Meta Gamer in Equestria Bonus Chapters: Archimedes's promise

Chapters

CH 2: Gran Gran and Grains in the Glass.
CH 3: Blast to the Past
CH 4: The Land Before "Discord."
CH 5: Speaking Their Language
Ch 6: Servants and Sages
CH 7: Prelude of Hope
CH 8: Harmonics of a Cupid
Ch 9: To Bargan with Chaos
Ch 10: A Price too Low
Ch 11: A Price too High
CH 12: Timey Whimy Heartaches.
Ch 13: Back to the Present.
Ch 14: The Definition of Paladin
CH 1: Seven Years Gone So Fast (Exposition of)
Ch 15: Swan Song of a Champion.

CH 2: Gran Gran and Grains in the Glass.

Hours Later, around sunset Keen Wit, Archimedes, Time Turner and Pinkie Pie, with all her seemingly eternally youthful vigor, were sitting around the machine Keen Wit had designed. It was meant to cook and dispense different tea recipes as needed. There was even a simple green tea I could tolerate without gagging that he made a point to include in the dispenser's options.

"Are you done putting your stuff away yet, Moss? Your tea is about cooled to the temperature you like. If you take much longer it will get cold."

I turned off the lamps I had been using to see and did my best to slip Hope's birthday present to the hidden compartment. I then stubbed my toe in the dark backroom of the workshop shortly after, having miscalculated where I was. I could turn it off after I stepped to the door, but I wanted to keep my gift a secret. Not for any particular reason. Others could know and it would still end up fine, but I was rather fond of the idea of it being a surprise. The extra steps, while silly, helped me reinforce just how important it was to me.

"Gah!... I'll... Be fine. I'm coming back. Just had to get some things ready for Scrap's shift in the morning. Orders to be filled, what basic stock and supplies I want manufactured and replenished when he has time, notes on the billing and the discount I agreed on for the Apple Family's order he'll be working on."

As I came to the table, Keen Wit levitated my double portion mug over to me. It was the one that he would serve me when he wanted to cue me in that I needed to sip it slowly and engage in the conversation. If I had a normal sized pony cup, I'd drink it faster than the ponies and one way or another it would cause a bit of an awkward scene if I needed to stay. He didn't always serve my tea in it, though and would let me slip away sometimes, depending. Yet, for whatever reason, he emphasized that he needed my presence with it.

I heard Time Turner compliment Keen Wit's invention as I sat down. "Ah! Not the best cup of chamomile I've ever had, but for a machined tea, I am rightly impressed!"

Archimedes didn't partake in any tea, but was happy to have half a sweet biscuit to gnaw on his custom seat/perch at the table. Pulling away from the holder that held the biscuit up, he gently pecked at the buttons next to him.

"Good. Always," his speaking perch said for him. We had to fill in the gaps between the words, but it worked well enough if precise details weren't necessary. We had refined the tech considerably since the prototype he was using, but we hadn't gotten a mobile version of it for him made quite yet. The mobile version would need a translator element to it for the diplomacy missions. That would weigh it down to the point of still needing a dedicated carrier backpack for Spike, at least at current tech levels. Until we could even get that made, the cards we made for him would have to do.

"I'll be sure to relay that to my mother then, Archimedes." Keen Wit replied, raising his cup to the bird in toast.

Pinkie Pie finished putting her umpteenth cube of sugar in her tea and was satisfied when she saw it couldn't all dissolve into the tea. She then took it and looked at me as she cooled it. "Thanks again for healing me the other day, Moss. Being sick is never fun."

I looked at her odd. "Pinkie, I've only healed scrapes and bruises as of late. I haven't had to heal somepony from being sick in a long time. I think the only time I ever treated you for being sick was over seven years ago."

Time Turner lost his oddly chipper attitude and turned to glare at Pinkie.

"Still no sign of the counter sign for tingly tongue..." Was all that she could say, looking up in thought and not noticing his glare. "Huh. If it's not about Moss, then I wonder what that means. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."

She then pulled out a notebook and a pencil. Turning back to me, she asked. "So... do you think you could set me straight then? Perhaps help me remember exactly when we interacted and how I responded? Like every single time from when we first met to now?"

Time Turner slapped his hoof to his head, "As always, subtle as a brick."

Having learned to not question the pink mare, I shook my head and said, "Whatever this is about, fine, but you owe me one. We will have to skip all the parties you pull me into as that would take too long, but I think you have all those on file anyway."

She scribbled a quick note, mumbling "Pulls Moss to parties..." as her pencil moved in her teeth to write.

"I think the first time we met, I showed you a letter with Princess Twilight's cutie mark on it and you pointed me to the ca-"

Suddenly, the door to the shop were busted down and guards were flooding the shop, calling to everypony "Everypony down! On the ground!"

Pinkie screamed and flailed in panic as the rest of us just dove to the ground. Pinkie was tackled after managing to dodge a good deal of the guards, and the rest of us were pinned, with twice as many pinning me as the others due to my size.

One of the guards looked around with a device and called to the leader, "The sensor is indicating three possible sources of sirenite."

"Then show us!"

He pulled the device close to me, then down to my chest. "It appears to be in his necklace."

With what they were looking for dawning on me, I shifted my lungs and called out "That would be my old translation amulet. I still use it from time to time when my lungs get tired speaking Equestrian in the raw."

I could feel them levitating my amulet off of me, and knew my translation would end when it floated out from around my head.

"No need to tear up the shop. I also know where the other two are and I will direct you to them. My old music box on the top left shelf of the larger workstation in the back, and a small pendant containing a small sliver of the same crystal to contain a single song I was going to give as a present. It is in the secret compartment in between the two drawers on the right of that same work bench. The key is on my wrist... My front right ankle."

Everypony was worried, and even Archimedes was netted, but Pinkie was in an absolute panic still, crying as the guards still held her down.

Shortly after a few guards were sent to the back room, they came back and had the items I described in tow.

"The two necklaces are far too small to be the item stolen, leaving the music box. Are we sure there are no others?"

The guard with the detector looked carefully at the screen. "Yes sir. with all three gathered together, I'm getting no further cross resonance. These are the only three in range of the scanner."

"If you have all the data you need and confirmed my amulet isn't the culprit, can I have it back, please? My lungs tire quickly by talking like this even without being pinned down."

After a moment, the Guards apologized and returned my amulet to around my neck, saying they were following a lead of a thief that resembled Time Turner that had stolen a powerful and dangerous artifact from one of the Royal Family's vaults only an hour or so before. The only lead they had was that it was made of sirenite, and the description of the thief.

I sighed and realized I wouldn't be able to press my amulet while being pinned. "Well, I figured you had a reason busting in here, but you can see that crystal, while... tosipovi," I tried to imitate the way they lipped the word for the crystal type, "has been in that box for the last five years, with the aging on the welds holding it in to prove it. I have had it at multiple birthday parties and Pinkie has photos showing me singing at these parties. Time Turner has also been with us at the get together since noon. I doubt he is the pony you are looking for."

The guard looked at Pinkie about this. With this, she spoke very plainly, and blandly. "Pound and Pumpkin Cake can show you my files on the parties." It sounded like something she would respond with, but compared to when I normally was with her, it felt like she had rehearsed the answer, not that the guards would notice.

About an hour later, the guards that were sent came back and confirmed what we had said. We were let up and allowed to return to our business.

"Thank you for acting so quickly, Moss." Time Turner called out, with Keen Wit nodding in kind.

"That could have been a lot worse. They would have wrecked the shop looking for those if it hadn't been for your quick thinking."

I nodded in kind, stretching my sides, then pressing my amulet to give my lungs a break.

"This wasn't my first rodeo with being arrested. On top of that, unlike in my home world, the guards here actually do have the best interest of the people in mind. That said, however, what were you looking for?"

The guard shook his head. "I'm sorry but that is classified."

Pinkie looked at the guard in a stern glare. "You ruined our tea party."

The guard just shook his head, "Look, it's not about manners, It's about-"

She cut him off with a hoof to his mouth. "Clearance level, Element of Harmony. Element Bearer number two, Pinkamena Diane Pie, bearer of the element of laughter. Clearance passcode: Gama point Alpha Delta. What were you looking for?"

The guard's own sign of rank glowed light pink for a moment at what Pinkie Pie said, causing the head guard to look at her in shock.

"Miss Pie... My apologies." he gathered his thoughts then continued. "The crystal we are on the hunt for was originally an unauthorized attempt to imitate the elements of harmony and their ability to focus and store raw magic. The experiment wound up being both a success and a failure. It did gain the ability to store energy into it, though it could absorb positive or negative emotional energy, not just positive. It also had a negative effect on the test subject, overloading them with an emotion they weren't used to. This caused them to die from complications later after we discharged its energy to store it safely. It is basically an extremely difficult to wield equivalent to any one of the elements that can be wielded by anypony. Its one flaw is that the energy must be first focused into it and stored rather than recharging itself over time. But we were holding it until we could find a way to neutralize it safely. In the wrong hooves, it is a danger to everypony, including the one who uses it."

He gestured his guards out in haste, stopping at the door for one last moment.

"We must recover it before whoever wanted it has a chance to charge it. Please let us know if you discover anything."

Without skipping a beat, Pinkie went back to the tea machine and got it to turn on. Picking up her cup, she just about swigged the old tea before I caught her.

"That thing is packed with sugars and has been sitting out for an hour. Let me at least purify it."

With a wave of my hand, I called out to Archimedes "Partner?" and blue mist quickly formed, going to all the tea, killing any bacteria that may have grown and any nasty stuff left behind from them. I then rubbed my fingers together, and called out "Hocus." After that, the tea warmed back up again, allowing Pinkie Pie to drink it quickly and get back to her notes, "Alright, Moss, continue."

I only shook my head and saw Keen Wit do the same. Time Turner at least helped get the front back in order as I entertained Pinkie's request.

Keen Wit had decided to calm his and Time Turner's nerves with a bit of his mother's personal blend and was just getting sat back down after cleaning up the shop.

"And then I showed you my music box about four years ago, which made you want to have me show it off at parties. A decision I still have some reservations about to this day, if I'm being honest. After that, it was pretty much just you dragging me to parties."

Time Turner looked at Pinkie, "Alright. With that, are we done here yet, Pinkie?"

"Almost. Other me told me there would be one last interruption right about..." She looked at the clock on the wall as it changed minutes. "Now!"

At first nothing happened, but then we heard a loud mechanical whining in the back of the workshop.

Quickly, we ran to the back room as I called out, "Barata," a few times and snapped my fingers, lighting up the oil lamps in the back room.

It was transparent at first, but quickly became solid. A large box in the middle of the room. We all were dumbfounded but I was even more so because it had words written on it. Not in Equestrian, but in English:

Two large words of POLICE and BOX with the words PUBLIC CALL written between them in a smaller font.

"Well I suspect I know where this is heading." Time Turner called out as he came forward and just about knocked on the door, only for it to open.

Another Time Turner came out of the box, calling out "Now there's no need for that, you handsome devil!"

Time Turner smirked and retorted back in a playful quip. "Oh, and you should know! You just as handsome looking devil!"

"I'd say so! I am you a few adventures down the line after all!"

"Hey! What's going on here!" Keen Wit called out from the doorway, "And why is your giant box in my shop, Time Turner!?"

Everypony in the room was suddenly looking at a very irritated Keen Wit, who clearly had very little patience left.

"I think I can answer that," a mare's voice called from the machine.

Looking back to the box, a dark brown unicorn mare stepped out and looked at Pinkie. "Tingly tongue telling you Time Turner needs your help again, Pinkie?"

Pinkie's mouth opened wide as her tongue started to spasm a little, her eyes wide in excitement. "That's it!" She said as her tongue stopped its spasm. "That's what tingly tongue meant! I have to wright that down!"

Keen Wit, looking like he was at the end of his rope, called out. "Look, I don't know who you are miss, but I am about fed up with... Wait..."

His anger diminished considerably, with curiosity and astonishment taking precedent.

The mare finished stepping out of the box as Keen Wit circled her. She cocked her head and followed him as he did so, shifting her posture to allow him to get a good look at her every angle with a coy confidence.

She didn't seem to be all that impressive a looker, from what I had learned of pony standards, but Keen Wit didn't have a look of infatuation in his eyes. More along the lines of disbelief.

Finishing his circling, Keen Wit came up to her, face to face, and asked, "Who... Who are you?"

She gave a smirk and refused to answer him, instead taunting. "Oh, come now Keen Wit. Aren't you going to at least try to live up to that name your father gave you? I know you're sharper than that."

His eyes nearly bulged out of his head as I saw something dawn on him. "G-g-g-g-g."

She gave a patient nod and cooed maternally to him "Go on."

At first I thought he was going to leap at her, but instead collapsed trying. She met him half way and they embraced as he started balling his eyes out. "Gran-Gran Sharp Cookie! It's you!"

She held him while gently rubbing his main and back. "Let it out. Let it out, Keen Wit."

The two Time Turners looked rightly proud at the sight before them. The one that came from the box muttered "Still beautiful the second time round."

I, meanwhile, looked back at the two embracing and pressed my amulet. "Hold up. How could you be his grandma? You look like you're the same age as him."

Sharp Cookie turned and gave me a blushed smile. "Well thank you! But I'm currently twenty two, not nineteen. From my point of view I haven't even given birth to his father yet but I do still love my grandson non the less. And that big blue box is a time machine. Do try to do the math and keep up."

I paused and looked at everypony, not really believing what I just heard.

"She's telling the truth, Moss." I heard Archimedes call to me.

He flew down to the workbench and cawed a little. "And I know for a fact we need to get in that box and go with him, because I was there at the other end. I'm sorry I had to keep this a secret from you, but the you I remember from back then was just as surprised as you are now. Please."

Both of the Time Turners looked at me and said, "Seriously?" Before looking at each other. The one that had been with us gestured to the one from the box to continue.

"I don't know exactly what words your owl is saying to you right now, but I'm pretty sure he's right about coming with us." He gave an air of disinterest as he looked to his box. "If you don't go back and do the events you're supposed to do, it could rip up the entire timeline."

The first Time Turner continued, "Everypony you ever knew and loved, gone. Killed off in a terrible event-"

The other jumped in, adding a flare to his words, picking up the pendant I was going to give Hope from the workbench. "Or worse, they will have never existed at all... Ancestors dying, grandfather paradox and all that."

The one with the pendant put it down as the first one piped in again, "Tell you what. Do it and we'll owe you one in the future, or rather you owe us one from our point of view and we'll both be paying each other back in each other's point of view. How's that?"

I was confused for a moment as they finally stopped talking. A lot of their time travel stuff wasn't making sense and I wasn't going to waste brain power throwing it all together, but I got the basics. I do it or bad thing happen.

I shook my head and looked back at the box. Seeing the writing, I looked back at them.

"You've been to Earth... That's Earth writing. Could you-"

"Take you back?" one of them interrupted. I had lost track of which was which. "Theoretically, yes. It might be possible, but it would be a doozy. Even then you'd probably want to do something about those fin ears and that complexion before you take that ticket. Don't think you'd want your friends back home dissecting you."

I looked at my green tinted hands and nodded. "And I don't think they are ready for magic, anyway. No way to guarantee it wouldn't end badly. Besides, Archimedes needs to stay here, but I'd have to drag him with me if I went home."

I looked back at them and thought a little bit.

"Time Turner isn't your real name, is it? You're not even from Equis."

The other took their turn and said. "We have a sharp one here! And to answer your question, no, I'm not from Equis. Time Turner is just my local alias. But before you ask for my real name, I think you already know why I can't give it to you. Lets just say when I'm on a mission and not taking time off on Equis, you can call me the Doctor instead. So, all aboard?"

I looked at Archimedes. "This is not an order, just to keep the familiar magic in check, but I ask you to swear to me. If you swear to me on her memory, on the oath you gave her that you know what you're doing, then I'll go. Anything short of that and I'm staying here."

Archimedes didn't hesitate to fly up and hover in mid air a few yards in front of me, looking me dead in the eyes, head holding still as the rest of him bobbed like birds could do. His emotions burned through his divine catalyst connection with absolute, suffocating zeal in his earnestness.

"I swear by the memory of my one and only beloved, Ebony Nexus, and to the oath I made to her to protect this world in her memory that this is no prank, and that you will make it back alive. If ever you trusted me, trust me now, Moss."

I stared into his eyes for only a few seconds as I saw that same abyss of absolute conviction I once had in my own. I just nodded and moved towards the box.

One of the Time Turners came with me and looked at the two ponies holding each other, one sobbing on the floor.

"Sharp Cookie, are you coming with us?"

With her practically in a death grip from him still holding her so tightly, showing no signs of stopping, Sharp Cookie looked back and called out "I'm sorry, Doctor, but it looks like I'm going to have to sit this one out. You'll have to deal with out me until he gets dropped back off."

Before we go, you will need to change out your amulet's songs. You're going to need numbers three, seven and seventeen."

I looked at him odd, then put my fingers to my temples a moment later to cue the others in on who I was talking to. "That will take up my entire amulet. I won't even have room for a single translation charge. My amulet won't be able to speak for me at all."

"I know. But you will need them."

I could only whine, knowing my lungs were going to be screaming at me by the time I got back without any translator aid.

"Archimedes says I gotta change my amulet's settings first. I should probably get my tinkering tools and component pouch too. Did I have my armor back then?"

Archimedes looked away and didn't answer me initially.

"Archimedes..."

"Just the protective bits of your good workshop gear..."

My head ached a little as he said that. My good workshop gear was something Keen Wit and I made to help Scraps and myself work our alchemy in the field. While Keen Wit specialized in prosthetics and neural control of those prosthetics, Scraps and I were both alchemy specialists. It was what let us higher him in the first place. We had experimented and found a few solid recipes that could be expedited with a kit that held pre made mixes of what we needed, like a refined version of Keen Wit's tea machine. Just the last step of mixing it with water and infusing our magic into it was needed to get a working potion. Otherwise, it would take hours to prepare a potion we might not end up needing by the time it expired with a conventional alchemists kit.

The main apron in the gear not only housed the potion kit, it also acted as an equivalent of magically reinforced leather armor, which was quieter and overheated less easily than my preferred armor, but was more Scraps' style than mine. It was less protective than the armor I would have used otherwise, despite our attempts to augment it with a few leathery bits of protection for my limbs, but it was far more expensive than my dragon scale armor in spite of this.

As I thought about this, I went across the room to the area I kept the workshop gear next to the portable tool pack.

"I should probably grab my vial holder too, then."

I was about to reach for my gear as Archimedes finished.

"...And you will end up losing the gear in the past, permanently."

I keeled over a little, leaning towards the spot I kept my kits as I found my headache growing exponentially.

CH 3: Blast to the Past

"Nope! Nope, nope, nope!" is what I called out as I quickly grabbed onto the nearest thing to me that I could hold on to and closed my eyes tight.

Time Turner... or the Doctor, or whatever he called himself pranced right in beside me and had a bit of a laugh to his voice as he piped in, "Well, I'll have to add that one to my books. Usually I get someone just saying something about it being bigger on the inside the first time they pop in. What's got him all worked up?"

Archimedes chimed in as I slid down to a squat, "Indeed, what has gotten into you, Moss?"

Hearing him flap in and find a perch further in, I held on for dear life as I shook my head.

"This is non-euclidean space! I'm not going any further! I'm staying right by the door where I can make sure I don't get lost! I know just enough about non-euclidean space to not ever want to mess with it! Tell me when we get there!"

A moment of silence passed. I wasn't sure what their thoughts were.

Archimedes gave a empathetic, "I can see why you would think that it isn't safe, partner, but I can assure you this contraption is no where near as dangerous as you might be thinking."

Time Turner gave a bit of a shocked expletive, "Ah!" followed by an unconcerned rambling, "Got just a bit more of a science brain on him than I expected, given his workshop is just about out of the steam age on Earth. Maybe late steam age. But even normal space isn't really euclidean space, not if you zoom out far enough or are near a black hole."

When Time Turner continued trotting onward into the room, Archimedes continued. "At least not in this room. I can tell from my studies that it has not so normal spacial properties to its larger structure keeping the separate rooms together, and you may get lost between them if you are not careful, but each room to itself should be safe in regards to dimensional space. Though they didn't travel through time, I've seen one or two similar structures in the millennia I waited and adventured on Toril."

"Right! If you would come here... 'Archimedes' as you are currently called, I have something that should boost your signal to Moss. It should let you two communicate without a distance restriction. Well, you'd still want to stay within the general orbit of Equis. For our needs, however, effectively you'd have no issue with range while you're hooked up. You should even be able to speak through the machine with actual sound here on the ship once I get that part fine tuned to you. And no, I can't let you take it with you when you're done. It's borrowed and I promised it wouldn't leave the ship until I return it."

Time turner then moved a little further and I heard what sounded like buttons nobs and a few levers being activated. "And with that, give me just a few more seconds..."

I heard that mechanical whining come up then die down.

"And we have arrived! Alright Moss! Eyes open! Back the way you came! go on! Scoot! I'll be monitoring you and I'll be sure to pick you up when you're done! Also, don't worry about me leaving you, I can't close the bubble while the link between you two is intact and one of you is inside and the other is outside. I'm as stuck here as you are while Archimedes stays inside the TARDIS."

With this, I found Time Turner opening the door of his blue box, pushing me out said door and onto some dirt. I looked back at the box just to hear the barely audible sounds of the door being locked.

"Can you hear me? Moss?" I heard Archimedes call out.

"I can. Are you staying inside then?" I called out, pushing on the door to test it. It felt a lot more solid than a wooden door should have been, but it did have a small amount of give.

He was slow to answer, as if forming his words carefully.

"As Time Turner said, its best if I stay put. I'll guide you as best I can from here once this device comes on. Time Turner has you on the viewing glass, but you'll be communicating with me once you leave our line of sight. Can you confirm communication telepathically?"

I paused, and realized I was in a cave, but just outside it was the middle of the day. Turning around I mentally called to him.

"Testing testing?"

"I heard you loud and clear, but I meant once you're over a hundred feet away once this device comes on."

I nodded, gave a thumbs up, and called out to them verbally. "Alright got it."

After a few "Can you hear me now?" calls, we confirmed we would be able to communicate just fine through the activated device, but that was the least of my worries. When I looked out of the cave, I was nowhere near anywhere I was familiar with. The cave was well hidden enough to where nobody would see it from the road, but not hidden enough to where the locals wouldn't know about it.

"Are you sure we are in the right time, partner? I don't think we ever left Equestria in our time here, unless this is where one of your diplomacy missions took place? I don't recall any of your missions being to broken down areas. This place looks almost war torn."

The plant life was unkempt, and a bit overgrown. The buildings of the village the path looked like it led to looked more destroyed than not, and there were a few smoke pillars over a hill on the far side of the main road of the village. I was hoping they were from some place with a few different smith shops or something, not what I was afraid they were.

"Oh, believe me, we are. But we aren't on one of my diplomacy missions. We're back in the era of the first rift war."

I got a pit in my stomach at his words. Tentatively, I asked, "You mean first part of the rift war... right?"

"No. The first rift war, thousands of years ago. Back to before we drove out the gods Angharradh, Moradin and Bahamut."

I started down the path, "I don't know those first two, but wasn't Bahamut one of the good gods? I mean, I thought he was a dragon, but a good one, right?"

"Time Turner just got the audio working. He can listen in on us now, but he will have to-"

"Good day, Moss!" I heard a chipper voice pop into my head.

"I take it back. He can speak for himself, apparently."

I shook my head as I reached the edge of the village's buildings, or rather the rubble remaining from the nearest building.

"And about Bahamut?"

Archimedes spoke up with a bit of apology to his link, "Indeed, he is considered fairly good as gods go, but shortly after they squeezed Vecna out of this world, they started bickering over who would 'watch over' us, but it was just a thinly veiled desire to use the world for its resources. Angharradh was a goddess of the elves, and Moradin was the prideful head of the dwarven pantheon. Bahamut's involved followers were largely human, though he did borrow from other gods he was allied to, but none of the races truly trusted each other."

"That Vecna chap has been a bit of a pain in my side, being another time traveler and all that." Time Turner quipped in, "Wouldn't be surprised if he just let them have this world, thinking he'd be able to have them spend more energy at each other's throats than they'd end up drawing from it in the end. He sure seemed to turn tail and run a little too easily when I was here last. I mean, he loves knowledge and I can't deny the timing was almost perfect. He stripped the place dry of all sorts of knowledge to hoard to himself right as the others came in to drive him out."

I stopped in mid tracks on the road as I processed that.

"Wouldn't a time traveling god be a dangerous thing?"

"You'd think that, but no. Turns out he has a huge disadvantage in our quarrels if we duke it out in a time he has no worshipers and twisting the timeline around even when he's powerful got a few too many gods on his back. Kinda what led to the intervention of the other three when they realized he had meddled with things subtly."

I shook my head and looked around, checking my surroundings. "We are getting distracted. What exactly am I supposed to do in this time?"

I heard nothing but silence again before Archimedes spoke up.

"Help the resistance win the war."

"Resistance? As in the natives?"

"And those that will eventually become native, as well as a few others."

A loud crash made me remember I was in a war zone. It was so loud, I could have heard it from the cave. My heart had jumped in my throat for a second, before I forced it back down to make way for my war face.

"I felt your alertness go up. If we are where and when Time Turner says we are, I recognize that crash from the first time. We need to cut off communications for now and you need to follow that sound. Get ready for a fight. Oh! And don't use any quintessence magic, not even the cantrips. Don't even use any non quintessence spell to heal wounds as they will still be laced with it. We can't let the draconiquis sense even the slightest whiff of your quintessence being activated."

While he was gabbing at me, I put my artificer glove to my thigh and called out, "magno gradu." A chill energy went into my legs, increasing my running speed. A trick I had to learn to keep up with ponies at times.

After that I was running full force. I was starting to get a little weirded out by his wording, but I responded, "Should have said that earlier, but sure! Explain more later! Running now!"

As I came closer to the noise, I found the village wasn't so abandoned, as it was an active combat zone.

I could hear orders being shouted, in thick accents thanks to my amulet's translation. It sounded like they weren't so much combating an equal force, as they were rounding up runaway slaves.

I finally saw faeries and satyrs running and flying as best they could, but nets were being tossed at them and they were falling to the ground.

I also saw what was hunting them. They looked like the satyrs, but were human sized.

As they spotted, me, they tossed me a net then turned away. At first, I thought they were tossing to capture me, but the net didn't deploy.

They thought I was on their side.

I used the tactical advantage to sabotage their efforts I could without getting caught, freeing the netted victims instead of hauling them off. I had to put a few of the large satyrs to sleep before cutting the nets with my tools, but the small satyrs and faeries gave no complaint when they saw me helping them and just ran again.

Eventually, the large satyrs had trapped the largest group of the runaways in what may have been the town square at one time.

Seeing that there was a big crowd gathering, I figured my cover could be blown and I'd need as much of an edge as I could. I quickly sprayed the ingredients of three specific potions into their vials that already had water pre-filled in them, then shook them in my hand as I added my remaining level one spell slots.

Downing them as quickly as I could without spilling, I felt the effect on my more exposed skin, covering it with a subtle barrier, augmenting my defense. I knew it was projecting past my armor too, I just couldn't feel it. My stride improved further, to as fast a speed as I dared control with my limited dexterity, and I felt a slight loss of my edginess, keeping me ever so slightly closer to a calm, "in the zone" mental state, something that would help me fight efficiently in subtle ways. They weren't viking rage potions that would risk killing me, but they definitely gave me a collective edge similar to one without the drawback.

Nets were cast and the fleeing fey were restrained on the spot, caught and unable to get free. The largest of the larger Satyr looked at the largest of the smaller satyrs in the net.

"We're supposed to take you in alive to get our reward. But I don't think they will argue with me making an example of at least the imitation satyr that started this little stunt. Should still be plenty of ale left after they account for your loss!"

His accent was thick, and strange, but the amulet managed to translate regardless. I wouldn't have the same ability in reverse, though, due to my amulet being filled with three songs of varying complexity. Even so, I didn't think he knew raw Equestrian.

I could tell that it was an undisciplined group of mercenaries from the fey realms, and a crudely organized one. An alpha hierarchy with the strongest being the leader by right of dominance. I knew exactly how I could break them up without risking the captives. Which was good, because I had to act fast.

I withdrew my rose stem from my component pouch and cocked it back with as quiet a, "Rapto," as I could. Meanwhile, I tried to step forward past the crowd as inconspicuously as possible.

The leader took a good back swing of his spiked club over his head, making an exaggerated moment to draw out the drama of the attack, clearly wanting to make the others too afraid to try to escape again. That's when I struck.

I didn't go for the alpha satyr himself, but rather his club. I caught it in my thorn whip cantrip's grasp and yanked it back towards me and out of his hand as he tried to pull it down.

He looked back at me with a mean glare, then just about pointed and called to his troops, but stopped as I pounded my chest with both open palms a few times in succession.

I was challenging the alpha and he accepted. But unlike with a previous adventure where the challenger was barely holding on and fighting for whatever kind of victory he could, I had to do more in this fight. It wasn't enough to win. This was a battle of the mind and morale. I had to dominate him. I had to show to his troops just how vast the gap between me and him was. I had to make it clear I was not to be messed with and that they were insignificant compared to me. I had to make them want to cower and flee.

I had to utterly crush and humiliate him.

"You want to keep the full bounty?" He pulled out a short sword from a sheath and used it to wave the others back. "I don't mind taking your share to make up for killing this one."

I put my hand to my amulet's settings, selected the song, and just about pressed play. I figured this was the time for number seventeen just as I activated my natural nineteen 'portent' good luck charm to not only play the song, but masterfully apply my hard earned expertise to make a total modified role of thirty performance.

Instead, I found the opportunity to dodge, sidestepping his charge at the last moment, making him trip over himself and look uncoordinated as his sword hit the dirt.

Then the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I pressed play.

I heard the rhythmic pounding, "Thump, thump, clap! Thump, thump, clap!" come from the amulet's custom instrumental sounds and couldn't help but put my hands to my belly, and then clapping with the beat.

The alpha picked himself back up and gave me a glare as he saw me starting to taunt him. I dodged again, stopping my clapping as I had to move more carefully.

I kept dodging his slashes and singing as he made his attacks a bit more seriously. One grazed my armor, being repelled and just lightly nicking it. Another I had to use my shield on.

I quickly snapped my fingers in my gloved hand and pointed to his sword, calling out "Uro!" Sparks of energy came out of my glove and practically attached to his sword like a magnet, rendering his sword so hot he couldn't keep hold of it.

At this point, my amulet activated its sound effect part I had set in the song to make it sound like others were singing along side me as long as I sang, mimicking my voice with slight differences. A not very easy trick to pull off that had multiple stages in development before I could put it into this song, activating and deactivating on its own as the song needed.

At this point, he had backed up for a second, letting me do the same, resuming my joining on the rhythmic slapping. This time hitting my thigh guards, then smacking my chest like I did when I challenged him.

Right as he tried to get to his club, the other weapon he had, I raised three fingers of my gloved hand and called out "Barata!" to call out my strongest flame spell. I ironically chose it as my command word, also being the same word for my weakest flame magic in my prestidigitation cantrip.

A five foot ball of fire, almost like a miniature sun, formed from the energy bits that shot out of my glove as I backed up. With a slight twitch of my hand, I directed it to ram into him.

I almost lost rhythm as I saw him fall on his ass, getting singed good, but the necklace kept playing and I quickly recovered.

I once again had to play keep away from the weapon as he came at me, but this time I kept the ball of heat on his back, far enough to where I could handle the heat, but he was feeling it. I did have to cast the shield spell once to keep the blade from hitting me, though, with him getting otherwise lucky.

Eventually, he collapsed from over exposure to my miniature sun. Between the exertion of the fight and the sheer heat, he was crippled on the ground. He was still awake, but he couldn't hardly move from the sheer heat exhaustion.

I dropped my flaming sphere spell and stroked my beard, as if wondering what to do with him. Quickly, I stuck my non gloved thumb in my mouth and fetched the most slimy bit of saliva as I could manage. I rubbed the saliva between my fingers, calling out "Umecto," and performed the create function of my create or destroy water spell.

With the texture of the saliva as the material component, the twenty gallons of water that appeared above him didn't have the consistency of a pale of fresh spring water, but rather a more swampy, disgusting water. It was still water, and not saliva, but it had the immediate feel of low quality water not fit for drinking and would for about an hour before it faded.

He was completely drenched and got uncomfortably refreshed with the lukewarm water still cooling him, just barely getting back in the fight and able to move.

He looked around and felt the slimy, swamp like water on him.

Looking at me, he had an absolute look of rage as the music still played from the amulet.

He just got up and ran at me with his horns, trying to ram me like a goat.

In response, I ran backwards, just matching his pace and grappled his horns.

Getting irritated, he finally lifted up his torso and I put my arms down to my side on purpose as he screamed, trying to pin me with a bear hug style grapple. His men were turned away from me and I softly called out, "Tutela!" as I fingered a small pentagram with my hand at my side, putting a blade ward between our faces to soften the blow I knew he was going to do next.

As he brought his head forward to ram mine, I did what I could to pull away and soften it further. I could still feel it pretty good, and think he got my lip very bloodied, but I did my best to hide any pain.

By this time, the ending of the song was playing with the guitar and 'thump thump clap' backing it up. I needed to do my big finish or it wouldn't fall right. I did my best imitation of a mad man's laugh and flung what I could of my arms around him in return as he looked at me confused.

He went from confused to panicked as he suddenly found himself being grapple hugged by a polar bear instead.

The hairs on the back of my neck landed his screaming attempt to get out of my grasp to a wimpy natural one through my good luck charm as I kept my grip and opened my jaws.

He batted at my muzzle with his horns, but I just pushed through the pain, knowing the damage wasn't permanent and got the grip my mouth needed. With his head squarely in my mouth, I bit down, hard, until I heard his skull crack and his body go limp.

I turned around to his men with his corpse just dangling from my mouth. Thanks to the quick release mechanism I added to the clasp of my amulet, it was still attached, finishing up the song while hanging from my bear neck.

Just as the song finished the last of the guitar, I opened my mouth and let the corpse drop.

And so I stood there as a polar bear, looking at the satyr as they looked back in horror. At first I wasn't sure if I had the right effect, but then I heard that familiar "Thump, thump, clap!"

I saw them run just as I started to look down at my amulet. It was then my adrenaline rush started to come down and I realized that the rhythm wasn't coming from my amulet, but from behind me.

I slowly craned my neck and saw a troop of well armed creatures of several kinds adopting my rhythm, pounding the ground and those that could were clapping for the final part.

I slowly raised my paws and released my wild shape, realizing I wasn't going to be able to intimidate them. My energy was a good deal spent, my potions were going to wear off soon and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to outrun their flyers, as I saw some had wings out of the corners of my eyes.

I found one of the nets being tossed over me before I could decide to run, though, capturing me instead.

I looked more closely at my captors to try to glean any information about them. My portent good luck charm was used up, but I managed to get a small boost from the last use of my flash of genus. The plus two of my feeble version of it was only a small boost, but it helped me noticed the armor they were wearing wasn't real with how it moved on them. To top it off, none of them were chasing the satyrs. I also saw a cat like humanoid in mage robes just as I had a bag put over my head.

As they started to drag me off, I mentally shook my head and called out to Archimedes.

"Partner? Are you there?"

"We're here. You have an update for us?"

"I'd say so... yea. I got good news and bad news. The good news is I found the resistance."

CH 4: The Land Before "Discord."

I couldn't really focus on a conversation at first as I was dragged along the ground for a while. I didn't have any injuries of major concern, but the back of my shirt above where the leather of the work gear protected me was shredded. I was going to need to take a while with two mirrors and my mage hand spell at some point to get the small rocks that found their way into my skin out. I was lucky they were going so slow, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to work my shoulders around the big rocks.

I was eventually put in a crude sled, which helped with the rocks, but it still wasn't all that smooth a ride. Once I felt they weren't going to throw me off the sled soon and I could relax, I continued my conversation with Archimedes.

"So what do you mean, getting captured was a good thing?"

"It's what happened last time. Just collect your thoughts. You're doing fine so far. You just saved the first leader of the fey refugees."

"...I know, I know. I had to be 'surprised.' But is there anything you can tell me before I get in over my head?"

"There is one thing. Don't say the draconiquis's name. Not even over our link. For all we know, he may be listening in right now and just never told anybody. You know he has a knack for listening in."

The path turned and I felt the sled hit a rock, nearly causing me to tumble out, but I felt several small hands push me back onto the sled as I was on the brink.

"OK... So why shouldn't we say that name?"

"Because if he discovers it early before it is given to him, even by accident, it will become invalid. He has to hear the Animus Mundi of this world use that word as his name, or the second true name won't stick. If that name, as a name in reference to him, reaches his ears by any other means first, it won't ever be able to have the magical properties associated with a true name that he would crave."

I breathed for a few seconds as we stopped for a moment. I had to because I was being spun around several times and I had to steady myself from the nausea of slightly upside down spinning. Probably to throw off my sense of location and not let them know where they were taking me. Practical, if I had even been trying. I knew I wouldn't have had a chance even if I had focused on it.

"And there goes the leverage for his cooperation if we do, corrupting the timeline. Is that why we can't let him sense the quintessence inside me in a dormant state?"

"No. Not exactly. While it does involve the timeline, the quintessence is for a different reason. While he will no doubt be able to sense the quintessence sitting in you, he won't be able to sense its signature specifically unless you call upon it. It is important he does not recognize it in this time, though. Eventually he will find out and cause us endless heartache when he does. That, however, will be in our first adventures in the future that we've already lived through, not right now."

It felt like the rest of the day was spent traveling on that sled. At one point, the sled stopped for a few minutes and I just laid there, cooperatively. I heard hushed whispers I couldn't quite make out, a campfire's crackling and what I suspected to be the sounds of eating.

At one point, I felt one of the fairies bounce on my belly, getting a little grunt out of me.

"Hello?" I called out almost as softly as the others did. The fairy was off of me quickly, but then I felt it rustling to my vial holder, and to the waterskin within.

Two or three of the little satyrs pushed me up to a sitting position. I then found a griffin putting a blade like talon to my jugular gently, just enough to let me know I could be killed at any moment. One of the little satyrs untied and lifted the bottom of the sack off my head for the opened end of my waterskin to touch my lips and dribble just enough water to cue me in I was being allowed a drink from my own supplies.

Thankfully, that waterskin was secure, being the water intended for my potions anyway. So I was happy to guzzle the clean drinking water. It was probably the cleanest in the group. Most the time in my adventures, I had to purify the water from whatever source we could find. Clean spring water was a rare treat out in the field, and basic water purification was a must for any party.

After the break, we traveled for a few more hours. Some of the fairies even sat down on me, taking a break from the march. They didn't "say" say anything, but just the fact they were resting on me showed they were grateful enough for what I did to trust me to at least not toss them while they rested.

Finally, after a while, I was stopped and sat up. It felt like everything except the bag on my head and the ropes binding me was systematically stripped from me as we had gotten to our destination. There were worried murmurs again, but again in hushed voices.

Even if I had my amulet, I wouldn't have been able to hear them, but I did hear a door open, then a familiar voice not from the group.

"And hello again, resistance fighters! I told you I'd come with reinforcements, and I delivered!"

I could hear Time Turner trotting up to me as I was pushed down to my knees. He put a hoof on my shoulder and called out, "Doesn't this one pack a wallop or what!?"

My bag was loosened and suddenly ripped off by Time Turner, who pranced back and seemed full of himself.

I blinked to what I saw and could hardly believe my eyes.

I was in the same cave Time Turner had parked his blue box, hardly ten minutes away from where I had gotten captured.

My jaw went slack as I stared around the cave in the not quite sunset, evening light. I could hardly believe the irony of having to travel half a day just to reach this location, but after a few seconds, I did realize they had to make sure they weren't being followed. Many smuggling routes in my world's past rarely ever consisted of a straight line but were rather a carefully constructed set of opportunistic movements, especially for people.

The anthropomorphic cat mage I saw earlier came up to me and placed a staff to my lips, casting a spell.

She then turned to Time Turner and "One mage is not going to turn the tide in our favor, little meddler. The sheer size of their forces is too great for such a small trinket to make significant change on the grand scale."

It hit me that she had a more advanced spell for translation aid.

I could also tell that the air was getting thick as the war had dragged on for a while. Not surprising considering every rift in the world was still open and the armies could move reinforcements and supplies through them easily.

"He does not even have your ability to speak multiple tongues at once, unlike most of your blue box associates. We could not understand his blithering while he fought. But he has aided us in our smuggling operation when it went wrong, so we will allow him to at least speak with us."

She shook her head and added one last quip, "Even if I have to fuel the spell myself now that you seem to be running out of even that trick."

I heard a familiar voice call out in a sinister tone. "In spite the fact we now know he is associated with you and your outlandish, empty promise."

Looking up just as he put his talon and paw on me, I saw Discord.

...

Or rather, the draconiquis that would eventually earn the name Discord.

"Ah, you would normally be right, but this one has knowledge of how the war is won, draconiquis."

The Fey seemed hopeful, both the fairies and smaller satyrs, as they seemed to perk up at this. Yet several of the resistance that looked even remotely hardened gave exasperated sighs.

"You keep saying that, how the war will end, but you will not even allow us into your box to prove it."

Time Turner looked at the draconiquis and gave him a glare that had absolutely no warmness, and a strong sense of being on equal grounds as the immortal before him.

"That's because while I may be trying to help, I don't trust any of your ranks with the delicate instruments or sheer chaos and destruction they could do if I let them in, or at least any of those that have asked. You're all too desperate. You'd jump at the first thing you would think could give you an edge in your fight without understanding the ramifications and end up hurting yourselves."

The draconiquis looked back at him with eyes so alight, his pupils were literal flames. I had seen him this determined only once before.

"Mind you, should your box's defenses ever fail, our next assault on it won't. We will win this war by any means. I've staked too much on it already."

Time Turner didn't even flinch as he snickered, "Like I said, desperate."

With this, he turned around and trotted back to his box. "And don't talk to me about having too much at stake in a war. This little thing is nothing compared to the wars I've been in. Now he is what you're getting from me. Use him or don't."

With this, the box opened and he quickly tumbled back in as the door closed faster than any troop could get to it, though one of the griffins still tried and got a bonk to the head on an invisible barrier as a reward.

A little while later the cat like mage, Diary, as she so alias-ed herself, was drawing answers out of me. She couldn't give me her true name, naturally, as she also was not a native. I gave no real resistance, though I could tell she was taking more than a grain of salt with every word I said.

"Yes, if what the guy in the blue box says is true, I'm from thousands of years in the future. Not sure how many thousands, though. Not a big history buff. So I have some rough outlines, but definitely no exact details on exactly what happens when. Also, this is pretty new to me too... So I apologize if it isn't too helpful."

"And what god do you serve, priest?" I could see the draconiquis squinting at me intently.

With this, I did my best to do the not lying lie I had been preparing for him.

"See my quintessence, do you? Funny thing about that. Not actually a priest. Kinda a scar from an old immortal. We bitterly went back and forth with each other for a bit."

Technically, I actually wasn't a priest. I was a phaux-cleric. Cleric and priest could overlap, but they weren't one in the same. I dodged a bullet with his wording on that one. It was a scar from an immortal, just his scar, not mine. And we did go back and forth bitterly after we met, until we finally came to respect each other, just not in combat.

"Speakthe truth."

I laughed in as calm and friendly a manner as I could, letting his effect take hold with the overwhelming force like I knew he could do. "I am speaking truth. I'd say you should see the other guy, but his body was kinda destroyed in the process. The last little bit in me is all that's left of his quintessence."

The draconiquis and the mage looked puzzled, dashing their eyes from me to each other.

I resisted the desire to smirk and squelched it to a simple smile as I pulled my ace out. "And if it's any consolation, let me show you something else. Something that will assure you that you will have plenty of chance to have your vengeance on me should I betray you."

Pointing to my heart, I looked to the draconiquis.

"Look closely at my heart with your ability to sense magic. There's a curse heavily wrapped around it. A curse that could kill me dead instantly if it was ever triggered."

I saw him look closely at my chest, and sniffed it with his nostrils as they came out from his snout like the eyes of a snail.

"You recognize that style, don't you? The one that created it?" I turned to give him access to my back as he moved to get around me. I knew where he wanted to look.

"The you I know in the future made it to ensure I-"

And there went that talon of his, magically delving into my back as uncomfortably as the first time I experienced it. I winced and pushed through it as he poked around.

"T-to en-n-nsure I d-d-didn't becom-m-me a threat to y-you."

I could feel his magics doing the rounds through my veins all over, around my internal organs and around my brain.

"That's definitely my handiwork. It has my style, signature and sheer potency."

With this he dropped me and gave a questioning tone. "Though I must say it is a rather restrained, timid version. A single trigger of learning my Torilian name? I do say, it's a solid reason to kill, but just that reason alone? Why in this world or any other would I keep it so plain and simple?"

I didn't know the exact details of the curse, so I didn't have a quip ready for that.

I paused, thinking of how to answer. Making sure to tell the truth but still make it believable. He didn't know Fluttershy yet. He wouldn't understand friendship and respecting her wishes for the sake of respecting her wishes at this moment in history. I had to word it carefully.

"We... We have a common ally in the future. One whom staying on the good side of was incredibly vital to both our... interests. You kept it short, sweet and to the point specifically to get the job done but not lose her favor with unnecessaries. You also don't apply it until the moment it is absolutely necessary. The moment that I learn you even have a... true name that can be exploited against you here on Equis."

A cold flame touched my shoulders as I realized I struck a nerve. "And you probably had the means to extract my name from me? Like that blasted rival of mine, Bunny Angel did!?"

Bunny Angel... like Angel Bunny? It didn't take me even half a second to connect the dots and realize he was speaking of Archimedes's old alias. No. The hard part was keeping a straight face as my cheeks burned red with the desire to laugh. It took all my will power to not telepathically call out to him, lest the draconiquis overhear and make the connection of just who was in the blue box and where my quintessence came from.

I had to just shuffle it away by thinking to myself, 'Oh, you have a lot of explaining to do when we get back in contact, partner. Bunny Angel,' With particular note to not message him as I thought it.

"Come now. Do you honestly believe such an alias is deserving of humor?" I heard a calm voice call out from the entrance. Turning to see the source, I found what looked to be a perfectly chiseled specimen of a human just as slim as myself. More particularly, I saw his particularly reflective, nearly glowing golden eyes. I also saw him sporting a set of plain brown, but otherwise impressive wings on his back.

"Your own alias simply means the slime that grows on a rock, does it not?" He set a small mouse down and allowed it to scurry to Diary. I instantly recognized a mage's familiar when I saw a mouse willingly going into the palm of a cat, calmly letting her kiss it on the head, then drop it to her pocket.

"I didn't ask you to bring him." The draconiquis hissed at the mage.

"Nor did you ask me to not bring him. If my patron shared knowledge with me more often, the level of loyalty needed to go above and beyond like that for them wouldn't lapse, master!" She mockingly bowed, lifting her robes like a dress in a courtesy. "Instead I have to fend for myself half the time and learn my own magic through wizardry!"

She gestured to the Fey that had sat quietly, almost forgotten. "Besides, we needed him to transport the refugees safely. A heavy hitter is needed both inside and out during a refugee jump. As skilled as you are, each of us can only cover one of those effectively on our own, and one of us two have to do the jumping, which leaves Bunny for the outside heavy."

Her master put his paw to his face and stretched it like rubber, rubbing it downward in frustration. "Oh the way our forces are stretched thin as it is... Was there really no other heavy hitter nearby?"

"None." She looked at me hesitantly, then gestured to me. "At least not any in the resistance."

The draconiquis simply shook his head and looked at Bunny Angel. "Keep things together and keep a close eye on our guest from the blue box. I'd say he doesn't have clearance but just being from that blasted box kind of makes clearance levels moot."

With this I discovered what they meant by a refugee jump as the draconiquis snapped his paw, causing him and his warlock to vanish.

A few seconds later the draconiquis was back, grabbing the refugees in his arms, which stretched to accommodate all of them, looped his talon loose and disappeared with them in another snap.

"As much as I hate to admit it, I still agree with him that he has the facilities to make jumps on his own. I wish the collective counsel would approve of his soloing of jumps."

With this, Bunny Angel turned to me and gave a cheerful bow. "I understand you have a common friend with us in the blue box. The Doctor may be odd and secretive, but we all are to some degree in this rag tag group of ours, and he has always delivered on his promises in the past so far."

I could only nod and focus on keeping my composure, knowing who I was really speaking with.

"Bunny Angel is it?" I called out, making a point to the blue box as I said it, just turning as I finished.

"That is the alias I have been assigned, yes. While we wait for them to speak to get clearance for you, let us chat more freely than an interrogation would allow for. Surely a little company on unimportant matters will ease stress. Though, with the tone you speak my alias... Tell me, do you know of me?"

I had a migraine from all the selective wording I had been having to do in such rapid succession on the fly and near fly as he asked this.

Carefully, I chose my words again, once again making sure it was loud enough for the blue box's sensors would pick it up, shaking my head. "I can honestly say I have never heard of that name before now. But anybody who is considered that jigsaw puzzle's rival surely must be potent. You seem rather interesting. Lets chat."

CH 5: Speaking Their Language

Bunny Angel sat behind me, carefully extracting the pebbles and small rocks from my back with the set of tweezers from my tool kit. They stripped me of my stuff, but hadn't taken it with them when they jumped. So the celestial was more than willing to assist with my dilemma after introductions were made.

"You're tool here is ingenious. You simply use the natural elasticity of the metal while keeping them in form with forging together only the ends." Bunny Angel commented as he got another small rock out.

I slowly nodded in recognition. "Well I can't take credit. The design wasn't originally mine. I just recreated it once I learned metalworking."

"And this metal. It appears to be a form of steel, and yet it shows no signs of rusting. I would wonder if it was plated, but the scratches from being well used go too deep."

I gently shook my head. "It's in the alloy. You're right about it being steel in that it's an iron-carbon alloy, but it's also about one eighth chromium. The chromium makes it weaker than standard industrial steel, or even the extra elastic spring steel similar to what you might use for swords, but it also greatly retards oxidation. It's more for tasks that aren't under a great strain, but need to not rust rather than one that takes raw strength. It will still rust if you just don't take care of the tool, though."

By the time I finished my explanation, Bunny Angel had stopped working on my back, although he hadn't finished. He had been working left to right, and still had about a third of the back left untouched.

"Is something wrong?"

"No." He answered in a light breath. "It's just that a smith's trade secrets are the life blood of his shop, and yet you freely gave away the secret to making your alloy as well as a summary of its strengths and weaknesses without even a care."

I shook my head again and gave a small laugh in embarrassment. "Well, I'm not a smith. I branch into many craft fields to bring them together into the field of artificery, and that "secret" was common knowledge among any metal worker in my time. Straight smith's do still exist, but they aren't as threatened by people knowing their secrets. They are more of a novelty shop where people pay for the time and effort for custom orders. Standard items are usually made in bulk with specialized equipment that streamline the process of making several things the exact same way anymore."

I gave a sigh of disdain as I thought about what I said.

"Though they aren't quite as durable as a quality custom item built for the same task."

Bunny Angel returned to his work on my back and spoke with a friendly air.

"It's funny. You speak like an alchemist, with big words like oxidation, yet you carry yourself almost like a man seeking repentance, bordering the conviction of a holy man. Most holy men see Alchemy as an affront to their beliefs. They believe it to be something cults mi-dasdcs." His voice dampened out as I realized the tongues spell had faded.

Apparently there wasn't much left, because I saw the tweezers being past back to me over my shoulder.

I took the tweezers with one hand and slapped my chest, reflexively looking for my amulet. "I didn't catch that last part."

I heard him call out a spell behind me, touching my shoulder in the process. Turning around, I saw him put a small clay statue of a pyramid like temple carefully back into its pouch. When he saw that I had spied him doing this, he blushed.

"Though I'm much older than yourself, I still am not yet powerful enough to work a spell without a material focus. Items that can work as holy relics are so hard to come by for the resistance and my goddess's holy symbol has no power in this world. Calling out to the dragon deity I served her through by proxy would not only draw his ire, but alert him to our location. So the mundane versions of a spell's needed materials have to serve."

He then pointed down and turned his index finger in a circle. "Now turn around and I'll heal up those wounds we just cleaned out.

I nodded, started to turn and waved my hand as best I could over my shoulders, calling "Nickto."

Before I finished, I saw a look of disgust on his face, though he was trying to hide it for politeness. When he saw the question in my eyes, he answered before I asked.

"You are... a mage. I took you for a smith... or at least some kind of craftsman."

I nodded. "Not much for mortal casters?"

he shook his head. "I can respect priests or other divine casters, as they are calling upon a link to a proper source of magic. I can also put up with sorcerers who did not ask for their magic but have it come naturally to them. My kind and Torilian dragons are blessed with magic in a similar way to sorcerers. So I cannot hold it against them. Are you a sorcerer?"

I sighed again. "While I would be tempted to say yes, and some of my magic was not of my own choosing... exactly, sadly, I have to say no. I studied as a wizard early on and now currently study a related field called artificery. While I don't worship it, I also had a knack for asking for help from the Animus Mundi in my time. In fact, I wonder what would happen if I tried to contact her in the past."

He closed his eyes, took a breath and let out the distaste as he let the breath go. He then looked back at me with that same smile.

"Ah, yes. You are from the blue box and are thus likely from another time, if its master is to be believed. I can respect druids. Likewise, while we have a common goal, I will bite my tongue on matters of your wizardry and the other art you speak of. As I once spoke when I betrayed Bahamut, 'I would rather do good with those that are unorthodox than blindly follow the path of orthodoxy, only pretending to do good.'"

I paused and looked into his eyes, seeing a strain in them of having to make hard choices. It couldn't have been easy for him to leave his entire order like that.

He gave a small courtesy. "Instead I will simply just ask of you as I would any person with power. Be responsible with your power, regardless the exact path you take for it, and I will have no reason to act against you despite my distaste."

With this, he reached for my back and performed the most potent casting of cure wounds on my back I had ever seen. I could see the skin on the back most part of my shoulder become as fresh and strong as it had ever been.

"I'm afraid I must keep the level to a minimum. I am here to treat the injured and I already spent more than I should have, renewing your tongues spell."

I looked at him funny. "That was a level one? I'd have to use two slots at that level to heal that well." Not that I would waste the extra on the cosmetic damage and mitigating scars past functional damage in the field, but it was true.

He looked at me odd. "Only twice? It usually took the druids three times to match me when they were with the resistance. That must have been an exceptionally poor execution of the spell. My apologies."

He glanced at the part of the back that he just healed. "Still, you seem to be pretty good none the less."

I swallowed a lump in my throat as I realized I had measured off my ability with the assistance of Archimedes's disciple of life effect, boosting my healing. He was measuring off what a normal druid could cast. I had nearly let my power level with healing slip.

A little while later, Diary popped back into the cave. "The counsel of this hideaway has agreed to allow the outsider to come in and speak his business, but his equipment will be commandeered from him and redistributed."

Her master quickly popped in and took my workshop gear, my amulet, my component pouch, my tools and my artificer glove, popping back out again.

Diary was looking at me quietly as I processed that. After a second, I realized she was testing me.

"Well, thanks for leaving my clothes. You might take the device out of the apron's pocket, as it is useless to a non alchemist and would only get in the way of the armor's protection and flexibility for someone that can't use it. The glove will still make a shield while I'm here in the past with it to keep it infused with my energy, but it can't be used by anybody but me for spellcasting. It's kinda an artificer specialty tool. The amulet has songs in it, and it's kinda special to me if I could get it back some time, but it also allows for baseline communication. I can hear your words with it while wearing it, but it doesn't have the capacity to help with me translating my words back to others, at least not while I have the songs stored in it."

With this I stood up and offered her my tweezers to put with the rest of my tools.

She raised an eyebrow. "Unexpected. We felt you would be as stingy with your gear as the little meddler."

I shrugged as she took my tweezers. "I'm not happy, but all that stuff could be replaced if I needed to. That exact amulet has sentimental value and helps me back home, but the mission is more important than the sentimental value. Can I get my clothes back on now?" I pointed at the one part of the pile left behind.

With a quick, nauseating teleport, I found myself in a different cave, one lit from artificial lights of differing kinds, both magical and more mundane like an old oil lamp I saw, rather than residual sunlight. Combined with a danker taste to the air, I could tell that we were suddenly a good deal deeper underground, though probably not too far, as the teleport Diary made did have the two of us practically pressed up against a wall, only for a new wall to suddenly be behind me by only a foot. The jump she made was clearly something that had a range limit and this new cave was just in range of the prior one.

The next thing I noticed was guards coming in and getting waved off by Diary. "He's not a hostile, and hasn't had a chance to restore his magic. My master has already confirmed he has very little left."

She wasn't wrong. I was already down one spell when I arrived, due to Pinkie's tea. Keeping the hunters asleep long enough to get the nets open took me casting the sleep spell at higher levels, at least once for each of the separate nets, one took a second casting when I cast the spell too early in haste and had to redo it. On top of that, I had my longstrider spell, my three potions, my heat metal spell and the flaming sphere spell. I didn't expend a spell on my create or destroy water thing, as that was a water genasi ability, and was kinda a once a day cheat way to cast the spell I didn't actually know, but the activation of the song also added to the bill.

I had one spell slot between the levels five through eight each. I had also used up my portent trick and something wasn't right with my link to the Animus Mundi. I didn't feel my wild shape ability restore when I sat with Bunny Angel and rested. It was definitely long enough to do it.

Even if I counted my speak with animal cheat cast for free once ability too, I was only at about a quarter of my expendable power left. Combined with my equipment suddenly gone... Yea. I was kinda at their mercy.

The unicorn levitating a spear and shield in front of her only glared and tightened her stance as her commanding officer spoke.

"He's had a chance to rest. Surely his stamina-"

"How many times to I have to tell you!? Torilians don't have mana wells!" Diary practically shouted at them. "That's a thing with you natives! We use spell slots and it takes a lot longer for us to get them up and going again once we use them!"

The head guard took a step back as she glared at Diary. "Says a Torilan that can restore some of her energy in an hour."

Diary stepped back and put her paw to her nose. "It's the exception to the rule, and is a double bladed effect. It only applies to my pact magic slots I get from my master, which is only a fraction of my slots. Why do you think I almost always use them first? It's so the others can stay in reserve because my wizard slots don't restore like my warlock ones."

She took a breath and reset herself as best she could. "You know its only a warlock thing and I gave you guys all the tools to be aware of them too. He's not a warlock, so he didn't recover."

At this time, Diary and the guard were showing their long history and negative energy for all to see. I honestly wondered if they would just have a scrap right then and there when I heard a silvery voice call out from just out of sight.

"Please, we are trying to improve morale here. The last thing we need is a fight. I will vouch for the newcomer."

I felt something familiar about that voice. The guards backed up a little as I saw a pony type combination I had not yet seen before. I saw a crystal pony thestral, her dark coat shone through the crystalline sheen like onyx. She came into the room holding herself almost like a queen, but not quite. She had the dainty like grace of a queen, but the way she held her smile and the toughened parts of her knees and ankles was more akin to a country bumpkin who wasn't afraid of earnest work.

"Mam. It isn't simply abou-"

She cut the other mare off as she put the other mare's head to her own so gently that I could have sworn I saw a kindred spirit to Fluttershy. "I know security is vital, but go get some sleep. Bunny Angel is here and he can cover your shifts while you rest. You need it."

The way the guard mare's face melted like she was showing concern to a beloved mother was borderline precious. I wondered if mine was remotely like that when I fell in love with Fluttershy like all her animals did. "But mam, you need sleep too."

I could see every other guard ease up and give that same affection to her, nodding in agreement.

"And the counsel makes a point to lead by example. So I will get rest soon too. But right now you have the chance while Bunny is here. I'll get mine once I've seen what is going on with our guest. If it makes you feel any better, I give you my word that, short of an attack on the hideout, I'll even start my rest before you are back on duty."

The guards slowly started to nod at this.

Diary spoke out, "The word of a counsel member, especially hers, is not given easily. If it's any consolation, I'll also volunteer my own recreation time I was going to spend to guarding this guy personally instead, at least until you guys come back."

Another guard shook his head. "You didn't need to do that Diary, but thank you. Our counsel mare has easily been the most loyal to the cause. Her word alone was enough to set our minds at ease." He glanced at me. "Although we wouldn't mind the extra layer of security."

With the guards leaving, I saw Bunny Angel come in, ducking slightly to clear the low doorway. With this, him and the mare came up to me. Getting a good chance to look at her face in detail, I could see an intelligence in her eyes and mannerisms. If I didn't know we were in a war zone and seen her diplomatic skills already, I'd say I'd have seen a muzzle like hers buried into a book like a stereotypical, average looking bookworm.

I saw her shake her head and then offer a hoof to me. After she saw me ball up my fist and put it against her hoof, she looked impressed on how I was able to mimic a pony's hoof shake. "I must say that is a refreshing change of pace. Most Torilians grab the hoof instead, mistaking it for one of their gestures of a similar nature. We manage, but it is not the kindest to our ankles, though. You've worked with ponies be-suxu?"

With my amulet gone, I put my hand to my throat gently, looking to Bunny Angel. When I saw him confused on this, I shook my head and cupped my hand to my ear instead.

He seemed to get it, then looked to Diary, who simply shook her head, then down to the mare as if to ask permission to set the spell up again. After a few moments of discussion, she gave him a simple nod and put a hoof to his hand, causing him to blush.

A pulling of the little pyramid out, casting of the spell, then a return of the pyramid to its pouch later, I was active with my tongues spell again.

"Well, let us speed through the pleasantries and get to business shortly. I'd rather not waste any more of Bunny's magic and we need to get situated so Diary may regain hers."

Diary got up. "I'll be in the meeting room, finishing up my rest for the next time you need it. This is why I volunteered. I was going to have to do it anyway. You got him for the next few minutes, right Bunny?"

Bunny was having a hard time hiding his blush, only barely managing to get it to start to fade as I looked back at him. Seeing he had nothing to say, I looked back at the counsel mare.

"I must apologize for the guards. Tempers have been a little high strung here of late. Since it is hard to keep morale up around here, I find myself often acting as an unofficial morale officer."

After a second of hearing the last part of her apology, something started to click about this strange mare. As Bunny Angel began to speak, items came through my mind rapidly.

"I suppose I should introduce you properly. Moss, this mare here is the heart and soul of the resistance in this region. She more than earned her spot on the council despite being so young when she gathered her fellow druids—I-I-I mean 'servants'-to..."

The dainty like grace of a queen...

Country bumpkin who wasn't afraid of earnest work...

"Most loyal to the cause..."

Intelligence of a bookworm...

Morale officer...

My mind was wanting to put something together that wasn't quite there, hearing her voice, but it felt it should be. A memory flashed through my mind of a conversation years into the past... Well, my past.

"She was only an average looker, for a just fully grown mortal, but her heart was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen . . . Only a few in the old world or this one could even hold a candle to her inner beauty, your beloved Fluttershy being one of those few."

Average looking bookworm...

I could have sworn I saw a kindred spirit to Fluttershy...

I still felt there was something my mind was wanting to put together, but didn't have all the pieces of. I did, however, realize who I was speaking to even without that mystery solved.

"In short, may I introduce you to-"

With my mind catching up, I interrupted him by jumping back with an outburst of absolute shock.

"Ebony Nexus!"

Author's Note

If anyone has noticed the alphabet substitution seems scrambled from the other series Pony/English cypher, good on you. You you should find out why soon enough.

If anybody wants to call Ebony Nexus a marry sue... I'd have to admit that you'd darn near be right except that she's not a main character/protagonist. It might seem cheap, but keep with it. I DO have a reason for writing her this way.

Ch 6: Servants and Sages

They stood there, astonished and a little afraid at what I said.

After an awkward pause, I figured an explanation was due. I returned my posture to normal and gave an apologetic nodding of my head.

"Sorry. A lot of history was lost in the amount of time between this era and the one I hail from, but your name and your reputation as a healer of the resistance are one of the few details that survived from this war that I had the chance to learn."

Both of them seemed to give me a distrusting glare at my explanation before she spoke up in a concerned and calculated voice.

"We were going to give you the title that I am called among the servants, but since you know my actual birth name, as unfond I am of both it and the birth mother that gave it to me, lets just go with that. Though, I can't say I am happy to hear that I will be known as the name I tried to forsake in the eras to come."

Bunny Angel gestured us along and soon guided me to an area where we could talk.

I could see Diary already there, cat napping in a somewhat comfortable pile of straw in the corner of the area that served as a "room" in the cave, her eye lazily open and looking at me. I also saw a large rock and some mismatched pillows acting as cushions adorned the middle of the room.

I had to adjust myself as I sat. The pillow I sat on had been filled with the same straw stuffing as Diary laid on and it didn't all behave, poking me in a few spots initially.

I also saw a pair of capybara in the corner with Diary, just chilling, unconcerned about the cat. I found it odd that the giant rodents known for their friendliness where there, but just shook my head and looked to the pony sitting across from me.

Upon seeing our eyes meet, she asked, "Tea? We have some left over from the evening rations that we don't want to go to waste."

She pored a bit into the largest cup and pushed it to me.

I took the tea and just about put it to my lips when I spied something in the room, on another rock.

It was a crude herbalism kit with a particular black paste left in a bowl. The table had a few markings on it indicating it had been made recently and not cleaned up.

Upon seeing the shade of the paste on the side of the bowl where it dried, my hair stood up on end as I recognized it from my time with Zecora and her herbalism lessons for me to help me make more permanent potions.

Astral marking paste. It was only ever used for two things. One was that it worked as the base for a more complex paste that helped in unmasking changelings and other things not in their true form, even working on my wildshape forms. The other was that in the form it was in now, it marked non ponies on the astral realm so that dream walkers could zero in on them and gain access to dream walking in their dreams quickly. It could mean that the griffins were having trouble sleeping, but it could be done on non ponies without it given they had known the individual long enough and well enough.

No, being in a time of war, I found it far more likely to be something else. Something that had happened to me in my past.

I gave the slightest taste of the tea, not even sipping it, but touching the tea to my tongue.

It was made from the same plant as the tea I drank back home. It had almost no stimulants in it, but could easily mask a certain class of chemical concoctions poured into it. I didn't have the tongue to taste such a mickey, but I had no doubt that a solid dose of it was in there.

When they saw me hesitate with the tea, I gave them a smile.

"This is the same tea I drink back home. Only one I can really stand. Otherwise I'll have the jitters all day. A bit cold though. Here, let me warm it up."

I put my teacup up next to the tea pot they had served it from and called out, "Hocus" while rubbing my fingers together, soon the teapot and mug was warm enough to have a small bit of steam coming off of it.

When I saw them relax a little, I knew I had guessed right.

I carefully pulled the mug back to my face and closed my eyes to smell it, as if I were to slowly enjoy it.

"I want you two to know, I have no intention of resisting, and am even willing to cooperate with you as you question me, but you can drop the act."

I opened them again, looked strait into Ebony Nexus's eyes and did my best to not look intimidating, but cooperative as I said what I knew would sound rather bad. "I recognize the setup for an Astral Judgement when I see one. You can tell the dream walker to come on out."

Seeing her nervous again, I held the cup as calmly as I could, while pointing to the paste. "That's Astral paint paste. In it's current form it only is used for non ponies so that a dream walker can hone in on them quickly. I'm familiar with this tea and that its flavor can mask a potent herbal sleeping agent. That means you don't have a unicorn that knows a sleeping spell at the ready, which explains the capybaras. The side effect of an astral judgement is extreme emotional distress on the one it is done to. In the absence of a calming spell, a comforting, empathetic animal to cuddle is the next best thing. That is something a druid could easily provide with an animal that's already friendly anyway. That makes sense, since if you had a pony that could do a calming spell, you'd also have one that could just put me under."

They were stunned at my analysis and unsure how to respond, but I could see they were starting to lean towards panic.

"But the flaw is that the paste takes time to apply, which cuts down the time the astral judgment has to be performed before a subject wakes up. This isn't my first rodeo with Astral Judgement. I know from experience it sucks and I won't have it done half-assed just so you can do it without me knowing before it's too late."

Just to make sure, I called out to Archimedes. "Partner? I was just served tea and I know it has a sleeping agent. I want to drink it anyway, yes?"

Archimedes piped in immediately, "I'm so sorry, partner. I don't want to ask this of you, but yes. We do want to...
'show' we will cooperate with them." His emotional tone wasn't just one of his melancholy, but genuine apology.

I pored a small bit of the tea into my mouth, pulled away from the cup and swirled the tea, gargled it then swallowed to show action backing my words of wanting to cooperate.

I then put the tea on the table and kept it close.

"I'll drink the rest of this cup for you and any more you need me to drink after you have the paste on my face. Lets give the dream walker as wide a window as possible."

With this, Ebony Nexus stood up straight again, unsure of what to do for a second. Ultimately, she took the bowl and brought it to me as if to hand it to me.

I became ever so slightly uneasy and did my best to set the bowl down on the rock table next to me without spilling it. I was starting to get tired already. It must have been a strong sleeping mixture they had in the tea for the single sip to get me this close this fast.

"I don't actually know the pattern you need for this."

At this, Ebony Nexus cocked her head in wonder. Before she could decide what to do, Bunny Angel spoke up. "That's alright. I've seen it enough to remember it. No need to reveal the dream walker."

After several minutes and several masterful strokes of his fingers, Bunny Angel had my face decorated sufficiently.

He passed me my cup and started to say; "If we want a solid time frame, given that you are already tired, you should only need a few more si—Not the whole thing!"

It was too late, I had already chugged the cup and set it down. I took a breath and looked at him "Like I said, as wide a window as poss...ib..."

With that, I was out cold. I could barely feel him catch me as I went under.

I found myself on my little dream island, half expecting Princess Luna to show up again, but quickly shook my head.

"She hasn't even been born yet," I said to myself as I felt a presence approach from behind.

"So you're the one going to judge me, then? I give no resistance. Do your thing."

I raised my arms out wide and relaxed my head back. As I did so, I could feel the small hoof of a mare on my shoulder.

I could feel light building up from that hoof and the pony behind me as I heard Ebony Nexus's voice call out "Reveal your secrets, Torilian!"

~~~~~~

I knew the dream walker chooses the connections between memories, but something reminded me it was still my memories they end up seeing, not what they wanted to see. I realized I had reflexively thought of one as she called me a Torilian.

"Joy from your presence, son of Gaia."

She seemed to pause at this, causing the memory to kinda just float for a little bit before she pressed in a more focused manner.

A brief excursion on my time before I came to Equis played in fast forward through my mind, like she was searching for some event that never happened, and thus the trigger to slow down never happened.

The events before the blue box appeared and disappeared as she was left unsure of what she had absorbed. Playing my time backwards, she zoomed through my life until we got to points that had involved the second rift war. As she watched, she expertly asked different questions that made different points show up. I didn't understand the questions, but I wasn't the one she was asking. She was asking my memories directly almost like a search engine.

~~~~~~

"Checkmate."

~~~~~~

"Fluttershy was dead in my arms."

~~~~~~

"Please, help me heal him, Auntie Equis!!"

~~~~~~

"I! Am! ~~@#^$#*~~Dalock!"

~~~~~~

""The Tree of Harmony is only what Equestrians call her. We among the servants call her the Crystal Sister."

~~~~~~

"-Hero."

~~~~~~

"Please Moss, could you close the rift?"

~~~~~~

"Partners?"

~~~~~~

"I said go away, Princess Luna!"

~~~~~~

"Hallelujah! You're alive!"

~~~~~~

"Not even in the pits of Tartarus, Moss."

~~~~~~

"Can you hear me now?"

~~~~~~

"Much appreciated, Ash. Worth every penny."

~~~~~~

After she had a solid idea of my timeline, she paused as if checking something. I myself checked my mental state and found I was doing surprisingly well, given how long the astral judgement had lasted so far. I was in pain, but the pain was coming so much slower than before.

Whatever she was checking, she had her answer and reset her focus. Her methods changed as she combed each detail thoroughly.

At the end of it all, it had been the longest Astral Judgement of the three I had ever been through by a large margin, and I couldn't deny I felt like total shit at the end. If it weren't for my past experience, I probably wouldn't have survived.

Somewhere in the middle of it all I had realized she wasn't held to a code of ethics on what to search for. She had free reign with no ethical restraints and I was at her complete mercy. She had not focused on a specific item, but had combed through as much as she could in the time that had been given her.

I awoke with a capybara laying next to me with her head on my belly, doing a light rolling of its breathing almost like that of a purr with the occasional whistle like chittering.

With my body and emotional state feeling like it had been hit by a truck, and then had the truck back up over it again, I just accepted the company, gently petting the animal and letting its empathetic noises of comfort wash over me.

"That was quite the reckless stunt you pulled." I heard Bunny Angel call to me from across the room.

Looking over, I saw him slipping that clay pyramid back into his storage for it. Next to him was Ebony Nexus, gently cuddling her own capybara, looking exhausted as well.

Bunny Angel got up and glared at me. "Before you ask, you've been out for almost three days, including the time spent in the judgement and then recovery. That sleeping agent doesn't register with the magics as a poison so I couldn't purify it from you."

I thought for a moment, then raised my head to speak before he cut me off.

"If it weren't for her continued efforts in keeping you under stress to keep your heart going while the sleeping agent ran its course through your body, you would have died in your sleep with such a dose. We were afraid you weren't going to make it. Many thought if your heart stopping didn't kill you, the prolonged stress on your body and mind keeping your heart going would."

"Don't be so hard on him." I heard Ebony Nexus softly call. "It's a miracle he survived at all and he's still recovering."

His face went from angry to pained as he turned to her. "As are you."

I wanted to apologize but found myself being cut off by him again.

"I just wanted you to know how much more stress you caused us at this base. Whatever the Doctor sees in you had better be worth it."

With this, he left the room in a huff.

After he had left and I found myself becoming more aware of my surroundings, I noticed my pants were positively soaked in piss.

"Yea, sorry. The sleeping agent had to leave your system somehow and we didn't have time to focus on pleasantries after you went down." I heard Ebony Nexus call out.

I shook my head and kept rubbing the neck of the capybara. Trying to be polite, I said, "Nothing a little prestidigitation can't fix."

I called out "Nikto," A few times to clean myself up, but knew I would have to just bear with the lingering chafe until it healed.

She gave a bitter laugh. "Its amazing how strong you are, given what you've been through. That was the longest Astral Judgement I had ever performed. I tried to pull as much stress on my mind as I could once we reached a level we felt your heart wouldn't stop, but that trick only relieves a small fraction of it. Had you not already experienced it with your princess and gained a minor tolerance, I fear you wouldn't have made it, even with going voluntarily."

I looked up at her in shock. "You were the dream walker?"

She smiled and weakly pulled up her bat like wing. "With as much experience with dream walkers and thestrals your mind proved to have, I'm amazed you didn't make the connection sooner. And yes, I am both a servant and a dream walker. They aren't mutually incompatible, just highly unlikely. I've actually found my ability to dream walk helped in my duties as a servant once I found my connection to the Animus Mundi. Several of the other servants say that I am a rare case."

She sat up and posed in a dramatic fashion, though her tone showed it was to play up the joke rather than actually seem epic.

"You're looking at what a Torilian druid would call our only member of the Circle of Dreams among the servant circles of Equis."

She plopped back down and started to nuzzle the capybara, who had eagerly come back in for attention.

"Not that we categorize ourselves like they do on Toril. Some strengths may be more common or rare than others, but we all have our strengths that we serve with none the less. We have no need to divide ourselves."

She gave a hug to the capybara and sighed. Tears formed in her eyes as she continued. "But to get back to business, I know there's a lot in your mind I must never reveal. The future for this world you showed me didn't just mean victory was guaranteed, it also meant we win in a more absolute fashion than I had even dared dream. That future was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. To think ponies of the future will unlock a permanent crystalline form like myself, and even cause it to pass to their children! If what you show me is true, then I definitely will want to preserve it. To do that, I must let the events that lead to that outcome all play out naturally."

She looked me dead in the eyes with a resolute strength I had only seen in the eyes of Fluttershy once before. Not even the abyss I felt in my own eyes or the zeal I saw in Archimedes's eyes compared to this.

"And yes. I do mean all of them."

It didn't take me two seconds to realize she was talking about her own death. Those eyes showed me everything. She was scared of dying, sure. She was scared down to her core knowing it was coming so soon. She didn't want to die, but she was going to meet it head on.

A guard popped their head in as I processed what her resolve meant. After a second, he piped in.

"O Daa kern porverind. Wummt core nadanon vantonill?"

She gently turned her head, the resolute energy of her eyes softening to a soothing smile. "Dee xoraka, tet parun."

Turning back to me, she asked, "Did you need anything? Water or food perhaps?"

I was stunned as I realized she had actually been speaking fluent English instead of using a translator.

My stomach gurgled and I realized just how dehydrated I was with my throat. I simply nodded with a bit of enthusiasm. "Please."

She nodded back and made a request on my behalf before the guard left.

"You speak English. How? I thought you were using a translation spell."

She smiled knowingly. "Your princess learned the basics of your tongue from performing a relatively short astral judgement on you. That is how she managed to tutor you in her tongue. It was the same with me, except I spent far longer in your mind and was able to refine it far better. Although I could never be more fluent than the one I'm imprinting a language from, from the imprint alone, I'm almost as fluent in 'English' as you are now. Thanks to you forcing me to be in there so long, I even know a good deal of the pony tongue from the future and a little of what you call 'Espanol' from your schooling as a child."

I nodded and processed what she said, still giving scritches to the rodent next to me. I paused.

"But Bunny Angel understood you."

"While he had his tongues spell active. He heard me the same as he heard you, translated. I just spoke English so as to not exclude you."

She shook her head. "I know you survived an Astral Judgement twice before now, and that is helping, but I'm still shocked you are as up and about as you are, keeping a conversation. Still, since we are still talking, let me introduce you to a friend."

She nodded her head and eyes upward to make me look above where I was sitting. I was surprised to realize I had been underneath a tree the whole time and didn't notice. I was also surprised a tree was alive and well within a cave.

"This is what is known as a sage tree. Sometimes they are also called guardian trees if they grow large and strong enough, but they are still the same thing, just a little more potent."

I looked at the tree. It looked like a normal tree, but in a cave. I couldn't identify the species, though.

As if she predicted my question, she continued, "If you are wondering how it can grow in a cave, they are able to absorb almost any light in their leaves, not just sunlight. The crystals provide all the light this one needs. That, and they are connected to the Animus Mundi."

I looked back at her, showing a desire to listen. Anything to keep my mind off the aches. I had learned dwelling on them only made them worse.

"They are called sage trees because they are the reincarnations of sages that served the Animus Mundi in the past. They act as keepers of safe havens and advisors. Servants can talk to them through the Animus Mundi to learn about the wisdom they had gathered in their past life and in their observations as a sage tree. This one's name is Toad Oil. Not all sage trees are as friendly as him but he's pretty old, even for a sage tree. He has told me in the past that he will do his duty for however long he has left but he's still ready for his final rest when the time comes. He also says he's happy to see you, though he says that to every ally from off world."

I nodded and started to say "Tell him I sa... You know what? I'll just tell him myself."

As I put my fingers to my temple and tried to hone in, Ebony Nexus's eyes widened as she called out, "No! That's a bad idea!"

"Nice to meet you too, Toad Oil." I barely managed to get out before I was blasted by something over the Animus Mundi connection.

"Torilian parasite!" I heard the very familiar voice of the Animus Mundi spit at me with an extreme vinegar to the message.

I felt my mind being racked as the connection was forced closed. I had definitely taken psychic damage.

I found Ebony Nexus over me, helping me get back to the resting position I hadn't realized I had fallen out of.

"The Animus Mundi has been extremely aggressive to any foreign druids ever since they betrayed the resistance and returned to the side of the elves and their god. It was the only way she could neutralize them, by refusing to empower them while on Equis."

I breathed deeply and did my best to recover. Sitting up and keeping the capybara at a distance with an extended arm scritching and holding her back at the same time, I said, "That explains why my wildshape hasn't recharged. She isn't fueling it. I probably can't call upon her for spells while I'm here either."

But I then focused my frustration and a good deal of my feeling shitty from the Astral Judgement into a bout of determination. "But there's one thing I need to clarify."

"I am of Gaia! Not Toril!"

A briefest of pauses seemed to follow, but then the anger swiftly returned, psychic damage and all.

"Parasite!"

I waved off Ebony Nexus as she came to help me up again. "No, I deserved that one. I'll get up on my own."

I took a breath and got up to my elbows. With a bit of snark, I called out rhetorically. "Yea, love you too, Auntie Equis."

CH 7: Prelude of Hope

I rested the remainder of that day with the two capybaras keeping me company and soothing my emotional stress. With a simple ration that tasted like it had a mishmash of whatever they could throw together into a dried nutrient ball, my physical needs were met.

I rested for a list of reasons. It would be suspicious if I didn't, even if I was recovering fast from the Astral Judgement. It was like I was gaining an emotional resistance... or at least an emotional numbness to the effect. Honestly, I wondered if it had anything to do with my constant state of guilt I had been in the last seven years as much as it had to do with surviving prior Astral Judgements. But regardless the source of my emotional recovery rate, my physical body was not fairing as good. It was tougher than average despite my modest frame, but it definitely still took a sizeable hit of exhaustion that would take more than one day to recover. Even my first one didn't hit me that hard physically. Was I getting old?

But, I had tactical reasons for resting too. In short, my situation made my spell options extremely limited and I had only one wildshape use left. So I didn't want to also go out without a refill of spell slots. I wanted to optimize my chances with the rest.

When I did get up the next day, I caused a stink with the guards. Some seemed shocked I had gotten up, others were just happy that I stayed in my rest chamber when they pointed their weapons at me, shakily. I could only presume they had heard of my ability as a "heavy hitter" and were happy I was complying with the orders they were giving despite having little force to back it up on their own. I had little to fight back, at least physically for another day or two, but I didn't bother correcting them.

A little while later, after I had been leaning up against the wall to conserve strength, Diary showed up and put her arcane focus to my face, casting her tongues spell again.

"Why are you up? I'm surprised you are emotionally whole enough to even care where you are."

I gave her a pained smile and closed my eyes. "Believe it or not, I've had worse, and I think I'm getting numb to the effects. This was my third judgement, after all."

I got up and tried to walk forward, only to trip. I almost caught myself on my own, but not quite. Diary had to catch my arms and helped me get stable.

With a shamed turning of my head away from her, I continued, "I won't deny my physical body is still only just par for the course and still needing rest, though. But my mission here continues and I won't accomplish it in bed."

Having helped me stand up, Diary gave me a cold, still untrusting glare. "And what exactly, if I may ask, is that mission?"

I quipped back. "What is yours? What do you get out of this? What loyalty would you have for the resistance if you serve chaos incarnate?"

She looked at me with a strangely mad confidence, like I saw an expertly made disguise peal back for just a moment to reveal someone who has given up a piece of their sanity for their goal, but not their patience.

"His mission is to help the resistance win the war and expel the malevolent Torilian influence from Equis."

Looking behind Diary, I saw Ebony Nexus coming up to us... wearing my amulet.

"I've seen his dreams and memories. I'd trust him the same as any of you."

Diary turned around and scoffed. "Expel Torilian influence? Wouldn't that be counterproductive for him? He's Torilian himself."

Ebony Nexus lost her usual charm and gave Diary a death glare. "Actually, you are Torilian. So by your own logic, you're also being counterproductive helping us."

Diary stepped back and gave a huff. "He's genasi! Practically human! I'm Tabaxi! His kind aren't being hunted down! Given unfair treatment in some areas, maybe, but not hunted down! Mine are hunted! Entire villages had to flee to this world because they wouldn't swear loyalty to a corrupt king and are wanted dead for it. A few of my village managed to join your ranks, but the rest had to flee to a far corner of this land."

Ebony Nexus regained what I now saw as a measured loss of composure to prove a point. With an apologetic nod, she accepted Diary's explanation without complaint. "Indeed. But for the record, he is not Torilian. He is Gaian."

Diary looked at me weird while I could only shrug and reply, "Long story, but yea. I'm not from Toril."

Diary just stood there, processing that for a moment before Ebony coughed to get our attention.

"But actually, I am glad you're up. I was hoping you could help me with..." She looked down at the commandeered amulet and looked away in mild shame. "With something in the main hall."

The biggest part of the cave, the area big enough to work as a mess hall for the resistance, was swarming with creatures of multiple kinds. There were griffins, ponies of course and two more tabaxi in the corner largely keeping to themselves.

And of course, there were the satyrs dancing on the table like you might see a couple of "the guys" do in a bar.

"As you can see, the satyrs and faeries we saved the other day were wanting to contribute in their own way. While they refused to fight, they did manage to boost morale while they hid for their next transport out of here."

The head guard came up and added to Ebony Nexus's statement, "Though if you could convince one or two to stay to help with the fight, we would be happy to have the extra troops. My current ones can barely stand thanks to them."

He gestured to a few of the guards still on duty. They were leaning on their spears, drunk, and one was straight up passed out.

Ebony Nexus just nudged her head in the direction of the drunk guards. "I know you are limited in what you can do-" I could see she switched to English for a second by the way her lips moved "-for good reason-" then switched back, "But do you think there is still something you can do for them?"

I looked at the guards again and pondered. "Are they just drunk? Do you just need them sober?"

Ebony Nexus nodded. "Bunny Angel is out right now and I don't know exactly when he will return from his mission. That's one of the reasons the Fey are helping with morale. Bunny and the Fey don't see eye to eye and he wouldn't allow for this."

The head guard rubbed the back of his head. "Looking back, I don't think I should have authorized it either, nor did I authorize those on duty to participate. Yet somehow they got slipped some hard cider regardless."

I nodded. "It would be easiest to do this with my glove."

The two of them looked nervous. "Yea... About that."

They waved one of the tabaxi over, who looked like a proper warrior clad in what I recognized as my old leather work gear along side a few other odd bits of armor that didn't keep him from being flexible.

"Our friend here isn't as adept at magic as Diary is, but she has gotten him to understand a basic level of wizardry. We figured he would be the best candidate for your shield glove and armor but..."

Upon how he moved his arm up, I recognized the delicate grace of a warrior caster, akin to Tempest's abilities in my time but a little different in the methods. The second thing I noticed was my glove on his arm, with singe marks on it.

He flexed his paw in the way I would do with my hand to get the shield to activate, but it only flickered for a few seconds, then popped a spark and shut off.

He shook his head apologetically. "I am so sorry. I can appreciate such craftsmanship of a quality armament and found it beautiful in its function before..." He hesitated for a second. "Before it broke."

It didn't take me two seconds to realize what happened.

"You tried to cast a spell through it, didn't you?"

All three of them were silent as I took it off of him with no resistance. I looked at the innards and found the burnt areas matched the singed areas on the back of his wrist and paw. I was amazed he could fit his digits through it but he had managed. Getting a closer look, his tabaxi paw was just adjusted enough to work as a hand but some of it was hidden by fluff.

Looking back at the glove, I saw the pattern of the burns. The entire matrix spanning the length of the glove was fried.

I shook my head. "This is beyond my ability to repair, but should be an easy fix for my business partner to replace the busted part once I get back home. We actually have spares of the part made. But yea. Don't go using an artificer's stuff to cast spells. They aren't arcane focuses just because an artificer can cast through them. Artificers aren't just a type of wizard and each artificer goes about their magic differently even among themselves. Other artificers might be able to work them with some adaptations applied, but that's about it."

I was tempted to put the glove on again, but thought twice about it. If I had it on, I might try to use it out of reflex, only for the shield not to work.

I carefully pocketed the glove as I looked back at them, making sure they didn't object.

"But I can still do it the old fashioned way with normal tools. Do you have a mortar and pestle? Maybe a teaspoon of salt and some charcoal? Rust can substitute the salt in a pinch if you have enough of it, though it might ruin the mortar and pestle for other things."

With a nod, the head guard went off to what looked like the kitchen area. Though it was still the same "room" in the cave, it was separated by barrels and other items that made a counter that doubled as a barrier between the rooms.

I looked to Ebony Nexus. "We are also going to need to get them about a waterskin of water each. They are going to have a short but sharp hangover after I get it out of their system and some water will help with that."

Both of them were back shortly. I was passed the mortar and pestle while the waterskins were forced onto the guards by the head guard.

The tabaxi looked at me as I worked, gently grinding the salt and charcoal together as I came up to each guard. With a gentle blow as I called out "Restituo," on each guard, an energy moved down the pestle in my hand and into the salt. As the energy met the dust stirred up from the wind, a red mist came forth from the mortar and clung itself to each guard before sinking in. Shortly after that, they were suddenly a good deal more alert and very eagerly drinking from their water skins.

With the guards quickly recovering after the alcohol poisoning leaving their systems, the tabaxi shook his head. "I don't know what that magic is, but it is most definitely not wizardry. At least not any form of wizardry I would ever be able to use."

He opened up the work gear and pulled out the field kit for my quick mix potions. "I thought about trying this out, but seeing how you work your materials, I now know I won't be able to replicate it. It's better in your possession than mine."

I took the kit with a polite nod and looked at the leather gear he was still wearing longingly, even though I knew I wasn't going to get it back.

"I am sorry, but supplies are thin. I barely was allotted this armor because I was the only one it would fit and was well suited for light armor. I've been fighting for a month with nothing but my nimbleness, my shin and arm guards and, until I was given that glove, a barrel lid protecting me. I'm going to have trouble even getting the barrel lid back as a shield now that it has been turned in. I know it feels bad to be parted with your armor, but I'm not about to give it up now."

After a second to let it go, I nodded my head in understanding. "I can make another when I return home. I think you will make excellent use of it."

With a job well done, I set the mortar on an open barrel and did my best to keep hold of my field potion kit. Without it, I'd be pretty hard pressed to make any of the potions, especially on the spot.

Turning to face the mess hall, the guard was getting the satyr to calm down and stop dancing on the tables.

One of the mother satyr was chasing her children, who were quickly running up to me and Ebony Nexis.

"You're the guy that saved us from those mean, giant satyrs! Can you turn into that really really big white bear again? I want to see it!" The littlest of them called out in the sweetest little voice. If it weren't for him being a boy, I'd swear I was looking at little Hope from back home, but a year or two younger.

"Me too!" Said what seemed to be the eldest sister, a decent size older than Hope, probably her mother's assistant but still full of excitement to be childish like her two younger brothers at the moment.

"Me too too!" Said the middle brother, a little older than hope's age but clearly the rough and tumble kind of kid unlike his gentle looking brother.

"I'm so terribly sorry!" The mother called out. "They are just so-"

I cut her off with a raised hand and an understanding nod. "It's alright. I kinda have that effect on kids. I'm a novelty anywhere I go."

Turning to the kids, I shook my head. "I can't do any more shapeshifting, as my resources on that are precious and I will need to conserve my irreplaceables for my mission."

"Not even once?" The middle one asked quickly, before I could get to my second point.

I gave him a mild glare for interrupting, but continued. "I only have one left in me until I get back home. So... sadly, yes. Not even once."

Seeing that usual turn to disappointment, I timed my comeback appropriately. "But I may have something you might like."

"I must not use too much of this stuff, but with your mother's blessing, I have some potions I can mix up that can let you play with the effects."

When the mother looked at me in worry, I addressed what I suspected was her concern. "I've drank these potions myself-" I cocked my head in thought, "-From the very same batch these mixes were made in, actually. Other than the healing potion, the effects are all temporary."

Ebony Nexus leaned over and piped in. "I remember seeing those. Some of them seemed fun. Which ones are you able to spare?"

I smiled and answered. "I can spare three potions that let them give cosmetic changes to themselves. Think of it like a drinkable costume. I also think I could squeeze one of my flying potions if you'd like that instead."

The sister seemed excited at the cosmetic potion, and the youngest perked up when he heard flying.

The middle one just asked "Could I be a monster?"

I gave an uncertain face, "ehh... Sorta. There are limits. You'd still have two legs and two arms and a head, etcetera, but you can adjust how they look. Though it's purely illusion."

Shortly after, the three kids were enjoying their potions. The girl was having a heyday with her mom on how she could adjust her cosmetics should they ever settle down. It seemed to give a taste of normalcy for them again. The middle child was doing his best to startle the people, though very few were actually startled by the one foot eight goblin, or the solid red furry monster he imagined.

The youngest, however, was flying with the faeries as they played some flying game with him for the ten minutes he had. He was so eager, but had held off drinking the potion until they were able to explain the rules.

Eventually, a fairy that was quite lovely but still clearly getting on in years came up to me and bowed while levitating in mid air.

"Moss, was it? I wish to thank you for saving us."

I tried to be polite and nod, waving my hand dismissively. "It was nothing."

She came up to me and caught my hand. She had to pull hard to catch it, but she still proved to have a good deal more strength than I thought a creature her size would have.

"No. It wasn't. When we came to this land, we were slaves. I won't even try to explain the hardship we had, but suffice to say that had we not escaped, I would not have my wings anymore. I was reaching an age where they don't value us as slaves anymore and pluck our wings for their alchemic value, greatly shortening our remaining life span to only a few months."

The satyr that appeared to be the one that the bully satyr called the organizer of the escapists came up to me too.

"I saw the plan we had so carefully laid out unravel before my very eyes when the bounty hunters were sicked upon us."

He paused and turned to look at Diary, who was once again resting in a cat nap like fashion in the corner, though a smile could be seen on her face with the merriment of the festivities.

"Diary won't admit to any of this, but from what I've been able to gather, her ability as a fighter, even as a mage, is barely any stronger than the average soldier. She says she has some powerful spells for when she' fighting solo and doesn't have to worry about bystanders, but her real power comes in her utility and illusions. We had thought we could trick them, but they brought in the bounty hunters and we couldn't shake them off our trail once they got close."

The fairy went to the head of the satyr, and sat down between his horns. I could see him look up with a smile as she did so, indicating a close friendship they had gained over the years.

She then spoke up again. "As the co-leaders of our rag tag group of Fey, we would be foolish to not acknowledge that without your intervention Diary alone would not have saved any of us. She might not have even gotten out alive herself. She only managed to hide with an illusion that the tracker would have seen through if you hadn't distracted him with challenging the leader. You not only managed to free us, but delay them long enough for reinforcements to get to us in time. Diary only managed to scare them off by observing you and playing off the situation you made at the last moment with the reinforcements and our regrouped refugees. It may have only been by a few minutes, but your opportune timing changed an absolute defeat into an uncompromised victory."

The fairy started choking up, tears running down her tiny cheeks.

As his friend couldn't continue, the satyr spoke up again. "With what Diary told us of the risks through her little mouse familiar, she gave us fair warning that sacrifices would likely have to happen and that she couldn't guarantee any one Fey would make it out. We understood the risks when she flat out told us she had never managed to break out a Fey slave encampment without losing a few slaves in the process. To top that off, due to our former master's cruel tastes, we were the only group with children, as they keep the young on Toril and send the middle aged and elderly here when we start to lose value on the market. So it was going to be even harder to spring us."

The fairy had wiped away her tears enough to speak again. "We owe not only our lives, but the lives of our children to you and the efforts of the resistance."

She lowered her wings and touched her antennae.

"Oh how I've longed to find a forest and live as my ancestors did, caring for the land and tending to it, and then it protecting us in kind."

The Satyr brought up a finger, carefully bringing it to arms reach for her to lean into for comfort. "We dwarf Satyr used to live a lot like our all male brethren of larger proportions, caring only for partying, drunkardness and enjoying the finer things in life with whoever would share them. Yet after beating the taste of finer things out of our minds from the times of my grandfather, we've come to only long for a peaceful life full of purpose and family."

He brought his hand down again after she was done with it and wiped her tears on his fur. "So I think I'd like to give that life style a go too. At least until the fairies are established and good on their own without us. Then we might wander out a little again. We are a wee bit more stir crazy than our winged counterparts, so I can't speak for our descendants, but the first generation among us would be satisfied with that at the least."

The young child that had been flying had come over and started hugging the adult Satyr's leg. As the adult Satyr comforted him, I realized they were father and son. His son then listened in as he leaned on his father's leg like the sweet, calm boy he was proving to be.

The fairy shook her head and sighed. "But I suppose that's just an idle dream. Back on Toril, my ancestors could attune to the powers of nature and that is what enabled us to work with the land. But on Equis, the Animus Mundi has closed herself off from any who are not of this land. Working with the land harmoniously is impossible without her."

I momentarily cried a tear before wiping it from my face. Not from sadness of her tale, but from the giddiness of knowing I could turn her sadness around.

"That isn't true. I don't think you realized this, but that blue box outside the base you saw? It's a time machine apparently. I'm not actually from this time. I'm from the future and I can tell you this much."

I leaned in with a grin. "I've met some fey in the future, and they most definitely work with the land. If my math is right, they might even be the descendants of the very fey in this room. I have many friends that work with the land, managing it and keeping it strong, without calling upon the Animus Mundi."

I leaned back with a sigh, "It will take a lot of wisdom and hard work, but living with the land without its magic is possible. I don't know what tribulations your kind will have to face from now to then, but keep at it. It may be a bitter path with sacrifices filled with more setbacks and endeavors failing to yield results, but bittersweet hope is still hope."

The little boy was looking at my face as he listened to my words with the wonder of a child, but the adults were a good deal more skeptical.

She hugged her friend's horn and laughed. "Oh, your kind words are comforting, but please do not feed us such fantasies of hope with such a whimsical tale. With the way you speak it's almost as if you are implying the Animus Mundi of this world will take us in as her surrogate children, even letting us restore our attunement to the lands we may tend, your words are spoken with such confidence. If it were true, I'd fight to keep the small pockets of freed fey in contact with each other so that we would keep safe until we were ready to come together and risk making communities that are too big to hide away entirely but could thrive."

Ebony Nexus walked up, having listened in.

"It's not false hope. I'm a dream walker and I've seen his memories. I must keep much of it a secret, but his tale is truthful. Also, as a servant of the Animus Mundi, I can tell you now that she is simply feeling wounded and is scared of trusting again after the Torilian druids betrayed her for their own world's gain."

She looked in admiration to me, then back at them comfortingly. "I have no doubt that working hard without the magic like he said will allow her to open up to you in time. It will take years after the war is over to get her to trust any outsider again, likely decades, but she will calm down dellont. Ton crass dorib..."

It took a second, but I realized my tongues spell had worn off. I couldn't follow the words of the conversation any more, but I could see the spark of genuine, if bitter, hope start to settle in the three Fey's eyes.

Upon realizing I had ran out of time, They called Diary over to reset my tongues spell. She seemed a bit more artificial about wanting to assist, now that I had seen through her mask. But she gave no complaint. I had come to realize that her story, while true enough, wasn't the driving force behind her motives. Otherwise she'd be acting in some way other than indifferently calm.

No, this was the calmness of someone biding her time. I needed to be careful about her. I wasn't sure if she was actually friend or foe. Probably more the enemy of the resistance's enemy than anything else. She seemed to realize I was on to her, but she didn't show any sign of caring as she went back to her napping point.

"I doubt it, but the reason we came over..." The satyr piped in, cuing his friend in on their original purpose.

She smiled and nodded in kind. "Was to say that we wish to give you a token of gratitude. A way of saying we owe you a favor for what you did."

At first, I shook my head but then saw the child and was reminded of something.

"Well... This is something of a long shot, but is there a way I could call upon your descendants for that favor? I mean, I'd have to prove I'm the same guy, but if my promise of better times proves fruitful and I'm not just some random nut case spouting whimsical fantasies of the future, could you get them to honor it?"

The fairy paused for a moment, then came up off her friend's head. "I suppose if what you say does prove to be true, the story of our debt to you would be worth having my descendants keep. So possibly, but what favor would this be? I will not force my descendants to be bound to an undetermined promise."

I got embarrassed, hesitated a moment then cupped my hands to whisper it. She leaned in and turned her tiny head to hear. Upon hearing it, her eyes widened.

She looked at me and almost coldly said, "You did something to anger them in your time, didn't you?"

I looked down in shame and nodded meekly. "Not on purpose."

She looked at me sternly for a moment, then spoke with her friend in whispers as well. After a moment of discussion, they were both satisfied. "Very well, with the way you worded it, I believe we can arrange that. We just need a way to confirm it is you when the time comes."

I scratched the back of my head. "How? Should there be a phrase or a password or something?"

She shook her head in response. "No. The message would be altered too much down the generations by the time we got to your time. There are too many language barriers to make a key phrase that would be reliable in identifying you and not degrade as our language evolves. We could keep the conditions of the promise intact in story as our language changes, but that's about it."

I wanted to correct her, but I figured I should hold off on the whole long lifespan through the Animus Mundi thing, and let them figure that one out on their own when it happened.

I looked down and closed my eyes. "Most any token I could give you would age beyond recognition by the time we got back together again too. So what else could we do?"

She perked up, "Actually, a token is exactly what I was thinking. If you could get us something unique to you, that you could prove was yours, we could preserve it. We do have some magic of our own without an Animus Mundi helping us. Protecting the integrity of ancient heirlooms was a common thing fairy slaves were kept for. With the ease of this duty verses our other chores, it was actually a coveted position among fairy slaves. We likely would keep other items preserved for different reasons as the generations pass as well. It would not be difficult for us to keep a single token preserved."

I thought hard for a moment, going over my inventory. Thinking of stuff I needed and couldn't give up, I found very little unique to me. But remembering the glove was burnt out, I laughed.

"I think I have something. I was a little bummed that my shield glove was broken, but now I think we can use it as the token."

I fetched it out. "I can't repair it in this time, as I don't have the supplies or tools, but I could do so very easily in the future. I have spares of the part that was destroyed in my workshop."

I slipped on the glove and tried to activate it one last time, getting an even briefer manifestation of the shield out before it popped and shut off again.

"It's supposed to keep the shield you saw out and running, but the part is busted."

I pulled it off again and conjured a simple tool with, "Presto," a few times as the short conjuration spell faded over and over. While I had them, I steadily opened up the seams of the glove, exposing the matrix underneath that ran all across the glove from fingers to a few inches below the wrist. "This is the part I need to replace. This one is busted but the core pattern is still there. If someone comes with the replacement part that matches this part, it's either me or someone speaking for me."

She looked at the part, then at me. She simply took the glove and bowed. "I believe that will work. It may even act as a symbol of this hope you gave us. Show us your replacement part and we will, if not forgive, reverse the punishment of one crime on the condition that no permanent harm to a Fey is done in the crime."

The satyr spat in his hand and offered it to me. I motioned to spit in my own hand, making sure that was what was needed, then put my hand to his, nearly engulfing the tiny hand in my own. The fairy in turn came down, set the glove on top and placed her own hands on it, keeping up with the motion of the satyr as he shook it and declared, "The promise is made."

CH 8: Harmonics of a Cupid

As the last of the boy's strength to stay up past bedtime failed him and his father and mother took him away to sleep, Ebony Nexus turned to me.

"Thanks for helping. This party has helped with morale considerably, and I appreciate you helping me restore real hope for the Fey. It's not going to be easy for them, but I'm happy knowing what is in store at the end of their journey. There is one more thing I'd like to try now, though, if you're willing to help."

She looked down at the amulet. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to return this, as nopony else has a use for it, but I'd like to try to sing one of the songs stored inside. It might mean a little more if I sing it. Could you help me set this up? I've seen you use it but I'm not quite getting it right and the attunement isn't helping me."

I shook my head. "there's a good chance it's not in there. What one were you wanting?"

She smiled. "I think you called it number seven? It was the one you adapted to sing at the birthday celebration of your shop's co-owner's father in honor of his way of helping ponies?"

I closed my eyes and nodded for a second with a smile, before realizing exactly how that song had gotten in there.

'Archimedes... you sly bastard. You knew she'd like it,' I thought to myself, again holding off actually sending the message.

I knew I had spent all my level two slots and was about to spend my last level one, but my gut was telling me it was worth it.

With some adjustment of the settings and confirmation that she couldn't fuel it herself and sing at the same time, we got the cave set up and let everybody know that she was going to sing a song. We even got Diary to cast tongues on her so she could sing it unbutchered in English, and let the song translate automatically via the Tongues spell.

They were all expecting a treat. They said she wasn't the best singer, but she had an above average set of pipes. As soon as they listened to the signal to be quiet, I activated the amulet with my last level one slot.

What they weren't expecting was to be blown away by her vocals being adjusted by the effects of the song, creating backup singers based off of her voice to sing along side her, echoing her words with only slight alterations, as if four ponies were singing instead of one.

"Carry on, my..."

The audience was straight up mesmerized by her performance until she was finished, their souls soaking in the performance like leaves needed to soak in sunlight.

I myself felt like I was looking at what could have been Guiding Star's ancestor, if I hadn't already known she was going to die soon.

As the song ended, the crowd cheered. I could have sworn I saw Ebony waver a bit as the song ended, but she waved me off and whispered to me. "I'm fine. I just never used sirenite or harmonic magic to enhance singing before."

She took off my amulet and started to pass it back to me.

"It was exhausting, but I couldn't deny it was fun. Here's your-"

Before I could reach for my amulet, it was snatched out of her hoof by Bunny Angel.

"I didn't notice at first, but it makes sense now. Had I known we had one of siren blood, I would have never let you near our hideout!"

Bunny Angel put himself between me and Ebony Nexus in a rather protective stance.

I backed up and put my hands up in a surrendering like pose. "I see you're back from your mission. What do you mean by siren blood?"

Ebony Nexus likewise looked at him and asked "Yes. What do you mean by siren blood? I don't recall him having any memories of being a descendant of a siren."

Bunny Angel put his hand to the edge of his ear and gently flicked it. "I had thought his initial surrender was due to his strain with using that amulet, but then I see him asking for it back so easily. Looking at his genasi heritage, it would be easy for him to not know."

I backed to the wall. "For someone usually peaceful now getting aggressive, could you start making more sense? You're starting to scare me."

His rival, the draconiquis, popped in over my shoulders. "Yes. While I am not fond of this little interloper, I would like to make sure we are right before we do anything. Just being connected to the blue box makes him a valuable asset."

Bunny Angel eased his stance, but kept his arm out to block Ebony Nexus from getting to me.

"Sirenite, when sufficiently pure and properly cleaned and cut, can act as a source of harmonic resonance for certain magics. It enhances singing and can boost music and emotion based magic. The problem is that impurities render the crystal frail with fault lines and cause static noise in the harmonics. This noise in the harmonics feeds back into the wielder, causing a kind of damage to the wielder with any real, usable level of harmonics being harnessed."

My mind was thinking of how my crystal was robust, and probably didn't have much impurity. I didn't interrupt, though, as he wasn't in the mood to listen to any counter argument.

"Sirens, however, are able to tune into any harmonic frequency and are able to absorb the noise, not taking any damage from it. This type of crystal is the key material in their signature weapon. They have a history of using this to mesmerize and manipulate people with dangerous results in the past."

He tossed my amulet to the head guard.

"But the down side is that they rely on it so much that their musical ability is next to nothing without it. So if you want to prove your innocence, sing. Sing without it and prove you can sing comparably well as when you had it on the battlefield."

I looked around nervously. Buying time, I said "You kinda have me at a disadvantage. I don't have any instruments I know how to use. That's kinda what the amulet was for."

"Partner? I've just been asked to sing without my amulet. Even with my practice, I still suck without the rhythm backing me. What am I going to do? Am I actually part siren?"

Bunny Angel looked at me. "I'm not asking you to reach the same performance overall, just your singing. Sing anything."

"I know you. And no, you aren't part siren. I wouldn't think any less of you if you were, but I know from the time we have spent together that you aren't."

I got panicked and barked back, "Tell that to him!" somewhat ironically.

I felt a wave of reassuring confidence through the connection as he answered, "We will, and more. Just calm yourself, find a center and think of song eleven. I know you have enough talent to sing that one without instrument backup. It's simple enough, and I'll help you keep rhythm through our emotional connection. It should work for at least that song."

"Well?" Bunny Angel called to me, expecting a response.

"Hey! A few seconds, alright!? You're putting me on the spot."

"I'd probably be able to remember if I wasn't panicked. What song was that again?"

He didn't answer in words. Rather, I felt the rhythm flowing from his heart and I understood which song it was.

Emotions ran through me like they had never before from Archimedes. No time he sent a message nor helped cast a spell did it feel even remotely like this. He nearly suffocated me with emotion once when he forced the connection open from the tiniest crack I left for him, but it wasn't like that. This wasn't emotion bleeding into me as a side effect of a spell or even pushing like a brute.

No. It wasn't going into me and stopping there. It was going through me and out again through the music. I was just at the end of the fire hose, directing its final flow. I smiled and stood up straight, stomping my heel to the rhythm he was sending. It was almost more like him trying to sing through me, rather than him helping me sing, though I still had to focus on my part.

I finally gave in to the urge to send the briefest of spats back to him at his choice of music and how it was perfect for the situation. "Oh, you sly bastard..."

"If you said goodbye..."

~~~~~~

Several of the emotions I felt him pump into me weren't relevant to the song, but I could relate to anyway. I knew what they were. They were his feelings for Ebony Nexus and they were reminding me so strongly of my feelings for Fluttershy.

There was one feeling that was foreign to me, but I couldn't deny felt kinda nice. I knew what it was too. It was his feeling of romance that he had tied up with all his other feelings for her.

I had no feelings of romance for Fluttershy. Despite this difference, however, I managed to let this emotion of Archimedes's flow through our connection with little trouble.

~~~~~~

"...hold you for the longest time!"

I felt practically electric all over as the song ended and the emotional link settled down again. The ponies in the crowd were stomping their hooves as the rest of the crowd showed similar motions of being impressed. A few in the crowd lucky enough to have their significant other with them had come together in the song and were listening with a look of contentment on their faces.

Bunny Angel stood there, shocked as I asked him. "Was that good enough?"

He shook his head and gestured the head guard forward, who passed my amulet back to me.

Bunny Angel clutched his hand to his chest and bowed, almost shakily. "I apologize for doubting you. I... I need to go."

With this, he left and I found Ebony Nexus following him in suit.

Before I could follow, I heard Archimedes call out, "I can feel your curiosity, but let the course we set them on play out. Let the love birds have their moment of privacy."

I could only watch the draconiquis look at me from the other side of the room, stroking his beard and looking at me in a way that seemed half and half between puzzled and intrigued. After only a second of eye contact to let me know we saw each other, he vanished with a snap of his talon.

I tried to throw the draconiquis off our trail, if he was listening in. "Far be it to rag on him, but why would a celestial like Bunny Angel fall in love with a pony? A part of why I never found a partner on Equis was a sense of bestiality to it. I mean, they're a sapient race that can choose for themselves and I won't think less of them if they ever did anything like that, but I never found a point. I wouldn't be able to have children with a pony. Bunny Angel strikes me as a morally upstanding guy that would likely have rules against it, so why with a pony?"

At first, nothing happened. I didn't get a response back for several seconds as I watched the room get back to their thing. The head guard even commented, "Well, that party definitely helped with morale more than I thought it would, thanks to our council mare's and your performances," before walking off.

I felt like I had taken a line too far before I got a response back. "It would be the same as if he fell in love with a human. His kind are not human nor even humanoid, even if they look similar at a glance. It would be just as bestial for his kind to fall in love with a human as it would be a pony. The resulting child he could have had with a human would be called an aasimar, similar to your genasi heritage with genie blood. If he were to sire a child with her, they would likely have a similar mortal-celestial hybrid. If I know my history correctly, their love story was one based in personality, rather than biology. If male and female attraction played any role between them like most romances have, it was likely secondary to mutual respect for each other's convictions."

Oddly enough, the response wasn't even a little bit bitter like I feared. It was calm and collected, like a teacher educating a student on a subject without judgement. It was Archimedes speaking in code as if he and Bunny Angel weren't one in the same being, just at different points in time. Something told me it wasn't just to keep Discord off our tracks if he was listening in—Although that definitely was a part of it. It was more like he genuinely understood the question wasn't meant to judge, but to understand.

I kinda felt bad not trusting him with being so mature and understanding with my unconventional way of analyzing. Then I remembered that most of the population I lived with even in Equis, while still more mature than my home world on average, wasn't beyond feeling such offense. So the reflex had some merit, even if not with him.

The festivities were getting cleaned up just as both the guards and myself saw one of the larger forms of pony stallions come barging down the cave.

"Help! He got hit by one of their traps and we don't have any potions! Is there a medic!?"

I saw a griffin being pulled behind him on one of the one-pony wagons. The griffin bore deep gashes like those found in a bear trap right into his sides. One of the wounds looked like it clipped an artery, he was doing his best to keep it clogged with his talon and keep his blood in.

Immediately, the guards ran to get Bunny Angel, but the guard came back with another that had been coming from the other direction. "Bunny Angel is gone! Our council mare is also missing!"

The head guard shook his head. "Every creature listen up! I'm assuming command and I'll have no chaos here today!"

With a look to around to make sure he had order, he then called out, "Any creature with medical training, focus on him!" He then pointed to the wounded griffin. "Every creature else, find our council mare and Bunny Angel! We can't lose our only potion maker and healer!"

With both volunteers and the guards moving in full alert, including the three I had sobered up, I looked to the griffin as did many others.

"Do we have any healing potions in stock!?" One of the cooks called out to the quartermaster of the base, who was in charge of rationing out supplies to the squads and keeping the base running on the side of supplies.

The quartermaster shook her head and called out. "None that will work on a griffin. All the ones I just inventoried have a poison to birds symbol on them. All the universal ones were shipped to the northern front!"

The cook shook her head. "Dam it! We told them our council mare said substituting onion for lavender would have side effects on the potions! Why didn't headquarters listen and leave us at least a few universal ones!?"

I remembered I had seen a fairy and satyr working on a blanket after the party had settled. I looked over to them and called out, "I think I can stabilize him! But I need a sewing needle and at least a few inches of thread!"

The satyr didn't even hesitate to pull out as much of the thread she had been working with as she could in a single motion, then bite the thread off where it was patching the quilt and held it out to her fairy counterpart. The fairy in turn took the needle and zoomed to meet me with the needle and almost a foot and a half of thread.

The guards had made way to let me work. I cleaned the wounds with the usual waving of my hand and a calling of "Nickto!"

Immediately, I felt a shock in my arm, like that you would get from a hand buzzer. I was confused but it only took one look at the fresh blood starting to pour out of the now clean wound to tell me I had to shake it off. Time was of the essence.

With the needle and my knowledge of how to use tinkerer's tools, I could do a version of my nearest artificer imitation to the cleric cantrip, spare the dying. It helped with wound stabilization when I was out of spell slots, but my version wasn't a true cure all for any wound, even with the glove. Tool style casting had its limits compared to infusion casting, but hopefully this jury rig of it would be enough.

I reached beside me and pulled up my potions kit. Quickly, I grabbed the nozzle for my swiftness potions. With a portion of the raw syrup in one hand, I placed it at the edge of the most critical wound while moving the needle in a circular motion as if to sew with the other and called out, "Firmus!"

Immediately, that same pain returned, shocking my system on both arms and well into my chest this time. But whatever it was would have to wait. I saw a red energy jump from the needle and first few inches of thread in one hand to the syrup in my other hand, which came to life and practically jumped into the wounds. Binding them like superglue, the once syrup turned adhesive caused the bleeding to immediately stop. A sewing like pattern could be seen on the outside as it also bound the nearby skin together like an all encompassing bandage. The glove would have bypassed the need for the syrup, but I needed raw material in this version and it was the only one that fit the bill on hand.

"There. That should stop the bleeding at least. I'm likely of little use beyond this with my current equipment, but I'll double check."

I stepped back and let the other medics take over.

The more conventional medical professional came into the room after being called and looked at my work. Though she looked more like a medieval field medic rather than a modern doctor, she was more equipped to handle this than I currently was given my limitations.

"Given the expediency, I'll have to let this patch job stay, though I could have done the same with some stitches if given enough time."

She pulled out a crude tube and kept it to his chest as he struggled with staying awake.

"Stay with me buddy! You hear me?" The stallion that brought him in called out.

"He lost too much blood. If he doesn't get something to replenish his supply soon, he's going to die anyway. Can we get a healing potion in here?"

A griffiness came up and looked at the medic.

"None that will work for our kind, but could we share blood?" She looked concerned. "We are both griffins, so he can take mine, right?"

She looked at the girffiness and shook her head. "Sadly no. We're still experimenting with that on ponies, never mind other races, and there's more complications than we expected. Successful transfusions are rare. Only twins have managed to do this successfully nearly every time and we don't know why. Unless you're his twin, I don't think it will work."

"I'm not his sister. I'm his..." She teared up and couldn't finish.

"Then sadly, we can't risk it. Even if by some miracle he could take yours, it would put you at risk too. I can't justify risking another in a random transfusion with no potions that can heal you to fall back on."

The wounded griffin called out to the griffiness "Honey..."

As I heard their conversation, I had a conversation of my own with Archimedes.

"Hey, my potions use up spell slots, but are my healing potions off limits because of that?"

"I was wondering when you would ask about those." He seemed so smug in his answer as he practically snapped it at me. "Are? They? Spells?"

I smiled as I had my answer. "No. They aren't."

I called out, "Does anyone have a vial? Even another potion flask would work. I think I can whip up something real fast."

Immediately, the eldest of the three children I had given potions to earlier came forward and held out the three vials in her hands. "I was wondering if you would want these back. Are you going to heal him?"

I nodded. "But I'm going to need some clean drinking water."

The medic looked at me skeptically as a guard came and filled a vial I held out with the water skin in his levitation.

"Now is not the time for showboating and snake oil! There is no way you could fix up a potion in the-"

By this time, I had put the stopper back on, inserted the nozzle that complimented it into the stopper, and injected the powdered substance I made a point to not tell the people I gave the potion to what was in it.

"-amount of time he has left! He has minutes, maybe half an hour at most! What do you intend..."

She became silent as the bottle swirled around in my hand and glowed red from my spell slot being used in it. I felt a little sting in my finger tips where they met the vial, but otherwise I felt no particular pain.

I gave her a glare as I held out the fresh potion, "I've drank these myself. Now if you have another option, do it! Otherwise, step aside and let me administer this! The drawback to these is that they don't last very long."

That was only half true. It was tied to my magic much like an infusion, but would fade if I rested for an extended period, basically overnight. Although, I was about to go to bed again regardless. My exhaustion from the astral judgement was catching up to me faster than I'd have liked to admit.

The griffiness called out, "Doctor!?"

The wounded griffin had finally fainted.

"He lost concusness. It's worse than I feared." She grimaced her face and levitated his beak open with her horn. "He'll die without more blood and I'm out of ways to give it to him. Every minute we delay for Bunny Angel to get back ups not only his chance of dying but permanent damage to his brain. Do it!"

I carefully poured the liquid into his mouth, making sure to hit the back of the throat. It didn't matter if it went to the belly or the lungs, given what was being healed, but it did matter if it got there fast. The potion that hit the lungs would just absorb into them, turning into oxygen rich blood while the stuff in the belly would simply become regular blood. The faster it got there, the more blood would be replenished vs other cuts. Some small things might also be caught in the mix and healed, especially if he was bleeding internally, but yea, we needed the bulk of it to be blood replenishment.

I finished giving him the potion and checked his pulse. It was weak but there. For a second he seemed to not do anything. But I knew the potion was just doing it's thing. It would take a few seconds for the renewed oxygen in the blood to get to his brain again. The griffiness started to cry and the doctor turned to me, as if to berate me, but was cut off right as the griffin gasped.

The griffiness hugged her lover with tears of relief as the rest of the crowd cheered.

Well, the rest of the crowd except for the doctor on duty.

She just made a point to give me the stink eye.

"Alright. Your concoction seems to have some ability to heal like a normal potion would. Would you mind giving me another sample to test and see the range of wounds it can heal?"

I nodded. "I can make more later, but they won't be instant like these. They will take the same time as normal potions. This instant stuff is special made at home and I only have three portions of the healing type left in my kit. They should be good for at least six hours once mixed. Maybe eight if you're lucky."

I had given her a safe ballpark estimate with a possibility of longer on how long the potions would last with me resting soon.

With a quick spraying of portions into the two remaining vials, the medic snatched one from me before I could mix the water into either. "I'll also be testing this to see what it's made of, but go ahead and finish the other one with your magic. With any luck, I might be able to replicate this mix for you."

I shook my head but didn't balk. I knew she wouldn't but I'd let her try anyway. I could see the tech they had here. The healing potion pre mix could only be preserved with freeze drying the ingredients, but I'd let her give it a shot anyway.

So instead of arguing, I just added water to the one I still had and swirled it, adding my energy and feeling the sting at the tips of my fingers again.

Once I indicated it was finished, she snatched it out of my grasp with her levitation as well and turned to the crowd. "Alright. We already have griffins confirmed, but I will need a tissue sample of every other race possible! We have an aarakocra coming back in from duty soon, right? To the front of the line with him the moment he gets back! With all current stock being avian unfriendly, we need to see if this is safe for them too!"

I took the chance to get out of the crowd and sneak back into my room. Sitting back down underneath Toad Oil's branches, I nodded to him and did my best to contemplate on something that I finally had time to worry about.

I called out to Archimedes, "Hey, what happened to my magic? It hurts when I cast spells now."

He sounded almost guilty as he replied somewhat hesitantly. "I... I was afraid this would happen."

I paused for a moment.

"I've been patient with you, dragging me back to this time, but I need to put my foot down. Now, calmly, I need you to explain what is going on and I will do my best to calmly listen."

Time Turner finally butted his head in. "Ah that's harmonics for you. You and your friend here have done some excellent harmonics in the past but..."

I could hear a near cawing over the connection, like a speaker was picking up background noise.

"Every time I helped you, there was a side effect of emotional harmonics. That's why you always feel disdain from me. I have to catalyze my helping you with some kind of common emotion we share. It's not my disdain for you, but rather a disdain we share. The disdain for our own kind and the hypocrisy we have come to know them for."

I settled in on my makeshift bed as best as I could and mentally nodded.

"Ok... following so far, but not seeing the connection yet. Waiting patiently..." I said, resisting the urge to lash at him to hurry up. I knew he'd get to it. Every time he helped me with a spell, I felt some kind of emotion from him. That was one difference between him and the Animus Mundi. Sometimes I did from her, but only on rare occasion.

"It's because while you have many emotions, you don't have any feelings of romance. In order to make that song work the way it did, you needed to sing with emotions of romance backing you. You didn't have it naturally, so I had to infuse mine into a cocktail of emotions that we do share. But apparently it still came at a cost."

"That explains why that song went over mediocre at the dance I sang it at."

Time Turner came back in. "Basically, when you harmonized with something in the past, be it with your friend or your amulet, it was always with an emotion you shared with the thing you harmonized with. In the case of the amulet, it was emotions you imprinted when you wove the songs into them as you wrote them."

"But there is something else." Archimedes interjected, getting a little irritated. "In sirenite, impurities cause noise in the harmonics. Your amulet was so pure that not only was it very durable, but any noise from mineral impurities were so slight that even your non siren blood was able to handle it, at least at the levels you used it and them being your own emotions feeding back into you. But because you didn't sync up with the emotions I fed to you properly, a harmful level of noise happened from that lack of syncing."

Time Turner piped in again. "It could happen anyway, even with a crystal of sirenite as pure as your amulet, if enough energy was resonated, even if it was your own. But you'd have to store your amulet to the brim with emotional energy over a longer period of time by singing into it and then will it to be it far more forcibly released than you do with your songs. That's about the level of noise that your friend produced when helping you with an emotion you couldn't sync with. Hey, it was flowing through my machine to reach him! Of course I can monitor the levels! Alright! Alright! I'm leaving!"

Archimedes gave a tone befitting someone wanting to calm himself. "At that level of exposure, you should heal from it fine. A few days not casting any more spells than you have to and you will recover. As for your potions, I don't know. But the amount of pain you feel should be proportional to the interference with your magic recovering, so go off of that. The less pain you induce, the faster you recover. The faster you recover, the less pain induced when you cast later. So tomorrow will be the most critical, but yes. As few spells as possible and held off as long as possible."

With the diagnosis done, I held off asking Archimedes where he went this night in the past, as that could blow our cover.

Instead, I crossed my eyes as I looked upward and back a little at Toad Oil's trunk, speaking to him rhetorically. "I don't suppose you know where Bunny Angel or Ebony Nexus went? Perhaps one of them could help with this headache I suddenly am finding myself with?"

Author's Note

For the Longest Time, Billy Joel.

Carry on Wayward Son, Kansas.

Ch 9: To Bargan with Chaos

I was dreaming. I didn't know if all my Astral Judgements and all the time I spent with Princess Luna made me more attuned, or just more aware of it, or if I just happened to notice it occurring and the occurrences were actually closer to normal than I suspected.

Somehow on occasion, I knew I was dreaming, though I didn't have all that much lucid ability. The dream would still play out fairly randomly at times, or at other times it would linger on a subject that it chose as my mind mulled over it. The only real difference was that I tended to remember them, like a part of my waking mind was still hooked up. That may have been just the case because it usually left me not as rested as I could have been the next day. They weren't scary per say, but they were disturbing in some subtle way. It wasn't uncommon for me to have to work on translating my home world's songs for therapy as soon as the day's tasks allowed after I awoke from one.

After I had gotten over the reoccurring nightmare that plagued my mind a little over seven years ago, they were the closest things to nightmares I had anymore.

The dream was about how Hope had snuck out of her place one night and came to me, knowing I worked late in my workshop about two years back. During this dream the pressing events replayed in my mind. She said she had described a dream to her dad, but her dad was being too dismissive of it. So she came to see me.

After I had shown I was going to take her seriously, having knowledge of what could happen with bad dreams that had the chance to grow untreated can do, I got her comforted with the softest towel-turned-Hope-sized-blanket the workshop had and some of my green tea with as much sugar and honey as she wanted. I'd have gotten her coco, as we had discovered satyrs could process it like humans and the ponies of this land once she got off the goodberry spell's berries, but we didn't keep any in the shop.

With her not being a pony either, it was hard for a dream walker to tune in on her. So it had gone unnoticed. I told her that a dream walker would likely be better, but if she needed a comforting ear I'd let her tell me all she wanted to tell.

Ultimately, she did go to the dream walking guild with her father for help, but what she told me that night played in my mind.

She remembered someone carrying her in a hurried manner. The person holding her seemed like someone she could trust but something was wrong. The one that carried her was worried. Soon, she felt herself being passed to another, a stranger. She heard the voice of the one she could trust, and the voice of the stranger. They were both worried and afraid. After that she felt the stranger carefully cover her face to where she couldn't cry out as the stranger took her away from the one she felt she could trust.

She ultimately managed to get the help she needed, but I realized what her dream actually was. It was a memory. The memory of the night her father had to flee with her and leave her mother behind.

Her mother's life force was tied to the web of magic that protected the village and she would die if she tried to leave herself. Every Fey of that village save her father and herself had this restriction. Her father because he was the Speaker, the ambassador of the Fey. Then Hope was free of it because she was a newborn that had not yet gone through the ritual for her life force to be tied. This life force web of theirs was the sanctuary of the Fey and it kept them safe, but it was also their prison.

It seemed almost random as to why I was dreaming of this. As I began to notice I was starting to awaken, however, I remembered what brought it back up to me in the first place. This was also the night I told her about the "bad thing inside me," and how a dream walker helped me defeat it. It was the only way I could convince her to go to the dream walker's guild. Even if I watered down a few details to generalized metaphors like "the bad thing" and I knew she could at least see I was still being selective with my words, I made a point to never outright lie to her or dismiss her fears. It was something I could do for her as an uncle that her father couldn't always afford to do, as much as I could see it tore at his heart to lie to her. I had no doubt in my mind he had some words with the guild about the dream in private before they placed the non-pony marker paste on her face so they could help her with it. If I knew what the dream was, then surely he did too and had a reason for his choices.

Ultimately, Hope had explained the nice bat ponies helped her with her fear of being alone without any of her own kind. It was then her father made an effort to let her make more friends. She recovered and was happy again. That was enough for it to not be my place in the matter. So when I had to chance to talk about it, I didn't press him on his desire to keep it a secret from her, I just told him that I knew.

I awoke to a virtual riot going on in the cave's main hall. I felt like I had slept enough, but was definitely feeling like I could have utilized a little more peace and quiet. Looking around, I found the guards had stopped guarding me, so I made my way to the commotion.

Upon looking into the room, I saw Time Turner positively tied up in every way imaginable with every weapon in the room trained on him. For somepony who was the center of the wrong kind of attention, he seemed rather chipper.

"I'm telling you, they're delicious if you'd just let me bake you a few! You can have them with eggs, jam, even just with a little butter. They may not be the softest, but the texture grows on you! I swear!"

As I called to one of the guards, the entire room seemed to acknowledge my appearance, with the nearest spears and horns turning around and pointing at me.

"Shit! Maybe I was safer in my room!" was all I could say as I saw the head guard come forward with Diary, who promptly got my translation for the locals up and going.

"This trickster has just kidnapped our council mare to that blue box of his! I don't suppose you know anything about this?"

Time Turner looked over at us and called out, "Oh, come on! I told you I only borrowed her! She'll be back within the hour, I'm certain of it!"

He then looked at me directly and jutted his head up in recognition. "And leave him alone! He's a whole other level of innocent than me. He knows less about me than you lot do! No offense, Moss."

Bunny Angel and his draconiquis rival both came up from behind me, Bunny Angel placing a firm palm and a quivering set of fingers on my left shoulder, and the draconiquis placing his sharp talons ever so gently, but still kinda piercingly on my right.

"For once, my angelic rival and I wholeheartedly agree on something. Too much is at risk with her little venture into the blue box when the Doctor let her through the box's defenses. Both of you will be held hostage until she returns."

I did a head count as they made their points. Realizing it was Just Ebony Nexus and Archimedes in the blue box, I had to get in contact.

"Hey! Is everything alright-"

I was barely able to get that much of my message through before he cut me off.

"Please, Moss! Not now!"

I felt a flooding of sheer, tear jerking emotion come crashing into me in that brief message. At the same time my brief conversation happened, Time Turner called out "That's all well and good! I can understand your fears. But that doesn't mean we can't have a good breakfast while we wait."

The influx of emotion I was absolutely not ready for had me flat on the ground as Bunny Angel answered. "There will be no pleasantries of any kind until she is returned or you are slain in retaliation of her abduction at sunset!"

Bunny Angel seemed surprised at my sudden collapse, but just glanced at his rival and shook his head, blaming it on him. I couldn't see him, but something told me the draconiquis was resisting the urge to have his eyeballs drill into the back of my skull, I was so certain he was focusing his attention on me. I had that strong of a down the spine feeling.

It didn't take me long to realize what I felt from Archimedes. He was face to face with a past version of his beloved, whom knew who he was from her Astral Judgement of me. After thousands of years seeking to further her wishes after her death... I couldn't even imagine the emotion running through him. I barely had even gotten a filtered and restrained tip of the iceberg and it flattened me. They didn't even need to hold me at all. I would have fell on my own and I was going to be stuck there for a few minutes as I recovered.

Never the less, I was bound with my fingers locked in place and my mouth gagged, as was appropriate for restraining a humanoid caster. It was similar to how a unicorn mage would have a power dampener placed on their horn, but less expensive, simpler to pull off in a crude setting and more constricting. The worst part I would never quite get used to is how my fingers had to be locked into a wooden restraint that I couldn't just slip my fingers out of. The restraints were never quite the right size and my hands were always a little sore afterwords as a result. Thank goodness they never thought to use it as a torture device.

The drama died down but the tension didn't until a little less than an hour later. A commotion came from another room as the return of the council mare was being announced. When Ebony Nexus's dark crystalline form finally entered the room, I could feel Bunny Angel's grip on me loosen to the point of barely having a hand on me.

"You... You're crying. What's wrong?"

She ran up to him, then hopped her front hooves up and hugged him while smothering her face into his chest.

As I saw them embrace, I could see the tears flowing freely from her eyes and onto his torso. Separated from her crystalline form, I could see her tears also shared that crystalline like prism effect of the light shining through it.

She hugged him tighter as her head gave a sturdy nuzzling to his chest. "Absolutely nothing. I'm just a little overwhelmed. Moss's memories were real. They weren't the whole story, but they were definitely real."

She pulled her head back and looked Bunny Angel in the eyes and gave the most sincere, gentle smile I had ever seen.

"I also know exactly what has to be done to win the war."

She shook her head. "But know that I can't tell you the vast majority of it. If I say too many details of what has to happen, they won't happen."

She then looked over to the draconiquis still on top of me. "But I can tell you the key to victory, and the price we pay for it."

At this point, she jumped off Bunny Angel and started to walk up to the draconiquis as if there was nothing else in the room but the two of them. "The key is I found a way for us to seal up the rifts to where they can't break them down, and we will have the ability to maintain them indefinitely."

The room was silent for several seconds as she stared at him in such earnest that I could tell it creeped even him out.

". . . You have my attention, council mare."

". . . Are you certain that's the only requirements? The secret they kept for so long?" Another council member chimed in. He had transversed through a complicated spell that allowed him to come forth through Toad Oil's trunk at Ebony Nexus's calling.

"Yes. A mortal wielder of pure quintessence is all that it takes. The only way this normally happens is a priest, but our friend here from the future is living proof it's possible without one."

"So why can't we just use him?"

I shook my head. "Because while I don't call upon a god, I do call upon an immortal that's bound to me in using it in a near identical manner. Problem is that I'm from the future. His help is not exactly available "right now" and won't be for several thousand years. I reseal a rift in the future after it falls into disrepair, but I can't do the ones in the past, or what you see as the present. Even if I were able to call on his aid, I have to leave in the blue box again soon. At most I'd be able to do one. It has to be a mortal of this time if it's going to be done for every single rift."

Ebony Nexus sighed as well. "It also will permanently damage the immortal, similar to having one's hoof caught in a machine. A part of their essence will be passed to the mortal and permanently fused to their life force. It's the only way for a non-god to power such a bond, even in the future."

The draconiquis shook his head and pointed a thumb like talon at Bunny Angel. "Even if what you say is true, why me? Why can't my goody two shoed counterpart be the one that does it?"

Ebony Nexus sighed. "Because he has another role to play and is barely strong enough to play it. If he were weakened at all, then he would fail his part." I saw tears forming in her eyes briefly before she fought through them. "I can't say any more than that. While you are able to use both æther and quintessence, you can use both of them separately in a pure state. There is no other pure quintessence wielding immortal in the resistance. All the others use a blend. An impure quintessence immortal would only be able to infuse a mortal with impure quintessence casting."

She looked at Bunny Angel, then the other counsel member. "Above all else, the quintessence has to be pure and Bunny Angel cannot be compromised. You're the only donor that will work. Any other donor will lead to defeat."

The draconiquis looked skeptical. Crossing his arms, he gave a huff. "I may have invested a lot in this war, but I'm not stupid enough to do something that reckless and desperate, at least not for free. What could you possibly offer me in exchange that could merit wounding myself in such a way?"

He was looking directly at me, not Ebony Nexus. His stance was intimidating and it threw me off my center as he gave me a very judgmental, yet cold glare.

"A..a-a-a. Ahem. A name," was all I could sputter out. I knew I botched it the moment I said it.

He looked at me blankly, like he couldn't believe the absurdity of what I said, cocked his head and rubbed his temple at that same absurdity. "A name you say? I could give myself any name I wanted, and have in the past."

Ebony Nexus interjected, salvaging the situation and stopping him in his tracks before he could reach for me.

"A true name!"

His paw stopped inches from my shirt and his attention turned from me to her.

She stood her ground and spoke again. "A second true name. One of Equis."

He squinted at me. "A true name!? While something like that would be tempting, I don't believe for a moment any creature here or in the entirety of the resistance could give me something as powerful as a second true name. I've lived for more lifetimes than any of you mortals could count, and I have only heard rumor of such a duality existing, much less met one or seen how it could be done."

She smirked. "You're half right. None of us have that power. However, the Animus Mundi, that is to say Equis herself, does have that power."

The draconiquis looked at her in shock for a moment. "You really are serous, aren't you, crystal flank?"

Ebony Nexus gave only the slightest nod as she stared him down.

He shook his head, "Even if you are, good luck convincing her to trust a-"

"She's already agreed."

He blinked twice and paused for a moment to absorb what she said. "What!?"

"I spoke with her on this during Moss's Astral Judgement, when I knew you wouldn't think to listen in since you can't listen in on astral communication."

She took a breath. "That one was a doozy to do, keeping the two links separate, but I did it. She meditated on it and has decided she is that desperate."

The draconiquis squinted at her. "Surely she would be wise enough to know I would demand payment in advance. But why would she trust a chaos spirit to keep to my end if she doesn't even trust foreign druids anymore?"

Ebony Nexus had to suppress a small laugh as it tried to come out. "Because it's a double edged sword. If she gives you a name, you can't return to Toril so easily and abandon her. The name she would give you would keep you safe here, where you would never be able to be compelled to speak your Torilian name again. But it would also be an anchor. With how you already betrayed the other world, Equis would be your one safe haven, and your Equisian name would become a liability elsewhere."

She looked him dead in the eyes with a shit eating grin. "You'd be getting payed in advance, sure, but you would also be buying in. Betraying her after getting your payment would only hurt you too."

Bunny Angel chimed in. "And I can always just compel you with your Torilian name. I vowed to only use it to force you to keep your word, or to prevent an apocalypse level event. But even if it's only to an incorporeal entity like an Animus Mundi, a promise is still a promise."

The draconiquis stroked his beard and pondered as I chimed in. "Please do wait for me to be out of ear shot before you do that. If I learn his Torilian name, I die."

As I talked, he gave me his attention again. I could just barely hear him say, "A common ally..." as he continued to ponder.

After a moment, he stopped and looked at the group again. "We would still need a mortal to bind my power to. I can't be held responsible for them."

Bunny Angel nodded. "Indeed, but I can think of no mortal that would love to seal the rifts more than your apprentice, Diary."

Diary shot her head up from her cat nap. "Wait, what!? Me!?"

Bunny Angel nodded. "Think about it, you didn't join the resistance to fight the good fight. You did it to strike back at those that betrayed the Tabaxi settlements and intend to hunt them down until none are left. What way could you possibly hurt them more than to cut them off not only from the most lucrative colonies they will have in your lifetime, but also the survivors of your Tabaxi kin that came to this world to escape them?"

"It is what drives you." The draconiquis came up to her now standing form. A talon to the chin tilted her head up as he gazed at her like a vampire might gaze at his prey in an entrancing thrall.

He briefly turned his eyes to Bunny Angel. "Yes, yes! I know, no mind manipulation magic!"

He turned back to Diary. "But I don't need it, do I? The power to take vengeance, and to give you a new seed of hope at the same time? It's tempting enough on its own. Isn't it?"

She was looking at him almost like a cat looking at someone with a treat, but also with just a hint of intoxication on the thought of her goals being achieved.

Her master spoke gently. "I don't want much, as I'm already getting compensated. But what would it be worth to you? To be the one that strikes the heaviest and key strategic blow against them? To let them know it was specifically your ire that denied them? How much of that high quality loyalty that has you 'go above and beyond' would that be worth to you?"

I could practically see her drooling as her eyes rolled back in her head with a whimper, dropping ever so slightly off the talon at her chin.

She quickly recovered and smiled at him. "If it gets me my revenge? Enough to last the remainder of my natural days."

The draconiquis pulled his talon forward to Diary, then curled up his paw and offered it to Ebony Nexus as an approximate hoof bump. "Then we have a deal?"

Diary took the talon in her paw, but Ebony Nexus found the draconiquis's paw being lifted out of her reach just as she went for it. "I'm not making the deal to you. I'm making it to your master. She can agree by calling out the name she has picked for me after I take your hoof in proxy. Otherwise, if I don't get that true name promised to me, the deal is off."

He looked at Bunny Angel. "That should satisfy your rules and keep me out of an uncompensated deal at the same time, yes?"

With a nod from the celestial, the draconiquis lowered his paw again and Ebony Nexus met it with her own hoof.

At first, they just stood there, but I soon realized Ebony Nexus was tuning in her focus to talk to her master.

Her head went slightly limp but then nothing changed for a few seconds.

At first it seemed as if it had failed, but then I felt a compelling force pushing open the connection to the Animus Mundi. I barely could notice the draconiquis perking his hear up and realizing he was hacking into the Animus Mundi to listen in as well.

I heard quite clearly the statement the Animus Mundi of Equis practically screamed at every creature that could attune to her, everywhere on the planet.

"Draconiquis of Toril! You now shall be known on Equis as-"

A pause happened to make sure the thoughts had no blending. The next thought was isolated all to itself. It was a concept more than a word, but as long as one had a word for that concept, and understood it, that was how one was to pronounce the name. So naturally, my mind threw the associated word into this screamed thought. A thought full of vinegar and anger she had for his chaotic, border-lining toxic behavior, but a genuine thought none the less.

A thought I knew every being that could hear her, servant and druid, native or not, heard—sealing in his need to be loyal to her and her deal.

"Discooooooooooord!"

Ch 10: A Price too Low

Diary was twisting and turning in front of the mirror, looking over her newly changed fur that was so random and patch jobbed it put a calico cat to shame. She shifted between a spot of actual calico fur, to a section of her face that seemed to have the temperature sensitive fur of a Siamese, to a single patch on her neck that was still her original orange to one that was more woodland bobcat like stripe to pure white, to pure black on the other back paw. That was just the fur patterns I could recognize from house cats. She also seemed to have a patch dedicated to every wild feline I could recognize too, and some I couldn't.

"Oh, yes! Mommy likey!" My amulet translated her ancient language with a thick accent, as it did with all non Modern Equestrian languages.

She was positively ogling herself, not even caring that the other tobaxi had started to object at her removal of her undergarments, forcing her to keep them on. "Mommy likey a lot!"

"Ahem..." The head guard came in carrying the robe she had dropped off in the main hall to visit the one room with a mirror. "I'm glad you like your new look, but you will need to stay covered and out of sight until we secure the rifts, Diary. You're too mission critical now. We can't risk the enemy recognizing your now positively unique appearance."

I could only shake my head as she reluctantly re-clothed herself. It was odd how I had gotten used to the "clothing was optional" mentality in Equestria.

"Why didn't I have a drastic change when I was bonded?" I asked, then quickly added, "I mean you were there when they did it to me. And you know more about this stuff than me." At one point he told me I had been changed immediately as I was taken from my world, which would have been long before they bonded me to him. I was also told that the bonding was the very last thing Oghma's followers did to me before sending me to Equis.

Archimedes took a moment to respond. "Did you not see your hair line for the last nine years?"

I brought my hand up to my all but bald scalp, feeling only the sides of my head having hair and finally connected the dots. I couldn't help but blush, not that any creature would notice. I hadn't put much thought to it compared to all my other changes.

"Are you alright?" I heard Ebony Nexus call from behind me, once again speaking her fluent English.

I turned to see her, mostly prepared for the evacuation. The hiding spot had been used for too long and they needed to abandon Toad Oil's cave before it was discovered with them in it. The fact that they were going to battle at the same time would be used as a cover for non combat personnel to get away while the enemy attention was drawn elsewhere. This naturally included their local council mare.

I nodded as I infused the last bit of healing potion, barely feeling the sting in my fingertips as borderline discomfort instead of pain as my magic was almost recovered from the harmonic noise. "I'll be fine. I just hope you guys will be too. I'm helping the troops by brewing up as many of my version of potions as I can from the supplies you granted me in the time I have, but they will only be good for today."

She shook her head as she came up next to me and my make shift alchemy station. "Well, I thank you again for the potions, but I have seen too much to believe you that easily."

She sat her hind end right on the ground next to me, not even looking for any kind of seating, and offered a bat pony wing of embrace in an eerily familiar manner.

"I saw your memories during my Astral Judgement of you. While I had to prioritize other things I learned from it, I was happy to find dream walkers will continue to be inclined to help in the future. That's something dream walkers tend to desire to do in this time too..."

She shook her head and forced herself to inhale in frustration. "At least most of them."

At this point she had returned her wing to her side, having seen me reject it, and continued. "You still live a self imposed troubled life in your modern day, despite having so many creatures that see you as family and care about you. Why is that?"

I set down the vial I had been holding, closed my eyes and finally put my face to my knees.

"You know the nature of the being I serve better than any other pony ever has, even more than my previous dream walkers. So while I don't want to explain the background of my faith to you, I guess I don't have to. You already know it, and what I did wrong."

I brought up my face again, barely holding back the tears. I briefly glanced at Bunny Angel looking over some expensive diamonds that were brought in for one of his spells like a tactician and talking to the ranking officers gathered at the base. "I violated something I should have considered sacred. I know members of the resistance did what was basically the same action, but at least they were not of my faith. So it doesn't apply to them, at least in the same way."

I took a breath to steady myself, as my hands had started to shake.

"It was because I had my faith I shouldn't have done it. That power was supposed to be for the all mighty alone. How would a king or queen of a country act when a soldier loyal to them breaks into their vault and steals a magical trinket only meant for the reigning monarch, then used it for their own personal gain? It would be less hanus for a foreigner to do it because they had no loyalty to begin with. The supposedly 'loyal' soldier still put their own personal interests above their loyalty to their monarch and betrayed the trust between them."

I gripped the cloth of my trousers to keep the increasing need to shake in check.

"There's no going back to how it was before, after that. I didn't revive her because it was the right thing to do. I wanted her back for selfish reasons. Being emotionally distraught isn't an excuse. I directly violated my faith and that's all there is to it."

At this point, I turned and looked at Ebony Nexus with as cold a face as I had ever given any creature.

"After my act of greed, why am I still so surrounded by goodness? I don't deserve such a good life. Why wasn't more taken away? Why wasn't I punished? I didn't even get so much as a slap on the wrist in karma for what I did or why I did it."

The tears finally came as I saw her just absorbing what I was saying. I wanted to put my head back into my knees, but this bond we had made an unique situation. She actually understood me. I didn't need to sugar coat it or protect her from my sin. I actually could relate it to her without any fear. So instead I forced myself to keep staring at her as the tears came.

"Just because I'm not getting punished now, doesn't mean I won't answer for it later. You know how my faith works in how I am supposed be judged at the end of my days. I know everybody sins and we can't 'earn' forgiveness, but without a reprimand of any kind, what's to keep me from slipping again? What reminder would I have if I just go back to the happy life I had before as if I hadn't done anything wrong?"

At first she was silent and I thought that perhaps she had nothing for me. Even that was comforting in that she understood I couldn't just make it all better by simply thinking it.

But then she picked up a stick in her mouth and started drawing a large circle with pictures in the dust like dirt that littered the cave with it. It took me a moment, but I recognized some of the druid like symbolism of the servants.

She then spat the stick out and spoke to me. "You're kind of right, in a way. This symbol, among others, helps us understand the relationship we have with the world. It represents many little factors, but the one I want to focus on is that things happen beyond our control."

She pointed to various parts with the clawed thumb like tip of her wing, carefully keeping it tilted to keep its crystalline sheen clean. She showed different points that look like wild fires and other natural disasters, albeit simplified.

"We can mitigate disasters, prevent wildfires with controlled burns, prepare for earthquakes and store supplies for times of famine. But ultimately they happen."

She pulled away from the picture and looked at me. "When they do, creatures get hurt. Some are fortunate with but a few scrapes, while others are not so lucky. Preparedness helps, but we will always come up against something that catches us unprepared, or at least a crack in our preparedness."

She closed her eyes and continued. "As much as most creatures don't want to admit it, death is a part of life. Pain and suffering happen. It's not a servant's job to prevent this specifically or to help those that get hurt recover. It's our job to promote life and help our master be healthy. On occasion we do help with disasters as there is some overlap between the two, but in reality, we often purposefully let them play out so as to let the imbalance that caused them to correct themselves. I think your words for this would be 'tough love.'"

She then set her attention back to the drawing, this time pointing to the opposite side where there appeared to be no disaster.

"But sometimes the opposite is true too. Where a creature will mess up and leave their guard down, but no predator attacks. Where a crop is planted in poor soil but a flock of birds will give it just the right amount of fertilizer to save it without giving it too much completely by accident. Some that we explain this to will compare this side of it to a cradle."

She withdrew her wing a second time and looked at me. "In reality, it's most certainly not a cradle or a sign they were right or safe. The greater forces may have some finer play in it in some subtle way, not too unlike your 'he sets all things in his ways' clause you explained to a future pony once. But on a scale we can clearly identify, not just conjecture, and have to work with in the end, it can only really be boiled down to one thing:"

She pulled out a coin with a symbol of fire on it and tossed it in the air.

With it landing square in the middle of her drawing, it landed on a side with the simple water drop symbol on it facing up.

"Chance. You got lucky. While you were kinda stuck on your system of karma, you were still kind of wise to realize luck isn't something to rely on. I don't really understand all your judgement at the end of days stuff. To be honest it kinda sounds like the Torilian gods and how they tried to preach to us, but you seem to understand that there will inevitably be consequences if you keep doing what you did. I see it more in a here and now in this life sense, and you see it in an 'afterlife' sense, but it is still there. In this life in your present moment, you got lucky."

She shook her head. "I still don't understand your need to hold it over your head and punish yourself, but if that's what you have to do to keep yourself in check... Far be it from me to stop you. But at some point you have to move forward. When that point is, I don't know. I still only got a general rundown of your faith. As thorough as my Astral Judgement of you was, it didn't get every last detail. But for a healthy life, which you will need if you want to be a practical servant for your master, you are going to need to stop letting this cripple you. I'm not saying forget it, but let the wound heal over to a scar and keep going. Otherwise the emotional paralysis is likely going to cause you to do or not do something you'll regret just as much, in some way or another."

After hearing her words, I couldn't help but want to shed another tear, but another part of my mind was nagging to not agree with her words just because they seemed to give an answer. It made more sense than most anything else I had heard a pony tell me about it, but it still felt like a sweet little lie spoken not in experience, but in wishful thinking.

As she opened her eyes again, I met her gaze with an uneasy smile. "I want to believe you, but what experience do you have on this? I mean sure, you're living in a time of war and that makes people mature fast, but you're like... in your twenties? I get that you're a counsel mare so you're probably a very mature mare in her twenties, but you're talking almost like a grandmother with those words. Again, I want to believe them, but it sounds more like wishful thinking than solid advice."

I was surprised when she simply gave me a pained look, like she had expected an answer like this.

"It never gets any easier, hearing somepony mistake me for a younger mare. It was kinda fun for the first decade, but it got old fast after that."

She turned to her other wing and opened it, revealing a scar on her side that looked like it had healed over long ago. Like, if she were in her twenties, it would have had to been given to her when she was two, if not further back than that.

"I've seen bad ponies get away with bad things, even being commended for good acts they had no part in. I've also seen good ponies and creatures get punished for things they didn't do, or for things that did no creature any wrong, getting everything taken from them."

At first I thought she was cramping up from the old injury, but soon I realized it was the same shame I had on my face as she curled in on herself as if to withdraw to her own little corner.

"I know because I was one of those bad ponies. It doesn't matter that I was trapped in a bad situation as a child or that I was exploited for my powers by other bad ponies. I still did bad things, and some of them were actually of my choosing."

She seemed determined again, looking up with gritted teeth.

"But then I got a lucky break and I didn't hesitate. I took it and never looked back. I left my old life as the 'dream monster' Ebony Nexus behind, even if some of it still follows me today as others took up the mantle of dream monster by those bad ponies, and I took up a new life as a servant. I was the only lucky one among them to get out."

Her gritted teeth were joined with pained eyes again. "But even then, I suppose karma still caught up with me. There's a catch to being the first and only member of a druidic circle. Even if we servants don't focus on them on Equis, they do exist and there are factors involved with them."

She looked down at the dirt. "Before I met you I had thought about telling him if we both survived the war, but now I know that isn't going to happen. I first awoke as a servant when I was sixteen. Due to my ability as a dream walker, it was natural I became a circle of dreams specialist. I did so just before the eve of my eighteenth birthday. After that, I practically shot up in power level as fast as my body and mind could handle it. Not too dissimilar to how she leveled you up in the future as a shape shifting circle of the moon."

She looked over at the war table where the attack that would happen at the same time as the evacuation was being prepared, and at her lover doing his utmost to help where he could.

"Please keep this a secret until you get home, because I never even told Bunny Angel this part of my growth as a servant. By the age of twenty one, I had advanced so high that I had unlocked a slowed aging process. I may look to be roughly twenty six, but I'm actually closer to seventy years old, give or take. You and Bunny Angel are the only ones here that even know my birth name or, now that I've told you, my past as a dream monster."

One of the camp workers popped his head in and asked, "Excuse me, but will you be joining us for the morning meal, counsel mare?"

She replied, with my amulet giving the translation in that same thick accent. "I will take my morning meal in here, if that can be arranged, thank you. I still have a few things to prepare and a few things to discuss with our escort volunteer here before the evacuation."

She sighed as she turned back to me. "The resistance just call me their counsel mare at my request now, using my servant name only when they have to clarify me from another counsel mare. They think I'm just wise for my years and lucky to look on the youthful side."

With a speed as if they had expected her answer, the resistance workers had her meal on a simple wooden tray brought to her like they had already had it prepared and set it down on the stump in front of her. Even with a carefully measured amount of sugar for her, normally heavily rationed.

As they bowed and left, I turned to the mare that I now realized had a look to her eyes fitting her actual age.

"If you really are that old, then I will have to take time to chew on what you told me."

She nodded and picked up her porridge bowl. "Naturally, that's how your mind works. But thank you for not out right rejecting it. Are you sure you won't eat any more than a biscuit before we go?"

I shook my head. "My stomach will just toss up anything else I put down if we get in a scuffle. It's best if I have very little in it for now. In my old life I could have eaten twice as much as the next guy and been fine, but I have found this genasi stomach I have now is a good bit more sensitive to adrenaline."

She wiped her mouth from the porridge and went to her tea. "I almost want to just give you my meal, knowing what I know, but I have to keep up the act to the end. It has to happen or the events will unravel and the future I saw in your memories would no longer be guaranteed. Still, this tea is my favorite. It's nice to have even if it isn't served the way I like. No pony can serve it the way I remember it. It would be nice to drink it in that form one last time."

I looked at the cup and pondered for a moment before I saw her looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to ask the question.

"How do you remember it being served?"

With the first genuinely relaxed smile I had seen all morning, she simply answered, "Iced."

I nodded and brought both hands forward. Feeling a slight shock, I carefully brought only a few fingers in as if making a fist while keeping others loose. In response, chunks of ice formed in the tea. Knowing I only cooled those ice chunks, I brought the fingers of one hand up and put a few of the fingers together, shaking them as if they were cold, and called out, "Hocus." With that, her tea was also chilled in a timely form.

She gave a nod in thanks as I flexed my hand to shake off the slight pain from the shock. It was nice to know I'd not have to deal with that in a few hours when I might have to fight to escort the refugees.

While she brought the tea to her lips, I finally asked a question I wanted to ask her for a while.

"So, if you don't like your birth name being used, could you tell me your servant name?"

She finished sipping her tea in sheer enjoyment, gave a content sigh and looked at me with a smile.

With a gentle shake of her head no, she answered with a simple, "No spoilers."

Ch 11: A Price too High

The two birds flew off and towards the cliff up the path as Ebony Nexus looked at me with a smug near-disbelief.

"If I hadn't seen the Animus Mundi teach you that spell with my own Astral Judgement, I wouldn't have believed it even if you told me."

She cocked her head up as the hood around her fell to her withers. "So, what did the rock doves have to say in exchange for the bread?"

I took a bite of the biscuit half I hadn't offered them and put the remainder back in my pouch. Shifting it to one side, I answered her. "They have seen other creatures that stand on two legs like I do above the cliff they live on, but they have been traveling on the road that leads away from the cliff and towards the fortress for a while now. They also saw no large creatures on the other cliff. The canyon should have no patrols near it right now."

Ebony Nexus nodded. "Then all we have to worry about is the one outpost on the cliff edge. At least we will know if we are caught."

I looked at her as she put her hood back up and carefully brought the others out of the trees. "Why is that?"

We made a beeline for the cliff edge as she explained. "This canyon and the surrounding area is a divination dead zone. A few bad spells mixed wrong here in a fight a while back and the result made it to where no magical detection or communication can make it through here. Illusions that affect the mind directly instead of tricking the senses can't even work. If the outpost is to send a signal, they have to do it in a non magical means, which means either a very slow messenger, which we will be long gone by the time help arrives even at a safe pace if that happens."

She did a quick check to make sure every creature was accounted for as they hugged the wall of the canyon entrance. Upon getting a nod from the midway guard, she glanced back at me and continued.

"That, or by a signal that can be seen from far off, like one of those fancy flare signals or a bonfire. At which point, we give up cover and run like our lives depend on it, because they likely will."

* * *

The plan was going smoothly for a while. We had gotten most of the refugees out of the line of danger. The guard post building was manned, but it was easy enough to smuggle the refugees through the hardest part by going across a gap under it, in its blind spot. The gap looked like it once led into an attempt of a mine in the bottom of the canyon before it was abandoned for lack of things worth mining for.

Combine that with some good timing from a lookout watching, and giving a signal in the form of a series of bird calls when the guard was looking in the direction they needed, and we had managed to get almost every creature through the choke point and to safety. Ebony Nexus the satyr leader and his youngest son were all that were left.

The boy had been crying in fear and was held back, lest his noise alert the guard when they came close. As much as I wanted to comfort the boy and get him through the scary part, we couldn't risk it. Once the path was discovered, it was as good as closed for all future smuggling.

That's why we had the mid guard. He wasn't going to stay with us, but if the group had gotten caught, it would likely have been split. Those that had gotten through would be led by either Ebony Nexus or the front guard, depending on where she was at the time, and those left behind would have been under his command if their elder was on the far side at the point of discovery.

The plan was just about over, with Ebony Nexus taking the last two across the aged, but oddly not rickety bridge beneath the outpost when it all went to shit.

A blast from somewhere in the canyon's brush struck the outpost and it started crashing down towards the bridge. I was on the early side of it, but Ebony Nexus was rushing to the middle, where the child and his father was.

I saw what was coming at them. Sharp bits of lumber and bits of rock. There was no way they would survive the pummeling or get out of the way.

With neither false life nor expeditious retreat available, I cursed myself silently and dashed forward. The only consolation was that I had the longstrider spell already in effect. I needed to mitigate the damage in whatever way I could, not just block it, so I cast featherfall on as much of the nearer derbs falling as I could and upcast the largest casting of magic missile I could on the stuff further out than my featherfall spell could reach. Ten rocks were blasted away and six more fell so slowly that the rest of the outpost caught up with it just as I caught up with them.

Quickly drawing a pentagram above me, I enacted the blade ward spell and transformed into my polar bear form, hunkering down over top of them and hoping for the best.

Rocks and boards pummeled my form so fast, I only managed to throw in one good healing of my beast form before I was pummeled so hard again it hardly mattered and I was thrust out of my wild shape.

The bridge also fell apart and we fell about twenty feet into a pit in the mine area below.

I heard a scream to my side as I landed hard. I did a quick check to see I was badly hurt but stable and quickly realized the rocks had stopped falling on us.

I looked up and saw a disk of magic blocking the rest of the rocks.

"Oh, dear... If that's what I think it was, then that's going to complicate things in a few hours." I heard a very cold sounding Diary call out as she came and pushed some of the rubble clear from the disk that blocked the only exit from the pit, straight up. Most of the rocks had slid off already, due to a slant in the casting, but some lingered.

"I don't suppose you have any healing magic, do you? It would save me a load of trouble later. Technically I have a little myself now, but I can't call upon my master here with this being a divination dead zone to cast it. If I could it would defeat the whole purpose of trapping you here."

Looking where she was pointing, I saw Ebony Nexus impaled on one of the boards from the bridge, the board was going right through her gut, almost at her spine. The wound was not a clean cut either. I could see the board splintered in half, poking out in two spots. As I saw the blood splattered on the wood sticking out of her, I knew that crystalline blood refracting in what light was available in the pit was her life blood, slowly draining from her.

"So this is it, is it?" I heard her call in English.

I pulled out my vial and pushed my last bit of healing mix in. Just as I was adding the water, I heard her call out.

"No. Don't use it on me." I heard her call feebly, "The wound is too big."

"Really? Just one potion? That's all you have to heal?" Diary called out as I finished the mix.

I looked up and glared at her. "That will barely fix the kid. And before you ask, no. I can't let you out."

She gave a posture showing she didn't care as she pointed to another in the pit.

The father satyr was sitting there, scratched up bad but stable. All his thoughts were on the child cradled in his arms. The child was bleeding out from a bad injury his dad was holding shut on what was left of his mangled leg. The only reason he wasn't screaming was him being in shock.

I looked back and forth between the two patients, both desperately needing help, and hesitated.

"Moss, I'm as good as dead already. The wound is too severe to even let the potion buy me time. The moment I'm moved I'm gone. Don't cry for me. The future belongs to the young. Save the boy."

I felt a little in shock myself, like it wasn't really happening, but a part of my mind remembered a detail. "Towards the end of the first rift war, she died trying to heal another."

In order to preserve the timeline, she had to die while healing another. Soon enough I found I had pored the potion down the boy's throat, letting his circulatory system decide what needed healing the most.

With the boy's leg still mangled bad, but not bleeding anymore, I nodded in confirmation of him being stable. With his mind coming to as the potion countermanded the physical shock, his father got to work hugging him as he cried, letting out the emotional shock.

With my heart finally catching up to reality that my mind had blankly processed, I snapped up at Diary, still not wanting Ebony Nexus to die. "Go! Get! Help!"

She just put her paw to her ear and called out "I can't understand you, Moss. And If you're asking me to help, I can't. Just say your goodbyes."

"Don't waste your energy, Moss. It's obvious she's following her master's orders to keep you here. They know they're too vital to the resistance now to get punished for this."

I looked at Diary one last time with a stern glare, then back down to Ebony Nexus.

Her eyes were getting weaker by the minute.

With a quick pat down of my equipment, I found nothing I could artificer cast with. In desperation, I placed my hands on her upper barrel gently, and called out to Archimedes. "Heeelp!"

I started breaking down as I knew what was unfolding in front of me was an event that had to happen. Still, a part of me cried out again. "Partner, help..."

But nothing came.

"Auntie..." I tried to call out for a second, hoping she would answer my call. Naturally, even if she could hear through the divination barrier, she still only saw me as an outsider, and so my words made no connection to her, and no help came.

But just then, I felt something. The connection between Archimedes and myself flexed in a weird way. Like a rubber band that had snapped shut after being let go. I had never felt anything like it before, but it stirred new hope into me.

Grabbing onto hope like there was no tomorrow that Archimedes could hear me, that somehow he was with me in this dark moment, I called out again.

"Heeeelp!"

But despite the hiccups I felt, banking on a miracle... Nothing came.

"Moss, please..." I could hear her weakening breath call out to me.

With my heart wrestling my mind for control over which was in charge, I broke down and threw my head to the ground in prayer. "Please, dear god all mighty... Help..."

But still, nothing came.

I just about fell into a deep darkness deeper than my depression had ever led me to when one final whimper broke what would have been silence, save for the boy's crying.

"Sing... for me?"

It was in that moment I realized, this was the key moment of my penance. The power of life and death taken from my hands. I saw it coming and still wanted to fight it. This was the true price I had to pay for what I did seven years in my past. This time being unable to save her life and forced to only witness it being taken. For all the power I had gained, I was powerless in this moment.

Now that I knew it was going to happen, what was my response going to be? Breaking down like a child? Anger? Hatred for yet another good soul dying in front of me? I echoed her plea in my mind, as both my heart and mind didn't want to do it. Like chains tying me down to sadness, my heart didn't want to move and my mind still wanted to zoom through the alternatives again, though it had none. So, with my mind wanting to do something, anything, I pushed through the stalemate of emotional inaction and mental panic. With slow, agonizing movements as if every joint and muscle I called upon were grinding to a halt with rust, I pressed my amulet and granted her final request with the song.

Yet my words were mumbled beyond recognition for a could couple seconds, finally forcing them to clarity as the focus of the phrase came down "...whispered of wisdom, 'Let it be...'"

I was pretty sure she had faded shortly after the second or third line I sang, but I knew by the time that happened, she wasn't wanting me to sing for her. She was wanting me to put my sadness into the song so that I wouldn't break. So I sang. I sang loudly. I sang with all my fervor. I sang with all my power and, despite my lessons, I knew I was singing it poorly by the time the song was done. I hadn't even started on the right line and I had to loop back and repeat lines due to not even having my bearings on what part of the song I was on.

It was her dying wish to do my best to not be crippled by her passing like I had seven years in my past, to let my heart heal. Yet I still felt pretty broken as the music ended.

But one big difference came from the singing. I couldn't help but feel just as broken, but this time I was still functional as the dust settled on the reality of the situation.

Knowing I had to move forward, I did my best to hold back my desire to punish Diary. Partially for trying to stay whole by not giving in to revenge, and partially because she still had her roll to play in the ending of the rift war. Both were for Ebony Nexus's sake.

I had expected her to just be looking around without a care, but she was looking directly at me with tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry we have to be on opposite sides of this, Moss, but my loyalty is to my master and my master alone now."

Spying the rod in her hand and the thick accent of translation gone, I realized she had cast tongues on herself.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, seeing I saw what she had done, she gave a bitter smile. "I won't be able to forget the rhythm of that song or how that singing moved me."

She put her rod to her chest and gave a small bow. "I know what it is like to lose someone. To feel broken. To want to hate. Don't lie, either. I can see it in your eyes and the quivering of your spell hand near your pouch. For some reason you haven't given into it like I have, but the urge is there."

She wasn't wrong, a part of me was sizing the two of us up on if I had to fight my way out. I was functional, but hurt bad. It wouldn't take a whole lot to take me out, maybe a cantrip worth of damage, two if I was lucky. I also didn't have any healing available to make up the difference. My beast form was the last cheat for self healing I had, and now it was gone too. She, however, was at full strength.

Her posture even showed me she had a few spells in mind that would take me out, even with her being a trickster style caster rather than raw power style. The fact that she was glancing at the father and son satyrs showed me they would likely get caught in the middle if a fight broke out.

She basically held all the cards. The only consolation was that she didn't want to fight and wasn't ordered to.

She looked at her casting paw and spoke more to herself than me, though I could hear it.

"I'm hardly any less a monster than the king I seek to spite, now. The scary part is how little this disturbs me when I know it should."

She closed her paw in a fist for a brief second then shook her head.

"It's good to see you still have some logic in you, and some heart," she called out as she saw me relax. "We are alike in some ways, both being rift sealers, or soon to be in my case. While I might be more hardened a tactician, I can see you have made your own sacrifices in your own way. I think the only meaningful difference between us when I look into your eyes is that you crushed your dignity into humility to achieve your ends, where as I just crushed my heart into dust."

She tilted her head, "I know you don't like me, but let me give you two parting gifts, for wherever your path leads you from here."

"First, a consolation on our current situation. I apologize on how I still have to keep you here, and please believe me that her death was not part of the plan. I'll come clean to Bunny Angel when we get back. It will mean I'll be locked away until I'm needed for closing the rifts, but honestly I'm fine with that. I'll have nothing after my vengeance is finished. With Bunny Angel knowing the truth, he will keep order in the resistance over her death and will not allow any of the blame to fall on you."

She turned back around and looked at the sky then tilted a little to just barely look at me. "My second gift is some advice. Don't think your dignity alone will always be enough of a sacrifice. I learned long ago my heart alone wasn't. I had to make sacrifices of many enslaved Fey to save other Fey. I had to make tough calls to make the most of situations that could never end in a happy ending for everyone. It's an inevitability someone is going to have to pay too high a price in some way at some point, or everybody will."

Despite clearly knowing what she had done, she turned and hardly payed me any further mind, looking up at the clouds.

"My master should have given the counter sign by now. I've kept Moss here where he can't communicate with them. What's wrong?"

Looking at the clouds myself, I saw something subtly terrifying. The general shape of what was clearly a simplified drawing of Time Turner's box was etched into the clouds.

Discord was trying to break into the blue box. The time machine.

I remembered Time Turner's words. "...don't worry about me leaving you, I can't close the bubble while the link between you two is intact... I'm as stuck here as you are while Archimedes stays inside the TARDIS."

Discord had been listening in and put this together himself. As long as I was away from the blue box and couldn't warn them, it was a sitting duck and Discord now knew it.

A few more moments passed as I found myself helpless to warn them, or even just not hinder them.

"What is taking him so long? Bunny Angel is at the front and the outer barrier shouldn't be that hard for a being of his level to disintegrate. Even I could do it given enough time."

She stretched her arms above her head in boredom.

"I mean, he did become weaker infusing me with his power, but only in that one way. Even so, no native has found a way to wield quintessence." She looked down at her paw and the multiple coat patterns covering her. "Aside from this method, that is. But no other immortal would be a willing donor without a great need, not even one of impure quintessence. So his new weakness wouldn't be exploitable right now."

A loud mechanical whining came from right next to me. With just enough room to fit inside the pit without disturbing anything, the blue box materialized.

"No!" Diary called out as she shifted the symbol of the clouds to show the blue box a bit more clearly, now encased in a definitive circle of no cloud, clear for all to see, instead of only those that were looking.

As soon as she had done that, she dropped her magic disk keeping us separate. The remaining rocks fell into the pit and onto the blue box's outer barrier.

She blasted away at it just as the blue box finished becoming tangible. With the clashing of her magic and the barrier, it felt like thunder was being created right there as she threw everything she had into breaking it.

"No time to explain!" I heard Time Turner call from the box behind me.

By the time I had registered what he had said, I felt a familiar set of thorned vines wrap around me, pulling me into the blue box.

With my resilience finally expended from the damage of the thorns, I felt my world fading to black.

All I could see from the doorway of the blue box was Time Turner going to close the doors, and the screaming figure of Discord tearing at a flaw in the barrier with his magic rich lion claw and talon alike.

The doors slammed shut as I finally fell into that darkness.

CH 12: Timey Whimy Heartaches.

I didn't know how long I was out, but I definitely felt like crap all over as I woke. After noticing the feeling of bandages all over me, I also felt a leathery wing holding my head up slightly and an angelic voice humming me back awake.

My eyesight was fuzzy, but I could have sworn I saw a silhouette of a dear friend above me.

"Fluttershy. It's good to see you." I called out as I forced my sluggish arm to come up to her face.

The humming stopped shortly before I reached her, and my eyes focused more clearly on the pony above me.

I just stared for a moment, not believing what I saw.

I sat up as my bearings came in to full from the sudden surge of adrenaline.

"E.... Ebony Nexus? How are you alive!?"

Her smile faded quickly. "Don't you dare give me any spoilers, Moss! I do not want to know how I will die!"

I tried to interject, "But-" only to have her swiftly bring up her hoof and fill my mouth with it.

"I said no spoilers!" Her outright angry face finally shut me up.

Upon seeing me yielding, she eased up the pressure of her hoof a little, though kept it in my mouth. It was amazing how I could hardly taste anything on it, and how ponies kept their hooves so clean.

"How am I alive? I'm guessing we picked you up at a point where I had already died. To answer your question: This me hasn't died, yet. I still have to do a few things before I get dropped of by the Doctor to..."

Her eyes watered a little and she turned away. "To go back to die."

She returned to look at me. "The version of me you saw after I went into the Doctor's blue box was... or will be?... Whatever the grammar, it was a future version of me that this me hasn't caught up with yet that left the blue box. From what the Doctor says, we will be meeting up with a past version of his blue box and I'll be making a quick dash between them, then be hidden in a back room until my past self comes onboard."

She then pulled the hoof out of my mouth, but kept it hovering nearby.

"So, no spoilers about what happens to me after I get back, alright? I don't want to know what happens until it does. I know too much already just getting the necessary bits. Any more could risk changing the timeline by accident."

She finally put her hoof down and looked past me. "Isn't that right-"

I followed her gaze and saw Time Turner as she used words from her ancient language. "-Time Guardian?"

Time Turner scratched his head as he leaned onto a grate next to what I assumed was the controls. "Ehh... You're being a little on the paranoid side. Although Time can be re-written, it can't be re written that easily. There's all kinds of hurtles one has to overcome above and beyond simply traveling through time."

He then shrugged. "But I wouldn't mind an extra safeguard. So if that's your style, knock yourself out. I've had many 'no spoilers' companions. Some of which were quite dear to me for the very parts of them that made them want to say 'no spoilers.'"

He hopped off of the controls and came up to me with a large brass bowl with a charcoal and herbal mixture inside.

"Speaking of companions. We need to re-summon yours. Archimedes told us to destroy his familiar body so he could rejoin his essence within you, allowing us to close the bubble and pick you up."

I looked at what I realized was the materials needed to cast the find familiar spell. Last time it was cast, it was actually cast for me by others to give Archimedes his owl body. I had never actually summoned him myself by casting the spell, though I had studied the spell from the book that was sent with me.

I took the paper from Time Turner and started scanning them, noticing they were a copy of my own notes.

I just about asked, "where did you even get..." When my mind was suddenly focused on something else.

"Oh hell no!" I called out as I hurried through the ritual as fast as feasible.

* * *

About an hour later, Archimedes was summoned back into his owl form.

Before he even finished his first stretch of his feathers, I was yelling at him.

"Why!? You were there with me when she was dying! So why didn't you help me heal her!?"

Archimedes came out of his stretch as fast as possible, feathers fluffing up quite indigently.

"..." I could sense his desire to speak, but not be able to form words. The energy of his message was both the indication that he couldn't form words, as well as why. For the first time since I knew him, he was angry.

No, anger was too weak a word. He was furious with me and was barely keeping his fury from pouring into outright hatred. I actually stumbled from the sudden energy, but stood my ground enough with a kneel and continued eye contact to let him know my question stood.

"Boys!" I could hear Ebony Nexus call out.

Archimedes subdued the flow of his energy through our mental connection, and I looked at her with surprise.

Ebony Nexus calmed herself but gave me a very serious face. "Bunny Angel, or I suppose you call him Archimedes now, wanted to heal me, I'm sure. Before he had to leave he was practically begging me to stay. He may not have said it directly but I could tell with his every tone that came from that machine."

By this point, Archimedes had flown to the machine Time Turner had set up for him and was getting hooked up again.

"He even told me that if I only gave him a single indication I wished it to not happen, he would send the timeline to 'Avernus' for my sake. I think that was his old world's version of Tatarus."

At this point, Ebony Nexus had picked up my hand and placed it to her heart. It was rapid for a pony's. It was even faster than what a human's should be.

"I won't deny, I'm scared. I am deathly scared of what will happen to me. But I will face that fate head on. I am a servant of the Animus Mundi of Equis. The future of Equis that I saw in your memories is a better future than I could ever hope to fight for normally. If my premature death guarantees that future comes to pass..."

She looked me dead in the eyes with a well of inner strength I had only seen once before. A pony I had grown close to once showed me that well of inner strength in her eyes, fighting for me. It was so intense that, like a stray puppy on death's door getting saved and nursed back to health, I had fallen in love with her spirit. Now I saw a kindred spirit to her in Ebony Nexus.

Ebony Nexus spoke each of her next words slowly and clearly.

"So! Be! It!"

Silence passed for a little bit as I absorbed her words. Eventually, I nodded, though my anger had only simmered.

"I... I think I get it. Your dedication. This can't be easy for either of you."

I heard Archimedes's voice coming from the machine he was hooked up to.

"No, Moss. You don't." The vinegar in his voice was not lost in translation from thought to auditory. "I have had to experience her dying three times now. Once as Bunny Angel, again when she left the Doctor's TARDIS to return to the resistance, and just a moment ago quite painfully when I heard you calling out to me for help."

Though normally silent as an owl, he cawed out mournfully. "And I will have to experience her dying yet again when we drop her off with the past version of this ship and I see her face for the last time."

He shook in contempt as Ebony Nexus came to his side. "I have had to bite my tongue on this since I discovered it was you that was going to be sent to Equis to save it from the second rift war. The moment I saw your face, I knew I was going to have to experience this time loop along side you, and had to endure that knowledge for our entire time together. So no. You don't get it. You just think you get it."

Ebony Nexus petted his head with her wing, calming his storm.

"I don't bear you any ill, Moss, and I know Bunny Angel doesn't want to hold a grudge against you either, but this isn't easy for him to hold his emotion in check now that the mission is almost done."

She left his side and started back towards me.

"Do not get me wrong. I have no doubt Bunny Angel has the strength to finish the mission and let the time loop close, but my concern is for what happens after that. When Bunny Angel had a disagreement in the past, he could hold off for the immediate task, or distance himself from them when the task was done. But with the two of you, that's not an option."

She had pointed at the brass bowl on the floor and then at my heart. I knew what she meant. We were bonded.

"I want to make sure you two can still get along after I'm out of the picture and the mission is over. I want to make sure that when you go back to the future past the point of the time loop, your friendship doesn't break because of what has to happen to me. I think the Doctor and I have a solution that will let you see Bunny Angel's point of view better, but it will be very..."

She shook her head, gave a huff and looked back to me. "The Doctor has only agreed to do it if you agree too. I can't give you details before you decide beyond it will be very, very painful for you, personally."

I sat down and thought about it with a more logical mind for a few minutes.

Ultimately, I looked at them and said, "I'm still not fond of being plucked from my home world, but I have come to experience so much joy and wholesomeness on Equis, that I don't think I'd trade it, literally, for the world. Fluttershy, Cries when Slaying and her family, Keen Wit, Scraps, that bundle of joy Hope, heck, I've even grown fond of little Tempest McBitchface. None of them would exist without the sacrifice you two are making."

I finally stood up and kept a firm grip on the railing next to the door they never bothered moving me from. "If I am to ever call myself a man of honor, or even just say I'm grateful with a straight face... Yea. I think I owe you this much. As long as I'm the only one getting hurt, lets do it."

* * *

It took a little coaxing, but they managed to get me to stay away from the door while the blue box... "traveled."

When the noise of the blue box settled again, every creature stayed away from the door at Time Turner's request as he ventured outside.

"So where..." I started to ask, then corrected myself, "So where and/or when are we?"

Ebony Nexus looked at me, "We're in your past, a point in time that you've already lived through. I can't determine the exact time, as that was left to the Doctor. I think your past self would currently be somewhere between when you released from prison for the first time, and a decent time before you were imprisoned again. As for where, we are in the Fey lands within the Everfree Forest. There is a soul here you need to speak with."

I looked at her in worry. "I thought you knew I'm not supposed to be here! I've been banished under penalty of death!"

She shook her head. "Not yet you haven't. Time travel, remember? And even so, you won't be leaving the blue box. They will be coming here. Just sit tight for a little bit."

Soon enough, Time Turner returned, calling out, "I hit a bit of a snag. He won't come in the box until he has a reason to trust us. I have it under control, though. We just have to talk to one more soul than expected."

Upon hearing the door close, we came back out of hiding to see Time Turner walking with a satyr. The satyr was old, crippled in one leg, and leaning heavily on his staff and Time Turner's withers.

"I was wondering..." The old satyr started to call out before his eyes fell on Ebony Nexus. "By the ways of the World Mother! It's you!"

Ebony Nexus's jaw dropped for a moment as she just stared at the satyr I didn't recognize.

He looked around worriedly for a moment, then gathered his strength and did his best to only lean on his staff, not Time Turner. "Do not worry, council mare. I still remember what you whispered to me when you came back from the blue box. I will not speak of the details of your death. Though I didn't really understand the request back then, I've had a while to think about what you meant."

He then looked at me, fiddling with what was left of his own hairline. "Although I'll admit I couldn't quite put the last pieces together until I saw a much younger version of the Beast-kin fall from the sky a few months back."

And so the two chatted for several minutes in the old tongue. While they did so, I could see both were a little reserved, dancing around certain subjects they were wise enough to not reveal details of. Eventually I came to realize that the satyr before me was the boy I had saved in the past with my last potion. Extrapolating from the explanations he gave Ebony Nexus, I figured out that the mangled leg had not ever healed right after my potion got the critical wounds stabilized.

As they were winding down, the satyr asked, "Would it be inappropriate to tell you my current title, council mare?"

She smiled and nodded. "By all means, old friend. You kept your promises. I think the least I can do to thank you is let you brag a little. I think I can manage that much on spoilers."

He blushed and shut his eyes for a moment before he looked at her again. "It's not the most prestigious title, but I'm known as Father Gatekeeper now. There's another member of the village council that would remember you. Mother Webweaver is a little preoccupied in keeping our village's web in working order but would likely be happy to hear of you. Would you like me to give her your regards?"

A crystalline tear went down Ebony Nexus's cheek. "No. From what I understand of current events from the Beast-kin's memories, she must not be distracted from her tasks. Please keep her and all others outside ignorant of my presence."

He was about to leave, when I called out. Pressing my amulet, I remembered I had no charges with the songs I had stored.

I shifted my lungs and spoke slowly in Equestrian so as to make sure I didn't stutter.

"You are a member of the village council. I recall an event in the near future where the council acts against me for an offense I give by accident. Don't fight that call. The punishment against me needs to happen."

Father Gatekeeper looked at me odd, but looked back at Ebony Nexus, nodded and left with Time Turner to lean on as the rest of us went to hide again. My heart felt heavy as I hid, because I was starting to more accurately piece together when we were, and who they actually wanted me to talk to.

When Time Turner came back, the doors closed and he called out, "Alright, I have the correct one this time. Come on out."

As I stepped out from hiding, I called out the one line of Tribal Griffish I knew. The only line that stuck with me in my times in the griffin lands, despite the bonds I formed there.

"Speaks with Talons."

There before me was a surprised griffin, staring at me with the sheen of his black raven feathers exactly as I remembered them.

"How do you know my name? Wait..." he called out, my amulet translating the Tribal Griffish as he got a good look at me.

"Beast-kin? You know my tongue? That's impossible. You do not even know the pony tongue, and why do you look so much older? What trickery is this?"

Predictably, he got into a defensive stance, backing for the door.

Shifting to Equestrian, I chose my words carefully. "I have lost count of how many things I wished to tell you since I saw you last." I had to hold back the urge to address him as battle brother, because I knew I hadn't earned the title in his point of view. Holding back the tears, however, was impossible.

I looked over to Ebony Nexus, sitting back holding Archimedes in both her hooves and wings, watching in respective silence.

"You fucking bastards," I softly called to them as I dropped to my knees.

'I can't tell him anything, and they know it.' I thought as my breath became hard to fight for in the sobbing.

"But I cannot. I cannot even..." I called back to the griffin. I was losing my ability to speak, given the added burden of speaking in Equistrian was compounding with my sobbing. "I cannot even say why I cannot."

Speaks with Talons had his own part to play in history. If I informed him of any of it, it might not play out right. He played multiple key parts in capturing and neutralizing the most twisted soul of my homeland that had ever been allowed on Equis. My isekai counterpart, Dalock. If the events that lead to his final defeat were undone, then both rift wars may as well have been for nothing. Dalock was so powerful and sick, there is no way the Speaks with Talons I knew would ever want to even risk that.

I tried walking to him while on my knees, but I faltered and was on my hands, sobbing my eyes out at seeing my best friend, alive and well, albeit only through a very, very temporary loophole.

I turned my head, having to collapse one of my arms down in the process and looked at the two ancient lovers.

Archimedes was watching rather coldly, yet Ebony Nexus had her eyes closed. Suddenly, I had an idea.

I put my face to the floor and muttered to myself, "No spoilers, and no regrets." and steeled myself for this next step.

I fought to get myself sat back up on my knees, then fought another battle to get my breathing under enough control to speak Equestrian again. All the while, Speaks with Talons eyes were darting every witch way, dis-trustingly.

Finally, the words came. "I know of the code of the griffin tribes. The most sacred secrets of the tribes' shamans are rarely shared even to the tribe and must never be revealed to outsiders. I do not know those secrets, for I am an outsider, but I know of the importance of the secrets staying secret. I also know you know how important those secrets are as well."

I took a few breaths to get the strength I lost saying those words in Equestrian back before wiping my face.

"I will now reveal a secret close to you, an entrusted hidden shame held to almost as high a sacredness to prove that this older version of me knows you well and is trusted by the tribe. After that, I will tell you a secret that you must never reveal to any creature after leaving this blue box, not even my younger self. A secret you must take to your grave, but a secret you must be told if my soul is to have any chance of finding rest."

He gave me a glare. If I didn't know him, I would have faltered under that glare. But I knew it was not in malice. He was trying to be cold and scary on purpose, to try to see if I would flinch, or show any other sign of lying.

Instead, I just took a deep breath and held it, then let it out to calm my tears further.

"Your full blooded sister, Cries when Slaying, has a wife, Silent Mercy. They are each other's beloved. Griffins can only have one beloved but, as they are both female, they could not conceive a child on their own. This is when your sister, Cries when Slaying, asked you to help much in the way of a widow asking the blood sibling of a fallen spouse. When you bred with Silent Mercy at the request of your sister, you were lost in the excitement and professed your romantic love for her without thinking."

I took a brief pause to breathe and let him absorb this. "Knowing she was married, you begged for forgiveness of such a claim. However, you would not take the claim back, for it was true. Silent Mercy was your sole griffin beloved. But such a declaration is basically the request of marriage for griffins. Seeing the rift this could cause in the tribes, as an apprentice of the high shaman can only take wives after being declared the new high shaman, both Silent Mercy and Cries when Slaying swore to never reveal the secret to any that could not be trusted like family."

At this point, Speaks with Talons' eyes were darting around and back to me rapidly. This wasn't in aggression as it might have seemed to any that didn't know him, but rather confusion.

After a moment, his mind seemed to settle, though I could tell he wasn't convinced.

"You had another secret. If you are going to speak it, speak! Speak or I will leave now!"

I sorely wanted to embrace him, but he was in no mood for it, so all I could do was quell the shivering in my own arms as my breath became difficult again.

"If you remember anything of this more aged version of me, remember this. I love you..."

My words died in my mouth as my sense of responsibility held back the last words. Seeing as my talking had stopped, he shook off my words and turned to Time Turner to let him out the door. The regret immediately surged back as I gave one last bout of thinking, boiling the last part down from the whole bit, to the one word I just had to get out.

"...Brother."

Speaks with Talons barely hesitated at that word, giving me the briefest of glances before turning his demanding glare back to Time Turner.

With this, I attempted to stand back up, only to fall over backwards and have Ebony Nexus grab the back of my shirt in her teeth, helping me drag myself back into the hiding spot.

Speaks with Talons was let out and I was biting a wadded up part of my shirt, quietly crying my eyes out like a baby while under cover. My mind couldn't help but wander back to the time that raw energy from Archimedes had floored me back in the rebels' cave. It felt so similar.

After about an hour of blue box time, and another timey wimey jump to get out of the Fey territory in the forest.

"OK. Now I get it." I shook my head, remembering Archimedes's species of celestial were extremely emotional, even if they had far better control over them. "Or at least I get it enough to hold a candle to it."

Archimedes paused for a moment, then nodded with satisfaction at my first words since we had left. I had been doing little more than breathing deeply and going through the motions of getting a tea table set up with Ebony Nexus.

Time Turner brought out a few different tea leaves I recognized from Keen Wit's mom's recipes. As Ebony Nexus pored the hot water from the kettle, Time Turner brought forth the type of tea leaf that would help calm ponies worries and held them above my cup's leaf trap.

"I know they aren't your regular tea, but it should help with your nerves."

He didn't put them in, but rather held them questioningly.

I thought for a moment, then nodded. "As strong as you dare. I probably need it."

He released the leaves from his hoof's grip, letting them slide then fall like bits of paper that had lost the static holding them up. He then grabbed a few more and maxed out the trap.

As I got my tea going, I noticed everyone else, even Archimedes was drinking my usual tea. Though his "cup" was actually a dish with a sweet biscuit on it, waiting for one of the others to poor a little of their tea in it for him to gnaw on instead of drink.

After the tea was all ready and the traps had been set aside, I noticed Ebony Nexus gave a little of her tea to Archimedes's biscuit, but didn't drink any herself. Instead she added some sugar, then let it sit while Time Turner and Archimedes started.

I finished my third sip, choking it down more like a medicine than a beverage as it did seem to be helping. Then I reached forward with both hands. Curling only a few of my fingers I formed ice cubes in her tea, then brought my hand up and shook it as if it were cold, calling out "Hocus," to finish chilling the tea.

Archimedes looked at what I did and turned to me with a sour glare, wires from the machine still just barely staying on his head. "What are you doing, Moss? You just ruined her tea."

Ebony Nexus, on the other hand, was staring in awe at what I had done, but not in disgust.

She took a sip and almost buckled at her knees.

Coming up again, she looked at the cup and called out "Amazing."

Looking back at me, she switched back to English. "Like you, I've never really liked tea. This was the only kind I could down without complaint once the sugar was in. But chilling it has actually made it pleasant for me. Thank you."

I looked at her confused for a second, and spoke without thinking "I thought it w..." before catching myself.

I forced a smile and rethought my words. "I thought you might like it."

With that, the rest of the tea time went well and our spirits gained a much needed uplift, though we all knew what was coming around the corner. None of us really wanted it to end, but we were all eventually full on tea and couldn't think of any more excuses after my nerves were calmed.

Time Turner activated the blue box's ability to travel yet again, meeting up with the past version of the blue box.

Ebony Nexus looked us all in the eyes and said, "I suppose there's only a few things left to do once I depart for the other TARDIS. Send the message to Bunny Angel to hold on, then hop into a back room and wait to be dropped off."

I looked at her funny. "Send a message?"

She nodded her head. "Do you recall the story Archimedes told you about hearing me in his dreams? I'm a dream walker, but do you honestly think I'd be able to send a message after I'm dead? A past Time Turner will be setting me to the right night for me to contact Bunny Angel to set him on his path of meeting you, then he will be picking you up, ready to drop me off for the final time."

Leaning over to Archimedes, she nuzzled his head with her own. "Goodbye my love. Until we meet again in the existence beyond this one."

I felt sadness. I wasn't sure if it was from Archimedes not being able to keep his connection closed, or if it was my own, but I felt sadness.

Archimedes nodded in kind, his words from the machine came out as a melancholic, "Duty calls."

The blue box's doors opened and I saw another blue box with the ocean behind it. Literally behind it, as in the boxes were on their sides, but gravity was still working normally for us while we were inside.

The gap between the boxes wasn't big. She'd have to purposely seek to slip by the other blue box to not fall into it when she jumped.

As the other box's doors opened, I saw Keen Wit's grandma, Sharp Cookie and another Time Turner ready to receive her.

Just as she prepared herself to jump, I stopped Ebony Nexus.

"Hey, this is the last time we will see each other, from my point of view, right?"

She eased up, thought about it, and nodded.

With an uneasy smile, I continued. "I had a question I have to at least ask to be able to say I tried. Just what is your servant name? You guys never told me."

She stopped and stood up proper from her ready position. With a cock of her head, she opened her wing, fully extended it and made an outward arc with it not too dissimilar to a human having their fingers fully extended to where they bend slightly backwards.

She then moved her wing in such a way that I could see the glean of her crystalline form brilliantly reflected in that wing.

She then squatted back down to the ready position and bolted to the door. Before I could react, she had darted between the blue boxes and Time Turner was holding me back, in case I wanted to give chase.

I could then see her turn around and keep Sharp Cookie from closing the doors just yet. She yelled back to me.

"I'm known among the servants as the Crystal Sister!"

With this, the doors to the other blue box closed and they started fading out with that whining noise.

I turned around as the doors closed and Time Turner went to pilot our own blue box.

All of a sudden, it hit me.

"The dainty like grace of a queen..." like professor Rarity.

"Country bumpkin who wasn't afraid of earnest work..." like professor Applejack.

"Most loyal to the cause..." like professor Rainbow Dash.

"Intelligence of a bookworm..." like princess Twilight.

"Morale officer..." Like the eccentric party pony, Pinkie Pie.

"I could have sworn I saw a kindred spirit to Fluttershy..." All of the element bearers.

Another set of memories flashed through my mind as I stumbled into the railing near the door.

"This is what is known as a sage tree. Sometimes they are also called guardian trees ... They are the reincarnations of sages that served the Animus Mundi in the past."

"The Tree of Harmony is only what Equestrians call her. We among the servants call her the Crystal Sister."
I dropped to my knees as I realized just who I had been adventuring with. I looked at Archimedes, my mouth agape and my free hand pointing at him in shock.

"She... She... She... She-"

The machine he was hooked up to finished for me.

"Yes. She reincarnates as the guardian sage tree known as the Tree of Harmony in modern Equestria. I was barely able to contain myself when I found out after coming back to Equis and I couldn't be more proud of her. Sorry for not telling you before. The loop had to play out with you in ignorance."

At this point, he struggled out of the machine, cords popping off unceremoniously and he flew to my arm.

"And, even though she will have changed considerably since her death, I will be only too eager to go to her when we get back, after the loop closes and the risk of changing the timeline ends."

He half bowed, and half nodded. "That is, if my partner will be able to spare me?"

At this point, the blue box had finished its whining. With an opening of the doors, we were back in Keen Wit's and my workshop.

I smiled and gave a light patting of Archimedes's head. "Of course you old goofball. I'll call if it's important enough."

He flew ahead of me as we stepped out. "In the morning. There are legalities I need to cover. She is a national treasure after all."

No sooner had I stepped out of the blue box was I hurtled to the floor for the ump-teenth time that day. I could sense my connection to the Animus Mundi prying itself open from the other side.

I was pulled into that familiar green haze.

I could see images of nations, both pony and other, becoming industrious, polluting and generally not caring about the environment. Over and over again, I saw images of Discord coming in and utterly decimating those nations, while leaving other areas that were living in harmony with the land mostly alone. This scene played several times over in different eras and parts of the world, resetting the technology level several times over.

I saw the descendants of the tabaxi fiddling with items much like my artificery and trying to mimic the flow of shaman magic. Alongside zebra efforts, æther based healers known as the witch doctors were brought into the world. Though not as potent, the scenes showed them doing much good similar to how the servants would do so, often freeing up the servants to focus on other tasks without as much scrutiny.

I also saw the Fey working tirelessly with the land. Multiple villages were founded in secret locations. Each sacrificed to stay hidden and live in harmony with the land, eventually becoming accepted and empowered by the Animus Mundi. It was only murmurs of her old voice that played at this point of the past, but they were murmurs of her gratitude to them.

I saw the descendant of the griffin I saved come to Discord with gathered feathers of different birds, having him help them suppress their eagle heritage and founding the griffin tribes one by one from griffins that no longer wished to live by the eagle ways, adopting the bird features of the six birds they chose with Discord's chaotic magic: Raven, Owl, Toucan, Hawk, Vulture and Parrot.

I also saw Diaree closing each rift, then staying in her cell until called upon again. I could see Bunny Angel and a few others running into the last rift as Diaree closed it behind them and ended the first rift war.

The scene then changed to show me leaving the blue box, then eons later, entering it the same way I left it.

The scene shifted and showed me coming down in a meteor from the previously abandoned rift, struggling in my first days as the Animus Mundi watched me with great interest, not quite sure what to do with me and the imprint of druidic like magic as if granted to me by another Animus Mundi. Upon my feeding of the crows, the motion of the energy around me that that version of me hadn't seen around me in the moment changed and quickly started filling in the pattern, accepting it and empowering it.

After this, the scene came forward to me as I was, sprawled out on my hands and knees, having just come out of the blue box. No power was infused into me, but I heard familiar words.

"Joy from your presence, son of Gaia."

As my senses came back to me, I saw Pinkie Pie and the other Time Turner tending to me. Keen Wit and his grandma, Sharp Cookie, were talking so intensely, they had barely even registered my entrance.

"I have to go now, Keen Wit. But I don't ever want you to say you won't really be a Wonderbolt just because you know you'll be transferred out to the normal air force upon graduation. You are set to be the founder of the iron wings for goodness sake. Even if you will not fly as a Wonderbolt yourself due to the princess wanting to error to the side of caution and the artificial non-pegasus wings being thoroughly tested before being in active Wonderbolt service, you are the first, the prototype. All of their glory will be in part thanks to your sacrifice, much as yours and your father's was thanks to mine. Now stand up and tell me who you are and who you will become."

A teary-eyed Keen Wit stood up and looked his grandmother right in the face. "I am Wonderbolt Cadet Keen Wit. I am the founder of the experimental Iron Wing division of the Wonderbolts. I will be known as the first non pegasus Wonderbolt, Iron Wing number I, W, Zero, Zero, Zero, Zero!"

"Will you have put your all into shooting past even the stars!?" Sharp Cookie did her best to imitate a Wonderbolt drill instructor.

Keen Wit stood to attention and responded. "Yes, Mam!"

She turned to the box and walked towards it. "What will you be forbidden from doing because of this, soldier!?"

"Ever looking back with regret, Mam!"

She stepped inside and readied to close the door. "That is the correct answer! Dismissed soldier!"

With the door closed, the box whined away and I was left with the same crew I had had tea with a few days prior.

"Hey, Keen Wit," I called out as I managed to get to my feet with the help of Pinkie Pie and this version of Time Turner.

He turned to me with a beaming smile and tears. "Yea, partner?"

I looked down at my now vacant shield/glove arm. "A lot has happened. But once you're feeling up to it, I need your help with something."

Author's Note

To Golden_Reflection, you may now post your,
in the chats... again. :rainbowwild:

Ch 13: Back to the Present.

A few days later, at the preparations of Hope's birthday party, we were expecting half the town's children to be there. Her playmates from the park were around her emotional and physical age with her being their equivalent of five or so. Where her playmates ages ended, her classmate's ages started. As such, her younger friends saw her as the smart one, and her older friends found her to be proportionately innocent. The few of her classmates that found her annoyingly childish still didn't treat her bad, due to in part them knowing they would get in trouble for picking on a classmate not even half their size. The rest of the cause was peer pressure from the rest of her class being former playmates of years past and/or being more mature than normal with older siblings in the school of friendship, who were ironically also invited by "professor" Pinkie Pie.

Some wouldn't make it, mostly among the older children and teens that had either little connection to Hope, or had obligations elsewhere, but Pinkie Pie insisted on having supplies ready for them just in case.

Pinkie Pie was the only professor at the school of friendship in attendance, however. Even with several of the local servants of the Animus Mundi attending and Fluttershy being on good terms with them, she had to be elsewhere on a diplomatic mission with the breezie migration in another part of the country due to this years wind currents.

Different ponies had different activities ready. Pinkie Pie had made sure each activity was well made, and some with interesting twists to the normal activity.

The one I had been assigned was no exception. With my shape water spell, I could transform the normal bobbing for apples game into a more immersive challenge, letting the ponies grab from the sides or below, with globules of water floating mid air. At least, that is what I hoped to have with the teens and a few of the older kids. With the younger kids, I'd have to have the water glob just move around in a circle and let the kids try to grab apples when they passed.

That is part of why I had to give a discount to the Apple family for the work Scraps, Keen Wit and I had done for them. A part of the deal for the rush order was access to their greenhouse crop of early spring apples. They weren't the top of the line for the farm, but no other fresh apples existed this time of year outside of the greenhouse Keen Wit and I developed for them as a prototype. But even so, I had to pull some strings with them to get apples in time for Hope's party.

One would think that simply having made the greenhouse for them would have been enough, but apparently it barely got my foot in the door with how in demand the early spring apples were. To get them prioritized for me this year, I had to get the greenhouse roof to come off at the pull of a lever wheel and let the trees enjoy natural spring weather without having to take the roof parts off manually. The Apples said they had spent too much time doing it the year before that the other early spring chores they needed to do at the same time almost suffered, had the students from the School of Friendship not helped.

Applebloom had become quite the negotiator as she blossomed into a proper young adult and took on more and more of Applejack's and Granny Smith's farm chores. Poor old lady had only a few years left at best, even if she did insist she'd out live us all.

My area was also set up for double duty in taking care of emergency boo boos for the kids. While the servants attending could heal, it either took a lot of them sharing the load with their mana style casting or it would drop all but the strongest among them attempting to cast it quickly like spell slot casting. I even had a few salve packs from my alchemy kit in the shop to boost the healing word spell to the power of my clerical casting if I had to. As marvelous as my æther style healing was, it still wasn't quite as potent as my faux cleric or druidic healing. I really didn't want to disturb Archimedes if I could help it and my Animus Mundi spell preparation was tied up with higher level spells.

Speaking of Archimedes, I had finished bringing the last of the baskets of apples and was about to go fetch the water for the barrel style tubs when I saw Archimedes coming down to land.

Letting him land on the arm that was normally for my shield gauntlet was weird, but I managed. Since I couldn't exactly retrieve my other gauntlet from the Fey, my right handed auxiliary was acting as my substitute until I could properly rebuild a new one. As such, the other hand had to act as the perch. It just meant I'd be casting all my spells with my right hand, including my artificer spells that I'd normally cast through my left, and getting my shield reflex to bring up the correct arm was a flip of the coin until then.

"Still conserving your spells, I see." Archimedes called to make small talk.

I nodded. "It's easier to keep the create water spell in reserve to replenish quickly if I have to, or to clear a drowning pony's lungs in an emergency. I still have plenty of time to set up. I'm surprised you are actually still in town. Got some business you need to wrap up before you go?"

Archimedes gave a quiet hoot, expressing his emotion verbally. "While I can't thank you enough for letting me go to her, yes. I do have one last bit of unfinished business lingering in my mind. I don't feel right going to her until I've clarified something with you."

I looked at him odd for a second, then nodded.

"I once said not all words of the ancient tongues translate well to your tongue. Your amulet was able to fill in the gaps rather well during our mission, but back when I spoke to you about her I was meaning something deeper. Ebony Nexus was an amazing healer of her day, but not just with wounds."

He put his beak down as if to tear at my arm, but didn't actually make contact. "There are many words that translate to the word of healing in your tongue. She healed flesh as a servant, medic and potion maker. She also healed minds as a dream walker."

He tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes as if to sleep, then opened them again and turned the side of his head to me, as if listening.

"She also healed bonds between friends and family as a counselor. Each of these types of healing have a different word in the old tongue."

He then turned his head to face me normally, took a breath and prepared himself for the important part.

"But the word Diary used to describe her death was the one that means 'to heal another's heart.' I once said she died healing another, but it wasn't Father Gatekeeper as a child. It was you. She spent her last precious breaths seeking to heal your heart. To preemptively mend it and help let the pain out properly before it broke... Again... And then hopefully set it on the mend when you got back and the time loop closed. The song you sang was so effective that it even helped Diary's heart to start mending again before she died of old age from what Discord tells me. A feat I myself had given up on before you had arrived."

He went down and gnawed at my hand, gently.

"So while you may feel you risk releasing poison with every step you take in this world, don't you ever think you're not worth the effort. If you want to honor her last breath, keep fighting your good fight until your own final breath. If you have the ability to ask if your chapter of the eternal fight is over, then your chapter isn't over. She believed in you, and so I do too."

It was weird. This moment was probably the most at peace I had ever known him to be, with the energy his telepathic communication was giving. It felt nice. Too nice, really. It was like I was almost... Jealous of him? Respectful jealous, but jealous. Normally he felt even more disturbed than myself, but now I was the one in the lead in that department.

It was almost like he could sense it in me, which could have actually been the case because he nodded again and spoke one last time. "In order to get the paperwork done correctly, I have to meet up with Moon Dancer in Canterlot to get it finished. Everypony says she's the best at navigating the magical preservation department's technicalities and I refuse to ask the royalty to help me bypass them just because they are hard. I just wished to say goodbye before I meet up with Sunburst to use his copy of the talking card table he keeps in the capital for me. And do not worry about not coming along for direct translation. I would rather have you here at the party with loved ones. I will make do. Take care, my friend."

A little while later, as I poured the last pale of water into the tubs, I went to start putting a few apples in to practice moving the water with apples, only to see what looked like a worm on one of them.

Considering they were grown in a greenhouse, the chance of parasites were slim, so I inspected closer and quickly thought "Oh no..." while backing up.

"Well, well, well." Discord promptly grew to his usual size and uprooted the top of a water well in his paw that hadn't been there before. He then tossed it into the distance to poof back into non existence, leaving the grass as it was before. "What do we have here?"

His eyes looked me over as he swarmed around me.

"The great rift sealer, Moss, using his basic gear instead of his quality gear? And where, might I ask, is your normal left handed casting shield-glove? Why are you using your right glove today?"

I looked at him with a cold stare. "Why are you beating around the bush? Just ask what you really want to ask."

Discord looked me in the eyes, not in anger but in firmness. With power I had only seen him use twice before, he said, "Answer my question!"

Knowing I didn't have the power to fight him, I didn't even bother. So I just let the magic compel me to respond.

"I lost both the glove and my good gear in a journey to the past, visiting the first rift war."

I stared into his eyes as my view of him in the present day merged with my memories of him in the past. Unsure of what to do at first as he glared at me, I swallowed a lump in my throat.

Slowly he grinned, snapped his talon and I found a tropical resort chair sitting next to the stool I was going to use.

"Oh I've been aching to catch up with you since then. So many things have happened."

Hesitantly, I sat down and chatted with Discord for a time.

Eventually, I had mentioned how I saw him reset civilizations that gave no care about the environment through the Animus Mundi.

"Ah yes. For the longest time I thought it was the Animus Mundi that was to be our common ally, but it wound up being our dear Fluttershy. Nevertheless, having the Animus Mundi see me as a 'net positive' for her health and fulfillment of her will definitely has had its benefits. Keeping her servants off my back being the most basic of them."

I nodded and brought myself to ask. "So, I understand if you don't want to answer but, Diary mentioned something about a weakness involving natives. If I might be so bold, what was it?"

Discord blushed a little and rolled his eyes, then put them back into position with the claws of his talon. "Oh if you must know I suppose I can tell. The princesses already know it anyway. If a native ever gained the ability to wield quintessence, even partial, I would have no significant weight against it. It could potentially hit me as hard as any mortal. Likewise, my magic, depending on the purity of the quintessence and potency of the magic overall, would have a hard time pushing back. In some cases it would barely make a dent. It's one of the reasons Equestria survived my reign a thousand years ago by sealing me away with a still young set of the elements that otherwise would not have had the sheer power to work on me. Fortunately, with Celeastia's leadership, Equestria managed to get itself to live more harmoniously with nature, adverting my wrath besides a little vengeance for being sealed away."

He then looked at me in a low key menacing glare/squint of the eyes.

"But that handycap only works with natives, Moss. So don't get any ideas."

We heard a whining of Time Turner's blue box appearing. Turning to see it nestled in the trees, I looked back at Discord in worry. Instead of him getting up at the sight of the door opening and Time Turner stepping out, he was calm.

"Oh don't worry, my moment of desperation has passed. I'll find a way into that box some day, but I can bide my time now."

I couldn't help but look at him with an uneasy smile as he laughed lightly. "It is funny isn't it? I can do most anything, even out power that old feather brain, Bunny Angel. Yet bringing back the dead and traveling time..." He scratched the back of his neck with his paw for a second. "Well, technically I can astral project into the past, but I can't affect anything while doing so. So 'properly' traveling through time without assistance and bringing back the dead are beyond me. Yet, though it's not why I wanted in originally, I wouldn't mind being able to see Diary one more time. We weren't proper... 'friends' by the end of her life, but I think we could have been if I could speak to her as I am today."

Tentatively, I brought my hand over to his paw and held it supportively. "I can't imagine the pain of being so long lived." I made the point to avoid the word "old."

With this I looked down at a small friendship pendant with Princess Twilight's face half obscured by his talon, normally hidden in his fur.

Following my eyes down to the pendant, he picked it up and gave a slight tearing sniffle. "Yes, the unfortunate side effect of an immortal learning the true meaning of friendship. I'll outlive just about all of them save for perhaps Time Turner. Fluttershy's memory will probably haunt me the most. Thank you for the reprieve from that fate."

He tucked the pendant away and willed the tears in his eyes to go back inside. "But fortunately, like Time Turner, I have a different perspective of time than most. It will hurt. It will hurt eternally once it comes, but I'll survive."

With this, Time Turner had come up and nodded to me. "Nice to see you here, Moss. Are you ready to go, Discord?"

Discord snapped the chair away and popped in beside Time Turner, giving him a wink. "You always somehow know when I'll be available in advance when we book a guys night. What are we doing this time?"

Time Turner turned to the party. "Celebrating Hope's eighth birthday. But don't worry, we'll also have a proper guys night tonight. Just consider this a two for one."

The party went smoothly for a while, and I even managed to chat it up with my old friends from the tribal griffin lands as they took turns doing their own party items with the servants.

When the youngest two of the group were relieved by their aunt to come over, I greeted the elder of the two, the vulture griffiness. "Hail, Brings the Thunder. How do my cousins among the griffin servants fair?"

I already knew from their aunt, Cries when Slaying, but it was polite to speak to each of them as if you were still in the dark at gatherings like this.

The vulture griffiness looked at me with a smile, "It is believed my own power in calling lightning as a mountain walker specialist is roughly equal to the high shaman's now, though my ability to heal is the furthest behind among full servants for my generation..."

She caught herself before she put her head down in shame, she brought it back up. "As we all have our strengths and limitations. As for my junior here, my raven half cousin has earned his name since the last time you visited the tribal lands years ago."

Cries when Slaying had purposely withheld her child's name so he could do the honors himself. With giddy anticipation, I looked at the mostly grown splitting image of my late battle brother, save for the lack of permanent half scowl being replaced with a chipper smile.

The smiling raven griffin bowed in respect and said, "Let me introduce myself properly, Beast-kin. I am the animal specialist servant, Whispers to Wolves, son of Silent Mercy and Cries when Slaying. Although my beast tongue is as universal as any animal specialist's beast tongue is, I still understand wolves the best. I am a little disappointed, though. I had hoped the pony you call Fluttershy was here. I wished to compare the differences in our beast tongues. To think that she learned how without the aid of a spell or the Animus Mundi's guidance is simply amazing."

My mind went to the adventure I had with him as a near-teen/almost not a child anymore "tween" during my last visit, and how I could read the body language of the wolves, understanding they didn't want a fight and managed to avoid one while with him.

I resisted my urge to hug him despite not technically being my battle brother's "son" and only his "spawn"/nephew in the eyes of the tribes. Almost as if she knew what I was struggling with, Brings the Thunder spoke up, breaking my beaming pride of a stare before it got too awkward.

"As for your battle sister, Jumps through Shadows," She nodded to the parrot griffiness playing a flute with the other servants giving music to the festivities. "She's still embarrassed about overusing your wand and breaking it, but at least she has finally stopped seeking a way to repay you and accepted it as a sacrifice on behalf of the village."

I shook my head. "I told her it was bound to break eventually and I was glad that it did the job and helped her protect her end of the village defenses. I had the gut feeling she would have to split up from me that fight and I'm glad I asked her to attune to it in advance."

Brings the Thunder once again showed embarrassment, but from pride rather than shame. "Her talents are split between the shaman arts and the ways of the braves, but her healing studies are proving unparalleled for a quasi servant. She has already overcome the circle healing barrier for quasi servants and can help me in one with most tasks, though she must still rest more often."

With this, Brings the Thunder shook her head. "It will be time soon for the local servants to bring their gift, yes? I hear you coordinated their efforts in this."

I nodded and looked over to the Speaker, Hope's father, doing his best to be cheerful for his daughter.

"Yes, it is soon but there is one last thing I need to do before that happens."

It felt so long ago after my time travel trip, but it wasn't actually all that long. I had been coordinating with others to give Hope her birthday song this year. It was one of the few gifts she cherished above all others save only a handful like her mother's sash and I wanted it to be special, though I suspected it would be overshadowed shortly after by what I hoped her father's would be.

Moving along to Dawn Seeker, Guiding Star's twin brother and my assigned dream walker after Princess Luna wasn't able to be my regular anymore, was sitting down next to Tree Hugger and the Speaker, Hope's dad.

"Look I can't tell you what, but trust me, I prom... Oh hey Moss, you got here just in time!" Dawn Caller called out, "This guy is feeling down on his luck and I think we need to give him the good news, but it's not my place to say it."

I nodded, "And did our insistent new guest singer learn their lines already?"

He shook his head up and down somewhat vigorously, being the cheerful goof he was. "Oh and then some! She picked it up like no-pony's business! I may not have the pipes my sister, Guiding Star, does, but that doesn't mean I don't know music theory!"

I couldn't help but smile at this. "I know, right? if it weren't for your lessons, I wouldn't have been able to record a tenth of my songs I've managed to pull from out of here. Singer, only basic, but teacher? Exquisite!" I said as I lightly tapped my temple with a knuckle.

"My help with sifting through your memories helped too. Getting the notes and words remembered just right."

I nodded, "And not once with having to use Astral Judgement to force it, you skilled bastard."

With Dawn Seeker pleased at my compliment, I looked at Tree Hugger, who answered the question I was about to ask. "Zecora should be getting her and the others in position now. Now that you're here, should we join them?"

"Sounds good, you should come too, Speaker."

The Speaker looked at us and tried to wave us off with a smile. "I know you are trying to cheer me up, but this is a very personal time for me. I barely have the strength to get through it without my daughter noticing. Please, just leave me to my misery for now. Maybe you can tell me of it next month."

I then knelt down and stared him cold in the face. "Let me clarify, I wasn't asking you. I was telling you. Now you can walk over with us and leave Hope over there none the wiser or I can pick you up kicking and screaming and get her worried, but either way you're coming."

Without his staff or other spell casting focus, the speaker had limited ability to fight me, not that he would. But even if he had it his biggest worry was causing Hope to suffer by her two closest parental figures fighting.

"And when whatever secret you have in store for me does nothing?"

"Then I'll leave you to your misery like you asked."

A short walk later, where Zecora and several of the other local and semi local servants were getting together to sing for Hope, the Speaker started to say, "And so where is this..." just as his eyes fell on it.

"Yea... I pulled a few strings and called in a few favors so that I could call in other favors, but I still didn't get it totally clean cut. They said something about some paperwork and headache for you later, but for n-!"

The Speaker had shoved my face away, cutting me off and immediately ran towards the thing he saw.

A few minutes after, the stage was set and the children were seated. Hope was seated in the best spot front and center, being the birthday girl, naturally. When they suggested the high chair, I shook my head and said that anything but a short stepping stool where her hooves could still touch the ground would be a bad idea.

And so the curtains opened and from behind the cardboard hills, Tree Hugger, Zecora, Consolation, a young apprentice yak shaman and Jumps through Shadows came forth singing the Circle of Life from the Lion King, with Dawn Seeker acting as their conductor. Dawn Seeker set down my song modifying music box, the particularly large chunk of sirenite at its core playing out the instruments with a simple spring powered kinetic/æther conversion system. The system was a device just strong enough to power the music box's system designed by Keen Wit when we made it. Anything more would blow the music box's more delicate systems. It was set to power the music just as soon as Dawn Seeker disengaged the latch that kept it paused at the start of the song.

It was a corny play to me, but of all the songs I knew this was the one the servants felt would be most appropriate for me to have them sing for her, being about life and nature. As much as her father wanted to keep her from the village, he also wanted her to still have an interest in the Animus Mundi. The servants were his best way to do that.

The audience was enjoying it quietly, even the more fussy of kids loving the story they adapted from their own teachings about the Animus Mundi, by pulling out props and watching them move around the "circle of life." One or two of them I now recognized as the evolved forms of what Ebony Nexus once showed me back in the past.

And then the guest voice actor started singing, taking over for Zecora from the first half of the song. My amulet translated the ancient servant tongue, being the guest singer's natural language from birth, but nobody else besides the servants heard the words.

And yet, this is when Hope's ears perked up, exactly as I had hoped they would.

Even before the cardboard hills in the back most of the stage parted, she was already at the edge of her seat, breathing heavily.

And then there she was, the guest singer. An adult female satyr, horribly battered and bruised like she had been tortured for years, because she had been, but carrying her scars with so much pride she refused to let me or any servant heal them.

It was barely four more seconds of song after the reveal before Hope leaped out of her seat, jumping headlong onto the stage calling, "Mom!" and promptly tackle-hugging the newcomer like she had known this stranger since forever. Fitting, given that this was the satyr she had imprinted on at birth.

The song was promptly over as Hope grappled her mom as closely to her as she could, positively balling her eyes out.

A colt from the audience was about to boo but I put my hand to his mouth, saying "Hey, it's her party, she can cry if she wants to."

Seeing his job as a conductor was done, Dawn Seeker came up by and picked up on what I was saying, with the Speaker following behind, having just as many tears as his daughter.

With a snicker, Dawn Seeker added his own comment as he put my music box back into his cloak pocket to return later, knowing I would have rather had my hands free than hold it, "And you would cry too if it happened to you." Then looked at me, getting a smile from me for the inside joke from my memories.

As I knelt down to the Speaker, I could hear Hope's balling turn into outright animistic bleating like a sheep or a deer fawn calling out in joyous pain.

"Yes, you managed to get them to let her go, but not without cost. The fact that I will have to change my alias to 'The Banished' as she shall now become 'The Speaker' shall only be the lightest of it. To think they would demand her loyalty to the village by having Name Keeper use her true name against her before they unbound her life force from the village web. We will still never have another night together with how she must always return to the village each night. But I suppose even this compromise is still more mother for Hope than I had ever dared hope before. It also means I'll be less significant to Hope now, with her bonded parent now returned, but I would have had it that way from the start if given the chance. You truly are a creature of many strange ways, Beast-kin."

I just shook it off as we watched Hope start filling an eight year hole of loneliness in the form of tears falling onto the cardboard stage. "Don't mention it. It just cost me a glove and a little dignity. Just be ready to take the credit and get in there you oaf."

At this point I picked him up and carried him over, much to his shock. At first he wasn't sure, thinking this was just their moment, but Hope quickly roped him in, hanging on him almost as tightly.

He looked at me oddly for another moment then, seeing me give him the thumbs up, just joined in on the family hug merrily.

Author's Note

I happened to make a Hero Forge model of the birthday girl and her mom, if anyone wants a better visual of this touching moment. Though do realize I did modernize the sensibility of the clothing since we do have more standards for clothing than Equestria, but for those that want to nitpick that, just consider this "our equivalent" to what would be in that scene.

Bittersweet Embrace

Also, I know it may seem late in the series to be adding another character, but Dawn Seeker isn't new. He's just not well explored or previously named, like Jumps through Shadows, Brings the Thunder or Whispers to Wolves. Kudos to anyone who can figure out the book and chapter any of them were first introduced in.

Ch 14: The Definition of Paladin

After a time, Hope finally stopped making so much noise, but she utterly refused to let go of her mom, snuggling her while the party got to the meal and then birthday cake. One of the unicorn parents even had to levitate the candled cake down to Hope to blow out the candles because she wouldn't let go of her mom. The rest of the cakes on the table were then declared open and the rest of the kids were allowed to dig in as Pinkie and the Cake Twins served the cake. The twins were guests, but given their family's ties to baking, they were patient enough to help out and get their cake last. They weren't exactly desperate for more cake to eat, being bakers. There were a lot of kids even with many not showing up so Pinkie was grateful for the help.

With Hope's mother even kneeling down to feed her daughter so that her daughter didn't have to let go, the clingyness getting slightly cringe but with her mother just as happy and going with it. Meanwhile, Hope's father and Dawn Seeker stepped aside from the festivities, choosing to join me in the more brooding zone of the outskirts of the party.

"Alright, that out of the way, I got business with you, Moss." Dawn Seeker said to me. Turning to face me, he brought forth a small crystal ball like bit of glass, but smaller. "Before she declared she never wanted to see your face again, Princess Luna was entrusted with this for when the time came. It's a message in a bottle that she entrusted to my sister, and then them to me for when I would see your dreams indicate certain events had passed. Those events did pass earlier this week, but you needed to focus on the party. It will make more sense when you listen to it. It's designed to run off the levitation energy of a unicorn, but I think your mage hand cantrip will do the same trick."

With a quick lifting of the small orb in my mage hand via my substitute glove, I found a message playing. I knew it was a message because it was Speaks with Talons, my late battle brother who was shown in the orb.

"I am told this device will allow me to leave a message for you, Beast-kin. I am leaving this message because of..."

I could see him hesitating, choosing his words carefully. "Because I have reason to believe I will pass from this world at some point before you will, and I... get the feeling you will be troubled by my passing. Our bond as battle brothers has not been the most traditional, but from the first time... one of us called the other brother I knew our bond would run deep. I want you to know that if you felt my meeting you causes my death, should it do so, I do not want you to fret. We all have our battles, both of the talon and bow, and of the mind and soul. I have seen you struggle with these, fighting to stay true to yourself. Though we do not serve the same master, I am proud of your struggles I have been able to... witness and have no regrets in being your battle brother.

"If it should come to pass I die in a way that you feel you are to blame, know that I go to that death of my own choosing, dying the same way as I live. You will not be the one that killed me, but the one that made me know what it feels to be alive before my time to die. All will die, and it is a part of life, so I do not fear it. My death happening before yours is no tragedy in my eyes, for I will surely go down fighting, either through defense of my beloved from a talon, or fighting a spiritual fight, I will go out on my own terms. Do not let my death of flesh be the end of your fight of spirit. I wish I could say more, but I do not know what that death will be, nor can I predict when it will come. Simply know I fought to my last breath, and I expect you to do the same for your struggles."

With this he turned to the side. "I believe that's all I can think of, Princess Luna. How do we shut this..." and the orb went dark, the message finished.

Dawn Seeker then came up and said, "Normally these are given shortly after a funeral service, but as you know, Princess Luna saw Speaks with Talon's memories, including... that one time you met him with Time Turner. We had to let those events play out from your-"

I cut him off, bringing Dawn Seeker into a hug as I quietly cried so hard I gave the birthday girl's tears a run for their bits. "Thank you."

The party was just about to end when suddenly all the attendance started hearing a noise in the distance coming closer. Soon enough we realized it was musical troop.

Then we saw several ponies singing as they marched up and around the park singing in unison seemingly random lyrics of "Oooooh! Our passion burns through day and night!"

"Pinkie, I think you over did it with the marching band." I heard Pumpkin Cake call out over the music of the ponies marching.

The mood suddenly shifted as Pinkie was looking anything but happy. With her guard up, she was more akin to a bull ready to charge than her normal self. "I didn't order any marching band and besides, this isn't a marching band."
It was then I realized they all had a piece of sirenite on their necklaces, but before I could act, they finished their music based spell, singing "Oooooh! Our vengeance on Seaquestria starts now!"
Before I could reach them, the entire birthday party was suddenly encased in a magical barrier being maintained by the sirenite users' musical rhythm.

"If all of you will stop screaming!" A voice called out from the edge of the barrier. A lone aquatic looking pony with a notably larger piece of sirenite approached, the only sirenite wielder of this new group inside the barrier around the party.

Not many were too panicked, but none the less she had their attention.

Discord shot out and aimed to defend the party goers, "I don't think so!" darting forward to the aquatic looking mare.

But he never reached her. The aquatic looking mare called out a rhythmic "Oh I do think soooo!" With a magical looking jar, promptly sucking him up in side almost like a genie being shoved into its lamp. "I know your weakness, chaos spirit. I mastered weaving my dedication into my voice centuries ago and even my grandsons can weld enough quintessence into their barrier to keep a creature crippled to its use in check." As she popped the cork onto discord's face, finishing his transference into the bottle, she simply let it dangle to her side. "You're no threat to me, nor is anypony here, save potentially one."

With everypony promptly scared of her, she looked out to the party goers. "Listen up, I'm only after one thing and I don't care how much or how little I have to destroy to get to it. I'm not actually interested in the land. As you can see, I am a pure bred siren, Queen Coral of the sirens in fact, or I would be if I still had a kingdom. Long story short, I don't give two shits about life on land. You can have it. I'd be more than happy to go back under the waves and leave you to your pathetic little lives up here on the land, but there is one thing standing in the way of that."

She paraded around the group, calmly continuing her monologue in sheer confidence, the crowd moving to stay clear of her, even Pinkie Pie.

"A prophecy of a champion that can match my power, even in my domain under water. If I were to take Seaquestria, they would just call upon Equestria for aid, and that champion would arise. Even if I win against them would decimate my kingdom in the battle. I don't want that. So I have painstakingly kept track of the movements of agents that could threaten me up here when I'm out of my element. There aren't many, but some. The Pillars of Light, the elder Alicorn sisters Celestia and Luna, and the fairly recent history of the modern Element Bearers even show potential for a threat if they are all together."

She then looked directly at Pinkie Pie. "Which is why I made sure only one was present and the others would be too far away to join her. Even the spirit of chaos Discord has been neutralized and yes—even the Time Guardian's gadgets. You know who you are and I know you're here, Doctor! I have separated you from your blue vessel and your little sonic device is powerless while inside the sonic field created by my grandsons' barrier. I don't want war or devastation on the surface, I just need one thing and I'll leave your precious ponies in peace, never to see me or my kind above the waves again. Giving me what I want is your most practical move because you have nothing else to pull against me, Time Guardian!"

She had kept marching with a regal prominence. "I will get what I came here for, young ponies. I will eliminate the one prophesied to be able to defeat me before they can enter their prime. I know not what this little foal looks like, but I do know they are present because this party bears their name. You can sacrifice this one and the rest of your nation will live without any more trouble from me. Or you can do it not and many, many more ponies will die trying to defend them. Bring me the one known by 'Hope Bittersweet' and I'll be on my way, never to be heard of again above the waves or I will systematically kill every single living thing inside this barrier one at a time!"

With Hope and her mother and father behind me, I had to fight with every fiber of my being to not shift my posture to guard them, lest I accidentally signal where, and more practically what, Hope was. The Siren believed Hope to be a foal, not a fawn. That was something we needed to keep secret for as long as we could.

"No volunteers to squeal and save themselves then?" The Siren Queen rolled her eyes. "I was told ponies and creatures that live among them were known for their loyalty. Oh well. Time to just do it the old fashioned way. But by all means, fight if you think you can. Bring a champion so I can crush them beneath my song. Maybe then you'll have wizened up. If not, I can just keep killing one at a time until none are left. I've trained my grandson's well. Their barrier will easily last all day."

"Don't do it! Don't challenge her, anypony!" Time Turner called out to the crowd. "I know of Siren magic! She'll only grow stronger with each challenger she defeats! We can only beat her if we give her our best chance right out the gate!"

The Queen Siren looked at Time Turner, here eyes squinting in recognition of who he actually was. "Oh, there you are. And yes, by all means, bring me your best shot and let me crush them! Might save us some time if I just get that out of the way, knowing I'll only get stronger while your options only get weaker. No normal mage can match a master user of sirenite. None of you have the sheer power to match it save the united efforts of the element bearers and the rest of them aren't here. Not even that imitation of a siren fish monkey that uses our signature crystal to perform his poultry imitation of song-craft can match the potency my sheer royal righteousness!"

She was pulsing with her song-craft's power while looking directly at me and my adapted necklace of Equine Tongue as she said this. Her sheer self-convicted belief that she had some royal right to do what she was doing was fueling her quintessence, like an impure quintessence user akin to the paladins in DnD. Or like the native quintessence users known as the element bearers... but with the self serving negative emotions of her royal self righteousness instead of harmony driven ones.

In short, an absolute queen bitch with nobody able to challenge her sheer magical potency present or in range to get there in time.

"Think. Think, think think!" Time Turner said as he was looking at everybody, seeing what they had. He went to several before sifting through Dawn Seeker's cloak pockets, finding my large music box device. "Wait... This couldn't be..." he said. Prodding the large crystal within with a stick. "But it certainly looks like... But how... unless..." He looked at the augmentations I did to my amulet that let it play music. Of course! The music box as a delicate read-write style can't, but the amulet as read only can! Oh I'm very good!"

He got out a notepad and quickly jotted down a note. "Just reminding myself to do something later so we can do this now. Moss, You can pay me back later for this little power boost but-"

I cut him off. "Ummm what are you talking about, you owe me big from earlier this week. Don't you remember? There were two of you for a brief time too."

He looked up as if remembering, then gave a seemingly fake "Ah yes I remember, with the... thing right!? Just one more note for later real quick." he wrote down an item on a pad where I could swear I saw the words "Have Moss help earlier in week of-" in Equestrian then flipped it closed before I could confirm the odd message.

"Alright, don't have much more time to explain, Moss. This crystal in your music box is a powerful artifact, like we shouldn't have it powerful, but it is also filled with your energy from the last... how many years have you had it?"

I just stared at him blankly. "A little over five years. You gave it to me as a hearthswarming gift saying Keen Wit and I could make a much smaller music creation box out of it. Why don't you remember this?"

Ignoring my question, he continued. "If we can just get it out of here and into his amulet that can draw out energy, then disengage the flow regulator, Moss will have quite the supercharge of magic harmonized to his emotional feelings stored in the crystal. He'll be able to fight her on even ground despite his relative inexperience. Only she's used to fighting smaller opponents, while Moss is used to being the underdog, so he may even have a slight advantage. It's the only shot we have. Otherwise little Hope dies and likely all of us with her."

He was wrestling with the music box, trying to get the crystal out. "Blast! It's welded. Why'd you have to go and weld the thing!?"

The Speaker shook his head and grabbed the music box, "You need the crystal out, unharmed, yes?" He turned to Time Turner, whom gave him a nod. He then jumped up to my chest, landing as soft as he could and grabbed my mistletoe, speaking his spell/prayer to the Animus Mundi in the ancient servant language while holding the music box out in the other. "Surrogate Mother, I beg, help the Beast-kin protect Hope."

As he finished, I heard the spell bring forth several vines. The vines struggled under the aura, their magic quickly fading against the pressure caused by the siren queen, but they managed to break the weld of one of the pillars that held the box's crystal secure before withering. With the opening, the crystal fell out and Time Turner caught it. The Speaker then looked at me in the eyes and said. "I don't care about our differences or the song you stored in that crystal, Beast-kin. Do what you have to do, but above all else: Save. My. daughter." in the servant language to keep the siren queen from hearing it.

As the Speaker hopped off, Time Turner said. "Look, I have to disassemble your amulet, so you're going to lose translation when I do. Just run the song you've been practicing at full power and imagine it fighting her song! It's a literal battle of the bands situation. You have to put more feeling into your song than she does hers, or she wins. Got it?"

As Time Turner worked my amulet's crystal loose and fit the larger one in, the siren queen saw us. In raw Equestrian, I heard her, "So you're going with the would be imitation of a siren fish monkey after all? I've heard of his exploits and he's a total pushover, sappy soft and never angry, never joyous. How could that thing ever have the emotions to deal with me? This will be too easy. Once he's defeated, you'll either bring forth Hope Bittersweet or I'll just stop wasting time and kill all of you, knowing Hope Bittersweet is among you."

"Good luck Moss, she means it." Time Turner said in his universal tongue, easily translating to English via devices of his I still had yet to discover. "She doesn't have the power to kill us all guaranteed yet or she would have already. But after fighting a champion, she'll have that last boost she needs if she wins. Bitter on the tongue as it may be, you're our last hope. Knock her out!" He passed me the amulet with the large gem crudely fitted into it.

As I approached Queen Coral, she smugly took her place several yards back from me, set for a duel. "Let us see what you have. It will not be a worthy challenge to my royal fury, but I'll respect the right of champion none the less. It will fuel my power all the same when I win."

I took my place and saw Hope and her parents huddling together in my peripheral. I dare not look at them lest it alert her to her intended target. But I could see they were cheering me on with the rest of the party goers.

I slowly used my controls on my amulet, adapting it to the larger library in the larger crystal to find the one song I felt had a chance against her. The song I had never intended on sharing. The song I had poured five years of grief and guilt into, hoping Time Turner was right about this crystal being some kind of artifact that could store it. With it selected, I had my spell slot ready to cast it, and looked at her.

"You wield your righteous royal indignation in your song?" I said in raw Equestrian to her. "Well lets see how your royal indignation sizes up against the energy of-" I disabled the flow regulator, knowing this was surely going to hurt, poured in my largest spell slot and pressed play, "-My crowning sin!"

CH 1: Seven Years Gone So Fast (Exposition of)

Author's Note

This is not exactly the same as MGiE. It will draw from it, but it will be different. It will have that "This sequel is not like the original" taste, and I can't help that. The original is finished. Reread it if you want. This is a separate, though canonically connected, story.

This story is decently inspired by notes I had originally considered cannon as I developed backstory for the main story. While I was taxed as I finished it, I also realized there was enough to weave another small tale, with a bit more effort. This story has served it's purpose to help me have a more productive stress relief outlet for my overactive mind than video games as I worked on other things in real life. I hope you enjoy.

CH 1: Seven Years Gone So Fast (Exposition of)

The night still echoed through my mind. The night I performed that forbidden spell. It changed the course of history. I couldn't deny that it had a silver lining of good results, but it was still wrong. I could feel in my heart of hearts it was something I would have to answer for on the day of my judgement. Until then, I did what I could and bore my shame with as much dignity I could muster. Never forgetting, but moving forward as the world moved forward.

Moving forward. That's what each gear of the music box did as I carefully tweaked the magical item in front of me. It held the many songs I had managed to piece together from my home world. I could carry a small number in my upgraded amulet for a party or get together, but the bulk of them had to be in the box, as it had a much larger and higher quality version of the crystal that made the core of my amulet.

I put only so much effort into most songs, as the instruments were often secondary to the words, which I always had to sing aloud live at the time. Ultimately the device was nothing more than a fancy karaoke machine with a bit of translation magic put in via it's compatibility with my amulet. But it was a music box that stored my therapy projects. It was more of a treasure chest than a trinket, to me.

When I sang, it was the only time ponies could hear me and not look down on me for my lack of speech. If I could prepare a song right, I could convey a story that moved them. Many had to be altered, but I hoped to share what wisdom I could through the hobby. It had become a bit of a pattern that each song I finished caused Pinkie to review it with me and set it as part of one of her parties where it would resonate with the guests. She even called it her "invite Moss fuss free and make sure he actually came to the party pass." Literally her words, not mine. She even recently set me up to sing at the birthday party of a child who was practically my adopted niece in all but formality later in the week.

As I set my tools down back in place and started putting the music box back from modification mode to normal play to store it, I couldn't help but smile. She practically adored me, and her father had gone from hating my guts to having a begrudged near indifference when I risked my life to save his, and in turn hers, when she wasn't even a year old.

Turning the screwdriver to re-lock the mechanism's secret compartment, I heard a voice behind me, my amulet translating automatically.

"Is that a good stopping point then, Moss?"

I quickly put the box away and made a carefully measured turn to see my business partner.

Pressing my amulet to make sure I didn't miss anything when I spoke, I gave a subtle glare and stood up straight. Carefully, I moved my lips and shifted the flex of my lungs to speak the tones of raw Equestrian despite my amulet being active.

"I have asked you never to disturb me when I am working on my songs, Keen Wit."

"Unless it's an emergency," He coyly smiled. "And we both know it only applies to that song you keep to yourself. I can hardly believe you've spent years fine tuning it. In the five years I've known you, it usually takes you maybe two months at most to get one in working order. When will we hear the words? Even the notes sound beautiful when I overhear them."

"In all likelihood? Never. That song is a private one. But as for the quality, I owe it all to my music tutor. It is nice to know some of it has even carried over to my speech."

He gave a begrudged nod and agreed, "Some, yes. You still sound like a child when you're not singing, just an average one now."

While he gave me the imperfect compliment, I shook off the possible insult, knowing the young stallion didn't mean any harm. We had learned to be open with each other on a level that would otherwise be obscenely rude. He was the co owner of the artificer shop. We had opened together two years ago when he officially turned from colt to stallion at the age of seventeen and was old enough to do so. With both of us being very logically minded, we clicked right away, and quickly grew to trust each other with our unguarded thoughts, eventually leading to the shop. Anybody else hearing even part of that song would have had me in quite the mood, but he understood how far to push and never stepped over the line. We respected those few things we still wanted to be private.

In the end, he was just showing concern about me being so closed off most the time. With the way he handled it with such finesse and understanding, it was like the spry, outgoing, sharp minded and level headed stallion had been the one closed off from others at some point.

I looked over at the clock in the front of the shop. I grabbed my material pouch and my mobile tool kit from their safe spot near the back area door and fastened them to my hip, then waved my hand over the dirty parts of my outfit, calling, "Nikto." a few times to clean up the grit of the workshop.

"Is it time already? lets go. We do not want to be late."

As we went out and were about to lock up, Keen Wit levitated his dad's old hat off the spot where it normally sat and put it on his head, just behind his horn. All I knew about it was that it was special to him, and he only wore it for special occasions anymore.

I heard the filly I was working on call out, "I'm telling you, Kerfuffle doesn't know what she is missing. These guys' shop is on another level."

With a few adjustments done, I tightened down the settings on her artificial foreleg and injected replacement oil into the innards to accommodate for the new level needed on the new setting.

"Give it a shot and see how it works. I have enough oil on me to adjust it one more time for you if we need, but after that you will need to get it into the shop for Keen Wit to fine tune it properly. You need to stop putting off your appointments. I can not tune it to your growth as well as Keen Wit can. Nikto."

With that last magic word, the excess oil was cleaned off the prosthetic leg and the area around the sock on what remained of her real leg looked like it had been freshly washed.

The filly who had previously been leaning to the side of her amputated leg put her prosthetic limb under her and found herself far better balanced. She then ran off, content with her restored ability to prance and play.

Her father came up from working on the replacement bird houses he was working on with others in the animal care department and a few volunteers. He gave a knowing smile and a nod in thanks, having been near enough to listen in.

"She doesn't understand that quality prosthetics are expensive. We got lucky with you guys agreeing to use her as a field tester on just the price the insurance would pay for a prosthetic after the accident. But you and my boss's boy really are something else with your builds."

I shook my head and pressed my amulet, my lungs getting tired of the strain to speak Equestrian with the correct flex, though my lungs were getting stronger on shifting the flex with exercise.

"Keen Wit's the better artificer, just less mobile with his upkeep equipment. I'm more of a second in command of the shop due to the time he has to take out for his military training and helping his dad. Skill wise, I'm practically his apprentice rather than his partner. On top of that, I've just about reached my limit on how much more skill I can gain on the subject. Keen Wit still has lots more potential. It was Keen Wit that taught me his 'flash of genus' æther technique that let me get your daughter's prosthetic adjusted right and I barely pull it off. Scraps can use it twice as well and twice as often as I can, and Keen Wit wouldn't have even needed to use it as prosthetics are what he specializes in."

I could see in his face he only half believed me, thinking I just wanted to be humble, but he just shook his head with a small laugh and gave me a smile in response.

Seeing my relative exhaustion after a morning's work at the shop and giving the tune up at the get together, he moved to let me be alone and bid me a last bit of gratitude.

"I also need to make sure she knows to keep it clean at the sock. My tomboy daughter won't always have you around to prevent infections from her prosthetic. Thanks again."

I could only shake my head. "'Flash of genius.' What a silly name. He just didn't want to admit he reverse engineered my portent trick to make it. At least he shared it with me, though."

Finally able to be by myself again, I sat down, leaning back against the trunk of a tree. I needed to meditate soon, but I also needed to check my surroundings first.

I looked over to the pick nick area with the ponies preparing for their pick nick with the school of Friendship students. A lot of them were unrelated, mostly coming together due to their ties with Keen Wit's dad being their boss. It wasn't out of obligation, however. Wayside's departments were like family to him and Keen Wit. He worked them like dogs at times, sure, but he and Keen Wit also did what they could to take care of them.

I would normally politely decline Keen Wit's invitation if I felt I could get away with it, but one of the guests of honor today was a soul I had known for a long time and still worked with.

I started screening the area for him but was quickly interrupted when I saw a ball coming at me fast.

I reflexively activated the glove Keen Wit helped me make, raising it to meet the ball. The mobile micro energy barrier, fixated to my glove's orientation, successfully blocked the ball and deflected it up into the tree, distributing the force along my arm instead of at a point of impact.

As the filly from before and a few colts came up apologetically, I spent a few seconds to deactivate the shield glove again.

"We're so sorry Mr Moss. We didn't mean to lose control of the ball."

I gave a gesture of gently shaking my head after getting back up then gave them a smile and a courteous nod. With the apology accepted, we all looked up into the tree, seeing the ball lodged in the branches.

The unicorn colt shook his head. "There's no way my horn can reach that far. I can barely float stuff right next to me. Even adults would have a hard time grabbing it that far up. Lev-ee-tat-on has its limits."

The young pegasus opened his wings, still learning to fly. "Maybe my mom can get it?"

"She's on the other side of the park," I heard the filly call out, "That will take forever. Unless..."

She looked at me in hope, with the colts following her lead only a moment later.

"Is Mr Archimedes with you today, Mr Moss?"

I shook my head and tested my voice.

"He won't be..."

I sighed at the tilt their heads made, indicating my amulet's effect had expired. I flexed my lungs and spoke raw Equestrian, hoping the conversation would not take long.

"He sent word he will not be here for about another hour at least."

They looked sad at my answer, but I called out to them as they turned away. "But if you will wait, I will see what I can do. It might be in range for me."

I looked down at my glove again. Over the years I had expanded my knowledge of æther from when they unlocked my ability as a wizard style spell caster. I then used that to study the witch doctors I met in my travels after the events that left me as the sole humanoid left on Equis, with an emphasis on their use of items to cast magic through.

After a year or two, I reverse engineered this into my own technique of artificery. Learning to infuse some of my own energy into items or substances to coax out properties that were already there just under the surface, but with a little push in the right directions from æther to get them going. This was what the patterns woven into the innards of the glove were for, though it had a secondary benefit. Having the underlying matrix built in, it wasn't just my shield, but it doubled as my primary spellcasting focus for my artificer spells when in the field.

The tools I used in the shop were a bit too clunky to carry around and my tinkerer's kit I used for general maintenance at my side were too flimsy and wouldn't last if I used them for this. The only weakness of these new spells were that they had to be cast through a tool or an imbued item the caster was familiar with the use of. There were a few simpler tricks that didn't count as spells, but all artificer magic that reached the level of a proper spell had to have this, even if a more expensive component was also needed.

With a quick grasping and release of my hand and the slightest push of a cantrip's level of magic power out of my palm, the patterns in the glove responded and focused the energies as needed alongside the command word "Tenere."

What resulted was a glow of aura similar to their unicorn levitation fields, but manifested into a shape similar to my hand rather than a glob that outlined what they held. Their eyes practically glowed alongside it, though with anticipation, not actual light.

I felt a small tinge of pride as I willed the mage hand up with the power that was entirely of my own study, not something isekai-ed into me from the start of my adventure in this world. Keen Wit not only quickly picked up on it but also outclassed me, and our one non-owner employee at the store knew how to mimic how I adapted the witch doctor techniques, but I was the one that put it together.

Unlike my wizardry that I learned in the time of a week from a cheat sheet of a spellbook given to me, the others learned this magic from me. It wasn't something I had to call upon another entity for like with my faux-cleric magic through Archimedes or the druid magic through the Animus Mundi. It was more like a solder learning a weapon maneuver. It wasn't unique and I had a little help from Keen Wit to refine it, but once I learned it it was mine. My knowledge. Not some spirit of the world holding my hand, not me asking permission from Archimedes, not just the following of a recipe from a spellbook I didn't write. Me.

The ball was a few inches out of range, but the branch it was stuck on wasn't. I jiggled a little further down and got the ball to slip onto another branch. My mage hand then picked it up and floated it down to me.

I held onto it tight with my actual hands as the unicorn colt tried to grab it from me.

"I will only do this once today. If you get it stuck again, then you have to figure it out. Also, my levitation can not hold one of you up if you fall, so don't try climbing to get it, either. Keep that in mind as you play."

It was only partly true. If I changed the settings, I could hold them by putting a bit more energy into it, but I'd have to sacrifice something else. I also always kept feather fall ready, but it wasn't technically levitation and I didn't need to encourage recklessness.

With this I let my grip loose to let him take it. As they went back to playing, I slumped back down, hopefully unbothered.

With a little humming, I entered a meditative state. When attuned like this, those blessed by the Animus Mundi, the spirit of nature of this world, could speak to each other almost as if we were on a HAM radio, though none of them knew what that was, of course. I wasn't among those that got their powers through proper study and servitude, but being able to tap into their magic was one of the things I had been empowered with when I got isekai-ed into this world. So I would often do so to check in on the servants of the Animus Mundi I had come to work with over the years, and even coordinate on behalf of Hope's father on occasion.

It was usually over details involving Hope when the situation was dire enough to risk letting the prying ears of his village listen in. He may not have liked me, to put it mildly, but he did at least trust me not to lie to him. Though, to be fair, he kind of had to as his village could use his true name against him if he tried to tap into it himself again. A weakness that, thankfully, his daughter wouldn't share with her parents when she would be old enough to learn to do it herself.

"Tree Hugger, I can sense your meditation. Thank you for keeping your meditation focused long enough for me to contact you. How are your efforts with the..."

* * *

After a few minutes of checking in with my contacts among those that could tap into the Animus Mundi, I came out of my trance and noticed a familiar owl looking at me.

I brought my fingers to my temple out of habit and mentally called to him through my wizard familiar link. "I was told you weren't going to be back this soon."

"And I thought I told you to stop working on those music box songs. They feed your depression. I may have been a few hundred miles away, but even if I were on the moon I could feel your despair. I don't like it. It reminds me of my feelings for her."

I nodded apologetically, understanding.

"I do try to keep it down, but I can't keep it in forever. It helps me address my depression, not feed it. It lets me let it out and remember why I decided to keep on going when I was in that cave, not to give up. Now, again, why are you here earlier than I was told?"

He shook his head gently side to side almost like a pivot, with his owl neck. "My best guess is the watch the conductor was using wasn't adjusted for the local time zone here. It was probably off by an hour when Spike sent the message."

With this I stood up and offered my arm out to him. "Well regardless, it is good to see you again, old friend. Productive trip?"

Flying down to my arm, he gave his own standard energy of melancholy away in the mental link. "As productive as could be expected. Translation was an issue as always, but we got the trade route established with a fair local tax."

With that, I put him to my shoulder and moved back into the festivities before he would inevitably push me to do so.

After a small hunt for the non alcoholic cider, I had a mug in hand and a bit of cooked sweetcorn in the other, letting Archimedes pick at it with me. We were gathered at the small spot set up like a graduation ceremony, though not as formal. It basically just had some chairs all pointed in one direction with a table that held a few things.

The seats were soon filled and I stood in the back, since I would block the view of most anypony that sat in the seats anyway. Apple Bloom came to the stage and gave a small announcement of those who had gotten their cutie marks, and a round of applause naturally followed. Some of the School of Friendship students were granted graduation and many of their alumni friends of the last four years cheered them on.

It was simple, but that's how they wanted it. They didn't want to stand on ceremony, as if the ceremony itself was what was important. I understood it was more simply for the celebration of the ties they had formed along the way. One special note, however, was for a special soul. A part time student at the School of Friendship who had finished his studies to complete his first year was in attendance. He had made many friends as he worked on another item, which they had agreed to celebrate and it was his time to take the stage.

Fluttershy, who had been teaching at the School of Friendship as one of its founding staff since it was built, brought out the last scroll from the stand where they had been laid out. It was different from the others.

Tempest checked the artificial horn we had made her and then used it to take the scroll then levitate it out in front of her.

"Thaddeus 'Scraps' Rex, Step forward," she called out. I could practically see the tears in her eyes forming.

With this, a below average sized diamond dog came forward from the area that all his other friends came from.

"To the Diamond Dog known as Thaddeus 'Scraps' Rex. The board of the Office of Rehabilitation and Reintegration has evaluated your cultural, interpersonal and ethical studies of Equestria as a nation, as well as sufficient growth in skills applicable in employment. We also have made additional note to your progress in your personalized program of combating your former kleptomania and your new ability to refrain from any urge to take items inappropriately. In light of this, the office of Rehabilitation and Reintegration do here by recognize your ability to provide for yourself and perform as a productive member of Equestrian society, and do here by declare you a properly graduated parolee. Therefor you are now granted the status of a legal, independent citizen of Equestria with all the rights, freedoms and responsibilities there of."

With this, Tempest rolled up the scroll and put it in a case, then leaned down to him. I could barely hear her say "We'll frame it later. Let's celebrate."

With cake abound from sugar cube corner being catered by Pinkie Pie and her boss's twin apprentice children, I made a beeline to the one thing I wanted to do without being prompted to do it.

Approaching Tempest and Fluttershy, I pressed my amulet then asked Tempest. "Now that Scraps is graduated, do you intend to take on another charge?"

She stopped in mid bite and looked at me. Making fast work of the bite in her mouth, she swallowed and replied.

"I love Scraps. I'm glad I could be his RRE officer. But taking on another? Not in the pits of Tartarus, Moss. My sentence time is up as of today. I'm getting out of that office and staying out. Still, did you hear about that singing troupe that is touring Equestria? A band of all male singers led by a lady that they all call Nana Coral. They are set to be in the area next week. Do you think Pinkie Pie will be able to employ them for Hope's party? Give your music box a run for its bits?"

I just shrugged. "Who knows, I gave up guessing with that mare on anything a long time ago."

Fluttershy came up and gave me a fanged smile, having finally gotten used to the thestral form I wound up forcing her into in order to have her stay among the living.

"It is good to see you being social."

I swallowed the awkwardness I knew I would always find cropping up when I was near her, and did my best to be polite and not let it show. She was too empathetic a soul and could be brought down by being reminded of my difficulty with our past. She wasn't at fault, I was. It was my burden and mine alone.

I brought up the nearly emptied corn cob in a quiet toast, then gave a smile and nod.

"And it's good to see you comfortable in your own wings. Family taking it well?"

She had stopped using the disguise crystal in her second year as a teacher in the school in order to teach by example, letting the changelings not being afraid to show their true forms. Although she did have to explain how her brush with death caused the change in her race from pegasus to thestral was what made her uncomfortable, rather than being a thestral at all.

Fluttershy shook her head with a suppressed laugh. "Mom and Dad were accepting right from the start, seeing it more like a medical scar than anything. My brother, however, didn't really know what to think. He stumbled with not knowing how to treat me for a while." She let out a gentle but still exasperated sigh. "It took him the longest time to finally understand I wasn't suddenly a dream walker just because I became a thestral. The odds even for those with a strong family history of it among thestrals are still only one in a few dozen at best."

Happy the diamond dog chased her half grown but still hyperactive pup nearby, who was freshly enrolled in the school as the second diamond dog enrolled in the school after Scraps. Given that he was granted a full diplomatic scholarship like the first year's foreign participants, he was likely going to surpass Scraps soon enough, but oddly Scraps was fine with it.

"So I hear you've hired enough staff to where the Element Bearers are no longer the majority of the teaching staff. I mean I can't say I'm surprised. Rarity always has had her business. Rainbow is becoming more active in the Wonderbolts. Applejack has to spend more time on the farm after Bigmac was asked by the Tree of Harmony to get that one town's farms working again. Pinkie Pie has refused to stop helping at Sugar Cube Corner and Princess Twilight now has two schools to look after, after taking over for Celestia on the gifted unicorn school, on top of running the entire country."

Fluttershy just gave me a warm, but weary smile. "And I find it surprising your home world's schools run five days out of every seven and barely teach the youth the basics. I was shocked when you mentioned that in your guest lecture on economy of efforts in my class."

"I'm still surprised you asked me to share my thoughts on grudges and the practical application of forgiveness and caution on blind forgiveness."

She nodded in kind. "And your third and most recent lecture, The Short Term and Long Term Rewards and Risks of Parasitic vs Symbiotic Relationships."

"That one had to be approved by Twilight..."

And the conversation held for a good while. I even managed to genuinely relax by the end, though only for a little while.

* * *

As the festivities moved forward and eventually died down, I ran into a few different familiar and not so familiar faces.

My not quite adoptive niece, Hope Bittersweet, came sprinting up to me with her father stomping his satyr hooves in close behind. "Uncle Moss, Uncle Moss!" the energetic almost eight year old satyr called to me, "Time Turner says you've got a special song for my birthday! One you've been planning for since I was little!"

"Get back here, Hope!"

From what her father told me, their aging slows considerably compared to ponies as they get older and a good chunk of the effect was just a part of their biology, not in their magics. So while she may have been almost eight with an intelligence to match when compared to ponies, her physical age and maturity was closer to their five year olds on most levels. It wasn't an exact one for one with a few exceptions, but that was the nearest her father could explain it.

I looked at the child that was maybe one and a half feet tall if she stood straight up on her tippy hooves. She leaped into my arms just as I looked at the stallion Time Turner.

I caught her as she dove in for a hug to my belly, gave her a brief, gentle hug back of course, and quickly returned her to her irritated, barely over three foot himself, father. With her still giggling, her father turned to Time Turner as well.

The stallion took a few quick darting of his eyes back and forth and answered.

"Oh well..." He put his forehoof behind his head and scratched it some. "I may have mentioned a piece or two of some details I picked up and she may have connected the wrong dots."

The fawn still in her father's grasp looked back to me somewhat sad. "So you don't have a song ready for my birthday party?"

I closed my eyes and shook my head gently. Pressing my amulet, I showed a little cold anger to Time Turner.

"While I have been fiddling with a song for a few years, it was one I never intended to release and would like to know how you came across such information."

Time Turner gave a quick shrug of his shoulders and just dodged the question. From what I was told, he was quirky like that, but I'd drill him on it later if I had to.

Turning to Hope, I smiled. "But I do have a song of sorts planned, just not that one."

Instead of smiling back, she got confused. "Why not?"

I sighed and looked at her father, then back to her. "Because your father and I have a difference of opinion that made a divide between us back before you were born. The words of that song is steeped in my side of that opinion. If I sang that song near you, your father would kill me. Fiddling with it is just a therapy that has helped me cope with that bad thing inside me I once told you about."

With this, her father shook his head. "I put my differences aside out of necessity, but yes I likely would if the song is about what I suspect it is about. If Hope's mother could have been with us these last eight years instead of imprisoned, I wouldn't need nearly as much help and Hope wouldn't have made so many attachments to those that are not Fey. At times, I feel the messages about Hope I sent to her mother through the servants is the only thing that has given her mother the strength to keep going."

The father gave an expression of mixed annoyance and gratitude. I could tell he missed her sorely and appreciated my efforts to stay in contact with her through the servants. The village would shut me down with sheer noise if I ever tried to talk loud enough through it for those in the Fey village to hear, and we couldn't risk him doing it directly. He would always not like me on some level, mostly out of protective instinct from a potential threat I was in his mind as a quintessence user. But as a desperate father, he had swallowed so much of his pride for the sake of his daughter. I couldn't help but respect that.

The filly sighed with disappointment as she fiddled with the cloth wrapped like a sash around her upper barrel. "I don't remember Mommy, but I wish I could meet her some day. Daddy's told me a lot about her. Zecora even managed to bring me this from her for my birthday last year. I wish I could talk to her like aunt Zecora can, but she says it's dangerous for daddy to use that way of talking and that it's best I don't until I'm older because the village still wants to lure me back with whispers."

She hugged the cloth tightly, looking like she was just hugging herself to someone not realizing the cloth's worth to her. Ponies saw it as nothing more than an odd accessory, but I knew what it actually was, as did her father. Neither ponies nor even Hope herself understood why doe satyr needed it—something I feared her father would have a hard time explaining if his situation didn't change before she reached that age—but she still cherished it dearly. It was the only thing directly from her mother she had.

Archimedes, having seen this sadness coming, brought a flower bud from the tree that hadn't quite opened yet. Knowing what he had in mind, I knelt down as I touched the bud to make a small imbuing of my non spell artificer magic into it. The magic put a mild glow to the bud that wasn't nearly as bright as my light spell, but could last indefinitely if I didn't call it back. I then called out, "Luxo," to cast an aspect of the druidcraft spell.

I spread my fingers out in a near spiral pattern as she watched the slightly glowing bud blossom to a beautiful glowing pink flower. Her eyes were absolutely captured by the sight as her sadness dissipated significantly, but didn't quite vanish.

"It won't last forever, but I hope to see it in your hair when I present the song that I am working on for you."

With her over expectations and subsequent sour mood corrected, her father set her down and let her put the flower in her hair before walking her home.

Keen Wit walked up, having seen me comfort her. "What was that you said about her before?"

I couldn't help but grin a wide, doting parent like grin as I was reminded of something that should be embarrassing, but never would be for me. While my amulet was still active, I put on a tone befitting an adult speaking enthusiastic gibberish to a baby. "Most precious thing ever, and must be protected at all costs!"

Time Turner just raised both his eyebrows as he watched them walk off. "Indeed. Protected at all costs..."

He then shook his head and looked over. "So, are we going to stand here all day, or are we going to the shop for tea?"

I looked at him weird. "Tea?"

Keen Wit's expression matched mine for just a second, but then he seemed to remember something.

"Ah that's right, I invited him to the shop for tea a while back."

Time Turner gave a smile that was just a little on the silly side, as if it were all settled like that.

Ch 15: Swan Song of a Champion.

Her song's energy blasted at me like her mere presence blasted at the vines, but as the words came the pressure from me and my augmented amulet pushed back. Naturally, she couldn't understand my words, my translation amulet disassembled to make this makeshift power booster amulet, but it wasn't a battle of lyrics. It was a battle of convictions and sheer energy. She had skill and experience in song weaving on her side, but my augmented amulet let me match her with sheer brute force.

But then I felt the pain surging through me. The sheer energy, even perfectly harmonizing from it being my own energy, was causing a shock to my system, like I was holding onto a joy buzzer that I couldn't let go of.

"Harmonic noise is painful, isn't it? I wouldn't know, being a pure bred siren." I heard her in my head. The magic of our songs linking us as our auras manifested giants of ourselves in the air. Hers a powerful fanged and menacing monstrous version of herself. Mine a crude humanoid cloud but none the less present and roaring back. "Give up and I'll make it end quickly."

I shook my head and sang the next verse like I knew it like the back of my hand. "Your faith was strong but you needed proof..." as my mind screamed back at her, not knowing if she'd hear. "This is nothing compared to what I've suffered in the past!"

She was playing mind games, trying to throw me off my game. She hadn't anticipated the threat I was proving to be. That was good, it meant she was scared.

"That toy is the only thing letting you match me. What are you using to fuel your song, sorrow? I have mastered every emotion on the harmonic plane. I could weave even love or hatred into these songs. Both at once if I wanted! Don't make me get serious! Stand down!"

The third verse started and I approached my emotional baggage from yet another angle, adding another layer and strengthening what I had already started with. "I know enough about harmonic magic to know you have to feel every emotion together at the same time to wield them. They have to be connected. Sorrow and loss, anger and hatred. Love and romance. They have to connect. I may not show them, but I can duel wield them too!" I screamed at her mentally as I felt the pain from the harmonic noise intensify.

"You're only going to get weaker, fish monkey! The pain will only grow and make it more unbearable for you! You were doomed from the start! I have overcome such a hurdle with such an easy method! I love myself and what is mine, and hate everything else! I have mastered the two grand emotions and wield them at the same time!"

This time I stayed silent and simply let my resolve speak for itself. My knees buckled but my song stayed strong as I sang into the fourth section. She could see the resolve in my face as she wielded the two opposite emotions together against me, yet I stood strong. As I spoke the line "and every breath we drew..." with near automation, I said to her mentally, "You use those two together? So can I, but you have the ratio all wrong. Backwards even."

As I entered the final section of the song, she called out, her desperation starting to show in the fact even she was starting to feel a little noise from her sirenite piece, pushing the limits of what a siren can nullify before they start feeling it too. "How? I can see you loving everything, sure, but hate!? What is letting you tap into both and face me evenly!? What is it you hate while loving everything!?"

As if it were falling into place perfectly as I called "it's a cold and it's a broken..." I answered her, throwing all my remaining energy into the song, allowing the pain to amplify it rather than dull it. "Myself!!"

Suddenly I could see her syrenite crystal shatter, and felt my own crystal shatter along with it. Tears flowed down my face. Exhaustion, emotional release, or just the sheer pain I felt... I wasn't sure the source of the tears, perhaps all three. All I knew was the world was getting dark as I felt several ponies struggling to catch my large form while I fell back.

The last thing I heard was Time Turner boasting. "You read the prophesy wrong, Queenie Coral! It wasn't one known by bittersweet hope. It was one known for bittersweet..."

I found myself standing with that familiar sense of being in a dream, but strangely, I wasn't on my familiar dream island of reflection in that sea of stars. Instead, I found myself in a largely white landscape. It was almost like clouds, but solid.

"Am I dying?" I called out to nobody in particular. I half expected an answer but nobody replied. Nobody was around.

After getting no response, I wondered if it was the afterlife. I felt like I heard a thump from all around me at once. Looking around, I saw something golden in the distance. I went to it and found it to be a golden fence with the famous pearly gates. I saw two figures just on the far side of those gates that I recognized.

"Speaks with Talons? Fluttershy?" I saw as clear as any example could be given, my late battle brother standing with a rare smile on his beak, battle scars and all, pounding his chest with his talon in a respectful greeting to me. Next to him was a version of Fluttershy back when she was still a pegasus, also giving me a smile, though a sweet maternal one rather than one from a brother in arms. But something was off.

Speaks with Talons was solid, but Fluttershy was flickering between being solid too, to being see through, to not being there at all, then back to being solid. Not a slow fade between them, but a full moment of solid, a full moment of a single level of translucent, and then a full moment of not being there at all.

"This... This is an illusion made from my own mind."

I looked at the image of Fluttershy, responding with simple body language, showing she was still being supportive despite acknowledging I recognized she wasn't real. I truly could only ever see her as kind. "If this was the afterlife, you'd be only in one state of being after what I did, not all three. You'd either be here, or not. And if you were here, you'd either be whole or not. The only reason you're flickering between them is because in my mind all three possibilities are believed to be equally valid and possible. If I were in the afterlife, I'd have the answer if I saw the real you. So this isn't the afterlife."

Again, I heard a thump from everywhere at once, but it was so brief I still ignored it. I stood back up and gave their images a respectful bow none the less. "Or at least it's not entirely the afterlife, yet. This feels like a dream but not a normal dream."

I looked over to the side of the pearly gates and found an old man standing at a podium. "Is this a death dream, Saint Peter? A dream held at the end of one's life, to help me reflect on my life or accept death before passing on?"

I could see the immaculate book sitting on his podium, currently closed. He simply gestured as if to ask if I wanted him to open it. To see if my name was inside.

I shook my head. "I know in all likelihood you are but an image of my mind, but that sliver of a doubt that this could be real still lingers, so I will speak with respect just in case. I have..."

I felt a hand on my shoulder, causing me to stop speaking. It was a middle aged hand, but neither the age nor the fact that a hand was on my shoulder made me stop. No, the fact that I could see a wound on the wrist as if something had been driven through it made me stop because I couldn't help but choke up when recognizing it.

I dared not turn around to see his face. Out of respect or fear, possibly both, but I dared not turn around as I fought for breath to speak.

"I... I tried to be good. I know one doesn't earn... passage through here... It's given or it's... not. I can't undo the mistake I did." I looked at the image of Fluttershy again, then put my eyes to the ground. "I've tried to pay penance... To strengthen the part of me that was too weak that day... To never make that mistake again. To never defile... what is rightfully yours and your father's again. I am not well learned in the ways you set up... The lessons you tried to teach. But I'm trying to be as you would want me to be... I know not if it's enough, or if like Moses striking the stone, a punishment must come even to one that is sorry, but... I am trying."

Again, I heard a thump from all around me at once, much louder than before. If it were not for the hand on my shoulder, I would have looked around for the source. But this was too important. I lifted my hand and reached to touch the hand on my shoulder, but fell short, ultimately curling my fingers in at the last moment. "But at the same time, I can't just give up. I said I'm trying, not I tried. If it's my time, then I apologize profusely for still resisting, but I have to keep going for as long as the Almighty lets me. I don't know if I do or not, but if I have a say in this, I have to go back. I have to keep going. I don't deserve the luxury of being able to opt out now if there's even a chance I can go back. On the off chance it's not the end right now and he deems there's more I have to do, then I have to see my penance through to the end. Not so much to pay my debt, but because it's what is right."

I heard that thump even louder still, almost too loud to not focus on, but my focus stayed on that hand, resolute to see this conversation to whatever end it may be. The hand seemed to squeeze my shoulder, as if in approval of my choice, if nothing else, then let go and pulled out of sight again.

The moment the hand was out of sight, I heard a crash from behind instead of a thump. I then felt hooves hug me from behind, wrapping around me as tightly as he could. I then heard Dawn Seeker, my assigned dream walker, scream as I felt his form tug at me like he was being tugged up by a cord. "It's now or never, Moss! Wake up!"

I felt the jolt of electricity shoot through my chest as a unicorn restarted my heart with a carefully placed bolt of energy.

I gasped for breath, not even aware of my surroundings as my eyes just stared blankly ahead. Adrenaline alone keeping me awake as the oxygen cycled through my system more fully. Slowly, I got my bearings as I laid in the grass, gasping.

I could see Doctor pulse, the only pony doctor that could have known where to shock my anatomy to get the desired effect, as well as his unicorn assistant.

"Thank my lucky stars you both attended Hope's party." Was all I could say as I felt like shit all over. Not just lethargy or bruising either. My entire nervous system felt shocked as if that joy buzzer from the syrenite was still going off, albeit duller.

"Ow... Why do I still feel the shock from the... song..." I said as the Speaker and the Servants took over looking over my health with their healing circle.

"We haven't any diamond dust to remove your exhaustion. Wound healing magic alone will not fix you. Do not strain yourself, Beast-kin."

I could see Time Turner trying his best to get my original gemstone back into my amulet. With some trial and error, he finally got it back in, got the unicorn assistant of Doctor Pulse to charge it then passed it to me so I could translate. I was in no condition to speak Equestrian in the raw.

When I repeated my question, they just looked at me with pity. "If you had as much harmonic noise exposure as Time Turner said you had..." Doctor pulse shook his head. "It's only natural you're still feeling the after effects. The pain should dull down and eventually fade in time, but I have no doubt there's going to be some... lingering effects even after the servants get the diamond dust to treat you, which I've ordered delivered to us here via emergency pegasus just as soon as the barrier went down. Your magic is a bit different, but the core principle should still apply with decent accuracy. Even when you heal up from all this... you're probably not going to want to cast many spells. Your body's nerves will always be at least somewhat fried and I can guarantee it's going to hurt like Tartarus every time you do. Even your small spells, the ones you call cantrips, will surely hurt pretty bad. I doubt it will ever fully heal after the stunt you did to save us."

I clutched and un-clutched my hand as Hope and her mom also came up to check on me too. "I'm sorry for wanting to hear that song, Uncle Moss. I didn't know it hurt you so much. That bad cloud thing from inside you was very scary, but you made it fight the bad lady. I'm so sorry you got hurt protecting me."

The tiny satyr doe put her head on my knee and hugged me, what tears she had left after getting her mom back now shedding onto my pant leg.

"It's alright, Hope." I said, realizing she didn't quite get the whole situation, being so young. Looking over at guards processing Queen Coral and her grandsons, all of their more basic crystals also shattered, I took a breath and sighed. "It did hurt me, but I think some good came from it too." I too shed a tear as I looked at my dominant hand. "I managed a permanent leash for that bad thing. I'm not all better, but I took one pretty big first step in that direction today." I could see her tilt her head at this point, my translation amulet shutting off. With my words now mostly to myself, I continued.

"I finally got a little penance, a little bit of a slap on the wrist." I flexed my dominant hand again, knowing it would never let me cast a spell willy-nilly again due to the threat of pain. Finally a tangible consequence to remind me there are consequences. Not that I would have done it just to do it. But since fate sent it my way, I decided to take the double edged blessing as a healthy dose of tangible humility rather than just a debilitation. "I think I can start mending properly now, the pain a welcome reminder."

I turned to Time Turner again. "I guess this will probably hamper my ability to contribute to future adventures. Tell me, is there anything I can prepare for without ruining any spoilers, Time Turner... Doctor?"

He shook his head. "Actually no. I love visiting museums and reading history books to see how much they get wrong. You were barely mentioned in Queen Coral's defeat, the guards of Ponyville taking the bulk of the credit. Not to say they don't deserve their time in the limelight too, just not for this per say." He looked at the guards taking their prisoners away and a press pony politely asking questions to the head guard. "After that, you just kinda fall off the history books. I was actually kind of afraid I'd end up sending you to your grave in a draw against her because of this when I realized what your music box crystal actually was. But thankfully, not today. Not that you won't have any more adventures, as even everyday things can be adventures if you want them to be, but no more 'big' ones worthy of history books, at least that you play center stage in. Enjoy your retirement as an adventurer, Moss."

I thought about it and smiled a little. Turning to Pinkie Pie, I asked her, "Is there any cake left while I wait for the medical pegasus to return? Maybe a little help with blood sugar after exerting myself and my spirits?" with a sincere smile. She fittingly already had one ready for me just behind her head, as if somehow knowing I wanted it at that exact moment despite me always being a bit of a grump about the cake before.

Author's Note

The version of Hallelujah that I felt would best fit Moss's chosen song and the feelings he put into them.