Starlight Glimmer so deeply relished sleep these days.

This was a far cry from how it had once been, so long ago. For so many years she had dreaded sleep because of the visions that it would bring to her. Even in the months when her little utopia (dystopia, as she now knew it) experiment out in the plains had been at its peak, there were still the nights where she suddenly awoke and had to sob under the blankets, quiet enough that she could be sure that nopony would hear. Sleep opened the floodgates of the subconscious, the innermost id, and that torrent could pry off the locks she had placed upon all of her most hurtful thoughts and impulses. In her dreams, she couldn’t stop herself from reliving the past. There may have been some worth in it, some added motivation when she started the next day, further incentive that she must continue on her righteous path. But it was never truly worth the pain.

That was, for the most part, past her. Twilight Sparkle had helped her. Reuniting and making amends with Sunburst had helped her. Making friends with other ponies had helped her. And assisting in saving Equestria and redeeming a few lost souls along the way, that had been its own medicine. She had been gradually starting to get better and better sleep over the course of those years.

But then the school happened.

As much as the end result might have been worth everything that had occurred—even a certain megalomaniacal filly’s bid for power—Starlight Glimmer still deeply questioned how much Twilight Sparkle had truly considered the effort that would be necessary to go into maintaining a proper school, one with its own unique, hitherto-unheard-of brand of education at that. And she and her core group of friends were the ones who actually had to juggle other occupations on top of their time spent teaching and managing the establishment. Starlight Glimmer was working exclusively as the counselor and even after more than a year of operation she still felt the pressure weighing heavily upon her more often than not. She was glad for the results, of course, always thankful to see a pony or other creature leaving her office better than they had upon entering, a hopeful and grateful smile upon their face. Getting to that point, though…she was always worried that every single step was being made through a minefield, just one wrong move all it would take to send the situation spiraling out of control. Every day she would at least once have to face an encounter that was on par with one of their adventures to save Ponyville, Equestria, or the whole world.

So often it seemed to be one or more of those six who ended up on the other side of her desk. They were the pride of the school in many ways, the ideal of what Twilight Sparkle had hoped to achieve, six creatures coming together from radically different places and proving that it was still possible to become the closest of friends. All the same, those differences still made themselves apparent every now and again, and it became critically important to explain to one or the other that, no, a yak’s discarded hair should not be taken for nest material, starlings do not have the ability to spontaneously metamorphose into trout, and a changeling egg is most certainly not an emerald and Smolder really ought to have asked before trying to eat it anyway.

And all of that was to say nothing of Trixie. Even on the weekends, when the odds of having a visitation were significantly lower (from nopony but students living in the dorms, such as the aforementioned six), she’d still have to deal with the ramifications of whatever stunt the showmare was trying to pull off, in practice or in an actual show, sometimes a show without any practice beforehand. She’d still been smelling smoke and feeling crispiness at the edges of her mane when she collapsed into bed hours ago.

So Starlight Glimmer was glad for any opportunity to sleep, to let herself be taken into dreams and momentarily forget that there was anything to worry about, to ease the aches and pains of her body, even if she wasn’t truly aware that she was asleep, or aware of anything for that matter.

She was very much not glad when she was suddenly yanked from her bed and brought careening into and through the halls of the castle.

“Huzawha?” It took one second for the pink unicorn to wake up, to blink her eyes at the dull light.

Two seconds for her to become aware that she was moving—that she was being moved, levitated through the open air, a tingle of magical force enveloping her entire body, walls and doors flying past.

Three seconds for her to begin to panic, no care about what peace she might be disturbing in the process as she started to scream. She knew self-levitation well enough to fly with the best of pegasi, and she might have been able to use that to counteract the telekinetic effect on her, but that required a level of focus that she didn’t have right now, and her flailing only resulted in her spinning about erratically. All she could do was begin to charge up magic, a reflexive defense mechanism, ready to wildly let loose at the slightest provocation, to fire at whomever she believed to be responsible for this, and for all she knew the castle itself was acting upon her. She’d always been dubious of Twilight Sparkle’s explanation of how the whole structure had just sprung up from the ground, fully built, and wondered what arcane mechanisms and concealed intents might still be hidden in its architecture.

But the Castle of Friendship was not especially large, a far cry from the likes of the palaces in Canterlot or the Crystal Empire, and so it was only four seconds total of confused movement before she was deposited on the floor. She landed on her hooves, but her positioning had her weight leaning backward, her arms wheeling as she felt gravity reasserting itself over her. She might have been able to stop herself from falling, but she was already focusing on not letting the bolt stored in her horn fire, and so she landed harshly on the unforgiving floor. Her pained cry probably should have been sharper, but she was still burdened by drowsiness and it came out as a noise that quickly faded away into a squeal.

“Oh, thank goodness, Starlight, the spell worked, I thought I might’ve grabbed a pillow!” A familiar voice called out to her from…somewhere. Reality was quickly waning as she sat still, sleep catching up to her after being left behind in her bedroom. She didn’t catch the urgency with which the words were spoken.

“Twi…Twi…” The adrenaline was ebbing, and her eyes didn’t want to stay open no matter how hard she tried to keep the lids pried apart. She could have just fallen asleep right there on the crystalline floor, morning aches be damned. There was still one more day of weekend left before the school week started again, and she was going to spend as much of that time asleep as she possibly could or else she was going to hand in—

Something tapped sharply against the side of her head. “Ow!” Starlight Glimmer hadn’t heard the flapping of wings, whipping at the air until it was right next to her ear. She turned to the side, and for a moment thought she saw a blazing mass of fire right next to her. But then the blur of reds and oranges refined into a recognizable shape: wings, of course, a thin body, long tail, and head with a short beak. A phoenix. Didn’t Celestia have a pet phoenix? Was this her? If so, why was she here and not in Canterlot? Far too many questions all at once, and she wasn’t nearly lucid enough to think about any of them.

And past the fiery bird, through an open doorway leading into a lit room, was Twilight Sparkle herself. The alicorn had her wings open and flared slightly, a corona of violet magic around her horn that was far more than would be necessary for a simple task of levitation. She was glancing back at her, just to see that she was there, but her focus was clearly on something else in the room. There was a distinct wariness about her features, and when she played back her words in her mind, she could clearly hear the worry and the panic bubbling just under the surface.

Something was wrong.

There had better be if it merited waking her up.

Wearily, stumbling once, Starlight Glimmer stood and came in through the doorway to meet with the pony who was alternately her mentor, boss, and friend. She was still tired, terribly so, but she thought she could manage to converse, just to understand what was happening, even if her vision was shifting in and out of focus.

“I’m so sorry for waking you up like that,” Twilight Sparkle belted out apologetically, clearly seeing the pall of weariness that hung over the other mare, “levitating something without watching it isn’t easy, it wasn’t rough on you, was it?”

“Only on my ass,” Starlight Glimmer replied with stark frankness, one hand brushing against her still-sore rear while the other rubbed at her forehead and eyes. Fluttering wings behind her as the phoenix—Philomena, she wanted to say—followed.

And she looked at the purple pony and saw that her cheeks were so flushed that they had nearly changed color to crimson. The unicorn had a tendency to be a bit more on the crass side with her humor, but it surely wasn’t that mortifying of a statement, was it? Or maybe it had something to do with her gaze, angling ever so slightly downward. Twilight Sparkle’s nightwear was about as modest as most of her wardrobe skewed toward, a gown that neatly obscured her body, only offering a hint of the uppermost swell of her bust and hips, and one could be certain that there was underwear beneath that. Starlight Glimmer’s present garments were decidedly less than that, a silky shirt that conformed rather neatly to her chest and stomach (there was a symbol of a wispy green curl over a magician’s hat emblazoned on it—unsold merchandise from one of Trixie’s tours that she’d assisted with), and naught but the elastic band of panties around her waist, leaving the length of her legs exposed.

“W-well—” She gulped and stammered, returning to the conversation at hand. “I’m sorry for having to do that, I just…I couldn’t afford to step away from here, I needed to keep the shield going.”

“Shield?” But as Starlight Glimmer was asking the question, she was already looking to the alicorn’s lit horn again, and then to one of the light sources in the room. There was a translucent magenta field of light which was filling the room, partitioning off the space they were standing from the rest, like a quarantine bubble.

She would have been able to know what room she was in immediately if she had approached it normally, but instead she was left to be surprised as she noticed the décor: the bookshelf loaded primarily with comic books, the mobile of a dragon in flight hanging from the ceiling, the writing desk with a heart-shaped red crystal perched on a stand at the top, and the distinctive bed.

Although, many of these fixtures had been pushed out of place, some broken by the force with which they had been displaced.

And there were also the puddles which for the moment were overlooked.

And then there was the occupant of the room himself.

Starlight Glimmer stared. She blinked her eyes and she kept staring. She had to be certain that she was dreaming, that she was still asleep, that this wasn’t real. That had to be the only explanation—it would handily explain the phoenix inexplicably being here as well. But the idea of this being a dream wasn’t much more comforting, as that would have to mean that this image before her had somehow been birthed by her own unconscious mind, and she didn’t suspect that even she could be so deranged.

It was Spike. Of course it was Spike. It was a dragon in Spike’s bedroom at an hour when Spike should have been in it (and everypony else ought to be in their own), ergo it was Spike.

But it also…wasn’t.

Spike had grown a great deal in the years since Twilight Sparkle first moved to Ponyville, from what Starlight Glimmer understood, though by the time she met him he had already progressed well into adolescence. It was hardly a year ago that he had finally grown his own pair of wings, what had become understood to be the dragon equivalent of reaching adulthood. He’d been steadily developing musculature, bolstering the shape of his physique, broader shoulders and thicker chest, the rounded boyishness of his features giving way to strong definition. Within a decade, he’d probably be taller than any of the ponies who were his closest friends by at least a head. The body structure of a dragon was a bit different than that of an equine, though, with a longer torso and shorter legs, proportions that were most reminiscent of crocodilians.

The maturity was coming in a bit slower—he still had difficulty grasping responsibility for his actions at times, and his appetite was always a problem—but progress was progress. He’d struck up a budding relationship with traveling mail-gryphon Gabby and his long-time childhood crush on Rarity had finally begun to cool to distant affection and admiration. He had settled into a friendship based around shared interests with the older Big McIntosh and the much older Discord. He was starting to take teaching at the School of Friendship seriously and was planning his own course about the challenges of a non-pony creature growing up around ponies. It brought a tear to Twilight Sparkle’s eye every now and then when she considered just how much Spike had grown.

But now as the alicorn looked at the dragon on the other side of the barrier, she seemed bewildered and aghast more than anything else, a swarm of questions no doubt buzzing wildly through her head, and Starlight Glimmer was feeling much the same.

The body of the dragon was not quite that of dragons as equine studies were familiar, more akin to that of a sea serpent. Bulk (most of it) was eschewed in favor of length, a serpentine shape that wound upon itself. There was a chest and an extended span, maybe five feet of torso, down to what must have been legs, and then an even longer tail that coiled and twitched as it curled around itself. The body scales were a familiar lavender, but that was offset by pale blue on the underbelly and a deep purple for the ridges that ran along the spine (though the field of magic between them distorted all colors slightly). The head was supported by a long neck, bobbing in a daze, emitting a dull, throaty grumble. There was hardly any room for the figure to move comfortably, certainly not enough for them to unfurl their wings from their back.

All of that would have been enough for the two research-inclined mares to take in, to tide them over with queries and theories for moons to come. That description still was incomplete, mentioning nothing of the dragon’s assets.

No one must have ever bothered to tell this dragon that they weren’t supposed to have mammary glands, but that didn’t stop this one from having a pair of breasts hanging from their chest. Breasts which were comparable in size to boulders, with nipples that were the diameter of dinner platters, such that the twin mounds filled the span of their arms. Dragons weren’t supposed to have external testes either, but here this one had a sac and pair of balls that similarly crowded the space between their legs, making it hard to imagine how this creature could possibly muster movement. The genitalia was almost the only solace, as both ponies were aware that, like many reptiles, dragons possessed two members (“hemipenes” was the technically correct term), but the size was a different matter, a pair of tapering, barbed purple shafts that jutted from the dragon’s loins, each more comparable to a tree trunk than what should have been part of a body’s anatomy, each larger than the entirety of the average adult pony. At least one hand and one nearly-as-dexterous foot were preoccupied with groping at their own swollen, scaly flesh at all times.

And then the shifting and the bobbing diminished. Movement stilled, focus heightened. The neck reared back and craned about, turning to face toward the ponies and phoenix who were in their presence. The spines along the skull had grown out, bending and drooping under the pull of gravity, creating the illusion of a pony’s mane. The shape of the muzzle was distorted by the presence of exaggeratedly bulbous lips, glossy purple mounds, the lower obscuring the chin while the upper hid the nostrils. Eyes stared over the top of this obtrusion, glittering with primal intent. As with the scales, the familiarity of the green irises was countered by black sclera and red hearts in place of pupils, as if stricken by love. Or, more likely, lust.

The ultimate deciding factor, however, came when the dragon finally spoke to them.

“Twily.”

Twilight Sparkle flinched when she heard the name that her other brother usually used to refer to her. Except here it wasn’t being spoken in the occasionally jesting terms of endearment that were shared between siblings. That the sounds were slightly muffled and mumbled by the immensity of the lips through which they were passing didn’t help matters.

“I see you brought somepony else to watch.” A low, rumbling chuckle. “Don’t worry, I’ve got enough of a show for both of you.”

It was Spike’s voice, beyond a shred of doubt, but the intonation was wrong. Husky, lilting, alluring, seductive. Spike had never talked that way, and they couldn’t imagine him ever acting in that manner. It was an affront to their very perception of him.

Nor could they have imagined him then proceeding to masturbate in front of them, placing a clawed hand against one shaft, rubbing against the fleshy length while guiding it toward his face, swollen lips, sucking greedily on the pointed tip, while the other was mashed betwixt his cleavage and thrust between the engorged breasts. Breasts that he now had.

That was when Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer tore themselves away, panting haggardly after unknowingly holding their breath for so long, and faced each other. If Spike noticed this, he made no gesture of acknowledgement.

“Twilight, what—” That was as far as the sentence could go. Starlight Glimmer’s hands grasped at the open air, as if attempting to physically hold the thoughts that she needed. It wasn’t that she couldn’t think of what words should come next, it was that there were too many words in her head, crammed together, all wanting to be spoken at once. She was growing aware of the flush in her own cheeks. That and the subtle tenting against the surface of her shirt over the ends of her breasts.

Twilight Sparkle certainly wasn’t going to help her at all on that front. She could see now just how unsteady the alicorn was, especially the wavering in her magical signature, threatening to flicker out if she lost her concentration. That was one of the things she had grown used to, though, in her years as a hero and now one of the Princesses of Equestria, working under pressure, be it physical or emotional, always determined to uphold Harmony. But this was new, from what Starlight Glimmer understood; she had never had to act against someone close to her, not like this. That might have been the worst part of it, actually: not that something had happened to her dear friend and adoptive brother, but that it had necessitated action, required her to put him under scrutiny as being a threat, something that needed to be isolated. What exactly that threat might be…well, assuming Spike could still even move himself, just existing at those present proportions could cause significant damage to his surroundings.

Eventually, Starlight Glimmer managed to come up with something, basic as it might have been. “Twilight, what…what is happening?!”

“I…I don’t know!” the other mare replied just as frantically, shaking her head in several quick spasms of her neck. “I was…I was just coming here to talk to Spike and…and he was…”

She didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to even think about setting eyes upon that writhing, moaning mass of scales and meat that was Spike. But she did, and it was right as the peak happened. His body stiffened as his (anatomically inappropriate) testicles contracted and ejected a load up through his twin shafts. His cheeks and throat bulged while excess dribbled between his lips, white running over the amethyst gloss, and the second erupted in a jet of thick, gooey ropes that sprayed out and splattered against the wall. (The presence of the white puddles over the floor clicked into place.) And Twilight Sparkle cried and whimpered as she recoiled, and the barrier nearly winked out.

But Starlight Glimmer was quick to be at her side, to wrap her arms around her. She held her, felt her shivering, until she stopped. The alicorn was taller than her, but she seemed so much smaller now. Philomena then came and perched on her shoulder, leaning against the side of her head, nuzzling gently. As with all of her adventures, the fledgling princess had her friends at her side to support her, to provide the stability that she needed to continue, and the force field held. (And, for what it was worth, Spike seemed interested in helping as well, it was just that his idea of “helping” seemed to be “showing a simultaneous autonomous boob- and blowjob to an undesiring audience.”)

“Twilight…do you have any idea what this is we’re dealing with?” she asked, a hush.

There was a pause before she shook her head again, their manes rustling together. “No…this…this isn’t any magic I’ve ever seen before…I couldn’t even identify any kind of magical resonance.”

“Can this be like…” She scrounged the depths of her memory, thinking back to older lessons which had been immortalized in the form of correspondence and journal entries and made for handy informational (and often amusing) reading during the early days of her apprenticeship under the Princess. “There was that time he underwent spontaneous growth from a reaction to greed. Can this be something like that? Something based on”—they could still hear the wet slaps and splashes—“lust?”

“If it is, it’s nothing I’ve ever heard of.” There were still tears in Twilight Sparkle’s eyes, but they were beginning to shimmer with latent pondering. “We still know so little about dragons, and that includes anything related to their libido or mating cycles. Even if it was…” She winced, jaw clenching to prevent her from speaking. This discussion was too absurd for her to handle. That she was even in a position where she had to say these words was sheer insanity. “I could understand the…the phallus. The dicks. Even the testicles. Higher capacity for mating. Maybe it’s, uh…a necessity for situation where an available mate is significantly larger than oneself.” Another wince. “But why the breasts? Why the lips? Why even the color changes? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Spontaneous sex change or hermaphroditism to fill in a void where there aren’t enough of the other sex available for reproduction?” Starlight Glimmer posited. She knew that this was too important to get into a back-and-forth of theory swapping, but she couldn’t entirely resist chiming in with her own thoughts.

Hesitantly, Twilight Sparkle looked back again. The dragon was much the same, his whole serpentine body undulating as he twisted around. She clearly didn’t want to think about any such details, but she was prevented from doing so by the larger details of the balls which obscured the space between the legs at this angle, the undercarriage hidden by blue mounds. “I don’t know if he has a…a vagina,” she admitted after giving up, a process for which she had only tolerated to allow a scant few seconds. The notion of impregnation was permitted to occupy even less space within her head. “But the…the body…so thin around the middle…that’s not really ideal for a breeder, is it? Adult dragons are supposed to be thicker than that. And it doesn’t change that they’re oviparous, they don’t need to be nursed, hatchlings are ready to eat diamonds and drink lava as soon as they’re born, the breasts are completely superfluous.”

“So, this is…something completely unnatural, then.” The fascination was there, somewhere, buried underneath the horror.

“Something unknown…something Equestria has never seen before.” For her, the curiosity was mingling with the dread, every internal question only opening up a new string of further questions, each with their own unsettling implications.

“And if it’s not just some draconic life cycle…not just some process unique to dragons…”

Twilight Sparkle broke away from her abruptly, stepping back, mane and feathers rustling. They both looked at each other, faces hard set, eyes wide. They stared into each other, searching for something that wasn’t supposed to be there, but neither knew what they were looking for. Philomena, however, remained perched upon the alicorn’s shoulder, and that was enough to put the pink unicorn at ease, for now.

“That was…one of the first things that came to mind,” she muttered, breaking her gaze to look down. “That was why I put up the barrier.”

“He didn’t try to…go after you, did he?” Starlight Glimmer had to imagine that, more than anything else, more than this perverse transformation, a violation of her trust for Spike would have been even more jarring to the Princess, something that she would have difficulty recovering from.

She shook her head. “He’s been…preoccupied, all this time. Barely even said anything to me. I’m not sure if he’s even noticed the barrier yet, he hasn’t tried to get out.”

“So, for now, this is isolated.” There was only the smallest hint of relief.

A nod this time, slow, hesitant but hopeful. “And that’s why I need you.”

Starlight Glimmer blinked. “Me?” The indignation at having been woken up was rising again, an instinctual annoyance, ignorant of the mounting crisis presented to them, evidently in need of whatever attention could be offered.

“I…” She looked to the side, shifted her shoulder, only now seemed to become aware of Philomena using her as a perch. Then seemed to realize that there had been things yet to be said. “I…I was woken up by Philomena.” The phoenix chirped in affirmation, a sharp, flinty sound. “She was agitated and she, you know, is supposed to be in Canterlot, so I knew that there was something wrong. But I don’t know how to translate for her, so I had no way of knowing what that was! I thought Spike might be able to figure it out since he’s spent some time around phoenixes before.” Her speech was gradually accelerating, approaching the rapidity of Pinkie Pie, albeit a sort that was fueled by anxiety instead of excitement, up until the end. “But I came here and…” She hung on those words before closing her mouth completely and her eyes fell.

Starlight Glimmer looked at the fiery bird, putting together the fragments of information now available to her. Something was wrong. Something was wrong and it was Celestia’s pet who came to warn them of it, not the solar diarch herself or her sister. And most ponies were asleep right now; Luna could have gotten out an advisory through their dreams in a far more expeditious manner. Not the most favorable of portents. “So where does that leave us, then?”

“Fluttershy.” She blurted out the name before any explanation. “Fluttershy should be able to interpret for us. I need to get Philomena to her as soon as possible, and then…” Her eyes flicked only momentarily in the direction of the dragon on the other side of the room. The hope was there. Uncertainty was as well. “And while I’m doing that, I need you here, to keep the barrier going. To…to watch him.”

The unicorn tilted her head to the side, and the curling tuft of her mane slid over her brow. “Why can’t I take Philomena?”

“Because—” Twilight Sparkle had to stop after the word came out as a harsh bleat of desperation. Her nerves were still fraying. “Because…I’m worried. I feel like…there’s going to be more than this. I’m worried. And…” She started to turn to the side, only to recoil, her eyes closed, her hands balling up into fists. There was a faint pulse of light around her. “I…I know I should be here for him…I should be the one to take care of him…he’s my brother…but…to see him like this, it’s just…” Her eyelids squeezed tighter, but that only had the effect of forcing out the tears.

A hand settled upon her other shoulder, calm and gentle. She opened her eyes and saw Starlight Glimmer smiling at her, gently, warmly. “It’s okay, I understand,” she replied. “You just…go on, and be quick about it, don’t leave me by myself for long.”

Slowly, weakly, Twilight Sparkle nodded, and she gave an attempt at a smile, a faint crease at the corners of her muzzle. “Thank you, Starlight.” She took in a deep breath and her posture relaxed, the shaking diminishing. It helped that she was releasing her concentration, allowing her magic to recede, and there was a moment in which the barrier began to fade before the other mare’s corona manifested and the magenta was replaced with teal.

She began to walk away, and Philomena rose from her shoulder to fly ahead of her, only to stop and give one final glance at the figure she so desperately wished wasn’t Spike. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to anything that was transpiring. Even after orgasming, he just kept on going, perhaps even more vigorously than before, pawing at himself, moans and growls emanating from the depths of his throat. He writhed across the floor, and flesh thumped and pushed against anything that was in the way. He had always been a tenacious sort, so determined to do what he put his mind to, and very often that was something that was ill-advised.

“Starlight?”

She looked back and the mares met each other’s gaze again. The air was tense. Speaking not just as friends but as teacher and student.

“If…anything happens…if you…feel something happening…do everything that you can to protect yourself.”

“I’ll be fine, Twilight,” she replied with an assuring and confident grin. “You already woke me up. I couldn’t possibly fall asleep again while something like this was going on right in front of me.”

Twilight Sparkle winced momentarily, but she smiled back.

Then she was gone.

Starlight Glimmer returned her attention to Spike. After a moment there was a flash of teal light and a pop and she leaned back onto one of the stools from the kitchen, teleported in for her. The least she could do was make herself comfortable as she watched.

Then there was a second flash and pop. She had to suppose there was actually a benefit to this. She didn’t have to deal with the squeamishness connected to having one’s sibling be mutated into a hypersexual caricature, and now that the initial shock and panic was wearing off she could use this opportunity for more practical purposes. Despite the critical need for more information on the biology of dragons, Twilight Sparkle had never wanted to subject Spike to much in the way of experimental research, not even after he had grown old enough to give consent for some of the more invasive procedures that might be needed. Starlight Glimmer could take it upon herself to be more proactive on this front, and on this occasion, they were going to need all the research they could get.

She held the notepad over her lap and the quill in her other hand, and she looked up as Spike gave out a thunderous moan, writhing on the floor, curling away from her, and his tail lifted up and away from his burgeoning buttocks. She muttered to herself as she wrote on the page.

“Confirmed…no slit…just the hole.”

= = = = =

Pinkie Pie’s days had a tendency to end very abruptly. It looked easy to be a whirlwind of energy, to be bouncing all around a room and talking a mile a minute and pulling out baked goods and party favors at the drop of a hat. The truth of the matter, though, was that burning through all of one’s reserves left very little left at the end, after accomplishing everything that was “necessary” (which, given that this was Pinkie Pie, could be any number of unusual and inexplicable matters). This meant that, when it was time to sleep, she would rapidly begin listing and staggering and slumping with eyes half-open, and sometimes she would just fall asleep where she was standing.

And that was without getting into the occasions when she was hosting late-night parties where alcohol was permitted.

This night, she had managed to make it to her bed after brushing her teeth (when you spend ninety-five percent of your waking life smiling, you’d better have good teeth) and stripping down to her underwear, just clambering onto the mattress before pitching forward onto the pillows. She started snoring with her ass sticking straight up into the air. She wouldn’t have been concerned, knowing there wasn’t anything to worry about, since Gummy would let her know if anything indecent happened.

Gummy the alligator was sleeping in a basket nearby. “Asleep” for him wasn’t much different from “awake.”

Suddenly there was movement in the quiet bedroom. Movement from the prone mare’s body. Not conscious movement, not turning in one’s sleep, not the involuntary muscle spasms of perceived motion in dream. It was a twitch, starting in her tail, the dock vibrating and making the big bushy mass of pink curls rustle rapidly. This progressed lower, into her hips and legs, and her knees bent and rocked, back and forth, pushing against the mattress. Her butt waggled in the air in an astonishingly provocative display for a pony who was currently unconscious. It didn’t last long, hardly even five full seconds, but it was punctuated by a flex that made her buttocks clap together.

“Oh…” she whispered in her sleep, muffled, speaking directly into the pillow, “that’s…different…”

Amidst the dark, a shadow peeled away and entered her.

Gummy opened his eyes, and shuffled about on his stumpy legs until he was turned around and closed his eyes again, turning his back on Pinkie Pie and the noises that were beginning to rise up outside the windows.

Author's Note

You waited two and a half years for the follow-up to the final lines of Tinged, a random sub-10k story I wrote on a whim. Now here we are, more than a hundred thousand words later.

I feel at this point I still had a fair deal of uncertainty on exactly what direction I wanted to take this story in. The original draft also had a lot of conflicting perspective between Starlight and Twilight before I narrowed it down to just Starlight.

There was a lot that had to be set up here, to establish that fine line between porn and horror which will be toed over the course of this story as more and more characters become corrupted. I wanted the general vibe of corrupted individuals to be that of someone who has no sense of self-control, no inhibitions, they will be blissfully ignorant of how uncomfortable they may make others but they don't go out of their way to force themselves on others, especially non-corrupted.

This chapter was originally written in October of 2020, over a year ago. My supporters on Patreon have had access to this as well as the rest of the chapters of thie story in the time since then. I post previews of all of my story content, and as I push myself toward higher aspirations there may be more and more stories that stay in that early preview form for a long time before their completion. For as little as $2.50 per month, you too can get access to these previews and have the opportunity to peek in on my writing process.

If you would rather not make a commitment to a subscription like that, you can also support me through one-time donations on Ko-Fi.

Regardless, I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my work, I hope that over the course of this story it will in some way make a difference in your life. <3