Tall Tale of Sweet Sauce

Chapters

Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 12

Chapter 3

A journey through the Everfree could not be accomplished on an empty stomach, just as revolutionizing dimensional thaumatology was doomed without the use of a proper lab.

Sauce’s arrival in Equestria might’ve tossed a few dozen curveballs his way, but one by one things were working themselves out.

Granted, a pint-sized laborer-to-be and a talentless unicorn were hardly the competent friends and servants he’d once commanded. But it was a start. Every endeavor began with a single hoofstep.

“We’ll need supplies,” he announced, as soon as he had led his erstwhile allies from the curiously arboreal castle. “Field rations for at least a single meal while traveling, preferably nothing with too much savor. We wouldn’t want to attract the attention of predators.”

The other foals could easily keep pace with him—the unicorn could probably have passed him in an instant if she wished. Even the colt was quick on his hooves. Probably had to be, with such small strides. But Sweet Sauce didn’t let that get him down. He was in Equestria, he’d already achieved his goals. Actually doing everything was really just a formality.

“Where did you want to go?” Pipsqueak asked, shuffling nervously just behind him. “My parents would be mad if I go too far.”

“Not too far,” he said hastily. “Or too long. Just through the forest to the castle.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially, though there were only the two distant guards, several meters away. They didn’t seem to care about their conversation. Ponies didn’t know him anymore. Nopony did.

He would have to correct that at the earliest opportunity.

“Through the forest?” Dinky asked. “You mean, like… the Everfree?” She turned at that moment, facing a direction the map had pointed to. If only he’d walked out to inspect the trees, he could’ve saved the trip to the crystal library. And missed out on acquiring some help along the way. “Mom said I should never go there without an adult. It’s way too easy to step off the trails and get lost.”

Trails? The thought was about as strange as an earth pony reading books, but he didn’t question it at first. Had the untamed magic of the Everfree somehow been dulled enough to let paths survive? What would Equestria do to resist invasions? What if the Yaks attacked again?

“That’s fine, I’m an adult.” He puffed out his chest, grinning at the two of them. “I know I don’t look like it, but I was an adult earlier this morning.”

“What does that even mean?” Pipsqueak asked. “Come on, Sweet. You don’t even have a cutie mark. You ain’t a grown-up.”

Sweet Sauce shuffled uncomfortably on his hooves, but he could offer no objection. Pipsqueak was right, of course, and that was the most troubling thing of all. What did losing a cutie mark mean for the destiny of the afflicted pony? Had he somehow sacrificed his special talent in his return?

“It’s magic,” he said, deflating. “I used to be one of the best spellcasters in all Equestria, maybe the best. Starswirl never agreed to a proper wizard’s duel, so perhaps we’ll never know. Probably just as well—couldn’t say I was the best if I lost, could I?”

The unicorn hesitated, retreating half a step. Maybe she was about to tell her friend to do the same. Their excitement for an adventure had been easy to kindle, but they were also just foals. It would be almost as quick to cool unless he kept it stoked.

“I know you’re discerning folk,” he said hastily. “And you, Pipsqueak, you’re here too. I will prove it with a proper demonstration, as soon as we acquire refreshments for the journey.” He pointed a dramatic hoof at Dinky. “I meant what I said about helping you, young unicorn. But first, I must eat.” He groaned, pawing at the ground. “I don’t believe I’ve had the taste of anything but grass since my arrival here, and that was an unpleasant experience. Technically, I’ve not eaten a meal in this body’s lifetime.”

His companions shared a glance, before eyes settled on Pipsqueak. “My gran runs a little shop near the train station,” he said. “She doesn’t mind if I take somethin’ for my friends every now and then. But it’s more snacks than… the kind of things you say.”

“Train station? I thought I spied tracks… that’s a relief. I was beginning to think that Equestria had stagnated completely since my departure. Snacks are an order above what I have had. I would happily purchase whatever we needed to outfit the expedition—but my property is lost, likely destroyed. It will take time to rebuild my endowment.”

“Your parents must be really fancy,” Dinky said, as they set off towards the train station. “Doesn’t it get tiring?”

“A little,” he admitted. “But you wouldn’t take me half as seriously if I said the kind of things my neighbors did the last few years. Who’s my little pogchamp? This town has so many cute doggos!” He twisted his face in disgust. “And worse, language mutates so fast that the way everypony talks today will be completely altered in a year. Little bird carries away something unfortunate on Twitter, and next thing you know there’s a new word. Language is a virus, children. One way or another, you’re going to get sick.”

Both of them laughed, though there was little comprehension on their faces. This was the simpler way of showing authority—just speaking very quickly and projecting his confidence in everything.

They found the train station not long after, resembling nothing Sauce had seen in at least a century. But the tracks looked the same, and as they walked, the train steamed to a stop. Literally steamed, right down to the coal fired engine and hiss of actual boiling water.

“Where are you from, Sweet Sauce?” Pipsqueak asked. “Talkin’ like that… is that a Canterlot accent?”

“Discord no, that place? Wouldn’t catch me flying up there dead, you’d probably have to keep me restrained just to ride up there.”

“Then where?” Dinky asked. “It’s at least someplace fancy, right? Someplace proper, where the unicorn families turn their noses up at everypony else?”

“Originally, yes,” he said. “I grew up in a castle, wanting for nothing. Except perhaps a scheme ambitious enough to one-up my older sister. I guess I’m living that scheme now.”

He didn’t address the subject further, at least not until they’d finished at the little corner store. Again Sweet found the resemblance far closer to the world he’d been banished to, rather than the one he remembered. Equestria had refrigeration now, and the constant glow of electrical power rather than the smoky, dirty oil lamps of the past.

It was looking more and more like his return home wouldn’t even require him to sacrifice his convenience after all. Now if only he could find someone making modern music, he’d be basically set.

The earth pony, appropriately, had a set of saddlebags they could use to bring snacks, though they were far too small for anything more than a daytrip. Sauce said nothing else until they’d given him a bag of haycrisps, which tasted deep fried enough to be familiar. Even so, that was the exception—most of what the store sold were small-time products in humble glass bottles and paper wrapping.

With his stomach sated at least for the moment, they finally neared the looming trees of the Everfree, dark silhouettes rising overhead like whole buildings. Even Sauce caught himself shivering with trepidation at the idea of following that trail inside. But only for a moment. It was still light outside, and his quest was yet incomplete.

“And now we proceed,” he said, crossing definitively into the shadowy depths of the trees. They couldn’t linger out in the open for much longer, or else attract the eyes of adults from nearby. There were already a few glancing in their direction, though so far at least they hadn’t been interfered with. If they try to stop us, I’d have to go alone. That would be a hungry, unpleasant trip. “Time for that lesson, Dinky. Are you ready to learn some magic?”

That did it. She nodded eagerly, following behind him. The colt came last, watching with a skeptical eye. But ultimately the fear of being left behind was powerful enough that he came too.

Sweet Sauce wasn’t leading her on, either—he needed somepony with some magic, as encountering danger in the Everfree was a near certainty.

He rushed rapidly through several basic principles of spellcasting as they walked, occasionally stopping to survey their surroundings and reference the dwindling sunlight. If they hadn’t reached the castle before Celestia lowered the sun, this expedition would get quite a bit more unpleasant.

“So begin with proper focus,” he finally said, pointing at a stray length of wood on the path before them. He stopped their progress with one hoof. “Let’s practice now. Focus on the object you wish to manipulate, and nothing else.”

“I know that part!” Dinky called, annoyed. “Everypony knows that part. But seeing unicorns staring at stuff isn’t enough!”

He sighed, but didn’t argue. “Focus is the first step. You must see nothing else, until you perceive the substance of that stick with your horn, not your eyes. Feel the shape of it, the weight of gnarled wood. Know its past—the tree it once belonged to, and the leaves that once adorned it. It longs for that life again, deep within. Feel the stick so well, you know it as you know yourself. Let it become part of your substance.”

“That’s silly,” Pipsqueak said. “That ain’t how magic works! I’ve never seen a pony be a tree before. That could never happen.”

“Do not distract, workhorse,” he snapped. He could see it, if not feel it without a horn. The unicorn was focusing, possibly as she’d never focused before. “Now you feel it,” he continued. “Now, lift it up into the air. Like moving your leg. It’s no different. Just another part of you.”

The stick lifted up into the air, hovering in faintly purple magic. Dinky gasped, a grin spreading across her lips. “H-how? How am I doing this?”

“Magic, obviously.” He walked slowly around her, to where the stick levitated in the air. He was careful not to touch it, lest he disturb the delicate sympathetic bond the filly had made with the object. “You underestimated your own ability. Look at what you achieved with just a little instruction. Now, bring the object to you.”

He walked her through a few basic exercises, the kind he would’ve expected any magical kindergarten to teach the unicorns enrolled there. But he couldn’t spend too much time teaching—they were burning daylight, and also it was a lot of effort.

But just a few minutes was enough that she could at least practice while they walked.

“And now you’ve experienced your first brush with competence,” he said, bounding past her. She’d switched from the stick to a single stone—she hadn’t quite been strong enough to do two at once.

“Now that you know a little magic, you have the tools to practice. You must do so at every opportunity, but don’t use too much at once. If you feel a headache coming on, rest. You must build endurance, just as your tiny friend has to work to build up muscle.”

The shadows around them were lengthening now, and Sweet Sauce couldn’t feel the sun on his coat anymore. But that hardly mattered. They were basically at the castle already, all without being waylaid by a single basilisk or other terror.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered, his steps slowing as the trail continued. “We’re close enough now the village should be nearby. We should hear them, smell the smoke from their cookfires… a castle as large as the Two Sisters’ requires a huge staff, along with all the other royal workers the crown employs as scholars and craftsponies. Where are they?”

“The Castle of… what?” Pipsqueak asked. “Why would anypony want to go there?”

They emerged from the trees, and Sweet Sauce saw. As it turned out, the cartographer hadn’t been taking outrageous liberties—the castle really was in ruins.

Windows were shattered, roof collapsed, towers overturned. The village was barely even a suggestion, a few rings of stones outlined ancient foundations. There was no sign of life.

Well, except for the timberwolves, rising from the undergrowth with woody nostrils flaring.

Chapter 4

Sweet Sauce remembered predators like these—though nopony was sure if timberwolves were even capable of eating the ones they caught. They were manifestations of the untamed wild places, and protected them fiercely. To see them here did not bode well for the state of the castle.

“What are those things?” Pipsqueak asked, continuing towards the bridge. It wasn’t much of a bridge, just half-rotten wooden beams, and threadbare rope. It wouldn’t be able to carry the load of the many hundreds of carts rolling in and out of the castle each day, with food and steel and other supplies.

“Not friendly.” Dinky dropped the stick she was levitating, taking a few nervous steps towards the forest. “I don’t think they want us here. We should… go.”

It won’t help. It’s about dominance, and we’ve already threatened their territory. Sweet Sauce ran through a few scenarios in his head, different ways they could run for their lives until they were eventually hunted and torn apart. It would be at least the third worst hike he’d ever been on.

“No!” He took off at a gallop, straight past the timberwolves onto the old bridge. “Follow me!”

His companions hadn’t been entirely cooperative during the journey so far—but fear had a way of working on ponies. Even now, they were herding animals by nature. It was good to have a leader to follow.

They galloped along behind him. The old wood groaned under their weight, but being small did have at least one advantage. They were much too light to damage the bridge.

The timberwolves considered for a few moments, then they were off chasing them. Jaws open wide, wooden teeth glistening with sap. But as the first got close to them, one of its paws shattered the bridge underfoot. It tumbled into the canyon below, yipping and squealing as it fell. This gave the others pause, long enough for Sauce and the foals to clear the bridge.

“Dinky, the rope!” he said, gesturing urgently at it. “Cut the rope!”

She stumbled to a stop beside him, eyes widening with panic. “You want me to… what? We didn’t learn about how to cut…”

The other two timberwolves turned away from the opening, and back towards them. Even worse, they seemed to realize the danger the bridge presented—instead of stampeding towards them, now they took each step carefully, creeping towards the three helpless foals.

I might be a dirthorse, but I’m not useless. Sauce took hold of Dinky’s leg with one of his own, drawing a few swirling shapes in the soft soil. The rune lines began to glow with each stroke—the magic didn’t care that he was basically puppeting her. Unicorn magic was unicorn magic.

“What are you doing?” Pipsqueak asked, with the expected level of earth pony stupefaction. Along with a heaping spoonful of not knowing when to bucking shut his mouth. “What is that?”

Dinky turned towards him, losing focus.

The wolves were almost to the edge of the bridge. One of them rested one paw on solid ground, toothy smile widening. Hopefully they ate stupid ponies first.

“Point your horn at the bridge!” Sauce yelled, jerking Dinky’s leg through the circle enclosing the runes. As soon as it completed, the air lit up in a brilliant cyan flash. But that was nothing compared to the flames that followed.

Dinky’s horn blasted with a wave of fire twice as wide as she was, a shimmering blue wall. It tore through the timberwolves like they weren’t even there, then ripped the bridge and several feet of dirt right off the cliffside.

The beam continued up into the air, slicing through trees like paper as it vanished into the distance near the speed of light.

Steam began to rise from Dinky’s horn. She turned towards him, grinning weakly. “That was… woah.” She dropped to the dirt beside him, and started snoring.

For a few seconds there was nothing to break the silence, other than the gentle crackle of burning bridge and Dinky’s snores.

Pipsqueak made his slow way over, nudging her with one hoof. He circled wide around her, avoiding passing in front where her horn still steamed slightly. “Dinky can do that?”

Sauce glanced down at the black marks burned into the dirt, and began scuffing out the runes as quickly as he could. “Don’t ask silly questions, Pipsqueak. Anypony can do that. But unicorns happen to have a readily accessible foci that can be tapped for useful magic. Disabled ponies like ourselves need to rely on blood and other crude mechanisms to fuel a spell.”

Sauce nudged the resting filly with one hoof, but she didn’t move. In his panic, he hadn’t managed to give the makeshift rune anything to limit the power it took. “Help me with the child, Pip. It’s almost nightfall, we can’t leave her here.”

The colt looked up, concerned. “You’re not doin’ that silly accent no more?”

He forced it, though he couldn’t muster the heart for it right now. “I will if you do.”

“I ain’t doin’ no accent!” But he helped without further complaint, and that was what mattered.

Sauce walked through dead gardens, toppled statues, up the soundless steps to the old castle. They managed to carry Dinky well enough, at least they didn’t drag her legs. Being an earth pony did sometimes have some advantages, even if he found the exchange utterly unbalanced.

But if Sauce had been expecting to find the interior in better shape than his glimpse from outside, he was disappointed. Priceless tapestries were tattered or missing, intricate mosaic flooring was drowned in grime and dirt, and the smell of mildew and rotting wood assaulted his nose as they stepped inside.

“We shouldn’t be in here…” Pipsqueak muttered, keeping pace with him. “But where are we even supposed to go? The whole bridge got burned up. Are we stuck here forever?”

Sauce shook his head absently. “There are a dozen different ways to cross a gap that wide, and only eleven involve magic. We’ll find somewhere safe for our companion to rest the night. By morning, she should be recovered. Though she might be too weak to cast spells for another few days.”

“A few days?” Pipsqueak asked, indignant. “I’m in so much trouble… my parents are gonna be worried sick about me. Don’t you have parents who worry about you?”

“They’re dead,” he said, as flat and cold as the crumbling stone all around them. “There is nopony looking for me. Or if there are, they probably want to kill me too. Some grudges run deeper than iron and bone, young workhorse.”

“This looks safe.” Pipsqueak gestured down an open doorway. The space beyond was darker than most, but here that was an advantage. Servants’ quarters, with intact furniture. They walked together through the gloom. Sauce almost asked Dinky to light the way, until a particularly loud snore reminded him that she was completely unconscious.

“You can’t just say things like that,” Pipsqueak finally said. “You talk like a pony out of a comic book. I thought you were pretendin’. But why take us here? You could’ve lied all you wanted when we were safe in Ponyville. Dinky would’ve listened either way, it’s how she is.”

“I never lied to you,” he said seriously. “Well, nothing I told you was untrue. You’re small enough that you tend to make assumptions that are easy to exploit. But that isn’t the same thing.”

They found a bed that hadn’t been completely rotted away to nothing. But there were no spiders on the plain wooden platform, or infestation of weevils. That would have to do. Together they hefted Dinky up onto the platform, where she could finally rest.

A shame they didn’t have a blanket, Sauce was getting chilly.

“This is really bad,” Pipsqueak said, slumping to the floor in front of the bed. “Those things… they were really gonna eat us. Not just some story for Nightmare Night.” He whimpered, curling up on the floor.

“I wouldn’t let them,” Sauce said. “We were never in any danger. Or… no, it was terrible danger. But our enemies were in far greater danger. If there were any watching from the forest, they’ll probably tell all the others just how dangerous little ponies are. Future travelers will have far less to fear.”

Pipsqueak met his eyes, but he didn’t seem reassured. He turned away after only a few seconds. “You really mean it.”

“Always. Except when I don’t, which isn’t right now. Pass the snacks?” Pipsqueak twisted to the side, exposing his saddlebags packed with their almost meal. But he’d take unsatisfying equestrian food over whatever slop he could order at a roadside McDonald’s any day. This was home.

Except it wasn’t. The castle was crumbling around him. The ponies who should’ve been here for their epic confrontation weren’t here. Do I really want the Royal Guard to show up and drag me off? At least that way somepony would remember him.

“What happened to this place?” he asked, as soon as he’d finished eating. However unhappy he was with him, Pipsqueak didn’t leave. A pony who’d led him somewhere scary was still safer than a half-collapsed castle filled with strange noises and general spookiness.

“Huh?” Pipsqueak looked up, scooting a little closer. But maybe he was happy enough to have someone to talk to.

“The Castle of the Two Sisters,” Sauce said. “This was the capital of Equestria. There should be hundreds of structures around it on all sides. A city of ten thousand, the center of culture and learning for all the world.”

Pipsqueak’s eyebrows went up, or at least he thought they did. The windows were boarded up, and the only light was a faint trickle of moonlight from down the hall. Too bad the music player’s lithium battery hadn’t agreed with the Worldgate.

“Old castle… ponies sometimes come out to visit. They talk about how important it was, I guess. Also… stories about somethin’ haunting it. Hopefully those are just for Nightmare Night.”

“When was it important?” Sauce pressed. “There’s plants growing inside, sections of ceiling have collapsed. That should take centuries. I haven’t been gone that long.”

Pipsqueak only looked more confused. “I dunno, Sauce. My parents would never dream ‘a letting me come here. School wouldn’t either… this is the Everfree. This is for grownups, with lots of friends and powerful magic. We shouldn’t be messin’ with it.”

“I’m not going to mess with it, the ponies I’m looking for aren’t here.” He slumped to the floor, not far from Pipsqueak. He’d never get closer, because that would be admitting he didn’t want to be alone. Perish the thought. “At least tell me you know who Princess Celestia is.”

“Obviously,” Pipsqueak said. “That’s easy. Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight. Rulers of Equestria four. The first one…” He stopped his recitation, interrupting the rhyming meter. “Okay, I forget the rest. But it’s not my fault! Feels like every year it gets longer!”

“More Alicorns in Equestria,” Sauce grumbled unhappily. “Like the two weren’t enough. After everything Celestia survived, she doesn’t need more help than her sister. Why did they allow it?”

“I have no idea.” Pipsqueak struggled with his saddlebag a moment, then rested his head up against it. “I’m gonna be in so much trouble… we’re all in so much trouble. I hope they don’t send Dinky back to magical kindergarten.”

“There was supposed to be a castle here,” Sauce said. “Way bigger than Ponyville. Packed with ponies ready to pamper us. There were always musicians outside, day and night. I liked the bats best—they played the gentlest music. Bells and lyre you could hear from anywhere in the garden. I fell asleep to it sometimes, playing songs from Before. Why did they leave the castle?”

But Pipsqueak didn’t answer. He’d fallen into an uneasy sleep, tossing, and turning on the old stone floor. Soon Sweet Sauce joined him, in that little space not even suited for his servants.

Maybe tomorrow would be better.

Chapter 5

Night was an unsettling experience for Sweet Sauce at the best of times. Stripped of the discipline and protection of his conscious perception, sleep was as often torment as rest. But here in Equestria, dreams might be his first chance to reach a tendril of contact towards the Alicorns. Maybe Luna would sense him, or at least feel his pain. She wouldn’t abandon him to his fate.

But if the night princess had noticed his return to Equestria, she made no sign he could feel. He had never shared any of her unique magic, so he couldn’t call and demand she arrive. He could only wait.

At the same time, the castle of his childhood offered none of the comforts he remembered. Instead of rest, he spent most of the night tossing and turning on the stone floor, conscious of the many strange sounds of the ruin as it settled and shifted. If another attack came, he was entirely bereft of easily accessible magic. He’d only have the darker stuff within reach… certainly not a way to make a healthy return.

There were no windows in the little servants’ quarters, so he didn’t wake to the sun. But some noise did cut through the frightening background chatter and creak of the castle—shouting.

He wasn’t the first to rise—in fact, Sweet covered his head with one leg, wishing very much that the discourteous interloper would go somewhere else for a few more hours. All they needed was one of those godforsaken automatic lawnmower machines to rumble loudly beside his window. Then a neighbor’s dog would start barking at the gardener, and his entire morning’s sleep would be ruined.

That didn’t happen. But Dinky thumped sideways out of bed, moaning groggily. “Where are… what happened?”

Pipsqueak wasn’t far away—apparently they’d fallen asleep close by. He stirred, sitting up. “Voices? Isn’t that the weatherpony?”

“I think so. She trains my mom sometimes…” Something nudged against Sweet’s shoulder—a hoof. “Wake up, Sweet. Sounds like rescue’s almost here.”

He had only an instant to consider what he would do next. He’d led these ponies here—not from one safe city to another, but down a dangerous trail to a castle of ruin and despair. It wouldn’t matter that the route was supposed to be safe. He’d be blamed, as usual.

He sat up suddenly. Sauce hadn’t slept much, so it didn’t take long to shake off the delirium. “For you, yes.” He rose, taking a few steps towards the doorway. “Seek out your rescuers. Return to your lives of thankless drudgery. I can only offer a sincere apology that you were inadvertently drawn into this doomed scheme. My quest to find the princesses will require effort elsewhere.”

He broke into a brisk trot, back down the hallway where he’d come. “Remember to practice, Dinky! You were fortunate enough to be randomly incarnated as a superior tribe. Use what you were given.”

“Where are you going?” Pipsqueak called. He followed a few steps, but stopped in the doorway. “Don’t you want to be rescued?”

“I would love to be rescued,” he said. “But for me, it would not be a rescue.” He was wasting time explaining this. “Internment in a thankless prison would not serve my ends, workhorse. Farewell.”

He reached the central hallway. Out here, he could hear the rescuer’s voice clearly. A pegasus mare, shouting from not far away. “Dinky Hooves! Pipsqueak! Where are you?”

He dodged to one side, seeking the shadowy gloom of another nearby passage. The castle might be ruins, but his memory was keen. He could still see the castle as it should’ve been, with rich carpets and many servants and walls that hadn’t fallen in.

He hurried down a passage that would’ve led to the kitchens, once. They’d been built close to the throne room, so Celestia would never be far away from whatever she craved. The stone was black now, and the wooden sections of ceiling had gone. A fire had probably claimed the entire wing, when hostile invaders had taken the castle.

Sweet Sauce should’ve continued that way, getting far away from any potential rescue. He waited in the shadows just around the corner anyway, falling as still and quiet as he could. Once he knew the foals had been successfully rescued, he could resume his daring escape with a clear conscience.

There was a little more shouting, then finally the others answered. “Here! Down here!” Dinky called. She still sounded disoriented, drained. The effects of her magical attack would take more than a night to be completely overcome. But it was loud enough to be heard.

Heavy hoofsteps sounded on the stone, then the adult voice again. “You are here! Twilight’s just behind me, hold on. We don’t want to make too much noise, or we might attract the monster.”

“Monster?” Pipsqueak asked, fearfully. “Maybe you should… stop yelling?”

“There was a monster here?” Dinky whispered, suddenly panicked.

“Duh! Didn’t you see the magic outside? There was this flash last night, cut right through the trees all the way back to Ponyville. Everypony saw it.” The mare didn’t sound afraid, despite her words. “Even Twilight wasn’t sure what did it. Monster.”

It was time for him to get moving. While Pipsqueak replied, Sweet turned back towards the half-collapsed passage, hurrying deeper into the castle. Their rescuers obviously wouldn’t know about the ruin—nopony seemed to remember that there had once been a castle here.

Just a little further and Sauce found what he was looking for. Sure enough, the kitchen had been entirely consumed, and only a single stone wall remained. There was no ceiling overhead, nothing but a narrow chimney rising high among the ruins. He kept to the shadow here, in case the search party mare flew this way.

Sweet Sauce closed his eyes a moment, and the old building came to life around him. Tables overflowed with treats, fire roared in the huge oven, and servants and kitchen staff thronged around him. No one dared stop him, but he could see the fear in those faces—fear that he’d do something wrong, and Celestia would be angry. But he never did.

Why wasn’t it still here? This was the Equestria he missed most, the life that had been taken from him. If only there was some spell to make the world back into what it should be.

Sweet Sauce was so lost in thought that he failed to notice the pony landing behind him—not until she spoke.

It wasn’t the same creature who had come for the foals. This speaker was more confident, decisive. “You seem lost. What are you looking for?”

The walls vanished from around him, the spectral servants faded, the smell of pastries and baking bread vanished. Sweet winced, spinning slowly around.

An Alicorn loomed over him, over twice his height. Her wings spread wide, as large as Luna’s had been in those days. Probably not as big as his, but it was hard to be sure. Everything looked bigger from the ground.

“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna,” he said. “They’re supposed to be ruling from here, in their castle. But there was nopony living here.”

The Alicorn was soft purple, with darker shades swirling in her mane streaked with pink. She took a few steps towards him. But she didn’t raise a weapon, and her horn didn’t begin to glow with protective magic. “Nopony has lived here for almost a thousand years,” she said, like a teacher instructing him in something he ought to know. “Most ponies don’t even remember the Castle of the Two Sisters used to be the capital. Did Miss Cheerilee not teach you that?”

There would be no fleeing from this pony, not with wings like that. Yet she was barely watching him—mostly she eyed their surroundings, the forest and the ruins of the castle.

“I have no idea who that is,” he said flatly. One hoof brushed against a chunk of rusting metal on the floor before him—a blade, or what was left of one. Should he attack the Alicorn? A doomed approach. Besides, she hadn’t done anything to him yet. “I just want to meet with Princess Celestia. I didn’t want to hurt anypony, and I don’t think I did. Timberwolves aren’t ponies.”

“No, they… what?” The Alicorn, who had to be Twilight Sparkle, touched his shoulder with a wing, urging him back into the castle. “Come with me, please. It’s very dangerous to be here. Even more recently. Your parents will hear about you wandering off.”

He obeyed, though he let his hooves drag through the dirt as he did so, kicking up a little ash. “I doubt you have the necromancy to do that. Even Luna wasn’t willing to learn that much forbidden magic.”

Finally the young princess seemed to hear him—maybe for the first time. “Did you just say…” She stopped, horn glowing faintly. Not an attacking spell, but a bright lavender glow, illuminating the collapsed hallway. “Did you just say necromancy?”

He shrugged. “You said you were going to tell my parents. Well, they’re dead. You’d need horribly evil magic to talk to them. Didn’t seem like the type.”

Before she could answer, another face appeared from the hallway. A bright blue pegasus, hovering around the corner rather than standing there. “Twi? Did you find another foal in here? These two say they—” She stopped, looking down at Sauce. “Oh, great! That’s everypony.”

Twilight’s magic faltered, and she gestured forward again. Sweet Sauce obeyed without objection, marching shamefully back the rest of the way.

By the time he made it into the hallway proper, he discovered that even more had changed during his brief absence. Several mares waited here now, eyeing the castle warily. They came from all of the common tribes. Despite their intention to find a “monster,” he couldn’t see a single weapon between them. No swords, no spears, not even a dagger.

“I want to know who told you about that,” Twilight said. “Later. When we’re back in Ponyville.”

“And I want to meet the princess. Both of us are probably going to be disappointed today.” He left her there, to converse in confused voices with the pegasus mare. She’d already gone back to not paying any attention to him. How much more outrageous would he have to get before the adults noticed?

I could be a disciple of Tirek. Or maybe I’m going to summon the Smooze, that could be fun. The Alicorn was entirely unknown to him, but she had recognized certain keywords. But which side of the family had she come from?

“They found you!” Dinky called, as he rejoined them in the center of the circle of rescuers. “Why’d you run away like that? Weren’t you afraid of getting lost?”

“Entirely the goal,” he muttered.

The rescuing ponies were all mares, and still seemed focused on possible dangers. Had they not listened when his companions told them what the “monster” had been? That was quickly becoming a theme.

“You don’t want to get in trouble!” Pipsqueak exclaimed, with the joy of a genius who had just solved a complex technical problem. “You were running away!”

“That might be a clever deduction if I hadn’t said so explicitly when I left. It appears I’ve been outmatched. I can only hope they take me to judgement by both princesses before I am executed.”

“What’s ‘executed’?” Dinky asked.

He didn’t get the chance to reply—one of the ponies guarding them had finally noticed their conversation. A creamy yellow pegasus this time, with a long, wavy mane. “Little fillies and colts should try to relax. Being scared won’t help us make it home any faster. I’m sure we’ll be going back soon. Then we’ll get you back to your families where you belong.”

He met her gaze without blinking. “I’m glad for both of them—my companions deserve your mercy. But I have no family to be returned to.”

“Oh dear,” the mare said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He says things like that,” Pipsqueak added. “I think he makes it all up. He just likes to make ponies confused, so he says the weirdest things he can think of.”

“Absolutely not!” He turned, puffing out his chest. “You have no idea the depths of eldritch perplexitude I’m capable of, workbeast! I was being sincere.”

The Alicorn’s voice interrupted them all, loud enough that even Sweet turned to look. “Everypony, move close to me. These little ponies have families at home, and they’ve waited long enough. We’ll skip the walk.”

Chapter 6

Sweet Sauce had little reason to be impressed with a teleportation spell, even one cast without preparation on an entire group to travel several miles at once.

Okay, maybe he was a little impressed. They reappeared in Ponyville without blowing out his ears with displacement, or freezing the ground with the sudden shift in temperature. But part of that might just be the change from what he was used to, after living in a world where being able to read a bus schedule meant greater than average competence.

He didn't recognize the room they appeared in, but even so it took him only a few seconds to figure out where they must be. High walls and a vaulted ceiling made of blue crystal, strange thrones near the back surrounding a flat object that radiated more magic than most ponies in the room combined, and stained glass.

While the other ponies needed a second to recover from the transport, Sauce only rolled his eyes. "You're so subtle with all this. I simply must talk to your interior decorator."

As usual, nopony reacted. The other young ponies were far too disoriented from the transport, shaking themselves out and reconnecting with their three spatial dimensions.

The adult ponies were all apparently used to this, but only the white unicorn even glanced at him. He was too small, they just didn't care.

Maybe he could've tried to run for it, slipping away from the castle and vanishing into the darkness. But as much as these ponies ignored what he said, he had a reasonable idea of how strongly they would react if he tried to flee.

If there was one mercy here, an execution would probably require all the princesses to be gathered to pass judgement. He would get to say goodbye.

But the next few hours brought no execution. Instead, the families of the ponies who had followed him arrived, fawning over their missing foals and carrying them away. They didn’t seem to notice him lingering there—if they blamed him for leading their children away from town, they concealed it well.

They didn't linger in the throne room, but moved him downstairs to a blank, nondescript storage room, with mostly empty shelves smelling of fruit. Over the next few hours, most of the rescue party slipped away, until only a single pegasus remained—the yellow and pink one with butterflies for her cutie mark. What was her name again?

Sauce didn't much care. He slumped against the wall, ignoring her attempts to talk to him and staring off into space. There was no sense trying to negotiate with these ponies, not after what he'd done. Might as well just face whatever fate they had in mind for him.

At least when they brought lunch for his captor, they had a plate for him, too. He could enjoy one last meal of equestrian produce before he went to the gallows.

It was late afternoon before they finally came for him. Not the escort of a dozen royal guards they should've used, in case he went to the effort of trying to escape. No, this was two mares. Both were older than his rescuers, though like all ponies they aged more gracefully than primates.

Maybe the one with the pen and scroll cutie mark just had a mane that color. Both were dressed more formally than most ponies, with coats and white shirts. Strange to see something that almost mirrored the word he'd been banished too, except for the obvious lack of pants.

"Mayor Mare," said the pegasus, standing. "You found this poor pony's parents?"

Sweet Sauce remained on the ground, resting his head against the shelf. He closed his eyes, and went back to pretending to be asleep. Maybe it would even work.

"I'm afraid not," said the pony. Like her clothing, she spoke with a forced formality the princess hadn't used. Twilight doesn't need to put on an act for ponies to know she's important.

"I apologize for the delay, Miss Fluttershy. We've been waiting to hear back from Family Services in Canterlot. Their telegram just returned: there is no missing foal matching his description. They're still searching, but—"

She lowered her voice to a whisper. A valiant effort, but it was nowhere near quiet enough that he wouldn't still overhear. "It probably means he has no family to report him missing, or his family doesn't want to find him."

"He, um..." the pegasus began, her voice shaking. "He did say something about his parents not being around anymore."

"They're not," he said, sitting up suddenly and glaring across the room as the three mares. "My parents are dead. I have no extended family. And my siblings want nothing to do with me."

The white-haired pony jumped a few inches as he spoke. The others merely looked at him. But she recovered quickly enough. "Welcome to Ponyville, Sweet Sauce," she said. Barely deviating from her forced formality. "I'm sorry we haven't been able to help you yet. But there's some good news!" She gestured, and the other pony stepped forward. "Let me introduce you to Honeydew. She's our representative with the Department of Family Services."

This one wore a brown satchel over her shoulder, and a pair of thick glasses. She smiled, and it seemed far more natural than on the other mare. "Hello, Sweet Sauce. Nice to meet you."

He didn't meet her eyes. "Where are the soldiers? I'm ready to stand trial. On the condition that the Princesses of Equestria act in judgement, I wave my defense. I will face what I deserve."

Honeydew twitched once, looking back. "Is there something I should know about this case?"

The pegasus shook her head. "No... he's been saying things like that since we found him. Nopony can figure out why.He didn't want to answer our questions."

"Miss Honeydew will take care of you now, Sweet," said Mayor Mare. "Will you go with her?"

No threats. No soldiers. Once he got away from this tower, he could probably escape whenever he wanted. But maybe he wouldn't want to. Whatever the Department of Family Services was, it was obviously part of the government. Maybe he could use it to reach Celestia.

"Sure." He stood. "Whatever you say."

"It was nice meeting you, little pony," the pegasus said. "I hope you can... I hope you can be happy here. Ponyville is a wonderful town."

"I'm sure it is," he said, still not looking at her. He had nothing more to say.

So it was that Sweet Sauce left the stupid tree castle behind, without chains or warmages or even Royal Guard following behind him.

There was only Honeydew, who didn't even seem fit enough to keep up with him in a foot-race. But she was a dirt horse, which probably made her stronger than she looked.

I only get one chance to escape before they know I'll want to, he thought. I have to pick it carefully.

So not right now. He could make a run for the train station, now that he knew the princesses were in Canterlot instead of their castle. But trains needed bits, and he didn’t have any yet. He would need to swipe some.

"Where are you from, Sweet Sauce?" she asked, as they approached a nondescript building near the center of town. It looked just like the houses to either side, except that it lacked any personal touches. There were no gardens, no unique colors on the trimming.

He gestured vaguely into the Everfree. "I grew up in the Castle of the Two Sisters. I was born in Unicornia, but I left too soon and too young to remember much about it. Just... cold. Snow. Gale force winds."

That had the expected reaction. The earth pony nearly tripped over herself, but managed to stay on her hooves as she made her way up the lane. "That's... quite the active imagination you have there, Sweet Sauce. Unicornia? I bet most ponies your age don't even know what you're talking about."

He followed her into the office. Despite its plain exterior, great effort had obviously been taken to make it seem comfortable. The walls were pink, the furniture was all soft and cushiony. There was a single desk, but even that had rounded corners. There were no open doors, no pictures of anything that wasn't smiling and happy.

"Standing in here is going to give me diabetes," he said flatly, hesitating in the doorway. "And I should know, I worked in the royal kitchens. Well... lived in the kitchens more than worked. I wasn't paying myself."

Honeydew was already catching on, because she didn't stop this time. She walked with him to a set of comfortable-looking sofas, covered in fluff and padding. "Well, Sweet Sauce. I'd like to get to know you a little better. From the, uh... from the smell of it, you were in the Everfree for a while. So I'll keep our conversation brief, then you can use the facilities. Would that be okay?"

"Sure," he said, settling glumly into the chair. Though given the environment, he didn't really make much of an effort. Instead, Sauce stretched over both edges of the seat, with legs hanging off into empty space. The colors might be so bright they burned, but at least it was comfortable here.

Prison in Equestria is better than going back to that desert. I'll take a bright pink cell over yuccas any day.

Maybe she expected him to say more—he didn't, just closing his eyes and letting his mind drift. Whatever else was in this office, he hadn't seen any big piles of bits. So there'd be no stealing a train ticket right now.

"Are you sure you couldn't tell me more about where you grew up?" Honeydew asked. "It would make finding any family you have much easier."

He looked up, meeting her eyes with a sudden glare. "Just say what you mean. You think I'm lying to you and you're asking for me to tell you the truth. I did, that's the problem."

She froze again, pen stopping in whatever scribbling she was doing. Her ears flattened—apparently she wasn't expecting confrontation.

This childcare pony had done nothing to him. But that didn't mean he felt particularly cooperative. Not after today. "I'm not sure if Mayor Mare told you I walked out to the Castle of the Two Sisters. Why do you think I did it? It was supposed to be fully staffed. My family should've been waiting for me. But the castle's gone. My friends who worked there have probably been dead for... centuries."

He trailed off, slumping back against the couch. It hadn't felt like centuries. Sweet Sauce hadn't needed to resort to strange magic, hadn't needed a new body.

There were temporal incongruities between divergent spacetimes. Starswirl had been right about that, the crotchety old bastard. At least he wouldn't be alive to gloat.

"You sound... very serious about all this," Honeydew said. She might as well have just burped for everything it meant. "How long have you been from... the ancient past?"

How long? The question took him a second to process—how could he ever be from somewhere else? But there was one way. He could be a child with a delusional fantasy.

He had one chance to cut through all this—one chance that might end with him going where he needed to go.

Sweet Sauce hopped down off the couch, and looked up at the earth pony with her stupid clipboard and quill. "Listen to me, Honeydew. My name is Sweet Sauce. It is imperative you deliver me to my older sisters—Princess Celestia Radiantis and Princess Argentia Luna. Send a messenger on swift wings to deliver them my message. I have crossed the iridescent veil by force of intellect and magical will. The terms of my banishment are done. I wish to apologize for—"

He came to a choking halt, stuttering. He kept the tears from his eyes, but not his voice. "For what I did. I accept whatever punishment they find fitting. May Faust have mercy on my soul."

Chapter 7

Honeydew stared back at Sweet Sauce, her expression so utterly flabbergasted that he almost started laughing all over again. She braced herself against the couch with one hoof, and used the delay to take a few long, slow breaths. Finally she glanced down at her pad, and began scribbling with her mouth.

She didn't reply, and he would've thought she hadn't even heard him, except for how vigorously she looked down at her writing, then back at him.

Good. She better get that all written down, so my demands can be clearly delivered to whatever pony is sheriff of this insignificant town.

Finally she finished, and settled the pad neatly on the couch beside her. "How long have your been practicing that, Sweet Sauce?"

He shrugged ambivalently. Maybe he did have the right to be a little proud of what he'd done. He resisted the instinct. "It's the truth. I'm ready to face the consequences of my actions. Just deliver the message to the princesses for me, and we'll escalate this."

She chuckled, rising from her seat. "Would you like some snacks? I've got that apple soft drink all the other fillies and colts love. I bet you'd like some too."

She made her way to the desk, opening a tiny box that had been sitting beside it. A little fridge—he hadn't really expected to see its like here in Equestria. The interior wasn't nearly as big as a similar device would've been in the realm of his banishment, but there was enough room for a single shelf. She removed a can from inside, very alike in basic shape to the ones in his memory.

But instead of a complex tab requiring unicorn magic, this one had a place to settle a hoof, then twisted to open along the top, folding up to give ponies something to hold in their mouths if they had to. She settled it down on the table between them, nudging it closer. "Go on."

The smell was nice, probably real apple. Nothing like the sludge that humans fed to their children. Yet he resisted, on the principle if for no other reason. "I just told you that I'm admitting to capital crimes. I'm ready to be punished with whatever Equestrian justice demands. Why are you giving me snacks?"

"Because they make me feel better when I'm stressed," she answered. "And it sounds like you're stressed."

She's not taking me seriously. If only he still had a horn, he could answer this level of indignity with the swiftest possible response. There wouldn't be blood, but at least a proper scare, letting this mare know where they stood. She would have no more reason to doubt when he showed exactly what his magic could do.

I could do something with runes. Prove what I can do. Yet that sounded like an awful lot of work, and for what? Maybe it was an indignity for these ponies to forget him. But it was also incredibly convenient.

If they refuse to realize who I am, they can't stop me. It was time for Sweet Sauce to realize an opportunity when he saw one.

"Oh yes, I'm terribly anxious." He took the bottle, then took several long sips. It was appropriately bubbly and sweet, though not as smooth as something made in his prison. But he'd take a few bits of apple in his teeth to know that this had actually come from a tree. For all he knew, maybe the farm right here in town. "I get anxious all the time. And when I do, I say things."

She nodded, but didn't press. Waiting for him to continue, and confirm a few more of her biases? Sweet could do that.

"It's because I'm afraid," he continued. "Of my family finding me again. They're so mean... they call me names. They eat all the cake before I get any. And they hit me. It's awful."

So began a few hours of pointlessly circuitous nonsense. Sweet Sauce had learned a few things from his banishment—in a world where almost everypony suffered from some flavor of mental illness, he absorbed enough of their symptoms and armchair psychology by proxy that he could belch the whole thing out in disconnected fragments. But that would only make him feel more authentic, right? A child wouldn't know what his feelings meant, or how they connected. Sweet couldn't possibly be expected to either.

And best of all, that stupid councilor looked smugly self-satisfied the whole time. Sometimes she wrote a little of what he said, sometimes she wrote a lot. But the more of his lies she put onto that pad, the further she would be from actually understanding him.

And the better Sweet's chance of actual escape.

But he didn't flee that night. When they were done, there were still no soldiers waiting for him, only a modest meal and a place in one of the little bedrooms on the second floor. There was space for several foals here, but there were no other occupants. Just him and his thoughts.

Still, whoever built the place wasn't completely stupid. The windows were huge, giving a great view of the town outside—but they didn't actually open.

Likewise, there were plenty of generic toys, but nothing he could easily fashion into a weapon. Or, unfortunately, anything sharp enough to carve runes into the tile floor. But it wasn't like he wanted to escape on his first night.

If there's one advantage to getting the incorrect body on this side, it's having plenty of extra time. Even if he needed an extra decade, that would make little difference. He probably had a century to plan for his next body. He could waste a few years here to facilitate escape.

But he didn't have to waste years, as it turned out. Honeydew was there the next day for another interview, and he gave more of the same nonsense-answers to her absurd questions.

But this time their conversation was brief, barely even an hour.

When it was finished, she didn't react to the myriad of mental conditions he apparently had, and the three-ring-circus that she probably thought was taking place inside his cerebrum. Instead, she began with a completely separate topic.

"I know it might be scary, but I have some news for you, Sweet. Do you want another snack before I tell you?"

He rolled his eyes in response. The novelty of unique Equestrian snacks might be fun, but that didn't mean he would let himself get easily distracted. He shook his head vigorously in response.

"Just tell me. I promise there's nothing you can tell me that's half as frightening as the nightmares I've experienced. Talk to Discord next time you see him, and see how scary anything in your daily life feels."

It didn't have half the impact he'd been expecting. Honeydew smiled politely. "I didn't think you had been in Ponyville long enough to meet Discord. He can be a strange sort, that's for sure. Just don't tell him anything you don't mean, that's the best advice I can give."

She shuffled about with the pad in front of her, before finally holding it out. "There's no easy way to tell you this. I just want you to know that no matter how scary it seems, I'm here for you. Lots of other ponies will be too. You won't be alone."

He shrugged. "I doubt you would be if you actually knew me."

"We mentioned yesterday we couldn't find your parents. Since then, I've forwarded your name and description by telegram from one end of Equestria to the other. There is not a single missing pony report that matches you. No ponies are looking for you."

She rushed ahead, not giving him even a second to consider the comedic obviousness of the statement. "I know it might feel like you've done something wrong, if your parents aren't looking for you. But there are lots of reasons that they're not able to care properly for a foal. As painful as it is, you should try to see this as an expression of love.

"They know they can't give you the love and attention you need, so they're hoping you'll find it with somepony else. It's my job to make sure you will."

He stared back, expression utterly flat. But if she expected him to be crying, maybe to fling himself at her like a child, she would be disappointed. "They're dead," he said. It went against several of the lies he'd been repeating for the last two days. But none of those were even terribly consistent. "Of course they didn't make a missing pony request. They're buried."

Okay, maybe he couldn't be completely emotionless about it. But he wasn't going to cry for Honeydew. She didn't deserve to see it.

"There are ponies who volunteer to help when something like this happens, we call them foster parents. Usually we like to find a foster family as close to where we found you as possible. It happens there's one family right here in Ponyville. After a conversation earlier today, I confirmed that they're willing and able to take you in."

Finally the weight of that statement struck him. A foster family was ready... now? It hadn't even been two days. He could count on ponies to do it better than the world he'd left behind.

"A foster family," he said. "You're afraid I'll be... disappointed? I'm not. You seem like you mean well, but I'd rather be in prison than stuck upstairs in that bedroom. At least jail gives people time in the yard. Or I could make ten cents an hour stamping license plates."

She ignored most of what he said, as usual. "They'll be visiting later this afternoon to meet with you. If you get along well, you'll be done in my office before dark. And if not... that's fine too. It's far better to find a family where you all get along, even if the relationship might not be permanent.

She dropped down onto one knee, looking him directly in the eye. "This doesn't mean we've given up finding your family. We will try to track them down. You aren't being adopted after just two days. It will be months before I can decide if your new family is right for you."

Before I can decide. Every word she spoke was another reminder of just how little she thought of him. But aside from all the indignity, it also meant she wasn't going to be watching him.

I just have to play nice for a few days. Make them think I'm just another foal, then I can get a train ticket and be gone before they even miss me.

A few days was nothing for such an important mission. "Can you tell me anything about them? I'd like to know who's coming before they get here. In case they're... scary." Or too careful to trick.

She sat up, returning to the clipboard. The folder wedged inside was far thicker than it had been the day before, when there was barely more than his name on a single sheet of paper.

"It's a local couple, been married a few years now. A pair of lovely mares named Vinyl Scratch and Octavia Melody."

She turned the folder over, revealing a pair of photographs. From the look of the wallpaper, they'd been taken in this exact room. In addition to their photos, there were also images of their cutie marks, and various lines of pedantic text about how eager they were to start their own family and how they hoped to give a little pony a loving home.

Honeydew obviously didn't intend for him to read any of that, because she flipped the board back around a few seconds later. "I considered several local foster families before selecting that one. I think you'll get along well."

"Me too," Sweet said, without hesitation. Those smiling faces, and generic nothing-words about how much they wanted a family.

They would be perfect marks.

Chapter 8

Sweet Sauce didn't have very long to wait for the family-to-be to arrive in the office. Minutes really, and the door rang with the sound of their arrival.

He hadn't left the downstairs office—it wasn't like there was anything waiting for him anywhere else. He needed to judge these ponies, see which one would be most likely to be sympathetic. Or gullible.

They looked much as they did in the photograph—a white mare with a crisp blue mane and a pair of deep red glasses on her head. A proper unicorn too, which might make her more useful, or potentially just more dangerous to anything Sweet might be planning. How good was Equestrian magical education for those who weren't foals?

But then he got a closer look at her partner, and his stomach turned just a little. It wasn't just a trick of the angle used in her application photo. This was an earth pony.

Strange that she was the more elegant and refined of the two of them, carrying herself with a properly dignified step and a constant air of control. Yet still Sweet Sauce felt confused, and maybe a little sick.

It wasn't that they were both mares—they were from different tribes. Was this unicorn so desperate for a partner that she was willing to look for them among common ponies?

Deep breaths. Equestria has changed, but it's still home. You can use this. Sweet sat up, doing his best impression of a frightened, nervous child. He remained in his seat, watching fearfully but not saying anything.

He remained quiet as they spoke briefly with Honeydew, before all three turned towards him. The visiting mares were at least graceful enough to pretend to notice him just then.

"Sweet Sauce, this is the family I told you about," Honeydew said, as gently as ever. "They're here to meet you, like we discussed."

He nodded, though he didn't move from his chair, watching them approach. What could he learn about these ponies, if he kept quiet? What could he use?

"It's a pleasure to meet you," said the earth pony. She spoke with a familiar accent, though there were subtle differences that years had made. But from that mane style to her decorum, she could easily be one of Celestia's favored castle staff.

Except that she was an earth pony. The other mare only then removed her glasses. She grinned stupidly at him, and never quite stopped moving. Her hooves tapped to the beat of a song that only she could hear.

"We've heard you got into some trouble," said the other. The unicorn sounded just like the average pony around town. If anything, her accent was aggressively common.

This doesn't make sense!

"That's awesome! So long as you know when it's okay to make a little trouble, and when it's not. That's the hard part."

Honeydew's eyebrows went up, though she pretended not to notice.

"Oh, where are my manors?" The earth pony straightened, extending one hoof towards him. "I'm Octavia Melody, and my wife here is Vinyl Scratch. We're your... or I guess you would properly say that we might be your new foster parents."

He took the offered hoof by reflex. Some gestures hadn't changed much in... however long he'd been gone. Though hearing such clear language coming from an earth pony felt like it might make his brain crack in half.

"Nice to, uh... nice to meet you too," he squeaked. Did he sound nervous enough? Maybe he should grovel a little more, really sell it. "I'm lost. My parents are gone. It's all very confusing."

That worked—the mares shared a look. Sympathy. Perfect.

"I'm going to get some snacks," Honeydew said, turning to leave. Not towards the fridge hidden under her desk, but the stairs. "Why don't you talk for a few minutes? I'll be back."

You want to check how well we get along, Sweet thought. And that was just fine with him. He could play along. If he was going to be trapped in a body this small and useless, he might as well let being pathetic work to his advantage.

"So, uh... what do you do?" he asked. That was innocuous enough, right? As Honeydew vanished up the stairs, he should be more free to ask what he really wanted to know. These ponies wouldn't have a clue.

"Music!" Vinyl exclaimed, sliding her heavy glasses into place. "Octavia is in the orchestra, she plays the stuff that makes you think. Not me, though. I like to make the whole house shake! I want it so loud, the royal guard get complaints about how noisy we were! I want my neighbors to hear it through the floor and come down to join the party!"

And from how loud you talk, you've done it so long you're suffering hearing loss. Yet that didn't make sense—Vinyl was a unicorn, so shouldn't she just heal herself?

Why was he smiling? "I didn't think Equestria had music like that."

"It's new!" Vinyl exclaimed, bouncing right over to the chair and grinning down at him. "Just you wait until you hear it. You'll be completely blown away."

"But that isn't why we’re volunteering to help you," Octavia added, following just behind her. "My wife is enthusiastic about her career, and I support everything she's accomplished there. But we have no expectations you'll share that enthusiasm. This is about providing you with somewhere safe. Until they find your parents, or... are unable to do so. Either way, everypony deserves comfort and safety at home. Don't you agree?"

He laughed bitterly. "I don't know what deserves means. Where I came from, my parents were harsh. Their expectations were astronomical—and why expect anything from me when they already had perfect daughters? I grew up expecting nothing, and nothing is what I received."

"Grew up," Octavia repeated, sounding slightly confused. "There's still some time for that, I suspect. Perhaps we'll be able to provide something better."

It wouldn't be hard.

They spoke for some time more. It couldn't have been more than an hour, though it was far longer than a trip for snacks. Could Honeydew really expect that even a foal would believe what she said?

Eventually she did return, inviting Sweet Sauce upstairs to enjoy the meal she'd prepared for him. "I need to speak with Miss Octavia and Vinyl for a few minutes, sweetheart. It won't take long, I promise."

He nodded, slinking back up the stairs the way he came. He did stop in the doorway long enough to wave back at them one last time, before leaving them behind.

Honeydew hadn't spent much time preparing the meal that waited for him. More plain porridge and a box of juice. Hardly the rations of a king. But it was something. Equestria cared enough about the smallest and most defenseless creatures that it wanted to make sure they were taken care of.

He picked at it, not terribly interested in more slop. One of the other advantages of being so small, he could go longer with less. Mostly he was listening, straining to hear anything that might hint at what the adults were saying below.

Would this plan work? Could he steal a train ticket from these mares? What had happened to Equestrian music in the years since he left? Maybe he could find something to replace the MP3 player that had tragically burned in his crossing.

Sweet would never have admitted it, but as he waited, he began to realize that he wanted them to say yes. He could trick another family, maybe even easier than this one. But he wouldn't find a pair of ponies who were both in musical careers.

But that unicorn married an earth pony. It's wrong. His memories told him so, told him that even Celestia would've been outraged at such an indignity. How else could the tribes keep their customs and cultures intact, if creatures didn’t respect the boundaries between them?

But when he tried to muster the disgust, it just wouldn't come. Those ponies certainly seemed to care for each other—they were united in their interests, and in their desire to help him. Beyond that, the physical side of it all currently alluded him. That was the price of reincarnation—some parts of his understanding didn't follow between bodies.

Finally there was a knock at the door, and Honeydew stepped inside. She shut it smoothly behind her, and nearly smacked into him. "Oh, Sweet Sauce! You didn't touch your food."

He didn't react, barely even looked at the food. "What's happening? Did they like me?"

Honeydew hesitated. "Even if they did, that isn't the first question I care about. I need to know if they're going to be a good match for you. Families that arise naturally in Equestria can often clash, making each other’s lives more challenging. When we build them from scratch, we try to make sure that won't happen, if we can."

Can't seem too eager. She's still suspicious. He sat down on his haunches, even though it made him feel smaller and more vulnerable than he already was. "They seemed nice," he said. "Plus, they like music. Music I didn't think this world even had."

"Is that something you care about?" Honeydew asked. "That didn't come up in any of our conversations."

"Uh... yeah?" He looked away, hoping she wouldn't see his expression too closely. "I mean, it's not... it doesn't matter that much. It's just something I like." Some years it felt like the only thing I had in common with the aliens of that distant hell. They felt some of the same things, and put it all in song more raw and honestly than any harpsichord.

She stared for another few seconds, then produced the clipboard from over her shoulder. "The couple are willing to sign off on your temporary stay as a foster foal. If I sign this, you'll be out of my care—you'll go with them, and live with them for the foreseeable future. Maybe a little while, until your parents are found. Possibly until you grow up and go out on your own. Or until you discover that you aren't good for each other, and you're assigned to some other pony. Any of those is possible."

"I know," he said. "Except for the first one. You'll never find my real parents, I promise. If you find ponies who claim they are, they're lying for some nefarious purpose. I would show you the grave..."

He choked up abruptly, falling silent. He couldn't show the grave, not anymore. It was behind the old castle, and was probably overgrown like the rest. But that didn't hurt so bad. There were never any bodies in there anyway.

"I'm going to sign this," Honeydew finally said, scratching something onto the form. "You don't have any personal effects, so... that about does it." She dropped down, lowering her voice. "Make sure you behave well, Sweet Sauce. If you want to keep living there, you need to treat their home like a guest. Be respectful, and never do anything you wouldn't have done at your old home."

He had to choke back a laugh at that last one. If only you knew what that meant.

He followed her back down the stairs. Vinyl and Octavia waited near the door, both grinning at him. Well, Vinyl was grinning, glasses propped up on her forehead again. Octavia didn't seem to experience emotions quite so strongly, and she only smiled politely in his direction.

"I think you'll enjoy staying with us, Sweet Sauce," she said. "Vinyl and I might have a bit of an... unconventional household. But that's one of the lessons I learned from her. Sometimes it's the unexpected that gives us the greatest opportunity for personal growth."

He stopped just in front of them, matching their grin. "Then I know I'm going to like it there. I need a little of the unexpected to... stay young?”

Chapter 9

Sweet Sauce knew he was brilliant. In terms of ponies who had ever lived, he would've placed himself in at least the top ten, maybe even lower than that. It wasn't his fault that so many other creatures just couldn't see past the tip of their own noses. Equestria didn't really need a constant supply of true genius. Just a few individuals like him were enough, to protect the country from danger and to occasionally intervene when ponies needed saving from themselves.

Even knowing and accepting his genius, Sweet Sauce had trouble processing just how easy it was to put his plan into motion.

The couple that had come to adopt him might care deeply about having their own family, but they didn't know who or what he was. Like Honeydew, they were completely unable to see past the way he looked. They didn't suspect a thing, and that made them perfect.

Getting the paperwork filled out was really just another hour or so of waiting, while the two mares went on and on about how great Ponyville would be to live in and all the exciting things they would do together.

Maybe he should've paid better attention to what they were saying. But actually listening would've implied that he had any real intention to stick around and try to find a place.

Sweet Sauce had no desire to remain in a farming village, any more than he planned on staying as a pathetic little mudhorse surrounded by more of their base and simple kind.

Or so he told himself. In some ways, he had to ignore Octavia to keep thinking things like that. She was mostly the one to handle the paperwork, coaching Honeydew through with simple dignity. Every word she spoke, every suggestion she made—all with confidence.

He wanted to ask how much time she'd spent in Celestia's court. Maybe a few simple questions would save him the need of some stealth maneuver, stealing gold or a train ticket to make the ride up to Canterlot. But as hard as it was, he resisted the urge to ask immediately, and alert Honeydew to his plans. The child-services pony might be dense, but he felt as though she saw him a little better than these clueless mares did.

Just like that the final arrangements were complete, and Honeydew snapped her notebook closed. "And that's everything we need." She bent down, meeting Sauce's eyes one last time. "I want you to remember what we talked about. A foster relationship is mutual in both directions. There is no judgment for the family or for the little pony if it ends up not working out.

"But at the same time, these things generally cause friction before ponies learn to live with and accept each other. That's why we'll be seeing each other frequently at first—once a week, for your first month. Then monthly after that."

"I'm sure we won't have any problems," Vinyl said, looking up. "I know he's got a reputation for being a bit of a troublemaker, but that's okay. Trouble is what I live for."

You may regret those words, he thought. But he kept his mouth closed, doing his best “scared kid” impression for a little longer. The moment of his triumph was at hand.

"I'll tell you,” he said. "But they seem nice." He said nothing else until they were outside, leaving the little building behind.

Ponyville had changed little during his day imprisoned. The streets were still full of mostly-farmers living their lives. But even that was an improvement from what he'd seen recently—these businesses were all locally owned. That silly little apple farmer probably came from an orchard just down the road. The place selling sofas had a workshop out back actually assembling them.

Where he'd been banished, this kind of life was a dream to most. Even if I fail at every one of my goals, and I die alone in obscurity, and least I never have to hear another lawnmower again.

"You're gonna love Ponyville, Sweet Sauce," Vinyl said, just a few steps from the building. "Tavi and I could've gone like... anywhere in the country. Could've lived in downtown Manehattan if we wanted. Could've lived on the royal block in Canterlot."

"Would have made things simpler," said the other mare. "So much closer to my usual venues, and yours. But Ponyville just has that homely charm. It's hard to leave behind a place you've come to love. Or a pony."

They left downtown behind, then the suburbs of slightly less dense Equestrian housing. But this wasn't ancient Equestria—this little town had no city wall. It had no watch either, or guard-towers to be seen. But there were guards somewhere, he'd seen them on the day of his arrival. Maybe they were just better about staying hidden?

"Oh, we should probably warn you," Vinyl continued. "We're out on our own. Didn't used to be, but Ponyville has some rules about how much noise you can make on a weeknight. We had to relocate a little, so ponies could 'sleep'."

She smacked something down over her eyes as she said it—a pair of vibrantly red glasses, dark and mirrored. "Their loss."

The earth pony clucked her tongue once. "Now now, Vinyl. I don't think this young stallion cares much about the intricacies of Ponyville zoning laws."

"Maybe not," she agreed. "But he did say he liked awesome music. You did say that didn't you Sweet?"

He hadn't, but now he was listening. Venues close to Canterlot? Maybe his suspicion about Octavia's position as a musician or something in Celestia's court wasn't that off-base after all.

"I've been away from Equestria for a long time," he said. "I'll admit I'm not up with the latest musical trends. When I was last here, it was mostly vielle, flutes, occasional drums. I didn't follow it as closely as I should have."

More of the creatures he'd met were out here. Sweet recognized Dinky and Pipsqueak playing outside an old-fashioned schoolhouse, kicking a little red ball between them.

They stopped to look up as he passed, staring. He waited until he was certain the adults weren't watching, then waved back once. Circumstances permitting, he would have to give that filly a little more instruction with her magic. Not developing her talents here in Ponyville was an unforgivable waste.

Dinky waved back. Pipsqueak watched him, eyes narrowed. Maybe he was trying to figure out what Sweet was doing with a pair of locals. If you're hoping to see me executed, you're out of luck, dirthorse. My deplorable form has rendered me beneath contempt from the authorities. I escape punishment yet again.

"Friends of yours?" Octavia asked suddenly. Apparently he hadn't been as stealthy as he thought.

"Not sure," he answered honestly. "Our first meeting went productively. They got to explore some of Ponyville's local wildlife, and I learned that everything I believed about Equestrian history was incomplete. Rewarding all around."

The mare's eyebrows went up. "Don't worry, you'll get a chance to spend some time with them later. Starting tomorrow, your education will resume. They do seem to be about your age."

He barely suppressed a groan. As though there was anything he could possibly learn from a village schoolhouse. Knowing the state of Ponyville, the teacher was probably another useless dirtpone like himself. But because they were teaching in a school, that would probably mean they'd failed in their destined profession farming somewhere. So they'd be bitter and resentful in addition to being a simple earth pony.

Don't worry about it, Sauce. You're not staying. At the worst, he might be subjected to the indignity of a little longer at a local school. But maybe he could find a way to make his time there entertaining.

"Home sweet home," Vinyl said, hurrying up the remainder of the path. Sweet Sauce would've easily called it the strangest structure he'd ever seen, if Ponyville didn't have a tree made of glass.

But even in second place, it could hold pride of place for strangeness.

It looked a little like two completely unrelated homes had been cut down the middle with a circular saw, then cemented together. One was made of simple elegant woods, matching the general color scheme of Ponyville. The other was brilliant purple, as garish as the tree castle.

Yet there were some details to tie it together. Instead of ordinary windows, there were musical signs worked right into the metal frames, and piano-key-shaped molding. And if that wasn't enough, the entire chimney looked like a pipe organ.

"Pretty awesome, isn't it?" Vinyl stood by the door, though she didn't open it yet. "We designed the whole thing ourselves. Didn't build it, that's what bits are for. Heavy construction stuff doesn't actually make for good music, despite what you'd think. It's mostly just lots of loud grinding."

"They let you build this?" he asked. "It's... the craziest place I've ever seen. Did you get a picture of the mayor's face the first time she saw it? Oh, or your neighbors? I bet their reactions were worth dying for."

Octavia made a disapproving clucking sound, walking past him through the door. She didn't seem to have a key, and he couldn't see a place to put one on the door. This was no castle, so no reason to lock anything.

Even in a town of useless earth ponies, they were polite enough not to rob or hurt each other, apparently.

Vinyl grinned back at him. "I didn't think of a camera! But you're right, they were... unable to handle the awesomeness."

She reached over his shoulder with one hoof, lowering her voice to a whisper. "Few ponies can. Between you and me, I didn't think Tavi was gonna be able to handle life at my frequency either. But she's more than meets the eye."

He nodded conspiratorially. Yes, let the mare talk about herself. The more she focused on her own relationship, her own past, the less she would be looking at him. "Is that how you met? Music?"

And if they had the bits to build this absurd monument to musical excess, they wouldn't miss a few for a single train ticket. He wouldn't even need to feel guilty robbing them.

Vinyl led him inside, then launched into a long story of how she'd been performing a long set “at the club,” with the other mare seeming increasingly embarrassed as it went on.

"Be mindful of the details, he's only a foal," Octavia said, snapping the door shut behind them. The silliness he'd expected from the outside of the property was greatly magnified inside. Not only were walls different colors, but the furniture was chosen from a different design, the interior decorating was completely different, even the lights.

They're in a relationship, but they want to do everything separately. Maybe he'd understood less about these mares than he initially guessed.

"Your room is upstairs," Vinyl said, gesturing at a stairwell. Naturally, it had to be shaped like a musical score, twisting up into the air. Just like everything else. "We weren't really sure the kind of pony who might be living with us..."

"We honestly thought you might be older," Octavia continued. "But if there's anything we could do to improve it, let us know. We want you to feel at home here, even if it might not be your permanent home."

He barely even looked at the stairs, though. His eyes were drawn towards something on Vinyl's side of the room—a set of huge boxy speakers attached to the ceiling, wired to an even larger base behind her. It was obviously venue equipment, and had its basic design in common with the kind of thing he'd seen at concerts in his prison.

One of the few things that made that world bearable.

He stumbled past the two of them, touching one hoof on one of the keyboard's support poles. His eyes followed the maze of cables, trying to make sense of it all. "How can this be here? How can any of this stuff be here? Equestria hasn't invented it yet!"

The two mares shared a look.

"You know I have to," Vinyl said, flipping down her sunglasses.

"I know." Octavia took a few steps back, firmly crossing the line in the center of the room. "You wouldn't be the first pony not to recognize all that," she said. "But you may want to take a step back. My sweet Vinyl's hearing is... not as sensitive as most."

He didn't move. A few seconds later, he wished he had.

Chapter 10

Sweet Sauce took a few moments to recover from the explosion of sonic force. He stumbled backward, legs flung wildly in all directions. Eventually he found purchase on a nearby couch, and finally collected his wits. For once the sturdiness of these useless mudpony bodies actually amounted to something—a pegasus might've been rendered instantly unconscious upon impact. His ears rang, sound returning only after a few seconds. And when he heard it...

It wasn't some incredibly overpowered music box, playing ancient unicorn melodies from old Equestria. Rather, it was something he'd never heard before, at least here. But in the world he'd come from...

"Vinyl, dear. I think you may've broken him." Something nudged his side, a gentle hoof helping him to a standing position. He accepted the help, though he didn't turn to look in Octavia's direction. He took one step closer to the speaker, letting the bass shake his whole body.

"Not just a wall of noise," he said. "There's... complexity here. You play... dubstep?" That wasn't quite the word—but here in his homeland, what else was he supposed to call it?

Vinyl lowered the volume—apparently all that had come from a record. One of hers, he had to guess. And I can start to understand why the city had noise complaints.

"Dunno what that is, but yeah! Music! It's not the thinking kind of music, Tavi has the bases covered on that stuff. It's the kind of music that makes you rock." She banged her head along with it for a few seconds, though he wasn't sure that was quite what the song called for. Her enthusiasm was almost infectious, even if the music was a little intense.

And the sophisticated earth pony still wants to be with her? He watched as Octavia cut sidelong over to the speakers then gently turned the volume down. The music settled into the background, the way a normal pony might listen without breaking their ears. Still loud enough to enjoy, at least.

"You'll have plenty of time to appreciate that living with us, Sweet Sauce. But Vinyl's music is something that many ponies need to... develop a taste for, rather than appreciating right away."

"It's awesome," he said, grinning at the magical speakers. "I had no idea we had anything like it. I thought I might never hear it again. But... of course ponies would come up with it. We're so much more sensible. Don't waste time pointlessly killing things."

The two adults shared a look, though he was barely even aware of their attention. "You play that kind of thing all the time? Do you do it all, or do you have a synth replaying some of the background beats for you? How much magic does it take to work the speaker?"

"Woah there, Sweet." Vinyl rested one hoof on his forehead, stopping him just before he could cross behind it all and inspect the machine for himself. "If you wanna check it out some time, I respect that. But we should probably get you settled first. And I've got some old training stuff stashed away for you to jam on before getting near my production stuff."

Sweet stopped in place, ears flattening in a sudden wave of embarrassment. Had he seriously just let himself enjoy something? Clean up your act. You're on a mission, remember? You don't live here.

"Right." He nodded once, settling onto his haunches. "Sorry. I don't want to... hurt your stuff."

"Don't feel so down about it," Octavia said. "If you have a musical interest, you've found the right household. Honeydew didn't mention anything about that. But your room is this way. Why don't we take a look?"

He wasn't exactly eager to leave the music behind, even if it was just playing in the background. I could really enjoy living here. Yet almost the instant he thought it, Sweet brought himself up short, then hurried after Octavia. He could not let himself get taken in by these two and their unnatural union of tribes. How upset the ancients would've been to see something like this. He could dwell on that, and not get curious about what other kinds of music Vinyl could play.

They took him through the house, an utterly mundane and uninteresting affair beyond its centrally eclectic design. His own room was located in a loft section, above the two clearly decided living areas. It showed subtle signs of previous use as storage—deep scratches on the floor for shelves, and a persistent smell of dust. But other than that, it was more than adequate.

The furniture within was everything a young pony might need—somewhere to sleep, a desk for their schoolwork, a few bookshelves for personal study, and a window to look out and appreciate the wonders of their perfect world.

How many ponies grow up somewhere just like this, and have no idea of the horrors that they could be banished to? All of them, he supposed. It wouldn't be perfect if they lived in fear of banishment.

"Do you like it?" Vinyl asked. She lingered in the doorway, just beside Octavia. "We can pick up anything you need—but most foals aren't big on things, you know? It's about experiences."

"I don't think foals know what that means, dearest," Octavia chided, though her voice was friendly. She followed him inside, passing colorful walls covered in a musical mural.

She dropped down to one knee, meeting his eyes. "I know how overwhelming it can be to have everything change, and end up in an unfamiliar place. But you should know, you can always talk to us. If you need something, if you're frightened or stressed. If there's anything whatsoever bothering you, then please tell us. We'll do everything we can to help you."

"Even if that means you don't like staying with us," Vinyl said. "We want you to love being here as much as we love being together. But we hope you'll give us a little time to find that jam, you know? You gotta give the opening act a chance."

"I don't think he knows what that is either, sweetheart."

But Sweet Sauce wasn't thinking of that. "Do you mean it?" he asked, voice dead serious. He looked up, meeting Octavia's eyes. Strange to be giving such a sincere request to an earth pony of all creatures. Yet in some ways that made the most sense. Whatever might be true of his mind, his body really was just another dirthorse. She was a dignified, sophisticated earth pony—in some ways, he wasn't any different. "Will you listen?"

She blinked, taken aback by his sincerity. She glanced once at Vinyl, before nodding seriously. "Of course, Sweet. Anything you want to tell us."

"I know how it can be not wanting to talk to social services," Vinyl added, settling in beside them, leaning up against the bed. "Ponies whose job it is to care. Honeydew is great, but still. It can feel weird, I remember."

Her music still drifted up from downstairs, thumping rhythm echoing slowly. The bass shook the ground under his hooves, though not enough to dislodge him.

"I have a problem," he said. "It's the most important thing for me in the whole world. I tried to tell her, I tried to tell Princess Twilight. But nopony listened."

The two of them glanced nervously between each other before replying. Octavia, this time. "What kind of problem?"

"A... something I did wrong, a long time ago. Back before Equestria was even called that by everypony. The kind of wrong that's so bad you never, ever live it down."

They showed no sign of recognition—but they didn't interrupt him. Maybe he didn't need to steal a train ticket. He could just ask for help. "I'm not sure when they wanted me to come back—maybe I was supposed to be banished forever for my crimes. Maybe it was just about staying until I figured out how to get back, which could take forever. And it felt like bloody forever, let me tell you."

Only Vinyl's music broke the silence. No vocals to interrupt his thoughts. Or to give him a break. The silence weighed on him as heavy as their eyes, ever watchful.

"I can't take it anymore. I couldn't live in that world. I couldn't be surrounded by all the... awfulness, not for one more second."

"What do you need?" Octavia asked. Not judgmental, not with any emotion at all in fact. Simply curious.

"I need to tell them I'm back. I need to say that I've had a long time to think about what happened, and they're right. I was wrong. They can accept me back here, or they can dispatch me. Either way, I'm ready to face justice. I deserve whatever punishment they allot to me."

The two ponies were silent long enough for the record to finish with whatever it was playing and start on the next tune. He no longer cared. "Who are you talking about?" Vinyl asked.

"Princess Celestia and Princess Luna," he said. "They're the only ones qualified to judge what I've done. The only ones who remember my crimes. Maybe that's part of my punishment too... all my glories and triumphs erased. All my follies and mistakes... gone. Unrecorded by history. Unloved, unhated. Unworthy of a spot on the page."

Despite centuries of practice, Sweet Sauce found he could not read their expressions anymore. But it wasn't the naked skepticism of Honeydew either, who had only one chance to hear the truth from him and missed it. Maybe they would be different.

"I appreciate what you're doing by helping me," he continued. "It's... noble. But all you really have to do is take me to the princess for judgement. What happens after that is providence."

Finally Vinyl spoke. "That's... real heavy, kid." With every word, he felt himself sinking into the floor. But the carpet couldn't grow up high enough to hide his shame. "Heavy stuff. It's no fun to feel like you did something wrong."

"But sometimes, uh... apologizing isn't the best way to do things," Octavia added. The two of them looked away from him, in a second of desperate silent communication. And just like that, he could read their intentions exactly. "Sometimes the ones we hurt are gonna be okay just moving on. And trying to dredge up old wounds for an apology, it's... really not helping them. They don't need to hear that as much as we need to say it. But if they did hear it, uh..." She shuffled back from him, glancing back and forth around the room. As though one of the wall paintings was going to give her a better excuse.

Of course, it didn't. But Vinyl tried to help. "I'm sure you did your best to make it right," she said. "And now, it's really just about... accepting the way the world is. You've got to flow with the life you have, not try and change it into something else. The princesses love all of us, but they expect us to grow on our own."

Sweet slumped his head forward onto the carpet, and stopped watching them. He didn't have the energy left for resistance anymore.

It wasn't so much that they hadn't believed him—that was expected. Of course an adult wouldn't believe a foal who insisted they needed to see the princess. He had tried and failed to tell so many of them now, he half believed he'd been cursed for his trouble. Were these last few hours an inherited curse, waiting for all this time for his return from another world?

But he had dared to hope that they would believe him. How many lifetimes had he lived? How many ponies had he known?

They won't listen to me, no one will. If I want to end this, I have to do it myself. He had no unicorn magic to check if he'd really been cursed, or if he was just running afoul of adult after adult disregarding an extraordinary claim. He could try to push against it, perhaps summoning increasingly outrageous knowledge until he forced them to see the truth—

Or ended up locked away in Tartarus, without ever meeting Celestia. He knew the mare well—she wouldn't be above imprisoning a foal, if they were dangerous enough. Maybe even without meeting him for a personal judgement.

There's another way, he realized, staring up into those fake smiles. I don't have to fight directly. I can play along, wait for my opportunity. I can find allies, manipulate the local earth ponies until I get near the princess by chance.

Curse or no curse, Sweet Sauce had never been a pony to do more work than he had to. Fighting fate directly took so much effort. But playing along, waiting until exactly the right moment, that he could do. He already had some promising local recruits.

Sweet stood suddenly, grinning the fakest of fake smiles. "Thanks for listening to me! I feel much better now. By the way, do you have any Mt. Dew? I like the blue flavor best... can I have some, please? Nothing makes me feel better like unhealthy chemicals other people call food!"

Chapter 11

Sweet Sauce was barely even aware of the next few hours—the entire next day, really. Expending additional effort unnecessarily was his least favorite thing. On the other hand, letting other ponies believe things about him that weren't true was a state that was all too easy to settle into. The mares were well-meaning, but not terribly inquisitive.

They wanted him to drop his strange admission, and not hold them to their promise of helping him. So let them think that he'd been convinced. Of course, it was just a matter of accepting that he couldn't change the past and moving on. He could be a better pony, that was all.

Still, he slept better that night in the home of real ponies, instead of a municipal care office. They might not have helped him in any meaningful way, but Vinyl could play music like nopony in Equestria. And Octavia wasn't a bad cook. Nothing as good as he was, but he had to keep his expectations reasonable.

He didn't sneak out of the bedroom in the middle of the night to try and steal the bits right then and there. Temping as it might be to get his mission underway as quickly as possible, plausibility was just as important.

The longer he let them think he had peacefully integrated into this family, the less carefully they would watch him. He needed to do more than steal a few bits—he needed the train station to sell a ticket to a foal. He needed to be able to board a train without being stopped. Once that happened, it would be a simple matter of following another group, and pretending long enough to make it up through the city.

A city he knew nothing about, that had been a backwater mining colony up in the mountains. Less obscure than Motherlode perhaps, but only by centrality.

That was what separated Sweet from an actual foal. He could be rational long enough to realize his true goals needed more time. He could wait.

Begrudgingly, perhaps. But he could wait. He could sleep.

The next morning came, with another blast of music. Pretty good music, so he didn't mind being woken up. Besides—he could've been cold and lonely in an old castle, so maybe this wasn't so bad.

Octavia was already gone by the time he made it down, off to some performance somewhere, so it was just Vinyl with him while they had breakfast. "I think you'll love Miss Cheerilee," she said, as soon as his mouth was full of sugary cereal and couldn't defend himself. "Everypony says she's one of the best schoolteachers in Equestria. She gives ponies the personal attention they need."

"I don't need school," he said, as soon as he'd managed to swallow. The shock was bad enough that he'd nearly dropped the spoon. "I already forgot more than anypony there could teach me."

"Someone's sure of themselves," she said. "That's great, maybe you're like... a prodigy. Everypony's good at something." She took one glance at where his cutie mark would've been, but of course there was nothing there. That was one part of himself that could not be easily given back. I'll get it, I've been through this before.

Bodies aged, and replacing old ones was just part of the process. He would endure it again if he had to. And make sure he got the next one right, instead of depending on runes and hedge-magic for an entire lifetime.

"I mean it," he said. "I don't need school. I'm an expert."

Vinyl grinned at him. Her horn glowed, and the music blasting through the kitchen dimmed to something that let him think straight. A disappointment, really. He didn't want to think. "If that's true, then tell me. Who won last year's aerial relay in the Equestria Games?"

His mouth fell open. "Sports trivia? I wasn't here, I don't know that!"

The unicorn clicked her tongue. "Okay, how about... history then. Why was Nightmare Moon imprisoned? Who fought her when she returned, and how did they win?"

Nothing came, of course. Nightmare Moon. He'd caught that name before, in passing. It carried with it enough context to guess at who they were talking about. "What happened to Princess Luna?" he asked, meeting her eyes. "Why would she resort to forbidden summoning again?"

"That's the kind of thing you'll learn in class," Vinyl said. "Besides, didn't you make some friends in Ponyville? They'll want to see you again. I heard Honeydew say that Pipsqueak and Dinky really liked you."

Maybe one of them, because she'd never been taught how to use her powers in her entire life. But he resisted the urge to say anything uncharitable. For better or worse, those little ponies had risked themselves on one of his mad quests. That gave them some leeway with him that other ponies wouldn't enjoy.

"I would learn just as well from a book," he said obstinately. "Where I came from, we had this thing called... homeschool? I don't exactly know how it worked—but I can tell from the name it involved going to school at home. I think they sent students back with books, and every few days they'd get graded? I can guide my own learning. And graduate at my own pace."

"Graduate," Vinyl chuckled. "Graduate from your cereal, Sweet. How about this—you go today, see how class works out. Maybe it'll be great! You don't know it won't."

"I don't know how many compactified dimensions are in the space on my muzzle, either. The math says six, but I can't observe them anymore. I only have my memory of being able to observe them. But that was so long ago I'm not even sure it was real. Maybe I just think I remember."

Vinyl rolled her eyes, then stood. "Are you done already?"

He answered that by descending on the food again. Milk and cereal—it could almost be another day back home. Except that on this side, the cows actually worked at their farms, instead of being relatively dumb animals.

How many of them did I eat?

He put that thought away as quickly as he could, emptying out the bowl. He nearly dropped it in his attempt to get it to the sink—using his mouth wasn't ever going to be as easy as magic.

He could keep trying, though. Until he wasn't trapped as a stupid too-small pony anymore. This might be my last lifetime. The judgement could be death.

He would take it, over dealing with another summer in New Mexico.

Next thing he knew, and he was back on the streets of Ponyville. Not just to run away—against a unicorn as skilled as Vinyl, that was doomed. So he trudged along, going as slow as he thought he could get away with.

That worked for a few minutes, until he felt a sudden pressure, levitating him right off the ground and onto her back. "Okay, no more dragging your hooves. Class time."

He groaned. "That's the real waste of time, Vinyl. I should be teaching the class, not attending it. And I did—the castle had a whole wing for touring scholars, and I gave lectures sometime. Nopony in all Equestria knew more about the Johnson-Tanaka dimensional field equations. I'd give a practical demonstration, but Equestria can't bear to part with a talent like yours."

Vinyl didn't slow down. Even worse, it seemed the schoolhouse was out in the same direction as their home. He would have only moments to try and think of another way out.

There were some ideas—if he could get back onto the ground, he might be able to trick Vinyl into empowering some dangerous rune or another, maybe create an illusion that would chase her off.

But all that would undermine his hiding-place, and maybe place him under more security. More importantly, it would be an awful lot of effort.

He knew he was running out of time when the sound of giggling children replaced the morning hum of insects and the gentle murmur of wind in the trees. A few had already seen him—he was doomed.

They reached the fence, and he clambered off her back without prompting. The indignity of his position was only marginally worse than having to suffer through an entire day of class designed for a foal.

Yet the teacher wasn't here yet, so the other students were just playing outside. Another opportunity for escape, perhaps?

"I'll be here after class," Vinyl said, settling her sunglasses down over her eyes. "We can talk about how it went, ‘kay? I think you'll like it."

Without having said a word, Dinky was already making her way over. Subtly, but she'd left her little game behind. He caught a few other whispers from the other students—though he didn't care enough about what they thought to actually listen.

"Sure," he said. "You've made up your mind, so I guess this is where I'll be. I'll try not to get lost."

She waved, but that was all. She was just a foster parent, after all, one he'd only met the day before.

"You're not leaving?" Dinky was the first one to actually approach him. The other foals seemed to be sizing him up—though the older ones, with cutie marks of their own, had mostly lost interest. But Ditzy watched, and Pipsqueak wasn't far behind.

"There was no execution," he said, sounding as defeated as he could manage. "No judgement, nothing. I'm still here."

"I just thought you lived somewhere else." She levitated something through the air in front of her, settling it down on the fence ahead of him. Just a rock, yet... the proud grin on her face might as well stretch from one end of Ponyville to the other. "I practiced."

"I can see that." He didn't have to fake his smile back. "I've met a lot of failures, Miss Dinky. More often than not, they're not bad ponies, they're not incompetent. They're ponies who have been let down. You might have a real talent, but how would you know without somepony to show you? I wish you a lifetime of study."

"Told you he sounded like that," Pipsqueak said—to the assembled foals. "Fanciest colt you ever heard."

He shrugged one shoulder. "I've been called worse. Deserved it more, too." He looked out on the little crowd, and caught a sneer from a pair in the corner.

One whispered to the other, loud enough that he couldn't possibly fail to overhear. "That's a fancy pony? He looks like he doesn't even bathe."

"Probably not," agreed her silver friend. "He doesn't even have a bookbag. What is he going to study, anyway?"

Sweet Sauce gave them almost a full second of his attention, wondering what he would have to do to appropriately humiliate them. But that thought lasted far less time than infatuation with Vinyl's music, and he turned away just as swiftly. He was too old to care about schoolyard drama. Let the foals think what they wanted.

"If you want to keep learning, I could make a few more suggestions for you," he said to Dinky, as though he hadn't heard a word. "You've already proven yourself under pressure. Most ponies would crumble, but you made it through the Everfree. You fought timberwolves." And killed dozens of them, but let's not give you nightmares you don't need.

"You'd do that?" she asked, nudging him in the shoulder with a hoof. "There's more?"

"Wait, Dinky! He's gonna ask for something. Don't make any promises."

The door opened, and an earth pony mare emerged from inside. Exactly the kind he'd imagined with a name like "Cheerilee." Even her cutie mark was saccharin. "Come inside, class! We've got an exciting day ahead!"

"No promises this time. But I'm stuck here, and I'm bored. At lunch, maybe. But no pressure—I don't mind doing nothing."

He trudged his way inside, somehow ending up at the back of the line. He really was trapped here, at least for the day. If I can survive the Draconic Invasion, I'll make it through one day of pony school.

Chapter 13

There was nothing particularly dignified about being walked home by a princess. Twilight Sparkle made polite conversation the rest of the way back, her tone so aggressively boring that not even a cart full of nitroglycerin would've been agitated by it. Everyone who saw them turned to stare, looking from him to the Alicorn and back again.

It didn't matter if they didn't say anything. He could see the suspicion, and could imagine the whispers even if they weren't out loud.

Thankfully the indignity went only so far as city hall, where they met Vinyl coming the other direction. She froze in the street, then lowered her head in a makeshift bow to the princess. "Is something, uh... Princess?"

She answered with a smile, gently patting his shoulder with her hoof. "Nothing wrong at all, Mrs. Scratch. I wanted to have a word with the young colt about his experiences, that's all. You can take it from here."

Sweet grumbled in frustration, but walked eagerly away from the Alicorn anyway. Nevermind the indignity of being passed around between mares like a football, while the other fillies and colts of Ponyville wandered at their leisure.

"Enjoy living in Ponyville, Sweet Sauce." The princess waved down at him with one hoof, then took to the air. She spread her wings and took off without a backward glance, angling straight across-town for the silly tower of her garish tree-shaped crystal castle.

For a few awkward moments, Vinyl and Sweet just looked at each other. Then hoof-traffic around them resumed, and Vinyl smiled weakly at him. "Usually getting noticed by the princess is a good thing. Was it for you?"

"No," he grunted, frustrated. "I don't think she believed me either. Nopony does."

Vinyl considered that a moment, then her eyes settled on a nearby building. It was one of the silliest in all of Ponyville, which meant that Sweet instantly approved. He'd take a clashing, garish town over brutalist cement and glass. "How about some ice cream?"

"From there? The place that looks like gingerbread? I assume they know their way around diabetes."

Vinyl took a moment to process his reply. "Is that a yes?"

"Technically, yeah," he muttered. In all his many lifetimes, much could be said about Sweet Sauce. But his nickname hadn't come from nowhere. Besides, being reincarnated meant he could splurge a little. He had a child's sugar tolerance all over again. "You think they have mint chip?"

They did have mint chip. Not only that, but Twilight taking him out of class early did mean one benefit: they beat the line. By the time the lopsided mare behind the counter finished serving them, a line of other foals stretched out the door. A few gave his bowl of ice-cream jealous looks as he walked past.

They didn't eat right inside the store. Without a word from him, Vinyl could apparently tell that he'd rather be anywhere else. So they walked down the road a ways, until they found some stone benches beside a park to eat.

"You're enjoying that," Vinyl said, after only a few minutes. "That bowl's half gone already! Don't get brain-freeze!"

"I thought there was something wrong with it at first—where I came from, this flavor was always green. But mint is strong, it wouldn't take much to flavor a whole batch. Not enough to turn it green for sure."

Vinyl stared at him. "And where was that, Sweet?"

"Equestria, originally. Guess you'd call it the Everfree now, seeing as nopony's living there. Wild magic, what a drug." He had no particular reason to hide from her. What was the point of watching his words when nopony believed him to begin with? "More recently, New Mexico. Endless dry dirt, sand, desperate little plants clinging onto life. Then giant islands of bright green where people dumped lakes worth of water to grow lawns."

He lifted his head from the bowl, whispering to her. "And they didn't even eat them. They just grew big, then cut them down. Loudly, way too early in the morning."

The unicorn nodded knowingly, and let him finish his treat. He did, feeling a little better with every spoonful. It wasn't just the green colors missing from this, it was all the chemistry. It doesn't matter if nopony ever believes me. I'm back in Equestria. If Princess Celestia didn't want to believe him, did it really matter what he'd done? Maybe he could relax, and grow up a bit.

Vinyl didn't question him further about the specific details of that strange otherworld he'd given. Whether that meant she believed him, or just didn't want to turn it into an argument, Sweet Sauce no longer cared. They left after a few minutes more, tossing away empty paper bowls before setting off for home.

"Tell me about school," Vinyl said, as soon as they'd left the crowd behind. "Before the princess showed up."

He groaned in response. "Testing. So much stupid testing, Vinyl. Cheerilee wanted to know every little thing I'd ever learned, and really rubbed it in when I didn't. But I know more than most kids there. Throw me into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and I could be one of their leading professors. Just give me a few weeks to catch up on the Journal of Applied Thaumaturgy... are they still printing that?"

"Thaumaturgy," Vinyl repeated, face wrinkling like she'd just smelled something foul. "Well that sounds boring. Colt like you does not belong in some stuffy old unicorn school. Buck the entry board, and buck anypony who thinks she's better than you because she went and you didn't."

Sweet whistled quietly. Well that wasn't the response he'd been expecting. "I don't actually want to go," he said quickly. "A subscription to the journal would be enough to catch up on the magical innovations of Equestria since my departure. I'm sure it's all fascinating and unambiguously interesting. They definitely haven't spent the last century rediscovering things their betters knew before their grandparents were born."

Vinyl was just watching him now, silent. Maybe he should've realized and shut up. He didn't. "On second thought, you better not. I'm unfit for duties of ambition, Vinyl. Yoke me to a cart and set me pulling potatoes. Or maybe if I'm very lucky, I'll have the pleasure to harvest beats at the direction of the princess. What more could a humble little dirt horse like myself aspire to achieve?"

They were past the edge of town now, so there was nopony else to overhear. Only Vinyl Scratch walked just ahead of him. She stopped dead, glaring at him so intently that he floated off the ground.

She lifted him close, then raised the polarized glasses off her face so their eyes met. Her expression wasn't angry, exactly. Cold.

"It's wrong to talk about yourself like that, Sweet. Your worth doesn't come from the kind of spells you can do. Most unicorns can barely lift two things at once with their magic. They told my wife she'd never play the cello. Buck that. Who cares what they think?"

Sweet stared back, somewhere between shocked and afraid. She wasn't hurting him—unicorns lifted little ponies all the time. But to see such intensity from Vinyl of all creatures...

Still, hovering here in the air, legs dangling—didn't exactly make him keen to argue. "I'm not saying she can't do anything. But I can't. Empowerment is a great message, everypony now is so optimistic and friendly with the other tribes. But no number of cheerful slogans and posters on the schoolhouse wall are going to change what I am."

He lowered his voice to a frustrated mutter. "Only magic can do that, the one thing I cannot do on my own."

Vinyl set him down gently, replacing her glasses. "And that's how I know you need to go to class."

"What?" He turned, mouth hanging open indignantly. "Those aren't even related!"

She nudged him forward with her muzzle, and they set off again. "If you knew anything about Equestria since Luna's return, you'd know that friendship is magic. Two of the Elements of Harmony are earth ponies, and they've helped save Equestria with their magic half a dozen times by now."

She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial mutter. "Live with us in Ponyville for long enough, and you'll see them do it a few dozen more."

Sweet grunted unhappily in response, but there was no way to argue with her. Just because he couldn't imagine how a few farmers could help against real threats didn't mean it was impossible. Sweet knew a lie when he heard one, and Vinyl believed what she said.

"Anyway, Octavia will be with you tonight, and get you to class tomorrow. I've got a venue to get to, so we'll tag team this. But with what you said, that's probably for the best. Spend some time with her, see just how awesome an earth pony can be."

They reached the crazy split-house a few moments later, and Vinyl let them in. "What kind of venue?" Sweet asked, not really expecting an answer. "Music?"

"Duh." But the inside of the house already made that clear enough. The speakers and mixing table and associated hardware had all been boxed in hard metal cases, and loaded onto a cart so tightly that a single pony could pull it. Assuming they were strong enough. "This one's down in Appleloosa. First time I've been there, so it should be pretty cool. It's where most of the bits come from—record sales are all corporate." She rolled her eyes as she said it, banging one hoof against the case. "But when I go out and perform, there's no separation between me and the audience. It's the way music was meant to be, communication, two ways. Dynamic."

He should probably go off into a corner and vegetate, or whatever it was that young earth ponies did. But Sweet couldn't help himself. There were weapons sharp enough to cut through his cynicism. "I want to go. Can I see you perform?"

Vinyl grinned back. "I'm sure we can make that happen, Sweet. It's good to have somepony you can trust behind the stage. But traveling would mean missing class, and that just wouldn't fly. But I'm doing a local show next week! So how about this, Sweet. If Cheerilee says you're doing good, you can come. If not, we'll push it a little longer, see how you're doing."

Probably won't get anything better at this rate. "I still think it's a waste of time. But sure. A week, that doesn't sound so bad."

And they weren't, really. His next few days involved more or less the same routine. Get up, walk across town to the schoolhouse, and spend a few hours learning things he already knew. Okay, sometimes he learned something new. On his third day he actually got Cheerilee to take his question about Nightmare Moon, and got a stripped down, clearly fictionalized take on events.

But "jealous that no one appreciated the night" was more information than he had before. There was no avoiding the schoolyard jockeying for position the foals engaged in, but he didn't mind stepping to the side and letting them assume he was on the bottom. His new friends Pipsqueak and Dinky weren't particularly popular either, their parents weren't rich and they didn't come from the families of the "Elements."

But what did Sweet Sauce care about "crusading" anyway? Unless the Equestrian Army was massing to retake the sacred ancient home of Unicornia from the ice, it would only end in disappointment.

Besides, those ponies listened to him. Pipsqueak's suspicion that he was planning another dastardly adventure to get them all in trouble eroded by the day.

"Going out and taking risks takes too much effort," he said, and meant it.

Sweet Sauce would've denied it if anyone asked, but there was a student he was excited to see at the little schoolhouse. Dinky Hooves had been denied every possible advantage for her magical development. But all she needed was an occasional bit of advice or a few words of encouragement, and she learned.

So maybe he wouldn't be a professor at any prestigious university anytime soon. His talents wouldn't be completely wasted in this impoverished farming hovel.

Chapter 14

The worst part for Sweet Sauce wasn't living with an earth pony. If anything, Octavia did a far better job matching his expectations for decorum. Living with her was a great deal like growing up in the Castle of the Two Sisters—it meant politeness, but also an uncompromising obedience to the rules. So long as Sweet made it to class on time, and got his homework done, the rest was up to him.

No, the worst part of Sweet's new life in Equestria was what didn't happen. The new princess knew what he was, knew why he waited for judgement. All she had to do was deliver his message to Princess Celestia, and Sweet's mission would be complete. Whether that ended in reconciliation, or execution, he didn’t get to decide.

After a few days that meant letting him out unsupervised again, not just with Octavia or Vinyl watching over him like a pegasus playing with an amusingly-shaped cloud.

But there was little for him to do, so little reason to run off on his own. Sweet Sauce was still waiting on the princess to arrive, there was no reason to take risks with daring escape plans. Besides, trying to steal from them would mean missing Vinyl's concert.

He used this new freedom to spend time with the other ponies his age. Not because he enjoyed the activities they did—obviously those were beneath him. But he'd even take silly earth pony games over wandering around an empty house or staring at a wall. Part of him was tempted to visit the library and catch up on a few of the old magical journals, but he had a feeling Twilight wouldn't let him check those out anyway.

His patience with the indignity of it all eventually paid off, and it was time for Vinyl's concert.

Well, concert was a bit generous, given she'd booked out an empty warehouse at the far end of town. But by the time the sun set, a line was already forming down the road, and the sound of distant bass shook the town from streets away. No wonder the locals didn't want her performing there too often.

There were no ponies his age in line, and he discovered why as soon as he stepped into the building from the back, and the scent washed over him. This wasn't the kind of place that little ponies were usually allowed to go.

Unfortunately that also meant Sweet only got to see the concert from in back.

"You're waaay too young to be out in the audience, Sweet. But don't worry, you're not missing out on much from that side—just lots of sweaty ponies doing weird dances you wouldn't understand, and gross-tasting drinks you wouldn't want. If anyone brings something from over there, don't drink it by mistake, okay? You'll hate it."

"Not for the reasons you think," he replied. Of course he'd have to adjust anything he drank to the weight of a creature his old self could've held with one hoof. But more than that, it was the mouthwash-tier smell coming from behind the black curtains. Those ponies weren't drinking because they wanted to enjoy the craft—they were drinking to be drunk. "I need none of the intoxicants of the lower class. A real beverage serves only to enhance the faculties, not muddy them."

The mare nudged his shoulder energetically. "Octavia's wearing off on you already, I see. Cool cool. Just don't want to get either of us in trouble. Rules are lame, but if you break 'em, you can't come until you're older." She gestured around them with a hoof. Backstage wasn't particularly large, most of the space was occupied by cables and equipment. They stretched from one end to the other, bundling together into a mass that traveled through the curtains to Vinyl's musical setup.

"But the other stuff is cool, right?" He nodded at the tiny crew area, with its boxes of sweets, coffee, drinks. Not the kind that would make ponies forget who they were and have foals they'd regret in a few months.

"Yeah, yeah," Vinyl turned away from him. "I told the manager you'd be here. Be cool, and he'll let you come back next time." She left him to his own devices. Before he could get into any trouble, the performance started.

He could only imagine what it looked like on the other side—but he could hear it, and that was what mattered. Vinyl hadn't been exaggerating when she said she was communicating with the audience. It was more than a simple call and response—Vinyl varied the music she played as the mood of the audience shifted and swayed. And it was loud, much more than anything he'd heard in Equestria before. The whole building shook with it, carrying him along even if he had to hear it from behind.

Sweet's stupid useless foal body got tired after only a short percentage of the performance, despite all the excitement. But what biology could not do, a few cups of coffee could supplement. Being completely wired only made the music sound better. The one thing he'd actually missed about the world of his banishment, and he didn't even need to give it up after all. The princess's child services department had handed it back without even asking.

But then something went wrong.

He was barely even watching anything anymore, staked out on a couch near the speakers where he could listen. He saw the assistant-ponies tinkering with something off to the side of the room. That crew left him alone, so he had no reason to bother them in return.

But then the lights flickered, and sparks flashed from that side of the room. A pony went spinning backward through the air, trailing magical sparks. She landed in a confused heap, her mane still shaking to the sway of music that wasn't playing from that speaker anymore.

The music continued, transformed from stereo to mono. That wasn't just half the volume gone, it was the better part of the intensity. Sweet rolled out of his couch, frustrated.

"She plugged it back in, look what happened to her."

"I don't see what's wrong, it looks the same to me."

"It's the cords, they're in the wrong spots."

As he approached, Sweet heard the remaining ponies conversing in hushed, urgent voices. They stared down at the back of the speaker assembly as though it really were the lost runes of an ancient and powerful magic. And behind the curtain, he heard something even worse: a disappointed audience.

"Fix your magic!" someone yelled.

"Boo!"

Sweet Sauce might not have any magic, but he had a little earth pony strength. He shoved his way past two terrified ponies, directly up to the mass of cables. Their ends still sizzled and popped with magical sparks, glowing red. Did Vinyl use her own magic to power this?

"You don't belong here," said one from the side, trying to push him back with a wing. That was Spotlight, the manager. "Vinyl would kill us if something happened to you."

He dodged out of the way. "Then you'll be fine." Did she seriously not hire anyone who knew how her equipment worked?

Sweet might've been stunned into the same indecision as the other ponies, except he'd spent years working with this stuff while banished. In that world, an accident wouldn't just leave your mane glowing for a few seconds, it would stop your heart.

These were musical connectors, not municipal. But there was an identical configuration on the other side of the room. Besides, they were color coded.

Before anypony could grab him, Sweet took the smallest connector in his mouth, careful not to get anywhere near the silvery contacts. He pushed it into place on one of the side-units, then another. The ponies instantly backed away from him, eyeing their fallen comrade nervously. Even Spotlight looked nervous, though he kept reaching halfheartedly for Sweet. "Come on kid. That stuff's not a toy."

"No," he whispered harshly back. "But it's not a bomb either." He went from smallest to largest, matching colors each time. Nothing exploded, nothing flashed, and each pair brought back a little more sound. The angry crowd behind the curtain stopped yelling. Finally, he plugged the thickest cable into the base, and it started thumping pleasantly again.

He turned his back on the configuration, marching past the staring assistants with the greatest possible concentration of smugness he could muster.

"Who the buck is that?" somepony whispered. One of the crew, he didn't care which. They obviously weren't worthy of learning their names. Vinyl had probably just hired a few locals to help move her boxes around. "How did he do that?"

"He's her kid," Spotlight whispered back. "Guess she trained him. Makes sense. She didn't want to spring for anypony technical behind the curtain for such a small venue. I kept saying it was a bad idea—she just didn't want to tell me the foal was doing it. Legal might raise some eyebrows."

"Ooooh."

But Sweet didn't care what they had to say, not anymore. They could nurse their companion awake, and he could enjoy the rest of the performance. Needless to say, the backstage ponies kept well away from Vinyl's gear after that.

By the time the mare finally came backstage for the last time, she'd been transformed by her performance. Her mane stood on end, and she carried a heady mixture of pony and alcohol smells. Her ears and tail sagged, but there was still some energy to her voice as she approached the manager. "Great work, everypony. Nice save with the lights an hour ago. Ponies don't come lining up for half a show."

"Nice save having the kid around," Spotlight said, pointing vaguely over at Sweet's couch. He was still mostly awake by then, honest. The coffee could keep him up past midnight. He wasn't nodding off. "We'd be two hours past sunrise without Celestia if it wasn't for him."

"What?" Vinyl tried to look covertly at him. It was easier for him to pretend not to notice when he was so tired. "Was that his fault?"

"No!" Spotlight waved his wings energetically. "Something got tangled after your second set, and there was a little feedback, and we lost the whole right. Your foal marched right over and hooked it back up like he'd been doing this for longer than we've been working together."

"That's... cool." Vinyl turned, crossing the stage to where he sat. He forced himself to sit up straighter, meeting her eyes. He didn't care what she thought about him, that would be stupid. He just had to make sure she didn't get the wrong idea and think he was tired so early.

"What did you think of the show?" she asked. "As awesome as you hoped?"

He nodded. "I knew Equestrian music could be more than just strings and woodwinds."

"That kind is cool too," she said, patting him once on the shoulder. "But that stuff is supposed to make you think. I help ponies party." She lowered her voice, glancing across the room at her crew. They'd already started moving again, taking things apart. They didn't look like they knew what was going on any better than they had a few minutes before. "Did you really help keep the show going?"

He nodded again. He didn't try to look away this time, there was no reason not to be proud of his work. The show went on, and nothing blew up. That was a critical success.

"I think you won over Spotlight," she said, grinning wider. "I'm sure he'll let you come again. Maybe next time we can get you to a venue that's more appropriate for your age. I do the Nightmare Night festival in Canterlot Castle this year—lots of younger ponies go to that. The punch is... just fruit, usually."

"Yeah." He grinned tiredly back at her. "Canterlot Castle? Could I bring my friends?"

"We'll talk to their parents about it. And I'll have to make sure Octavia is cool with it. She's never gonna guess you were so talented!"

Chapter 15

Sweet Sauce could hardly believe his luck.

With barely any work on his part, other than attending a social function he had planned on going to anyway—Sweet Sauce had achieved far more than he could've done simply by stealing a train ticket. After all, just arriving in the city would be the first step. He wouldn't know the location, and the closer he got to the princess the more resistance would rise up in his path. A random foal would not be allowed anywhere near her, even if it was just long enough to ask a few questions.

His next few days passed in a blur from then on. Not just because he was getting used to living in Ponyville, but mainly because there was an end in mind. I didn't make it back to Equestria to build my own tower somewhere, and start designing my next body. I'm putting an end to this.

That didn't make the burden of his stupid dirthorse education any less tedious. But being a beast of burden in a farming town whose creatures would never amount to anything, class continued for only a few hours a day. There were no advanced skills for him to learn, just glorified babysitting and occasional lessons about friendship, solving problems, and local history. Those last lessons at least served some purpose for him, though he wouldn't admit it.

He'd been wrong to assume, for example, that Equestria faced no genuine threats during his absence. These last few years had nearly brought an end to the nation more than once, as ancient and novel threats alike assailed them from all sides. By coincidence or fate, many of these threats arrived at Ponyville or Canterlot, meaning the locals often had personal experiences surviving them.

Even Dinky had a story, about hiding in the schoolhouse with a few of her friends, burning a candle to keep the lights on when the sun didn't rise.

"I don't remember nothin'," Pipsqueak proclaimed, almost proud. They were in their usual spot in one corner of the playground, though Sweet had since learned that Pipsqueak didn't have to hide. Far from being a loser with no social standing, the tiniest colt in the world was actually the class president. Sweet Sauce didn't know or care what that meant, but in practical terms he knew everypony and stuck around Dinky because he liked her.

Probably not in that way, but Sweet still couldn't be sure. It would explain why he'd been willing to follow them into the Everfree, even though he'd been opposed to the expedition from the very beginning. "Parents talk about it often enough, but I don't remember anything."

"Good," Dinky said. "It was scary. Probably the worst thing ever, except Tirek. You don't know how bad you're gonna miss having magic until it's gone. And I couldn't even use it back then..."

She tossed a few nearby stones up into the air, catching each one in a neat stack. She balanced them on the edge of an overturned bottle, and when they stopped glowing, nothing fell. Phenomenal growth with dexterity over such a short period. A few more weeks of practice like that, and she would probably be ready to move on to more advanced spellcasting.

"It's hard for me to imagine anything that would... provoke Luna into behaving that way." Sweet started pacing—in part to help him think, and in part because he was sure recess would be over soon and they'd be forced back inside. "She was always so level-headed. One of the only ponies who noticed how hard life could really be out in the villages. She was there to be an advocate for the thestrals when no other creatures would talk for them."

"I thought you didn't know anything about history," Pipsqueak said, indignant. "How good are you at making things up?"

"Terrible. But I'm excellent at fabricating connections that were never there and convincing myself the past was different than it was. Not this time though. I can't imagine what would make her turn against Equestria like that." Unless it was me.

He could still remember that final night together. She hadn't been there for his banishment. Maybe something he'd said left the seeds of doubt in her mind, enough that she stood up to Celestia at last. Or maybe it was completely unrelated. Celestia can't be mad with power, or she never would've allowed two more Alicorns to rise in modern day. Even the grade-schoolers knew that Twilight was Princess Celestia's apprentice. All she had to do was ignore that family, and she would have no rival.

The answer to that might not matter for him soon, depending on what Celestia judged. He would still be there to submit to that judgement, and suffer whatever consequences it brought. I need to make sure Dinky gets all the training she might need. It would be a shame for me to get executed and her not to develop her talents.

"Did you get permission yet?" he asked, finally stopping in front of Dinky. "You know it's gonna be awesome. Nightmare Night wasn't a thing last time I was here, but it seems like an amazing holiday and you shouldn't miss out."

Just so long as you don't follow me over to the princess when the time comes. You don't need to see what happens if it goes badly.

"Oh, yeah. I'll be there with my mom. She was already invited because of... something. A stallion she's with got invited because of something or other. Boring grownup stuff. But I'm going!"

Pipsqueak's face suddenly became confused. He flicked his tail nervously back and forth, ears flattening. "You're actually going?" He looked from Dinky to Sweet, then back again. "I'll have to ask again. My dad didn't want me going, not after I said who invited me. You did get us lost in the Everfree."

Sweet clutched at his chest with one hoof, indignant. "Get you lost in the... how dare you! I took us directly to the castle. It just so happens that my information was over a millennium out of date, and there was no longer anypony living there. A tragic mistake I will not repeat."

"Back inside, everypony!" came Cheerilee's voice, shouting from the open doorway. Sweet shuffled along behind the others, among the last to finally make his way into the classroom. Maybe Pipsqueak wouldn't be able to go, that was a shame.

He couldn't be sad about it, that would mean admitting they were friends. He couldn't admit to making friends with ponies so young, or else admit that they had interesting things to say. He was older and more important than anything they could do together. Obviously.

That day brought something unexpected on the way back from school.

He walked with Dinky most of the way—now that he made the trips reliably, his adoptive guardians no longer insisted on accompanying him. That was fine, they always made sure he had a few bits in case he wanted to stop for sweets. But he didn't get a chance this time, because Princess Twilight stopped him again.

The Alicorn wasn't looking for him, at least. She hadn't come into his class and drawn attention to him. She was distracted, walking another direction with her friends. But once she saw him, she stopped, waving for them to keep going.

"Sweet Sauce, do you have a moment? This won't take long."

He nodded, but even that was too much for Dinky. She muttered some excuse, then vanished down the street as fast as she could.

The Alicorn watched Dinky's retreat in silence, at least until she was gone. "I suppose that answers that. This only concerns you, Sweet."

He settled onto his haunches, looking as distracted as he could manage. That wasn't hard, since she'd stopped him in the center of Ponyville. There were so many interesting creatures here, so many diverse smells and sounds vying for his attention. "What?"

She glanced once to either direction, but there was nopony nearby. Traffic went well out of its way to avoid them, even if that meant crossing to the other side of the street and back again. Twilight didn't seem to notice the effect she had on ponies. You just haven't been an Alicorn for that long, have you?

"I spoke to Princess Celestia. I delivered your message."

With those simple words, everything around them seemed to fade away. The colors fled, the carts and wind and birds and whispered conversation—none of it mattered. "What did she say?"

Twilight dropped down to one knee in front of him, resting one leg on his shoulder. She spoke quietly and calmly, the way anypony might talk to a child that might be too sensitive to handle what they were being told.

Sweet Sauce tensed, preparing for some final, terrible revelation. He was lying to himself if he thought he was ready for anything. He didn't want to be executed. Being in Equestria was too good to give it up so soon.

"She didn't know who you were, Sweet," she said. Each word was another blow, striking into him with terrible force. "She didn't know your name. I told her about some of what you said, and she was completely oblivious."

Sweet twitched once. "Impossible. You must've told her the wrong name. Celestia and I... she would remember. She knows me. We grew up together!"

Twilight held his shoulder so he couldn’t look away. She shook her head once. "No, you didn't. Sweet, you've never met her. You're not old enough you have been around for any of the events you spoke about. And she doesn't know your name. The princess has one of the best memories I've ever known—it comes with being an Alicorn. She does not know you."

She stood up then, releasing his shoulder with one hoof. "I'm not sure why you would be so insistent on that question. But I hope now that I've asked on your behalf you can focus on the life in front of you. You're doing much better in Ponyville, or so I've heard. Make it your home. I'm sure if you do ever meet the princess, she'll tell you how proud she is. She loves to see her little ponies grow."

Sweet should've argued with her. Something was very wrong here, either what the princess had said, or what Twilight had told her. There were pieces missing, so critical that Celestia had somehow failed to...

Twilight was right about one thing: Alicorns wouldn't forget important things, even if many years passed. Immortality was a pointless gift if continuity of experience couldn't be relied on.

"She wouldn't forget me,"he whispered. But the princess was already gone, and she had no reason to believe him anymore.

Then like a ray of light, a single thought. Celestia didn't want her to know.

In that context, everything fell into place. Princess Celestia wasn't proud of what she'd done to him, and she had obviously gone to great lengths to erase his legacy. She'd done the same thing to "Nightmare Moon," such that all he could find about her was obscure references mythologizing her jealousy over the stupid sun.

She won't let me use a messenger. I have to go to her myself.

Sweet Sauce gritted his teeth, and set off through Ponyville at a brisk trot. As before, those who had been nearby when Twilight talked to him scattered before him. Maybe they were afraid his encounter with the princess would somehow put them in danger too.

Sweet skipped the sweets and went straight home. He would need to plan the upcoming Nightmare Night perfectly. There were still a few more weeks, maybe he could fit in a little more “magic practice” for Dinky Doo. If that meant “accidentally” creating some enchantments he could use to sneak off and find the princess, well... that would be a tragic shame.

Chapter 16

Sweet Sauce wasn't sure exactly what he was excepting from a celebration he'd never experienced in Equestria before. But he hadn't experienced much of anything in the modern Equestria, so anything would be its own surprise.

He would never admit to having any kind of interest in a party so big it attracted ponies from all over Equestria. All to celebrate something called "Nightmare Night."

Even Cheerilee had told him remarkably little about the event, except confiding that it was the way creatures celebrated and remembered Nightmare Moon. That should've been all kinds of interesting to him, since it might be his first source of real information about the rebellion. But the trouble was that no one was willing to give him that information.

But they wouldn't be able to keep it from him this time, not when he would be personally attending the party. Let the ponies try to withhold the truth when he was there.

They took the same train, with Vinyl and Octavia and Vinyl's whole crew taking up space in the car. That also meant Dinky and even Pipsqueak, who had decided to come along despite his parents' initial misgivings.

Shame he couldn’t just leave them alone for this trip. But as annoying as the dirthorse could sometimes be, it was hard to imagine another long trip without inviting him along. Maybe Sweet was just being affected by his biases.

At least his adoptive parents were there to warn him about the customs he was required to follow. Being told to attend in costume instantly created unpleasant correlations with his time while banished. They couldn't possibly be related holidays, could they?

Naturally Sweet Sauce chose the most terrifying thing he could imagine for his costume, and dressed up as a clock. Vinyl hadn't really understood what he was asking for, but Octavia approved.

As usual, she proved to be the more discerning of the two, despite her inferior breeding. Strange how often that kept happening.

It was a stupid costume by any metric. Not like Dinky, who had dressed as a pegasus princess, right down to cardboard wings and an elaborate mane style to cover her horn.

As though you would ever want to degrade yourself to tending clouds and squeezing rainbows.

Sweet had no idea which princess she was supposed to be, except that she was gray in color and it didn't take Freud to figure out what was happening there.

But he recognized Pipsqueak's costume, seeing as he had dressed up as someone Sweet knew. "Tirek?" he asked, mouth hanging open. "I didn't think Equestria even knew about him anymore. Hasn't he been dead for..."

Pipsqueak rolled his eyes. "How does Equestria know about him? He was basically just here."

The costume was as silly as it was elaborate, with a stuffed torso to imitate tirek's strange body, and pipsqueak's head emerging from somewhere near his belly. But at least he'd chosen something that was scary.

"Really? You fought him without me?"

"You?" Dinky tilted her head to the side, confused. "You're not a fighter, Sweet. You don't even have a cutie mark."

"I've had several. Or... I've had the same one several times. If there's a way to change your destiny, I still haven't figured it out. Maybe that should be comforting."

He reached up to the silly clock around his head, pushing the hour hand back with one hoof. "No matter how many times you turn it back and start over, you always seem to end up back where you started. Maybe that means that our free will is an illusion. Maybe it just means I'm not terribly creative. I tend towards 'all of the above.'"

"There he goes again," Pipsqueak said. He hopped up into one of the few empty seats, propping his forelegs up against the glass. It looked particularly comical in a centaur costume. "Are you going to keep talking like that all evening?"

Only until I meet with the princess. Then none of this will matter.

He spent the better part of the train ride imagining what that would be like. Once the weight of guilt was off his shoulders, and he could face his future in Equestria with total freedom.

He would need to take steps to ensure he wasn't an earth pony next time. Magic was painfully slow without a physical focus of his own. A proper Alicorn would be ideal, but was it worth the effort?

On the other hand, Celestia might just execute him, and put an end to the annoyance he represented. I need to get away from my friends before it happens. They shouldn't have to see my execution.

Canterlot was a large city, at least by the standards of his last memories of Equestria. Less so compared to the world that he'd just come from. But Sweet could barely even call those awful places cities. Not when half the people who lived there wanted to kill each other.

The party hadn't started by the time they made it up to the castle. But in a way, that was more interesting. It meant that Sweet could watch as the last few layers of decorations went up.

Canterlot Castle had a great deal in common with the place he remembered, except that the roof wasn't falling in and it wasn't completely overgrown with vines. The princess hadn't been much for innovation in the time he was banished.

"Hopefully we don't need your help with the gear this time," Vinyl explained, beside the central stage. From the arrangement of the decorations, it seemed the event would take place entirely in the grounds, with fake webs and posters and other various spookiness covering the courtyard.

"Don't wander off," Octavia said. "Anywhere on the castle grounds should be fine. And stay together—young ponies on a night like this could get into a great deal of trouble."

"Of course, Miss Octavia!" Pipsqueak said, grinning stupidly. Just like a dirt horse to agree to something without even considering how it would affect the rest of them.

He nodded his agreement anyway—there was no point trying to convince them to let him break the rules. It was always easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

It felt like barely seconds later, and the crowd poured in. Sweet had even been wrong about the audience—it wasn't old fancy ponies from Canterlot, but mostly fillies and colts around their age, with the occasional family member to supervise.

"What should we do first?" Dinky asked, as soon as they had their distance from the adults. "I could try to find my mom, or... maybe we could go through the maze? It's supposed to be the scariest thing!"

"You want to get scared?" he asked, indignant. "Nopony will tell me what the point of any of this is. Are we here celebrating, or is this a... horror show. Like one of those big box stores where you don't go to buy anything, you're just there to look at other shoppers."

Pipsqueak rolled his eyes, or at least Sweet thought he did. It was hard to tell what he was doing from inside that stupid costume. "That means even less than usual."

He nodded gravely. "I'll do whatever you want to. Just make sure it's extremely dark, crowded, and easy for ponies to get separated."

"Maze it is then?" Dinky said. She didn’t wait for confirmation, and they set off together across the party for their place in line. They didn't even have the respect of being allowed to get scared right away—they had to face the greater terror of a queue first.

"Sweet, is everything okay? You've been making even less sense than usual. That means something's bothering you." Dinky said it all so casually, he hardly even realized what she was asking at first.

Surprisingly insightful for a little filly. "Nothing's wrong," he lied. Convincingly, he hoped. "I'm just... scared of tonight. It's going to be my scariest night back in Equestria."

The line moved slowly, as groups of other young fillies and colts were sent in well-separated. Enough that they could be thoroughly spooked when their time came.

Sweet took a few seconds to poke around at his saddlebags. They were for collecting candy, or supposed to be. He had a few little enchantments inside, all crafted by Dinky during their “magic practice.” Some of them might even work.

"Scared, you?" Pipsqueak asked, his eyebrows going up. "We were hunted by a whole pack of timberwolves, and you didn't even flinch. I bet you would've fought a dragon."

He looked down, expression going dark. "Many times. Pray you never see that fight. There aren't winners in a battle with dragons, only survivors."

His words attracted a few stares, but these were young ponies he didn't even know. Let them think he was the weirdest little colt who had ever weirded, so long as that made them leave him alone.

From the other side of the courtyard, Vinyl's music started playing. Ponies turned to look in that direction, drawn by the flashing lights and pulsing music. A few even got out of the line ahead of them, clearing the way to the entrance.

Suddenly they were second up, behind another group of little ponies he recognized. The Cutie Mark Crusaders were here, the siblings of ponies that were apparently important to Equestria in ways that Sweet aggressively didn't care about.

He turned his back on them, pretending not to notice they were here so they wouldn't have to make awkward conversation. Thankfully it worked, and they were now at the front of the line.

"Something must have him scared," Dinky argued. "If he wasn't, he would say so by now. He would be eager to tell us how grown-up he was and how silly we all were."

She leaned in close, grinning wider. "Is it the pumpkins? Their faces do look weird when they're all carved like that. Almost like they're in pain."

He shook his head once. "Nothing like that. It's nothing you could possibly guess."

"Well that just sounds like a challenge," Pipsqueak said. Even he was smiling now. "Figure out what scares Sweet Sauce. Even if we can't guess, all we have to do is watch. See how you act, and we'll figure it out eventually!"

"You can try," he muttered under his breath. "But if I get my way, you won't be there to see it."

And here they were at the perfect place to sneak away. He hadn't even bothered to make up a convincing reason for why he wanted to be spirited.

"Go on in," said an exhausted-sounding pony. A royal guard, judging by the armor they were wearing, but they'd replaced their usual helmet with a carved pumpkin. Light flickered out from inside, in a way that might've frightened him if he didn't know exactly what charm to use to simulate a candle flame like that.

"If you find your way out, there's refreshments on the other side. If you can find the golden horseshoe, you'll win a prize." They hadn't been doing this for half an hour and the guard already sounded bored.

They set off together, passing through a leafy net and into the maze proper. For once, Sweet couldn't rely on his memories of the place to bypass any challenge, since the old castle hadn't had anything like this. Except its floorplan maybe, but he wouldn't expect that to be mirrored in hedges.

"We've been here once before," Pipsqueak said, as soon as they were past the guard. "So you should probably let Dinky and I lead. We're the experts."

They passed a strange fountain, filled with pony-shaped statues, as though they'd been petrified in the exact moment they clambered for their lives. They even had convincingly terrifying empty eyes.

"It didn't look like this last time," Dinky whispered. "I don't remember very much of that day. The Crusaders were arguing so loudly I didn't pay much attention to what Cheerilee said."

Sweet grinned despite himself. "Good idea, you two should take the lead. I'll follow." He definitely wouldn't. But if they lost him in a maze, they might spend half an hour searching before realizing he'd snuck away. Then he just had to hope he could find where the most important pony in all Equestria was hiding.

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Chapter 17

Sweet Sauce kept alert for any chance to get away from his group. There were plenty of dark corners in the maze, plenty of fog machines, plenty of twisting passages meant to confuse the unwary.

But there was some trouble with trying this somewhere scary, trouble he should've realized from the start: scared ponies wanted to huddle together, not drift apart.

Sweet Sauce wasn't afraid, certainly not of anything in a little maze made for foals. And if anything slightly perturbed him, well—he had ample excuse. He was a feeble earth pony now, with all the magical aptitude of a sack of bricks and the physical strength of a melting chocolate bar.

The maze was more elaborate than he might've expected, with dozens of ponies working inside to frighten its young visitors as they passed. He glared at every single one of them, trying to look as pathetic and weak as he could. But if their compassion would keep them from scaring his little group, they had a strange way of showing it.

If there was a golden horseshoe in the maze somewhere, he never came anywhere close to it—maybe that was a reward for the more enterprising older ponies, who could brave the headless horse and other (certainly fictional) terrors. Let them have their reward—his tiny companions would be happy just to escape the maze alive.

But finally, as they neared the end, Sweet's golden opportunity arrived. The ground slipped out from under them, shooting them down a ramp filled with fog. The others screamed—Sweet certainly didn't—and he went spinning into the dark, bouncing off several walls to change his direction.

Eventually he landed on a soft pad, gently despite the terror of the drop. It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom. Once he did, a grin began to spread on his face.

The passage up was shrouded in fog, but the polished ground would be much too slippery for a pony to climb in any case. Mirrored walls surrounded him on all sides, though there was a faint doorway visible in one.

"Hello?" Dinky called. "Pipsqueak? Sweet? Where'd you go?"

"I'm here!" Pip yelled. His voice sounded close by, yet separated by many walls. Just like Dinky. "I hear you. Sweet?"

He opened his mouth to reply—then shut it again. Forget having to fabricate some excuse, potentially frightening or harming his friends. The maze had presented this chance to him on a gleaming platter.

"Sweet Sauce!" Dinky yelled, a little louder. There was real worry in her voice this time. Was she afraid for his safety?

He gritted his teeth, ignoring repeated shouts for him only with great effort. His friends were afraid for his safety! He might give them fearful nightmares without even trying. Could Sweet just let them fear?

It was wrong to make friends. Appearances are wrong, I'm not a foal. If he told himself that enough times, it would be true. That was how things always worked.

So instead of calling out, Sweet dug around in his pack, searching for the most advanced of all the enchantments inside.

None of them were terribly powerful, both because of the lack of time he had to prepare, as well as the novice talent of his assistant. He could create only spells that he could trick the unicorn into creating under the guise of practicing more advanced magic.

Without making her complicit in the plot, that was quite a limited list. For most magic, intention was a critical component.

But for one specific spell, Dinky's bewildered confusion was an advantage. He found that spell near the bottom of the bag, in a vial of fluid as dark as ink. Even without a horn, he could feel the stored power inside with a touch of a hoof.

There wasn't much—his proper self could've cast a spell like this to last forever without disruption. But he wouldn't even need an hour to make it into the castle.

Sweet popped the little cork in his teeth, then downed the concoction in a single greasy sip. It tasted awful, gross enough that his whole body rebelled at the texture going down, and he nearly puked it back up.

Finally, with a measured effort of will, Sweet managed to get the potion down. The effect was immediate after that—Sweet's world went gray and out of focus, with sounds seeming to come from far away, echoing and distorted.

He cinched up the saddlebags, then hurried forward through the hall of mirrors.

His reflection no longer seemed sharp and clear, but gray and fuzzy around the edges. Unfortunately that fuzziness didn't translate to being incorporeal, or any other powerful effects. He would need to complete the maze.

It was hard to feel frightened when he was a half-step out of sync with the rest of the world. There were monsters in the mirrors, distorted creatures that were made far more terrifying by the bending reflections. But when they were turned into shallow silent reflections, he could feel no terror.

The worst the maze could throw at him was passing Dinky and Pip a little way on. They had reunited by the time he reached them, and still called out his name, searching for him.

Sweet lingered a little longer than he should, wondering if he could somehow help them escape this maze without alerting them. But as he stood deliberating, Dinky's appearance regained a little of its color, and he had to hurry off.

"Did you see that?" she asked, pointing in the direction he'd been standing. "I think he's close! Maybe through the mirrors?"

He trotted off, as briskly as he could. Sweet didn't have time for deliberating with the maze, so resorted to the simplest possible method, taking every left-forked path in sequence until he found his way out. He passed several other little groups on his way, including the Cutie Mark Crusaders, hopelessly lost near the center of the mirrors. But they were carrying something with them—was it gold?

He didn't care enough to look. A few strides later and he was out, breaking into a gallop as he crossed the lawn.

He had to dodge and weave between the densest crowds, but he was equal to that. Being so small and having such a stupid tribe meant that his reactions were quick, and his strength never waned.

Soon he reached the castle steps. A pair of bored-looking guards stood there, preventing almost everyone from ascending to the open doorway. The few ponies walking along all wore fine clothes—they'd come to a very different party.

Sweet slowed as he reached them, walking at the quietest, most dignified canter he could. One of the guards glanced in his direction, or maybe slightly over his head? Their spear faltered, but they didn't actually lower it to block the path.

Then Sweet was past them, without either one regaining their color. He kept his slow pace, since the sound might still break his stealth. "Did you hear something?"

"I don't think so." The other guard glanced up and down the stairwell, his eyes gliding right over where Sweet was standing. "Maybe it's Princess Luna. You know she must have something big planned."

"Every year," said the other, exasperated. But he looked forward again. Sweet sped up, hopping up the oversized stairs as quickly as he could. He reached the palace doors, where ponies in suits waited with a guestlist.

He lingered just out of view until one of the slow-moving noble ponies arrived, tapping one hoof impatiently. With so many eyes on his spell, its power would be waning rapidly. Did he have hours left, or only minutes?

When the gigantic pony with her oversized dress finally passed through, he trailed just behind, careful not to step on it. Both ponies at the door looked in his direction, but then got distracted by something else, and didn't say a word.

The castle interior was decorated with a far more boring ensemble of glittering magical crystals. If it wasn't for the blue and black hangings, Sweet might not have guessed this was anything different from a standard ball.

In a thousand years your guests barely changed. He passed through the crowd, wondering if these ponies were related to the same ones who had been ruling Equestria when he left.

The more things changed, the less anything was different. That was a Blueblood chatting too loudly with a Shimmer over by the drinks. From the smell of them, definitely not made for the visiting fillies and colts outside.

Sweet resisted the urge to snatch one of them for himself, possible only thanks to his lack of a horn. If getting a drink wouldn't mean clambering up onto a chair and testing his magic to its limits, he would already have one by now.

Good that I don't. I only get one chance at this.

Finally he found what he was looking for, a raised platform near the far end of the dining hall. There were more guards standing around it, though they carried no weapons and wore the same nightmare night decorations as the ones outside. Celestia's mischievous side coming through, perhaps.

She was entirely alone up there, though a large group of ponies milled about at the base of the steps, waiting for their chance to climb up and speak with her. They waited politely while she ate her meal.

Predictably, Celestia was barely eating at all, picking at the plates in front of her with such deliberate slowness that Sweet suspected she had paced the entire thing to take all night.

Never change, Celestia. Except in this one way, perhaps.

Sweet Sauce had spent almost a month to get here. The weight of anticipation pressed on his shoulders—questions unanswered, dangers unconquered.

Debts unpaid. It was time to face what he deserved.

With so many other creatures waiting for their chance to see the princess, he barely attracted a second glance. Sweet walked calmly up the steps, past guards that looked at him for a few seconds, then turned away again as they were distracted by other things.

Only Celestia remained in focus with every step. Her Alicorn magic cut through a simple distraction charm like ice tossed onto a stove. Her mane rippled in the same array of rich, familiar colors. Yet she didn't watch him approach. If anything, she remained focused on her meal.

She lifted a tiny fork in her magic, spearing a little cube of seared fish. The unrealized luxuries of Canterlot living. Maybe Sweet would get to enjoy some meat again soon, if this went well.

Or maybe he'd be fertilizer for the garden.

A commotion rose in the back of the hall, briefly drawing Celestia's attention. Not only her—dozens of ponies turned in that direction. Two guards stepped away from the platform, trotting briskly across the room to investigate.

Sweet barely heard any of it. Something about ponies trying to get in who didn't belong. There were always such hangers-on with important political events like this. The matter was obviously beneath his notice.

Sweet couldn't do this with the dignity he would've liked. Ultimately he had to hop up onto an empty chair, facing Princess Celestia directly.

She dropped her fork, staring directly at him. As though they had any doubt about the effectiveness of a stealth charm on her.

Now was his chance, he would never get another. "Princess Celestia Radiantis, Lightbringer, Diarch of Equestria and Princess of the Sun," he said, with all the dignity a little colt could muster. "It's been a long time—you won't believe what it took to get here. Are you happy to see me, big sister?"

Chapter 18

Sweet Sauce knew how difficult his life was about to become.

Even in the perfect world where Princess Celestia accepted his return and forgave all crimes, things would never be the same in Equestria again.

But Sweet Sauce had a realistic idea about how likely that outcome was. The oldest sibling had always been a pony with extremely rigid views. Evidently that attitude had come up against more than just Sweet since his banishment.

He was even prepared for anger—Celestia had been furious enough to banish him once, after all. Maybe that same anger would rise again. At least that way he could die knowing he had come as far as he could, and never tried to conceal the truth. He was no covert spy here to seduce and subvert Equestria. Let him own the consequences of his actions, and the pain he had caused.

But what he wasn't prepared for was bewilderment. Princess Celestia stared back, her plate of food untouched. Sweet stared, searching for any crack in her mask. But he saw nothing.

It felt like forever, but it had probably been only a heartbeat. Celestia's hesitation faded, and she sat up in her seat, grinning politely at him. "I'm afraid you must be lost, little colt. The foals party is outside. You should go down the stairs there, and back out. I know you'll find something fun to do."

With Celestia's own confusion gone, the ponies around her sprang into action. Guards appeared from nowhere, but they couldn't just sprint up the ramp and tackle him. That would make a scene in front of these important ponies.

If there was one thing he could count on Celestia to value above all else, it was keeping up appearance. He could use that to his advantage.

As far as everypony else is concerned, I'm a lost foal. I'm an embarrassment to her event, and she can't do anything to me without the whole country talking about it with the morning paper.

Instead of backing away, he hopped up onto the platform, then took one of the chairs in his mouth. It squeaked and ground loudly as he dragged it, but its size did not deter him. Even a throne built for another Alicorn was light enough for earth pony strength to handle. Let nopony say he didn't use the pitiful magic life gave him.

Besides, he wasn’t the only distraction. There were half a dozen guards gathered near the entrance, all packed into a circle. He couldn't overhear what they said, or else risk taking his focus off Celestia. But being gathered over there meant there were only a few left to bother him.

So long as he was careful not to get too close, they wouldn't be able to grab him. He could keep this going as long as it took to get his answer.

"I know you might not recognize me," he said. "I'm Tellus Mergen. I know I wasn't much of a younger brother. I deserve what you did to me, banishment to that awful place. Even the realm beneath, without magic or soul, was not enough suffering for what I did. If you think my sentence is not yet served, I'm here to face justice."

He hopped up onto the chair, to gasps from the already staring crowd. This conversation was dramatic enough that even the ponies outside were starting to react. He couldn't hear Vinyl's thumping bass through the walls, or the cheers of the younger ponies, celebrating the night in a more authentic way.

Sweet saw her twitch, in the instant he mentioned his true name. But it was so subtle that even Sweet couldn't be sure of what he'd seen. Her expression had lasted for so short an instant that he couldn't get a good look.

She stood up, dramatically enough that ponies all around the stage fell silent again, watching her. "I am sorry, young colt. You look so determined, and you have come all this way. But you are lost, and confused. Whatever names you think you know, you should forget them."

Her horn flickered gold, for a period so brief that he'd barely even seen it. He had no doubt the other creatures around the room hadn't. But he felt no spell. Even in his weakened state, Sweet would've known if he was targeted by something. His diminished powers did not translate to diminished wits.

"You don't want to punish me?" he asked, dumbfounded. "I'm glad if that's the case. I think I learned a lot during my banishment. I'll keep my head down, I won't ask for help with dangerous experimental magic. I won't put others at risk."

Celestia turned her back on him. She gestured with her wings, and at once the two hesitating guards rushed to meet him by the chair.

Neither touched him. They had no weapons drawn, just stood menacing in their fine armor. But if he tried to escape, he had no doubt those hooves would tackle him to the ground. He would not be getting away from this. Though what the princess would do with him after this was over...

At least he hadn't picked the Summer Sun Celebration for his dramatic return. She might've just barbequed him right there in front of everyone.

"I would like to know what this foal is doing here," she said. Sweet instantly recognized that tone, and knew that he had lost. She sounded like a slightly perturbed mother, one whose disappointment grew in him and everypony else present. It was the voice of a pony who had already made up their mind.

"Who is responsible for this?"

Sweet prepared to scream—one last demonstration, something that would make it to the front page of the newspaper. If Celestia wouldn’t acknowledge his return, maybe the crowd would force her into it. Even pressuring him to go to prison would be something.

Tellus Mergen would've acted without hesitation. But Sweet Sauce was so much smaller than all these creatures. Celestia loomed over him in stature and magical power, and there were guards to either side. He hesitated.

The crowd parted at her words. Creatures stopped dancing, backing away to clear a path to the entrance. Even some of the guards stepped aside, revealing two little ponies. Pipsqueak and Dinky Doo, looking terrified.

What the buck are you two doing here? Sweet's shouted display died on his lips, unspoken. He whimpered instead, not loud enough for anyone further than Celesta to hear. "How can you not remember? You sent me there, big sister. I couldn't stay away forever—I would rather be banished to Tartarus. At least that way I could see the ponies who came to visit."

He started to cry, distorting whatever he said next. This was as far as he could possibly come, the end of all roads. It still wasn't enough. Wasn't coming here the right thing to do? I spent my whole life escaping the consequences. The one time I try to face them directly, and Celestia refuses to even look at me.

"It appears the nature of this venue has changed without my knowledge," the sun princess continued. "See that these foals find their way back to their parents. Make whatever further alterations to the door policy are required for uninvited guests not to get themselves lost, please."

Sweet felt a pair of hooves grip him by the shoulders, lifting him out of the room and carrying him through the crowd like a sack of grain. He didn't resist, or try to get away. There was nothing more for him to say here.

Sweet Sauce had come to an end, begging for justice or forgiveness for Tellus Mergenw. Celestia refused to give it. Where did that leave him now?

The punchline of jokes among the wealthy ponies in attendance here tonight. He saw them whisper and point, and knew this very moment would be discussed at dinner parties and fine meals for months to come.

At least it was probably Princess Celestia who would receive the mockery here. Watching the princess of the sun get completely flustered by children arriving would have amused him too, under other circumstances.

They brought him out the door, but not the way he'd come in. The rest of the castle was roped off tonight, even to the wealthy guests. The guards carried him past it, with several others walking ahead.

Eventually they reached a small lounge, with comfortable sofas on either side and an empty tea table in the center. The wood was as fine as anything Sweet had seen in his old home, without succumbing to rot. There was gold inlay here, and fine tapestries on the walls.

But he would not be welcome here, probably ever again.

The other guards arrived through the open door, depositing two other little ponies on the couch. Pipsqueak and Dinky Doo, though he had already guessed who it would be.

Both looked overcome with terror—even worse than they looked in the Everfree forest, facing down monsters that wanted them dead.

Both collapsed onto the couch, practically melting before his eyes. The guards retreated, or at least most of them did. One of the door-guards lingered by the entrance, eyeing them with barely-restrained anger. "We will find your parents. Don't try to leave."

He pulled the door shut, and it clicked locked.

Sweet Sauce lay exactly where he had been deposited, a barely distinguishable lump atop the cushions. He closed his eyes, wishing he could melt away into the couch and vanish completely from sight.

What was he supposed to do now? His ultimate goal—reaching Canterlot, forcing a confrontation with the princess—had come and gone. Celestia's punishment was worse than a simple execution, she had erased him completely. Even from her own memory.

There was nothing left to aspire to. There was no more reason for him to plot to escape, no secret meetings to have, no way to force the authorities of Equestria to listen to him.

One by one they had rejected his story, all the way to the top. Now even his older sister refused to acknowledge he existed. Why would you pretend? I know you remember me. You couldn't forget that name.

What could a pony do when they finally reached the end of every desperate plan, and they were worse off than when they started?

Cry, mostly. Cry alone on the couch, wishing for a world that still made sense. The hell of his banishment had been cruel, but at least everything made a twisted sense. Generally a selfish, uncaring kind of sense, where everyone had to fight for their own survival, or else drown.

I spent all those years imagining how Equestria would be different, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe the place I imagined only existed in my memory.

He wasn't sure how long he lay there—time had never mattered much to Sweet, and it mattered less now. But something jostled the cushions beside him, enough to make him look up.

Dinky Doo stood there, head tilted to the side. She watched him with compassion, and more than a little concern. "Are you... alright?"

He sniffed, wiped his eyes on the fine pillow behind him. If he was lucky, he would leave a stain. "Not really."

She sat down beside him, but didn't try to get closer. "We were worried about you. Got lost in the maze, but didn't know where you would've gone."

"That part's not quite true," said another familiar voice, from ground level. "I knew where he'd go. Week after week, what's he always say? He's gonna meet the princess, get the truth. He's gonna get banished to the moon or thrown into Tartarus or made into a statue or..."

Pipsqueak rolled his eyes. "Are they gonna do those things to us?"

"No," he said, voice flat. "The princess... acted like we'd never even met. Like I was just a lost little pony who wandered somewhere he didn't belong. My family doesn't care about me anymore. They want to forget I was ever born."

Chapter 19

Sweet Sauce wasn't sure how long he waited in that little prison room. It would have been easier if he thought the weight of punishment was coming to crash down on his shoulders for his crime—at least an execution would mean an end to this.

But what was a pony supposed to do when he didn't have an identity anymore? He had come clean to every creature willing to listen to him, and still they rejected him.

There was even a part—albeit a small one—that was forced to confront a terrifying possibility; what if everypony was telling the truth? Maybe he was genuinely insane, and all his memories of banishment were lies.

That would not explain numerous other factors in his life, the least of which was his talent for magic. Something was certainly different about his origin compared to other ponies.

But if every pony he ever met, from the Princess of the Sun right on down to his adoptive parents, all told him his origin was a lie, shouldn't he consider it?

It was not a possibility Sweet Sauce would ever have believed, before now.

"I didn't want you to be here," he repeated several times, to his terrified friends. "You've done nothing wrong, and I'll make sure they know it. I'll take all the blame."

Dinky looked up from her moping near the wall. Her horn glowed faintly, angled slightly towards him. He felt no spell, just raw anger.

"You think that's what we're worried about? That we're scared of being punished?"

"I am," Pipsqueak said, earning himself his own angry stare. "At least a little! You have to admit, it's scary. Celestia was mad at us!"

Mad at me. She pretended not to be, pretended not to know who he was. But when he first introduced himself, he had seen her face.

"That is scary, but that's not why we're worried. Sweet, we're here because of you. We're your friends. Whatever you're going through—you need to talk about it. You'll feel a lot better if you tell the truth. Don't you think it's time?"

He couldn't meet her eyes. "I never tried to lie to you. When I taught you about magic, didn't it help? The spells you made for me, they work, because they're real. It's all real." He stood up, pacing in front of the locked door. The guards outside either didn't hear, or didn't care.

He could scribble something that could blast a door down. But in the princess's castle, that would accomplish nothing. Whatever else might be true, he didn't need an express ticket to the dungeon. Though it would at least bring an end to the mystery about his future...

"You say you're some... big, ancient pony," Pipsqueak muttered. "You were really important and powerful. Everyone listened to you. You lived in the palace. You were a better cook than the princess. You're thousands of years old. What other things..."

"I helped save Equestria from a dragon invasion, negotiated peace with the king of the griffons, invented several interesting spells, and was slightly wrong about a few things. The kind of wrong where ponies got hurt, and it was my fault."

Even now, speaking the truth as plainly as he could, he kept from giving the full details. Sympathetic or not, this was still a little filly and colt, ignorant to magical subjects and innocent to the true darkness of the world. He would not hurt them anymore than he already had.

"You sound so confident," Dinky said. "Like you've even convinced yourself. You think maybe... that's what happened? If you repeat a story enough times, sometimes you can start thinking it's true, even if you know it isn't."

He would've dismissed her without listening two days ago. Now—some part of him wondered. it would be a simpler solution.

"I wish it wasn't true," he whispered. "I wish I just had a magical talent from nothing. I wish I was nopony, without a history. After the things I did—it would be easier not to. I want everypony to be right! I want to just... pretend. Grow up, start my own little magic school off in the wilderness somewhere. I've always wanted a wizard's tower. A real one too, not that pale imitation Starswirl built. We're talking deep dungeons, real stone blocks, a pointed tile roof, maybe a huge telescope on top. No expense spared."

He didn't even see the way the little ponies responded, because someone else spoke. At first he couldn't even tell where they were coming from. "I wondered if it could be you, brother Tellus. When I heard Princess Twilight mention someone claimed your ancient nickname, part of me dared to hope. A feeble part, with many reasons to doubt and distress. Yet strong enough."

As he watched, the corner of the room seemed to darken, shadows condensing into the outline of a pony. From his size she seemed towering and powerful, with a flowing mane of stars.

She wasn't wearing a costume, or using illusions that made her resemble the alicorn who had apparently tried to conquer Equestria. She looked just as he remembered.

"I cannot imagine any other could have heard that particular fancy of yours." Her little stealth-spell faded completely, and she came into clear view. There was the familiar moon cutie mark, stained black on her coat. "Yet it leaves me with so many questions. How could you still be alive after so many years? How could you have returned from a lifeless wasteland-realm, without magic? And of all bodies, I can't imagine you would choose an earth pony."

His companions were frozen with surprise, staring at her. Then they bowed, albeit awkwardly. And with less respect than he would've expected from Pipsqueak.

"Best princess! You're not off celebrating Nightmare Night somewhere else?"

You've met? Sweet's eyebrows went up at the thought of the dull and practical earth pony aspiring to something beyond himself.

Luna laughed quietly. "Yes, sweetheart. I was in Fillydelphia until a few minutes ago. I will return to conclude the festivities, as soon as I hear the answers this little pony has to give."

He felt tears—his eyes watered, and the world blurred around the edges. I'm not crazy. She remembers.

It was a fight not to break down himself, descending into helpless tears and garbled mutters. This young body wasn't built to stay up so late, let alone suffer so much stress. He'd nearly been blasted with magic from the Sun Princess herself!

"I wanted to ask... y-you a few questions myself," he whispered. Years rehearsing and pretending and imagining how this moment would go, all fled beyond his reach. "I've heard what they say about Nightmare Moon. But it doesn't make any sense. Did Celestia really banish you too?"

He could see horror on his friends' faces—who could've expected him to speak so casually with the princess? But he wasn't going to give up now. If Luna could acknowledge him, then Celestia could too.

Luna sighed, settling weakly down onto her haunches. There was no denying the strangeness of that sight; even in the palace, the furniture of this little tea-room looked small compared to an Alicorn.

He had all these months to grow content with his station, only to be thrust right back into it. That should be me too. I'm trapped in a dirt-pony prison. A few minor miscalculations crossing through a Worldgate, and he was an earth pony colt who could barely grow wheat. Or whatever it was earth ponies did—he had to assume the wheat thing.

"You may be right to ask. But you were banished first, little brother. You tell me how you were able to cross an insurmountable divide. None of the other monsters we sent—" She stopped abruptly, noticing his face.

"Nothing else returned," she finished lamely. "That was why we chose that realm. It was impermeable to magical powers."

He grinned proudly back at her. "Almost impermeable. Sufficient effort over an extended timeline was able to gather a trickle of power from the local environment. There is magic there. I assume some friendship must exist, enough to enkindle..."

He shook his head sharply. "It's an awful place, one I justly deserved for all I had done. But I refused to stay banished forever, sister. It would be better for me to die in Equestria than live as an outcast for another century."

"You shouldn't say things like that!" Pipsqueak hissed under his breath. "That's a princess you're talking to, don't you even know?"

Dinky wasn't even brave enough for that. She just cowered behind him now, looking completely out of her depth.

"He knows," Luna said. "Have no fear, little ponies. I am not here to punish you for his actions. Tellus here has suffered enough punishment. Nopony is better qualified to judge the true weight of prolonged banishment than I. I suffered your fate and more. I deserved your fate and more. Yet Celestia elected to forgive me, and give me a chance at redemption. One wonders why she did not extend you the same, after all these years..."

He shifted uncomfortably on his hooves, in the strange pressure between his two lives. Here was the person he never expected to see again—the smaller of his two sisters. He couldn't waste this opportunity, or else Celestia might steal away what little compassion he had earned from Luna.

"I know the cost I inflicted on you, what I took from all Equestria. I know I don't deserve forgiveness. But if I can't have it, then I'm prepared to accept your judgment."

The princess's face became unreadable. She opened her mouth to speak, then the door banged open.

A figure stood in the open doorway, dressed in a shredded costume and looking haggard. It was Vinyl, her true confusion and pain visible on her face. One of the lenses was missing from her glasses.

"Princess, wait! I'm here to accept responsibility! It's my fault, I should've known he would wander into the palace. He's expressed fantasies about meeting with you since we first adopted him. I should have—"

Luna lifted a wing, silencing her. The guards rushed in behind her, though they didn't actually hold her. They just watched Luna, waiting to see her reaction.

The moon princess lowered her wing, very slowly. "You're a performer. I believe I have... yes, I recognize you. DJ Pon-3, if I recall. You've performed at several royal venues. Your music is catching pigeons, as the fillies and colts say."

Vinyl just stared, bewildered.

"I've never said that," Dinky whispered, the first to break the silence. "What does it mean?"

"I'm confused as to your relationship with my brother. Why did you feel the need to take responsibility?"

"Because Octavia and I adopted him, we're—" She stopped again, levitating the half-broken lenses away from her face. "Brother?"

Someone finally heard what she was saying.

Sweet allowed himself the tiniest smile. He hadn't quite told that much of the truth to Vinyl and Octavia, even when he thought they were listening. From the shock on her face, she hadn't imagined anything like it. "I... h-had no idea."

"Nor did I, until moments ago," Luna said. "All of you—I believe you've been caught up in ancient matters, complex and strange. Miss Pon-3, do you know these other children as well?"

She nodded weakly. "They came with Sweet, Princess. They were here to enjoy the party, by my invitation."

"Take them with you, see them returned to their families."

"What about him?" Dinky asked, taking one of Sweet's hooves. She held it, squeezing tight. "You're not gonna be too hard on him, are you? I know he's a little strange, and he doesn't always realize how what he does will affect others. But he means well—he taught me how to levitate! I didn't know earth ponies could ever know that!"

Luna patted her gently on the back with one hoof. "Fear not, young filly. I will secure the best possible treatment for him. Justice and mercy in equal measure."

Dinky hugged him. Not for long—and no unicorn was ever going to channel the force to harm an earth pony with her grip. She made a good effort anyway. "Be good."

He giggled in spite of himself. "For you, I'll try. Just this once."

Chapter 20

Luna took Sweet across the palace, and up her vast tower to her private quarters. "There's no reason we should have to be so covert about the whole process," she explained as soon as they stepped inside.

There was no longer any royal escort, just the two of them walking together. But why should anypony expect guards leading around a little colt who didn't even have a horn? If a Princess of Equestria couldn't handle such a minor threat, the whole nation had bigger things to worry about.

"But I fear what Celestia might do if we come at this from an oblique angle. She has already dismissed you several times, including once at so public a venue as the feast below us. We must consider her pride, both public and personal."

Sweet followed her into a sprawling gallery. It was decorated in nearly the same style as he remembered from their younger years—maps of the stars and constellations on the wall, prominent place for a telescope in the center. This one was a modern design, with a mirror wider than his whole body. But it was the same fundamental principle.

There were other modern additions too—a record player off against one wall, and shelves of vinyl. The colorful sleeves suggested a taste far removed from the dignified waltzes and other public performances.

"I don't know why she would lie at all," he whispered, taking it all in. It was probably just the strangeness of his body, but he wanted to rush right into the middle of it all and start playing with it. What kinds of amazing things could he see with a telescope that size? Were any of those records Vinyl's albums?

Only exhaustion helped him resist. His last day had drained him enough that even staying awake took conscious effort. His stupid body cursed him again.

"Like, so she thinks I'm a danger to Equestria. If she thinks I'm a sociopath who will continue my dark experiments, letting me go doesn't help. I would just... set up an evil lair somewhere, foalnap some helpless ponies, and cause more pain than I already did. If I stayed quiet enough, I might actually manage to create a Worldgate of my own! Imagine what terrors I could bring through!"

Luna made her way to the wide picture-window, and pulled the curtains closed. "I do not think that she entertained such a thing. Celestia has always been alert to potential threats, even if her strategies for resolving them are ultimately—ill-proportioned."

He followed her to the window, but couldn't reach it to see what she was looking at. Not without jumping all the way up onto a side-table. The fine wood was probably worth more than some houses, and not made for such treatment. He didn't care.

"So the other option—she doesn't think I'm a threat. In that case, why lie? There's no reason to keep telling everyone I don't exist, and turn me down every time I try to talk to her."

"Isn't there?" Luna reached over with one wing, resting it on his shoulder. Her expression was so calm, almost pitying. "You make the same mistake as so many of our little ponies. Alicorns might be ageless, but we are not gods. Have you stopped to consider how Celestia feels?"

The question was so obvious. He wanted to snap back angrily—but it would be a lie. He had considered the logic of Celestia's position, but nothing beyond "she hates me."

Luna lifted her wing. "We were both... hurt, beyond words. My experience has given me a degree of nuance—only by becoming a terror unto myself was I able to comprehend its impact.

"I know how you feel," she whispered, gently. "I know how much it hurts. My crimes were not as personal as yours, but they were more severe. I understand how you feel, as Celestia never could."

He wilted. His face burned with tears all over again, making his voice unsteady. It cracked like a child—which made sense. How else would he sound? "When is it enough? How much pain do I have to feel, before I can forgive myself?"

"I... don't know." She patted him with one hoof. "Some nights I still hear the screams. Sometimes I still see her reflection in the mirror. I remember what it felt like, to be willing to condemn Equestria to eternal night. I do not know when I will have suffered the same measure as I inflicted...

"But I know you have reached the same destination I did."

"How?" he stammered. There were tears all over again. But this was why he had come—if he wanted to hide, he could've stayed on Earth.

"Because you are here," she answered. "Our sister has tried several times to send you away, to let you fade into the background. All you had to do was turn around and walk away, and you could've done anything you liked. Reformed or not, repentant or not, Celestia could not even bring herself to watch. She does not wish to face you."

She hugged him. That made him feel smaller and more useless than ever—he didn't care. Luna understood, in ways that words alone could not express.

He wasn't even sure how long he cried. Not quite so long as his centuries-long banishment, but close.

Eventually he stopped, and Luna let him go. "Time has not entirely closed the wound for our older sister, Tellus. This is why she hoped for you to simply fade, rather than confronting you directly. The truth of your reformation is undeniable. But to see that requires more of her than it does of you. She must forgive."

"I expected you both to hate me," he said. "Forever. I know I don't deserve any kind of redemption—I never thought you would take me back."

"I don't know... if she is willing to forgive," Luna eventually said. "We have a choice before us now, little brother. Or—you have a choice. I could not decide on your behalf."

He looked up, silent. He had spoken enough in his old life, now it was time to listen. "You could take the opportunity Celestia offers and fade from her life. You would be free to pursue whatever future you wish from Equestria. I would see you—but only so quietly as not to provoke a scandal. Maybe with proper study and the concentration of magical power, you could regain your status. All the better if you went abroad. Equestria has many allies who lack anything like the power of our Alicorns. The kirins, hippogriffs, or changelings would be thrilled with somepony like you. I would help you in any way I could. In time, I'm sure you would find happiness."

It was a tempting offer. Practically speaking, there was little different from some of the ways he imagined this confrontation. Not accepted back into the family, but free to live a new life, without the burden of his banishment or fear of recapture.

Becoming an Alicorn again would be a challenge without the help of one who already had that power. But he already understood the principle—it would just be a matter of gathering the voltage.

A century ago, he would've taken the bargain without a second thought. Ostracism from the family, but freedom to regain his proper place. More importantly, it meant life in Equestria again, and not being banished to some distant wasteland.

It was tempting, but the longer he thought about it, the less enamored he became. It didn't really mean life in Equestria, unless he was content to hide the truth about himself. He could not remain an Alicorn in the open, or else be forced to confront Celestia. Unresolved, she might treat him like another of Equestria's ancient enemies, and banish him all over again.

He would have to leave, and live around other creatures. Half-dragons, half-griffons, or whatever the heck a changeling was.

They might all be wonderful, but they weren't the reason he came back. "I won't take that option," he said. "I didn't gather magic for a century only to come right back into hiding. Your forgiveness means—well, not more than you know. You know exactly how much it means. But I have to face her."

"It could mean—a much worse outcome," she said. "She could banish you again, she could lock you in the dungeons for the rest of your life. If you step out of my shadow, you will be at her mercy."

He hopped down off the little table. "I know. I knew all that could happen from the beginning, Luna. I came anyway."

She nodded grimly. "I suspected you would say so. Yet I had to offer, or else I would have to carry the guilt of the consequences. Would you like to hear my plan?"

He listened carefully. It was good, much better than anything he'd come up with on his own. It wouldn't even keep him waiting that long.

A single night's sleep in Luna's tower, most of the day occupying his time with her books and records, and the moment had arrived.

The royal sisters had two private meals together each week. Only there were the important matters of state barred topics of conversation, royal guests of various offices and departments banned guests. It was a time for family, to keep their relationship strong even when their domains meant they rarely encountered each other.

Luna brought him to a quiet antechamber, connected directly to their private dining room. There he would wait, until it was time for her to set their plan in motion.

It wasn't empty, either.

Vinyl and Octavia rose to their hooves as he entered. He expected mostly just anger from the two of them. Surely an adopted foal was only worth so much pain, and at some point they would just be letting him go.

He expected that coldness, and a quiet admission that they couldn't handle him anymore. But what he saw was... pain.

Vinyl embraced him, then Octavia. Neither said anything at first, just stared over his shoulder at the moon princess, waiting in the doorway.

"Remain quiet until I call for you," she said, horn glowing. "Our older sister will respond best after her favorite meal and some dessert."

She clicked the door shut without another word, leaving the three of them alone in the little windowless room.

"So," Sweet whispered, staring up at them both. "Guess you... got Luna's letter, huh?"

Octavia nodded. "When Vinyl told me of what transpired last night, I could scarcely believe it. I would not, if the words had come from another's lips."

He remained still, resting on his haunches. He couldn't get too loud, Celestia would arrive at any moment. "I wouldn't either, probably," he said. "I tried to tell you—but I know why you didn't believe me."

"We should have listened," Vinyl said. "Everypony was telling us how much trouble you are. But there were signs they should've seen. You knew so much—magic, history—all of it."

He grinned weakly. "Thank you for... coming. It means a lot that you would help me. You didn't deserve such a huge... stack of problems to deal with."

Octavia waved a dismissive hoof, then embraced him again. "Of course, sweetheart. I know we've only cared for you for a short time, so you have no reason to take us at our word. But we promise to be better listeners from here on. When we return to Ponyville, you'll have the attention you deserve."

His mouth fell open. After all this, they were still willing to care for him? Yet he barely knew what to think. The next hour would decide his entire future, brief or long.

He only nodded tearfully. There was no time to reply, because Celestia's voice spoke from through the door. Their meal had begun.

All he could do now was wait.

Chapter 21

Sweet Sauce listened quietly from the side-corridor, remaining as still as he could.

His elder sister was no bat pony, with hearing that could pierce walls and stone alike. But she was still an Alicorn, one who had survived countless assassination attempts, fought in ages long passed, and had a body coursing with incredible amounts of magic. If she discovered him lurking here before the time was right, she could treat him like an assassin.

If that happened, his adoptive parents might be implicated in the scheme. He was willing to risk his own future, no matter how dire his eventual fate. But inflict that pain on somepony else? Never.

When they started eating, he dared to whisper to Vinyl and Octavia. "Stay in here when I come out," he said, mouthing each word so quietly it was barely audible over his own breathing.

He tensed, fearing an argument—but none came. Octavia just mouthed the word "when?"

He scratched his chin, thoughtful. "I dunno. I'll... probably ask for witnesses at some point there. My sister doesn't really trust anything unless multiple ponies are involved. Luna will help, but more voices is good. You'll see."

He could hear only parts of the meal. None of it was particularly interesting, since those rules were the entire reason this conversation was happening in the first place. It was a time for the royal sisters to spend together without worrying about Equestria's future, if only for a few minutes.

Then they got to the dessert, and his heart began to beat rapidly in his chest, loud enough that he thought it might give him away with its aggressive pounding alone.

"This is some of the most excellent Genoise I've had in months," Celestia proclaimed, a few minutes later. Of course she hadn't paced herself with the desert. Princess Celestia never did. "I'm struggling to remember anything with this precise mixture of moisture and complex secondary flavors. It's... right out of history."

"You could say so, older sister," Luna said. "You could say this Genoise is an extract of history, along with its creator."

Silverware clattered to the table on the other side of the room. Sweet stood up by the door, but didn't move quite yet. Once this started, he was stepping into a future that might be far worse than hiding. But it was much too late to change anything now.

"What do you mean, Luna?" Celestia asked. Her tone was almost the same as before—but Sweet could detect the subtle difference. That edge was hardened to knife-steel. "The one who created this recipe is gone forever, as he should be. He took the recipe with him to his deserved grave."

He could barely hear through the door—Luna was not speaking so loudly anymore. But with his ear pressed up against the wood, he could make it out.

"It would be simpler if that were the case," she said. "I know how much you wish to forget the painful details of our past. But I must insist for your sake, mine, and all Equestria. The simpler lie does no greater kindness than the truth."

A chair squeaked on wood. "Don't do this," Celestia whispered. "What you're doing here is a favor to nopony. Sometimes the past should remain buried. This is the best future some ponies can hope for—and the best they deserve."

At least she isn't trying to hide it, Sweet thought. If that was her way of acting like she didn't know who he was, it was even less effective than what she had used in front of her royal guests.

But there was nopony to impress tonight—this was a family affair.

"Many would have said the same about me," Luna countered. "I suspect a far larger group, in their day. I managed to unravel a nation, to provoke lasting animosity at an entire tribe of ponies. Tellus never did anything nearly as damaging."

"Worse," Celestia muttered. "So much worse. Imagine what our noble parents could've made of Equestria, with more time. Imagine the devastation wrought by threats like Discord—Cosmos could have stopped him in his tracks. We would never have needed the Elements of Harmony. Lives lost would be spared."

"Threats like Nightmare Moon, whose armies rampaged across Equestria? I'm sorry, sister. I know you do not want this to be true—but it is.

"Our younger brother has returned from his banishment. After many years in that nearly magicless wasteland, he gathered just enough power to bridge his way across."

"No!" Something shattered in the other room, splattering wetly to the ground. Sweet winced as he heard it—so much for getting a slice of Genoise. "Nothing comes back! That's why we banished magical threats to that universe. There's no power, no way to come back. He lived out his life long ago, then died naturally when his years were up. It's the kindest fate I could give him."

"Not quite zero magic." He stepped through the door, emerging into the little dining hall. He found it much as he expected—Luna at her seat, Celestia standing over it, horrified. His cake on the floor in a ruined pile.

His old self probably would've lectured about the hours that went into crafting something so perfect without unicorn magic to manage multiple tools at once. Did she want to try scalding milk by turning all the dials with her mouth?

"There's no natural sources of magic on the planet opposite Equus. But there's still background radiation—and there's blood. I only used my own, if you're wondering. No massacres, just patience."

Celestia glared down at him. "This... colt? This is the one you bring? This child is so determined to make himself a nuisance. Why would you take his side? How did he manipulate you?"

"Please." Luna rolled her eyes. "Sister, I understand the act for our subjects. Admitting any other Alicorns would add significant complexity to the lie you've constructed of Equestria’s history. But there's nobody here to hear it."

He advanced on the table, dodging the fallen cake. Even his earth pony body could sense her incredible magical might. In their last conflict, it was only the two of them working together that had overcome his power. This time, she could squish him like a fly if she wanted.

An execution might be exactly how this ended. He could only hope Octavia and Vinyl would stay in that little closet, hiding until her rage subsided. They shouldn't have to see a pony die.

"Fine!" Celestia yelled. Really yelled too, not just that angry talking she usually did when ponies made her unhappy. Together, they had finally pinched a nerve. "I looked aside, despite his insistence. It was the greatest mercy I could render. But if you two insist on this, then tell me. What do you want, Tellus? Tell me swiftly, and be done with it. You crossed worlds to be here, it must matter to you."

He reached the table. It was higher than most pony furniture, constructed for the two regal Alicorns who used it. It might as well be a fort for the size of his body.

He didn't look away from Celestia now. One way or another, his future turned on this moment.

"I have returned to Equestria from my banishment," he said. There was a speech in his head, but just like before, he couldn't remember it. Something simple would have to do.

"I want to return home. I don't care if I don't see the castle again, or if nopony in Equestria remembers me. I just want to be allowed to stay. But if not, then I would rather die than go back. I don't want to live in a world without magic. So if I can't stay here, then I can't live anywhere."

He trailed off awkwardly, panting from the overwhelming emotions. In his head that had all seemed so much clearer. But when he said it like that, it came out like the ravings of a mad pony. Too late to change it now.

Celestia gestured with her horn, and the huge table slid out of the way, pressing itself against the wall. She didn't seem to care that the fine china shattered to the floor, and the ruins of their meal tumbled into an increasingly degenerate mess.

"Why?" she demanded, advancing on him. "Why would I allow you to return to Equestria? Do you deny your guilt?"

"No," he said flatly. "I am guilty. Cosmos and Gaia are dead because I convinced them to help with my experiment. It's all my fault."

"Against all Father's warnings!" Celestia continued. Her voice boomed through the chamber, rattling the paintings on the walls, and the fine chandelier overhead. Sweet could only imagine what the servants must be feeling at that moment. If he were them, he'd be finding somewhere to take cover.

The last time they fought, they had nearly brought death to an entire country.

"Against my objections! Against all wisdom and common sense! They died because you flew directly into the sun, but didn't have the decency to die with them!"

Even expecting this moment, her words cut deep. His eyes welled with tears. He sniffed, fighting back the emotions. He would not let the age imposed by this body dictate his behavior. It was a losing battle—Celestia towered over him, barely inches away. Even looking at her hurt his eyes, impossibly bright.

It was hard to believe this was even the same mare. The one who had been so quick to forgive and rehabilitate Luna looked like she might tear him apart physically, if given the chance.

"Yes," he said again. "I did. I admit that I was wrong, that their deaths were my fault. I was wrong to blame anypony else, or to resist your sentence the first time."

His words stole a little of the wind from her. Celestia glared down at him, as though she'd been expecting an argument. Hungering for it, but he refused to oblige.

If he thought otherwise, he would not have returned to the palace. Better to return in secret, and never face her.

"You're a self-absorbed, conceited mule," Celestia finally said. "Your pride always threatened Equestria in ways that we should've seen sooner. Every day you ruled with us was another I spent dreading what disaster you would cause next. Why should I let you stay here? Why shouldn't you be punished?"

He didn't get a chance to answer. The side door banged open, and two mares practically tripped over each other in their eagerness to get to him.

Few common ponies would have the courage to move in such defiance of Princess Celestia herself. He admired their courage, even if their timing left a lot to be desired.

"He's not like that!" Vinyl said. "Err—Princess. Princess Celestia. Please. I don't know what kind of pony you remember, but Sweet Sauce isn't that."

"Not in the least," Octavia agreed. They stood over him, facing directly into the sun. "Well, perhaps a tad inconsiderate in his speech. But you should hear all the good he's done at school. Befriended a lonely little unicorn filly, taught her magic. Half the class would probably call him friends. In the months we've known him, this pony has never been a... danger to the ponies around him. If he was like that long ago, then he's left that pony in the past."

Celestia stumbled backward from the two mares. Her expression became an unreadable mask as they spoke. "Is that so?" she asked. "What is your connection to him, little ponies? Why has my sister brought you here?"

"We adopted him," Vinyl explained. "He didn't manipulate us either. We knew what we were getting into. We're his caretakers now—if anypony can say that he's changed, it's us."

Bold claim to make to Celestia, Sweet thought. But it was hard not to admire so much courage. If he had ever doubted the love of these adoptive mothers, he didn't anymore.

"I... accept that assessment," Celestia said. "His guardians would be the best suited to render judgment." Her horn flashed, and something appeared in the air before them—a large glass vial, with gold filigree on its neck.

Oh buck, Sweet thought.

"To judge whether he should be forgiven, you need to see what crime he committed first. I will let you render judgment. After you see what he did, then he can return to live with you, in your household. Either that, or I judge. Do you agree?"

He mumbled something, but far too quietly for them to hear.

"Yes," Octavia said. "We agree, Princess."

"Sounds entirely fair to me," Luna agreed. "And the best chance you can hope for, younger brother."

He had no choice but to accept.

Chapter 22

Sweet Sauce opened his eyes, and saw another time.

The Castle of the Two Sisters was no longer a ruin of nameless age, moldering in obscurity in a forest overcome by chaos magic. Instead it formed the capital of a great city of Harmony, with thousands of structures packed tightly around it.

He found himself inside a vast laboratory, only one level beneath the surface of the castle. A stairwell led directly into the ceiling of the room above, providing quick access to the kitchens. But this memory had nothing to do with any of the experiments he had conducted there.

He smiled at the familiar smells, the feel of castle stone under his hooves, and the glow of crystal lamps running along the laboratory walls. In the distance, a single figure slaved over a vast spell-diagram, one that wasn't clearly visible to him yet. He knew all of what it said, without needing to see. It was meant to be his life's work, the greatest achievement of ponykind.

Sweet felt the tickle of magic against his mind, and knew exactly what that meant. This illusion was constructed from his own memories—it would not distort the truth, but it also wouldn't omit any of the more painful parts. This would be a harsh but fair judgment, exactly as his oldest sister always delivered.

Sweet glanced to either side, and saw he was not alone. His adopted parents, Vinyl and Octavia, stood not far from him to one side. Celestia and Luna were a little further away, watching events with stiff stoicism. His parents only looked curious—they didn't know just how badly things would go.

Somehow, it was the currently-living ponies that looked out of focus. Sweet could see through them, and would probably have some difficulty if he tried to touch them as well. The ancient stone of his lab remained firm, just as the orange glow of his magic as his old self worked.

It was a towering Alicorn, taller in stature than either of Equestria's diarachs. His horn was shorter and his features more youthful than either of the mature mares, but he was still a stallion.

Without any effort to move, Sweet's vision blurred, and suddenly he was beside the spell-diagram.

This was more than any simple laboratory effort—this spell was carved in steel, with gold poured into the lines. Several glowing crystals surrounded the diagram, each one connected by thaumoconductive wires. At its center the air seemed trapped in a vortex, beyond which no light emerged.

Whenever the little vortex tried to grow larger, lightning arced from one of several crystals, containing it directly at the center. With the spell not yet begun, the construction seemed so... safe. It was a pile of dynamite, waiting to be ignited.

"I don't understand what we're looking at," Octavia said. Her voice echoed and distorted in the lab, seeming out of focus compared to the little scratching of the stallion's quill on a floating pad of paper. "What does this have to do with Sweet Sauce?"

"This is Tellus Mergen," Luna explained. She walked slowly around the circle, a transparent outline that grew increasingly out of focus the further she got. "This was Sweet Sauce."

Sweet's legs shook, and he turned towards the kitchen stairs. Any second now, two ponies would make their way down. He could already hear their hooves on stone. Just don't come. Tell me my experiment is too dangerous. Stop it.

It was too late to warn them now. This was only a memory.

"Okay but like, how?" Vinyl asked. "I know you're a smart kid, but this is an Alicorn. A... prince. Didn't even know those were a thing."

"One was," he whispered. "When I came back to Equestria, I had so little magic to make a body that I... could only manage this. It was worth whatever sacrifice it took to be back in Equestria. I wanted to look like my old self, but I couldn't. That might have taken centuries more."

A pair of older ponies emerged from the steps, looking far grander and more mature than any living Alicorn in Equestria. The mare was taller than Celestia, with a mane like glittering starlight. The stallion dwarfed any in attendance, with a coat like the pockmarked surface of a distant planet, and a short red mane of mixing gasses, like the banded rings of Saturn.

"Tellus,” the stallion said, the first to arrive beside the spell diagram. "Your mother and I have spent the last several hours discussing your proposal. We do not think it would be—"

"Before you answer—" his younger/older self said, dropping the pad of paper he'd been writing with. "I'd like you to consider the potential benefits. At the rate Equestria is expanding, there should be less than a hundred thousand generations before we exhaust the resources of one planet to sustain ourselves, and have to expand. Consider how we could shortcut all those early stages of development if we had populations growing in other realms at the same time.

"We already know populations expand to meet their constraints. So consider a colony sent every year, with an Equus of their own, all linked through portals just like this one. Consider the explosion of art, thaumaturgy, literature, music—"

"It's an amazing idea, Tellus," said Galaxia, resting one leg on his shoulder. "What you're proposing will change everything for Equestria. But that does not mean we need to rush into this. As you say, there is time. Lifetimes beyond our own will pass away. We could devote many generations more to researching this field before we risk any experiment."

She let go, retreating from him. In that moment, Sweet felt the same surge of emotion his older self had. He remembered exactly what it was like to fear the end of his research, silenced before it could reach its true potential.

"Wait!" he said. "I don't actually need both of you to power the spell anymore! I've made some efficiency adjustments to the matrix. You can see here—I just wanted you to see the test, that's all! I can cast the spell myself!"

"Really?" Cosmos circled around to the other side of the diagram, passing directly through the group as he did. His adoptive parents showed no recognition, just stared on as history repeated before their eyes.

The same was not true of his siblings. Celestia watched with a face frozen and emotionless, the same expression she showed to Equestria's Solar Court. The face of a monarch who knew what was about to happen.

Luna had no such restraint. Tears were already streaming down her face, and she quietly wiped them away on the back of her leg. For the three of them, this was more than a memory. They saw the faces of the dead.

"Was it true, what you told them?" Celestia demanded. Her voice echoed just like the others did, tone absolute. "You said you designed the spell for a single caster. Did you tell the truth?"

She would know if he was lying. That would not make his case look any less damning. "No. I knew it might be possible, but I didn't design it that way to start."

His younger self interrupted him, silencing his explanation. "I've already chosen a suitable target," Tellus said, teleporting rapidly around the circle. He pushed each of the crystals onto the diagram one at a time, making the spell glow brighter. As it did, the seed of darkness within expanded in equal measure, pulsing with its own heartbeat.

"Father told you it was too dangerous," Celestia continued. "He told me, before Mother and Father came to confront you. He intended to..." She sniffed. "Create a commission. Study your theories in exhaustive detail, and consider them again in time. You could have had your experiments—you could have achieved whatever mad dream your magic aspired to create, if only you were patient. Do you deny it?"

He shook his head, as tearfully as his sister. "I—I never knew that part. But I know this was my fault. I made a few shortcuts, just to get a demonstration. I wanted to scry a door open—a few seconds at most. Nothing was supposed to happen."

"But it did," Celestia insisted. "I'm sorry you have to witness this, my little ponies. I am sorry my sister is forced to relive it. Yet for the judgment to be fair, you must."

It was as gruesome as Sweet remembered—worse, since this memory constructed the world retroactively, rather than restricted to his own vision at the time. He was powerless to do anything but watch, as his young self made all the same mistakes he'd played over in his head for months before this moment.

"After you banished me, I thought about what I did wrong. Thought that maybe—there were a few variables I could adjust. Better preparations to make, or physical alterations to the diagram. But after the first few years, I gave that up. It was never about whether the spell would work."

But it didn't work this time. The hole expanded, smashing into the crystals he had used to insulate it. What were easily enough to protect such a small opening with three Alicorns were drained dry with just one. The opening in space tore through the ground, devouring stone and spell-diagram alike.

Gravity warped and distorted, causing objects all over the castle to tumble over, and pegasi to crash out of the sky. It didn't reach them in the memory—objects blurred past them, but not fast enough to obscure the moment when Galaxia slipped through the opening, vanishing into the void with one last scream of terror.

Cosmos blasted into Tellus with one strike of his horn, sending him tumbling away from the diagram. Then he turned his power on the runaway singularity, striking into it with the might of a mature, powerful Alicorn.

The singularity collapsed, taking half the lab with it. It ripped a hole in the ceiling, devouring part of the kitchens and the dungeons with it, leaving molten stone dripping from the edges.

A younger Celestia appeared from the top floor, leaning down to stare into the chaos. She found Tellus curled up near the edge of the diagram, weeping incoherently.

"That was not any... easier to witness a second time," Celestia said. Her horn flashed, and memory faded back where it belonged.

It left the group assembled exactly where they had been in Celestia's private dining room—with Sweet Sauce curled up tightly, crying almost exactly as his ancient self had done.

"I deserve my punishment," he said. "I deserve e-everything. If you really... gave me justice, you'd cast that same spell, and throw me in to join them."

He couldn't see the others anymore—could barely hear them through his tears. It was Vinyl's voice who eventually cut through it, standing over him. Her usual confident attitude was gone, replaced with the truer persona Sweet saw backstage, and at home.

"So, uh... Princess. What we just saw—"

"Is taken directly from his memory," Celestia said harshly. "Exactly as he experienced it. I have done nothing to alter what happened. As there are none living who saw the exchange except my brother, we must trust to the reliability of events."

She sniffed, then stood alert. "You must now pronounce judgment. The creature before you is a peerless magical prodigy. Even without a horn of his own, he could easily create spells to kill you and your entire family. He ignored the advice of the scientific community and his own parents, performing dangerous magic anyway.

"He was banished a thousand years to a magicless wasteland, then returned in the form you see before you. If you wish to show him mercy, understand you do so at whatever risk you believe he presents.

"Or admit the danger, and turn him over to me for judgment. He wants it so badly, so I will grant it. An endless, merciful oblivion. The decision is yours."

Epilogue

Sweet Sauce was surrounded by the pain he deserved—the pain he had caused with a single, critical choice. But if he didn't overcome his weakness now, he would face his death curled up and helpless. He hadn't fought to invent his own school of nearly zero-energy magic only to face a pronouncement of death and eventual execution without a chance to face his judge.

He struggled to his hooves, then turned towards his adoptive parents. In the judgment of these two mares, his entire future turned. Whatever execution Celestia chose for him after failure this time, he had a feeling it wouldn't give him a chance to escape back to Equestria.

"I-it's okay," he whispered, looking between Vinyl and Octavia. "I don't b-blame you. I would be too scared of me too. You can say it."

He could barely see through vision blurred by many tears. At least when he died just now, it would be here in Equestria. He had spent weeks at home, making new pony friends and discovering what his world had become. Many ponies had died with worse.

He couldn't read the faces of the two ponies here to judge him as they shared one last, painful look. Meanwhile, Luna stared in silence, powerless to do anything to change the outcome. Sweet already knew exactly what she would say if he asked for her help now.

He had begged for this confrontation, when he could've accepted a safe life anywhere else in Equestria. He had forced this moment, so its consequences were his to accept.

"That was really you?" Vinyl finally asked. Her voice shook with emotion, and she propped her glasses up over her face. "Back in time?"

He nodded glumly. "I barely remember being him anymore. It was hard to carry all those memories through my banishment. But my last day in Equestria I'll never forget. I c-caused the death of my own parents. Made my sisters and I orphans. Assassinated the rulers of Equestria."

Octavia cleared her throat. "You didn't seem terribly... pleased with the outcome, in past or present."

Where was she going with this? Every second was a battle to contain his own emotions, one he generally lost. He sniffed, wiping his eyes with one leg again. "I t-tried to give them a gift. Open up the universe to Equestria in ways... we never imagined. I failed."

He raised one hoof, before Celestia could speak. "Y-you don't need to say anything. Their deaths were my fault. It was an accident, but e-entirely preventable. I accept my judgment."

"Princesses." Vinyl Scratch bowed again, low. "I hope this isn't a problem, but..." She shot another glance at Octavia, who nodded. "It doesn't feel like we should be the right ponies to judge. The loss was yours. We can't imagine the pain you're feeling at the loss of your parents. How can we decide a sentence?"

Celestia's expression remained unfalteringly harsh. "Yet, you must. Do not fear reprisal for your choices, my little ponies. You will face none. Your involvement is for my brother's benefit. You represent all the ponies of Equestria. You have seen what my brother is capable of—now you must decide whether he is permitted to dwell among you. As he will be in your home, you two make for the perfect, symbolic judges."

Octavia bowed too, though she didn't hold it for nearly as long. "Then by your leave, Princess Celestia. I think we would like to take Sweet Sauce home now."

The answer was stupefied silence. Of all the ponies in the room, Luna was the first to react, a tiny smirk stretching across her face. "The little ponies of Equestria forgave me my transgressions, sister. Should we be surprised this group you have long cultivated to be so harmonious would extend these virtues towards those who have harmed us as well?"

Celestia wobbled on her hooves, then slumped into a sitting position. Her eyes glazed over, and her perfectly-cultivated mask melted away. She cried, and nopony dared to interrupt her.

Except Sweet Sauce. He kept his head low, which was already easy considering he had such a pathetic scrap of a body anyway. "I know... no apology will ever be enough," he whispered to her. "You don't have to see me again if you don't want to. I won't try to rule. I just don't want to go back to that awful place. I can stay in Ponyville and never come back to Canterlot if you don't want me to."

His older sister finally looked at him. It might've been the first time since his return—or at least the first time she didn't quickly look away again. "I've spent a thousand years teaching my subjects to forgive, Tellus. What kind of Princess would I be if I'm not capable of exemplifying that same virtue?"

She touched him on the head with one hoof, a light, brief pat. Not quite a hug. But he could hardly blame her for not being ready. "Thank you for this lesson, Vinyl Scratch and Octavia Melody. It has been... most illuminating."

Sweet Sauce felt something then, a sudden surge of magic flowing over him in an incredible flash. Given the strange path his life had taken, it was one he'd known several times now, almost identical each time.

He dropped to the ground a second later. His eyes stopped glowing, and so did his flank. His cutie mark had returned.

No matter how many times he created a new body, the result was always almost the same. It showed the planet Equus, beginning as a sketchy outline on the left, and filling with color on the right.

Most ponies only experienced this transition once—they didn't know how different their lives would be now that they were properly marked. "Oh," was all he said, grinning weakly. "Guess Harmony remembers who I am, too."

His adopted parents were far less conservative about embracing him, holding him tight.

"How can we argue with such a judgment?" Princess Luna asked. “It seems the verdict was accepted. Welcome home, little brother."

Sweet Sauce dressed for school the same way ponies usually did—he tossed on his saddlebags with the day's books, and hurried downstairs. His mom Vinyl was off on another concert tour that night, but fortunately his other one Octavia was there. She already had a plate of hot waffles waiting for him downstairs, along with a local syrup that his old world had no name for.

"You haven't forgotten anything, have you?" Octavia asked. She peeked through his saddlebags, albeit only for a few seconds. Long enough to look satisfied. "Good. No more leaving your textbooks at home just because you know what's in them."

Sweet finished his breakfast, then hopped out of the chair. "My memory on some of these subjects is... faulty," he admitted. "This new way of teaching math confounds me. It's stranger than runecraft."

Octavia slipped a tightly-wrapped bundle into the other side of his saddlebags. Lunch, probably. "I have no doubt you'll excel in time, Sweet. You know Vinyl won't allow your attendance at next week's concert if you don't pass your exams."

"I will!" He bounced his way over to the door, just out of reach. "I'm getting my homework done! I spent my first few weeks barely paying attention. Now that I know I'm staying here, I treat class differently. You'll see!"

He hurried out the door—partly to avoid any additional lecture, but also because he knew when his friends would be passing the house.

Escorting him to school was a relic of the past, now that he made no attempt to sneak away from school. Now that he had nowhere to run to, there was no reason to supervise him.

Besides, there were plenty of good reasons to make it to class. At least two.

Sweet crossed Ponyville with little fanfare. A few of the locals waved to him—a harpist sitting strangely in the park, one of the apple farmers on his way to market with a cart. None of these ponies knew his old name. None of them knew his ancient achievements, or the breadth of his ambition. None of them knew the world his magic would've created.

None of them knew the guilt he carried, that the ponies who should've been there to help rule Equestria, and protect it through its greatest hardships, weren't alive to do it. Tellus Mergen was gone now, and might be gone forever.

But Sweet Sauce, at least, was welcome to stay.

"Hey Sweet!" Dinky joined him from another intersection, trotting along to keep up with him. "I practiced that thing you taught me! I think I can almost do it!"

She stopped walking, tossing a little red ball out from her saddlebags. It bounced a few times, before her magic struck it—and it transformed into a cupcake, covered in gray and yellow icing.

It smacked to the ground a second later, splattering the floor with sugar and bits of crushed cake. "Well I... probably should've kept levitating it."

A pigeon fluttered down from overhead and started pecking at the ruined cupcake. A few others joined it seconds later. "Maybe," Sweet agreed. "Birds seem to like it."

They continued together for a short distance, walking through a perfect Ponyville morning. The weather team had organized exactly enough clouds to keep things from getting too hot, without making the morning look gloomy.

Shame the world he'd been banished to never figured out weather planning. He wouldn't be returning to offer them lessons in the subject.

"If you went back a month and told me I'd be doing transfiguration, I never would've believed you!" Dinky continued. "Why don't any of the books teach the way you do? It makes so much more sense when you explain it!"

Sweet shrugged, keeping his face as neutral as possible. He couldn't help grinning with pride as he heard it. This was a satisfaction his old life had given him only rarely. Few ponies were illustrious enough to train with such an important Alicorn, and those who were refused his reckless style.

Now he didn't have that problem. "Most of those old textbooks were written to the old style—Confoundurism. They want you to struggle, because they think figuring things out on your own robs you of the moral improvement that comes from the search for truth."

He rolled his eyes as he said it. "Most of those crusty old unicorns didn't know what they were talking about either, by the way. Nopony could tell them they were wrong, because their books weren't supposed to make sense. It's a great little grift."

Another set of hoofsteps heralded the approach of another little pony. Pipsqueak was now a little shorter than Sweet, and still lacked a cutie mark of his own. But so did Dinky.

"Morning!" He slid to a stop in the gravel. His mane looked wild, and there was still a pencil tucked behind one ear.

"You didn't do your homework last night?" Sweet guessed.

Pipsqueak grunted, the closest thing to an admission he was going to get. "What do you care? You're an Alicorn, aren't you?"

Sweet shrugged. "I'm... not sure. I think I might be, one day. I wasn't brave enough to ask them about that part. What does that have to do with your math homework?"

Pipsqueak blushed. "It's hard!"

"So study with us!" Dinky insisted. "If Sweet can help me with magic, he can help you with numbers. Right?"

"Right," he agreed. "Mostly. I don't remember everything. But three heads are better than one. We can figure it out together. Then you don't have to rush in the morning to put fake answers down before class."

They walked to the schoolhouse, speaking about nothing. Sweet Sauce could enjoy every empty word of it. He had no more secret plots, no more need to hide away bits for train tickets.

In time he would be older, and he would have to decide whether or not to embrace his old ambition. But at least for now, he let thoughts of the future fade from his mind. What little filly or colt in Ponyville already had their life planned out?

Tellus was banished to the mists of history. Sweet would have to decide whether to bring him back, one day. But today, he could focus on his friends.

Chapter 1

Sweet Sauce woke in a crater, naked body steaming.

For a few seconds it was all he could do to remain conscious, fighting the backlash of a spell that could easily kill a lesser pony. The worldgate seared into the loamy earth all around him, scrawling the magical signature to his place of origin.

He would have to scratch those out before he left, hopefully before anypony else stumbled upon this place. An astute unicorn might be able to reverse-engineer his origin, much to their torment. He could imagine no pony from one end of Equestria to the other guilty of sin great enough to be banished to New Mexico.

Nearly dying was an exhausting process, and he could still barely move. But he couldn’t lay there until he was stronger—he had to know if the spell had worked.

But would anywhere be as bad as where I left? He toyed with the idea, considering a range of possible worlds. But even swarms of parasprites and the devouring Outsiders from beyond time and space would at least mean something was happening.

Sweet Sauce managed to sit up, at least enough to see his own shape. Elation surged in him, briefly overpowering the spellburn gnawing at his whole body. I’m a pony again!

He leapt to his hooves in the center of the crater, wobbling only slightly from one side to the other. Despite many years away, he found balance still came naturally to him. “That’s two victories,” he muttered to himself. “She couldn’t keep me away forever.”

As he said it, his ears twitched at the unfamiliar tone. He’d been expecting himself to sound different when he got back here, that was part of any transformation. But why did his voice sound so childish?

“Please don’t be…” He trailed off, hiking up the edge of the crater. It was about equal to his height, maybe two paces around in any direction. He scribbled at the markings with his hooves as he walked, deliberately smearing them into ashy dirt.

At the edge of the crater was more grass—a field? But not far away he saw a copse of bright green deciduous trees, and the ground was covered with dense growth. Grass, not bare dirt with patches of thorny bushes and the occasional cactus. It was almost enough to ignore just how big it all seemed. Those trees might as well be monuments, rising up in the distance like a city unto themselves. Even the grass grew above his eye level in places, though it was the soft green, friendly kind.

Sweet stumbled forward a few steps, breaking into a run for a simple takeoff—and felt nothing at his sides. He skidded to a halt in the rich green grass, turning to stare. There were no wings protruding from his sides.

There was something else missing, far more important than any pair of feathering wings. After so many years without it, Sweet searched for the cutie mark on a light green flank. He could still picture it perfectly: the arcanus equilibrium, a star diagram used in all but the simplest ritual spells.

There was nothing there. Short green coat, barely even tall enough to see through the overgrown grass. It was like staring into a mirror, and not recognizing the reflection. Being another species was bad—being younger was bound to be inconvenient. But losing his mark?

But did I lose it when they forced me out? Or coming back?

With deliberate slowness, dreading what would be waiting for him, Sweet reached up with one hoof, feeling his forehead. He already didn’t see it when he looked up, but he had to be sure.

There was nothing there. No horn, no wings. “I’m a mudpony,” he declared with a definitive stomp into the dirt. “Me, a mudpony.”

What would he do about it? Sweet considered the problems before him, ranking them in an instant. He had no idea where in Equestria he was. He was apparently a little colt again,though he couldn’t say just how much of his physical age he had lost. He was an earth pony, stripped of all but the vague earth “strength.” It was a good thing his arrival couldn’t strip him of his understanding of ritual magic and supernatural principle, or else he’d really be in trouble.

It’s okay. I still have more magic in me now than I could marshal in a decade back there. It’s an improvement. Fix later.

Sweet circled the edge of his crater, scratching away the rest of his spell as he walked. With hooves this small, it took him a good while—long enough for him to examine his surroundings for any sign of civilization. He also searched among the dirt for any sign of the portable music player he’d hoped to bring with him, the single object of great enough personal significance to risk bringing into the spell.

He found it after a few minutes, lifting it from the dirt. It was little more than a rectangle of melted plastic now, glass screen fractured into a thousand lines and colors. “Goodbye, old friend,” he whispered, lowering his head respectfully to the machine. Away went one of the few parts of his prison he had loved.

He tossed it into the center of the crater, kicking in some blackened dirt to seal the music player away for its eternal rest.

That sacred ritual done, Sweet Sauce returned his attention to escape. Unlike the body he’d been trapped in, this one could eat the grass if it came to that. He did so while he circled, chewing thoughtfully.

For a few seconds. He spat it out just as quickly, wiping his tongue clean on his coat. “Alright, going a little too native. Walk it back.” What would his sisters think if they’d seen him eating grass?

He banished that unpleasant thought, focusing instead on the edge of a red roof visible in the distance. Ten seconds of flying, maybe less. Unfortunately, he had to walk.

He whistled as he went, or tried. Pony teeth weren’t quite where his instincts expected. Undeterred, he hummed instead. He could still get the pitch right, even if it wasn’t in the right octave anymore.

Finally the building came into view, along with several others nearby. The architecture would’ve been entirely unrecognizable to him in Equestria, but not in his prison. It was a barn, along with a farmhouse. He emerged at the edge of a fence, walking right under while barely having to duck.

But he wasn’t the sort of pony to be borne down with dread over the mounting evidence of his physical changes. Sweet Sauce wasn’t going to give up while victory seemed so close.

He circled around the farmhouse, eyes scanning for any sign of other ponies. Perhaps this new body would keep his return from being quite so dramatic—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still get the information he needed.

He could make out activity from one of the nearby orchards—repeated banging and echoing, like somepony was losing a fight with a tree. That sounded rather entertaining, and he probably would’ve gone to look.

But as he turned in that direction, he spied distant roofs through the trees, densely packed around a few taller structures.

More rural than I’d like, he thought. But regardless of where in Equestria he’d ended up, there was bound to be regular travel to the capital.

“Hey there!” called a voice, high and girlish. He turned reflexively, and caught a pony trotting towards him from up the road. She crossed the gate with a confidence that suggested she owned the place, or at least lived here.

She was also taller than he was. His ears flattened involuntarily, and he took a step back, face warming a degree or two. “Are you lost, little pony? I ain’t seen you anywhere near the farm before. But if you’re here with cousins for the harvest, you’re three months too early.”

He blinked, dazed for another second more. This child wasn’t here to torment him and remind him of the failings of his spell—Sweet Sauce had achieved the impossible. Twice, actually.

“Yeah, I’m lost,” he said. “Could you point me to the Castle of the Two Sisters?”

The filly blinked, dumbfounded. “You mean the place my sister told me never to go by my lonesome, out in the Everfree?”

Everfree. The stranger recognized the name. “Yeah, that!” He took a few steps past her, back towards the road. “Could you tell me where it is? That’s where I’m supposed to go. I’m not quite sure about the conversion rate between universal time, but I’m at least a few centuries late by now.”

The filly stared after him, before catching up in two bounds. She stopped directly in front of him, putting on the air of a big kid protecting their smaller, stupider sibling. “Whatever you’re talkin’ about, there ain’t nothing worth going through the Everfree for. Don’t you got parents or something? Maybe talk to them if you want to go anywhere so dangerous.”

Parents. The word hit him harder than any earth pony hoof. He stiffened, silent for a few seconds. Then he dodged around her, back down the road where she’d come from.

“You’re right!” he called, without looking back. “I should probably get back before somepony misses me.”

The filly followed to the edge of her gate, watching him go. “Yeah!” she called, reaching vainly after him with one hoof. “You should… probably… yeah! You go ahead and do that! Unless you think you need help! I know mah sis wouldn’t mind if I was a little later gettin’ chores done, if I was helping a little pony in need!”

He didn’t look back. Not terribly friendly perhaps, but friendship took effort better spent on something more productive. “Nah, thanks anyway. Good luck with your rural drudgery, workhorse!”

With respectful greetings concluded, Sauce accelerated down the road towards the town, hope building in his chest. The Everfree is close enough that children have to be warned not to go there. I’m already closer than I could’ve hoped.

Of course what he would actually do when he reached his goal was still a diffuse cloud of possibility at this stage, but Sauce could live with that. Overplanning was part of the reason he was in trouble in the first place.

The nameless town seemed so close, but the actual process of walking there drained his endurance still further. He might need to rethink his strategy of walking to the castle himself. Depending on the angle he entered, the Everfree could require multiple days of walking.

My allies are long dead. My possessions are entombed or destroyed. My body is lost. Sweet’s list kept getting longer and more discouraging. But I’m not in New Mexico anymore. I’ve already won, even if I get eaten by a Grue.

He broke into a trot, crossing an old bridge into a town. Compared to where he had come from, the place seemed dated, with thatch rooves and narrow, cobblestone streets. But it didn’t matter that these ponies could’ve been a town from his own time, without much progress or change. At least until he saw the castle.

Lording over this humble farming village was a structure that looked like the northern crystalsmiths had left their snowy home to build here in Equestria. Its design was at once beautiful and utterly ridiculous. All the important parts of that structure are at the upper floors. It was a castle built with no regard whatsoever for the needs of the non-winged ponies, who would have to hoof it up many flights whenever they wanted to visit.

This was home. The village bustled with activity, ponies throngning around him, chatting with each other in friendly voices. They bought and sold and traded, just as he remembered.

They still used Celestia’s sun glyph in many of their decorations, each one staring down at him like an unblinking eye.

Was she hunting him, even now, ready to cast him back into the desert? Or would she even care that he survived?

Finally, somepony who looked like they knew what they were talking about.

The single unicorn sat oddly on a park bench, reading a packet of hastily printed paper. She barely even looked up as he approached. But she wasn’t a mudpony, so he’d already made progress. “Excuse me, spellweaver?”

She didn’t move, didn't even look at him. “Unicorn!” he shouted, hopping up onto the side of the bench. Her head was still well over his, but it was something.

“Oh.” She blinked, then looked at him. “Hey little guy. What can I do for you?”

“I’m in search of knowledge,” he said. “I require a map to the capital. Do the scribes maintain a repository in this agrarian backwater?”

She frowned, looking puzzled. “That’s not a very nice thing to say about Ponyville,” she eventually said. “I know it’s no Canterlot, but… what kind of colt talks like that?”

He ignored the question, and her complaint. “I require scholars. Please, where would I find them? I need to acquire a map before sundown.”

She rolled her eyes, then pointed vaguely towards the absurd tree-castle in the distance. “In there, the Castle of Friendship. Are you lost, kid?”

He hopped off the bench, hurrying in the indicated direction. Sweet Sauce would not stop for anything, even a well-meaning unicorn.

Chapter 2

Sweet Sauce approached the tower of the structure the unicorn called the “Castle of Friendship.” At a glance, it seemed like “Friendship Spire” or “Crystal Monolith” would probably make a better fit. And why was it shaped like a tree?

Equestria had become a strange place since his departure. If he wanted to be home here, sooner or later he would have to figure out why.

But not now. There were simpler goals before him now. First he had to pass the watchful eyes of the Royal Guard, with uniforms that might as well be identical to the ones he remembered. Gold armor, no weapons, and a cutie mark—but not Celestia’s or Luna’s. That was curious.

He slowed a little as he passed through the wide front doors, expecting and perhaps anticipating his arrest and imprisonment.

But he didn’t have a cutie mark anymore—he was a mudpony, and pocket-sized at that. They barely even glanced at him. If he didn’t hurry inside, they might’ve repeated that stupid mantra everypony kept saying. Was he lost?

Yes, he was lost, but he was about to get un-lost.

It was a good thing earth ponies were tougher than they looked, because so were the steps. Sweet huffed his way up an endless spiral through the hollow trunk, passing sealed doors leading to rooms with civic sounding names and sometimes plaques with important history.

Important to somepony else, maybe. He just wanted a map. He would have to figure out what to tell the supervising scholar when they asked him why he wasn’t hard at work on a field where he belonged.

He clawed his way up the last few steps, gasping and panting like he’d just scaled a mountain. And in a way, he had. A mountain of pointless crystal and glass. “Who… thought it was a good idea… put the important stuff up here.”

When he regained his powers, he would need to have a word with the architect. Just because something looked cute in a model didn’t mean it should be built, even if Equestria had apparently mastered the crystal magic of the Empire since his absence.

Curious that it would only be used for one building, though. Were we conquered by the Empire?

His curiosity didn’t run deep enough to let the thought linger for long, though. Sweet had a singular goal, and it remained undone.

He shook himself off, then marched through the open library door.

He glanced to both sides, expecting more guards and at least a few supervising scholars. How could they leave such vast wealth unguarded?

Before him stretched thousands of books, filling shelves so plentiful there was an upper balcony to hold even more of them. His mouth fell open, and he nearly collapsed again.

This was when somepony would stop him, any minute now. Had Equestria become so safe that the wealth of a princess was just displayed?

Or maybe their protections were more covert. There might be spells monitoring, watching for thieves or vandals using their intentions. Those would not trigger on Sauce, as he had only come to scrawl a copy of a map. At worst, he would steal a single vellum sheet.

There were no scholars guarding the doorway, no blue robes with frilly tassels, nopony at all. He walked past an empty circulation desk, past empty reading tables, and comfortable benches that towered over him like monoliths.

Sauce flirted with the idea of selecting a volume at random and reading, to learn whatever secrets of Equestria’s present he might glean.

But the sun was already waning in the crystal window, indicating late afternoon. If he grew too distracted with reading, he might be walking through the Everfree at night.

I have to reach the castle before that, or I’ll have to defend myself. He wasn’t afraid exactly—except perhaps of unnecessary work. Fighting would take effort better spent on important things, like not fighting.

One ear twitched involuntarily, as a single voice wafted through the otherwise silent space. For the second time that day, it was a child’s voice, though this one was a little closer to his own age. He twitched, turning to listen.

“Put it back, Pipsqueak!” she was saying. “Spike could be in any minute!”

“I’m just lookin’!” replied another voice. Male this time, though so high and squeaky it was hard to tell for sure. “There’s no rule against lookin’. What are maps for except knowing where things are, anyway?”

The first speaker whimpered nervously. “Just hurry up. You know they don’t like it if we take things out without an adult.”

Sweet Sauce was already turning by then. He didn’t run—running was a lot of effort. Besides, it might verify the speakers’ fears about adult intervention. If he were going to be stuck in a tiny, pathetic body, he would at least enjoy the benefits of being small and quiet.

He rounded the corner a moment later, and found the ponies in question. One was a little unicorn with an off-gray, pinkish coat. The other was a pinto, a useless mudpony like himself.

Importantly, the colt was the first creature Sauce had yet seen who was smaller than himself. So there was at least one thing earth ponies could do: help repair his ego.

The foals froze as he approached. First they seemed frightened, caught in the middle of their disobedience. But that only lasted a second—as soon as they recognized he was their age, they relaxed.

More importantly, the shelf behind them was overflowing with scrolls, each one packed into protective tubes. At least one was open in front of them, spread on the floor with little respect towards its contents.

“You two shouldn’t be opening scrolls like this,” he said, striding up beside them like the librarian come to inspect their work. It would’ve worked on the colt, but the mare was taller than he was, and she was a unicorn. “What if somepony stepped on it by mistake?”

Correction: it shouldn’t have worked. They backed away from him a single step, obviously intimidated. If you sound like you’re in charge…

He had a few seconds to look down at the scroll, which wasn’t anything useful. Not a map of the capital, or Equestria, or even just the local area. It focused entirely on somewhere called “Trottingham”, which Sauce couldn’t identify and thus instantly lost his interest.

“Who are you?” asked the filly, the first to recover from his correction. “You know about scrolls?”

He nodded. “In my day, scrolls and codices were the norm. You do not want to know where the vellum came from, and nopony wanted to make any more than we needed. It’s way easier to erase and re-use a page when it’s loose like this.”

“In your day?” The colt circled around him. He looked for, then obviously didn’t find, Sauce’s cutie mark. “You’re not much older ‘an me, I reckon. Your day is right now.”

“Unfortunately, but that’s no fault of mine.” He gestured vaguely with a hoof, then calmly stepped over the map and up to the shelf.

For all that had changed in Equestria in the yet-undetermined number of years since his departure, he could still read everything just fine.

“Ponyville and Surrounding Area” seemed useful; unfortunately it was two shelves up, entirely inaccessible.

“What are you two up to anyway?” he asked. He didn’t even give them a chance to answer. “That’s awesome, but do you want to help a pony in need?”

The foals shared a look, then nodded. “I’m Dinky, this is Pipsqueak. What’s your name?”

“Sweet Sauce,” he declared, far too loudly, stepping into the light of the nearby window to strike a dramatic pose. “Discoverer of the Alcubierre manifold teleport, pandimensional worldgate innovator, and three-time Harmony Soufflé World Champion.”

He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t tell my sisters, but the last one was the hardest. Competition was fierce.”

For the third time today, the ponies listening looked utterly dumbfounded.

“I don’t know what those words mean,” Pipsqueak declared. “But they sounded like tall tales to me. It ain’t right spinning tales when you’re asking ponies for help.”

“I’m not spinning anything,” he said flatly. “I’m entirely stationary, and that’s the problem. The map I need is on that shelf, inconsiderately out of reach of young scholars the worlds over. Dinky, could you please levitate it down for me? I’d do it myself, but…” He waved one hoof vaguely over his forehead. “Well, you see my disability. I can feel myself choking on the dirt already.”

She giggled, but the colt just kept staring. Her horn sparked once, and the entire shelf of maps jolted slightly to one side.

She sighed, shaking her head ruefully. “Sorry, weird pony. I wanna help, but…” Her horn sparked again. “I haven’t learned. My mom’s a pegasus, so she can’t teach me. I’m no good at magic. But it’s no big deal—most ponies around here can’t do it neither.”

Sauce frowned, the first time he had since the tragic death of his little music player. “That just won’t do, Dinky. No pony deserves to live so monumentally far beneath her station. If I had more time, I could instruct…” He trailed off, thinking hard.

He didn’t even know what had happened to Equestria over the last years—he couldn’t even say how many years he had missed. Now probably wasn’t the time to be volunteering to fix the poor instruction of a single family.

I might need somepony with unicorn magic if I run into trouble in the Everfree. How long could it take to get an aspiring young talent ready to fight?

“I could show you,” he finally said lamely. “But first! Smallest laborer horse, we will have to resort to the primitive tools of our lowly station to get that map: teamwork.” He stepped sideways, bracing up against the shelf. “Climb up and grab the tube. Be mindful not to drop it—we don’t know how ancient it might be. Vellum becomes brittle as it ages.”

He had to duck down for Pipsqueak to clamber onto his back, but he did, and didn’t object until he’d already stood up again. “Why do you talk like that?”

“The question we all ask ourselves,” Sauce said. “Because Luminous Arc would crack me with a ruler if I did otherwise. Old habits. Deportment, decorum, delicious. The principles of a rounded education. But I’ve had that education more than once now, and the contradictions become constrictions. You know how it is.”

“I have no idea,” he said. But then he got his mouth around the tube, and flopped sideways off Sauce’s back. He landed on the map, righting himself quickly.

“Exactly what I said about putting them on the floor,” Sauce muttered, clucking his tongue with faint disapproval. “Now come on, I need to see this map. We have quite the journey ahead of us.”

Should he be feeling guilty for how easily the little ponies went along with what he was saying? Maybe. He didn’t though.

They left the other map on the floor, and he hadn’t seen whether Pipsqueak’s hooves had even done anything to it. But despite what he said, Sauce didn’t care. Trottingham could keep its own maps.

“Do you really know about unicorn magic?” the filly asked, while he was rolling out the map. “How’d you learn?”

“I dunno if he knows,” Pipsqueak muttered. “Sounds like he just likes to hear himself talk.”

“Yes and yes,” Sauce declared, hopping up onto the table beside the map.

Most of what it showed was useless—names for local buildings, zoning and the like. But there was a little that mattered.

Off in one corner, the scraggly, overgrown nightmare that was the Everfree Forest. Best protection against invasion Equestria’s capital could possibly have.

There in the center, right where he expected, was the Castle of the Two Sisters. Though the artist had clearly taken some liberties with the way they drew it—it couldn’t look like that.

“I’ll prove it, too,” he continued, hopping back down into the chair. “Want to come on an adventure with me? I’ll teach you on the way. You’ll be casting levitation like a pro by the time we get there, or your money back!”

Dinky giggled again. “That sounds fun. Can we be home by dark? My mom gets real nervous if I stay out too late.”

Sweet Sauce nodded, though he didn’t think it was true. “I can practically guarantee it.”

Chapter 12

Sweet Sauce made it through one day of pony school.

Barely.

More than once he found himself wondering if it would've been kinder just to opt for execution. At least that way he wouldn't have been suffering through agonizing, time-wasting hours.

Of course there was nothing new in the fundamentals. Language had changed some of its conventions since he left, but not by much. He could still work with figures, and blasted through every level of student evaluation.

That didn’t mean there weren't big holes, though. Just like Vinyl had highlighted, he didn't know a damn thing about local history or customs. He didn't know the general happenings around Equestria either—why had Princess Luna been banished, how the buck had Tirek found his way back to Equestrian land? Many other, similar questions, all got left blank on his sheet.

Well, after the first one. He came up with a comical fiction for the first question, describing in vivid detail how Princess Luna had discovered Celestia's sweet tooth and publicly shamed her before the Solar Court, only to be banished as soon as they were gone for the day.

He could've sworn he detected a chuckle from Cheerilee when she was grading that question. But lies were a lot of work, and it was much easier just to lean into what he was.

I look like a stupid mud horse. Treat me like one. It can't take very long to teach me how to pull farm equipment. Then I can be out of this stupid place, and you can go back to instructing the other peasants.

"This is the strangest score I have ever seen," Cheerilee said, after dismissing the other students for recess. He sat glumly before her desk, listening with envy as they did anything besides waste away in a stuffy old schoolhouse.

"The test doesn't even have an evaluation for your grasp of language, mathematics, and magical comprehension. But these other scores are... needing improvement." Her face twitched as she said it, suppressing whatever she actually wanted to say. "You've never learned anything about the history of Equestria?"

"I've learned tons." He looked back, unflinching. Sweet wasn't going to be intimidated by a schoolteacher. "None of it was on your test. Ask me about the Tribe Wars, the Scouring of Starswirl, ask me about the Windigos or the Sugar Scourge." He lowered his head at that, taking a pose of mock respect. "May the dead rest in delicious honor."

“That is... very interesting." She set the sheet down, leaning over her desk to watch him. "Could you tell me a little about your instruction, Sweet? I'd expect scores like this from a student going into Celestia's Academy, a decade older than you. Who taught you all this?"

"Clover, mostly," he said, without a hint of irony. "Starswirl was too good for anypony who wasn't a princess. Him and his stupid Pillars of Equestria. Then he up and got himself banished, and it was Clover all the time after that." He glanced longingly at the open windows, and the giggling voices beyond. "Harsh schoolmaster, he was. No breaks."

Cheerilee watched him without comprehension. After a few seconds, she waved towards the door. "Well thank you for, uh... telling me all that. You can join the others. I'll have to think of a curriculum suited for a student as unique as you are, Sweet. I don't want your potential wasted."

"Too late for that, miss," he said, scampering off. "A few centuries too late. I'm every kind of wasted that a pony my age can be. Legally speaking."

He chanced one look at her face, and the layers of deeper confusion warping there. There weren't very many advantages, but being this age did have its perks.

As it turned out, Cheerilee gave lots of long breaks between classes. Despite Ponyville's size, it had a set of really nice playground equipment, with lots of layers and things to climb on. The few pegasi in class took their turns gliding off the highest points, while others amused themselves in little groups.

He found his way to Pipsqueak and Dinky, and they accepted him without complaint.

"What were all those papers?" Dinky asked, kicking him the ball they'd been playing with.

He passed it back, instead of sideways to Pip as the game required. "Don't roll it." He tapped his forehead expectantly. "Every chance to practice. Train your mind; nothing but your magic is an acceptable solution."

"You don't have to listen," Pip urged. But even he seemed to realize how fruitiness the argument was, because he didn't keep it up for more than a few seconds. He watched without objection as Dinky passed the ball again, this time wobbling in shaky magic.

Sweet caught it in one hoof, nodding approvingly. "Good!" He passed it on to Pipsqueak without even looking in his direction. "You'll be a pro conjurer before you know it."

"So what was all that?" Pipsqueak asked again, a little more insistent. "You were really goin' to town back there."

He grunted in dissatisfaction. "Unfortunately it appears my efforts were in vain. I wished to impress upon our instructor the futility of educating me. That would hopefully convey to my adoptive parents the absence of any need to keep me enrolled. Unfortunately there are a number of… gaps. Contemporary history, mostly. Can't be helped."

He slumped onto the ground between them, ears flattening. "She isn't going to recommend to Vinyl that I don't belong here. Cheerilee is just going to give me a targeted education. I can already feel it approaching."

He also felt the ball coming, lobbed by magic straight at his head. He caught it with one hoof, grateful for the sturdiness of earth pony bodies. At least being a stupid dirt horse got him something. He stopped it, then rolled it back towards Pipsqueak.

"I'm glad you're staying," Dinky said, without missing a beat. "Nopony else can teach magic like you do."

"There were others," he said, a little more cheerfully. "Unfortunately, they're dust now. I've been gone too long. Even the powerful spellcasters I knew get reluctant to extend their lives if it meant dealing with awkwardness like..."

He stood up on undersized legs, gesturing at his blank flank. "Well, this. Precision and accuracy, fillies and colts. Learn the difference."

"You're a weird pony," Pipsqueak said. "Guess it makes sense you're staying. Might get into trouble if they let you wander off."

He nodded confidently at the dirthorse. "I assure you, I will find my way into trouble no matter where I'm shoved. Here, there, banishment to another reality. Wherever I go, disaster will surely follow. Mostly for me."

The bell rang, and soon enough it was back into the classroom for another few hours of pointless instruction. Sweet weathered it, mostly by quickly filling in whatever answers came to mind and then doodling increasingly bizarre things on the margins of his assignments. Let Cheerilee figure out what to make of an Exoplanar Summoning diagram. Or... half of one.

The other half was a recipe for a kind of cookies humans liked to make. One of the few things worth a little of his own time, though he would never admit it.

Blessedly, his rescue did come, in time. Unfortunately for him, it came from a princess. Not the one he'd wanted to meet, either.

Twilight Sparkle appeared in the doorway, about ten minutes from the end of class. She whispered something, and Cheerilee nodded her approval. "Sweet Sauce? The princess would like to speak with you. To... welcome you to Ponyville!" That last bit sounded a little strained, even for her.

The other students began to whisper. Most looked away from the doorway, intimidated by the creature looking there. Even a dirt pony could probably sense the magic radiating from her.

Twilight Sparkle might not rank against some of the ancient powers that had once ruled in Equestria. But her eyes were quick, and she radiated a steady stream of magical power. Nothing like Celestia or Luna, but enough that he wouldn't miss it.

"He'll be back tomorrow," Twilight promised. "But I'll worry about getting him back to his family this time."

It wasn't like Sweet had anything to bring from the desk. He rose, making his slow way over to the Alicorn. He ignored the whispers, and the confused stares from his friends.

Were they his friends? They had fought monsters together, once. That probably counted.

Twilight said nothing until they were out of the schoolhouse, and onto the road. She glanced up at the school, then gestured in the direction that would take them away from Ponyville. There was a single residence down this way, and nothing else.

"If you changed your mind about the execution, I know I deserve a trial. At least let me have my hearing before you bury me."

The Alicorn froze on her hooves, staring openly at him. "Do you always say things like that, Sweet?" she asked. "Honeydew reported that you had a colorful vocabulary."

He nodded once. "I've read my share. You try finding something else worth doing in New Mexico. Your choice is a good book or a few hours sweating in the sun. Take your pick."

The princess looked thoughtful. Maybe this was the moment that someone actually heard what he had to say?

"I called you out of class because of... a combination of factors. They concerned Honeydew, and me too. Since I'm in charge of Ponyville, I was close enough to visit and speak with you."

He said nothing, letting the painful silence stretch between them. Sweet had now tried telling two different adults the truth. There was no point volunteering anymore. They never listened.

She might be a princess, but the pressure of his silence wore her down rapidly. Just a few seconds, and she was squirming. "During the rescue, you mentioned something to the older ponies, something that nopony your age should have heard of."

She stopped, her wings half-opening. "There's no wrong answer, sweetheart. No one is upset with you. But I would like to know where you heard about Necromancy."

Oh buck. He'd mentioned it as a passing joke, so briefly that no one noticed. Or more likely, nopony had recognized the word. Except her. "You won't believe me if I told you, Princess. Nobody has. I say things, and nobody believes. Nopony hears. I told Honeydew that I needed to speak with Princess Celestia, that I was ready to face my judgement. But here I am, adopted out to..."

He couldn't bring himself to speak ill of Vinyl and Octavia. He almost did—but they'd never actually done anything to him. Besides, Vinyl hadn't let him try her equipment yet.

"Ponies. You won't listen either."

He felt the touch of wings against his face. Incredibly soft, pushing up on his chin. "Face judgement for what, Sweet Sauce? What could a colt your age have done?"

She had listened, at least in some small way. The words turned to mush in his mouth. He remembered fire, and a terrible crater ripped in the royal laboratory. He heard the swirling madness of outer darkness, and the torn scar in reality his spell had made.

He shook his head vigorously, banishing the pain. His head was quite small, there wasn't room for agony like that. A colt his age shouldn't need to cry. "Things you can't imagine," he whispered, voice cracking. "Princess Twilight, I was banished from Equestria for what I did. I served my sentence, and now I'm back. Until I meet with her and Luna, there's unfinished business."

The Alicorn stood a little straighter. "Does it have anything to do with what you talked about out in the forest?"

He shook his head once. "Necromancy? That's foal's stuff—cheap power for small minds. I like being alive, thanks. Can't work with the dead before you start to die a little too."

Twilight's face was a mask. Her wings snapped to her sides, and she finally pointed back the way they'd come. "Thanks for talking to me, Sweet Sauce. You've given me something to think about."

"Please tell her," he whispered. Begged, even. "Just ask. She'll know who I am. She's the only one in Equestria who will."