We buried Twilight deep, not just out of respect but with a genuine fear that something out there might dig her up.

Spike placed a stone he'd scratched a name and date on at the end of the mound and we stood there and gave the eulogy at the spot where the Tree of Harmony used to grow.

"I promise I'm gonna come back here with the most beautiful headstone you've ever seen." I wasn't sure if I was speaking to Spike or Twilight.

We left just as the sun reached its zenith, casting a golden ray through the cave ceiling and down on Twilight's final resting place.

"What are you gonna do now?" I asked Spike, hanging my head low as we dragged ourselves toward the brightness of the cave mouth.

"I guess I'll stay here until supplies run out," he responded glumly. "Then, depending on what happens, I might flee to the Dragonlands."

"You won't have to flee," I resolved.

"I hope not. the Dragonlands might not have Sombra but they're not exactly nice."

We returned to the lab which to me seemed to have a tainted air about it now. I sat before the ring which, in the mayhem and fallout of everything, hadn't moved since Twilight set it down. I rubbed my face with both hooves, not knowing how to feel about it anymore. The symbol of my love for Cadance was also now a symbol of Twilight's death and her selfless love of country… and her trust in me.

That letter was addressed to the Shining Armor that Twilight used to know but no matter who I was now or my misgivings about rulership, I couldn't let her down. My heart couldn't take it. I would have just dropped dead from sadness but Twilight's sacrifice meant that I had to succeed now more than ever.

I pounded a hoof on the table, rattling the ring on the plate. There had to be another way. She was too exhausted to make a decision like that on her own. She wasn't in her right mind. Of course I would have stopped her, just like she wrote.

My eyes settled on the empty space within the ring as my mind slogged through the darkest of swamps. This is stupid, I thought. I couldn't change anything now. Twilight did what she did and she didn't give me her powers to just sit around dwelling on her loss and what could have been. She gave me a mission.

I levitated the ring in front of my face and snapped off the necklace. I'd wear it like it was intended to be worn. Spike watched breathlessly as I floated the ring over the tip of my horn and slid it down. Just as the metal band lodged snugly on me, electricity surged through my veins. Visions I could only understand as Twilight's memories flooded my head as the synapses in my brain expanded and realigned. I gasped as the euphoric rush subsided.

"Did it work," breathed Spike, wide eyed.

Instead of answering, I looked around for something to test my powers on and singled out a frying pan. I focused the first spell to come to mind and transformed it into an ugly but functional alarm clock. I wound it up and began passing it in and out of little wormholes that I ripped in spacetime all about the room.

I hit the device with an energy blast that made it glow red hot and shoot out little plumes of fire. I continued juggling the smoldering clock through portals before making it pop up in front of me. The cutter I sent through it was three times bigger than the ones I usually made. It sliced the clock in two with a shower of sparks and drove deep into the stone wall with a thud. In an instant, I transfiggured the clock halves back into a single frying pan and let it clang robustly on the floor. Then I cast my ultimate defence which bubbled around a little flask on the shelf. While holding it there, I sent out another diamond cutter. It dissipated on contact with my barrier, protecting the flask within but shattered the two which flanked it on either side.

Spike blinked in amazement. "Woah… you might be more magically agile than Celestia."

"I'd better be," I sighed. By my math, me plus Twili plus live sacrifice needed to yield something unprecedented.

The agility was one thing but I also felt incredibly powerful and well versed. Spells that I previously had no knowledge of how to execute were now second nature to me. Spells that I'd never even heard of before, I could conjure instantaneously as easily as recalling my name.

Was this really what it was like for their kind? Was the bulk of this prodigious epiphany from my sister's exceptional abilities? Was it just typical alicornhood, the sum of those parts or had I transcended to something else entirely? Without having sized up Sombra in years, the magical synergy within me, had me convinced that I was now the most powerful being on the planet.

"I have to go," I murmured, turning to Spike. "Are you going to be okay?"

He swallowed nervously. "That depends. Are you going to die?"

"I don't think so. I feel pretty confident right now, despite everything awful."

—-

I wanted to go straight to the kill and roll credits like I'd wanted to do for almost two and a half years but I was worried about Pinkie and her family. Like Twilight said, I didn't know how it would pan out. After a presumptive win, would it be harder or easier to help them? Would it be more or less dangerous for them? In the end, what drove my final decision wasn't any sort of tactical acumen or statistical calculation. I knew where they all were right now and I just really wanted to see someone happy. I needed it. If I could just find where they were hiding, I could reunite all of them and they should be safe together no matter what happens.

I did what I'd already been doing, bared down and pushed forward with steeled resolve. One second I'm standing in the shadows of the Everfree Forest, the next I'm materializing between two parked trains in Shail Junction. It was an incredible leap, exponentially greater than any distance I'd ever spanned before. The feat was shocking yet somehow just as predicted.

Even having a big cashe of brand new and upgraded spells which I had yet to try out, I was still at the same time acutely aware of the extent of my own abilities. They already occupied a well traveled space in my brain. I did not need to practice with them. I was at the top of my game just as before.

I wandered the train yard in the early afternoon light in much the same way I had on my first visit when I got picked up by Limestone. Seeing no one around, I went in the direction of the depot where I'd been locked up. Between two cars, I saw the same clipboard bearing unicorn guard from before who's name I never got. Close behind him was Limestone. The two were leaving to do audit inspections or whatever it was they did.

I quickly hid behind a parked tanker car and maneuvered around to the other side, keeping out of sight as they passed over the tracks.

As the tip of Limestone's tail vanished behind the corner, I teleported her back to face me.

"Hey," I whispered.

Her eyes bugged out in surprise. "What- What are you doing here?"

"I figured out where your family is hiding… I think."

Her eyes narrowed in determination. "Well, take me there right now."

Her unexpected demand threw me for a loop. "Uh, take, take you? Well there's a few details we should probably-"

She suddenly shoved a hoof over my mouth and shot a glance to the side. "Go ahead," she yelled. "I'll be there in a minute."

I lowered my voice. "The Apples told me Maude went through Ponyville to try to find Pinkie but she'd already left. They said they were going to some cavern in Red Tail Crossing. Does that sound familiar to you?"

She rubbed her chin. "Yeah, that's supposedly where father's family took shelter during a harsh winter on the wagon trail before they settled in Rockville."

"So you know where that is?" I prodded expectantly.

"Not exactly. I've just heard the story about it a million times… but we have maps in the depot." She turned and pointed back the way she came in a beckoning manner.

I preemptively zapped us inside the little building. Limestone blinked confusedly before digging into a cubby of rolled maps. She spread one out, covering the whole table and then flipped it over to see the index. This whole reuniting thing was a more complex puzzle than I'd expected but I felt like we were almost there.

"This is the most detailed map for that area. It should have it." She pointed to the Rs as she scrolled down the list. "G-8," she muttered, flipping the map back over.

We examined the grid swatch which fell upon a quite rural region. It didn't take long to find it. There were only five named things in the whole square of G-8.

"Right there." She tapped her hoof on an intersection of two outlined roads, indicating that they were undeveloped.

"There's… nothing out there," I murmured.

"I'm sure that's the point," she replied absently. "Ugh. I shouldn't run before I have a place to hide but I'm pretty sure I can find that cave if I could just get there." She sighed in frustration. "But it's all wagon roads for miles and probably with half a dozen checkpoints on the way."

I looked all over the map for some place I'd been or even just heard of as a reference point. Ponyville was hugging the opposite edge of the region, almost off the map. I checked the distance scale, trying to estimate how big of a challenge this might be for her alone and started becoming worried. There were indeed no train tracks out that way.

I thought I'd be simply relaying this information and then she'd want to sleep on it to plot her next move if there was one. I hadn't planned on just diving in like this but I couldn't stop myself now. "I could probably get you there in fifteen or twenty minutes," I blurted.

"How?"

"Some creative teleportation," I replied, twirling my hoof.

She furrowed her brow in confusion. "Wait, how far can you actually teleport?"

"Pretty damn far now," I admitted.

"But you needed a train before."

"Yeah, I did. It's a long story but now I don't need a train."

Her forehead wrinkled as she thought. "I have an out to disappear for the rest of the day on official business but that's all I get. If I'm not back tomorrow morning, I get reported as a deserter and I'm stuck out in the open till I can find my family and hide.

My eyes metronomed across the room as I formulated a plan. "I can take you there now. We can look around. If we don't find the place, I'll just bring you back before tomorrow like nothing happened. We can do that whenever you can and as many times as you need.

Limestone gritted her teeth and looked away momentarily. Silently she wiped her eyes with one hoof. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," she agreed with a strained voice.

—-

"Okay, stop. Stop," pleaded Limestone. "I'm gonna barf."

I paused us in the middle of a grassy meadow full of dancing butterflies and she took a deep, labored breath.

"Are you keeping your eyes closed like I said?" I asked, looking alertly around.

"No," she grunted. "What if there's danger?"

"I'll tell you if there's danger. Close your eyes. We'll be there in… I honestly don't know. Less than ten?"

We were both dressed as officers. I figured it would make the trip easier.

"Does Pinkie know anything about this?"

I shook my head, my anxiety over Pinkie renewed. "No. I haven't seen her yet."

"Should we have brought her?" She looked into my eyes with a worry on her face I wouldn't think she'd allow.

"I don't know. She's at work right now."

"Well, so was I… Oh." Her face fell in realization.

"It's okay," I nodded. "I'll have her up to speed by tonight."

Limestone tentatively closed her eyes and we continued teleporting. Red Tail Crossing was probably a day's trip from Ponyville on hoof. I started us out from the Apple's farm and apparated us in a chain of long range bursts as far as my eyes could see while avoiding the roads.

Contrary to popular belief amongst non magic users, even with the incredible teleportation range that I now possessed, I still had to have a mental spacial lock on a location to blink there and that's difficult if you've never been there, can't see it or can't visualize it. The real story though is how I wasn't feeling drained at all.

I took us to the outskirts of an isolated village nestled in a grove of tall trees. The closest town to the crossing was a place called Blossom which had a sign at the entry reading 'Population 48.'

We walked down main street casually, absorbing the feel of the place. I expected rustic but it looked like it hadn't changed since pioneer days, like an untouched community lost to time. The few ponies who saw us, looked away or kept their heads low. At the other edge of Blossom was a worn signpost supporting a collection of roughly painted distance markers, the closest monument being Red Tail Crossing at just two miles.

"So what'd you do in Ponyville, anyway?" grumbled Limestone.

"Looked for your family but the whole reason I went there was to find my sister, Twilight."

She blinked. "Your sister is Twilight Sparkle? I guess I already knew that. She's still out there? Did you actually find her?"

My gaze sank into the dusty wagon rut scrolling lazily beneath my hooves. "Yeah but… then I lost her again."

Limestone spent a moment trying to unravel my vague reply before conceding to her curiosity. "What do you mean?"

"She…" I swallowed as despair swelled in my chest again. "I buried her a couple of hours ago."

"Holy shit." Mortified and spellbound, she quickly looked away.

"She sacrificed herself without my knowing to put her powers into my ring and then told me to go kick Sombra's ass with it. So that's what I'm gonna do."

Limestone stewed silently over the brutally blunt revelation and I started to feel even worse for killing the conversation and painting her into a corner with it. "It's okay if you don't know what to say to that," I fumbled. "I wouldn't know either."

"I'm sorry. I…I didn't know." She shook her head. "I shouldn't have dragged you out here."

"You didn't drag me out here. I wanted to do this. It's the only thing that makes sense right now. It's… healing, I guess."

She looked back at me with words poised in her mouth but they never came out.

The trees disappeared along with the smattering of little log buildings as the old dirt road took us into open fields of waving grass. There were countless outcroppings of big bulbous rocks jutting up all around us. We came upon another signpost marking a crossroads in our path. This had to be it. There was nothing else out here.

Limestone sat on her haunches upon the dirt x and looked around bemusedly at the oddly shaped monuments surrounding us. "Okay, we're looking for a rock formation that looks like an ursa's head."

I scratched my head. "So, one of these big rock mounds has a cave in it?"

"I guess," she shrugged. "I don't know how much of that story is reliable though. Father wasn't even on that journey. It's something his grandfather told him when he was a foal on the rock farm. I didn't know there'd be this many rocks either. I mean, any of these probably could have worked as shelter in some way."

"Don't worry. Remember, we don't have to figure it out right now. And now that we've been here once, we can come right back in a blink.

"Yeah… okay. I guess we should split up."

I nodded in agreement. "And look, it's already divided up into quadrants. You wanna take the town side and I'll do the far side?" I suggested.

She stared incredulously at me.

I frowned. "What?"

"Nothing. No, that's okay." She stood up and flicked the dirt from her tail.

We went to work. I tried to keep my search methodical, grid-like so as not to miss areas or cover anything twice. I recognized many shapes in the rocks but nothing that really stood out as an ursa head.

I teleported to the top of one particularly tall mound just to get a good view. There were dozens of these outcroppings stretching out in all directions like we were ants in a farmer's crop field. I saw the gray figure of Limestone far below on the other side of the road, pacing and scanning the base of a mound for an entry point.

I continued searching but found nothing save for a few shallow, empty nooks. The sun sank lower until everything was bathed in gold and as the shadows lengthened, our hope for finding them today waned. We met back near the crossroads.

"You didn't find anything, did you?" grunted a deflated looking Limestone.

"Nope."

"Smoke break while I think." She backed up against a rock formation and patted down her pockets till she found her pack."

"Share?" I asked meekly. "I'm out."

She held up the open pack on her hoof and I floated a cigarette out.

"Shit. Do I not have matches?" she grumbled angrily, still searching herself.

I magically sparked the end of her cig and then my own. I knew how to do that now.

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh, thanks," she sighed heavily. She slid down the rock face until she was back on her haunches with her eyes closed.

"You seriously think you can beat Sombra?"

"Yeah," I breathed flippantly without hesitation."

"Then you must be pretty amazing. I'd love to have that time back… and our stupid farm. Hard to believe that a couple of years ago I thought my life would just keep going on more or less the same as it always had. Turns out I've never been more wrong about anything ever."

I sat down in the grass beside her. "I think that's normal, to think or lie to yourself that things will always stay the same. There's some fancy psychology term for it but I can't remember. Twilight would have known."

"You two were pretty close?"

"Yeah."

Limestone picked a little white flower and twirled the stem between her hooves, making the petals dance. "I don't get how you can just be out here looking at rocks with me right after that."

I cleared my throat. "I think everyone deals with it differently. I'm like a top. If I stop moving, I fall over and can't get back up."

She laughed weakly. "I guess I can see how that works. Never been there myself, at least not that deep, so I don't know and I don't think I know any well adjusted ponies to take notes on either."

"Is Pinkie well adjusted?" I asked facetiously.

"Pretty sure you already figured that one out by now," she smirked. "She's… different. There's a reason she left the farm. That kind of life isn't for everypony. I never really sorted out if I was personally offended or jealous when she went."

Limestone looked down at the pile of pedals and beheaded flowers between her legs. "Wait… snow." She facehoofed. "It was winter. According to the story, the snow here was as high as 'five buffalo' that season."

"Then that means the entrance wouldn't even be close to ground level where we were looking," I mused.

She shot up and spit out her cigarette. "And it would mean we can ignore all these shorter rock formations. A lot of them would have been completely buried."

I zapped us to the top of a large outcropping and we surveyed the area again, keeping that new detail in mind. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon.

"I count six that would be high enough," I muttered.

"Really?" she scoffed. "Exactly how high is five buffalo then?"

"'Bout that high," I replied, gesturing vaguely to the sky in a silly non answer.

"Well let's go see if one looks like an ursa head."

I took us down to the base of the nearest outcropping that fit the description and we walked around it, looking up watching to see if it metamorphosed into an Ursa.

"Wait, we're just making the same mistake again," I blurted. "What if it only looks like an bear head from-"

"From five buffalo high?" she finished. "Then why don't we just climb all six of the rocks?"

"Yeah," I nodded.

We started scaling the stone in a corkscrew pattern, trying to find an entry anywhere. When we found ourselves at the top, I teleported us to the next one.

I caught myself watching Limestone's ass as she began to ascend fearlessly above me. Were those flanks a Pie thing or just an earth pony thing?

We scouted the second formation all the way up just like the first but found nothing. The dying gasp of the sun's rays vanished from the sky before we reached the third summit with nothing to show. Before we could reflect on our fruitless search combined with our loss of light, Limestone cried out.

"Look," she gasped, pointing out into the dusky field. There, across the way, disappearing into the indigo veil of night, was a great stone mound with two tufted ears and an open snout, roaring up at the sky.

I stroked my chin. "Oh… I see it now."

"Take us over," she ordered impatiently.

I teleported us to a relatively flat spot about half way up. We scattered, moving upward from there. Our exuberance reached a fever pitch as we scrambled haphazardly over the rough stone in the dark as if we could squeeze a little more use of a few lingering particles of light if we hurried.

"Here it is," laughed Limestone.

I scraped around the corner along a narrow walk to meet up with her in front of a dark gap in the stone.

Our eyes widened as an orange glow began to rise from within. Then a warped silhouette materialized on the sweep of the rock wall within.

"Maud," exclaimed Limestone.

Another gray earth pony stepped out of the mouth of the cave, carrying a lantern in her mouth. Her face was expressionless as she calmly set the light down on the ground. "Oh, it really is you," she droned.

Limestone screwed up her face in confusion. "Huh?"

"We made Boulder the lookout. He said you were here." Maud picked up an unassuming but out of place river rock sitting at the entrance. "I can't believe you found us," she continued, affect still as flat as ever.

"Yeah, thanks for looking for me before disappearing into hiding,'' snapped Limestone.

"We had no idea where you were and you never wrote."

"I wrote… like two or three times."

"In two years," Maud retorted matter-of-factly.

Limestone stomped her hoof on the ground. "Beside the point."

This wasn't exactly the happy reunion I was craving.

Maud's eyes turned to me. "Who did you bring?"

"This is Shining Armor, Pinkie's boyfriend. He actually brought me."

Maude cocked her head to the side in what I hoped was pleasant surprise. "Pinkie has a boyfriend now? Is she here?"

"Not yet," I answered.

"C'mon! Take us inside," complained Limestone.

Maud bent down and picked up the lantern in her teeth once more. We followed her inside, down a spiraling descent just big enough for a pony to walk through. I kept my eyes on Limestone's hooves, chastely averting them from her hindquarters. Finally the ground leveled off and the passage opened up into a sizable chamber adorned with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites.

On the floor, illuminated by another lantern was what I could only describe as a subterranean picnic. The rest of Pinkie's family, Igneous, Cloudy and Marble, gathered round a humble setting of plates on a blanket. Their fare was hay and mushrooms.

The three of them shot up at our intrusion and rushed to mob my companion.

"Limestone," gasped Cloudy who spearheaded the pack. She flew to her side but gave her a conservative side nuzzle as if to save space for the others.

"This is truly a great day," proclaimed Igneous, resting a distant hoof on her withers. Marble was the only one to give her a full on embrace around the neck, marking an end to an obvious stretch of desperation and worry.

Despite the repressive austerity they possessed in Pinkie's photo, her parents really did seem overjoyed to have one of their daughters back right now.

"Is Pinkamena with you?" asked Cloudy.

I smiled at hearing her given name.

"No, mother," answered Limestone. "Uh, Everyone, this is Shining Armor." She pointed to me and I was all but certain it was the first time they'd actually noticed me. "He figured out where you were and helped me find you."

"Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire?" blinked Igneous in disbelief.

"Formerly known as," I scoffed.

"Will wonders never cease? We owe you a debt of gratitude."

Pinkie's parents laid their hooves on my shoulders in sincere appreciation.

"You should stay for dinner," mumbled Maud, sitting down at the blanket. "I hope you like cave mushrooms… because it's cave mushrooms again.'

"I would love too but you know what I would love even more? If Pinkie was here with us."

"I would love that too," she agreed.

"I'm sure you all have a lot of questions and catching up to do. I'm gonna go get her. It won't take long."

The family reassembled at the dinner blanket but before I could depart, I felt a hoof tap my side.

"Wait," said Limestone. She swallowed. "Um… it's been a while since I saw someone actually care about someone else's problems… Kinda makes me wanna hurl, in- in a good way, I guess." She grimaced and scratched her head, flustered with her inability to express her gratitude.

I felt like this was the best first impression that I could have possibly made with Pinkie's family.

"We did good. High hoof?" I suggested.

"Yeah, that works," she agreed.

We bumped hooves and I caught her smiling.

"Well, thanks," she mumbled at the ground.

"I'll be back soon," I promised. "I'm going to go get Pinkie and then I'm going to get you your farm back and then even more."

She looked up at me with startled amazement before I vanished in a flash.

Author's Note

Man, that was a long one.

Climax incoming...

Also the end of this chapter reminded me of this: