so slightly.

Sister told me nothing of Eventide, until the letter forced her hoof. Why? To shelter me from the guilt of having turned an entire city against her while under the Nightmare's influence?

Or because she feared that I would fall again upon learning that I still have devotees? That it would go to my head?

Another voice broke her from the dark musing, one much like Masquerade's, and yet further shifted, and never quite having shed the feeling of artifice that a trained ear could catch. A voice that accompanied far better memories.

"Absolutely lovely," Rarity gushed, as she came up beside Luna, not quite touching her but coming a hair's breadth from doing so. "To think that such a marvel lies within Equestria's borders!" She was not looking straight up, as Luna had been, and instead scanning what was immediately in front of her, trained eyes sweeping every shining surface and sharp barb. "This much obsidian, so far from the Dragonlands. Along with black opal, black tourmaline, and is that blizzard stone?" A practiced gasp came with a raised hoof. "It is! How marvelous."

A warm smile adorned one of her local guide's faces, and Honour Code stepped closer as well, though not as close, casting a glance at the guards before keeping to a respectful distance. "It's rare to find somepony who can recognize the components, and that there are so many." The gentlemare glanced at the trio of gemstones adorning Rarity's flank briefly, before aiming that all too kind smile at her. "Would you happen to be a jeweler, my lady?"

Rarity gave the titter of one who had heard the question many times and was very good at hiding how tired she was of it. "A dressmaker by trade, but gemstones have a strong place in my work." She cast her own look at her mark and paired it with her own gracious smile. "Having an eye for the unique beauty of each, and how they may work in combination with each other and with fabric, is--"

Shadows fell over the ponies, and Luna saw her six companions instinctively tense, Rainbow shifting to take wing as she looked up. The guards were more stoic in turning their gaze upward, her escourts were completely unfazed, and Luna herself could already tell what was passing in front of the false moon. Griffons, three of them, the one in front larger than the other two, gliding well above their heads and making no movement to dive at them, their destination likely at the far end of the city. It brought back some memories, of a group of refugees who had arrived from a Griffonstone still locked in its civil war.

"Woah!" Rainbow's eyes were wide as they followed the griffons, then looked back down at the ponies below her. "What are those uniforms? That looked like Wonderbolts! Only the older style. The really, really older style."

Again Honour Code's warm smile found a target. "Eventide has its own militia. The aerial combatants do model themselves a bit on the original Wonderbolts. Including some of their signature tricks."

"That's... awesome..." Then in an instant, the fanfilly made way for familiar suspicion as she swooped close to Honour Code, practically snoot to snoot. "I mean, what does an Equestrian city need a militia for? What are they training for?"

"Rainbow..."

Twilight's warning word fell on deaf ears, but Honour Code's smile never wavered. "That would be for all of the monsters."

Rainbow blinked, pulling back. "Monsters?"

The next words came out in complete nonchalance, with just a hint of pride. "Oh yes. The swamps are full of them. Cragodiles, water deer, the occasional hydra... We regularly need to send fighters out to thin their numbers." Her chest puffed out, and more of the pride surged forward. "And you are looking at a one-pony squad."

Blinking had all but stopped. "You've fought a hydra?"

"Heyyyyyyyyyyyy!" Pinkie Pie raced over, getting into the gentlemare's personal space with much less suspicion and much more wide grinning. "We fought a hydra too! Welllll, there was a lot more running and screaming and hop-skip-jumping than fighting, but then Twilight charged right at it. Oh! And then there was the time we--"

"Ahem."

It seemed miraculous that Pinkie stopped at the sound, but she wasn't the only one, many eyes turning to Rarity where she still stood right next to Luna. "As lovely as it is to travel down a road of our most dangerous memories..." Her gaze moved back behind them, and Luna followed it, seeing Fluttershy half-hiding behind Applejack and shivering. "I do believe that we are on our way to meet the chancelor? I would hate to keep a pony of her station waiting."

"Well said." And with that, Masquerade stepped forward, placing an effortless smile on her lips as she looked up at Luna with that same look of reverence. "It would be my privilege to introduce you to Chancellor Penumbra, Your Highness."

Luna forced herself to smile back. "I have been looking forward to the meeting as well." She gazed again at the tower, looking like a dream from her fillyhood, and managed to add, "Let us be off."

Two equines sat around a stone table, the cluster of spectral animals around Blackbird providing a light source that matched the green of the flickering lanterns hanging from the tunnel walls. Here, underground, Blackbird started to feel a little more herself. She could almost ignore the burning scent in her nostrils, which she reminded herself again and again was psychosomatic, that it would fade in time and that she hadn't really burned off all of her feathers under the oppressive sun, nor could her current host also smell it.

Zigzag looked at home at their place at the table, one front hoof crossed over the other. Strange that a creature streaked with pastel pinks and blues that reminded Blackbird of candyfloss could have the shadows suit them so well, but when she nosed over the trinket from her saddlebags, they looked like nothing short of a royal gazing upon the gift of a visiting dignitary to their domain. More green light flowed from their curved horn, drawing the artefact close, and the unicorn zony tilted their head left and right, taking in the polished moonstone inlaid with intricate patterns of thin orichalcum thread.

"Well isn't this an expensive investment on the chancellor's part." They set the stone down, but the magical grasp was replaced by a pink hoof laid on top of it. They looked at her, practically through her, with sharp golden eyes. "How long have we had this?"

Blackbird, accustomed to far more frightening stares, was unfazed. "Two weeks before we sent the invitation. It needed time to charge itself on the local mana. It just needs to attune to a user."

A smirk crossed their muzzle. "Which is where I come in, naturally." The ghostly squirrel scampered close, and they shooed it away with their free hoof. "Who else is going to be at this party?"

"Me, Penny, Brandy, Dusty, Honour, and Mask."

"The chancellor, all three secretaries, the militia captain, and the archmagus." They shook their head, smirk gone and a troubled frown in its place. "That's a lot of risk. The Element-Bearers could behead the Society in one swoop."

"Penny believes they're too merciful to kill us if it goes sideways." The words came easily, as she'd been saying it to everyone on the need-to-know list since the wheels were set in motion. The trust in the words had not wavered, but she was growing truly tired of saying them.

"Maybe she should ask Discord about their mercy." They leaned toward her, ears pointed forward, and the glowing bear lumbered closer at the display of aggression from them. "Though it might be another thousand years before he can break out and answer."

Blackbird remained unmoved, rolling her eyes slightly as she fought the urge to yawn. Walking in sunlight was exhausting, and she wanted to sleep for a week. "Discord was an enemy of the Crowns. We're citizens. The princess would clearly stop them before they went that far."

"And how do we know that?" That got her to react, and they seized upon her wide-eyed look to keep going. "She isn't the same alicorn who shrouded us. Maybe she wants Eventide wiped off the map so she can forget her past mistakes."

That was not a conversation Blackbird had had, or ever desired to have, with one of her kin. Everyone had a slightly different idea of what Princess Luna would be like, how she would fit into the Umbral Society's world, and while not everyone wanted her involved too closely after her reconciliation with her sister, she hadn't heard a single one be so hostile.

She responded the only way she could, which was for her briefly widened eyes to narrow. "...Have you always been this pessimistic and I just didn't notice, or did someone piss in your morning oats?"

Lips pulled back and flat teeth were bared. "Whether the chancellor will admit it or not, the princess is an outsider, just like her sister." Their hoof pressed down on the stone with increased force, and the spectral rabbit was glared into retreat when it started to hop closer. "She's been in exile through our history. She has no reason to care what happened to us during it, or to truly see us as her herd." With a sigh, the aggression ebbed away, ears drooping as they admitted, "I want to be wrong, but deifying her before we know her is dangerous."

Blackbird didn't know what to say to that, and it frightened her. Could all of them be so wrong about the character of the Lunar Princess? She'd cast aside the name Nightmare Moon, had forgiven her sister, but surely she hadn't thrown away her loyalties to her most devoted. She would want to usher them all into the new, harmonious age with her...

...Wouldn't she?

"So it's a no, then?" she asked instead, and the owl flapped over, not faltering at all at Zigzag's stare. "I'll tell Penny we need to go with plan B."

She didn't dare tell them that she was well past plan B, having gone through C, D, E, F, and G before braving the sunlight to get here. The others had either refused to take part for varying personal reasons--Penny would never force others to take the risky jobs--or were unable to attune. She could see the wires starting to shine from an inner light, and knew lack of attunement would not be a problem as it had been for the zebras she'd frantically nosed it into the hooves of. Full attunement took time, and the party could not be delayed, and while she had someone in mind for plan I, she could feel the clock ticking.

She did her best to keep from sighing in relief when Zigzag shook their head and responded, "...No. I'll help." The links of the thin chain attached to the stone clinked as glow surrounded it and it settled around their neck. "You'll need the best, and we know that that's me. I'm just going to complain the entire time."

Blackbird snorted. "Works for me. You and Dusty can be complaint buddies."

"Oh?" They gave a chuckle as they adjusted the chain, examining the budding glow. "Good to know that one of you has some sense in all this." As they pushed off from the table, they jerked their head toward the darker tunnels behind then. "Now, come on, I'll get you a potion so you don't catch fire on the road."

Blackbird glared at the choice of wording. "I wouldn't need it if you lived in the city like a sane being."

"You wouldn't need it if you'd come after sunset like a sane being. Luckily for you, I have the ingredients. Now come on, don't want to keep the chancellor's guests waiting..."

The inside of the Ebony Tower was even gloomier than the exterior, and Twilight found herself squinting to try to see in the light from the magical torches that lined the walls of the hallway. She could hear her friends grumbling, and stumbling, as they too struggled in the dark, but Honour Code and Masquerade's hooffalls never faltered, nor did Princess Luna's. The guards also seemed to be handling themselves just fine, and it made her wonder if there was a night vision enchantment on their armour alongside the illusions.

Even before cracking open the book, Twilight had been made familiar with what was known of the Umbral Society's structure. A quick, crash course. And so by the time they'd gotten on the train, Twilight knew about the chancellor and secretaries.

None were elected to their positions, despite their titles being a holdover from old democratic earth pony governments. The exact process of their selection was kept from outsiders, but the best guess had been that a chancellor chose their successor, and the new chancellor appointed their secretaries. What was known was that a chancellor's position was for life, or until they stepped down, and the secretaries would leave when they did, if they didn't die, quit the position, or have it taken from them due to conduct the Society considered unacceptable.

There were always four in total, one chancellor and three secretaries. While the chancellor could be any kind of pony--in theory, they didn't even need to be a pony at all, but in practice, all since the beginning had been--the secretaries were always one pegasus, one earth pony, and one unicorn. Their exact titles were always self-chosen, reflecting a virtue, skill, or something else they felt they brought to the Umbral Society to make it better. She'd been given their names and titles to memorize, and as they all walked down the stone hall, she pulled the information to the front of her mind.

Brandywine. Earth Pony. Secretary of Strength.

Blackbird Song. Pegasus. Secretary of Hope.

Diamond Dust. Unicorn. Secretary of Sorcery.

And Penumbra. The Society Chancellor.

She hadn't been sure what to expect upon walking through the tall doors at the end of the hall, into what looked to be a meeting room, four chairs clustered around a table with only one pony waiting for them, but the pegasus mare she saw wasn't it.

Illuminated by more magically-lit torches, Penumbra was striking. She was paint-patterned, her pelt half obsidian, half golden, and it had a metallic sort of sheen that came from both possessing the correct fur type and committing to a level of dedicated personal grooming that Twilight was sure would make even Rarity balk. The colour scheme continued into her mane and tail, the two colours alternating in streaks, and her wings were solid-coloured, but each were different in which colour, her left black and the right gold. The colours also bisected her face, a bright white blaze separating a gold left side and black right side like a river, and sharp blue eyes gleamed from each shore.

She definitely wasn't a pony seen everyday. She was also young, startlingly so.

Of the six Bearers of the Elements, Applejack was the oldest and Rainbow the youngest, but there weren't many years within the gap that the other four squeezed into. Penumbra was clearly a mare, not a filly, but barely so, easily younger than Rainbow, and seeing her in this position of authority felt strange. There was no minimum age beyond adulthood to be part of Parliament, and so many local governments structured themselves the same way, but high-ranking positions still carried the unspoken assumption of being for those with more life experience.

The surprise over her age may have been why, as Penumbra approached and bowed to Princess Luna, so low that the feathers of her spread wings brushed the floor, Twilight's eyes automatically went where they did, and found the next shock.

Ponies in positions of leadership rarely had a mark for it. While rulership marks had existed throughout history, they were few and far in-between--such marks were one a generation at most, and accounted for some of history's most wise political leaders, as well as its most dangerous tyrants--and so, for the most part, being a leader was treated by ponies as something that was less innate and more learned. Skills that anypony could hone. After all, even the princesses weren't marked to be royalty, simply for their ability to move the sun and moon.

Twilight hadn't known what to expect from the mark. Possibly something that provided an edge in the job, like one for organization or public speaking. Or a mark for something that could be pursued as a hobby instead of a career, like art or music.

It was neither.

Twilight had seen her mark before. Not on another pony, but on the cover of the book now tucked in her saddlebags. The sun, half behind the pre-Summer Sun Celebration moon, Mare and all. Not a mark for something tangentially related, or completely unrelated, to her work. Not even a rare mark for general leadership, which could have explained her being so young. A mark for the Umbral Society.

A mare who could turn out to be her enemy had a mark-deep dedication to her role.

Twilight tried to shove the thought away. She could also be a friend. A new friend for Princess Luna, who needed plenty in this far off time from everything she'd known. This could be the start of something wonderful, the reconciliation of the two sisters helping the lingering rifts in Equestria to mend.

Or one of them could say or do something horribly wrong, the Umbral Society could turn on them and trap them all in this creepy tower while they launched a civil war, and, while she was playing "worse case scenario," let's add Luna falling back to Nightmare Moon in despair to the mental image.

"Your Highness." The voice was crisp and clear, the sort honed for speeches. "I am Chancellor Penumbra of the Umbral Society. It's an honour."

Princess Luna easily matched her voice's speech-like rhythm. "The honour is mine, chancellor. I have looked forward to meeting the pony who safeguards the creatures of Eventide beneath her wings."

"You flatter me. I am a representative of the citizens' will, nothing more."

"You are too humble." Much like with Masquerade and Honour, she made a motion with her wings and said, "Now rise. I am a guest, and you the host. You need not grovel at my hooves."

"You're too kind." Penumbra slowly rose, and as she did so, she was markedly not like the other Eventide mares in how she looked around at Twilight at her friends with a smile. "And you must be the mares we have to thank for the restoration of our princess." She started to nod around to each pony. "Lady Applejack..."

"Eeyup."

"Lady Rarity..."

"Charmed, darling."

"Lady Rainbow Dash..."

"Who else?"

"Lady Fluttershy..."

"Eep."

"Lady Pinkamena Pie..."

"Hiiiiiiii!"

"And Lady Twilight Sparkle."

"It's... a pleasure," she said with a forced smile. "But please, call me Twilight."

"As you wish, Twilight." Penumbra's smile didn't quite reach her eyes, and those eyes didn't seem to want to look directly into her own, instead planting themselves in the general vicinity of her snout. "But if we're going to be on such a friendly basis, I insist you call me Penny." She turned to the others again with one more nod. "And the same goes for all of you."

All of her friends made sounds of assent, in tones of differing cheerfulness, and that seemed to satisfy Penumbra, who turned next to Honour Code and Masquerade. "Thank you for greeting our guests at the station and escourting them here. If you'd like to attend to duties elsewhere, you're free to do so and I'll see you at the celebration."

"It was a dream come true to escourt Her Highness," Masquerade said with the sort of dreamy voice that reminded Twilight of Rarity when she spoke of Canterlot. "But... I do have some research to attend to, so I suppose I must take my leave."

"And I should check on the militia," Honour Code added, "There've been reports about particularly aggressive swarms of flash bees that are too close to the city for my liking."

Penumbra nodded, and the two nodded back before giving Princess Luna one last brief bow and trotting back out the doors. She then brought her attention to the table, and gestured toward it with a golden wing. "As for the rest of us, I'll have more chairs brought in, along with some food. I'm sure the train ride has left all of you hungry."

That earned a universally positive reaction, even from Rainbow, who flapped over to the table with a cheer, Pinkie pronking right behind her with the rest in tow. Twilight, however, wasn't sure if she'd be able to eat, and found her eyes drifting back to Penumbra's flank.

What did a mark for the Umbral Society mean?

Was it a leadership mark, one specific to running the Society? That was a very narrow mark, but such things weren't unheard of. Marks could range from "have a variety of skills in this broad field" to "be supremely good at this one specific thing" and plenty of ponies fell all over the spectrum.

Could it be like Applejack's mark, more having to do with where she felt she belonged? If she enjoyed being in this tower, and being around her fellow members, so much that it felt like her true home and family, such a thing could have manifested, though it did imply that the Society regularly recruited pre-marked ponies.

It was the last option, however, that worried her. Zealots could have marks that matched the iconography of their movements, indicating such an intense belief in their values that it became an inescapable part of their identity. They were the things cautionary tales were made out of, and the historical examples tended to out-horror the fictional ones. If Penumbra's mark meant embodying the values of the Umbral Society...

They could be new friends. Twilight wouldn't let herself discard that hope. But the image of the old moon covering part of the sun disturbed her, and now that image was stamped on a powerful mare, one who had them in her domain.

The book was heavy in one of her saddlebags, her Element heavy in the other.

She hoped they would be enough.