The Twilit Tower

Chapters

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter I
The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter II
The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter III
The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter IV
The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter V
The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter VI
The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter VII
The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter VIII
Interlude: The Magician — Chapter I
The High Priestess — Chapter I
The High Priestess — Chapter II
The High Priestess — Chapter III
The High Priestess — Chapter IV
The High Priestess — Chapter V
The High Priestess — Chapter VI
The High Priestess — Chapter VII
The Hermit — Chapter I
The Hermit — Chapter II
The High Priestess — Chapter VIII

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter I

The tower watches. The tower waits. Ponies move within and without and the tower watches, and waits, and puts the pieces into place. Lessons are learned, and lives are shaped. The wheel turns, and all is as it should be. All is as it will be.

The tower watches a new pony approach. An old pony. Older than anything, but still only seven. The wheel is turning. It is time to teach.

The filly struggled onward through the darkness. Unseen branches and thorns caught in her fur and tugged at her skin. Far away, a crow cawed. Fog curled around her hooves, and Twilight suppressed a shudder at the slow dampness of its passage over her flesh.

The night pressed in from every side, and the foal had to fight the urge to sob.

She was having the Dream again.

The ground beneath her hooves was moist and squelched with every step, but Twilight knew that if she looked down she would see nothing but darkness. The twigs that scraped against her flank were real enough to draw blood, but if she tried to grab one in her hoof there would be nothing but air.

The Dream was always the same. First the nothingness, the night and the thorns. And then —

And when she looked up at the horizon, there it was. The same as it always had been. Malevolent and horrible, squatting over the horizon like some vast, hideous toad. The building loomed over the landscape; its shadow stretched for miles, but no matter how long she walked for, Twilight would never reach even the outermost edge.

That was the curse of this place. You could walk and walk forever, and never be any closer to a way out. The Dream lasted as long as it pleased, and days could seem to pass with no relief. Each time she woke panting and gasping, sheets slick with sweat, to find that she had been gone from the waking world for only a few hours. Her mother chided her for being clingy on nights after she had the Dream, but she didn’t understand.

Nopony did.

Twilight alone was its victim, and it seemed to delight in the terror it ignited in her, the distant building carving a jagged smile into the starless sky as it watched her pant and panic.

But Twilight took a deep breath, mastered her fear, and began again to walk. What else could she do? She had tried sitting still before, and if you waited too long, unseen somethings began to slither through the dark around you. She had tried screaming for her parents; there was no one to hear. All there was, the only solution, was to walk.

So Twilight plodded on through the endless, formless world, eyes fixed on the sole focal point; that wretched building, poised before her like a cat above a mouse. Its outer form changed each time she saw it — sometimes it sported jagged minarets and buttresses, other times it was squat and square like an office building. Once it had been a strangely elongated cottage, like a witch’s house from a fairy story.

But always it was the same shade of purple, almost like her own coat, but dingier, greyer.

And always the windows were the same. Dark, eyeless sockets, staring out into the night with a gaze blacker than black. Emptier even than the world of the Dream itself.

Twilight walked until her hooves ached, until her little muscles screamed for a rest, for some relief, and then she walked some more. A stitch came and went, jabbing into her ribcage like a dagger, but she walked through that as well.

Watching the building got old fast. Mostly she kept her eyes on her hooves, watching the purple blobs of her legs moving one in front of the other, one in front of the other. The rhythm was as restful as anything could be in this place. And she preferred watching herself to the only other option; the building in the distance.

But when she looked up, something was different. Something was wrong.

It took her a second to place it, but then she gasped and pointed her hoof, mouth agape.

The building was closer.

It was a leaning tower today, with six windows stacked one atop the other, watching her with six empty glares, but…but she was close enough to see the stonework. The lintels and the doorways.

How had she gotten closer? The Dream had haunted her for as long as she could remember — she had a few hazy memories of waking up in tears, scrambling from her cot with unsteady legs and screaming for her father — but the building had always behaved the same. Its appearance changed, but its distance never did.

And yet now here it was. Less than two hundred feet away. Watching her.

Waiting to see what she would do next.

Heart pounding in her eardrums, Twilight took one hesitant step forward, and then another. Slowly, cautiously, the foal advanced towards the building at the heart of the Dream.

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter II

Little by little, the invisible ground began to slope upwards. Twilight stumbled more than once, but eventually she figured out the angle and worked out the right height to place her hooves. It was basic trigonometry; thirty three degrees. Miss Crabapples would be proud.

Twilight had long since surpassed the other foals in her grade — they were still on their times tables and she was moving on to the same math textbooks Shiny was using for high school with only a little help from Miss Crabapples.

The building was close now. Only a few steps away. It looked like a tower tonight — impossibly tall and slender, with a single turret rising from the roof. Like something Ra-pone-zel might live in.

But the windows were the same as they had always been. Vantablack. Endlessly deep. Utterly impenetrable. Anything could be hiding in darkness that complete. Anything could be watching from those windows. Waiting for her.

Twilight swallowed hard. “SohCahToa,” she whispered to herself, seeking comfort in the familiar. “Sine equals opposite over hypotenuse, cos equals adjecant over hypotenuse, tan…tan…” Her voice was horribly quiet in the night. “Tan…equals opposite over adjacent…”

The mnemonic recited, she tailed off, and the motion of her hooves faltered and finally stopped. The tower soared into the empty sky, and those black windows watched her, the silence pressing down, as weighty as the dark.

Shifting unhappily from hoof to hoof, Twilight hesitated. What was the right course of action? Never before had the Dream followed this course. It had always been exactly the same. The darkness, the endless walking, the brambles and the distant building. Always watching, never waiting.

But tonight it had finally changed. Now, of all times, she had finally been permitted to approach. Or rather — she had been approached. Though it had been her legs that seemed to move, Twilight had no doubt of who the true initiator had been. The building had finally deemed her worthy. And…and she had no idea why.

Twilight Sparkle was a foal who prided herself on her rationality. Her ability to think calmly and rationally. The Dream had always been a weak point — but she had talked to her parents, had read a psychology article in a magazine Daddy brought her — and she had been fairly confident in classifying the Dream as a run of the mill night terror or recurring dream. But recurring dreams did not change. They just recurred.

And now the Dream was changing, and Twilight was suddenly not so sure that she felt calm and logical after all.

“SohCahToa,” she finally said, trying to pull herself back to reality. “Sine equals opposite over hypotenus.”

The world was rational. The world was sane. She was rational. She was sane. She was a scientist — or she would be when she was grown up, which was practically the same thing — and she could figure this out.

The Dream had ceased to be a recurring dream or a formulaic nightmare, that much was clear. But it was still just a dream. She remembered going to sleep, remembered the copper-hot taste of the cocoa that scalded her tongue. The gentle tickle of her Daddy’s fur on her forehead as he kissed her goodnight. And then closing her eyes and just fizzing with excitement about tomorrow. The entrance exam. Princess Celestia! Magic school. Only the knowledge that a good night’s sleep is vital for a healthy brain stopped her from hopping straight back up and heading right back to her textbooks.

She had tossed and turned for what felt like hours — and then suddenly, with no shift in consciousness, the Dream. Unpleasantly familiar. But different, tonight. Now she was closer to the building than she had ever managed to get before.

Perhaps it was as simple as the stress of the entrance exam wreaking some unheard-of chaos in her subconscious that was causing this strange departure from the norm.

Yes, that must be it. And once the entrance exam was over and done with, the very first thing Twilight was going to look up in that glorious new library was the tantalising reference to lucid dreaming she had come across in Trotson’s Dictionary last month. Once she figured that out, the Dream would be dealt with once and for all.

She peered up at the tower again, tilting her head back until her neck ached. But the roof was now nowhere in sight — the tower seemed to stretch on forever.

If only she had prioritised that research sooner. Maybe then she would be able to wake herself up on command.

As she lowered her gaze again, her ears flattened. The building had taken advantage of her distraction to make a change. Where previously purple-grey stone had risen smooth and unmarred, now there was a door.

Twilight pressed her lips together as she regarded it. The door was painted a deep purple, and sized only a little larger than she was tall.

It was an obvious invitation.

She let out a breath and tried to think about her options. She could not wake herself up on demand, and she could not control the dream as a practised lucid dreamer could. Her only choice was to wait and hope she would awaken. She could sit here and wait — or she could go through that door and see what lay beyond.

With a slight lowering of her brows, Twilight moved forward and pushed the door lightly. It slid silently open on well-oiled hinges and her eyes widened as she saw what lay beyond.

The foal dipped her head and stepped through the door. Unprompted, the door closed behind her. With a slight hiss, the purple stones rippled back into place, as though the door had never been there at all.

The tower had swallowed her whole.

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter III

Eyes wide, Twilight Sparkle padded further into the strange room. It resembled nothing so much as a hotel lobby — there were sofas, chairs, a parquet floor; even a reception desk. It looked almost normal, apart from the fact everything was decorated exclusively in varying shades of the same dull lavender as the walls. The only thing missing was the ponies.

Slowly, cautiously, she skirted the edges of the room. The wide purple carpet led toward a vague rectangular outline carved into the wall, but there were no doors leading to a foyer outside. When Twilight glanced over her shoulder, even the tiny door she had entered through had vanished.

In all other respects than its total lack of doors and windows, the lobby was a standard one. It could have belonged to any of the many hotels she had stayed at with her family over the years. Her father wouldn’t have looked out of place on that settee, sipping tea while he read one of his detective novels. Her mother would be leaning against the reception desk, chatting with the staff about the weather and the local tourist attractions. Shiny would be running riot through the lobby, dodging imaginary enemies and wielding his wooden sword with righteous anger.

A smile quirked the edges of Twilight’s lips. This empty hotel lobby inside a tower too small to contain it was creepy, no matter how she looked at it — but she just had to remember that it wasn’t real. This was all just a dream, and soon enough she would wake up and be home with them.

And she would take her entrance exam, and she would get that scholarship, and she would learn magic from the Princess herself. No knowledge would be beyond her, and life would be everything she had ever dreamed.

“I’ll wake up soon,” Twilight promised herself, to make it true. “This is just a…a game until I do.”

She completed her circuit of the room and paused back where she had started. The only real aperture that the lobby contained was a single pair of elevator doors. They might be false, of course, with nothing behind them. But given that the other spots in the room where doors might be contained only indentations, it seemed unlikely that the elevator doors would have nothing behind. Twilight was more concerned with the lack of a strong earth pony to power the elevator’s passage up to whatever other rooms the tower contained. Then again, this was a dream. Perhaps she would be able to power the elevator by magic, or something.

On closer inspection, the elevator did not possess a call button. The metal plate where a button should be bore only a small keyhole. There was no key in sight.

Twilight scowled. Even her own subconscious was unwilling to make this easy for her, it seemed.

Fine. So she needed a key. She was in a lobby — where would a key be in a hotel lobby?

Her gaze flicked to the reception desk, where she had imagined Twilight Velvet chatting with a non-existent concierge. Bingo. The reception desk was where they kept the room keys.

Moving faster now that she had identified a potential solution, Twilight bounded over to the desk, and with only a moment’s hesitation, slipped across that invisible border between ‘guest’ and ‘staff’.

Wriggling up into the plush chair behind the desk, Twilight peered into the shadowy recesses of the concierge’s domain. The desk seemed ordinary enough at first glance. Pencils in pots, a clipboard, a binder or two. No keys hanging on hooks, though. The dim light from the purple-tinted bulbs above did not permeate into the deepest corners of the desk, and Twilight stretched out her hoof, feeling blindly in case there was anything hidden there. She strained to touch the wall of the desk, which she knew must be there, as she had stood on the other side of it not a moment before.

But from the concierge’s side the reception desk seemed much deeper. No matter how far she reached, she could not find the desk’s limits. And with her head down here as well it was so confoundedly dark — wait a minute! Twilight groaned aloud. She was a day away from the entrance exam to Equestria’s most prestigious magic school, and it hadn’t even occurred to her to use the very simplest spell taught to toddlers just learning how to use their telekinesis.

Twilight Sparkle lit her horn, and gasped aloud.

The desk was not a desk at all from this side. It was a tunnel, and it stretched on further than the limits of her purple-pink light could reveal. She hesitated for a second, then shrugged. It was only a dream, after all. With a little wriggling, the rest of her followed the initial hoof into the hidden space beneath the reception desk, leaving the concierge’s chair spinning behind her.

The tunnel was not tall enough to stand upright in, but Twilight was a small and determined foal, and she made good progress through the passage, squirming along on her belly. Her horn-light revealed about five yards ahead of her, and it was hard to measure the progress she was making when the pink circle of illumination moved along with her.

When she saw a pale shape ahead of her she cut the spell immediately. The darkness plunged back toward her, and she had to stifle an instinctive squeal of fright. Relax, Twilight! It’s just like Shiny says. The dark can’t hurt you.

The indistinct shape ahead of her resolved itself into a rectangle of light, roughly the same size as the desk alcove she had entered through. With a final shove of her hind legs, she was through, tumbling down to land on her rump on a hard stone floor.

Twilight picked herself up and peered around. The room was small and cuboid, completely devoid of furniture. The only decoration was on the walls — hundreds, if not thousands of little hooks adorned every wall, and from every hook hung a small, shiny key.

Well. Looked like she had found the key cupboard. Surely one of these would open the elevator.

Twilight did a cursory lap of the room, but every key looked identical. Small, silvery, with the same tines and lumps. Impatient, she huffed air out through her nostrils. Stupid dream couldn’t even bother to make more than one key. Well, perhaps it didn’t matter which key she took? Maybe they were all the same.

She picked one at random and wrapped it in her magic, floating it down towards her. As soon as it left the hook, something changed. If she hadn’t been using her magic, or perhaps even if the key had not been wrapped in her magical field, she would have missed it. But she felt it. A little pulse, accompanied by a small grinding noise from behind her. She turned, but nothing had changed. The tunnel was there, same as before, stretching on into the pitch black, the lobby waiting unseen beyond it.

She shrugged and trotted back toward the exit, the key floating beside her. Rearing up onto her hind legs, she reached for the lip of the tunnel entrance, ready to pull herself up onto it — but when her hoof approached it, she met resistance. She tried again, frowning, and again the same thing happened — an invisible barrier was blocking her way. She tapped on it experimentally, then banged, but no matter how hard she hit it, the barrier was the same. Flush to the wall, blocking the tunnel entrance.

Locking her in.

A frisson of fear rippled down her spine, but Twilight kept herself steady. She was made of sterner stuff than this. It was some sort of — a shield spell, maybe? Like Shiny’s. It had locked down when she took the key. It stood to reason that it would unlock when the key touched it.

She floated the key toward the shield to test her theory, but nothing changed. Twilight frowned and let the key fall. Every key in here was identical, but clearly she had picked the wrong one.

Stretching out her magic again, she picked up four different keys at random points from across the room. She kept her eyes on the tunnel entrance as she did so, and this time she saw exactly what happened.

As the keys lifted off their hooks, the grinding noise began anew, and the four walls of the tunnel moved inwards. It was not by much — half the span of her hoof, perhaps — but the tunnel definitely shrank.

A lump rose in Twilight’s throat. Without the right key, whichever key it was, she could not exit. And every time she tried a key, the tunnel would shrink. How many tries did she have? She performed a few quick mental sums — if every key took an inch off the tunnel’s height and width — well, that was forty attempts, at an absolute maximum.

That crawling feeling on her spine was back, and much stronger than before. Twilight was not claustrophobic (a word that she had enjoyed the taste of ever since she first read the thesaurus cover-to-cover at the age of four years old) but she began to feel like perhaps she was developing it.

Just in case, she tried each of the four keys held in her magic, but none produced any effect, and her hoof still could not pass through the wall. Panic rose in her throat, and it was a struggle to stay calm.

“Okay,” Twilight said, and the shock of her own voice was loud enough to make her flinch. “Okay, Twilight Sparkle. You are smart. You can solve this.”

There was silence for a moment as she thought.

“Try one more key, just in case.”

It was not the very best plan, but it was worth one more roll of the dice. It might be her lucky day. And she had a little more leeway before the tunnel would become difficult to traverse.

She scanned the wall of keys once more, and selected one that seemed especially shiny. She pulled it off the key, tensed for that rumbling noise — and sure enough, there it was.

The key joined the other five on the ground; a pile of failures.

“I tried the key,” said Twilight, answering her own suggestion. “Didn’t work. What now?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, honestly. “I have no idea what to do.”

“Okay,” she said, striving to hit a positive note. “What would…what would Shiny do? What would Clover the Clever do?”

“Use magic,” was the prompt answer, “Clover the Clever would have a spell for this.”

“What spell?”

“I don’t know! I’m seven."

“Ugh!” Twilight stomped her hoof on the ground in sheer frustration. This self-talk was getting her nowhere, and was just making her feel like a crazy pony, as well as a lonely pony.

“Clover the Clever would look at the problem, and work out what spell would be best,” she said, pacing back and forth in front of the tunnel. “She’d…she’d use the Sight.”

Bingo. That was the solution, right there.

Twilight had only read about the spell in the vaguest of terms — it involved opening oneself up, and seeing the truth of things beneath the matter of things, but none of the textbooks were terribly specific.

After a lot of late-night sessions and a lot of reading in the age-restricted advanced section of the library, she had finally reached a point where she could — sometimes — in the quiet of her room, after an hour of quiet thought and slow effort, catch a glimpse of a faint, shimmery thing out of the corner of her eye that she thought might be a leyline.

But when you got really good, when a real mage looked at the lines with her mage’s sight, you could see everything. The way the world worked, the way the clouds and the seasons moved. The way the trees grew. The way magic flowed through ponies.

Twilight wanted to be good enough to see all that one day. And with enough work, and the right school, she knew she would be good enough. It was only a matter of time.

And for right now, maybe even her limited skills would be enough to see if any of the keys was more magical than another.

She shut her eyes and tried to empty her mind. She cast her magical senses outward, brushing over every corner of the room, every key, with her telekinesis. Just touching without taking hold. That alone was more magic than many ponies could dream of. But she was Twilight Sparkle, and nothing could stop her.

Twilight Sparkle, future Grand High Archmage of Canterlot University, opened her eyes.

And screamed.

The lines, always hazy at the best of times, suddenly sprang into dreadful and vivid reality. Twilight had never sensed them so clearly — nor had she ever been somewhere with such a horrifying whirl of energy. The normally peaceful lines, laid out in an orderly pattern of mild curves and straight lines, whirled and tangled around the room in a dizzying mess. And worse, they were moving. The lines did not move. They simply were. What manner of place was this?

Twilight blinked and blinked again, harder and harder, trying to shut off her magical sight. But it would not go — the lines were still there, writhing and gyrating like living things, pulsing closer with every passing second — and stars, what would happen if one touched her? Twilight backed away, pressing herself against the wall that appeared to her magical vision only as a faint sketch, while the lines that were all too real twisted and spun in every direction. They paid no heed to mundane concerns like floor or ceiling, and the hideous whirl of lines that Twilight could make out above her must be the rest of the tower.

She shook her head from side to side, and then she saw it. A blaze of purple light in her peripheral vision. She turned to it with reluctance, praying it would not be some fresh horror like a knot in the leylines. They were supposed to be ordered. All the books said so. The cosmic framework that lies beneath our world, the celestial clockwork, Hayhoof called it. That was an image that Twilight had loved. That was what she had tried to see every time she shut her eyes and cast the spell for Sight, a feat that was beyond even her parents’ capabilities.

Thank the stars, it was not a knot. It was a — an object? Something glowing so bright that it almost rivalled the lines themselves.

Squinting against the brightness did nothing, of course, because it was a magical signal her brain was only interpreting as visual stimulus, but nonetheless Twilight squinted as she approached it.

Once she was close enough that her nose almost brushed it, she could finally make out the shape within the inferno.

A key.

Twilight reached out with her magic and seized it, and to her surprise it did not burn her. Shaking her head hard to clear it from the Sight and the terrifying tangle of the leylines — of the order of the world! — she made for the tunnel.

With a sob of relief, she scrambled into its now-tighter confines. It did not resist her this time. The invisible shield was gone. Crawling was much harder than it had been, but she fought her way through the tunnel’s confines with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. For one horrible moment, she had really thought she might be trapped in there for good.

Bursting out of the far end of the shrunken passageway, Twilight collapsed onto the parquet floor, the key falling from between her teeth. Trembling, she lay very still for a moment, and then finally began to sob.

The horror of what she had witnessed finally began to sink in, and in the darkness behind her eyes she could still see the dreadful twisting mass of leylines. There was no way that her subconscious could ever make up something like that. Twilight was clever, but she was not imaginative. She liked science books, not storybooks. History was as close as she ever got to fiction. The bizarre things in this place had not come from her imagination.

And even if it had, the terror she had felt in that room — when the door began to close, and then when she saw the lines — that ought to have been enough to scare herself awake from even the deepest of sleeps.

The evidence was mounting. Twilight was beginning to believe that the Dream was not a dream at all.

She had no comprehension of magic as advanced as the magic that must have created the tower. It was the work of an archmage, or a Princess — but someone as powerful as that would surely be able to find a way to draw ponies in as they slept. Had she been trapped here, somehow? But by who? What evil wizard worth his salt would waste his high-powered magical traps on a seven-year-old?

Her mind was whirling as she staggered over to the elevator door and fitted the key in the lock. The pneumatic doors hissed open, without even a hint of magic to move them, and the foal climbed inside.

The panel held no buttons, and the only directional arrow showed up. The doors slid shut, and Twilight, too numb to wonder if this was wise, let it happen. The same two thoughts chased each other round and round her skull, like dogs fighting over a bone.

What is this place? And how do I get home?

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter IV

The elevator hissed slowly upwards, and Twilight waited. The quiet hum of whatever hidden magic or machinery powered it was unnerving. Twilight had encountered elevators only once before, on a trip to Manehatten the summer before, when the family had accompanied Twilight Velvet to present her latest paper at a conference at Manehatten University. Those elevators had moved only with the distant thudding of hooves, as the muscular earth ponies that powered them thundered along on the treadmill hidden somewhere beyond the urbane mirrors and tinkling music.

There were no earth ponies moving this contraption. In this place, Twilight Sparkle was quite sure that she was more alone than she had ever been.

Twilight stood very small at the centre of the cuboid space and tried to ready herself for whatever was coming. The only problem was that she had no idea what that was.

She was somewhere intensely magical, that was clear. Somewhere designed by a mage of almost unimaginable power — capable of creating pocket dimensions, of remotely teleporting desired individuals from anywhere in Equestria. Capable of dream manipulation. These were skills so impossible that not even Princess Celestia herself possessed them.

Two years ago Twilight had begun swimming lessons at her local pool. Physical exertion had never been among her favourite pastimes, but the lessons had taught her one truly valuable skill.

The ability to spot when she was well and truly out of her depth.

And the worst of it was that she had been coming here unintentionally for years. She had skirted the Dream’s edges unwittingly, believing herself the victim of simple foalish nightmares. And only now that it had pulled her well and truly into its maw did it reveal its true nature.

The elevator halted. Twilight tensed, ready to flee or cast her closest approximation of Shiny’s shield — but the doors did not open. Instead the entire elevator lurched disturbingly to the side, and just as Twilight’s mind summoned a horribly realistic image of the steel cables holding her up beginning to fray and snap, one by one, it began to move once more.

But this time it was travelling unmistakeable sideways.

Twilight was not a particularly mechanically-inclined scholar. Intricate mechanical instruments could be interesting, but most of their value lay in what they could tell her about thaumaturgical energies. But by Celestia, she knew enough to know that elevators did not move horizontally.

This mage was not only pushing the boundaries of magic — but also of physics itself.

For a moment, she began to feel queasy, but she swallowed the bile, ignoring the burning in her throat, and strove for calm. She already knew their capabilities. Had she not seen the hidden room beyond the tunnel, the way the tunnel itself warped and shrank? No, she knew what she was up against. This was just more proof atop an already too-large pile.

The elevator jerked again, and continued its journey in another entirely new direction. Twilight stumbled but just about managed to maintain her balance. It wasn’t until the elevator stopped that she finally lost her footing.

She was still clambering back to her hooves when the doors hissed open.

The world beyond the elevator’s golden-lit square was empty and black. Twilight pushed down another wave of fright and tried to master herself. Celestia help her — this horrible place had reduced her back to a trembling four-year-old, afraid to sleep alone after Shiny had moved out of their shared nursery into his big-boy room.

Twilight waited, just in case anything was about to jump out at her, but everything was dark and still, and the elevator doors showed no sign of closing again. Clearly, this was where she was meant to disembark.

Cautiously, she inched toward the doors. Skipping straight out into the dark would be lunacy, and she had an unpleasant feeling that the second she was through those doors the elevator would instantly depart, or possibly even vanish. She wanted to be sure she knew what was out there before she gave it the chance to do so.

The lobby had been creepy, but at least she had been able to see what was going on.

She poked her muzzle through the sliding doors and waited, wide-eyed, for her vision to adjust. The bright glare from the elevator lights didn’t exactly help, but after a few minutes of concentrated peering into the gloom, she began to think she could make out some shapes.

Shelving. Lots and lots of shelving.

Row after row of it stretched away into the dark. Shadowed recesses of glossy black wood.

Twilight’s mouth formed a little ‘O’ of surprise. “A library.”

Reassured despite herself, she took a couple of steps forward. A library was familiar. A library was safe. Even one as huge and shadowy as this. She approached the nearest shelf and peered into it, ears tipping back again as she saw that there was nothing on it but dust. She checked the next, and the next, but they were all the same.

This library was completely devoid of books.

And as she was checking the fourth aisle, just to be sure — she heard the quiet ding of the elevator doors closing.

“No!” She whirled back, but it was too late.

There was nothing there but a smooth, blank wall.

Twilight stood for a moment, flanks heaving, jaw clenched so tight that her teeth were grinding against one another. This stupid tower kept trapping her. It wasn’t fair.

Spinning back to face the empty library — what sort of books might a place as magical as this have contained? — Twilight steeled herself. Another floor, another puzzle. There was a pattern emerging. Very well. She would solve it, and find the elevator again. Go up another floor, and maybe she’d reach the exit sometime soon.

She drew closer to the shelves, and trotted alongside the aisles for a few paces. Every one appeared identical, but she could see no further than twenty paces down each. The shadows swallowed up everything beyond that. Even her brightest horn-light could not pierce it.

Just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything — calm and methodical, just like doing a test paper — she double-checked the area in which she was standing for clues or hints. Nothing but dry, dust-choked carpet tiles, and shelves upon shelves stretching away in both directions.

She needed to go in.

Pulling in a deep breath and reminding herself firmly that she was not afraid of the dark, Twilight squared up to the nearest aisle of shadows. She didn’t linger; there was no point. She stepped into the penumbra of the shelves, and she didn’t look back.

Dust filled the air and scratched in her throat, thick as ash. It lay deep enough on the bookshelves to give everything bathed in Twilight’s pink field of light a strangely fuzzy look. Like everything was somehow made of felt.

Having assumed that the shelves would run parallel to one another all the way to the other side of this shadowy room, Twilight was perturbed when she came across her first corner. She followed it readily enough, but when she reached a junction where the path branched off into three separate paths, each lined by the same dusty shelves — then she did pause.

“Is this…a maze?” She spoke the words aloud and then immediately regretted it. One small voice in the great darkness, in a twisting web of shelves…it just made her feel even smaller.

I wasn’t ready for a maze. Perhaps I’d better turn back and think again. It was possible one of the other aisles would lead directly to whatever door lay on the other side of the shelves. Not likely, but possible.

She trotted back to the previous corner and turned, ready to head back out to the open area and choose another aisle — but the corner did not lead to the same long straight section that she had originally followed. Instead Twilight found herself at another junction. With five branching paths this time.

Twilight sat down on the floor hard enough to send a mushroom-cloud of dust puffing out in every direction. More space-warping trickery. It shouldn’t surprise her, not after the lobby, but somehow she hadn’t expected it to alter in real time.

For a moment she wondered if she might cry — Celestia knew she felt tired and hopeless enough to do so — but no tears came, and eventually she hauled herself back to her feet. It was just a puzzle. Like the lobby. Okay, that was scary — but it was alright in the end. Twilight was good at puzzles. She could do puzzles.

After a moment of indecision, she picked a path at random and plunged deeper into the maze.

One junction led to another, and another and another, in a fractal pattern so fragmented that Twilight soon lost all track of the direction the elevator originally lay in. The bookshelves were all identical. Dark wood, mahogany or black oak, polished until it shone and reflected dim purple lights back at her. Smothered in dust on any horizontal surfaces, and utterly empty. And always eight shelves high, far taller than even an adult pony would be able to see over.

For perhaps the first time in her life, Twilight almost wished that she were a pegasus instead of a unicorn.

By the time she reached the small clearing Twilight was flagging — not that calling it a clearing felt right, she was in a library, not a forest. But the little space between the narrow aisles, with eight new passages splitting off on its far side, seemed much more of a clearing than a room or any other comparative descriptor.

Twilight sighed and sank once more to her haunches. Shouldn’t she be hungry by now? She ought to be. But she felt nothing other than a little soreness in her muscles. Would she be able to sleep, if she tried to? Could one dream within a Dream?

She didn’t know. She just wanted it to be over already.

And then Twilight heard hoofsteps.

“Twilight?” said a voice, a mare’s voice, husky and deep. “Twilight Sparkle, is that you?”

The voice emanated from the darkness behind her, and Twilight flinched. She did not know that voice.

Her mother’s words echoed in the back of her mind, repeated every time she was halfway out the door, en route to the library with a saddlebag stuffed full of overdue books. Hurry back, Twilight, and don’t talk to strangers.

Slowly, she turned, and saw a mare emerging from yet another aisle. Her horn glowed with her own yellow light, and where it overlaid Twilight’s purple the shelves and floor were illuminated in a shade of dusky orange.

The mare herself was shaded in yellow as bright as her magic, with a mane of fierce red and amber. Only her eyes were not yellow-toned; blue and even, and staring at Twilight with something remarkably akin to recognition.

“Twilight?” The mare sounded less certain now. “It’s me. Sunset.”

Twilight shook her head, and backed away, eyes on the nearest aisle. This was the first living pony she had seen in this strange ghost-building, and she wasn’t sure whether to be glad or afraid. On the one hoof, this could be another person trapped by the tower in the same way that she was — or it could be the tower’s mysterious architect, come to toy with her further. The urge to run warred with the age-old instinct that safety lay with the herd, and she finally settled with hovering just by the entrance to the aisle of shelving; ready to flee in an instant if the stranger grew hostile.

“I don’t know you,” she said at last, and the stranger called Sunset looked utterly lost.

“But you are her. I know you are. I mean, you’re maybe a bit…smaller, than the Twilight I knew, now I think about it,” she inspected Twilight with a critical eye, and the foal shrank away, “But it’s all the same. Your hair, your eyes, your cutie ma—”

Twilight turned more deliberately as Sunset spoke, displaying her flank. Still blank as the day she was born, and that was enough to stop Sunset short.

“—Oh. Maybe…maybe you’re not her, then.”

“I don’t know you,” Twilight repeated, a little stubbornly.

Sunset shrugged. “Well, there’s already two Twilights, that I know of. What’s one more?”

This rather cryptic statement did little to settle Twilight’s nerves, and she shot another longing look at the dusty shelving behind her. If she darted down it, surely it would rearrange itself behind her, blocking the stranger from following her. It seemed fairly foolproof, as escape plans went — though it was dependent on the assumption that this mare was a victim of the tower too, and not somehow controlling it.

But Sunset didn’t look like the sort of all-powerful mage that would be needed to create somewhere like this. She wasn’t an alicorn, for a start. Just a unicorn. And a jumpy-looking unicorn at that.

“Are there more of me here?” Twilight asked cautiously. Cloning spells were…not unheard of. The legend of Uthelred the Unwise was a popular fairytale; a bumbling wizard who had tried to work on too many things at once and bitten off far more than he could chew. But it was still magic Twilight had never read about as being something actually achievable.

“Not here,” was the not-quite-reassuring reply. “At home. Where I come from.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Not…not Equestria.”

She seemed unwilling to expand further, and Twilight was forced to content herself with that non-answer. Somewhere beyond Equestria’s borders there were two ponies who looked unsettlingly similar to her, but larger. Ugh. Hopefully they were just distant cousins, and not anything more sinister.

“How did you get here?” Twilight asked abruptly, eager to change the subject. If Sunset could describe how she got in and it was a different route to the one Twilight had taken, perhaps it would be a viable route out.

“I just…I…” Sunset seemed at a loss. “I don’t know. I think I just woke up here?”

“I dreamed myself in here,” Twilight replied. “Did you start off in the lobby too?”

“The lobby? No. There wasn’t a lobby.”

“Where have you been, then?”

The mare looked perturbed. “A room with…with a bear. A great big bear made of stars. And there was a room with moving platforms — and another one that didn’t seem like it had anything in it at all. Just blackness. And voices.”

Twilight did not bother trying to suppress a shudder. The lobby had been bad enough, but if ursa majors and rooms full of voids awaited her…it might not be as simple as she had hoped.

“But at least I’ve found you now.” Sunset was smiling now, hopeful again. “You know the way out, right?”

Twilight blinked. “What? No.”

The smile vanished. “What do you mean, no? Come on, Twilight, you must have something up your sleeve.”

A glance down at her legs showed Twilight that she was still unclothed; the tower hadn’t suddenly changed her body as well as her environment. “I don’t have sleeves.”

“It’s…it’s an expression. I mean, you’re a bit younger than my Twilight, sure, but — you always have a solution. You’re Twilight Sparkle!”

Twilight shifted her weight and pawed uncertainly at the ground. Sunset seemed to think she knew what being Twilight Sparkle meant better than Twilight herself. “I…I really don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I want to go home, Twilight,” Sunset said, coming closer, her tone growing more insistent. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice the colours of this place? Everything’s lavender and pink and purple! It’s obvious.”

Whatever it was, it wasn’t obvious to Twilight, and she began to back away. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

“I don’t get why you had to put me on four legs again, but fine.” Sunset no longer seemed to be listening. “I’m willing to put up with it and learn my friendship lesson from whichever of you wanted to teach it to me — but I’m getting tired now. I want to go home.”

“I do too,” Twilight said, earnestly, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. Did Sunset think she was the one keeping her trapped here?

Sunset sniffed, and she suddenly looked close to crying. Her horn-light began to flicker. “Send me home, Twilight.”

“I can’t.” Twilight’s voice was little more than a whisper.

Her brows lowering and a tinge of desperation entering her voice, Sunset pressed forward again. “Send me home, Twilight.”

“I — I—” Twilight scrambled to her hooves and began to back away. “I can’t.”

Anger flared in Sunset’s eyes, red and hot, and Twilight bolted.

“Twilight, wait!” The strange mare fell, seemingly tripping over her own hooves. She landed flat on her face and looked up with a snarled oath. “Damn these stupid legs — Twilight, don’t go! I just want to talk!”

Twilight saw the corner before her — a corner that if she could make it around, would surely rearrange itself and safely separate her from this half-crazed stranger — and she dove for it. As soon as the mare was out of sight, the bookshelf groaned into motion, and this time Twilight was glad of it.

She kept up her pace for a good few seconds, darting around one corner, then another, relief flooding through her veins with the certainty that she had left Sunset well and truly behind.

“Twilight!” the mare howled, behind her. “Twilight, come back!”

Twilight shook her head hard. Not a chance.

Then came a sharp crack, like the noise a whip makes as it slices through the air. Twilight’s ears rotated as she listened — what had that been?

“Twilight?” called Sunset’s voice again, from somewhere up ahead now. “Where are you?”

Pupils contracting into pinpricks of terror, Twilight skidded to a halt and took a hard left instead of the dead ahead she had intended. Sunset had moved.

Another crack, another call — further away this time. “Twilight!”

And Twilight’s brain finally connected the dots. Eleven months ago, she had first read A Guide to the Higher Magicks by Wollycobbles the Wise. Chapter thirty-three: Objeckt-Summonning and Displacements Magick: Also Known as the Arte of Teleportation. The language had been dense and the prose frustratingly vague, but it had been clear enough on the very basics. A teleportation spell will always result in a snap of displaced air.

Sunset was teleporting in pursuit of her.

Suddenly the theory that Sunset was the Wizard seemed a whole lot more feasible. Twilight had never met a wizard capable of teleportation, and she had met a great many of her Mom’s professor friends.

Twilight’s hooves drummed faster on the wooden floorboards, and she took the corners at such speed that she skidded and overshot more than once. And all the while: crack, crack, crack — a merciless rhythm of Sunset’s desperate efforts to get to her location.

But though the whole library seemed to be full of Sunset’s voice calling her name, Twilight’s fear gradually faded back into a more mild state. Sunset evidently had no control over the maze’s movements, or she would be able to teleport to the right spot. As long as she kept moving, Twilight should be safe.

Just as the pounding of her heart had finally begun to slow, there was another snap of displaced air — far too close this time — and Sunset’s voice rang out from only a shelf or two away.

“Twilight, I can hear you! Will you stop already?”

Swallowing her sob of fear, Twilight hurled herself into a flat-out gallop once more, eyes on the next junction ahead of her. And then the floor beneath her hooves opened up and Twilight’s headlong run became a tumble, and then a free-spinning fall, a scream pulled from her throat as she plummeted end over end down into the darkness.

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter V

The breath rushed from Twilight’s lungs as she impacted. Eyes still reflexively clenched shut, she swallowed hard and tried to get a sense of whether any of her bones were broken.

There was no pain. Everything seemed fine. The fall had been a short one, though the fright of it had made the moment seem to stretch out into infinity.

She had landed on something soft. Something…leathery? Something altogether too warm.

Her pulse stuttered as it clicked into place. Skin. It was skin beneath her back.

Not quite daring to open her eyes, Twilight tried to gird herself for the horror that would certainly await once she did. A room made of skin, perhaps? A horrifying facsimile of a pony, made from the stitched-together parts of the tower’s victims?

She had no choice but to face it, so she pulled in one last shaky breath and looked up, ready to meet her fate.

That same breath caught and died in her throat when she stared into the vast green eyes of the beast that had captured her. A — a dragon. One of the monsters from the fairytales she had used to enjoy, as a very young foal.

“Are you alright?” the monster asked her, in a voice that rumbled deep within his gargantuan chest. “You took quite a tumble there.”

Twilight stared upward, unable to utter a word, transfixed by the sight of those dreadful pointed teeth. Each of them was over twice as long as she was.

“Are you alright, Twilight?” The dragon offered her what might have been a sympathetic smile, if it were not attached to a mouth bigger than a cave.

He frowned when she did not answer, and once those horrible teeth were once more hidden from view, Twilight found her breath again. She had the presence of mind to glance around her, trying to work out what she could do — how she could escape.

The outlook was bleak. She was standing on the literal palm of a dragon. Those huge green talons could close over her and crush her with shocking ease if he was so inclined. The room they were in was gigantic, to accommodate the bulk of the similarly gigantic dragon. If she craned her neck, she could make out the tiny speck of the trapdoor she had fallen through, now sliding closed again. And if she looked down — well, the floor was a worrying distance below, but more arresting than that was the gem.

It was an emerald, levitating and spinning slowly in place, and enough magic was rolling off it to make the fur on Twilight’s neck stand on end.

The dragon followed her gaze down and a proud smile flickered across his snout. “It’s looking great, isn’t it? I think it’s nearly ready.”

Twilight’s eyes moved back up to his face and her ears tilted back. “Uh…yes? It’s — it’s very nice.”

“Seriously, though, Twilight, are you okay? I almost didn’t manage to grab you in time!”

It was only then that Twilight realised that this huge purple dragon — another total stranger — also seemed to know who she was. Alright. More clone troubles. If he knew her copies, perhaps that meant he would be less inclined to eat her than she had feared.

“I’m okay,” she answered slowly. “But…could you put me down, please?”

The dragon nodded amiably and began to lower his claw. “Sure!”

It was a sensation remarkably similar to that of the elevator; the strange tugging sensation in the gut as gravity pulls you down. Twilight’s eyes were fixed on the jewel as she descended past it. She had never read of magic like that. Gems could hold magic or even spells, if the cut and clarity were good enough — but something this big, giving off magic by itself? It was outside of anything she’d read about.

Twilight supposed a little bitterly that she should really be used to that by now.

The dragon pressed his knuckles flat to the floor and Twilight cautiously hopped off. Some part of her still expected him to just…squish her, or something. Weren’t dragons supposed to be evil?

“So it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” said the dragon before her now, perfectly genially.

“Uh…” replied Twilight. “Well, I haven’t — I don’t —”

He stared down at her for a moment and then something clicked into place. “Oh! Have we not met before?”

Twilight shook her head.

“Right, right.” He nodded vigorously. “Well — I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Spike.”

“I’m Twilight Sparkle,” replied Twilight, knowing it was completely redundant to do so. He already knew. Somehow.

“Pleased to meet you!” Carefully, Spike lowered his claw again, and extended one behemoth of a claw towards her.

Taking a few stumbling steps backward before she realised what he wanted, Twilight hastily recovered herself and pantomimed shaking the proffered claw. “Pleased to meet you.”

There was a pause.

“So…could you tell me how you know me?” It was a risky question; possibly he would not like it asked, and doing anything a dragon of this size would not like was very risky indeed. But he seemed ready enough to strike up a friendship. And unlike the other rooms, this one contained no threat more overt than Spike’s mere size — and given that he didn’t seem inclined to use it, she might actually get some answers for once.

“I guess I’d be pretty curious too,” he grinned, with another disturbing display of all those teeth.

But then before he could continue, he suddenly glanced at the jewel, called to it by some invisible signal. “Just one second, Twi.” He turned away from her, raising his neck until he was level with the jewel, and then opened his mouth and let rip a huge gout of green fire.

Twilight let out a soft eep of terror as the heat of it washed over her — the raw destructive power. Was he going to kill her after all?

But only the jewel was bathed in the inferno — not one stray spark came Twilight’s way.

And as suddenly as it had started, it was over. The gem was roiling with magical energy now, and Twilight wondered if Spike’s fire was magical. Perhaps the gem was an ordinary power storage sort of spell, on a vaster scale than anypony in Equestria had yet conceived of.

As Twilight stared up at it, she blinked, and when her eyes opened again she thought she saw the ghost of the leylines again, channeling all that power out of the gem to destinations unknown.

Spike leaned back down towards her, reclaiming her attention. “I suppose it would make the most sense if I just say we’ll be…really good friends, one day.”

“How would you know that?” Twilight said skeptically. “Can you see the future?” Was that a known draconic trait? Maybe. She would need some real research time to be able to answer that.

With a surprised laugh, Spike shook his head. “Me? No. I just — well, I guess I just have a good feeling about it, that’s all.”

Before Twilight could respond, he raised a claw to stop her.

“Sorry — hang on.” He paused and sent another belch of flame toward the purple jewel, which swallowed the proffered energy hungrily, every last green swirl vanishing into its maw.

Twilight watched the process with a critical eye, and noted the spike in the magical excess pouring off the gem. “What is that thing?”

He grinned down at her. “I’m not used to being the one answering the questions.”

She frowned. “You’re not offering many answers.”

“Right, right, sorry. Well, okay, you always — I mean, I always think it’s a good idea to answer a question with another question. What do you think it is, Twilight?”

She rolled the question over in her mind. The gem was pumping out enough raw magic to make her fur stand on end, but far more of it was being siphoned away by those near-invisible threads. Channeled away into the rest of the tower, to who knew what ends. “I think it’s a battery, of sorts. All the energy for a spell as gigantic and complex as this place has to come from somewhere; it can’t be completely self sustaining.”

“You’re smart,” he said with a smile, as though he had expected no less.

“So are you what powers this place?”

He laughed. “No. Well — I offer a bit of fire, sure. To help out. But someone else does most of the work. I’m just…a closed circuit, I guess you could say. I don’t power much beyond this room. It’s another person who does all the actual magic.”

“The Wizard,” Twilight offered.

He laughed again, though Twilight couldn’t see what was funny. “Sure. The Wizard. She’s real powerful.”

She. Twilight’s ears pricked up. This was the first real glimpse of the tower’s mysterious owner. “Do you know her?”

One corner of his mouth quirked, and Twilight was forced to make a conscious effort to tamp down her growing annoyance at all these secret jokes.

“I do,” he confirmed gravely.

“Do you know where she is?”

He shrugged. “She’s everywhere in this place.”

Twilight ground her hoof into the floor in mute frustration. “That’s ridiculous.” Nopony could transcend the need for a body, no matter how powerful they were. Even Princess Celestia, older than eternity, had a body.

He just shrugged, and the silence between them stretched.

“Do you know the way out, at least?” she asked at last.

He shook his great head. “There isn’t a way out for some of us.”

Her heart sank. “But…you’re a dragon. Surely nopony can keep you locked up.”

“No…” he said softly, and the word was a great long exhalation. “I’m not a dragon. I’m just…an echo, I think. A battery, like you said. Something that used to be.”

“How can that be right?” Twilight demanded, jabbing a sharp hoof into the scaly hide of his tail. “You’re real. I can feel you. You’re not an echo.”

The dragon arced his great neck to look down at her, and he smiled, but the expression seemed full of pain. “I’m your faithful assistant,” he said, and his vast green eyes swam with tears. “I always will be.”

Before she could question this bizarre statement — before she could even wonder what he meant — he was belching out another gout of fire, and another, and another — and the final one was so long and so hot that Twilight had to shut her eyes against the blaze.

The roar of the flames blasted on and on. And when it finally, abruptly, ceased, and Twilight opened her eyes, the dragon was gone.

— My name is Spike, and I’m your faithful assistant —

Twilight looked around, wondering if she had imagined that last echoing whisper.

The dragon was gone. In his place only an egg remained. It was huge, as far as eggs went. Twilight had seen chicken eggs as big as her hoof, but this egg was more like the size of her. But large as it was — it was nowhere near big enough to contain a dragon the size of the one who had been here only a moment ago.

It sat directly beneath the jewel, and both of them pulsed softly with green light.

Twilight walked a slow, incredulous circle around the egg. How could this be real? Full-grown creatures did not just relapse back into foetuses and eggs whenever the whim took them.

“Spike?” she asked, cautiously — just in case he would turn back into a dragon again if she asked him.

But the egg was unresponsive, and Twilight frowned as she considered her predicament. The room was vast — and echoingly empty now, without the bulk of the dragon to fill it. The now-sealed trapdoor she had entered through was miles above her and utterly unreachable without Spike’s help. All that was left in this huge, curving room was her, the jewel, and the egg.

It was another puzzle. It had to be. Just like the lobby. Solve the puzzle, unlock the door. Simple enough.

Twilight considered the egg and the jewel individually. Spike had referred to himself as a closed circuit, limited to this room only. He had been powering the gem, charging it up for something. And hadn’t he said it’s nearly ready?

A closed circuit wouldn’t end with a strange unbirth back into egg form. A circuit would continue. The egg would have to hatch again — and maybe that was what all the power in the gem was for. A self-spawning lifecycle; a warped parody of a phoenix.

Perhaps that was the solution to the puzzle. All Twilight had to do was serve as the bridge — close the circuit.

It made sense. So without further hesitation, Twilight reached out for the egg and the gem with her magic.

The egg felt ordinary enough. Smooth like stone, with a little spark of life deep inside. But when her magic brushed against the gem, Twilight stumbled and fell to her knees — awash in a sea of power. A burning ocean of dragonfire, with crackling green waves that tossed her to and fro.

Endless, endless fire — burning her without burning, igniting her magic and her brain and her soul itself — Twilight knew she was howling with the pain and the not-pain of it, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. All she could hear was the thunderous whisper of a thousand fires.

Twilight gasped and choked, utterly adrift from her own body, unable to feel even the breath she knew must be catching in her throat.

All that was left to her was the magic — her connection to the jewel.

And something else, a thinner thread; but persistent. A little flicker of life. What was it? It was hard to think beyond the fire, but she clung to that thread and followed it down until she found the cold, smooth surface of the egg.

The egg. Of course. That was it. Just connect the two. That was all she needed to do.

It was like trying to corral the ocean itself into a narrow gutter, but after seemingly endless attempts, Twilight finally managed to catch hold of a crackling flame and force it down the thread of her magic and into the egg.

Once those first few drops had gone, the next followed more easily — and more after them, and more again, until finally there was a flood of fire, rushing through Twilight to the egg, moving too quickly to even burn.

And when, at last, the jewel was empty, and Twilight came back to herself, panting with the exertion, she found herself curled up in a little ball on the floor, her horn smoking slightly. Beside her, the first cracks were beginning to form on the surface of the spotted egg.

And as she clambered back to her hooves, she saw a black spot in the wall that had not been there before. A door where there had been no door.

Despite her exhaustion, a thrill rushed through Twilight. She had solved the puzzle, she had passed the test. Her instincts had been right. And her magic had been strong enough.

With shaky steps, she moved toward the door. When she reached it, she found it to be as comically small as Spike’s room was overwhelmingly large. The lintel barely reached her chest. She pulled it open, and peered sceptically inside. The corridor was every bit as undersized as the door itself, and even a foal as small as Twilight would struggle to squeeze through. If it had been just a short tunnel with a subsequent widening, she wouldn’t have hesitated; but the tiny corridor stretched on out of sight, well-lit all the way, without even a hint of growth further down its length.

Twilight peered around the rest of the curved walls of Spike’s rooms, wondering if perhaps she had missed a second door. Then something caught her ear. Just at the edge of her hearing. She looked up —

From far above, at the zenith of the dome-shaped room, there came a grinding noise. The trapdoor was opening again.

“Twilight, are you down there?” It was that same voice again, husky and rough, and Twilight cursed her rotten luck. She had hoped that the rooms would shift and change behind her — how had Sunset managed to catch up?

“Twilight!” Sunset was peering down through the trapdoor, and Twilight turned her face upward, horn blazing with a deliberate display of her magical power.

“Leave me alone!”

Don’t talk to strangers, especially not here. Especially not when she’d just found out that the all-powerful wizard was a mare. And the one creature Twilight had seen in all her time here, other than the dragon who claimed to be an echo, was a mare. A very magically powerful mare.

Sunset was not a pony to be trusted.

“Just wait,” Sunset said, trying to inject a note of calm into her voice. “I want to talk to you.”

Twilight looked from her pursuer to the small doorway that had opened at the base of the wall. It was an ordinary door, reproduced in perfect miniature. Twilight had been concerned about fitting her own bulk through it — there was no way an adult pony would fit.

Far above, Sunset lit her own horn. “I’m coming down!”

Glancing up only long enough to see the horrifying spectacle of Sunset lifting herself bodily in her own magic, Twilight bolted for the door and hurled herself to her belly to squirm through it and into the passage beyond. Whatever horrors lay ahead would almost certainly be better than finding herself at the mercy of a mare powerful enough to teleport multiple times and still have the reserves of mana required for levitation.

Sunset claimed to be as trapped as Twilight was, and it might be true — she might not be the Wizard. But Twilight was not about to take that chance.

With one final wriggle, she squeezed her flanks through and the door slammed closed behind her with a reassuring finality. Unless Sunset really was the architect of this nightmarish place, Twilight was safe at last.

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter VI

It was hard work, crawling on elbows and knees, frantically scrabbling with all four hooves at once just to propel herself forward. But inch by painful inch, Twilight progressed, and gradually the corridor began to widen.

Soon she was able to get to her hooves and walk normally, her horn only just scraping the ceiling. There were no bends in this corridor, no curves. Just smooth purple-grey blocks of stone, each identical and utterly flawless, cut smoother than even a master-mason could ever cut. The only perceptible change was the constant, subtle widening of the corridor. Before long, the ceiling was higher than the roof of Twilight’s home, the polished stone flags of the floor stretching wider than a Canterlot road. Twilight wondered idly how long it would go on getting wider; would she find herself in a corridor larger than a stadium? Taller than a Manehattan skyscraper? Where would it stop?

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware that she should be frightened at that prospect. She might be trapped in an infinite corridor — or in an infinite tower, where every room was worse than the one before. Dragons and empty libraries, hotel lobbies and far-off clones. None of this was normal, all of it was horrifying…but somehow it had all taken on a strange sort of distance now. The immediate terror of pursuit from Sunset had passed, and she supposed it was rational enough to find her rest somewhere. At least this corridor was safe enough to be boring.

She walked without ceasing for…well, it was hard to say how long. It could have been an hour, or it could have been five. For all Twilight knew, the Wizard could manipulate time as well as space, and she had been trapped in here for a hundred years. Well — hopefully not. The thought of that, of her family being swallowed up by time in the blink of an eye, was enough to make her feel suddenly very queasy.

Twilight saw a glimmer of strange light up ahead and quickened her pace, suddenly glad of the distraction from her fears. Without warning, the grey-purple wall dropped away into a huge pane of frosty-blue glass. It was opaque, and strange patterns danced within — almost like ice. She brushed a tentative hoof against it, but it was warm rather than cold.

Her lip curled. Could nothing in this place make sense? It wasn’t asking too much for things just to comply with a few of the laws of physics, surely.

Other than the fact one of the walls had been replaced by the blue glass, this section of corridor was the same as all the rest. The glass was the feature — perhaps even a new puzzle — and so it was the glass that Twilight kept her eyes fixed on.

Apart from the usual imperfections and bubbles in the surface, and the swirling patterns within, the glass was unchanging. Tired as she was, Twilight upped her pace to a trot. The corridor had been a peaceful enough interlude, but she itched to make some tangible progress again — if there was such a thing as progress in this place. If she went far enough, surely she would come to a door sooner or later.

“I just don’t understand you!”

The voice, ragged with pain and marked with a strong southern burr, rang out of nowhere.

Twilight jumped and skidded to a halt. “Who said that?”

“I don’t understand what you don’t understand, Fritter,” another voice answered, different to the first. It didn’t seem like either of the speakers had heard her.

“What do you want from me?” the first mare asked, a hitch in her voice, and when Twilight pressed her muzzle against the disturbingly warm surface of the glass, she thought she could make out a blurred figure beyond.

“I want you…I want you to love me too,” the second mare replied, a sob evident in her words. “I just want you.”

No — Twilight hesitated and squinted harder — not one figure. Two. Two ponies, face to face, confronting one another, their shapes distorted and rippled so much by the uneven glass that she could hardly tell whether they were pegasus, unicorn or earth pony. Both were vaguely yellow in colour, one with a green mane, the other red.

“I don’t — I can’t—” the first mare stuttered, and Twilight slowly pulled back from the glass.

Suddenly this felt too much like eavesdropping. On a private conversation, an adult conversation. Like the arguments she had heard her parents having, once or twice. It wasn’t meant for her ears.

For a moment, she considered calling out to them. Banging on the glass perhaps. This was closer to another pony than she had been in hours. Since she had escaped Sunset, she had seen no one.

But her last encounter with one of the other strangers wandering this place had been far from helpful, and something in her shied away from interrupting this. Her parents hated it when she walked in on their grown-up conversations. Like the heated debate they’d had on whether or not they could afford the fees for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, if Twilight somehow managed to pass the entrance exam but did not secure the scholarship. When she had snuck through the door, tears in her eyes, and promised to study three times as hard, they had looked at her with such pain in their eyes.

No. Conversations like this one were not meant to be listened to.

The two shapes were growing more animated now, gesticulating and shouting, and Twilight hastily pulled her muzzle away from the glass and galloped down the glass-walled corridor, the furious voices of two agonised strangers chasing her as she went.

Twilight stood very still, looking up at the newest challenge before her. A door, the same lavender as her own fur, emblazoned with a six-pointed star orbited by five lesser stars. Obscure enough that it could mean anything, denote any number of dreadful things within. One of the void-rooms Sunset had mentioned, perhaps? Dark as the night sky, hence the stars.

There was no real way to tell. And her prevarication was just that; a delay of the inevitable. There was no other way to go, unless she wanted to try smashing her way through the glass wall or go back to face Sunset.

Twilight let out a heavy sigh and reached out for the door. At the merest brush of her hoof it swung inwards, moving smoothly on silent hinges.

Within all was whiteness and mist. Tendrils of fog unrolled out into the corridor, weaving themselves around Twilight’s forelegs and beckoning her on.

One more sigh, and Twilight resigned herself to her fate and obeyed the wordless command. There was no way to go but onwards.

The mist swallowed her soundlessly, and the clopping of her hooves on the unseen floor was all she heard. She tried her best to keep going in a forward direction, but this room had a lot in common with the form the original Dream had taken. No visual information, only feeling — and this time without even the spectre of the ever-present tower on the horizon.

Just blank white, and the slow prickle of moisture over her fur.

And then she heard a rustling noise.

Twilight froze in place and tried to pinpoint the direction it had come from. She waited ten seconds, twenty, but no further sound came, and she finally concluded she must have imagined it. Deprive the senses long enough and the brain will begin to fill in the blanks.

She started to move again, and then she heard it. Clearly this time. A voice, with a lazy southern drawl.

“Well, howdy-doo, Miss Twilight!”

There was no dismissing that as imagination. “Who’s there?” Twilight shouted into the mist. “Who are you?”

“A pleasure makin' your acquaintance,” the voice said, though somehow Twilight felt that it wasn’t speaking to her.

“Show yourself,” demanded Twilight, doing her best to sound commanding. “Who are you?”

“I'm Applejack,” said the voice, more distantly, and then Twilight caught a glimpse of orange-yellow in the distance. “We here at Sweet Apple Acres sure do like makin' new friends!”

Without hesitation, Twilight barrelled after that solitary flash of orange, pursuing the bouncing yellow ponytail long after it had vanished into the mist.

Yet another stranger who already knew her name. Twilight was getting heartily sick of them.

“Let me guess,” said a new voice, dripping with sarcasm, and Twilight was frozen by the horrifying familiarity of the cadence. Was that…it couldn’t be her voice, could it?

“You’re Rainbow Dash,” said the second Twilight Sparkle, the clone Twilight had so dreaded meeting.

A gravelly voice answered her. “The one and only. Why, you heard of me?”

“Stop it!” Twilight cried, not altogether sure who she was addressing — the clone, or the ghostly occupants of this misty room.

“Yeah, yeah, that'll be a snap,” said the gravelly voice, mercilessly. As though it had not heard her at all. “I could clear this sky in ten seconds flat.”

A rush of wings, and something blue flashed overhead through the fog, trailing rainbows behind it.

Somepony behind Twilight gasped, and she whirled in place to see another shadow in the mist, closer than any of the others had been. A white mare, a unicorn, with a sweeping purple mane. “Oh my stars, darling! Whatever happened to your coiffure?”

“Don’t go—!” Twilight stumbled towards her, but the mare dissolved like a mirage on the first touch of her hoof.

The soft warble of birdsong. A shivering yellow presence in the fog. “Um... My name is Fluttershy.”

Twilight galloped towards the new shape, but though it was sitting, it danced back, constantly just out of reach. A new shape formed just beside the yellow one — a more familiar mix of purple and green.

“Oh, I've never seen a baby dragon before,” breathed the ghost named Fluttershy. “He's sooo cute!”

“Wait!” protested Twilight, but they did not.

“Well…” said the misty ghost of Spike in a voice just barely recognisable as the bass rumble she had heard from his adult form. “I started out as a cute little purple and green egg…”

Then they were gone, and there was a new suggestion of a pony, pink and brimming with energy as it bounced around Twilight, never coming within touching distance. “Hi, I'm Pinkie Pie, and I threw this party just for you! Were you surprised? Were ya? Were ya? Huh huh huh?”

Twilight stopped fighting — stopped trying to reach the stranger. “Stop it,” she said, glaring with a trembling lip at the pink ghost.

“Were ya? Were ya?” It leapt closer, closer, forming into hazy details as it approached. Blue eyes, balloon cutie marks, a fluffy mane as bouncy as her movements. “Huh huh huh?”

“Help me or go away,” Twilight spat back at her, and the ghost obediently dissolved into nothingness.

Letting out a disappointed huff of air, Twilight dropped onto her haunches. Tried to recover her self-control. This was the strangest room yet. If this was a puzzle, it was not one with an obvious solution.

And as she sat there, they came back to her. The creeping, whispering ghosts of ponies long dead, a jumble of voices —

“We’re stickin’ to you like caramel on a candy apple…it was under E!…I’d never leave my friends hanging…Laughter, Kindness, Generosity, Loyalty, Honesty…When the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth Element to be revealed.”

They swam back out of the fog towards her — the five strangers, the pony that looked too much like her. The voice that was not quite hers.

“I felt it the very moment I realized how happy I was to hear you, to see you, how much I cared about you. The spark ignited inside me when I realized that you all... are my friends!”

A flicker, and they were older. “Friendship isn’t easy, but there’s no doubt it’s worth fighting for.”

Laughter, a picnic. Dreams fulfilled; a crown, a flight captain’s badge, a store, a sanctuary.

“Never judge a book by its cover. Real friends don’t care what your cover is. A good friend, like a good book, is something that will last forever.”

Six ponies, facing down a vast and incomprehensible threat. A thousand threats, all alike only in that they were each doomed to defeat. Not-Twilight’s voice again. “Whatever it is, I know we need to face it together.”

A flicker, and then the ghosts were older still.

“Will you be Cheese Pie’s godmother?”

“Um, well…Discord and I want you all to be bridesmares — if you don’t mind.”

“Apple Bloom’s graduation is this week an’ we’d take if kindly if’n y’all can make it.”

“I’ve got a big show on Friday! Can I count on you to come cheer us on?”

“My Yakyakistan launch party is coming up; would you like to be the guest of honour, Twilight?”

Another flicker, and then one by one, the mares began to fade, until only the lavender one remained, kneeling by a bed.

“Will you be alright, Twilight? When we’re gone?”

A little laugh. "There is only one thing that’s truly immortal, Pinkie. It’s called true friendship. I’ve had that, with you all. I’ll be alright.”

“I know,” the mare in the bed said weakly, before relapsing into another fit of coughing. “I know. But I worry. Who’ll throw you parties when I’m gone?”

Not-Twilight smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “Don’t worry about me, Pinkie. You just focus on getting better again.” Her voice was tight.

“I’ll try, Twilight.”

Another flicker, and then the final friend was gone. The lavender mare — the one who Twilight still refused to recognise as herself — stood alone as the years passed around her. Cities rose and fell at her feet, rivers altering their courses to flow around her vast limbs. Stars burned to life and faded out in the time it took her to blink.

Another voice. Tender, kind, and achingly old. “It’s time for me to leave, my faithful student.”

“I see.” The answer was emotionless. Flat.

“Will you not join me — beyond? It has been a…long time. Are you not tired?”

The voice was still monotone. No trace of the laughter that was there when the five mares were present.“There is work to be done. Someone must remain to do it.”

“You could…you could do as I did,” suggested a vague sunshine-gold outline. “A student, a protege—”

“I would never do as you did.” The rebuke was not sharp, but the sunshine flinched back as though it had been slapped. “You asked too much.”

“I am…sorry.” And with those final words that presence too faded, and the mare who once looked like Twilight still remained.

Planets orbit her horn. The sun danced upon her forehead. Stars flickered like fireflies around her. And still she stood, alone, pulling the strings and the leylines of the universe, mechanisms vaster than Twilight could comprehend. And all the while the feeling grew, the emotion swelling until it was overwhelming — loneliness, aching, crushing, loneliness — an eternity alone, with only a brief spark of the fleeting thing called friendship to illumine those shadowy eons.

The weight of it was enough to bow Twilight’s knees, press her muzzle to the floor. To bring the tears spilling from her eyes though she could barely understand what she was seeing. A pony — a pony far too like herself for comfort — alone after her friends were gone. Just like the two ponies arguing behind the glass wall. Friendship was — it brought pain. Ponies loved ponies who didn’t love them back, who left them, and it hurt. Twilight was…she was better on her own.

She understood that now.

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter VII

And just like that, the weight was lifted. Twilight could breathe again, and the tears she had not intended to shed were drying on her cheeks. Pulling in one heaving lungful of air after another, Twilight slowly opened her eyes, trying to ready herself for whatever new vision awaited.

The fog had cleared. Traces of it still lingered at the very edges of the room, but that was not the sight that held Twilight’s attention.

Her gaze was fixed on the far wall of the room. A wall that was not a wall at all. At first Twilight thought it was a statue — a huge statue of a pony, an alicorn carved so cunningly from stone that she almost looked alive. A tail flowing in the way that Princess Celestia’s did, the mane curling around to create a floor that undulated up and down in a motion that looked so real Twilight could hardly believe it was carved stone and not real hair.

The alicorn’s eyes were closed, a faint smile dancing at the corner of her mouth, and Twilight crept closer, entranced despite her misgivings. But for the facial features and the difference in manestyle, she could almost have believed it was a statue of Princess Celestia — but this was clearly intended to be a likeness of a different pony.

And wasn’t that a bizarre image? A princess that was not Princess Celestia. Everypony knew she was the only alicorn; had always been the only alicorn.

Twilight paused at the edge of the statue’s mane before steeling herself and scrambling up it. She wanted a closer look at the workmanship on this statue. Something so flawless had to be magical in nature.

She peered closely at the hooves and legs, clad in carven shoes with pointed stars embossed in them. The peytral with the gem embedded in it, so like Celestia’s. The crown, larger and more ornate than that of the Princess, but still reminiscent of it. The material was the same throughout — the same smooth grey-purple stone that the tower itself was made of. But there were no visible lines between the blocks. The alicorn appeared to have been carved from a single piece of stone, and she was so well-made that she almost appeared alive.

Twilight looked up at those long eyelashes brushing the cheek, the half-smile playing across the muzzle. She tried to puzzle out again what the challenge was here —

And then the alicorn opened her eyes.

Twilight tried to bolt and sat down with a thud, too startled to do any more than let out a soft mew of terror.

The alicorn’s eyes were those of a living pony. Sparkling purple irises scattered with drops of brighter colour. Kind eyes. She shook her head once, and then like a river, the life flowed out from her eyes across her face, down her mane, into her chest. Colour flowed with it, and fur, and hair — and in less than a few seconds Twilight was staring a living alicorn in the face.

An alicorn who looked disturbingly similar in colouration to both herself and the not-Twilight of the visions.

The princess — for what else could she be? — looked down at Twilight and her smile slowly spread across her face. “Hello, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight remembered the way the key in the room hidden beneath the concierge’s desk had glowed, so bright it had hurt her eyes, and swallowed at the thought of how bright this monstrous princess would burn if she opened up her Sight now.

“How do you know my name?”

A faintly amused glance. “I know…all things. And you knew, too.”

“I…I did?” Twilight’s head was still spinning as she fought to catch up. Was this the clone Sunset claimed to know? Surely not. No clone of Twilight would ever manage to become a princess. It was feasible that this alicorn could create the illusion of a resemblance to Twilight. Twilight wasn’t sure what the motivation for that would be, but she hadn’t understood a single thing that had happened since the Dream deviated from its usual path, so at this point anything was possible.

But regardless of that — of whether this alicorn was one of the clones or not — the existence of another alicorn was a complete impossibility. Princess Celestia was the only princess. Had always been the only princess. Early Equestrian theology was a scantily-sourced and hotly-debated field, but almost every scholar agreed that the Princess had been present at the dawn of the world; had perhaps even brought the world into being herself.

The mysterious Princess before her took no notice of inconvenient facts — like the fact she wasn’t supposed to exist. She continued their conversation as smoothly as if Twilight’s existential dread were of no consequence at all. “Did you enjoy meeting Spike?”

“Uh…” Twilight tried to come back to the present. “The dragon?”

“Yes. My faithful assistant.”

“He said he was my faithful assistant,” answered Twilight doubtfully. “But I didn’t know him.”

“Didn’t you?” The alicorn sounded surprised. “Well, I suppose you will. Or did. I’m no longer sure, myself. I miss Spike, sometimes. Until the wheel turns and I see him again.”

This bewildering statement did little to clear Twilight’s confusion. “Uh…but how can he be my assistant, if he’s yours?”

Even if he was a weird dragon with a habit of folding himself back into an egg, he was still a dragon. They didn’t usually take orders from foals.

The alicorn met her eyes again, and this time her smile was sad. “Oh, how young I was.”

Twilight frowned. What did that have to do with anything? Everypony was young, once. Even an alicorn must have been young once — unless they were an immortal alicorn, like Princess Celestia. Which possibly she was, even though a second alicorn was a complete impossibility. How young I was. It was a rather unanswerable sentiment.

“Tell me,” the alicorn said, her gaze now somehow a little hungry, “Tell me, Twilight Sparkle, of your life.”

This request was met with some perturbation. Twilight was not a social pony, but one slow afternoon when she had run out of other books she had read her grandmother’s copy of Twinkle Belle’s Guide to Etiquette and Sparkling Conversation, and she knew the theory of how to be social. This pony might be a princess, but she clearly did not. She kept saying weird things, and the conversation was only getting stranger.

“Well, I…read a lot,” she replied hesitantly. “I just finished Treatise on the Life and Times of Clover the Clever; Her Spells and Magicks; most ponies find Oulde Equuish too hard to understand, but I can read it okay, even though I’m only seven.”

“Ah,” breathed the princess, “I think I remember what it felt like to learn. I loved that.”

Twilight heard that with wide eyes but chose not to respond; even Twinkle Belle could not help her formulate a polite response to that.

“And I fly kites with my brother on weekends,” she said, slowly.

“Gleam…Shimmer…yes, Shining Armour,” the princess nodded, the words dripping like molasses from her mouth as she searched for the right ones. “…A brother.”

She knows me and my brother. The pieces were falling into place. She’s purple like the tower is purple. She’s a Princess — immeasurably powerful. She’s…she must be the one that brought me here. The Wizard.

I need to get her to let me go.

“And tomorrow I have my entrance exam,” she said pointedly. “I’m going to be doing a test in front of Princess Celestia. I need to be back in time.”

As direct an appeal as she could manage without begging, which she could not resort to unless she was truly desperate. Twinkle Belle focused on conversations with courtiers and aristocracy, but the principles applied just as well to a conversation with the secret Princess of Kidnapping. Keep your cards close to your chest, and act like you have equal power, even if you don’t.

The statement did not have the effect she had hoped for; that of immediate apology and release. Instead the alicorn simply sighed. “Ah, Celestia. I…miss her. It has been a long time…since I moved in the same planes as her. Since she moved on the same planes as me.”

“I understand,” Twilight said, latching onto this concrete fact with some relief. “I want to meet her too.”

“Luna went first.” The alicorn’s voice was a whisper again, and Twilight once more had the feeling that the alicorn was not really speaking to her. “She tired of the mortal world. She wanted to see what lay beyond. And Celestia could not long outlast her sister — not for a second time. And then I was alone. I have been alone a long time, and I will be alone a long time. It circles, little one. It circles, and we circle with it.”

“We do?” Twilight was shifting uncertainly from hoof to hoof again. She missed the solid conversational ground of meeting Princess Celestia.

“You have, and you will.”

Twilight shook her head. She was good at riddles, but she was getting nowhere with this one, and it was growing frustrating. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“No,” the alicorn smiled absently. “I don’t suppose I do, yet. But in time…in time…” Her eyes moved beyond Twilight, to the vast horizon contained within her own mane. “I am here, and you are here. We stand in two places and one. We have a great destiny before us.”

Circles within circles, confusion upon confusion. “But I don’t understand. What am I supposed to do?”

A distant smile in those starry pink eyes. “Great things, little one. Great things.”

Twilight began to feel strongly that she did not like the Princess of Time, or Magic, or weird towers — or whatever this stranger was princess of.

“One last thing I meant to ask you, Twilight Sparkle,” the alicorn said, a smile playing at the edges of her mouth.

Twilight waited mutely.

“What do you think of your friends?”

Twilight thought sourly of the room where the pony with her face had cavorted with five strangers, and how she had felt over and over again the pain of losing them, ponies that meant both nothing and everything to her. “I’m not fond of them.”

The alicorn chuckled. “That’s as it should be. Friends are not for you. Not yet. You’re much better off alone, for now. Remember that.”

Somewhat blankly, Twilight nodded. It was no less than the conclusion she had already arrived at herself, but to hear it confirmed by a princess was a very strange feeling.

The alicorn’s horn glowed, and she bent toward Twilight.

The foal backed away, ears flattening. “What are you doing?” The last thing she needed was more tampering from the Princess who had orchestrated this bizarre half-dream.

“I’m turning the wheel, little one. It all comes and goes, around and around. And everything falls into place.”

“I don’t want—”

“—Don’t panic. And remember, Twilight. You don’t need friends. All you’ll ever need, for a while yet, is your studies.”

The alicorn bent low, and though Twilight instinctively backed away, that great purple spire of a horn kept coming. A gentle touch to her forehead, and Twilight was filled with the same transcendent light that threaded the alicorn’s starry mane. It began in her horn, spiralling down the grooves in the bone, and then it drilled down into her brain with a sudden white-hot fury. It hurt, it burned, and Twilight heard a voice that sounded too high and full of pain to be hers. It kept screaming. Why did it keep screaming?

The Wheel of Fortune — Chapter VIII

Twilight Sparkle’s eyes snapped open. She bolted upright and sat for a moment in her bed, staring wildly around her, flanks heaving. But no immediate danger showed itself, and the sun filtered in softly around the edges of her curtains.

Eventually her breathing slowed, and she pushed her tangled mane back from her large eyes. Nothing was wrong. Everything was normal.

She paused, analytical to a fault; what exactly had she been afraid of?

But she could not immediately put her hoof on it, and habit took over. Her eyes went first to the clock; six a.m., an hour earlier than she usually rose, three hours before school started. Then her eyes moved next to her ‘to read’ pile, where they lingered longingly for a moment on A Treatise on the Life and Times of Clover the Clever; Her Spells and Magicks — and then finally to her calendar, pinned neatly over her haphazard desk. Pencilled into it was her study timetable, her reading for each day, her self-appointed tasks and tests…and circled five times in red ink so heavy it almost broke the paper, today’s date.

Twilight jerked to her hooves, a bubbling cocktail of energy and terror suddenly fizzing over. The entrance exam was today! The biggest day of her life, and it was finally here.

She tumbled out of bed and lit her horn, and the room erupted into activity around her. The brush moved haphazardly over her mane, her coat burst from the closet to enfold her, the toothbrush jerked almost painfully against her gums — and a whirlwind of books and notes and flashcards spiralled around her, a dizzying array of information flashing past her eyes.

The hurricane of pages moved with her down the stairs, stayed with her at the breakfast table — each sheet halting only long enough to be skim-read before being whisked away and replaced by the next. At the front door, after extensive discussion with her parents, she was persuaded to condense the whirl into a tottering pile, to remain beside the mat in the hall.

And then the foal, suddenly tiny without the swirling cloud of paper orbiting her, stepped out with her parents into the street. The last scraps of revision complete. Ready to face the biggest day of her life.

The pavement was hard underhoof, the colours strangely bright. The world outside was…more saturated than she expected. Less purple.

For a moment Twilight considered suggesting that they wait for Lyra, who had her entrance exam today too, but she decided against it. Realistically, Lyra wasn’t going to get into Princess Celestia’s school anyway; she was more interested in using her magic to twang the strings of her lyre than she was in using it to unravel the secrets of the universe. The two of them had little in common besides the fact they lived on the same street and both their parents felt like they should play outside once in a while, away from books or musical instruments. It wasn’t like they were really friends.

Something about that word made Twilight’s chest ache, and she turned hastily away from the thought. Even if she and Lyra had been friends, once Twilight got into Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, she would have no time for anything as pedestrian as playing. She would be busy studying, learning, drinking deep from the font of knowledge. Spreading her wings beyond the junior school and the limitations of her classmates’ abilities. Preparing for her great and glorious future as the greatest magical researcher the world had ever known.

No, she would have no time for friends.

It felt better that way, somehow. More right.

Twilight fell into step between her parents, tail swishing happily from side to side as she ran through Wisdom Grows’ theorem on magical energy one last time in her head. She had no idea what the testers at the palace would ask her, but she was sure she was ready. She was years ahead of any foal she knew, even Shiny, talented as he was. She had studied and studied for this. She was ready. Anything they could ask her, she could answer.

And maybe the Princess herself would even be there! That thrilling possibility lent her eyes an extra sparkle and her step an extra skip. Twilight had never met a princess in the flesh — a vast lavender alicorn, mane full of stars — only seen Princess Celestia and her young alicorn ward from a distance on parade days. Imagine what it would be like — her aura awash with raw magic, her wings wider than time itself — to speak to a real live Princess!

Twilight Sparkle quickened her step, confident that she was heading towards her destiny.

Twilight wet her lips nervously, and looked up at the adults surrounding her. There were her parents, smiling and nodding supportively, though nerves made Daddy’s smile look rather pinched. There were three teachers poised with pen and clipboard, and a throng of parents and children sitting around the amphitheatre-style lecture hall.

But they were not the figure that drew and held the attention. They were not the creature that Twilight Sparkle’s entire being was focused on right now, in this crucial second on which all her future ambitions hinged.

They were not Princess Celestia.

The Princess stood at the rear of the room, unobtrusively positioned behind the hopeful entrants and their parents. But she was three times the height of anypony else in the room, with a horn as long as Twilight was tall, and wings four times the span of a pegasus. Her mane billowed out across the ceiling, glittering with a thousand unseen lights, her tail lapping at the floor like rainbow-coloured water.

The Princess could not be unobtrusive.

“What we want you to do is quite simple,” one of the teachers said. “We want you to try to hatch this egg.” She stepped aside as she spoke, revealing an egg nearly Twilight’s height resting on a podium.

It was purple with green spots, and…it looked familiar. Where had she seen an egg like that before?

She was turning it over in her head, trying to place it, and the teacher coughed.

“Any time you’re ready, Miss Sparkle.”

Twilight froze in place. Any time you’re ready. She knew what that meant. We’re waiting on you. She shook off the feelings of deja vu and focused her mind.

A hesitant step forward. Hatch an egg. It was not what she had expected. She had prepared for thaumaturgical calculations, alchemical recipe recitals, minute manipulations and alterations of her repertoire of spells. But egg-hatching was not a spell she had ever come across, not in any of her writing.

Anything related to healing or life-magic was highly advanced sorcery, of course. Birth was a highly magical time, but Twilight’s self-assigned syllabus had not included anything on the topic. It had not seemed relevant.

And — this was no ordinary egg, either. Twilight paced a slow circle around it, turning the problem over in her head. The adults stepped back to give her room.

This was — well, it had to be a dragon egg. It could be nothing else, given the size. No other creature laid eggs of the right size.

Twilight shut her eyes and reached out with her magic. A thread of pink magic quested across the room towards the egg, and she brushed against it, feeling the shape.

The egg was cold; hard. No trace of the unique magical signature that accompanied most lifeforms. But that couldn’t be right. They wouldn’t ask her to hatch an egg if it wasn’t possible. Princess Celestia would not set her up to fail.

Twilight was the sixth student to face the test this morning, but unlike the others, she had waited outside the room until her time came. She didn’t want to be distracted by the tasks others might be set. It was better to remain a completely blank slate, receptive to anything that might be asked of her.

So she had no idea how the others had done — or even if they had been asked to face the same challenge. But even if they had failed, it did not matter.

She would not fail.

No, the egg lived. There was a baby dragon in there, and all it needed was a little nudge to get it out. She just had to find the right way to do it…

Could it be as simple as a test of brute strength? Crack the shell, remove it without harming the hatchling, and then free the baby inside?

No. This was Celestia’s school. There had to be more to it than telekinetic dexterity. That was hardly advanced magic.

Twilight pushed her magical sense deeper, traced the frozen form of the baby lizard curled within. Still nothing; no spark. But it couldn’t be dead; there was something more to all this. She needed more information.

Twilight opened her eyes and called up the Sight.

For months she had been studying this strangest, most esoteric aspect of sorcery. Every mage needed the Sight, but it came differently to every individual. It was hazy and tricksy, and no two authors described it in the same way. Twilight had worked for weeks to even grasp the concept of how to empty her mind. There were just so many thoughts fighting to be heard.

But she was finally at the stage where she could look out at the world and see a vague, hazy overlay of the truth that lay beneath the exterior. The flow of the lines, the glitter of the magic. It was still nebulous, but she could sometimes catch a hint at the way things could be twisted to achieve the result she wanted.

She opened her eyes, expecting to see the room as she ordinarily did, with the slight white overlay of the lines in the corners of her eyes —

— but her eyes blazed with white fire, and she stared out onto an amphitheatre of crystalline clarity, the lines cutting through it with military precision, a web of them weaving a close-knit grid through the walls and floor of this ancient Canterlot tower.

A tower, the lines spiralling through it — not a grid but a tangle — not through the tower but ofthe tower —

And dotted around the room, spikes of colour — midnight-blue for her father, pale lavender for her mother —

Lavender magic, burning through her —

— And at the very back of the room, a glorious wash of yellow, gentle and overwhelmingly powerful as a sunrise, soft and kind and burning white-hot all at once. Redolent with raw, magical energy, impossibly old. An alicorn.

An alicorn. An alicorn, older than time and younger than Twilight. Looking her in the eye, and whispering, “Oh, how young I was.”

And the egg, dead and cold and gone, thousands of years gone…but it didn’t have to be that way. Twilight knew how to alter the world, the flow of years — or she would know.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Great things, little one. Great things.”

A flood of images and memories, things she had done and would do and could or might or would never do, memories and visions and a great spinning wheel, lavender and lit with purple-pink magic just like hers, the world turning and turning with the wheel at its centre, and the tower at the centre of the wheel and at the centre of the wheel she was and would be and would never could never be would never stop being.

Twilight Sparkle opened her mouth and screamed. Raw power came rushing in a torrent from her mouth and eyes and nose and ears, and the ponies in the room threw up their hooves to shield their eyes before the magic caught them and changed them, changed everything. Power flooded through the foal, millennia of power and pain and loneliness, and all she could do was scream. She screamed and magic that was not hers and yet was hers and would be hers washed through her, directed through her by a being that was both herself and not, changing everything and aiming at one little nexus.

Aiming at the egg.

It lasted forever and for no time at all. Then the shell cracked and the dragon burst forth

— My name is Spike, and I’m your faithful assistant —

And it erupted upward into the sky. And then it was over, that strange touch from beyond the world withdrew, and the magic went with it, a tap shutting off.

And Twilight Sparkle, just a foal again, leaned forward and threw up all over the white marble tiles of the classroom floor.

Twilight came slowly back to herself. Her mouth still stung from the acrid taste of the vomit, but she no longer lay on the cold hard marble. Now she was cradled in legs as white as the stone, but softer and far more yielding. She traced those legs back to the smooth white shoulders, the gold peytral resting on the snowy breast. The wide white wings, the swanlike neck. The ageless face of the Sun Eternal, beaming down with a smile as warm as her cutie mark.

“Pr-Princess Celestia?” said Twilight Sparkle, the words leaving her lips like a prayer.

“Twilight Sparkle,” the Princess said, and the prayer was answered.

Still bewildered, Twilight began to look around for her parents, but could not bring herself to tear her gaze away from that beatific face. “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Amusement touched the edges of the Princess’ mouth, but Twilight didn’t feel like she was the object of fun. It was like they were both in on a joke, a secret, just the two of them.

“Mm-mm.” She shook her head. She felt unutterably weary, but so long as she was here, cushioned in the arms of the Princess herself, shielded from the world by those soft angel-wings, all was well.

“You fainted, little one.” The Princess smiled with maternal indulgence. “But only after you had performed a magical feat no mage has performed in centuries.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “I did?”

Celestia’s smile widened, and she moved her wing aside to reveal a small purple creature, all big eyes and gummy mouth, sitting in the ruins of its own eggshell. “You hatched the dragon egg, just like I asked you.”

At last, a small smile crossed Twilight’s own muzzle. “I did it?”

“You did. And providing a magical surge big enough to hatch an egg like that is very difficult, Twilight Sparkle, but what you did here today — that egg was a fossilised egg. Do you know what that means?”

“Of course I do.” The fears of being rude were lost in the wave of indignation at being thought stupid. “A fossil is organic matter buried in the earth for so long it turns to stone.”

“Exactly,” the Princess nodded approvingly, and more warmth washed through Twilight at that one word than any of the praise her most effusive teacher had ever lavished on her. “That egg was laid over fifteen thousand years ago, by a dragon named Morgwynne. And now you have hatched it at last.”

“I…wow.” Twilight tried to think back to the exact spell she had cast. But there had been no particular finesse to her actions. She had just opened herself up and channelled the magic right at the egg. There had been something else…a feeling of unease…something forgotten — a nightmare, perhaps? But the Princess was speaking again, and she shrugged it off.

“It was a dud egg even then — it never hatched, and Morgwynne gave it to me as a gift. But you, Twilight Sparkle, did what I never could.” A pause. “I am so proud of you.”

The heavenly heat that suffused Twilight’s every molecule then was like nothing she had ever known. Princess Celestia, Princess Celestia, a princess and an archmage amongst archmages, was proud of her. In all her life, Twilight would never wish for more than she felt at this moment. The Princess was proud of her.

“That’s not all,” the Princess went on. “Look at your flank.” She gestured with her muzzle, and the movement sent a ripple all the way down her ethereal mane. It was hypnotic, and it was only with difficulty that Twilight tore her eyes away to look at her own body.

And there, on her flank, was something utterly alien yet entirely familiar — a six pointed star, the same purple as her eyes, orbited by five smaller stars in white. Where had she seen it before? She knew she had seen it before.

While she was puzzling over it, the Princess nudged her gently, and that simple gesture of affection, delivered from a living goddess, the kindest, goodest, cleverest pony to ever live, was startling enough to drive all those thoughts out of her head.

“Your cutie mark,” Princess Celestia said softly. “What do you think?”

But Twilight was not looking at her flank when she answered. She was looking into the Princess’ soft fuchsia eyes. “I love it.”

“Your magic is among the strongest I have ever seen, my little pony.” Celestia bent closer, and she delivered the next question in a voice little more than a whisper. “Would you like to be my personal student, Twilight Sparkle?”

Tears rose unbidden to Twilight’s eyes, and she thought she might die from sheer joy. The summation of her short life’s work, everything she had ever dreamed of and more. “Yes,” she croaked, and then again, almost desperately, “Yes!”

“That is wonderful, my little one,” Celestia laughed again, and the sound was like bells chiming. “My faithful student. I think you are exactly what I have been looking for.”

Twilight, beaming so hard her face hurt, let the remnants of that half-forgotten dream die where they lay at the very back of her mind, and focused her entire being on the radiant alicorn in front of her. Her faithful student. I am exactly what she has been looking for. Her faithful student.

That’s what I’ll be.

The tower watches a new pony leave. An old pony. Older than anything, but still only seven.

The wheel is turning.

Author's Note

And we come to the end of the story's first arc. Stay tuned for next week, when the next arc will begin.

Interlude: The Magician — Chapter I

The first gleaming, orange streaks of morning were just peaking through the gaps in the mountains, and I pressed my head back against the seat as the train trundled on, relaxing in the orange glare of the slowly rising sun. It had been dark this morning, when I’d boarded, but tired as I was… getting to see such a beautiful view made it all worth it.

“Ticket, Miss?”

“Oh.” I jerked upright, grabbing my phone off the table and swiping through the train app. “Here you go—” I offered her the QR code, glancing up at the ticket inspector briefly; a shiny brass tag on her deep red uniform vest glinted in the light: S. Paid

“ —Miss Paid?” I offered lamely. For her part, the ticket inspector just scanned my phone, nodded once, and tapped something on her tablet.

“All checked in, Miss Shimmer. Have a nice trip.”

“You too.” Oh god. “Uh, I-I mean…”

“I get that a lot,” the ticket inspector said with a smile, already moving on to the next car. The train car door slid quickly shut behind her.

“I need to develop a coffee habit,” I muttered, slumping back in my seat. Maybe then I wouldn’t say dumb things in the morning. My phone vibrated in my hand, and I looked down at the screen in surprise.

Applejack (05:30 AM): Have a safe trip, Sunset!
Rainbow Dash (05:34 AM): AJ what are you doing up so early?
Applejack (05:35 AM): I work on a farm ya ninny
Rainbow Dash (05:35 AM): oi I’m not a ninny
Applejack (05:36 AM): and what are YOU doing up?
Rainbow Dash (05:37 AM): I’m doing my 5-9
Applejack (05:37 AM): your WHAT? You don’t have a job, and isn’t it 9 to 5?
Rainbow Dash (05:39 AM): omg I’m at the g y m AJ, miles don’t just run themselves

I snorted, typing quickly.

Sunset Shimmer (05:40 AM): Thanks, AJ. But girls, stop blowing up the chat. If you wake up Rarity you’ll find out what happens to people who disrupt her beauty sleep. 😂
Rainbow Dash (05:41 AM): Sunset you really need to stop using periods they make you sound mad
Sunset Shimmer (05:41 AM): What? But I’m not.
Rarity (05:42 AM): I am.
Rainbow Dash (05:42 AM): whoops gotta run
Rainbow Dash (05:42 AM): literally
Rainbow Dash (05:42 AM): 🏃‍♀️⚡
Rarity (05:43 AM): Get back in here, Rainbow Dash!!!

I huffed a short laugh, and then sighed. Twilight had shown Rarity how to turn on Do Not Disturb at least twice, but Rarity was always too worried she’d miss a surprise Instagram sale to use it. Those are the perils of always being available, I guess. You could lead a horse to water, something something...

I leaned my head against the headrest once again in favor of watching the sunrise. It was coming up in earnest now, the morning clouds glowing a bright pink that put Pinkie’s hair to shame. The orange intensity of the sun was mesmerizing, and I had to remind myself not to stare straight at it, beautiful as it was. I had always felt a little odd watching sunsets and calling them beautiful, it felt weirdly self-aggrandizing?

Sunrises were fair game, though.

I let the measured rocking of the train lull me into a stupor, and I slowly blinked my way through the sunrise, watching until the sun had freed itself completely from the horizon. The neon oranges and pinks faded to the more sedate golds and blue-y purples of morning, and with a faceful of sun, I finally felt a little more awake, a little more alive.

Maybe if I wash my face… I pondered, but I was already standing and stretching. The water would probably help. According to the ticket, the refreshment service wouldn’t start making the rounds until after eight o’clock, and that was a long time to wait for coffee. I glanced around the empty car, made sure my bag was still stowed securely, and then meandered down to the bathroom at the other end of the car.

“Come on,” I muttered, jiggling the little hook handle. The lock said Vacant, but the sliding door wouldn't budge. “Let… me… in!” I grunted.

As if to say “if you insist”, the door slid open, like it hadn’t just been rusted shut.

“Jeez!” I exclaimed, stumbling into the little cabin and wrestling the door shut again. “Really make me work for it, why don’t you…”

It was tiny and cramped and unsettlingly green, but it seemed mostly clean, if oddly out of place from the rest of the train's modern interior. Bathroom renovations must cost a lot even for trains, I thought, grimacing at my reflection in the age-spotted mirror. The yellow light flickered overhead in what had to be the most unflattering manner possible, and I sighed, looking away from my face in favor of turning on the tap.

The water was freezing, of course, and I hissed as I cupped my hands under the icy stream and splashed it on my face once, twice, three times.

By the fourth, I felt pretty awake, and by the fifth, I could hear the buzzing electric clinks of the faulty overhead light, so I knew I was awake. I tugged a few paper towels free from the dispenser to dry my face, vowing to never tell Rarity that I had committed such an atrocity.

With my skin sins committed, I balled up the paper towel into a wad and tossed it in the bin. My cheeks felt raw, but maybe I’d be able to do something other than stare brainlessly out the window at the scenery. I grabbed the sliding door’s cubby handle, already considering my options. I could read my book, write a letter, or maybe just scroll through—

The door slid open as smoothly and silently as a curtain.

I blinked.

“What the…?” I didn’t think I’d managed to elbow grease it into submission, I wasn’t AJ or anything. I frowned down at the track, and then at the floor.

Had it… always been carpeted?

I blinked again, but the carpet was still there, neutral and musty, and not the hard plaster I had just walked across. I could already feel the consternation wrinkle forming between my brows as I stepped through the doorway and back into the train proper.

As soon as I crossed the threshold, a strange spinning sensation gripped my gut, like I had just been dropped from a great height, and I staggered forward, clutching the wall. It was cold, clinical steel under my fingers, somehow even colder than the water had been, and definitely not the sleek plastic paneling from before. Something twisted uncomfortably in my chest and I looked up, down the length of the car.

Everything had changed.

The car stretched on, an impossibly long, impossibly dark patchwork of a hallway lined with… strange shapes on either side. They looked like they were supposed to be seats, maybe, or the idea of seats, or maybe just chairs with sheets thrown over them, if the sheets were made of darkness.

I stepped carefully forward, examining the nearest shadowy mass. The beige carpet beneath my feet deadened my footsteps, and the glaring fluorescent lighting overhead did nothing to chase away the shadows. I squinted in the gloom, trying to resolve how it could be both so dark and so light at the same time.

And then the train lurched.

I staggered forward for the second time in as many minutes, instinctively reaching out my hand for one of the dark lumps to catch myself before I fell.

Like I had grabbed a person, insight flashed through my mind’s eye like a movie.

A tiny filly’s hooves, walking ceaselessly up a rocky edifice towards a tower in the distance, one hoof after the other, never getting any closer, finally collapsing and sobbing with exhaustion—

A dusty attic, filled with boxes and regrets and a large dollhouse, everything covered in a layer of grime, a layer of sorrow, a layer of pity and longing and spite—

The aseptic tang of disinfectant under bright lights, in a dated waiting room, in a dark hospital room, in an empty church sanctuary, all underlined by the sound of a heart monitor, the ticking of a clock, the sand of an hourglass swiftly running out—

An unsettling living room, everything perfectly centered and perfectly wrong, with a single tiny, glowing television screen lighting it, its static buzz filling the void, as if the void could ever be filled—

A field of wheat, impossibly still under an unendingly grey sky, with a forlorn little house squatting in the middle of the bleached scene, impossibly clean, impossibly tidy, impossibly echoing with the sound of laughter, or was itsobbing? It’s so hard to tell, why is it so hard to tell—

I wrenched my hand back with an almighty gasp and fell to the floor, panting for air.

Thump-thump-thump.

My heart thundered in my ears as I scooted away from the shadowy mass I had touched, and I could feel the geode around my neck, too warm against my skin, hot enough to burn.

“No, no, no, no, no, not today, not today…” I staggered back to my feet, heart still hammering, and I ran.

With each step, the train car stretched and lengthened, almost chidingly, almost as if to oblige my ceaseless chase. I whipped my head to one side, then the other, but even the windows were useless; they flashed between starry void, absolute darkness, gloomy mist, buzzing grey static, before finally settling on creamy beige, a shade or three lighter than the carpet. Silhouettes moved past, all ponies, all acting out different scenes. My head spun trying to make sense of them, my stomach roiled nauseously, and the train lurched forward beneath my feet again, as if the ground itself was alive.

As if it could feel me watching, and didn’t want me to look too closely.

I wildly swung my head back forward, and I could see it, I could see my seat, there, at the end of the car! I just had to reach it, I just had to reach it.

And then?

The thought whispered through my mind, unbidden, unhelpful.

The floor stretched, faster now, like it wanted to push me backwards, push me away, and I didn’t dare look behind me, even as thoughts of a cavernous darkness, a monstrous maw lined with too many teeth flooded my brain. Everything in my body screamed at me to run, ever hair standing on end, my jaw clenched to stop my teeth chattering. I forced my legs to move faster, to sprint, but it was like moving through molasses, like moving in slow motion, worse than standing still.

But I was almost there, only a few more feet, a few more—

And then?

“Shut up!” I cried.

The train shuddered, and stopped stretching, like it had actually listened. I sprinted the last few inches, really sprinted—and pulled up short.

There was a small, child-shaped shadowy mass huddled on my seat, crying softly.

I opened my mouth, licked my lips, but it was dry, and I couldn’t wet them.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump!

My heart picked up, impossibly faster despite the fact that I was no longer running.

And I could feel it. I could feel the lump’s sadness, her sadness.

I reached out my hand towards her. “Are you…” I rasped, tried to clear my throat.

The lump stilled, her sniffles abruptly cutting off.

“Are you okay?”

She was quiet. And then she turned her void face up at me, her sightless eyes.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t scream.

“Miss? Are you alright?”

I blinked.

Like a dream, the scene dissolved between one heartbeat and the next, and I was back on the train, on my train, the one I was supposed to be on, the one I had bought a ticket for and boarded while waving goodbye to my dads, and I was standing right next to my seat row. I turned, and the ticket inspector was behind me, S. Paid, her brass nameplate so bright and warm and refreshingly real.

I let out a great, shuddering gust of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“Y-yes, yes. I’m alright.” I shakily stepped to the side, and gingerly sat down on my seat, where the shadowy little girl definitely hadn’t been a moment ago.

A hallucination? Or maybe sleepwalking?

“Are you sure?” the ticket inspector asked, frowning down at me with concern. Her dark blue hair complimented the red of her vest, and her white skin was clear and bright and made sense. “Are you feeling sick? Do you need a bag, or the bathroom?”

My stomach jolted as she said ‘bathroom’, but I forced the sudden spike of fear down, and instead I sighed, a shaky thing, and then reassuringly smiled up at her, or at least attempted to.

“Yes, I’m alright ma’am.” More doubtful staring. “Really. I think I’m just… tired.” That had to be it.

“If you say so,” she answered dubiously. A beat of silence. “I’ll make sure the coffee cart comes by you first.”

“...Thanks. I appreciate that.”

The inspector walked briskly down the car and into the next, her unmuffled steps purposeful and loud and oddly relieving.

Before silence could take over, a new sound filled it: buzzing.

My seat was vibrating.

I yanked my phone out of my pocket, but it was silent. The time, 6:14 AM, stared back at me for three seconds before the screen went dark, and still the vibration continued. Another hallucination?

“The journal!” My mouth realized before I did, and then I was scrambling for my bag. I tugged it onto the seat next to me and yanked my journal out. It was vibrating, which wasn’t altogether weird on a normal day with a normal message from Princess Twilight, but the symbol on the front, the one in the shape of my Equestrian cutie mark…

It was glowing a deep, forbidding red.

My geode responded in kind, warming under my sweater as it had earlier, as it had what felt both like moments and hours before, and my heart, just starting to calm, picked its earlier pace back up right where it left off.

Thump-thump-thump.

Heart beating in my throat, I pulled my journal onto my lap and carefully opened it to the most recent page.

There, in Princess Twilight’s familiar script, was a simple message.

Sunset Shimmer, I need your help.

The High Priestess — Chapter I

“Why do you keep talking to him like that?!”

“Honey, I have no idea what you—”

“You know exactly what I mean!”

“Now listen here young filly, you can’t talk to your mother like that.”

“Oh, so it’s fine if you do it, but if I do the same thing it's suddenly bad?”

“Yes! You can’t talk to your parents that way.”

“It’s very troubling.”

“Are you kidding me?! You absolute—”

The attic door swung shut with a bang as Flash Sentry closed the hatch. He brushed his wavy mane back with his wings and released a long heavy breath as tension slowly drained from his body.

Straightening his jacket, he trotted away from the door and further into the old crawlspace of his foalhood home. It was, unsurprisingly, dusty and had the telltale scent of mold permeating the air of the room. Dust motes clung to every available surface giving the whole place a grungy feel. Towers of boxes sagged from the weight of gravity and poor insulation that couldn’t keep the dampness out. He meandered through makeshift corridors between containers, keeping his wings tight to his body to avoid them touching the old boxes.

An unease he felt caused Flash to hang his head downwards, glancing at the thick layer of grime that coated the wooden floorboards. He pressed his left forehoof into the soot. Lifting it up, he saw a perfect outline of his hoof in the dust. He snickered as a sense of foalishness overtook his previously demure mood.

Stepping into the previous imprint he had made, he placed his right forehoof close to the first. Moving carefully, he made a game of getting his rear hoofs to land in the hoofprints he left behind. Step by step he continued gaining in speed until, inevitably, he tangled up his limbs and ended up tripping over them, falling onto the ground with a loud fwump.

Snickering at his antics, he found himself looking at a nearby wall of boxes. A quick skim of the titles caused his prior grin to flip. The containers were all labeled after his family. ‘SWIFT SENTRY’, ‘GOLDEN WING’, ‘STALWART SENTRY’, and ‘LEAD SENTRY’ covered some of the packages in his mother’s blockish, scribbled wingwriting.

Most of them read ‘FLASH SENTRY’.

As he scrambled to his hooves, he felt an uncertain feeling grip him as he looked over the chests that contained his old mementos and toys from back when he had been a foal. All neatly packed away and placed somewhere no one would have to look at them. Flash tried not to dwell on the meaning behind that sentiment.

That strange feeling became mucky as he tried to recall what was inside. No matter how hard he tried to wrack his brain, it all just became a blur in his memories. A streak of black ink smeared across a page like when he wrote his guard reports too fast.

Reaching out with a hoof, he pried out one of the boxes, careful to not collapse the stack. He placed his wings on the edges of the box giving it an experimental yank. It slid out easily enough, but his nerves at potentially causing a collapse caused him to shove it back into its proper place.

Continuing onwards, he trotted around the box wall and came upon a strange sight before him.

Bathed in a stark beam of light was a dollhouse.

From his vantage point, he could see it was three stories high and bright pink. It was modeled after an old Canterlot home, something that would have towered over him as a foal, but barely came up to his breast as a stallion. There was a dignity to the toy as it stood pristine and without a speck of dust upon it in a room of decaying refuse. But that same dignity gave it a sense of foreboding as Flash found it odd how new it seemed in this space that was so rarely visited.

Coming fully around the corner and tilting his head to one side, Flash tried to recall who could have owned the dollhouse. His sister Swift was the most likely contender, but she had grown up despising anything that had been considered a ‘filly’ toy. His brother was in the same boat, and the toy looked too new to have been owned by his parents.

Could it have been his? Flash thought, perusing his foggy memory for a hint of the dollhouse’s origins.

With curiosity driving him forward, he approached the toy, its presence growing bigger as he got closer, his perspective shifting downward. Unease gnawed at him, but he pressed onward, a strange compulsion driving him towards it.

As he arrived at the stark white door of the dollhouse, Flash found the toy building towered over him, his head now lower than the top of the door frame.

He spun in circles inspecting himself. He was the same proportionally, but he had, in fact, shrunk down in size. Compared to the towering walls of the attic and stacked boxes he was barely taller than the molding at the base of the floor. Struck by a blind panic, he galloped away from the house but skidded to a stop as he realized that he was not growing back in size. A panicked realization made him consider that even if he reached the attic door, he could never open the hatch when he was smaller than the mouth grip.

Turning back around, Flash cautiously trekked back to the house, his ears pinned down to his head as he took in the now terrifying presence of the building.

With surprise, he saw silhouettes through the ornate curtained windows that he hadn’t noticed earlier. Surprise turned to stark relief as the sounds of revelry drifted toward him. As orange light spilled from the house and bathed him in an ethereal glow, he couldn’t help but feel glad that there were other ponies present.

Flash stood before the door, perking his ears at the sound of laughter emanating from beyond the solid wood. He raised his hoof to knock but found himself stopping just short as an inkling of fear dripped into his thoughts. He didn’t know what was happening to him and there was no guarantee that the strangers inside would help him. Even worse, said strangers could be the reason he had become this small in the first place, which soon caused him to tense in place, his imagination running wild at the possibilities of what these ponies might do to him.

But as the torrent of nightmarish scenarios overtook him, he realized that he had no other options available to him. He either took the chance with these strangers or hoped that one of his family members remembered about him and came up to the attic to check. When he laid out the options like that, he realized there was actually only one.

Steeling his nerves, he rapped on the door three times, the bang sound echoing off the wood.

The door swung open. Standing past the threshold to Flash’s shock was a ponyquinn. It was an earth pony model covered in purple fabric stretched tightly over some unknown material. Gaps in the fabric showed metal joints at key points in its body. It had no facial features or discerning qualities as it was missing a mane, tail, and cutie mark. More disturbingly, it held the door open with an outstretched hoof, staring forward with its unseeing head as if it had been what had opened the door.

The ponyquinn tilted its head at a 90-degree angle. “Are you Flash Sentry?” A squeaky voice asked.

Incomprehension freezing him in place as he placed the voice coming from the ponyquinn, Flash answered with an uneasy voice, “Y-yes?”

Lunging forward, the ponyquinn grabbed Flash by the front of his jacket, its featureless face too close for comfort. “Then come on in!”

With a powerful yank, Flash was pulled into the house, too fast to even scream. As he crossed the boundary between the attic and the dollhouse, the door slammed firmly shut behind him, sealing his fate.

The High Priestess — Chapter II

Flash stumbled forward, skidding across the wooden floors of the dollhouse’s foyer, the floral wallpaper passing by in a blur as he grabbed onto the nearby staircase railing. As he regained his balance and released the banister, he turned towards the ponyquinn who had shoved their face into Flash’s. He leaned away from them, uncomfortable with the contact of the scratchy fabric on his fur.

“What are—” he began.

“Hello!” The ponyquinn interjected.

Put off by the sudden greeting, Flash returned the greeting. “Oh, um, hi?” he grinned nervously, worried that he might offend the thing otherwise.

“I’m so glad you’re finally here, Flash!” the ponyquinn continued.

“That’s… awesome!” Flash said, feigning an enthusiastic tone. “I don’t suppose you could step back a bit?”

“No,” the ponyquinn bluntly stated.

“Right, of course.” Flash gulped. “So, where is here exactly?”

“Its true name isn’t important, but to make things easier you can call it the tower.”

“That’s a really weird name for— ah!”

He was interrupted by the ponyquinn abruptly stepping back, grabbing his hoof, nearly toppling him in the process, then shaking it up and down rapidly causing the rest of his body to follow suit. The thing stopped just short of popping Flash’s foreleg out of its socket.

Looking into the ponyquinn’s featureless face, Flash angrily shouted, “What was that for?!”

“The traditional greeting ponies give. A hoofshake,” the ponyquinn stated matter-of-factly. “With introductions complete, we can get started.”

“Started with what?!” Flash said in exasperation. He shook his head and tried to regain his bearings on the situation. “Actually, first off, who are you?”

“Your guide,” the ponyquinn answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Sure, but what’s your name?” Flash tried again.

“I do not have one. It is unnecessary.”

“Then how should I address you? Saying ‘you’ every time I want to get your attention is going to get confusing.”

“You make a good point,” the ponyquinn tilted its head to one side in thought. “You shall pick one for us then.”

“You want me to name you?” Flash asked.

“Yes.”

Taken aback by the request, Flash furrowed his brow in concentration as he attempted to come up with a name for the strange… thing. It didn’t have any unique features excluding the fabric wrapped tightly around its frame. He focused on the colour, attempting to gauge what shade it was. It was a shade of purple, reddish in hue. The specifics reminded him of his mother’s garden and a certain berry that grew there.

“I’ll call you Mulberry,” Flash answered.

“Excellent,” Mulberry replied. “Now we shall begin!”

“And we’re beginning what exactly?” Flash asked apprehensively.

“A simple questionnaire,” Mulberry said. “To start. It will assist in our treatment of your emotional distress.”

“My—” Flash choked on his words in surprise, “I don’t have any distress!” He paused. “Okay, well, I shrunk down to the size of a doll, but I wouldn’t call that emotionally distressing.”

“Oh no, I’m not referring to your shrinking. I refer to your personal distress. All the things currently bothering you at home and work!”

Scrunching up his face in discomfort, Flash backed away from the ponyquinn with Mulberry following after him. “I’m not comfortable sharing that with a total stranger,” Flash replied as he felt his rump impact with a wall.

“But who better to discuss it with than a total stranger?” Mulberry tilted their head, pressing up into Flash’s personal space.

“A trusted friend?” Flash questioned, going back on his haunches and pushing himself against the wall.

“No!” Mulberry replied back in a chipper tone. “Your trusted friend is part of the problem! It’s always better to talk with an unbiased third party who isn’t part of your situation nor held back by any affectionate attachment to you.”

“I’m not sure that—”

“We are capable of giving you unbiased opinions and feedback,” Mulberry interrupted. “We can help you address your issues and move on.” They pressed their muzzle to Flash’s. “You want to feel better don’t you?”

“I mean yeah, but—”

“You want someone to discuss your problems with, don't you?” Mulberry continued.

“Yes!” Flash said exasperatedly. “But if you would give me a moment—”

“Then why hold yourself back, Flash? Let us help you.”

Flash bit his lip in indecision, his discomfort mounting with how close Mulberry was to him both physically and emotionally. Invading his space. Taking it over. And he hated how he couldn’t say no. He could move them out of the way, he could tell them to go away, he could do any number of things to get out of this situation.

But instead, all his brain could come up with was to agree with whatever it was they wanted and hope it would be painless.

“S-sure,” Flash agreed with a hesitant nod of his head.

“Wonderful!” Mulberry stepped backward giving Flash enough space to come back to the ground.

Flash breathed a sigh of relief as he did so.

“Now, to start,” Mulberry continued, “we will be asking a series of questions to get a better understanding of your mental well-being. Please answer truthfully to the best of your ability.”

“Okay,” Flash nodded his head, getting himself comfortably seated on his rump.

“Then let us begin.” Mulberry stared off into space for a moment before chuckling quietly to themself. “Oh! This is a fun one. What is your favourite colour?”

“Blue?” Flash replied uncertainly, trying to gauge Mulberry’s reaction. “No, it’s orange. Er, wait, white.”

“White is not a colour,” Mulberry stated.

“T-then blue,” Flash answered, pinning his ears to the back of his head.

“A lovely colour,” Mulberry said. They paused for another moment. “Who is your favourite sibling?”

Somewhat taken aback by the abrupt personal question, Flash thought about his younger brother Lead and older sister Swift. He didn’t particularly like either of them. His brother was obnoxious and loud. His sister likewise.

They were both difficult to talk to. His brother was insulting in how he addressed Flash, while his sister just took over any discussions they had with each other. However, the question still hadn’t been answered and Mulberry was waiting for his response. If he had to pick one…

“My sister, Swift,” Flash said.

“The professional athlete, interesting,” Mulberry mumbled.

Flash looked askance. “I see even weird ponyquinns know about her.”

“We find it difficult not to, with her being the best racer in Equestria.” Mulberry once more stared off into space. “How do you feel about your job?”

“I enjoy the work. The discipline and routine is good for me. I get to stay active and protect those that need it.” Flash shrugged. “It's fulfilling.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’,” Flash asked, confused. “I answered the question, now let’s move on to the next one.”

“Now, Flash—”

“I just answered you!” Flash yelled, stomping his hoof on the floors and leaving a crack in the wood.

Mulberry ignored the damage and stared at Flash intently. “Flash, I am obligated to remind you that you must answer truthfully. We are here to help. And we cannot help you if you are not honest with us.” They paused to allow their words to sink in. “Now, I will ask again.” Their voice went an octave deeper, an unknown power behind their words. “How do you feel about your job?”

He mulled over his thoughts, twisting and turning them until he found an answer. As he tried to speak the words, his throat closed up, unwilling to let him vocalize something so private.

Pushing through the discomfort, Flash forced out, “Everything is decided for me. I don’t have to figure out where I fit because everyone fits in the same box regardless of who they are,” he continued, the words becoming easier as he spoke. “I don’t have to set boundaries or figure out who I am in relation to others because, while in the guard, I’m not ‘Flash Sentry’, I’m just ‘Guard’.

“I-it’s comfortable.”

Mulberry stared at him impassively before they said, “Excellent response. Now, for the final question. How do you feel about your attraction towards stallions?”

With just a simple sentence, Flash could feel his world expand bigger as he grew smaller. His breathing sped up, his heart threatened to burst from his chest. His wings flapped behind him, anxious to take off and fly away as far as possible.

“W-what do you— no!” Flash exclaimed, his voice trembling. “I’m not attracted to— I’ve never—!”

“Now, now, Flash, it’s perfectly normal to harbour feelings for other ponies, even if they are of the same gender.” Mulberry tilted their head to one side. “Even a pony in a higher station than you.”

“I— what?!” Flash’s eyes shrunk to pinpricks, sheer panic coursing through his system. “I don’t— he doesn’t even—!” Flash slammed back against the wall feeling cornered. Everything seemed to be moving away from him, the walls, the stairs, even Mulberry. “Why are you even asking this?!”

“The root of your distress is your inability to come to terms with these feelings you have. In order for us—” they placed a hoof on their chest “—to help you, you must confront these feelings firsthoof.”

“This isn’t— I-I don’t want to talk about it,” Flash whimpered, his body shaking in fear.

“That is not an answer to the question, Flash Sentry.”

“I don’t—”

“We will not move forward until you answer the question,” Mulberry firmly stated.

He shrunk away from Mulberry feeling physically nauseous at being confronted so directly about an aspect of himself he so rarely wished to acknowledge, let alone talk about. Unfortunately, he had no way of escape and the only way forward was to satisfy Mulberry’s question. Gritting his teeth, Flash mentally pushed forward.

With his head hung low, Flash responded, “W-what do you mean by the question? It’s kind of vague.”

“Oh, apologies. We did not mean to be so unclear,” Mulberry said. “We are asking about how you feel about those feelings of attraction.”

Flash shrunk in on himself, hunching his shoulders and covering his body with his wings. “Shame, remorse…” he bit his lip, recalling a moment long ago now smeared with guilt, “... hate. But I wouldn’t act on it! The only one I really like now is married and he… probably doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Superb!” Mulberry looked down at him. This struck Flash as off since he was supposed to be taller than them. “Now, would you like me to take your jacket back? It appears to be too big for you.”

Confused, Flash glanced down then quickly became alarmed. He had become roughly the proportional size of a foal and his jacket, made for somepony that was both an adult and not average-sized, hung around him like a tent that had collapsed overtop of him.

“W-why am I—” Flash could feel his breath picking up pace, his chest heaving from his panic. “What did you do?!”

“We did nothing, but you are making excellent progress,” Mulberry said in a chipper tone, grabbing Flash’s jacket and hanging it over the nearby banister.

“Progress?!” Flash shouted. “How is this progress?”

“Because you’re finally addressing your feelings,” Mulberry stared into space a moment. “The questionnaire is now complete. Are you ready to move on to the next session?”

“I’m don’t really want to.”

“Perfect! Let’s go.”

Mulberry grabbed Flash by the shoulders and dragged him towards one of the closed doors in the foyer. It swung open as they approached, one willing and one filled with dread. Flash tried to bury his hooves into the wooden floorboards, but he’d lost all his weight from shrinking further making it impossible to fight back against Mulberry’s surprisingly strong grip.

“Wait! Please don’t!” Flash begged. “I-I need to fix this first!”

“You will! Just continue with the sessions,” Mulberry replied.

They stopped just short of the door. Flash looked up, finding Mulberry’s expressionless face looking unnervingly down on him.

“Try to be social!”

They pushed Flash through the door, which closed roughly behind him. He tried to push it back open, but it was firmly shut. Apprehensively, he looked out over the new place he found himself in.

Staring back at him, was a sea of differently coloured ponyquinns.

The High Priestess — Chapter III

Flash plastered himself against the door, terrified of the featureless faces surrounding him. Each was similar to Mulberry, a ponyquinn with no discernable parts, but where Mulberry had been a rather pleasant shade of purple, these ponyquinns were not. He spied one that was a shade of green similar to puke. Another a yellow that reminded him of pus. The others were as equally skewed towards colours that reminded him of funerals, hospitals, and sickness.

This nauseating display was made worse by a strong sickly sweet scent that permeated the entire room. It was like being dumped into a pile of cotton candy. The source appeared to be coming from the drinks and appetizers held by the ponyquinns. The drinks were transparent wine glasses filled with bubbling bubblegum pink liquid. The appetizers were sandwiches of weird combinations like hay fries and custard, and peanut butter and chives.

He tried to focus on the walls to push past his queasiness, but they were coloured an obnoxious bright pink and patterned with sterile white… flowers? Card spades? Fancy Prench symbols? Flash wasn’t entirely sure what it was supposed to be just that it was impossible to discern its exact shape.

Speaking of, he couldn’t seem to figure out the dimensions of the room. The ceiling seemed to stretch far away from him. Far enough that he couldn’t tell if what he saw was the ceiling or just an extension of the walls. The seams between were impossible to discern putting the very nature of the room in question, as if it couldn’t decided between being solid or something akin to a rolling wave.

There was a groaning underneath the floor, a loud creaking and snapping that filled Flash’s ears despite being pinned to his head. It gave the illusion of the room being in a constant state of stretching, expanding and undulating to a seemingly random rhythm.

Flash was adrift in a sea of pink. The ocean heaved against the door he stuck himself to, the only stable part of the room. The ponyquins watched him as he struggled to not capsize.

Waiting for the moment he would be pulled under the wooden waves.

Bile roiled in his stomach threatening to climb up his throat. He was marooned in a place that was wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong —

All at once, they ignored him. The ponyquins turned their backs to him and continued their prior conversations. The creaking of the room was quietly muffled by the sounds of murmured discussion and hushed whispers.

Taking a deep shaky breath, Flash collapsed to the floor and covered his head with his wings, hiding within their embrace. He whimpered as he huddled within relative safety, exposed with no armour in a strange place with zero preparation. His drill sergeant from basic would have a field day reaming him out for how much he’d screwed this up.

Another few more breaths and he felt calm enough to think back to Mulberry’s instructions. They had said to be social, which, through context, probably meant he needed to talk with the ponyquinns. Which meant he needed to get off the floor.

He really didn’t want to get off the floor.

But he didn’t have any other option.

Pushing himself back onto his hooves, tucking his wings to his sides and ignoring the persistent need to vomit, he gazed across the nauseating ocean and picked out the least problematic of the lot: an off-yellow ponyquinn standing by themselves.

Cautiously swimming through the clashing waves of bodies, Flash approached his target and offered a hesitant wave of his wing, pointedly not acknowledging the shaking of the feathers. “Hi,” he greeted.

The ponyquinn (Flash mentally decided to call them Sunny) gazed down indifferently upon him, boring a hole through his head with the mere suggestion of their expression. “Hi, yourself,” Sunny answered curtly.

“So…” Flash coughed into a wing to give him time to decide on what to say, “how are you?”

“Terrible,” Sunny bluntly replied.

“Oh, um, sorry to hear that,” Flash grimaced, feeling his nausea redouble its efforts at his expense, “why’s that?”

“You are aware this is a funeral, right?” Flash stared back blankly. Sunny scoffed. “Wow, real classy, colt.”

“I-I didn’t—!” Flash scrunched up his face “—sorry, I didn’t mean to be so insensitive.”

“Then learn to read the room. Seriously, why are you even here if you have no idea what’s going on?” Sunny took a sip of their drink, the pink liquid staining the fabric around the approximation of where their mouth should be. They eyed the drink before tossing it to the ground, the liquid staining the wood dark. “You wanna meet the deceased?”

“Meet the deceased?” Flash furrowed his brow. “That doesn’t sound right. Isn’t this supposed to be a funeral?”

“It is. For a mare that already thinks she’s dead,” Sunny replied dully. “She gave up and now we’re throwing a party for her to celebrate it.” They snorted. “Such a damn waste.”

“Why does she think that?” Flash asked.

“Because she believed a bunch of doctors whose best solution is to tell ponies is to give up.” Sunny stared into the distance before jerking her head back to Flash. “You know what? You should meet her.”

“I-I’m not sure—”

“It’ll be fine, come on,” Sunny interrupted before trotting into the sea.

Flash raced after her, jostled and churned by the ocean of ponyquinns who paid no attention to the colt chasing after the bright spot of yellow in the crowd. Soon enough, he was dumped unceremoniously by the waves onto the floor next to Sunny.

In this small island of respite were them and another ponyquinn the colour of baked bread. She smelled of baked apples, a scent that wafted so strongly from her it cut through the sickly sweet scent of the room.

“Behold, colt. The living dead. Be careful,” Sunny loudly whispered, “she might infect you with her fatalism.”

The brown ponyquinn (Baked, Flash mentally called her) hung her head, facing away from Sunny.

“Nothing to say?” Sunny exclaimed. “No comeback? Not even some grunt of acknowledgement? You used to write so much when I didn’t want to listen to you, but now, when I actually want to talk, all you do is mope!” They hissed the last words, venom underlying her tone.

Baked shrunk in on herself, head tucked, hooves snapped together. It reminded Flash of something, a long buried memory with a bitter haze around it.

“You got nothing to say anymore? Just giving me the silent treatment now?!” Sunny growled in frustration, stomping her hooves on the floor, leaving small fractures in the wood. “You sure do like to nose into my business, but when the spotlight is turned back on you, you keep everything to yourself!”

“H-hey—” Flash tried to interject.

“I’m so sick of this!” Sunny yelled. “We have to analayze and pick apart everything about me, but you get to hide behind your stupid illness whenever it’s time for you?! How is that fair?!”

“She can’t help it, though!” Flash wedged himself between the shivering form of Baked and Sunny. “It’s not like she chose to have a fatal illness!”

“What do you even know?! You don’t even what she has!” Sunny retorted.

“I-I can figure out context,” Flash replied. “And you shouldn’t be so mad at her! People mourn bad stuff differently.”

“So, you’re telling me I should just let her accept that she’s going to die?”

“No! You just need to—” Flash faltered, the memory of smoke filling his nose and reminding him of worse times. “—look. It’s hard. No one copes the same as anyone else.” Closed doors. The same walls. “But yelling at her doesn’t help. All it does—”

“Is what? Get her flanks moving?!”

“—is make that pony close themselves off even more!” Lectures. Monologues. Anger. “You need to listen—”

“She won’t even talk—” Sunny paused, “—write, whatever! There’s nothing to listen to!”

“You just need to be patient.” Time passing by. The same motions. “She’ll come to you when she’s ready. Just let her take some time to breathe. Offer support—”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?!”

“—and let her tell you how you can help.” Flash grit his teeth, his tail lashed behind him. “Making someone feel better faster never works.”

“Then I should just lie back and let her give up?!” Sunny laughed, a harsh edge to her tone. “That’s some of the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m just trying to help!” Flash shouted back.

“Unasked for, I might add!” Sunny harshly retorted. “You don’t know us! You didn’t even know this was a funeral until I told you, now you’re some sage dispenser of wisdom? Look, I don’t need assistance from some col—” Sunny paused, scanning Flash over, “... stallion who thinks he knows better!”

“But all you’re going to end up doing is push her away and make it impossible to be there for her when it matters,” Flash pleaded. “If you keep doing this you’ll—”

“What? Help her?”

“No!” Flash roared. “You’ll just ruin whatever relationship you have left!”

Sunny took a step back from Flash as he flared his wings and panted in place, rage causing his body to shake from the sheer adrenaline coursing through him.

“Ugh, you ponies are all the same!” Flash continued, his agitation growing. “You see a pony in pain and think you need to shove their rump back to happy as soon as possible without letting them actually take the time to get there. It’s always about how you, you, you can help rather than listening to what the pony actually needs! You’re just like my—” Flash stopped, the words dying on his lips.

“Like what, colt? Like—” Sunny looked past him and stomped their hoof on the ground. “Dangit, she’s gone!”

“What?” Flash said dumbly.

“She left!” Sunny pointed past Flash.

“Oh, she did. But, still you need to—” Sunny rushed past him, racing into the sea once more. “Hey! We’re not— she’s already gone.”

Snorting angrily, Flash stomped away, forcing the sea to part before him, cracking the wooden seabed as he went with each impact of his hooves. He ignored the protestations of the waves, his mind solely focused on his prior conversation.

He was mad. Angrier than he had ever been in a long time. He’d overstepped. He knew that. It was wrong for him to say what he did, but he knew what kind of pony Sunny was. The selfish kind that helped by shoving their solution onto others’ problems. Doing so without even taking a moment to consider the other’s feelings. She was the worst kind of pony. Just like—

“Having a bad time, big guy?”

Flash whipped his head towards the source of the voice. Another ponyquinn (dirty white plaid with saddlebags heavy with paint supplies) greeted him.

“Is that a joke?” Flash snarled, his already sour mood souring further.

“Just a hello,” the ponyquinn (Flash named them Paints) replied. “You seem kind of mad, and I thought you could use someone to talk it out with before you end up—” they waved a hoof in a circular motion, “—doing something you regret.”

“Yeah, well, pick a different nickname,” Flash growled. He stepped into their space, towering over top of them. “That was pretty mean.”

“Sure, sure,” Paints waved a hoof dismissevly. “But you really should calm down. You’re gonna get too big for this place at the rate you’re going.”

“Excuse me?!” Flash snorted. “What does that even mean?”

“Exactly what I just told you,” Paints replied.

“That I need to calm down?”

“Yep.”

“Me?”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” Flash stomped his hoof on the ground, frowning firmly at Paints. “I won’t!” He shouted. “And I shouldn’t have to!”

“That’s valid.”

“That’s—” Flash sputtered. He drew himself up, his vantage point becoming higher and higher. “I can be mad! I have that right! You don’t even know what I’ve been through today! I got stuck in a dumb dollhouse, after being shrunk to a dumb size, and now I can’t leave this dumb place, and I’m sick of it!” He yelled, his frustrations pouring out of him. “Everything has been Tartarus and let. Me. Tell. You. I am NOT going to— ow!”

Flash rubbed back of his head with a wing where he had impacted with something. He tried to turn his head to see, but found it difficult as his panicked mind took in the sounds of the wooden ceiling creaking against him.

He looked down and found he’d hit a growth spurt. A huge growth spurt. The ponyquinns that had once been above him, now looked like mere dolls. He raised his wings and hooves to try and keep them away from the protesting ponyquinns, but found the walls closing in on him, forcing his limbs closer to his ever growing body.

“Told you!” Paints called up to him.

The ceiling groaned, creaking against him. His heart pounded. He whimpered, panic and stress causing small tears to prick the corner of his eyes. Even worse, his anger had already grown — now redirected at himself.

His emotions had gotten away from him like some colt to the point he hadn’t even noticed this had been happening. How irresponsible could he be to endanger others like this? He had felt so righteously angry before and now he just felt disgusted with himself.

Dust fell from the ceiling and coated the top of his head. He spied out of the corner of his eye a small hole in the ceiling caused by the continuous pressure of his head against the wood. A panic-stricken idea flashed through his mind.

Acting quickly, he smashed his head against the ceiling, the wood giving each time he hit it. After a few whacks, the hole grew to grant him passage to the upper floor. It would be a tight squeeze, but better than crushing the ponyquinns underneath him.

Grabbing the edges with his hooves, he pulled himself up and out of the room.

Collapsing backwards onto the wooden floors that were relatively normal to his body size, he sucked in panicked lungfuls of air, forcing himself to calm his beating heart. He flicked his ears as the sound of soft steps echoed of the walls of whatever place he had found himself in. A purple ponyquinn filled his vision.

“Great job, Flash!” Mulberry greeted him. “Now, you need to get up! We have more work to do.”

The High Priestess — Chapter IV

“What was all that about?” Flash asked.

“Important work!” Mulberry replied.

“A funeral was important work?” Flash exclaimed. “How? Why? And you could have at least told—”

“We don’t have time for these questions, Flash,” Mulberry interrupted with their usual chipper tone. “We need you to get moving so we can keep helping you.”

Mulberry pulled their head back, granting an unobstructed view of the ceiling. A single bright white light shone back causing Flash to squint. It filled his view of the world, letting him momentarily ignore whatever terrible surroundings he had climbed into.

“Now, Flash,” Mulberry called out.

With a weary sigh, Flash got back on his hooves and stood up, expanding his view to include the space he found himself in.

It was a long corridor made of warm-toned wood, one end stretching away further than he could perceive, the opposite end similar, but ending in an empty void of white. Evenly spaced along the wall on his right were transparent window displays with a single item illuminated by an interior spotlight.

“Welcome to the hall made up of your memories,” Mulberry announced. “Before you are all the items that are important to you.”

Furrowing his brow, Flash took a step toward the nearest display. Inside were two stuffed timberwolves. Both were made from worn fabric stitched together with poorly sewn-on patches of mismatched cloth. One was dark green with a blue ribbon tied around its neck, and the other was a lighter green with a red ribbon. They stared back at Flash from their pedestal with matching glossy black eyes.

“What are these?” Flash questioned.

“Your favourite foalhood toys,” Mulberry answered, gesturing with an outstretched hoof. “It's concerning to us how much you seem to not remember.”

“My favourite…” Flash trailed off before refocusing on the second part of Mulberry’s response. “Hey! I remember things fine. It’s perfectly reasonable to forget about something from my foalhood.”

“But not the majority of your teenage years and young adult life,” Mulberry continued. “You appear to have significant gaps and we only procured as much as we did by diving further into your mind than we normally need to.”

“Not everyone can recall every detail of their life perfectly,” Flash retorted, snorting angrily. “I remember plenty.”

“Oh, then we apologise. We may have misinterpreted what we saw. Perhaps you can answer a simple question to prove your assertion?”

“Sure, but it's unnecessary.”

“What high school did you attend?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Flash scoffed, waving a wing. “I went to…” he wracked his brain for the answer. “Well, it was in Dodge— wait, no, that was my sister. It was Cloudsdale? No, mom went there.” He bit his lower lip, uncertainty on his mind. “Canterlot… ?”

“You attended school in Manehattan,” Mulberry stated cheerily.

“Right, of course,” Flash smacked his forehead with a wing. “I knew that, obviously.”

“Apologies, but we lied. You actually went to school in Vanhoover,” Mulberry corrected.

Flash blinked. He didn’t remember that. Hoping to distract from the panic starting to build in his mind, he placed a hoof against the glass and asked, “So, why are these toys important to me?”

“They were a gift from your father after you pointed them out at a toy store,” Mulberry explained, their tone betraying no recognition of the obvious change in topic. “You thought timberwolves looked cool and decided you needed both.”

“Yeah, since I didn’t want them to feel lonely,” Flash murmured, the memory resurfacing. Giddiness from winning a flight meet earlier that day. His father feeling charitable after his success. “I must have really loved them a lot with how many patches there are.”

“Oh, no, you were actually quite gentle with them. You loved to cuddle and hug them a lot.” Mulberry giggled lightly. “The rips were caused by your father.”

It was like the scratch of a record, his content memories souring immediately as further recollections piled in. “He… what? Why?” Flash asked.

“In the following flight meet, you came in last place due to over-training. You were too exhausted and flubbed the whole competition,” Mulberry said. “Your dad told you that ‘gifts were for winners’ and then ripped both plushes in two.”

“Then dad stitched them back up when he realised he shouldn’t have done that, right?” Flash turned his head towards Mulberry who remained silent, memories resurfacing of falling stuffing and the disappointment etched clearly on his father’s face. “Right?”

Mulberry tilted their head to one side, then jerked their head in the direction of Flash’s hoof. Flash looked in the noted direction and stiffened in shock to see blood congealing under his hoof against the glass.

He pulled it back leaving behind small pinpricks of blood in the rough outline of his hoof. Staring at the bottom, he took in the pricks of dried blood on the surface. All at once, he remembered the long nights sniffling in bed as he stitched his wolves back together using scraps of cloth from the garbage. Crying in frustration for each slip of the needle that stabbed into his unskilled hoof.

“We should move on.”

Flash jerked his head back to Mulberry who stood patiently by him.

“Lots to see, and we can’t help you if you just stand around here,” Mulberry continued.

“Y-yeah, sure,” Flash nodded his head, the corner of his gaze lingering on the timber wolf plushies.

He had managed to repair them, but they had only lasted a week before his father had found them and thrown them out in the trash.

Mulberry began to trot away, a bouncy step to her gait. Flash followed behind, numbness spreading through his hooves as an unnoticed tear fell from his eye.

Flash and Mulberry continued to traverse the corridor passing by beloved and important items that told his past. Each memory had a happy tinge on initial observation; the cart he used for his first part-time job, a trophy earned from a music writing competition, and tickets to his first concert, but it was mired in the inescapable frustration of his parents.

Criticisms, arguments, and passive-aggressive remarks about how he didn’t measure up, and how his siblings were so much more successful. It drowned any happiness he felt in a horrible malaise that stuck to him like sludge. It caused him to slump as they trotted on, slowing down as each cubic inch of concrete memory poured back into him, reminding him of how miserable he had been.

Even as his canter slowed to a dawdle, Mulberry kept pace with him, filling the silence between them with ramblings about the various circumstances surrounding a display.

As a new exhibit came upon them, Flash stopped in front of the window, his interest piqued.

“What’s that?” Flash asked.

“Your high school’s honours badge,” Mulberry replied. “For graduating at the top of your class.”

The badge in question did match the purpose Mulberry described. A dull gold medal shaped like a star with a pair of wings and a single horn held together by an outer band. Engraved into the centre were his name and graduating year. It was a beautiful piece, but for one rather noteworthy detail.

“There’s dried blood on it,” Flash noted dully.

“There is indeed,” Mulberry happily replied.

Pausing to mull over his thoughts, Flash asked the obvious first question, “is it mine?”

“No.”

“Okay, that’s… good.” Flash wracked his memory for an answer but was left wanting. “So, whose blood is it?”

“Topo Glint.”

Another pause as Flash searched his mind for a face to the name.

“Who in Tartarus is Topo Glint?” Flash asked.

“Valedictorian of your graduating class, whom you punched so hard in the face he splattered blood on you and lost two teeth,” Mulberry answered happily. “Don’t worry though, he did get them replaced with gold a year later.”

Nodding his head, Flash tried to recall the incident in question. Unfortunately, his mind refused to bring it forth outside of a vague feeling of satisfaction.

“Why did I punch Topo in the face?” Flash questioned.

“We believe the adjoining display will answer that.” Mulberry pranced merrily to the next exhibit, looking back at Flash with a tilt of their head.

Confused, Flash followed after them taking a gander at the display before him. On the central podium was a wooden guitar painted blue with his cutie mark inscribed on the front. It was smashed in half with the strings snapped off.

Memories flooded into Flash. His dream of becoming a musician. His mother wanting him to join her investment bank instead. Arguments. Yelling. Endless fights. A deal. His guitar smashed over the back of the living room couch. His frustrations over why he tried so hard to be at the top of his class only to have his mother unwilling to keep her end of the bargain.

Topo Glint making a snide remark about how Flash never worked for anything. How it was all just hoofed over to him by his parents.

“His dad worked at my mom’s bank as the hiring manager,” Flash said, the pieces falling into place. “I took his attitude as an excuse to make it so he would complain to his father thus ruining my chances at the bank.”

“You did, and it worked!” Mulberry exclaimed. “Shiny Glint refused to hire you despite pressure from your mother. You didn’t have to work there. You couldn’t work there.”

“But I couldn’t follow my dream,” Flash intoned dully.

“No, you couldn’t. You were forced down another path, but this time of your father’s choosing,” Mulberry agreed. Then, in a darker tone, “And that’s what got you into the mess you’re in now, isn’t it?”

Memories of smoke. Burning. Screaming. Panic. Overwhelming failure and heartache. Rifling through garbage. Desperation. Anger. So much anger. Then nothing. The same walls. The same arguments.

Flash trotted past Mulberry, the corridor beginning to stretch further away from him as he felt the weight of his memories push him further to the ground. Every step was an effort, but forward momentum was all he had as the numbness spread further through his body.

Ever present Mulberry trotted next to him, matching his slow pace. “It’s okay to feel this way Flash. We know this might be awful for you, but it will all be worth it eventually. The process will work; just trust in one thing.

“We’re helping you.”

Flash continued his forward crawl, his hooves weighed down, his ears assaulted by a neverending deluge of Mulberry’s exposition on his life. The corridor appeared twisted, giving it the appearance of a spiral with the windows stretching to accommodate the odd structure.

“Here’s the contract your father made you sign when you started your career in the guard,” Mulberry said.

Since music wasn’t a real career and the bank wasn’t an option.

“The first suit of armour you were ever given by the castle.”

That never fit right since pegasus armour was forged for streamlined ponies, not hulking brutes that could barely fit in his own race’s tents.

“And this—” Mulberry stopped before the latest exhibit as Flash trudged by. “Strange. We do not actually know what this object’s relevance is.”

Curious as to what had confused Mulberry, Flash trudged back to the prior display window. As he looked over the object inside, his eyes widened and he stepped as close as he could to the glass.

Inside was a nearly complete scale model of a timberwolf with various tools spread around it as if its makers were due to return any moment. The model reared up, its mouth open wide and filled with pieces of cut cardboard, its individual pieces glued seamlessly together.

It also shouldn’t exist anymore.

“We see that you appear to remember this piece. Would you be willing to—”

“How?” Flash interjected.

“What do you mean? We have already told you, everything here is made from your memories.” Mulberry tapped the glass lightly, a tink-tink sound emanating from the impact. “Before you is an object we are unfamiliar with meaning that it is both so important that it had to be placed here and buried so deep in your subconscious, we failed to procure it on our initial gathering.”

Short, quick breaths. Heart pounding in his ears. Flash stared at the object, memories bubbling to the surface.

“Miraculously, we think this object was placed by you, not us.” Mulberry leaned in closer to Flash. “Would you be willing to enlighten us about its importance?”

Burning. Smoke. Flames licking at fur.

“He’s gone, it shouldn’t be here.” Flash placed both of his hooves against the glass, pressing his face as close as he could.

“Who’s he?” Mulberry asked. “We presume you do not mean the model as it has no gender. Is he important?”

“He’s—” Flash caught himself “—It’s, I meant it’s. It was just a dumb slip-up. I’m not good at— the model is useless.”

A pause stretched between them. Panic engulfed Flash as he waited, the quiet filled with memories bubbling to the surface.

“Are you aware of what trauma is?” Mulberry asked.

“No, and I don’t want to know,” Flash answered curtly.

“Trauma—”

“Do you listen to anything I say?!” Flash snapped.

“—is when someone is put under severe physical, emotional, or mental distress. Now, there can be any number of instances and variations, but some of the results may sound familiar.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, mood swings, and memory issues to name a few,” Mulberry listed.

Flash stayed quiet, breathing heavily, fogging the window with his exhales.

“Does that sound familiar, Flash?” Mulberry questioned.

Yes. “No,” Flash answered.

“We believed your parents were the source, but with the effect this one object has on you, we now believe that is only half of it.” Mulberry turned themselves to face Flash fully, their focus solely on the pegasus. “Who do you see?”

“No one,” Flash stated, his face in a firm angry line.

“That can’t possibly—”

“It’s just a dumb toy!” Flash shouted, banging his hooves on the glass causing it to rattle. “It’s not important or connected to anything or part of some trauma that I don’t have. It’s just— it’s—”

A round, bright face stared back at him in the glass. Light blue mane curtained one side of his face, the other side shaved down. Brown fur the colour of baked bread, eyes always twinkling over some joke he’d recently thought of. An ever-present smile shared in private when no one was looking. A deep voice whispering his name conspiratorially as they muffled their laughter.

“—Someone I can never see again,” Flash whispered, a tear trickling down the side of his face.

Numbness flooded through him, taking any brief amount of joy at remembrance and wallowing in under a mire of grief. The kind that took everything, the kind you could drown a pony in.

“We are sorry to hear that,” Mulberry said. “Though, we are curious to know where this model went. Where is it now?”

A sneer on that kind face. Brown turned to puke-yellow, blue mane to a muddy brown. Two glossy hazel eyes peered back. Eyes that belonged to someone who had never once even considered a kind gesture.

The most punchable face in Equestria.

A torrent of rage tore out of Flash’s throat as he smashed his head through the glass, hate searing through him. Glass clattered to the ground, the jagged remains cutting into his face and neck, leaving red lines criss-crossing his fur. He found his forward momentum had brought him through the window and into blackness. The only sound was the choked sobs from himself as angry hot tears rolled freely down his face leaving burning trails of salt.

Flash’s ears perked as he heard a disgruntled cough followed by an unknown, yet familiar voice speaking to him.

“You’re late.”

The High Priestess — Chapter V

Jerking his head up, Flash saw a yellow plaid earth pony ponyquinn wearing a windswept blue wig propped up in a chair before a circular wooden dining room table. A single overhead light illuminated the bizarre scene as the ponyquinn gestured to a seat opposite themselves.

Its hinged mouth opened as it stared back at him with surprisingly expressive googly eyes, “Are you truly unable to respect anyone’s time?”

A harsh tsk caused Flash to take in the rest of the table. Three other occupants sat at different points. An orange runt of a pegasus with messy blonde locks with their nose held up high. A massive burnt yellow earth pony with a buzzed mane played idly with their plate. A pale orange pegasus with a long mane tied into interlocking knots looked at him with reproach.

“Hurry up,” his father called out harshly. “Get your rump down for dinner.”

Numbness began to settle over him once more as Flash trudged forward, his whole body slumping as he resigned himself to his fate, responding automatically to a voice he had obeyed for most of his life. He pushed out the chair, scraping it along the darkness with a loud screech. Sitting down, he pulled himself in and forced a shaky smile onto his face.

“Now that we’re finally—” a pointed look at Flash from his mother, Golden Wing, the pupil inside one googly eye rolling erratically “—all together, we can start dinner.” She grabbed a napkin off the table and laid it in her lap. “Flash,” he stiffened in place at her stern tone, “Make sure you cover your lap.”

Doing as he was told, Flash grabbed a napkin off the table and did the same as his mother.

“Seriously, mom?” his sister, Swift Sentry, said with a sharp edge to her voice, their mouth creaking open on its hinge. “Why only Flash? You don’t make any of the rest of us do that.”

“He’s a messy eater and has no manners,” Golden retorted, punctuating the statement with a swift glare. “And these are new chairs. You wouldn't want our new chairs to be stained, would you?”

“Stained chairs are preferable over treating a grown stallion as if he was a five-year-old colt,” Swift growled, grinding up her napkin with a hoof. “Besides that, have you been to his place? It’s—”

“A dirty hole in the wall?” Golden scoffed. “He lives on the lower end of Canterlot. Close to the ground!” She fanned herself with a paper mache wing. “Even worse, reprobates live there, dear. Reprobates!”

“I was going to say immaculate,” Swift hissed out through gritted teeth. “He’s in the military! Cleanliness is required even in off-site living.”

“Oh, please, sis.” Flash’s brother, Lead Sentry, snorted, a puff of glitter blowing out their makeshift nose. “I’m sure Flash still has his habit of leaving clothes everywhere. A decade of service won’t fix that.”

“First off, twerp.” Swift banged the table with a hoof. “He just left his jacket lying around. Second off, I don’t want to hear you of all ponies complaining about someone else’s cleaning habits since you can’t even be bothered to deal with that pile of garbage in your own living room.”

“I don’t have time to worry about something so minor as litter.” Lead rolled the black disks in his plastic eyes. “My job is actually demanding, whereas Flash hardly does anything at his. It’s pathetic that he can’t even hang one jacket up.”

“Guys—” Flash tried to interject.

“There’s enough trash in your house to constitute as a swimming pool!” Swift retorted. “Some of it goes up to my knee!”

“And?” Lead replied. “If it actually got bad enough I could have less important ponies clean it up. Oh! That’s a great idea. Since Flash doesn’t do anything worthwhile—” Flash hung his head “—he can come over and clean it up for me.”

“What a wonderful idea,” Golden praised.

Swift slammed both her hooves into the table, and raised herself from her seat with an angry glare. “Listen here you—!”

“Please, Swift,” Flash interrupted, reaching out with a wing. “It’s fine, just—”

“Enough!” Flash’s father, Stalwart Sentry, shouted. “Swift, sit back down.”

Swift did as she was told, grumbling under her breath.

“And Flash?” Flash turned to his father, snapping his wing back to his side. “Never interrupt your sister again. Understood?”

Flash nodded.

“Use your words,” Stalwart said.

“Understood,” Flash mumbled.

“Good, now eat your food.”

As the sounds of forks scraping on plates filled up the ensuing silence, Flash looked down at his dinner and stiffened in place.

It was revolting.

His mother had made a Vanhoover classic: mashed potatoes, green beans, and honey-roasted salmon, but with what had to be the vilest of ingredients. The potatoes were a putrid yellow with a texture similar to yarn, releasing yellow grease onto the plate. The beans looked plastic, shining too brightly in the light. The salmon was black with the consistency of tar.

Grabbing a fork with his wing, he poked the salmon which popped at the contact and oozed thin purple sludge onto the plate. It took every ounce of his willpower to keep the bile down in his stomach.

“Why aren’t you eating?” Stalwart asked coldly, staring Flash down with his googly eyes menacingly.

“I was just—” Flash took a large gulp to stop the rise of vomit pushing through his throat, “—admiring mom’s cooking. It looks so…” he forced a smile on his face to hide a pained grimace, sweat pouring down his brow, “delicious.”

“Of course it is,” Golden said with an indignant huff. “I spent all evening preparing this, so you better eat all of it.” She punctuated the statement with a jab of her fork in Flash’s direction.

Despite knowing these ponyquinns weren’t his real family, Flash simply nodded, his mouth tightly closed. Though they were made of fabric, the way they acted and the way they spoke was so exact to how his family were that his mind and body simply reacted rather than thought. An automatic response born of decades of obeying without question.

He renewed his focus on the food set before him. He loaded his fork with a piece of each portion and brought it tentatively to his mouth. He took an experimental sniff and immediately regretted it. The smell was a cross between rotten eggs and the underside of a schooner.

Taking a big gulp, he ate the bite.

Then banged his hoof into the floor to keep it down.

His tongue identified the flavour as a combination of ash, gelatin, and moldy lettuce. His throat closed like a vice to stop any of it going down, but he forced it through, his body shaking from the effort. Inch by agonizing inch he managed to push it down until it hit his stomach like a lump of stone. He gasped out a breath, drool dripping out of the corner of his mouth.

“Well, how was it?”

Only semi-coherent from the effort, Flash turned to his brother and replied, “How’s what?”

“The food,” Lead sneered, the implication of ‘idiot’ at the end of the statement quiet. “I’m sure with your unrefined palate it was a bit too much, but surely even you could taste the high quality of our mother’s cooking.”

He wanted to say the food had been the most revolting thing he had ever eaten in his life, but he was hyper-aware of everyone’s eyes on him and pressure made him answer instead with, “It was great. Could really taste the—” he forced his mouth closed to quickly stop the violent upheaval of his stomach “—refinement.”

“Obviously,” Golden said with an upturned nose, her voice tinged with smarmy pride. “Now make sure to finish your plate. No one leaves until all the food is eaten.”

Sheer fear coursed through his body at his mother’s statement. As his family began to eat through their dinner, Flash exercised the full force of his restraint to gulp down every vile morsel.

“So.” Golden cleared her throat. “How is your…” she waved a wing, “career going Flash?”

Startled out of his hyper-focus on trying to keep his food down, Flash looked up blankly at his mother.

“Your mother asked how you’re doing at your job,” Stalwart provided.

“Poorly as anything he does,” Lead added.

Swift opted to glare at Lead.

“Well, I got recently promoted as Captain Shining Armour’s second in honour of my recent deeds,” Flash answered, a hint of pride in his tone. “There was a monster threatening a settlement and I—”

“Took credit I’m sure,” Golden interrupted.

“What? No!” Flash exclaimed. “I would never—”

“Oh, maybe there’s hope for him yet then,” Lead said, a smarmy grin on his face. “Everyone knows that to get ahead you have to—”

“I didn’t—!”

“Do not interrupt your brother,” Stalwart coldly said.

Shutting his mouth, Flash used his wings to partially cover his face as he shrunk back. With some amount of panic, he noticed his body shrink as his perspective shifted noticeably downward.

“Will you lay off?” Swift angrily said. “I’m sure Flash is perfectly capable at his job.”

“It’s Flash, dear,” Golden said with a tone that suggested the reason to be obvious. “He can hardly be trusted to be capable at anything let alone something as taxing as the Royal Guard. Speaking of capable, though, I heard you came in first for the Dodge Junction Marathon,” she gushed with a spattering of excited giggles at the end.

Swift looked ready to argue but instead slumped back into her seat. “Yeah, I did,” she said, resigned.

“A long-distance runner and sprinter in equal measure.” Stalwart nodded contentedly. Flash felt an ache in his heart at the proud tone of his voice. “I would expect nothing less of my own daughter.”

“If you think that’s impressive, you should have seen the last earnings quarter at the bank,” Lead bragged. “Under my leadership, profits are up by 5%.”

“Oh my, yes,” Golden clapped her hooves together. “He’s been doing so well, they promoted my little colt to management and he’s been showing how good a decision that is every day.”

“Of course, mother. Nothing less for the Sentries.” He smirked in Flash’s direction. “Most of the Sentries.”

“Too true, honey,” Golden agreed. “You and Swift really are our pride and joy.”

Flash once more shrunk in his seat, becoming dangerously close to having his nose go under the table. He opted to ignore the sickening feeling in his heart for the one in his stomach as he tried to power through his meal in the hopes of ending this ordeal sooner.

“How’s your wife, Swift?” Golden asked.

“She’s fine,” Swift said tightly. “Pretty tired recently with the pregnancy.”

“Do you know the gender of the foal?” Stalwart questioned.

“Still too early to tell,” Swift answered, a frown marring her face. “And does the gender really matter?”

“Of course, dear,” Golden said with a wave of her hoof. “How else will we know what to buy them when they’re born?”

“Plus, if it's a colt, there’s a chance of them having undesirable traits with how our family is,” Lead added.

Pinning his ears to his head, Flash struggled to take another bite as he shrunk down to just above the edge of the table.

“I’m sure it won’t matter,” Swift retorted through gritted teeth. “They will have an equal chance of success regardless of how they’re born.”

“You need to plan for the possibility of incompetence,” Stalwart bluntly stated. “Gender might not end up playing a factor, but, from what I’ve seen of you three, the colts tend to get too caught up in fantasy. Only just managed to get Lead out of that mindset before it was too late to salvage his happiness.”

Before Swift could retort, Flash interjected, “I’m sure any foal of Swift and Mill will be happy.” Swift turned to Flash in surprise. “With how affectionate and kind Swift and Mill are, it’s hard to see their foal being miserable.”

“Thanks, Flash.” Swift smiled warmly. “That was really sweet of you.”

Flash returned the smile and found his perspective rising with his mood.

“Worthless factors in raising a foal.” Stalwart shook his head. “Flash is a good example of that. We did all we could for him and look how he ended up.”

Golden nodded in agreement with Lead releasing a derisive snort, and Swift staring angrily at Stalwart. Flash laid his head on the table as he shrunk back down to his previous size, his mood sinking further than the low point it already had.

“Wait a moment.” Golden furrowed her brow. “Has Flash met your wife?” Swift nodded in the affirmative. “Why has only he met her? When will you bring her home to see us?”

“She’s busy with the bakery and pregnancy,” Swift answered, clenching her jaw. “Not really in a state to be traveling much.”

“I suppose that would be difficult,” Golden remarked. “Maybe we’ll make a trip to you then.” Swift tensed. “What about you, Lead? Anyone caught your eye?”

“There is this one mare at work,” Lead grinned, waving his fork in a circular motion. “Lovely mare that works in marketing. Hard worker and great figure.”

“Sounds like fine wife material,” Stalwart commented. He regarded Flash with a cold glare. “And you?”

“What about me?” Flash asked.

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“Not currently,” Flash mumbled, his focus on the next bite of food to force down his throat. “I’ve been busy adjusting to my new position and haven’t had time to get out much.”

“Reasonable. So long as it's not another… oh, what was his name, Spear Point?”

“Spearhead,” Flash corrected, furrowing his brow. “And what do you mean by that?”

“Well, he was a… stallion and you with a stallion would be…” Golden started.

“I told you, I’m not attracted to stallions,” Flash cut in, pointedly ignoring his prior conversation with Mulberry.

“I would think not. Such a disgusting life choice,” Stalwart scoffed. “But I find myself skeptical of that claim with how you acted after—”

“It wasn’t like that!” Flash shouted, slamming his hooves on the table, his body growing in tandem with the rage roiling through him. “We were just friends who happened to bunk with each other!”

“Again, your reaction after—” Flash growled. “—the incident makes it feel like there was more there. What with you locking yourself in the room and constantly arguing with us,” Stalwart explained, waving a hoof dismissively. “Otherwise, I don’t understand why you would be getting so worked up over a loser who likes… ugh, what was it again, acid?”

“Acrylics,” Flash hissed through gritted teeth, feeling heat in his cheeks as the table slipped further away from him. “How did you even get those two words mixed up?”

“Dad isn’t some new age weirdo,” Lead snidely remarked.

“It's a basic paint material that’s been around for literal centuries,” Flash retorted.

“Watch your tone, Flash,” Golden chided.

“Are you kidding me, mom!” Swift shouted. “You’ve been on him this entire time over every little thing even when Lead and I are clearly the ones acting up!”

“Flash needs the warnings more, dear. It’s for his own good,” Golden replied with a dismissive wave of her wing.

As Swift launched into a verbal tirade with Golden, Flash stared down his father, snorting as his anger boiled over.

“Why do you have such a problem with me being with a stallion?” Flash asked.

“I thought you said you weren’t into stallions,” Lead noted.

“Shut up, Lead!” Flash retorted.

“Don’t backtalk your brother,” Stalwart interjected. “And it’s because we don’t want you to end up with some deadbeat.”

“Spearhead was a high-ranking officer in the guard, how is he a deadbeat?!”

“I wasn’t referring to just Spearhead,” Stalwart continued. “You lean towards the rowdy types when you should aim for someone higher class to balance out your…” Stalwart sniffed dismissively, “different personality. Even if we were to accept you with a… stallion, the same gender wouldn’t work for you.”

“Swift is married to another mare!” Flash yelled.

“He’s not talking about Swift,” Lead interjected, the ‘idiot’ once more silent.

“Swift is mature enough to handle a same-sex relationship whereas you need a mare to keep you straight,” Stalwart patiently explained. “A stallion would just exacerbate all your bad habits worse than they already are.”

“You don’t know that!” Flash shouted.

“I know actually that, Flash” Stalwart placed his hooves under his chin, staring directly at Flash. “I’ve heard how you talk about your Captain—”

“I’m. Not. Attracted. To. Stallions!” Flash punctuated each word with a slam of his hoof on the table.

“Who are you trying to kid here? We all know about your—” Stalwart shivered in revulsion, “—preferences. I would normally be fine, but the only way you’ll amount to anything—”

“I’m a Vice Captain in the Royal Guard! How is that not enough?!”

“—is if you settle down with a normal mare and try to do better with your offspring. It’s far too late for you to salvage your life at this point.”

Flash felt rather than heard the involuntary growl leave his throat. He slammed his hooves once more on the table, cracking the wood before he made to leave.

“Finish your food!” Golden called out.

Angrily grabbing his fork, Flash shoveled the last bit of food into his mouth and only realized too late what he was eating.

The reaction was instantaneous. His stomach, which had been revolting already from the last vile portions, heaved, emptying its contents through Flash’s mouth and onto the floor. He dropped to the ground, his body shaking as the acrid taste coated his mouth, and his meal coated the darkness in a grotesque display of colour.

When the last had finally left him, Flash wiped the remnants from his mouth with a hoof, unbidden tears falling from his eyes.

“So much for a refined palate,” Lead commented.

Finally reaching his limit, Flash galloped away from the table, his family calling out after him.

A door rose from the darkness. Without pausing, Flash charged through with his shoulder and back into the foyer of the dollhouse, his size increasing with his desperation and anger-ridden emotions.

He crashed into the door, smashing into it over and over again. The wood buckled but held against his rapidly increasing weight.

“Open! Open! OPEN!” Flash screamed, throat hoarse from both bile and yelling. “Break you stupid door! I can’t take it anymore. LET ME OUT!”

His head scraped against the ceiling by the time he ran out of energy. Slumping against the door, he released bitter tears and sobs.

“We have already discussed this.”

Flash peered down at Mulberry who looked back at them with their featureless face.

“You cannot leave until we’ve helped you,” Mulberry continued.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tell them it was unfair. He wanted to tell them he had had enough. He wanted to go home. He wanted to hurt them. He wanted to stop hurting.

But he instead let his emotions run their course until he was back to his normal size and numbness had all but taken all the feeling from his mind and body.

“Shall we get started on your next exercise?” Mulberry asked.

In lieu of a response, Flash got onto his hooves and trotted off toward a random door. Mulberry followed after telling Flash he was going the wrong way, but relented and let the door swing inwards into a new room.

Flash trotted onwards.

The High Priestess — Chapter VI

“We are certain this scenario will work,” Mulberry stated firmly, their tone unusually harsh. “The other exercises just weren’t right for you, but this one is exactly what you need.”

Flash followed listlessly after Mulberry into the new room, unresponsive to their ramblings.

“Now, I can understand why you were not responsive to the last… seven situations we went through together, but that was simply because we have not been giving you the right stimuli. It is time to switch things up.” They gestured towards a raised wooden platform in the center of the room. “Stand there, please.”

Following Mulberry’s instruction, Flash trotted up onto the indicated platform and sat his rump on the hard surface. His head and wings drooped in place as he continued his silence.

In contrast, Mulberry was a flurry of activity. Five windows dropped into place along the circular walls of the room. Each was made of standard glass panels separated by a wooden cross section framed between two pastel pink curtains. Mulberry raced about the room, pulling thick corded rope next to each to close the curtains and prepare for whatever new attempt to help Flash was in store.

“We will shortly turn off the lights, but do not worry, they shall turn back on soon after,” Mulberry explained as they continued to race about the room. “We are certain that this will help you.” They grabbed the last rope and waited for a response. Flash provided none. “We are certain that this will help you,” Mulberry repeated, a hint of desperation in their tone.

Pulling the last set of curtains closed, Mulberry trotted quickly out of the room through an unseen door. After a moment, the lights in the room turned off plunging the room into darkness.

Taking a deep breath, Flash felt a measure of comfort break through the numbness that overtook his entire being. The lack of stimulus and quiet brought him a sort of peace after the events prior.

Too soon for his liking, a light lit up to his right. He glanced towards the source to see the curtains had parted to reveal a strange sock puppet in a now open window. It had a tied-up bun of yellow yarn atop its head and large googly eyes.

“Flash Sentry is my hero!” The puppet exclaimed, wiggling excitedly in place with an open sock mouth. “He caught a thief that had stolen my saddlebags by chasing them halfway across the city and tackling them to the ground. My most important possessions were in there and I would have been devastated to lose them.”

Flash didn’t respond.

Another window lit up on Flash’s opposite side. He glanced towards it to find another sock puppet, this one dressed in guard armour with makeshift cardboard wings glued to its back.

“Flash Sentry is the bomb!” The puppet nodded in the affirmative, its mouth open as it released several loud cheers. “He’s the best gym bro to have and the raddest guy at parties. You can always rely on ole Flash for a good joke. You always tolerate our dumb Wonderbolt request on the guitar, right, bud?”

Flash didn’t respond.

Another window lit up. Flash didn’t bother to look and instead hung his head, staring down at his front hooves.

“Flash sentry is so hot!” The newcomer declared. “He, like, always checks in when in bed and has such a big—” the light flickered on and off, “—What? I was going to say heart!”

Flash didn’t respond.

A fourth window lit up.

“My brother is so amazing!” He heard presumably a puppet in the likeliness of his sister say. “He’s always taking time to check in on me and my wife in Dodge and is always so considerate. I love him so much!”

Flash didn’t respond.

Dead silence followed. The only sound was the steady breathing of Flash as he continued to ignore his surroundings.

The rustle of a curtain unaccompanied by a light broke the quiet. A crackling emanated from the depths with no discernible source.

One of the puppets coughed to clear their throat. “Well, what do you think is really great about Flash Sentry, Captain puppet?” The puppet dressed in guard armour asked.

“Flash Sentry is a failure,” a familiar voice called out.

Flash raised his head.

Light bathed the window in sharp relief to reveal the final puppet. Unlike the others, this one was a marionette. A cartoonish pony skeleton hung up by thread with a strange mop of blue yarn on its head swept over one side in a wave. Glowing blue sockets stared back as a fire burned behind it, licking at the edges of whatever material it was created from. Its limbs were held at unnatural angles appearing broken.

The skeleton twisted its head ninety degrees. “Everything is his fault,” The puppet intoned. “When the pony he cared most for needed him, he didn’t do anything.”

“I couldn’t,” Flash replied dully.

A loud bang echoed through the room as Mulberry burst into the room, the main lights bursting to life. “Okay, we think that is enough,” Mulberry called out as they began to close all the curtains on the other windows. “This is not how this scenario is supposed to go.”

“You cared so much about him, but were never able to tell him what he desperately wanted to hear,” the skeleton continued. “When you could have proved it, you failed him.”

“He needed me,” Flash weakly said, an errant tear falling down his cheek.

“We would recommend that you ignore the strange puppet’s words,” Mulberry interjected. “We are unsure of how they are here, but no matter.” They grabbed the rope next to the skeleton’s window. “This shall be dealt with shortly.” They yanked on the rope.

It fell down to the ground uselessly. Mulberry stared at the frayed end in confusion.

“That monster had charged into camp, a training exercise by that incompetent Sergeant who didn’t know how to do proper containment.” The flames consumed one of the marionette’s legs, charring it black. “It got to the sleeping tents.”

“The officers had said the chains were improperly bolted down,” Flash added. “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Flash this puppet is an anomaly,” Mulberry stated. “Please stop engaging with it.”

“It had torn through the tent.” The flames took another of the marionette’s legs. “You were both caught off guard, but he was ready. He had gotten out immediately before the monster could do anything.” The flames reached its torso, climbing towards its head. “You just stood there, staring at it.”

The tears fell faster, a stream down the side of his face.

“We see you are unable to stop yourself. We shall deal with this cursed doll at once.” Mulberry grabbed the nearest curtain with their hoof. It fell down burying Mulberry underneath itself. “Blasted sheets!”

“He came back for you. He took its flames for you.” The flames reached the puppet’s lower jaw. Its sockets turned red, burning intensely. “His entire body was bathed in fire. His last words about how much of a screw-up you are.” The flames consumed the rest of the puppet’s head, ash beginning to fall in a blanket of black snow from its charred parts. “He hated you.”

Flash stood stiff in place, failing to fight back the sobs that escaped his throat as his tears burned trails in his fur.

“It should have been you.” The marionette’s body fell away, but its skull stayed, a single skull with burning red eyes. “You are the worst thing to have happened to him. You will never overcome your failure. You—”

A wooden block slammed down from above, crushing the skull underneath itself. Wood splinters and glass from the window sprayed across the floor leaving scratches on the hardwood.

“We believe they have said their piece,” Mulberry stated, throwing their cloth prison onto the ground and stomping on it several times with their hooves. Once satisfied, they turned their attention to Flash. “Now, we should move onto a different scenario as we feel—”

“What's the point?” Flash hoarsely said.

Mulberry paused. Flash stared straight ahead, unflinching, tears still falling down, but his face set into a firm neutral line.

“To help you,” Mulberry reiterated. “We believe—”

“I know, Mulberry,” Flash interrupted. “I know that, but what’s the point?” he shouted the last word before returning to a flat tone. “Even if you fix what’s wrong with me, it doesn’t make up for what I’ve done.”

“We do not understand what you mean,” Mulberry replied.

“I killed Spearhead,” Flash announced with a confidence that brokered no argument.

“From what we can discern of the situation, we believe that the monster—”

“Physically killed him,” Flash stressed. “But who was the reason he ended up in harm’s way? What moron didn’t run when they should have?”

“We feel that you are misplacing the blame,” Mulberry said. “We feel that your guilt—”

“I’m not misplacing it, I’m putting it where it’s supposed to be,” Flash retorted bitterly. “I’m a failure, Mulberry. I disappoint my family just by living. I got someone I…” he choked on the word, “I got him killed. I have the audacity after that to have a wildly inappropriate crush on my Captain because he reminds me of Spearhead.”

Flash released a choked sob. “For sun’s sake, dad’s right. The only thing I could do to turn this around is to try with the next generation, and, even now, I’m so pathetic I can’t even get that right.”

“If you wanted a family—”

“I like stallions. Stallions don’t have foals.” Flash punctuated the point with a stomp of his hoof.

“There are plenty of options available to stallion pairs.”

“But not for a murderer,” Flash whispered helplessly.

“Flash, you’re spiraling,” Mulberry explained. “We shall help you step back from this so that you may take time to process—”

“No.” Flash shook his head, laughing helplessly. “No, no, no, we’re done. You’re wasting your time, Mulberry. Help someone who deserves it.”

“You are someone who deserves our—” a rumble shook the room, nearly toppling Mulberry to the floor. “What was that?”

A wall appeared behind Flash. Plastered with bird-patterned wallpaper. A curtained-off window in the center. Before Mulberry could react, a second wall appeared at a ninety-degree angle to the first followed quickly by a third opposite the second.

“What is—” Mulberry started before reaching out with a hoof “—Flash, get out of there!”

Shaking his head, Flash gave Mulberry a bittersweet smile. A fourth wall slotted into place, a fifth closing off the square room with a ceiling, trapping Flash within a doorless room.

Rising from the floor was a bed. It had a headboard of a cloud and blankets patterned with race stripes. The cloth reached towards Flash, entangling them within their soft embrace. Flash stepped forward, surrendering himself to the sheets.

He was pulled further in, smothered by fabric. They pinned him down, and held him trapped under the covers. Flash didn’t mind since it was what he wanted.

Finally succumbing to his exhaustion and numbness, he closed his eyes, allowing sleep to overtake him.

The High Priestess — Chapter VII

Flash slotted the last piece of the timberwolf model in place, the overhead tent light shining brightly on the standing table it was placed upon. A brown-furred pegasus carefully held the model in place with a wing, delicately balanced by two primaries. Once the stiff cardboard was properly stuck to the previously applied glue, Flash released it. After a moment of continued structural integrity, both stallions exhaled their pent-up breaths in relief.

“How exactly did you manage to convince me to do this, Spear?” Flash asked.

Smirking, Spearhead replied, “Because you adore my company so much.”

“Oh no.” Flash shook his head. “No one’s company is good enough to put up with constructing these fussy cardboard standees.”

“Then it’s because you enjoy doing secret projects under the Sergeant’s nose.” Spear’s grin widened, his eyes gaining a mischievous twinkle.

“Yeah, that’s true.” Flash snorted. “Anything to annoy that brown noser.”

“Brown because of his gnarly mane, or because of how far he sticks it up noble plots?”

“Can’t it be both?” Flash suggested.

Spear snickered, playfully jabbing Flash with a wing. Flash jabbed back, a matching grin spreading across his face. Spear retaliated, turning a jab into a light shove. Flash returned the gesture by shoving him with his own shoulder, toppling Spear to the ground.

“Oh, shoot—!” Spearhead exclaimed. Flash laughed. “Oh, it’s on, bud.”

Still laughing, Flash attempted to gallop away but was quickly tackled by the star linepony of the Canterlot Patriots. They ended up sprawled on the dirt with Spear overtop and Flash underneath him.

“I keep telling you. Don’t pick fights with ponies you can’t win against,” Spear lectured through his lighthearted chortles.

“Right, of course. I’ll definitely keep that in mind.” Flash nodded seriously before devolving into a baleful of laughs.

“You better,” Spear teased. He took in their position and then playfully smirked. “You know, this is a pretty good view.”

“Not in the tent, Spear,” Flash chided. “While we’re on base, we have to be more careful.”

“Right, yeah,” Spear agreed.

They stayed like that, Spear looking down on Flash with an odd look in his eyes, his head tilted to one side. Flash matched his head tilt and asked, “What is it?”

“What’s what?” Spear replied, startled out of whatever he was thinking.

“You had a weird look on your face.”

“What? Oh, yeah I guess I did.” Spear looked askance, lost in thought before refocusing on Flash. “Hey, bud. You said we need to be more careful on base, but once we’re gone, do you think—”

A rumbling growl interrupted Spear’s speech. Both stallions turned towards the noise in confusion. They quickly reoriented themselves into standing positions, weary of whatever had made the sound.

“What was—” Flash started.

The roof of the tent was ripped off as the head of a chimera forced itself through the hole, its teeth gnashing together, eyes locked on the two stallions.

It reared back, the hints of fire spewing from the corner of its mouth. Spear wasted no time galloping for the entrance flap, but stopped when he didn’t hear matching hoof falls. Turning back, he saw Flash stuck in place, staring in mute horror at the chimera.

“Flash!” Spear yelled.

Flash couldn’t move. Fear had grabbed hold of his legs and refused to release him. The chimera released its gout of flame, burning through the tent and the model he and Spear had painstakingly assembled. He had enough time to squeeze his eyes shut before the end. When it failed to come, he opened them in surprise.

Taking up his vision was Spear, looking at him with a pained smile. The flames burned his back. The smell of burning flesh assaulted Flash’s nose. The feathers of Spear’s wings fell down into ashy piles in the dirt.

Hot tears pricked the corners of Flash’s eyes as realization began to dawn on him. Spear brushed them away with an undamaged feather, pushing through the searing pain.

Out of the corner of his eye, Flash noticed several guards had arrived, taking the monster’s attention away from Flash and Spear.

But that wasn’t what was important at the moment.

“W-why?” Flash asked.

“Because I—”

“—Need you to wake up.”

Flash opened his eyes coming face to face with an odd sight. Nestled across from him under the sheets was a pony. They were covered in brown fur with a pair of large fuzzy wings on their back and a blue mane falling across half their face in a wave. A set of expressive blue eyes stared back, a mischievous glint to them.

“Spear…?” Flash asked groggily, sleep still clambering at his consciousness.

The pony smiled. It was a smile Flash had longed to see. Breaking through the numbness in his heart, he grabbed hold of Spear and pulled him in close, burying his nose in the hardness of his chest. Though uncomfortable, it didn’t matter because Flash had Spear with him and that was all that mattered.

“I missed you,” Flash said through a new bout of tears.

“Don’t blame you. I am smoking hot,” Spear teased.

Punching him on the shoulder, Flash pulled back shooting a hard glare at his target. “Not funny.”

“You just have a bad sense of humour, bud.”

“I have a fantastic sense of humour,” Flash protested. “Your jokes are just terrible.”

“Yeah, sure.” Spear rolled his eyes. “Because playing the Wonderbolt at every party is real funny.”

“They ask me to do that! It's a running gag!”

“Uh huh, sure they do.” Spear nodded his head, a smarmy grin on his face.

Grumbling under his breath, Flash turned onto his other side, pulling his wings and hooves tightly to himself. Spear ensnared Flash with his own wings, drawing him in close. Flash didn’t protest.

“Ah, don’t be like that. I missed you too, very close buddy,” Spear teased.

“You’re getting demoted to an estranged acquaintance at the rate you're going,” Flash retorted.

“I’ll be sure to include it on my business cards.” Spear changed his tone to better match a hoffball announcer. “Spearhead, Royal Guard, and estranged acquaintance of Flash Sentry.”

A snort from Flash was quickly followed by a bevy of laughter from both stallions as they laughed at the ridiculousness of their conversation. They lapsed into a comfortable silence as Flash enjoyed the sensation of being near Spear again. The numb haze that had overtaken him lifted, if only temporarily.

As he lay under the soft fabric of bedsheets with Spear’s wings wrapped around him, his memories from a moment earlier came back to him, a nagging question at the forefront of his mind.

“Why did you take the hit?” Flash asked under his breath, hoping Spear might not hear him.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Spear replied.

“No. I still don’t understand why you did it,” Flash confessed.

“But you heard it, right?” Spear questioned. “What I told you at the end?”

He wanted to forget Spear’s final words, but they came unbidden out of his mouth. “I hate you.”

A short pause. “You remember the showers?” Spear asked.

Flash snorted. “Seriously?” Spear stayed silent. “Of course, I remember the showers.” He flipped back onto his other side, Spear’s wings still wrapped around him. “It’s where we played around since the Sergeant wasn’t allowed in there.”

“Right, because doing that nearly every night for weeks was just ‘playing around’.” Flash blushed intensely at the statement. “And if you were so worried about the Sergeant catching us, what about all those nights you had trouble sleeping and crawled into my bed to cuddle? That sure does scream casual.”

“I-I had nightmares!” Flash protested.

“And you were lucky we had a four-pony tent to ourselves,” Spear retorted. “With how many times you initiated, something you wanted to keep on the down low, it’s a small miracle no one caught on.”

“I was just feeling pent up and…” the protests died on Flash’s lips. “Okay, fine. Maybe I kind of liked you.”

“Hmhm.” Spear nodded knowingly.

“I don’t know why,” Flash grumbled, then quietly, “But you were really important to me.”

“Because you’re not attracted to stallions, right?” Spear teased.

“I got you killed,” Flash whispered. “It was my fault.”

Pressing his nose to Flash’s, Spear replied, “You make some really weird connections, bud.”

Flash frowned, casting his gaze away from Spear, but keeping close.

“The one stallion you liked ended up dead in your place, therefore every future stallion will too,” Spear continued. “You’re mixing up survivor’s guilt with a fatalistic approach to romance. That’s completely bonkers.”

“I-I—” Flash attempted to think of a justification but failed. Instead, he changed the topic. “Well, that’s not the only reason. I punched out the Sergeant after the chimera incident. I can’t control myself!”

“You’re misremembering that incident. He was one hundred percent asking for it,” Spear replied.

“You can’t punch a superior officer,” Flash sternly retorted.

“True, but in this case—” Spear stopped himself, putting a wing to his chin in thought. “Actually, you know what. Look over here.”

Spear rotated himself into an upright position. A confused Flash followed suit, Spear resting a wing over his back as he did so. Across from them was a projector screen nestled between folds in the sheets. A large three appeared which counted down to 2 then 1.

In a blink, two ponies appeared on the screen. One was Flash (Flash mentally called him Screen Flash), and the other was a pukish yellow stallion with a greasy brown mane. Sergeant Drill, the other stallion, sneered at Screen Flash who looked livid. The other recruits gathered around them, varying degrees of disgust on their faces.

“What do you mean the chains got loose?!” Screen Flash shouted.

“Exactly what I just said,” Sergeant Drill scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Some lousy recruit didn’t secure the bolts properly and the manticore pulled them out.”

“Why wasn’t it caged?! Actually, follow up, why did you have a manticore on base?!” Screen Flash waved a wing aggressively in Drill’s direction.

“It was for a training exercise. Also, please, Flash. Everyone knows how expensive a cage is and I know how to stake a chain bolt,” Drill replied dismissively.

“You just said a recruit was the one who screwed up the bolts,” Screen Flash accused. “Also, why were we going to fight a manticore for training?! Nothing you’re saying makes any sense!”

“Ugh, do I have to spell everything out for you?” Drill mocked. “You’re all greenhorns with no real combat experience. What better way to get some than an actual threat?” He snorted.

“In a safe environment!” Screen Flash retorted. “You can’t just have us fight a manticore randomly and hope everything will be okay!”

“Well, obviously not since at least you aren’t up to the task. Freezing in place during an actual attack.” Screen Flash stiffened. “And while we’re talking about ponies not up to the task, what was that Spearhead’s deal? What was he thinking rushing back to save you? Obviously, the first thing to do was to secure his own safety, just like myself. Once he was secure, he should have observed the situation and then put out the alert for the guard to intervene. I mean, if you really think about it, it’s both of your—”

Screen Flash punched Drill in the face, toppling him to the ground. Before he could even react, Screen Flash got on top of him and began pummeling his face, blood splattering on his fur.

The assembled guards cheered Screen Flash on from the sides.

“Not my finest moment,” Flash muttered as the screen went black.

“Maybe not, but it was also the only consequence Drill got from the whole thing. Numerous injuries and one dead due to his carelessness, but the worst he got was a scolding from a higher-up that bailed him out,” Spear commented.

“I got kicked out of the unit.”

“And right into Shining’s by his request,” Spear remarked. “Your performance was exemplary and you were one of the best fighters in training.” He snorted. “‘Course, you ended up fixing that lack of real combat expertise pretty quickly with those long hikes with Shining’s unit in the backwoods.”

“The smaller settlements on the fringe tend to get ignored by the guard even when they directly ask for assistance,” Flash explained. “Or, at least, that’s what Shining told me and I’m hard-pressed to disagree. It didn’t sit right with him, how helpless they were to defend themselves and I agreed.”

“As did the Princess,” Spear said. “She wanted new blood in the upper ranks who cared for more than just station. It’s how Shining was promoted to Captain in such a short time with you being pulled along as Vice as the pony that stuck to him through thick and thin.”

“All because I thought he was like—” Spear started laughing. “What’s so funny?” Flash puffed up indignantly.

“You weren’t actually going to say that Shining is like me, were you?” Spear asked between chuckles.

Heat burned Flash’s face. “Well, he is!”

“Oh yeah, sure, bud.” Spear wiped a tear from his eye with a wing. “Come on, let’s deal with that next.”

The cloth overhead stretched upwards as Spear got back onto his hooves, accommodating his height. Flash followed after him with Spear wrapping his wing companionably around him. The blankets before them opened into a tunnel of fabric, the projector screen pulled upwards into the unknown. Though hesitant, Spear gently nudged Flash into the tunnel using his wing as a guide who took the suggestions willingly.

A short trot brought them to a cavernous space engulfed in fabric-made stone. On the pedestal of faux rock stood a replica of Shining Armour, standing proudly with his head held high.

Moving away from Flash, Spear gestured to himself and then the statue with a pointed look.

“Okay, obviously you don’t look remotely the same in appearance except for the blue mane,” Flash relented. “But your personalities are very similar!”

Folding his wings before him, Spear asked, “How?”

“You both, well, you know?” Flash questioned, waving a wing in a circular motion as he tried to grasp an example. “You both have nice eyes?”

“Eyes are not a personality trait,” Spear deadpanned. “I’m a walking bro-stereotype that flirts with anyone that shows a modicum of interest in me while mister stoic guard here couldn’t paint a simple square to save his life and has a sense of humour drier than a desert.”

“I like his humour,” Flash mumbled.

“Said the one crushing so hard he got a guilt complex.” Spear sighed in exasperation. “Flash, for sun’s sake, you’re not attracted to Shining because he’s like me, you’re attracted to Shining because you’ve both been through Tartarus and high water for years and naturally developed a close bond. That’s not even mentioning that he’s hot and, despite what I said, has a decent personality.”

“B-but, he’s—”

“I am not your exception. You’re just attracted to stallions that you get along with,” Spear stated, his tone suggesting that it was obvious. “You liked being around me, you like being around Shining. It’s pretty obvious based on your track record that you would develop feelings for him outside of friendship.”

“No, I mean, he’s… taken,” Flash finished lamely.

“And?” Spear threw his wings out, staring at Flash with a look that suggested he was being ridiculous.

“And what? I have a crush on my superior officer and a stallion that’s already in a loving relationship,” Flash explained. “That’s so—”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Spear interrupted. “Look, before you start going onto a self-deprecating tangent, have you acted on your crush? Like done something against his consent or tried to sabotage his relationship.”

“No,” Flash muttered, but quickly tried to add, “But—!”

“But nothing!” Spear stomped his hoof releasing an angry snort. “Ponies get crushes all the time, even on ponies that they shouldn’t. It’s natural. It’s how attraction works. The only problem is if you act like an idiot, which you are not. You. Are. Fine.”

“W-well, dad says it’s wrong, so…” Flash trailed off, already realizing the weakness of his argument.

Giving Flash a look of pure pity, he waved a wing toward a wall of the cavern. Three massive photographs popped out of the fabric. One was his brother dressed in his business suit the day he was hired at the bank. The second was his parents together on their wedding day. The last was his sister nuzzling her head between her wife’s hooves, both smiling contentedly.

“Who's your family, Flash?” Spear asked.

“How is this relevant?”

“It’s everything. The most important thing. I’m gonna ask again.” Spear pinned Flash down with a stern look. “Who's your family?”

“It’s…” Flash looked around helplessly, confusion evident on his face as he looked over the photos. “It’s all of them, isn’t it? I don’t understand what you’re trying to ask me here.”

“Are they? Are they really?” Spear pointed an accusatory wing at Lead. “Your brother mocks you every chance he gets. He has no respect for you and never will.” He moved his wing to point at Golden and Stalwart. “Your parents abused you throughout your entire life.”

“They never hit me,” Flash angrily retorted.

“So, breaking your things is better?” Spear angrily replied. “Belittling your accomplishments? Taking away your ability to make your own decisions?”

“The Guard ended up being good for me!”

“Something you found out only after they took away all of your other options,” Spear countered. “Your parents are vile. You’re an independent adult that can live without them in your life. So stop dealing with them.”

“They’re my parents,” Flash choked out.

Spear opened his mouth before closing it with a weary sigh. “Look, Flash, I get it, but you need to come to terms with the fact that they will never live up to that title.”

That single sentence struck a core part of Flash’s being, reverberating through and changing his perspective in ways he hadn’t seen before. It was overwhelming and in an effort to keep the implications at bay, Flash pointed to the last photograph and asked, “What about Swift?”

“What about her?” Spear replied.

“I don’t want to lose her,” Flash pleaded. “She’s… annoying. She fights my battles when she shouldn’t, but it’s still for my sake. I want her in my life. She’s the only one in my family that even cares. She—”

“Then keep her in it.” Spear closed the distance between them and gently clasped Flash’s cheek with his wing. Flash nuzzled into the touch. “My point isn’t that you should break ties with everyone. My point is that you should choose who you want in your life. Not keep them out of obligation.”

Looking over the photos, Flash took in the entirety of his family. His brother’s slander, his parents’ hate, and his sister’s awakward love. He was tied to them whether he wanted it or not, but the idea of deciding whether he should allow that connection to have any meaningful presence in his life resonated with him.

It left him with a lot to think about.

“I’ll think about it,” Flash relented.

“That's all I want you to do.” Spear jerked his head towards the other side of the cavern. “Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

Flash nestled himself under Spear’s wing and they trotted side by side deeper into the fabric cavern. As they walked, the ceiling slowly climbed further and further away from them into darkness. The soft sheets underhoof transitioned into the hardwood of the dollhouse’s floors.

As Flash stepped off the last of the fabric he felt Spear pull away from him. He stopped and looked back to see Spear stuck on the last bit of fabric before it fully turned into wood.

“You aren’t really him, are you?” Flash asked.

“I’m a version of him. From your memories with some of the gaps filled by you yourself.” Spear shot him a beaming smile. “Mulberry can’t physically reach you, but they can send someone else from afar. Even if it's just a construct made by your own subconscious.”

“I’m not ready to move on.” He took a heavy breath. “No, that’s wrong. I don’t want to move on.”

A heavy silence filled the space between them. It was broken by Spear. “Do you remember the time you spent between your recruitment into Shining’s unit and getting kicked out of Sergeant Drill’s?” He asked.

“I just holed up in my old bedroom,” Flash admitted, numbness beginning to prick at the edges of his mind. “Crying and sleeping and not doing much of anything. I ate what my parents made me eat, and spent the rest of my interactions with them arguing and yelling and screaming. I just…” he choked on his words, a sob escaping his throat as tears pricked the corners of his eyes. “You weren’t there. You never would be and it was my fault. Why do I get to go on without ever being punished for that? How can I live a normal life knowing you’ll never get that chance?”

The fabric sheets rustled. A single length of cloth slithered toward Flash. Spear stomped his hoof down, stopping the strand in its tracks. “I’m going to tell you something important,” Spear said.

“I know what you’re going to say.” Flash shook his head, closing his eyes shut. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“That’s why you need to. You’ve been hurting—”

“Not enough,” Flash sobbed out.

“—and you need to stop being the one causing it. You need to stop locking yourself in your room. Stop seeing ponies that make you miserable. Stop being in agony over events out of your control. Because you forgot what Spear told you. The reason he saved you.”

“No, I didn’t!” Flash shouted, staring down Spear on the verge of breaking down. “He hated me! He said—”

“I love you,” Spear intoned, a perfect match to his last words. “He said, I love you, Flash.”

His final words. The smell of burning flesh. The ashy feathers. Spear collapsing into Flash’s hooves. The disbelief roaring through his mind. The desperate calls of his name. The anger at the chimera. At his Sergeant. At himself.

A single helpless question of why burning at the forefront of his thoughts.

“I love you too,” Flash cried out, the floodgates open on his tears. “I love you and I hate you because now I have to go on without you.” He looked at the fake Spear, the illusion falling apart before his eyes. The ponyquinn revealing itself to him. “Can I pretend? Just for a little while longer?” Flash begged.

The fake opened its wings to him. Flash charged into the embrace, nestling his head into its chest. For just a moment, Flash could hear a heartbeat, feel the softness of Spear’s over-conditioned fur, and smell the crumbs of his favourite snack coating his chest. He could trick himself into believing that Spear was with him, that he would always be.

When he pulled back, Spear was gone along with the bedsheets that had entrapped him. Only darkness remained in every direction and a single wooden door.

Flash wiped the tears from his eyes with a wing and smiled into the darkness. The numbness was gone, a heavy weight lifted from his heart.

He trotted to the door, placing a hoof on the handle. He took a deep breath, savouring the momentary quiet before his life, his real life, once more reasserted itself. More ready than he had ever been before, Flash opened the door.

The Hermit — Chapter I

The building is a constant.

It’s easy to forget that, sometimes, with how often it changes. When the room you just left isn’t there anymore, it’s easy to think that the building is fickle, random, or chaotic.

But I know it’s not. The building is a law, as unshakable as gravity. Everything happens here for a reason, even if you can’t understand it. Even if the reasons are wrong. Even if they hurt ponies.

I do what I can to prevent that last part. I suppose you could call me a caretaker of sorts, for a building that doesn’t need any taking care of. At least, not in the usual way.

Today the building is a Tower. Don’t ask me how I know that without going outside. But it means that a decision has been made. A point has been reached. And a new visitor is finally here.

This one is important. More than our usual guests. I hope everything goes right this time.

The Hermit — Chapter II

The building means well.

It’s always trying. It wants to help, in a strange, misunderstood sort of way. That’s how I ended up here in the first place. That’s how everypony ends up here.

Sometimes, when a pony is at their lowest, when they need a helping hoof, when they’re scared or lonely or desperate - the building will reach out and find them.

But ponies are not inanimate statues, to be patched together, cracks filled with gold, and sent out again good as new. Sometimes, there is no easy fix. Sometimes, the building tries and tries and tries, and still gets it wrong.

Today the building is a Dollhouse. Another pony has been pulled in, placed under the microscope to be poked and prodded and sewn back together.

I can already tell this will be no simple fix.

The High Priestess — Chapter VIII

Flash stepped through the door and into the foyer of the dollhouse. Mulberry stood directly across from him, pastel pink wallpaper behind them, clapping their hooves as excitedly as a featureless ponyquinn could.

“Congratulations on your return, Flash,” Mulberry greeted, placing their hooves back on the floor. “We are happy to see you return from that place, seemingly better than before.”

Nodding with a small smile, Flash trotted down the hall and towards the front door, humming a random tune as he went. To his frustration, he saw the floors stretch away from the door creating a makeshift treadmill that stopped his forward advance.

“We know you are eager to leave,” Mulberry said as they tried to keep up with Flash. “We also agree that you are ready to do so, however, we simply must ask—”

“If that’s true then let me.” Flash quickened his pace, frowning as the stretching floor sped up. “I won’t stay here any longer.”

“We would never force you at this time, we simply wish to check in with you by asking a few questions,” Mulberry explained. “Can we have that?”

Slowing his pace to a light jog, Flash rolled his eyes and inclined his head toward Mulberry.

“Excellent, thank you, Flash.” Mulberry cleared their throat. “Firstly, what is your favourite colour?”

Smirking, Flash replied, “Blue. Specifically the darker shades. I find them calming.”

“I prefer the light purples personally.”

“And you are entitled to your wrong opinions,” Flash teased.

He could feel more than see the smile on the featureless Mulberry. “Who is your favourite sibling?” They continued.

“Swift, the only sibling worth bothering with.” He smiled warmly as he thought of her foal on the way. “I’m excited to meet my niece or nephew.”

“How do you feel about your job?”

“Fulfilled. I might have followed someone else’s ideals for the wrong reasons initially because I didn’t want to have to think, but I find that I’m glad I did it,” Flash answered. “I’ve accomplished a lot of good because of that and I plan to keep doing so as long as I’m able to.”

“Even if you’re just another guard to others?”

“My name isn’t important, what I do is,” Flash replied. “If I’m just Shining’s second or some random guard to others, that’s okay because I’m doing something I love doing even if it wasn’t initially what I wanted.”

“Wonderfully said,” Mulberry praised. “Now, final question. How do you feel about your attraction to stallions?”

“Mixed. I still feel uncomfortable when I think about being with a stallion, or a mare really, both for different reasons, but I’m kind of…” Flash tried to think of the proper word to explain his feelings, “exhilarated? I don’t know who’s out there for me, but I want to meet them. Give that a chance. Maybe even find someone who cares about me as much as Spear did. I won’t hold myself back just on account of others.” He smiled wistfully. “Or myself.”

“We believe you’ll find someone, but, even if you don’t, so long as you're happy living your life, we believe that you will be happy.” Mulberry jumped happily in place. “With that, we dub thee adequately functional and ready to rejoin society.”

“Adequately functional? Wow, way to make a guy feel good.” Flash snorted.

“You should feel good,” Mulberry stated, ignoring the sarcasm. “You’ve been through a lot and deserve to find joy in life. Now, we declare your treatment complete. Live well, Flash Sentry.”

All at once, the floor snapped back into place and Flash found himself at the door. He placed a hoof on the handle then remembered something he wanted to say to one who put him on this path to start with. He turned to Mulberry, a stern look on his face.

“This was the worst experience of my life, you’re the worst therapist I’ve ever met, and I’m burning every dollhouse I find from this point on to ensure this never happens again.” His expression softened, a smile appearing on his face. “But thank you for fixing me.”

“We did not fix you. You fixed you. We just helped.” Mulberry tilted their head to one side. “We do not understand why we must keep explaining this so many times.”

Laughing at their antics, Flash opened the door and stepped outside of the dollhouse. Ready to return to his new life.

Flash landed on the dusty wooden floors of the attic, mercifully back to his original size. He looked back and down at the dollhouse. It was now worn and aged from over decades of sitting abandoned. On a hunch, he opened up the playset on its hinge to reveal two timberwolf plushies sitting next to each other inside. They were stitched together with worn mismatched patches and had two gold ribbons similar to wedding bands tied around their arms.

He smiled and grabbed both of them, tucking them safely on the inside of his jacket.

Leaving the dollhouse behind, he trotted back to the attic hatch and pulled it open. Immediately the sounds of his parents and sister arguing drifted up through the opening. Flash rolled his eyes as he dropped down to the floor, closing the hatch behind him.

Passing by family photos he couldn’t care less about, Flash reflected on prior events, remembering the talk he had with fake Spear. As he made his way downstairs, his thoughts coalesced into a single answer and he made a decision.

The quaint kitchen housed the entirety of his so-called family. His brother sat to one side. He wore a stained business shirt over his fur and yawned loudly as the argument continued not a few hoof lengths away from him. Flash had never noticed it before, but Lead looked tired. The bags under his eyes were a darker blue than Flash’s mane, and he was clearly binging when he shouldn’t based on the tight gut poking out under his shirt (a jarring picture compared to Flash’s mental image of his rugby loving brother).

His parents, Golden and Stalwart, were together on the farthest side of the room. Golden cowered behind Stalwart with a stern gaze, while Stalwart stood his ground up front. They too clashed with Flash’s mental picture of them, seeming smaller than before.

Swift stood stubbornly opposite them, a kitchen table between them. She looked furious, staring daggers at their parents on Flash’s behalf. It was annoying, her sticking her nose in his business, but it was hard to hate her for it as Flash had been so unwilling before.

Before being a keyword.

Lead was the first to notice Flash’s return. “Done hiding in the attic?” He sneered.

“Yeah, got my head cleared up,” Flash replied.

“Yeah, sure.” Lead snorted. “Unlikely chance considering how empty-headed you are.”

“Is that chance less or higher than you ever getting a date?” Lead stiffened in shock. “Why are you surprised? She isn’t interested, Lead. The only one who doesn’t know that is you. Go creep on someone who doesn’t work for you like a normal pony.”

“Excuse you?!” Golden exclaimed. Lead just continued to gape. “How dare you talk to your brother like that!”

“I don’t care,” Flash replied. Golden leaned away in shock. “He insulted me first.” He turned to Swift who had stopped arguing with their parents to stare at Flash. “Hey, sis, you wanna—”

“Apologize,” Stalwart hissed.

“No,” Flash retorted, narrowing his eyes at his father. “He was acting like a jerk. He deserved it.”

“You do not speak to your siblings like that.” Stalwart snorted, drawing himself up which laughably only came to Flash’s chin (He had only just realized his size came from his mother).

“When they, and I mostly mean Lead, stop making fun of me, then I’ll stop,” Flash answered. He returned his focus to Swift. “As I was saying, you wanna go get ice cream from Mello’s and catch the train to Canterlot? We could be there just in time to visit some of my favourite bar spots.”

“Oh, yeah definitely. That sounds super fun, but, uh—” Swift leaned forward, covering her mouth with a wing, “—you feeling okay?”

“Never better, and I was thinking while we were barhopping…” Flash raised his voice ensuring it would be heard by everyone present. “I’ll have to find a big strong stallion to take care of me tonight. Really take me right in the—”

“Excuse you?!” Stalwart yelled.

Golden gasped, placing a wing to her chest. Lead gave Flash a look of utter revulsion. Swift just cackled madly.

“You will do no such—!” Stalwart tried to continue.

“Sorry what’s that, father?” Flash interrupted. “I can’t hear you over all of the possible future hotties I’m going to grind up against.” He trotted toward the door, a laughing Swift following after him. “I’m going to hook up with so many stallions they’ll start calling me a hooker. A bad one, since I won’t even charge!”

“But he will use protection,” Swift added between laughs.

“Yeah! Because smart no charge hookers play it safe.”

“So safe!” Swift added.

“They’ll have to call me the safe hooker!” Flash shouted.

Swift collapsed into a baleful of mischievous cackles.

Golden nudged her husband with a shoulder. “Stop them!” She urged.

Stalwart scrambled to think of something. “If you walk through that door, you are never welcome back,” He roared.

Both Flash and Swift stopped at the threshold of the door, turning back to stare at their father, the prior with raised eyebrows, the latter with a harsh glare.

“Even me, dad?” Swift growled.

Faltering, Stalwart replied, “Well, this is mainly for Flash. You’re still fine.”

“It’s just him who needs to learn his place,” Golden added.

Swift began to shoot back a retort but was stopped by Flash’s wing. She bit back her response. Flash gave her a grateful grin. He renewed his focus on his parents, several thoughts swirling in his head. He hadn’t realized it but an illusion had broken for him and he’d come to realize the two ponies that were his parents… didn’t really care about him. It hurt. But continuing to put up with it would just be self-inflicted pain.

And he was done insulting Spear’s memory like that.

“Okay, dad,” Flash said evenly. Stalwart visibly relaxed, a triumphant grin spreading on his face. “Goodbye.”

Before anyone could react, Flash pushed open the door and left, an ache in his heart. As Swift caught up to him, the ache dulled, the jab to the shoulder smothering it into the background.

“Dang, bro,” Swift commented with a beaming grin. “Way to stick it to our dad. What’s gotten into you?”

Flash looked up at the clear blue skies overhead. He thought back on his past, his memories and all the hurt that came with it. What before would have just been painful gaps suddenly felt… manageable. It hurt, but it didn’t consume him and little by little it would hopefully fade away.

He closed his eyes and felt, just for a moment, the phantom touch of Spear’s wing on his back, propelling him forward, a pleased grin on his lips. He liked to think that Spear would have been proud of him at that moment.

“I’m just ready to move on,” Flash said, opening his eyes and flashing a big smile at his older sister. “And I think from now on things will get a lot better.”