The Spirits of Harmony

Chapters

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII

Chapter I

“Hey Twilight, watcha doin’?”

The unicorn nearly jumped out of her skin, whirled around, and blocked the view of her special project with her body.

“Gah! Nothing, nothing! ...Oh, hi Pinkie.”

What she was doing, in the supposed isolation of her basement laboratory, was both delicate and probably not allowed, though she hadn’t been told not to do it. Officially.

The pink earth pony leaned to one side and then another, trying to see what her friend was trying to hide.

“Ooh, is it a surprise? You know I can keep a secret, right?” Pinkie said, hopping up and down with excitement.

“N-no. It’s really dull,” Twilight said, smiling woodenly. “Just…just working down here. In my lab. On boring things.”

“Aww, I can’t just stand by when my friends are bored!” Pinkie said, frowning sympathetically at Twilight. “I know, I’ll help you with it and then it’ll be super exciting!” The energetic pony began bouncing around the lab, setting the shelves of beakers, tools and delicate magico-electronic equipment wobbling and rattling. “Ooh, what do these do?”

Twilight waved her forehooves frantically. “Wait, no! Stop! I’ll tell you!”

Pinkie Pie skidded to a noisy halt in mid-air, then floated gently to the floor. “So, it is a surprise! Is it a surprise for me? Don’t tell me if it’s for me!”

Twilight quickly weighed the consequences of lying to Pinkie about this, then remembered what happened when she and their other friends tried to cover for the pink pony’s surprise party. She decided that honesty was, indeed, the only sane policy.

“It’s not for you, so you’ve got to swear this stays just between us, okay?”

“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!” Pinkie recited, making the accompanying gestures of the Pinkie Swear with gusto.

Twilight stepped aside to reveal a golden, gem-studded crown topped with a pink jewel cut into the shape of a six-rayed star. The headgear was wrapped at either end with copper wire and covered with electrodes and other sensory apparatus.

“Hey, that’s your crowny-thing!” Pinkie exclaimed. “How come it’s not in the vault back up in Canterlot?”

“Well, after that incident at the wedding, I was a bit worried about having the Elements of Harmony that only we can use locked up in a vault we can’t open ourselves miles and miles away from where we live. I mean, what if Shining Armor had been betrothed to some useless floozy instead of Cadance? I don’t want the fate of Equestria hanging on my older brother’s taste in mares!”

“So the princess let you keep yours here? But what about the rest?”

Twilight pawed the floor, looking somewhat embarrassed. “That’s…not exactly what happened.”

Pinkie raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“I wrote the princess about it, and she replied with a lot of patronizing statements about ‘national treasures’ and ‘not wanting to add to your many responsibilities’ and ‘falling into the wrong hooves’. She even implied I’d take the thing apart to figure out how it works! Can you imagine?”

Pinkie glanced back at the equipment-encrusted crown and opened her mouth to speak.

“That doesn’t count!” Twilight snapped, pre-empting her. “It’s still in one piece!”

The unicorn took a moment to compose herself. “Anyway there’s nothing to be concerned about, right? I mean, it’s an Element of Harmony! How can you misuse harmony?”

Pinkie looked puzzled. “But if the princess said no, then how do you have it? Did you sneak into the palace again and forget to invite me? Last time was so much fun!”

Twilight waved a hoof dismissively. “No, of course not! I wouldn’t rob the palace!”

“But that time you went in to get the time spell, you—”

“That wasn’t robbery. I was allowed to be there, the guards said so!”

“Then why did we wear those—”

“I hadn’t slept for six days, alright? I was under a lot of stress!”

“You shoulda let me help with the planning!” Pinkie chirped. “Hay bale, trench coat and nose glasses! Wa-a-ay better than those pinchy rubber suits.”

Twilight briefly tried to imagine what she’d have assumed if her future self had suddenly appeared to her dressed like that. She’d probably deduce that Pinkie was involved somehow and write it off as more or less normal.

“So-o-o?” Pinkie said, snapping Twilight from her reverie. “Howdja get it?”

“I woke up this morning, and it was just sitting on my bedside table, next to this letter,” Twilight said, picking up a scroll with telekinesis and floating it over to Pinkie.

On the scroll was written:

Our Loyal Subject Twilight Sparkle,

Thy scheme to keep the Elements of Harmony near to thyself and thy friends hath reached our royal ear, and we find it most pleasing in its boldness and plain sense.

Though Our Royal Sister hath expressed her doubts about this endeavor, we are certain thou possesseth the might and wisdom to remain with thy element at all times.

Verily, thou couldst do no worse than Our Royal Sister’s so-called impregnable magic vault, which presented no challenge to the machinations of Discord (cursed be he!) yet became a nigh-catastrophic inconvenience during the recent unpleasantness with the changelings.

Furthermore, the Elements of Harmony, which Our Royal Sister hath permitted to languish first among the ruins of our ancient seat, and thereafter within the ineffectual embrace of aforesaid vault, remain just as arcane as they were a millennium past.

In order to avert future catastrophes and allow the study of these mighty artifacts for the good of all creatures and the promotion of harmony everywhere, we, Luna, Princess of the Night and Co-Ruler of Equestria, hereby entrust to thee, Twilight Sparkle, the Element of Magic and all responsibilities of its preservation, protection and use.

The text up until then had been in regular black ink written with a tight, precise script. The next part, however, was written in great looping strokes of midnight-blue ink that seemed to shimmer and shine even though it was dry.

DOUBT NOT THE GRAVITY OF THE DUTY ASSIGNED TO THEE, TWILIGHT SPARKLE! THE FATE OF EQUESTRIA RIDETH UPON THY BACK.

STRAY FROM THE PATH OF WISDOM AND ALL THAT THOU LOVEST SHALL SURELY PERISH IN CALAMITY!

Pinkie giggled. “She even writes in that voice!” Normal script and black ink resumed.

Mention not this gift. save to the other bearers under utmost confidence. Allow us to be the first to tell of this to Our Royal Sister. We shall, as modern ponies say, ‘break her to it gently’ and ‘smooth things around.’ Any ire she hath shall fall upon us and not thee.

While we do this, we earnestly urge thee to unravel the mysteries of the Elements of Harmony. Having to depend upon such poorly-understood tools for Equestria’s survival sorely vexes both us and Our Royal Sister, loath as she is to burden any of her subjects, even thee, with her concerns. We trust thou wilt investigate thy element with appropriate care and delicacy.

We wish thee best of luck. May the spirits of Harmony guide thy endeavors.

Sincerely,
HRM Luna

The “Royal Canterlot Text” appeared again at the bottom corner of the page:

P.S. BEWARE THE MACHINATIONS OF ALCHEMISTS!!

“Are you sure this is real? I thought Princess Luna didn’t talk like that anymore.”

Twilight held up a silvery disk stamped with the image of a crescent moon. “The seal on it was real enough. Besides, it’s normal to be more formal with letters than with everyday speech.”

Pinkie gave the letter back to Twilight. “So, you’re going to send the crown back, right?” the pink pony asked.

“What? No!” Twilight said. “I can’t. Do you realize how much trouble I’d be in?”

“But you said Princess Celestia said—”

“Yeah, and then Princess Luna said the opposite! Ever since we de-monstered her, they’re both the boss of me. If I tell Princess Celestia what’s going on, Luna will be mad at me for disobeying her, and Celestia’ll be mad at Luna for going over her head!” Twilight gulped. “And then Celestia would be mad at me too, because I caused all the trouble by not keeping my mouth shut, and I betrayed her sister’s trust! But…but if she finds out I’m doing this against her wishes…” her voice trailed off into a whimper and her left eye began to twitch with anxiety.

Pinkie lunged forward and bear-hugged her neurotic friend. “Aww, there, there,” she cooed. “Don’t worry, Twilight! You told me your secret, and I believe you, so I’m gonna help us get through this together. You don’t have to go and start using magic mind control on the whole town line like last time, okay?”

The unicorn grimaced at the reminder, but returned the embrace. “I…don’t think compelling everypony to riot is going to do me any good, Pinkie.”

“That’s the spirit!” her friend said. “See? You’re already doing better than before!” The pink pony finally let Twilight go and turned back to the crown on the table. “So what are you doing with this now?”

“I’m doing what Luna told me to; I’m studying it. The moment I hear otherwise from Celestia, I’m going to do what she tells me instead, and so on.” Twilight lowered her head and sighed. “Things were so much simpler when we only had one ruler.” She suddenly brightened. “Still, I think I’ve got a lead on something interesting!”

“Ooh! What is it?”

“You know that bit at the end of the letter?”

Pinkie looked nervously over her shoulder at the staircase. “The warning about the alkie-whatsits? Are they after you, Twilight?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “No, there aren’t any alchemists any more, if there ever were. Everypony liked to blame things on evil alchemists hundreds of years ago, and then the whole system fell out of favor as the principles of transmutation became better-understood. I’m talking about the part where she mentions the ‘spirits of Harmony’.”

“What’s so special about that? Isn’t that just some old-fashioned way of saying ‘bye’, like ‘may the Horse be with you’?”

The unicorn tilted her head back and assumed her lecturing tone. “That’s the common explanation nowadays, but it wasn’t always like that. Way back when Equestria was ruled by Discord, there were all these old pony tales about forces that opposed him. If Discord is the embodiment of chaos and strife, the ponies back then were sure there were also spirits that represented harmony and order.”

“And then Celestia and Luna found the Elements of Harmony!” Pinkie interrupted.

Twilight nodded. “That’s right. Most ponies assumed that was the answer; the Elements of Harmony were the counterbalance to the spirit of chaos. Still, there were other theories. The princesses have been very closed-mouthed on exactly what led them to find the elements in the first place. Based on my research, I believe that there are also actual beings that embody harmony the way Discord does chaos, not just these magical artifacts that our friendship allows us to use.”

“Woooow,” Pinkie breathed, “that would be really amazing! All Equestria has secret spirit friends! But…if you’re right, where were they when Discord got out again?”

“That’s what I’m trying to discover,” Twilight said, tapping the crown. “The elements are connected to the spirits, all the sources agree on that, and nopony but us has used them for over a thousand years. I’m going to make the Element of Magic a beacon to them.”

Pinkie hopped in place with giddy excitement. “And you said this would be boring! So, if it works, can we throw them a big ‘welcome back’ party?” She had a realization and suddenly deflated. “Oh, right. I promised it’d be a secret.”

Twilight smiled hopefully at the crown. “We might get around to that eventually. If my theories are correct, a spirit of perfect harmony could help us get things straightened out with the princesses, and then there’ll be no need to keep it a secret.” She clapped her front hooves together. “It’s the perfect solution!”

“Hooray! Let’s get this show on the road!”

Chapter II

Hours later, nothing had happened.

Twilight had been sending every relevant type of magic she knew of through the crown, and the element had dutifully resonated and amplified the spells, causing the ether to reverberate with echoes.

There had been no reply.

Pinkie sat with her head resting on a table, ostensibly monitoring a bank of indicators, but actually half-asleep and staring off into space.

Twilight wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, then cast yet another spell through the Element of Magic. Lights blinked and needles jumped across the equipment.

“Did you see anything unusual from that one?” she asked Pinkie.

“Nuuuh,” Pinkie groaned.

“Yeah, me neither. I guess this is a bit of a blow against my theory, huh?” She levitated a dog-eared copy of Standard Sorcerous Soundings toward herself and began flipping through it. “Tried that, tried that, tried those…” Twilight flipped to the appendix and sighed. “Is there any spell in here that I haven’t tried?”

“Night Watch’s Ward of Warning, page one hundred fifty-one.”

Twilight flipped to pages 151-2 with some difficulty. “Good catch, Pinkie! The pages were stuck together. How’d you know I skipped that one?”

The earth pony was staring wide-eyed at a dark corner of the room. “Um…I didn’t say anything.”

“Huh?” Twilight replied. The voice had seemed a bit different from Pinkie’s, but who else would be down here? “Spike? Was that you?”

There was no reply.

Pinkie gulped and jumped behind the unicorn. “It must be one of those ail-chemists! Save me Twilight, I don’t wanna be turned into gold!”

Twilight stepped toward the shadowy corner from which the voice had come. “I told you Pinkie, there aren’t any alchemists! Anyway, it sounded like a child.” She beckoned toward the shadow and tried to appear as non-threatening as possible. “C’mon out now. You’re not in trouble, but it’s not safe to be wandering around down here.”

A small, blue earth pony filly crept out from behind a large piece of lab equipment and blinked owlishly at the two mares. Her cutie mark was an ornate mirror.

“Hey there, little pony!” Pinkie exclaimed, her worry forgotten. “I haven’t seen you around here before. I’m Pinkie Pie, and this is Twilight Sparkle! What’s your name?”

“My name is Verity,” the filly loudly announced, and then smiled as if she’d accomplished some notable deed.

“Well Verity,” Twilight began, “you should stay up on the ground floor. This isn’t actually part of the library.”

Pinkie gave the filly a sly look. “Actually, shouldn’t she be in school? It’s Thursday. Did you come down here to play hooky and hide from the truant officer, Verity?”

Verity did not appear least bit bothered by the accusation. “I came here because I was called.” Again she beamed as if expecting praise for her statement.

Twilight looked askance. “I should’ve known this would happen. Filling the ether with those sort of spells would draw somepony here. Though…how did you know about the spell I missed?”

“It was there.”

Neither of the mares knew what to make of this explanation.

“Is my sis botherin’ you ladies?” drawled a voice from the top of the stairs.

An earth pony descended, this one a stallion with a uniform light gray coat and mane. His flank was blank, and he wore a sleepy, placid expression.

“Oh, it’s not a big deal,” Twilight bluffed, hastily throwing a sheet over the crown. “We were just doing some simple magic experimentation. No place for kids, right?”

Verity smiled at Twilight and shook her head. “No, you were using the Element of Magic to try and summon the Spirits of Harmony!”

Twilight gaped and spluttered.

Pinkie, sensing the time was right for a distraction, stepped in front of Twilight and vigorously shook the stallion’s hoof. “Oh wow, kids today! Such great imaginations, am I right? I bet she’ll grow up to be a big famous author. So, is your family visiting or are you moving into Ponyville? I ask because I know everypony in town and I mean every pony and I’ve never seen you before!” She batted her eyes endearingly.

The stallion’s face slowly spread into a goofy grin. “Yeah…yeah, I guess that’s about the shape of it. Not sure how long we’ll be stayin’ yet, though.”

Pinkie smiled right back. “Well we’re all glad to have you! I’m Pinkie Pie, pleased as pink punch to meet ya!”

The stallion stopped shaking Pinkie’s hoof with reluctance but kept gazing into her eyes, obviously smitten. “Pinkie Pie…pleasure’s all mine. Name’s Concord, and this is my lil’ sister Verity.”

“Welcome to Ponyville, Concord! Let’s get out of this musty-dusty old basement and I’ll give you two the two-bit town tour for free!”

Twilight nodded, sweating bullets. “That sounds like a great idea! Don’t mind me, we were just finishing up down here when your sister came in.”

Verity glanced from her brother to Twilight. “She wanted us to come here, but now she wants us to leave.” The young pony didn’t seem disappointed; she simply stated her fact with the same exuberance as all her other declarations.

Without looking away from Pinkie, Concord reached over and tousled his sister’s mane. “What’d I tell ya, Ver? Ponies don’t know what they want most of the time. You just have to bear with ‘em and keep an even keel. Let’s go with La—I mean, the lovely Miss Pie, and see the sights.”

Pinkie giggled at the flattery, ending with a snort, and led the way up the stairs, Concord and Verity close at her heels. Twilight leaned against the sheet-covered crown and exhaled in relief. The little filly had somehow guessed exactly what she was doing, but her brother didn’t seem to take her seriously. Probably nopony else would either.

After shutting off and putting away the lab equipment, Twilight exited the basement and locked the door behind her.

The library was a bit busier than usual for the early afternoon. Several patrons were distractedly browsing the shelves or curled up in corners reading, casting curious or annoyed glances over at a group of ponies clamoring noisily beneath a window.

“Ooh! Do a funny one next!”

“No, a sad one!”

“I’d rather hear a love poem.”

“Do you know any epic ballads?”

A huffy-looking coal-coated pegasus noticed Twilight emerge from the basement and walked over to her. “What kind of library are you running here?” he whispered. “That dip’s been doing magic and belting out lousy poetry for almost an hour now. Between him and his groupies, those of us here to actually use the library can’t hear ourselves think!”

“I’ll take care of it,” Twilight said. “I’ve been a bit preoccupied today, sorry.” She trotted over to the group and cleared her throat loudly. “Excuse me everypony, but a library really isn’t the place for a recital. If you’d like to borrow a book, do it without bothering the other patrons, please.”

The group of ponies parted, some frowning and others looking guilty, and Twilight saw the ringleader standing in their midst. The white unicorn looked like the stereotype of a poet: dark, soulful eyes, gaunt features, a mane carefully styled to look unruly, and, to top it all off, a cutie mark of a heart pierced by a quill. The poet bowed elaborately to Twilight and took a deep breath.

“No need even
To take out
A book: only
Go inside
And savor
The heady
Dry breath of
Ink and paper,
Or stand and
Listen to the
Silent twitter
Of a billion
Tiny busy
Black words.” (1)

A few of the poet’s fans chuckled. Twilight narrowed her eyes and addressed the unicorn again. “We can’t listen to ‘silent twitters’ or anything else while you’re all in here making a racket. If you want to do a reading or a signing or something, you have to reserve one of the side rooms at least a week in advance. If you’re just going to sit around here and bother the ponies who want to read or study, I’m going to have to show you the door.”

A twinkle appeared in the poet’s eyes. He cleared his throat, placed a hoof over his breast and began to recite once again.

“Go and open the door.
If there’s a fog,
it will clear.
Go and open the door,
even if there’s only
the darkness ticking,
even if there’s only
the hollow wind.

“even if
nothing
is there,
go and open the door.
At least
there’ll be
a draft.” (2)

The gathered ponies laughed and stomped appreciatively against the wooden floor. Twilight whinnied in annoyance, but stepped over to the door and held it open. The poet bowed to her again, and he and his admirers exited in single file.

Watching the ponies troop outside, Twilight noticed the ground around the library was covered in bright yellow leaves. She stuck her head out the door and looked up into the tree-building’s branches. Indeed, all the leaves were shining yellow in the afternoon sun. Twilight boggled. First, it was much too early in the year for the leaves to change, much less begin falling, and second, when they did last two autumns, they were a mix of red and orange, not this solid, brilliant yellow.

“What happened to my tree?” she cried. “Did something kill it?”

The poet looked at her over his shoulder and winked.

“I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.” (3)

As if on cue, a gust whirled through the treetop and sent a fresh fall of golden leaves twirling down to the ground. The poet turned and continued walking away. The other ponies followed, laughing.

“Hey, that’s vandalism! Get back here!” Twilight yelled, and ran out after him. “Whatever spell you did, undo it right now!”

The poet ignored her.

She galloped around in front of the crowd and blocked their path. “Where do you think you’re going, mister?”

He looked at her strangely, as if she ought to know the answer to her own question.

“I have desired to go
Where springs not fail
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

“And I have asked to be—” (4)

Fed up, Twilight gave him a painful but otherwise harmless zap from her horn. The poet flinched, lowered his head and stepped aside, gesturing back toward the library and muttering unintelligibly.

Twilight’s gaze followed his outstretched hoof and she started in surprise. The leaves of her home were as green and alive as ever, and none had fallen.

“How did you do that?” she asked. “Was it just an illusion all along?” She turned back to where the infuriating unicorn had been standing, but there was nopony there. The ponies who’d been following him seemed just as startled as she was at their idol’s sudden disappearance. He must have teleported.

“Well, good riddance,” Twilight said to herself, trotting back to the library, “I just wish he’d done it sooner.”

(1) Library by Valerie Worth
(2) from The Door by Miroslav Holub
(3) from Galadriel's Song of Eldamar by J.R.R. Tolkien
(4) from Heaven-Haven by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Chapter III

Pinkie Pie had taken Concord and Verity over most of Ponyville. Verity had given everything from the bustling market square to the water tower the same look of wide-eyed wonder, but she hardly said anything unless Pinkie or Concord asked a question. She must have been brought up really strict, the pink mare thought, recalling her own childhood out in the rock fields.

Concord, on the other hoof, was chatty and cheerful. He praised every part of town Pinkie took them to, but his eyes seldom left the tour guide, and the adoring, star-struck expression never left his face. Though she usually enjoyed friendly attention, Pinkie was, for one of the few times in her life, feeling a bit uncomfortable.

The group approached the bright red schoolhouse near the western end of town. Recess was just coming to an end, and Cherilee was ringing the bell to call her students back to class.

“…And this is our town’s little school for fillies and colts,” Pinkie said. “Miss Cherilee teaches, and all the students are super-duper nice. I’m sure you’ll make tons of friends, Verity!”

The filly didn’t respond, or show any sign she’d heard Pinkie at all.

Pinkie tried again. “You’re going to school while you’re here, right Verity? It’s important! Little ponies who don’t get an education have their brains turn into tapioca pudding, like mine did!” She made a silly face at the filly.

This time she got the little pony’s attention, but Verity appeared utterly flummoxed. She glanced from the schoolhouse to Pinkie to Concord and back. “Will I? I…um…will I be going to school? I…w-well…”

Her brother shrugged. “Sure, why not? School’d be great for a lil’ thing like you! You like to learn new things, dontcha Ver?”

All trace of confusion instantly vanished from Verity’s face. “I do like to learn new things!”

“Great! I bet you can teach them all sorts of stuff too. Let’s just head over there and see if we can get you enrolled before the afternoon lesson starts.”

Verity nodded and galloped toward the schoolhouse with the other children.

As Pinkie Pie and Concord walked behind her, the stallion leaned over and beckoned to Pinkie. “My sis, she has a hard time dealin’ with things in the future,” he whispered apologetically. “If you ask her about the present or the past, she’ll just belt out whatever she thinks, but if it hasn’t happened it throws her for a loop.”

Pinkie nodded sympathetically. “I gotcha. It’s okay; everypony has their little quirks. Think how boring it’d be if we were all alike!”

Concord winked at her. “If ponies were more like you, you wouldn’t hear me complainin’!”

Pinkie laughed. “Oh, stop it! Everypony’s pretty amazing in all sorts of ways. Some are awesomely cool and fast like Dashie, and some are smarter than a stack of encyclopedias like Twilight and some can work all day long making things grow like AJ or care for every kind of animal like Fluttershy or make clothes so you feel like you’re wearing an art gallery like Rarity does.” She paused in thought a moment. “The comfy kind, not the ones with all the rusty spiky things and melted dolls and stuff.” The pink pony looked askance. "I’m not like that, I mainly do parties."

“Still, wouldn’t it be nicer if everypony could treasure everypony else the way you do?”

“I guess it might. It’s great being friends with everypony, like you and your sister.” She hadn’t been consciously intending to put emphasis on those words, but there it was. If Concord took the hint, he didn’t show it.

Cherilee waved to greet the unfamiliar filly who rushed up to the schoolhouse door. “Well hello there, young lady!” she called, “Can I help you?”

The little blue pony skidded to a stop and furrowed her brow, giving Cherilee’s question far more thought than the teacher expected it to warrant.

“Yes you can!” she finally declared as her brother and Pinkie Pie arrived at the door.

“Glad to hear it,” Cherilee gently teased. “I was getting worried for a moment there.” She looked up at the two older ponies. “Hello, Pinkie! Friends of yours, I presume?”

“They sure are! This is Verity and her brother Concord. They’ll be in Ponyville for a while, so we were hoping you could squeeze her into your class. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

Cherilee laughed. “Oh, of course! I wouldn’t be much of a teacher if I turned away a willing student, would I?”

Verity grew anxious again and looked back to Pinkie and her brother for support. “W-would she?”

Assuming it was nervousness at meeting new ponies, Cherilee bent back down to the filly. “It doesn’t matter because I won't. I’m Miss Cherilee, Verity. Do you want to join our little class? We’d love to have you.”

Verity instantly relaxed. “Yes I do!”

“So enthusiastic! I can already tell you’ll be a wonderful student.”

Pinkie winked at Cherilee and patted Verity on the head. “She knows all kinds of stuff. You better watch out or she'll be teaching the class!”

Cherilee chuckled politely and then looked up at Concord. “School’s out at five. Since you’re new in town, be sure and come to pick her up. I don’t know how Ponyville compares to where you’re from, size-wise—”

“Ponyville has a smaller area but a greater mass!” Verity announced.

“—But we don’t want her to get lost on the way home.”

“Ah, she’ll be okay," Concord said. "She’s got a better sense of direction than I do.”

Cherilee gave him a well-practiced no-compromise look.

He hastily bobbed his head. “Yes’m. Five o’ clock.”

The teacher turned and ushered Verity into the schoolhouse. “Class, I’d like you to meet…class?”

Shouting, laughter, hoofbeats and squeals from within drowned out her words.

She glanced back at Pinkie Pie and Concord. “They’re usually very well-behaved. I just had to cut recess short today on account of the storm, so they’re still a bit rambunctious.” Cherilee led Verity to the side of the teacher’s desk and tried again. “Class, there’s a new student I’d like you all to meet.” The roar continued unabated.

“Allow me,” Concord said, tapping the dust off one of his front hooves. He stuck his head in the door, placed the hoof to his lips and blew a shrill whistle that sounded over and slowly replaced the noise of the children.

Pinkie felt a tickly feeling pass through her like a wave, starting at her nose and going to the tip of her tail. It was probably Pinkie Sense, but she wasn’t sure what this one meant.

Concord slowly lowered the pitch and volume of the whistle until it died. The entire room was silent. The students sat at their desks, looking attentively at their teacher and the new addition to the class.

“T-thank you Mr. Concord,” Cherilee said, not entirely sure what had happened.

The stallion inclined his head humbly. “S’no problem. Seeya later, Ver!”

As the two ponies walked away from the schoolhouse, Pinkie was the first to speak. “Well, this is the edge of Ponyville! It’s just farmland beyond here, and you don’t need to see all that. That’s the end of our tour; you’ve been a wonderful audience!”

“How did the teacher know we were new in town?” Concord asked out of the blue.

“Probably because she hasn’t seen you before and because you’re with me! I always make sure new ponies feel all welcome-y when they get to town.”

The dopiness of Concord’s perpetual grin intensified, and his face began turning red. “You're even more...wow,” he said with honest admiration. He cleared his throat and slicked back his mane. “So…have you had lunch yet? I haven’t, and it’s a bit late so I was thinking we—”

“Oh gosh!” Pinkie exclaimed, looking up at the dark and glowering clouds the weather team was moving into position, “It is getting pretty late. I need to get back to Sugarcube Corner for the big evening rush. Everypony’ll be coming in to get their pastries and candies after work, and I’ve gotta help make them! Well, guess I’ll see you later!” She took off at a canter.

Concord followed. “How about this weekend, then? I should at least do something nice for you showin’ me and Ver around, right?”

“I work at a bakery!” Pinkie called back, increasing her pace. “Weekends are super-duper busy!”

The stallion continued on, undaunted. “Dinner! Next Tuesday! My treat!”

Pinkie sighed and came to a stop, causing the amorous stallion to nearly bump into her. She turned and looked Concord in the eye. “Gee, Concord, you seem like a really nice guy…”

Concord swelled at the compliment and nodded excitedly.

“…But we just met, and I hardly know you, and I’m really glad to have you as a friend, really, I am! …But I just don’t think I ought to have a special somepony in my life right now.”

The stallion’s face fell. Making anypony unhappy felt wrong to Pinkie, but what else could she do in a situation like this? She soldiered on, trying to remember what Rarity would say when these sorts of things happened to her.

“I’m sorry. It’s not me, it’s…you? Wait, no, the opposite of that! What I mean is I’ve got so many dresses to make and—CAKES! Not dresses, cakes. Great big complicated cakes that take up all my free time and the customers are so-o-o demanding…”

“I understand,” Concord interrupted, eyes downcast. “You don’t have to make excuses. You’re in the Big Six and I’m just a servant.”

Pinkie wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Did he work as a janitor or gardener or something? It would make sense, what with his blank flank.

He raised his head again, eyes shining. “It’s just…ever since I met you under the library and you jumped in to cover for your friend, all the time you were taking me and Ver through town, everypony you met on the way, everypony you even looked at, they all became happier, more alive, more loved than before. I could see it! Ponyville is so happy and peaceful, and it’s because you live here, Pinkie. You’re the conduit. You’re like…like a figure in a stained-glass window. You let the light Outside shine right in through the wall! It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since I came into this world.” He paused to wipe his eye. “I know I’m not worthy t’take rocks outta your shoes, but if I didn’t try…”

“Aww, c’mon, don’t cry!” Pinkie said, more confused than ever. What had Rarity told her to say when things got all weird and mushy? The magic words that brought stallions to their senses?

She made herself smile. “Let’s…just be friends?”

Concord sniffled. “Of course; I’m your friend forever. But maybe we—I mean, if there’s ever anything I can do—”

“Great!” Pinkie chirped, glad that the problem had been resolved so neatly. Truly, that unicorn knew her stuff. “Nice meeting you, Concord! Here I go, makin’ for the bakin’!” The pink mare dashed into town like a rocket, leaving the stallion in the dust.

Concord watched, mouth open, as she diminished into the distance.

From high above, a pegasus shouted “Okay, hit it!” There was a rumble of thunder, and a steady rain began falling.

Concord sighed miserably and lay down on his belly in the middle of the road. He resolved to lie there until Verity got out of school or a cart ran him over, whichever came first. The chill of the rain slowly soaked through his coat.

After a few minutes, he heard approaching hoofbeats. He ignored them. They were too heavy to be Pinkie's steps; Pinkie hardly touched the ground, especially when she did that adorable hopping gait.

Their owner came to a stop next to the prone pony, and the rain suddenly ceased falling on his head.

“Poor, poor Conky,” said a mocking voice just above him. “Isn’t it unfortunate? He hasn’t had that heart for a day and it’s already broken.”

The stallion opened his eyes and looked up into the face of a red-orange unicorn mare, her black mane held in a complicated braid and the mark of a golden, four-spoked wheel on her flanks. The rains fell as hard as ever around her, but, by incredible chance, not a drop hit her body.

“You leave her alone,” he said, looking up at her warily.

The unicorn laughed. “What, you think I’m going to go and punish her just because she spurned my cousin? You don’t know me very well.”

“I don’t care why,” he said, “just leave her alone. She’s in a good place. Don’t turn her.”

The mare clicked her tongue. “Quietism and misguided sentimentality; just what I expected from you. I don’t always hurt ponies, you know. Hey, maybe next go-around she’ll suddenly discover a hidden passion for weird, overly-forward unmarked stallions.”

Concord put his muddy hooves together in a pose of supplication. “Please, leave her be! Just this one pony!”

She rolled her eyes. “You know I can’t make promises, Conky. Unlike some spirits around here, I actually do my job instead of just bothering the locals.” She smirked and looked back into town. A single column of black smoke rose above the rooftops to blend with the clouded sky. “That’s not to say that the two don’t overlap half the time.”

Her cousin blinked up at her. “Do…my job?”

“Yes! Just because we got dragged Inside doesn’t mean we can take a vacation.”

Concord leaped from the mud to his feet with a whoop. “That’s it! She doesn't know! Once she sees what I can do, she’ll realize we’re perfect for each other! Fortuna, you’re a genius!” He tore off into town.

Fortuna shook her head as she watched him go. “I suppose I should be glad somepony sees it.”

Chapter IV

When Pinkie Pie got back to Sugarcube Corner, the storm was still going, but there was already a line of customers backed up through the door.

She hadn’t been fibbing to Concord; the busy part of the afternoon, what the Cakes called the “sugar rush,” had started a lot earlier than usual. In fact, it was also bigger than she had expected. Apparently there were plenty of ponies willing to brave the elements to get themselves a treat.

As soon as Pinkie squeezed around the crowd and got inside, Mrs. Cake grabbed her and pushed her behind the register. “Oh, thank goodness you're back, dearie!” the proprietor cried. “You just take care of these good folks up front and let me and the hubby get to work in the kitchen.” She disappeared into the back before Pinkie could respond.

The pink mare readied her best customer service smile and turned to the pony at the front of the line.

The smile was not returned. The orange pegasus dropped a paper box heavily on the counter. “It's about time,” she grumbled, flicking a dripping forelock from her eyes. “I'm here for a refund for my son’s birthday cake. The one you botched.”

“Oh no!...I’m so sorry about that, Mrs. Paisley!” Pinkie apologized. The bakery offered full refunds for unsatisfied customers, but ever since the ‘baked bads’ incident there’d only been one regular unsatisfied customer: Paisley. She’d always find something wrong with whatever Pinkie made, eat most of it anyway, and then come back to take advantage of the policy. It’d been going on for weeks.

“It's too bad how this keeps happening,” Pinkie opined as she popped the register’s drawer open with a cheery ding. “What was wrong with this one?”

Paisley turned up her nose. “You spelled my son’s name with an ‘I’. It’s A-R-G-Y-L-E!”

Pinkie opened the lid and checked. Just under half of a frosted apple-spice cake was left inside. Letters in yellow icing read:

HAP
BIRT
ARG

It was too bad Paisley always ate whatever part of the order would substantiate her complaints. Pinkie knew the customer was always right, but she was certain she’d got the lettering perfect this time!

As she counted out Paisley’s bits beneath the mare’s disapproving gaze, Pinkie chuckled in spite of herself. It just looked like it’d be fun to say, especially if she dragged out the last R.

“Habber-thargh!”

It was fun! Pinkie fell into a giggling fit.

The customer was not amused. “No wonder my orders keep getting messed up if this is how seriously you take your job. I’ve got half a mind to take my business elsewhere!” Paisley swept the bits off the counter and into her saddlebag.

“Oh, please don’t do that, Mrs. Paisley!” Pinkie pleaded. “The only other place in Ponyville is Baker Brothers, and they don’t give refunds ever!”

Several of the ponies in line snickered.

Paisley’s mouth silently opened and shut a few times, and her face grew as red as the curly design on her flanks. “Well I never!” she finally managed. “How dare you imply that I...that I would...I want to speak to your manager! Right now!”

The line of customers began to grow unruly.

“Hey lady,” said a large stallion behind her wearing a vest and hard hat. “Maybe you could table that until the rest of us get a chance to order, huh?” Several other ponies in the queue grumbled something to the same effect.

Paisley adopted a look of wounded dignity, took the box back and stepped out of line. “Fine, but believe me, I’m going to have words with the Cakes over this.” She sniffed and squeezed around the curling line to retrieve her umbrella saddle from a stand in the corner.

The stallion stepped up to the counter. “Ehh, don't worry about her none,” he said. “You guys are the only game in town now after that fire.”

“A fire?” Pinkie squeaked. “Oh no! What happened? Was anypony hurt?”

He shook his stubbly head. “Nah, I think they all got out okay, but Barnyard Bargains got gutted and Baker Brothers is missing a wall an’ most of its roof.”

“That’s terrible!”

The stallion shrugged. “Coulda been worse. We’re just lucky it started in the middle of this rainstorm. Otherwise it might have spread all over the place. Anyway, it’s a windfall for you and the Cakes, right? That’s why there’s so many ponies here today.”

“Hey!” Called a grouchy voice from further back in the line, “Is this a bakery or a garden party? What’s the hold up?”

“Hey yourself!” the stallion called back over his shoulder, “This lady is expressin’ her concern over your neighbors. I can’t just not to tell her what’s going on!”

“Maybe you can tell her about how I caught pneumonia while you were yakking!” called another voice from just outside the door.

“Good grief, how come ponies are so rude nowadays?” The stallion grumbled, stepping away from the line and craning his neck to try and see who had said that.

A hesitant-looking yellow mare slipped around him and placed her front hooves against the counter. “Ahm... I’d like a couple of tarts, please. One blueberry and, er, one peach?”

Pinkie was relieved that the line was finally moving again. “Sure thing, Junebug! Comin’ right up!”

No sooner had she ducked behind the counter than the voice of the big stallion stopped her.

“Whoah! Whaddya think you’re doing? You can’t serve her first; she cut in line!”

Junebug shrank back. “Um, but you were talking to somepony outside and I just thought that—”

“What in Tartarus is wrong with the ponies in this town?!” the stallion bellowed, and shoved Junebug back behind him.

A pale yellow stallion stepped out of line and moved menacingly toward the angry construction worker. “Tenpenny, you big bully! You can’t do that to Junebug!” he shouted. Several others growled assent.

Pinkie waved her hooves to try and get the crowd’s attention. “Everypony, please! Sugarcube Corner is supposed to be a place where we all come to relax, have fun and eat stuff! Don’t get all sore just because of a little rain and a little wait and a teensy little misunderstanding!”

The customers ignored her.

She ducked behind the counter again, and then suddenly appeared between Tenpenny and the pony who’d broken from the line to accost him.

“Everypony COOL IT!” she hollered, glaring at one belligerent party (her least favorite kind) and then the other. Without looking, she tossed a bag containing Junebug’s order to the yellow mare. Junebug managed to catch it, but stumbled into the line of impatient customers in the process. Another ripple of annoyance expanded through the crowd.

Everypony did not cool it. Not only did the stallions continue to stare daggers at each other over her head, the other ponies in line grew even more irate at seeing the cashier abandon her post. Some gave up and tried to leave, and others, seeing the promise of getting out of the rain, tried to push their way inside. Each group blocked the other at the door and began loudly demanding the right of way.

“Pinkie, how’s it going out there?” Carrot Cake called from the back.

“I think I could use just a little bit of help,” Pinkie yelled back, trying to push Tenpenny and another stallion apart between herself.

“Okay, we’ll be out in a jiffy! Just let me get this—”

There was a thunderous clatter from the kitchen, and then a series of splats.

“Oh dear.”

“It’ll be a few minutes, dearie,” Mrs. Cake called. “Hold down the fort!”

Pinkie gulped.

“You’re bothering this pony here,” Tenpenny growled to the other stallion, pointing at Pinkie.

“Oh, so now you care about treating mares with respect?” the other said. “Then apologize to Junebug!”

“No! She oughtta apologize to everypony in here for breaking in line!”

Junebug was still at the counter, carefully avoiding making eye contact with the arguing stallions. “Ah...it’s okay Cosmic, really! Just ring me up and I’ll be on my way, Pinkie.”

“Yes, let’s let Pinkie get back to work,” said Cosmic. “Care to take this outside?”

“What, and lose my place? You wanna have it out, we can settle things right here. Won’t take but a second.”

“Guys, stop it! No brawling in the store!” Pinkie insisted.

In unison, both stallions pushed her aside. They hadn’t planned to both shove her at once, and their combined force sent the pink mare flying backward to strike the store’s countertop with the back of her skull. Stars burst across Pinkie’s vision as she slid to the floor, and then she felt a familiar sensation; a ticklish feeling that started at the tip of her nose and rolled down to the end of her tail.

The noise of the crowd suddenly ceased. For a second, Pinkie was afraid the blow had rendered her deaf. She rubbed her eyes until the stars went away and looked around. Every pony in the store was blinking and swaying unsteadily as if they’d all just awoken on their feet.

The two stallions looked down on her, guilty and concerned.

“I’m...we’re really sorry, miss. I don’t know what...you aren’t hurt, are you?” Tenpenny asked, offering her a hoof up.

“Oh my gosh, Pinkie! I wasn’t, I mean, I didn’t mean to...oh gosh!” Cosmic babbled, hovering over her nervously.

There was another commotion at the door. “Get away from her, both of you!” Concord yelled as he burst through the groggy crowd. He slid to a stop kneeling before Pinkie. “I stopped ’em soon’s I could. Did these two hurt you? I swear, Pinkie, if they did, I won’t give them a moment’s rest, not ever again!”

Pinkie shook her head to try and get her ears to stop ringing. “What? Concord, what are you talking about? They stopped themselves.” She rubbed the knot forming beneath her mane. “Oog...sure wish they’d done it a teeny bit earlier, though.”

“You did hurt her!” Concord growled, rounding on Cosmic and Tenpenny, who backed away from the furious stranger. Concord snorted and glared at the pair. “Lookit you, all hale and hearty while she’s lying there in agony!”

“I just got a little bump by accident, no biggie,” Pinkie said.

“Brutes who harm somepony like Pinkie don’t just get to walk away.” Concord’s voice had taken on a hard edge Pinkie hadn’t heard before. One of the ears flattened against his skull slowly lengthened and changed from gray to tawny brown, like a donkey’s.

The tickly feeling rolled through Pinkie again, but this time it stayed and grew more intense. Tenpenny and Cosmic’s demeanor altered before her eyes. Shaking like a leaf, the yellow stallion curled himself tightly into a ball on the floor, put his hooves over his head and moaned. Tenpenny remained standing, but he instantly broke out in a cold sweat and began hyperventilating. His eyes darted fearfully about the room.

The rest of the ponies stood placidly in line, completely ignoring the two stallions freaking out right next to them.

Pinkie clambered to her feet, not quite believing what she was seeing. “Concord...are you doing magic at them? Aren’t you an earth pony?”

“Magic? Nah,” he replied, still watching Tenpenny and Cosmic squirm, “I just don’t think they should have any more peace, if they’re going to be like that.”

Pinkie prodded Cosmic with a hoof. He flinched and yelped. “Whatever you did to them, un-do it! Or stop doing it, or...just cut it out!”

Concord looked back at her, surprised. “But they—”

“You’re being all scary and weird and I don’t like it!”

“O-of course!” Concord blurted. The tickly feeling vanished and the two stallions came out of their terrified stupor. They both backed their way to the door, pushed through the now-pliant crowd and fled into the street. Concord's donkey-ear returned to its original size and hue.

Desperate to salvage his standing in Pinkie’s eyes, the gray stallion pulled one of the customers out of the line. The unicorn he snagged seemed startled but otherwise unperturbed at being grabbed by a stranger. “This is good, though, right?” he asked, smiling ingratiatingly at Pinkie. “They were stressed and impatient before, but just look at ’em now! They’re all calm and orderly as ponies can be. That was me!”

Pinkie gave him an incredulous look.

“Tell her,” Concord said, shaking the pony he’d grabbed. “You don’t mind the wait now, right?”

The pony, a russet mare, blinked dreamily. “I feel like... like I could just wait here forever. It’s so awesome just being here... in the universe and everything.” She smiled at Pinkie. “All the stuff at Sugarcube Corner is so good. It’s totally worth it.”

Concord pushed her back into line. “Neat, huh? Just doin’ what I can to help out a special friend.” He winked.

Pinkie looked him in the eye with the best serious, no-nosense stare she could manage. “Concord, friends don’t pretend to be something they aren’t, because they trust each other. What are you?”

He looked away and scratched behind his ear guiltily. “I’m... a pony!”

She crossed her forelegs and stuck out her lower lip.

“I am a pony... right now,” he insisted.

“Nuh-uh,” she said, waving to the queue of preternaturally patient patrons. “The only sort of creature I’ve ever seen that can just take a bunch of ponies and scramble their brains, no magic or anything is Discord. He could change into anything too. Are you a dracon- a dragonic- ...a freaky evil chaos spirit-thing?”

“A spirit of chaos wouldn’t go ’round calming folks and making your life easier, now would he?” Concord reasoned.

Pinkie knitted her brows. “So what kind of spirit are you then, huh?”

The stallion sighed. “A good one,” he admitted. “But I’m really a pony too! Your friend Twilight made me one!”

She stared at Concord for a long moment, trying to think of what to do. So Twilight had succeeded in bringing a spirit bodily into the world; a spirit with a schoolfilly crush on Pinkie coupled with terrifying mind-altering powers. He’d driven Cosmic and that other rowdy stallion nearly insane with fear simply because they mistreated her.

She glanced at the line of customers. They still stared off into space, too relaxed and peaceful to be able to object to waiting, or being rained on, or anything at all, really. Couldn’t Concord do something like that to make her just as unable to reject his clumsy advances? Pinkie Pie shivered. She’d have to be extra careful about this.

The pink mare shrugged and looked sympathetically at the stallion. “Gee, Concord, I want to believe you, but I don’t really know anything about spirits. What if you’re a bad one just pretending to be a good one? Then you’d lie, right? I can’t just go by your say-so; it wouldn’t be smart. You understand, right?” She tilted her head and twisted the perpetual curl at the tip of her mane around a forehoof.

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Oh, don’t worry! I know just what we can do to fix everything! See, Twilight knows everything about most things, so we can just go over to her and she can figure out whether you’re the real deal or not.” She tilted her head the other way and batted her eyes innocently. “That wouldn’t be any trouble for a real good spirit of harmony, right?”

“No...” Concord allowed, feeling hope stir again within him. It was working! Pinkie had only been reluctant before because she thought he might have been a bad guy, why else? But once her friend could vouch that he was obviously just what he claimed, and she would, one way or another, then...

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go!” He skipped toward the door.

Pinkie stepped on his tail. “Hold on a sec, Zippy McExuberant-Pants! Verity’s a spirit too, isn’t she?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, you have to bring her too or it’s no good. Oh! And I have a special favor to ask.”

He made a jerky little bow, barely containing his excitement. “Name it an’ it’s done!”

She leaned close. “We’re going to play a little game. You say you’re a pony, so now you have to act like it! You have to promise me you won’t use any more of your spirit powers like this,” she indicated the ponies in line, “until I say it’s okay. Okay?”

Concord nodded.

“Pinkie swear on it!”

“Do what now?”

She explained, and he recited after her with gusto, nearly blinding himself in one eye. Seconds later, Concord galloped out the door. The last scraps of the day’s storm were just petering out, and the afternoon sun peeked through the clouds.

Pinkie stuck her head out after him. “Remember, no spirit stuff! I’ll see you and Verity at the library!”

“It’s a date!” he called back.

As he vanished around a corner, Pinkie’s smile faded into a grimace, and then a sigh. She’d better get over to Twilight fast and warn her. Twilight’s magic had brought Concord here, so it stood to reason that she could zap him away again if worst came to worst.

Pinkie left right then, figuring the Cakes could take care of the uber-pacific ponies Concord had left in his wake. She broke into a canter, and then a gallop, making for the town’s library.

She failed to notice an unfamiliar scowling pegasus who took off from the roof of Sugarcube Corner and glided after her, muttering darkly under her breath.

Chapter V

Cherilee made the final stroke of the equals sign, dropped the chalk back in the trough at the bottom of the board, and wiped the dust from her mouth. “Okay class, let’s use what we’ve learned today about fractions. Who in here knows the answer to this problem?”

Six hooves shot up, including the new student’s.

Cherilee smiled and nodded to Verity. “Yes, Verity. Thank you for remembering to raise your hoof. Come up to the board and write out the answer.”

The filly slipped from her desk and trotted up to the front, looking neither to the left or right. She took up the chalk and began clacking and scraping away at the board.

The latest addition to Cherilee’s class was certainly a unique little flower. The teacher could tell that Verity had never darkened the door of a schoolhouse until today, but clearly somepony had been seeing to her education. During the history lesson, it had taken some time for Cherilee and Verity’s classmates to get through to the filly that she wasn’t supposed to answer as soon as anypony asked a question, but to wait for the teacher to call on her. Until they got her to understand classroom protocol, the little blue pony had given them an earful, expounding with absolute certainty on some highly unorthodox explanations for the failure of Equestria’s ill-fated first treaty with the dragon flights, most of them involving alchemists.

That wasn’t the strangest thing, though. It could just be that Verity had been the student of a very eccentric tutor until now. What Cherilee didn’t understand was the filly’s behavior toward her fellow classmates. Kids being kids, when the teacher had to slowly explain why raising one’s hoof was important, some of the other children had laughed and made unkind comments behind Verity’s back. It was natural for a young pony to be embarrassed, or depressed, or even angry when her strangeness and ignorance were put on display before her peers. Cherilee was all ready to offer comfort or chastisement as the situation warranted.

It didn’t. Verity had stared at her, attentive but impassive, the entire time. Cherilee couldn’t tell whether she didn’t notice or simply didn’t care about the giggles and jibes of the class. It was a bit unnerving. She must just be very emotionally mature for her age, Cherilee reasoned to herself.

As Verity continued to scratch at the blackboard, the other students began to murmur once again.

“What is that?”

“Is she drawing a picture?”

“Thath’s not math!”

Cherilee turned and checked on her charge. Verity had drawn a floor plan of the classroom, and was making X marks at various points.

“Verity,” the teacher said, “You’re supposed to be solving the problem up there, not doodling.”

The filly dropped the chalk back in the tray. “I did.”

The schoolteacher looked uncertainly down at her student. “No, Verity. You need to write out the answer, not draw.”

Verity nodded, picked the chalk back up and began writing next to her picture.

From her desk by the window, Diamond Tiara stifled a laugh. “Isn’t that the stupidest pony you’ve ever seen?” she whispered to Apple Bloom.

The red-maned filly frowned and shushed her. “Aw, hush! Ah bet she cain’t help being that way.”

Scootaloo, sitting to the right of Apple Bloom, shook her head. “Nah, I’ve seen her type before. She’s just playing dumb because she knows she can get away with it on her first day.”

“But Miss Cherilee’s trying so hard to help her! What a mean thing to do!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed from Apple Bloom’s left.

The teacher gave the row of fillies a sharp look. “You three! You know better than to whisper in class, especially when you don’t have anything nice to say.”

“Three?” Scootaloo said, “Diamond Tiara was—”

“Do we need to discuss this after school?

They hung their heads. “No ma’am.”

Cherilee nodded, satisfied, and looked back at the board. “Verity...what is this?

The blue pony had written out her answer:

Apple Bloom
Cherilee
Featherweight
Silver Spoon
Twist
Verity

“You asked me who in here knew the answer to the problem,” Verity explained with perfect innocence. A ripple of laughter went through the students.

Cherilee felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on.

“Hey!” Snips, a stout unicorn colt, said from the back of the room, “I know it too! Where’s my name?”

“You forgot to carry the two.”

As the rest of the class laughed harder, Snips leaned over his notebook and checked his work. His eyes widened. “Nnh... she’s on the other side of the room! How the hay did she know that?” he hissed to his friend, Snails.

“Know what?”

“She was right; I forgot the two!”

“Maybe she’s, like, psycho,” the lanky colt ventured.

Snips rolled his eyes. “You mean she’s psych-ic.”

“I thought I was your sidekick.”

“No, you dope! It means she reads minds and stuff.”

“That’s what I said: psycho.”

Snips groaned and dropped the subject.

Meanwhile, Cherilee was reaching the end of her considerable patience. She still coudn’t tell whether Verity was trying to see how much time she could waste, or if she was really this ignorant of how she was expected to behave. The teacher decided to give her one more chance.

“Verity, I want you to listen very carefully,” She said. “What is the answer to the equation right here on the board?” She tapped it for emphasis.

“Five and three eighths.”

The teacher exhaled and felt the pain in her skull begin to fade. Finally, the lesson was back on track. “Very good! And how did you find the answer?”

“I saw where you wrote it in your lesson plan there in the drawer.”

There was another smattering of giggles from the class, but most were simply staring silently at this point, in awe of the new kid’s chutzpah.

The teacher’s headache returned with a vengeance. This new pony was definitely a troublemaker. “No. No you didn’t.” she said, frowning severely and rubbing a throbbing temple. “You’ve been intentionally misunderstanding me, dragging your hooves to waste time, and now you’re making up ridiculous stories. Go back to your seat, Verity. We’re going to have a long chat about your behavior after school when your brother arrives.”

Verity gasped with righteous indignation, the first emotional reaction she’d expressed all day. She’d ignored the students calling her an idiot and a cut-up, but to be called a liar? It was beyond endurance. Concord was right, she reflected, ponies didn’t know what they wanted, and worse, they lashed out at the honest in their confusion.

She would teach this pony to doubt the word of a spirit. Verity planted her hooves and shut her eyes tightly.

In a flash, Cherilee’s headache vanished entirely, replaced by a confused, light-headed feeling. She shook her head to clear it. “Verity, quit being a naughty pony and go back to your seat now.”

The blue filly’s eyes snapped open and gazed into the teacher’s with startling intensity.

“When you were seven, your neighbors’ daughter Snowdrop had a pet kitten. She named it Berry,” Verity said.

“I won’t ask you again. Sit down.”

Verity didn’t heed her. “You wanted a pet of your own so much, but your parents said you weren’t ready to be responsible for another creature.”

“Verity, be quiet!”

“You and Snowdrop were best friends, and she always let you play with Berry when you were at her house. One summer, the two of you came up with a plan to prove to your parents that you could take care of an animal. Snowdrop’s family was going on vacation, and you would pet-sit Berry while they were away. Your parents gave their permission, so the afternoon after they left, you went to Snowdrop’s house to check Berry’s food and water and clean her litter-box. Berry had never been left entirely alone in the house before, and she was hiding because she was scared. You went inside to look for her, but you forgot to close the front door behind you. Berry ran outside when you weren’t looking.”

As Verity spoke, Cherilee’s annoyance melted into fearful amazement. “I never told anypony... how do you know this?” she gasped, lowering her ears and taking a step backward.

The blue filly ignored the question. “You searched all over their house until it began to get dark, but Berry was long gone. You were afraid your parents would never let you have a pet if they knew what happened, so you lied and told them everything went fine.

“That night, you lay in your bed and couldn’t sleep. Timber wolves howled outside your window for hours. They’d never been that close to your house before. You didn’t understand why until you went behind the neighbors’ house next morning.”

Cherilee’s lip began to tremble and her eyes filled with tears as the long-buried memory burst upon her with eidetic clarity. Suddenly she was seven again, finding the kitten’s torn, gnawed collar lying on the dewy grass. “Snowy... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered, backing into the corner and hiding her face in her hooves.

Watching the educator break down in tears, Verity experienced a sensation she’d never felt before; a tiny twist of pain in her innards and a cramp in one of her back legs. Was what she was doing... wrong? She pushed the thought aside. She was telling the truth; showing the world as it was, no matter what mean, deluded ponies wanted to deny. That was her purpose.

While this was going on, the other students looked at each other, unable to understand what was happening. Whatever the new kid was doing to Cherilee must be terrible, to make her huddle in a corner like that.

“We gotta do something, eh? She’s a psycho, and she’s psycho-ing Miss Cherilee!” Snails said, shaking Snips urgently.

“What can we do? If she’s psycho... ah, psychic, she already knows what we’re thinking!” Snips argued.

Apple Bloom overheard, and struck her hoof against her desk. “It don’t matter! She’s hurtin’ our teacher somehow, and we gotta make her stop! Who’s with me?!”

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle rose from their seats and joined her. Most of the class soon followed.

Suddenly, Diamond Tiara pointed and screamed. “Eek! Look at her leg!”

Verity’s back left leg had gone from blue hair to bare pink flesh, ending in a double-toe and a pair of dewclaws. It looked exactly like a pig’s trotter.

Apple Bloom gulped and felt her courage begin to ebb. “Is she... is that a changelin’?”

“D’ya know anything else that can go from a pony to a pig?” Scootaloo said, undaunted. “Rainbow Dash and your sister beat up a cartload of them, right? A whole class can handle just one.”

“G-good luck then,” Diamond Tiara said, grabbing Silver Spoon and edging toward the door. “Me and Silver Spoon, um, we’ll go run for help.

The two fillies snuck to the door as the rest of the class hesitantly moved to surround Verity at the front of the room. The new student seemed oblivious to them, and continued speaking to Cherilee.

“You knew it was all your fault, but were too ashamed to admit it to Snowdrop. You told her you’d seen Berry every day, and that she was fine when you left the day before they returned. You even helped her put up ‘lost cat’ posters all over town.”

“You stop that right now! Quit hurtin’ Miss Cherilee!” Apple Bloom demanded, standing protectively between Verity and the teacher.

Verity seemed to notice the young ponies around her for the first time. “I’m not hurting her,” she said. “She hurt herself.”

“Just shut your mouth!” Scootaloo commanded. “We’re not going to let a nasty changeling get our teacher!”

Looking back to make sure Verity didn’t see them, Diamond Tiara slowly turned the latch and pulled at the door. It opened silently as the rest of the class distracted the creature.

“D-d-diamond...” Silver Spoon stuttered, staring wide-eyed through the doorway.

“Shh! Do you want to be changeling chow?” her friend hissed, not taking her eyes off the suspected monster. She carefully backed through the door and immediately bumped into something.

Silver Spoon scuttled back to the other students.

Diamond Tiara tore her eyes from Verity and slowly turned her head to look behind her. Mere inches from her face, the gray stallion who’d brought Verity there smiled apologetically down at the filly.

“ ’Scuse me little girl, but is school out yet?”

Diamond Tiara’s scream got the attention of every other pony in the building. The class and Concord stared at each other in confused silence for a moment.

“That’s the pony she was with earlier!” Sweetie Belle shrieked. “He must be one too!”

Intimidated by the appearance of a second supposed changeling, this one full-size, the students backed fearfully into the same corner as Cherilee. Their teacher was still beside herself, mentally reliving her most shameful memory.

Concord waved at the class as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “Hey y’all. I know it’s a smidge early, but something’s come up and I need to—”

Scootaloo stepped forward and dropped into an aggressive stance. “You’ll never take us alive, you filthy monster!” she declared, flexing her tiny wings and pawing the floor.

“Um, okay. Noted,” The stallion said. “But I really just want to take Verity alive and leave the rest of you alive too. That alright, Miss Cherilee?”

Still weeping into the corner, she made shooing motions with her hoof at him.

He was unsure what that meant, but he stepped into the schoolhouse anyway. The students backed away as he approached.

“Hey Verity, let’s go. Pinkie wants us back at the library.”

Verity gave Cherilee one last glare and then trotted to Concord, staggering slightly due to her mismatched limb.

Concord raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. “Whoa there. How’d that happen, sis?”

“I changed,” she replied sulkily, walking right past him and out the door.

He shrugged to himself and turned to follow her.

“W-wait, stop!” Apple Bloom said. “What’s going on? What happened to Miss Cherilee? Is she gonna be alright?”

“Oh gosh, I wish I could help her, but I promised Pinkie I wouldn’t,” Concord explained. “Listen, if she’s still all weepy when Pinkie lets me do my thing again, give me a holler and I’ll fix her up right as rain, okay?”

“Pinkie Pie told you not to help Miss Cherilee?” said Sweetie Belle, baffled.

Scootaloo was similarly confused. “And you can ‘fix her up’? What the hay?”

“Sorry kids, can’t stay to chat,” he said, cantering out the door. “I got a hot date with a pink pony and I don’t want to leave her waiting!”

“But...”

“You’ll understand when you’re older!” he shouted, and galloped away.

Chapter VI

Pinkie ran through the streets of town, oblivious to the winged shadow sliding along the ground behind her. Then came the combo: ear-flop, eye-flutter, knee-twitch.

“Oop!” she said, nearly tripping at the last bit. “Hey, everypony! Watch out for do-o-ors!”

All the ponies in the street obeyed with trust born of long experience, giving every nearby doorway a wide berth. However, the pegasus following her didn’t know any better.

Thus, when a pony threw open the door leading onto her second-story balcony, the green-coated yellow-maned pegasus smashed into it face-first, bounced off and plummeted onto the street right in front of Pinkie Pie. The pink mare skidded to a halt.

“Ouch, That looked like it really hurt!” Pinkie exclaimed. “Are you okay? Do you need first aid?”

The dazed pony shook her head and pushed Pinkie away.

“How about second aid? Oh! Maybe lemonade? That always perks me right up!”

The pegasus mare grunted angrily and jumped back to her feet with more agility than Pinkie would have expected after taking a hit like that. “How did you do that?” the stranger demanded, rubbing the bruised side of her face.

“That’s just my Pinkie Sense. I don’t really know how it works, but it just does!” Pinkie reached out to brush some dust out of the pegasus’s mane, but the mare batted her hoof away.

“Don’t you patronize me! I know what you’re up to, Pinkamena Diane Pie, and you’re not going to get away with it!”

Pinkie briefly took stock of the various things she was up to at the moment. First of all, she was in charge of no less than eight birthday parties later this month, two of which were surprises. Three pranks were also on her plate: one potential, one ongoing and one that would go off whenever Twilight opened the dummy cover of Planning Spontaneity for the Excessively Organized. Then there was Twilight’s secret possession of the Element of Magic, and finally Pinkie’s plan to round up Verity and Concord before the two spirits could cause trouble.

Since Pinkie didn’t know which scheme the pegasus meant, she decided playing dumb was the best course of action.

“Who...me?” she said with exaggerated innocence, placing a hoof on her breast.

The pegasus’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t even try to deny it,” she hissed. “I saw everything. You’re trying to seduce and corrupt a spirit!”

Pinkie was flabbergasted. “What? Seduce? No! No-no-no.” She paused for a moment and pursed her lips. “Wait, we’re talking about Concord, right?”

The pegasus nodded.

“—No, no, nope, nopity-noooo!” Pinkie resumed. “I really don’t see him that way at all.”

“So you’re just using him for your own nasty little ends, is that it?” The pegasus snapped. “And you’re one of the Big Six? You make me sick.”

Pinkie took a step back. “I’m not using anypony!” she protested. “You’ve got it all wrong; I’m only trying to keep him from doing crazy-weird spirit things like he did back at Sugarcube Corner.”

“Obstructing his duty, you mean,” the other mare countered. “I saw you batting your lashes at him and ordering him around. You’ve got him wrapped around your hoof, and I know why.” She reached beneath her wing and withdrew a manila folder which seemed too large to have been hidden there. The folder was labeled “PIE, PINKAMENA D.”

Just looking at it made Pinkie feel... strange. It was a sensation she’d experienced before, but she couldn’t quite place it. She noticed the pegasus’s cutie mark: silver pan scales. This was clearly another spirit in pony form. Why did Verity and this pegasus have cutie marks but Concord didn’t?

The pegasus mare flipped through the folder, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. “Oh Ms. Pie, you’ve been a bad pony.” She turned the folder around so Pinkie could see it. Inside were pages and pages of official-looking documents, each headed with a single word in red block letters.

STALKING, HARASSMENT, VANDALISM, TRESPASSING; each word was the name of a crime, and the rest of each page had a date and the details of the act written to minute precision.

“Wha-what is this?” Pinkie asked, afraid that she already knew the answer.

The pegasus smirked at her. “Why, it’s your permanent record, Ms. Pie.”

“Permanent records are really real?,” Pinkie gasped. “I always thought those were just something ponies talk about to keep you on your best behavior.”

“What, did you think your parents and teachers were lying to you all these years? I suppose that explains a lot,” the pegasus replied, arching an eyebrow. “Credit ratings are real too, just so you know.”

The pink mare gulped. “This looks like it’s super-big-time important. Maybe we could go someplace private to discuss it like...the library?” She scanned the surroundings for friendly faces, but, oddly, the street was empty all of a sudden. Where had everypony gone?

A humorless laugh escaped the pegasus’s lips. “Oh no, Ms. Pie. Please don't drag any others into this. There's no escaping...” She paused to strike a valiant pose. “...Just Deserts, spirit of justice!”

Pinkie gave the pegasus a disbelieving look. “Your name is... ‘Desserts?’ Like cake and pie?”

“What? No! It’s ‘Just Deserts.’ As in, ‘what you deserve!’ ”

“That’s what I said, ‘desserts,’ ” Pinkie insisted. “And if you think I deserve desserts, why are you so angry? That sounds nice!”

“No! JUST. And then DEH-ZURTS with one ‘s!’ ”

“You mean a big sandy place? I thought that was pronounced different.”

Just Deserts ground her teeth and thrust the folder back under Pinkie’s nose. “Listen, just... just be quiet while I state your crime and deliver the verdict, will you?” She cleared her throat and extracted several pages from the folder. “These reports all come from the same day, when you targeted a certain Cranky Doodle Donkey for harassment, breaking into his home, chasing him around town, and destroying his personal property.”

Pinkie laughed and waved a hoof dismissively. “Aww, you don’t need to bother with that, Ms. Justice Dessert spirit, we worked it out okay and everything’s fine now. We’re real good friends.”

Arching an eyebrow, Just Deserts flipped a ways back to more reports of stalking and harassment. “I’m not done! Here, when you were being avoided by a certain Rainbow Dash, you hounded her across town until she relented.”

“Well, yeah, but everything’s cool there too. Me and Dashie, we’re like this,” Pinkie explained, pressing her front hooves together.

“And here,” the pegasus continued, opening the folder to the middle, “When you shadowed your friends around town and restrained and interrogated an acquaintance when you suspected they were hiding something from you.”

Pinkie’s smile began to fade. “But I learned better from that! Twilight even wrote to the princess about it and everything! Why are you telling me all this?”

“The point, Ms. Pie, is that whenever somepony decides not to be your friend, you go to any length to change their mind, hunting them down and terrifying them until they give in.”

Pinkie pawed the ground and looked away, frowning. “N-no, it’s not like that! I mean, It always works out! They’re all glad to be my friends! They like me!”

“They know better than to let you think otherwise, you mean,” Just Deserts replied archly. “You’re sitting atop a precarious perch, and you know it.”

The pink mare felt herself becoming genuinely outraged at the spirit of justice. And she’d been looking forward to welcoming this nasty, rude, accusing creature back into Equestria!

“Listen, you big greenie meanie,” Pinkie shouted, her voice echoing through the deserted street, “maybe I’m not the best pony, and maybe I go the teeniest-tiniest bit too far when I want to be friends with a pony, but my friends are NOT FAKES, and they’re NOT LIARS and if you think they are, then you don’t know anything, not even if you have folders for them too!”

Pinkie paused, realizing what she’d just said. She bit her lip and glanced around.

“Er, do... do you have folders for them, Miss Desserts?” she continued in a much lower voice. “Could I see? Or you could just look and tell me? That they’re my real friends and not lying, scared-of-me not-friends, I mean. I... I promise I'll stop doing whatever it is to Concord if you do, cross my heart and hope to fly!”

Just Desserts chuckled, shut the folder and placed it beneath her closed wing. When she spread the wing a second later, the folder had vanished. “And there we have it! You’re afraid they’ll abandon you, and you’re willing to do anything, even grossly violate their privacy, to prevent it.”

Pinkie lowered her ears and stared at the ground, unable to reply. It would be pretty unfair to look through another pony's permanent record without their permission. But was it true what the pegasus had said about her friends? It was such an awful thing to say about somepony, but sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep at night, she lay in bed and all sorts of horrible what-ifs paraded through her mind, doubts about what ponies thought of her foremost.

The pegasus relished the look of guilt on Pinkie's face. It was so good when the accused finally came around! “And then earlier today, you met a pony who could give you exactly what you wanted; he could make anypony stay by you, anypony go along with whatever you wanted. All you had to do was convince him to abuse his power of bestowing peace.”

Pinkie’s ears shot back up. “Wait, no! I didn’t have any plans for Concord. I didn’t even know he was a spirit until a few minutes ago. That's one of those ’alley-byes,‘ right?”

“Does the when and how really matter, Ms. Pie?” Just Deserts asked, shrugging. “Even if I hadn’t laid it all out, it would have occurred to you eventually. And don’t bother denying you’re tempted.”

The earth pony slumped into a sitting position, wracked with guilt. She wanted to cry out that the charges the spirit made were false and outrageous, but were they? She would do anything to make sure her friends were really her friends. Even use Concord’s weird spirit powers to force them to be? It seemed pretty excessive and not nice at all, but now that Just Deserts had mentioned it, she wanted to. She wanted to really, really badly. That probably made her a bad pony, and here was a spirit of justice all ready to arrest her, or give her a ticket, or whatever justice spirits did to bad ponies.

The weird feeling she’d felt when Just Deserts made her permanent record appear had been growing and growing throughout their conversation until it felt like an enormous weight, crushing her normally indomitable spirit. She finally recognized it: this was exactly what it had felt like when Discord had changed her into a grouch! She knew she should fight, or run, or call for help, but she couldn’t even bring herself to raise her head.

Just Deserts patted Pinkie on the back. “There, there, Ms. Pie,” she said, “I’m going to fix everything. We’re going to make sure you don’t go through with your evil plan by making you stay the Tartarus away from that spoony cousin of mine.” She produced another dossier from beneath her opposite wing, this one printed on yellow paper. “Let’s see. Fears, fears... spiders? Too crazy. Bats? Same. Abandonment? Too abstract. Oatmeal?” The spirit of justice paused and made sure she’d read that right. “No, just... no.” She skimmed down the list to the bottom. “Ah, a new one! Oh, this’ll do perfectly. Ms. Pie, can you still hear me?”

Pinkie nodded slowly, not taking her gaze from the ground.

Just Deserts lifted Pinkie's chin, forcing the earth pony to look into her eyes, which had transformed into pools of multicolored light. “Pinkamena, listen carefully. That stallion you met, Concord, he’s not really a spirit. There are no spirits. You've been tricked...”

As the spirit-in-pony-form spoke on, Pinkie’s own eyes started to change, mirroring the prismatic glow of the pegasus’s.

- Gem shape / cutie mark match beyond coincidence.

Previous orb forms had more abstract, geometrical designs except for Magic. Why?

Ask Prin
Don’t know if Luna told her yet.

- Significance of number, composition of jewels:

nine blue, oval (Topaz? Aquamarine? Show describe to jeweler)
one pink, 6-point star (98% certain it’s a tourmaline)

9 + 1

Sign of completeness? Does 9 repre
NUMEROLOGY IS A CROCK! That way lies madness.

...Symbology maybe? Have to establish context 1st.

- Overall design resembles modern take on paleoclassical period headgear.

Get Rarity’s opinion on
Not prudent. ‘3 may keep a secret’ etc.

Twilight Sparkle sighed, floated her pen back to the inkwell and pushed the scratch paper away. Other than a brief commotion outside during the storm, everything since she’d given that infuriating unicorn the boot had been blessedly peaceful. She had spent the afternoon trying to plan out a new angle for her research, but she just wasn’t feeling any inspiration for what to do with the Element of Magic next.

She had been so certain that making the crown into a magical spirit-beacon would turn up something interesting. Failure and reassessment were inevitable when probing the greatest mysteries of the universe, she knew, but a whole morning spent casting spell after obscure spell with nothing to show for it left her feeling both magically and mentally exhausted.

The waste basket next to her desk was overflowing with crumpled-up pieces of paper containing more scribbles and discarded plans on the subject. Ruefully, Twilight realized she’d have to destroy these and keep careful tabs on any future documentation to keep the secret safe. She crammed the papers into the wastebasket until they all fit, then levitated the whole bin before her and headed downstairs.

Twilight dumped the contents the basket into the bare fireplace in the living room downstairs and leaned over the hearth, calling up a simple spell to ignite the papers. Just as she was about to cast, the door to the library proper slammed open behind her. The distraction made the spell go haywire, and the pile of paper was incinerated in a miniature firestorm mere inches from Twilight’s face.

“Who’s there?” Twilight choked out between coughing and trying to rub the ashes from her face. Spike, standing in the doorway, started to laugh at Twilight's ash-coated visage, then doubled over, clutching his stomach.

“Urp! Mail call, Twilight. This...something’s different abLAARGH—”

A gout of emerald fire spewed forth from his mouth. The flame hung in the air for a moment, then twisted and curled around itself, transforming into a rolled scroll with a golden seal. Twilight gulped. The border of the paper was dyed red, the sign she and Princess Celestia had agreed upon for messages of utmost importance. Twilight snagged the missive out of the air, broke the seal, unrolled it and read:

My F.S.T.S.,

I apologize in advance for skipping our usual pleasantries.

As your mentor and sovereign, I command you to postpone whatever you may be doing and immediately tell me whether or not the Element of Magic remains in your possession. You may simply write ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on a scrap of paper and send it to me via Spike. Do not read the rest of this letter until you have done the following:

(a) actually set eyes upon the element (if you have it)
(b) sent me your response

in that order. Do it now.

The writing was hurried and messy, and the period after ‘now’ looked more like a splatter than a dot. Twilight’s eyes jumped to the next paragraph from force of habit.

Twilight Sparkle, I know you don’t like to leave things halfway done, but please control yourself and put down this letter.

Twilight reddened slightly and rolled the scroll back into a tube.

As she was reading, Spike leaned against the door frame, making faces and sticking out his tongue. “Bleah! That red ink makes it taste like the whole thing was dipped in paprika.” He noticed the worry evident on the unicorn’s face. “Uh-oh. What’s up?”

Twilight rushed past him with the letter in tow. “Get ready to take a really short note, Spike. There’s something I have to check on right now.” She ran through the library common room and down the stairs to the basement, leaving the door wide open behind her.

Spike had just turned away from the door to head for Twilight’s nearest stash of ink, quills and paper when the library’s front door burst open with enough force to nearly knock it off its hinges. The baby dragon jumped back in surprise as a frantic Pinkie Pie rushed through the door.

“Spike! Where’s Twilight? Is she okay?!” Pinkie shouted, grabbing the dragon and shaking him as only a dragon baby could be safely shaken.

“Hey, leggo!” Spike said, trying to break out of the frantic mare’s grip. “Twilight’s fine; she just went downstairs a few seconds ago. What’s got you so worked up this time, Pinkie?”

“A new pony just came into town today!” Pinkie explained, turning worriedly to look out the front windows.

Spike rolled his eyes. “...And you forgot to throw her a welcome party? That’s not a—”

“NO!” Pinkie interrupted. “This is bad, Spike! He’s been following me around all day, he probably knows about the super-important-thing-that-I-promised-Twilight-I-wouldn’t-talk-about, and he’s... he’s...” She gulped.

“What? He’s what?!” cried Spike, growing genuinely worried.

“He’s an evil, nasty, nature-corrupting ALCHEMIST!”

Author's Note

Yeah, I know it says "On Hiatus" at time of publishing, but I've had most of this chapter sitting around for way too long, so I thought I'd finish it up and put it out there before returning to my other fic. Frankly, this one is way easier and more fun to write.

Chapter VII

Down in the basement, less than a minute after Pinkie Pie burst into the library, she and Twilight were already growing exasperated with one another.

“I mean it, Twi!” Pinkie insisted, “That stallion from earlier today, he’s one of those alchemists and he knows about that!” She pointed to the bulge on the table, still hidden beneath the white cloth.

Twilight Sparkle ran a hoof down her face. Why oh why had Princess Luna included that ridiculous postscript about alchemists? Maybe it was her idea of a joke, resuscitating a centuries-old conspiracy theory.

“How do you know?” She asked the pink mare.

“I know because he tried to trick me into thinking he and that filly were spirits!” Pinkie said after a moment’s thought.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I mean, how do you know he’s an alchemist? Did he have ‘I Heart Perverting the Powers of Nature’ written on his flank or something?”

“This is serious!” Pinkie cried, stamping in nervous excitement. “He actually said he was a spirit and that you brought him here. How would he know about that if he didn’t know what we were trying to do this morning?”

This gave the unicorn a moment’s pause. Verity had guessed exactly what she was up to, and identified the Element of Magic. Could those two strangers really be up to something?

But... alchemists! In this day and age, no less! Twilight just couldn’t wrap her mind around something so ridiculous. No, it must just be another misunderstanding, like what had happened with Zecora. Small town ponies were pleasant folk, but they could be so credulous and provincial! There had to be another explanation that didn’t involve ancient bugaboos.

“Did he just volunteer this information on his own, Pinkie, or did you ask him if he was a spirit?” Twilight said, giving her friend a doubtful look.

Pinkie went from outraged, to thoughtful, to sheepish in the space of a couple seconds. “I, um, well... he had been doing all these strange things, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t an ordinary pony, and um...”

Twilight raised her eyebrows and stuck out her lower lip.

“I asked him if he was a spirit.” Pinkie squeaked.

“Well there you go! He must have just been playing along. Nothing to worry about.” Twilight nodded to herself, satisfied, and reached toward the Element of Magic.

“B-but he’s still an alchemist!” Pinkie spluttered. “You’re in danger!”

Twilight turned back to her anxious friend, looking equal parts apologetic and disappointed. “Pinkie, I’m sorry I got you involved in all this. I know you get carried away sometimes and you worry about the strangest things, but I thought you could at least keep your promise.”

Pinkie was flabbergasted. “I—but—what? I did! I didn’t tell anypony anything!”

”You might as well have!” Twilight exclaimed, “How can I keep this a secret if you’re going to go around asking every new pony if he’s a spirit in disguise? There’s all sorts of folklore saying the spirits are supposed to be connected to the elements. Somepony will put two and two together eventually.”

The pink mare pouted, still quite certain Concord was an alchemist. Twilight was just rationalizing and using her smarts to fool herself instead of facing the terrible truth. What did the number four even have to do with anything?

“He’s gonna be here soon, though. I told him to get Verity and meet me here back when I thought he was a spirit. We have to be ready to catch him before he tries anything!”

Twilight was still fairly certain there was no actual danger, but she worried about Pinkie. The breakdown on her birthday, the way she’d behaved on Nightmare Night, her worries that Rainbow Dash would forget her over the course of a week... it was as if the bubbly mare went out of her way to scare herself silly for the silliest reasons. Twilight patted her friend on the shoulder and smiled reassuringly at her. “Well that’s fine then. Go up and wait in the library and I’ll be up there in a second and we’ll get this all sorted out, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you or me or this,” she said, hooking a knee toward the Element of Magic.

Pinkie gulped, nodded, and trotted back up the stairs. Twilight waited until she heard the basement door open and shut, and then whisked the cloth off the table with a spell.

The Element of Magic was still right where she'd left it. Twilight Sparkle exhaled, not realizing she’d been holding her breath. Now she’d just hop back upstairs, have Spike send an affirmative reply to the princess, read the rest of the letter and get this business with Pinkie and the new ponies sorted out.

The door at the top of the stairs creaked open and two sets of hoofbeats descended. Twilight hastily hid the element again. “Pinkie! Don’t bring him down here!” she called up the stairs.

It was neither Pinkie Pie nor Concord who emerged into the laboratory at the bottom of the stairs, but a pair of mares Twilight had never seen before. A red-orange unicorn with a braided black mane and a green pegasus with a yellow mane and—

Twilight gasped.

Instead of a pony tail, the jointed, barbed tail of a scorpion twitched and curled above the pegasus’s hindquarters.

“Who are... what...” Twilight stammered, dropping into a wary stance and placing herself between the bizarre strangers and the table.

“Twilight Sparkle,” The pegasus said, scowling as if the name tasted bad on her tongue. “We need to talk.”

“I don’t know who you are, but nopony is allowed down here without my permission,” Twilight said, trying to sound as authoritative as she could.

The unicorn and pegasus traded glances. “Look at this! She summons us and then acts like we’re trespassing,” the latter pony complained.

“She was flinging spells willy-nilly,” the red unicorn replied. “She had no idea what she was doing.”

“Hey!” Twilight yelled, “You two better tell me who you are and what you’re doing here or I’ll show you some real spell-flinging!” A pink-yet-menacing nimbus of magic emanated from her horn.

The other unicorn shrugged languidly and without concern. “Very well, introductions. I am Fortuna, Most Harmonious Spirit of Fortune, She Who Turns the Great Wheel, Keeper of Necessary Evil, et cetera, et cetera.”

“And I am Just Deserts, a spirit of justice. Don’t think that I’ll overlook your threats and inhospitality just because you’re in the Big Six, Miss Sparkle.”

Fortune? Justice? Those weren’t any elements of harmony Twilight had ever heard of. She kept her horn lowered and glowing. “You don’t look like spirits to me,” she said, “You look like a unicorn and some kind of mutant pega-scorpion.”

Just Deserts bridled at the description. “We’re just as you materialized us, Miss Sparkle. If you have any problem with our looks, blame your shoddy spellcraft!”

“What ought we to look like, after all?” Fortuna asked, her eyes laughing.

Twilight chewed her lip and looked from one pony to the other. Pinkie had been right about one thing; something was up. These two knew far, far too much about what she’d been doing. If she grabbed the element and teleported she could easily give them the slip, but she couldn’t go far. She had to report to the princess, and Spike and Pinkie were still back upstairs. At least, she thought they were. These menacing strangers must have walked right past Pinkie to reach the stairs. Why hadn’t she done anything? Or... had they done something to her? Well, they hadn’t made any threatening moves yet, and Twilight was certain her magic could handle any two ponies who didn’t have the drop on her. What did harmony spirits look like, anyway?

She raised a spherical shield around herself and the table. “Okay, you say you’re spirits and I somehow brought you here without knowing it. Got any proof?”

Fortuna began walking around Twilight toward the covered table. “Tsk, so skeptical! Fine, let me see old Magic over there and I’ll put your doubts to rest.”

“Oh no you don’t!” the purple unicorn said, dropping the shield for a split second to throw a warning blast of magic from her horn. The spell scorched the floor inches from Fortuna’s raised hoof. “Don’t come any closer, and don’t try to cast anything or I’ll zap you senseless and be halfway to Canterlot with this thing before you hit the floor.”

“Don’t make this worse than it needs to be, Miss Sparkle,” Just Deserts said, skirting around the other direction and coiling her new tail.

The other unicorn said nothing, but smiled mischievously and took another step.

Twilight’s response was lightning-fast. Another spell-ray lanced from her horn at Fortuna, this one made to stun rather than burn.

It missed by a hairsbreadth to shatter a beaker on a shelf behind Fortuna. Twilight cast again, and then once more, but each time the spell’s bolt flew wide as Fortuna continued her leisurely advance. This had never happened before. Even novices had no trouble sending magic precisely where they wanted it to go. Twilight tried to seize the other unicorn with telekinesis, but the elementary spell simply fizzled.

“What’s the matter, dear? Having a little miss-fortune?” Fortuna asked, giggling at her own pun. “You all rely so much on my favor. When tiniest little things suddenly go wrong; a neuron misfires here, a muscle twitches there; you can’t do anything.”

Twilight was about to reply when she felt something sharp pressing against her neck. While her shield was down to attack, Just Deserts had snuck right up next to her and placed the stinger of her scorpion tail atop an artery.

“This is what I needed to discuss with you, Miss Sparkle,” the scorpion-pony said matter-of-factly, withdrawing an ominous-looking manila folder from beneath her wing. “Your flagrant mis-use of your powers is unbecoming to a bearer of the Element of Magic. Just look at this:” she opened the folder and thrust it in Twilight’s face.

The purple unicorn was in no condition to comply. “You’re crazy! Get away from me!” she shouted. Twilight tried to erect a magic barrier around herself and the crown again, but this spell too refused to materialize. Behind her, Fortuna smirked and pulled aside the cloth covering the table. Twilight tried to grab it back, but Just Deserts pressed the barb more firmly against her skin.

Miserably, Twilight gritted her teeth and slowly sat down on the floor. No shielding, no teleporting, her magic was being suppressed, and she didn’t understand how. There were spells designed to do that, but they were all fairly obvious. She didn’t detect anything of the sort around her. She glared at the two interlopers. “What do you want from me?”

“Oh, I’m just here on principle,” Fortuna said humbly, picking up the crown with her magic and slowly spinning it in the air. “Justy’s the one who wanted to see you so badly.”

“Well, first of all, let me thank you for giving me the opportunity to take the more direct approach to promoting justice,” the other pony said. “In return, I’m going to do everything in my power to set you back on the straight-and-narrow.”

“Th-the what?” Twilight choked, her eyes darting between the stinger and the element.

“She means she’s going to convict you of whatever bad things you’ve done and then dole out some sort of penalty so you won’t do them again. Justice spirit; it’s what she does.” Fortuna smiled and polished the crown with a corner of the cloth. “Don’t worry, it won’t take long, and I’ll look after Magic here in the meantime.”

If these weren’t spirits, Twilight wondered, why didn’t they drop the act now that they had her dead to rights? What did they stand to gain? It wouldn’t be the first time some of her spells worked in an unexpected way, but good grief, this sure wasn’t how she imagined the re-discovery of the spirits of harmony would go!

“Fine,” Twilight said through clenched teeth, “just tell me first, what did you do to Spike and Pinkie? The earth pony and the dragon upstairs, I mean. Why haven’t they come down here or anything? They should’ve heard the yelling and spells.”

Just Deserts nodded sympathetically, but didn’t lower her barbed tail. “Your concern does you credit. Mr. Spike is just fine and Ms. Pie is better than fine; I improved her demeanor earlier today. She won’t be able to interfere with any sort of spirit-business for the duration of her punishment.

Twilight Sparkle’s eyes widened. “Punishment? What did you do to her!? Pinkie’s... she’s one of the nicest, most conscientious ponies I know!”

“Conscience? Pah! A fat lot of good that ever did!” Just Deserts spat, suddenly incensed. “But enough about her,” she continued, returning to her dry, official tone, “we need to talk about your misdeeds. Please direct your attention to your permanent record.”

The mostly-pegasus flipped through the contents of the folder. “Now, there’s a whole litany of smaller abuses here, and I might have let those slide, but then came the ‘tardiness debacle’ a few months back.”

As Just Deserts paged through the folder, entry after entry had the same word in red block letters at the top: SLAVERY.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Twilight insisted. “I never enslaved anypony! Are you sure you didn’t get the wrong folder?”

Fortuna winced in sympathy. “Ooh, it’s best not to contradict her like that. She’ll remember it in sentencing.”

The spirit of justice’s eyes narrowed in scorn. “It says here you used a form of magical compulsion to usurp the wills of no less than forty-six ponies, forcing them to brawl with their family and neighbors until the enchantment was dispelled. It reflects... poorly upon you that this was not a memorable event.”

Twilight laughed nervously. “What, is this about that time I enchanted Smarty Pants? That wasn’t on purpose! I was under so much stress and the spell got out of hand! I didn’t want everyone to start fighting like that! A-anyway, the princess pardoned me herself!”

Just Deserts clapped the folder shut. “Ms. Sparkle, from the victim’s perspective, the major difference between mind control and murder is that the effects of the latter are permanent. To take away a pony’s very self and replace it with some simulacrum of your own fashioning is a grievous crime, no matter the circumstances. You should have known better; weren’t Ms. Pie and your other friends on the receiving end of just such an injustice not long before you committed this crime?”

The purple unicorn’s shoulders slumped. This crazy scorpion pony might or might not be a spirit, but she had a point. What might have happened if Princess Celestia hadn’t arrived when she did to break the spell? The other ponies didn’t seem to remember what had happened, much less know who was responsible, but what if one had been seriously hurt or even killed?

“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.

“That’s a start,” Just Deserts replied, smiling broadly. “But you don’t know what it’s like, not having control over your own self, do you?”

“No, but I can ima—OW!”

Just Deserts withdrew her stinger-tail from Twilight’s neck. From the other end of the room, Fortuna laughed.

Twilight rubbed the welt on her neck. “Why did you do that?! I did what you wanted!” she cried. An icy, tingly sensation began spreading from the site of the sting.

The spirit of justice nodded. “Yes, and now I want you to remember what you’re about to experience the next time you decide it would be convenient to start casting mind-control spells on your neighbors.”

“Next time? You poisoned me!” Twilight exclaimed, already beginning to feel her extremities seize up.

Fortuna rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be such a crybaby. It’s not even literal poison, just a dramatic way for her to render judgment. I would suggest making sure your eyes are shut before it fully takes hold, though. It might be a while before your friends find you!”

Though curing poison is something of a natural ability of unicorns, even the most magically inept, Twilight still couldn’t get her horn to cooperate with her thoughts. She tried to call for help, but she couldn’t force enough air from her lungs or even open her mouth. It was all she could do to even breathe. The last thing Twilight saw before she took Fortuna’s advice was the face of her tormentor. Just Deserts smiled cruelly, and her eyes slowly changed from the wide, liquid eyes of a pony to the piercing golden orbs of an eagle.

The two spirit ponies turned away from where the paralyzed unicorn sat and headed back up the stairs.

“Well, that was diverting,” Fortuna sighed, “but hardly worth my time. I thought you said you needed my help for a big turn, something that would get the old wheel really going again!”

“I do, I do!” Just Deserts insisted, grinning. “Now that both ponies who know we’re here are taken care of and we’ve got Magic with us,” she said, indicating the element with a flick of her tail, “there’s nothing to stop us from bringing the most stolid, long-standing and guilt-ridden institution on this miserable rock crashing down to a well-deserved fate!”

“You don’t mean—” Fortuna gasped, eyes wide with delight.

“I do!” the pegasus replied, putting a wing over the unicorn’s shoulders. “Regime change!”

Chapter VIII

Concord cantered back through town, carrying Verity on his back. The young spirit’s new porcine leg had slowed her far more than he would like and seemed to give her no small amount of discomfort, though she never complained outright.

The evening sun painted the sky with streaks of peach and rose and turned Ponyville’s streets into shadowy canyons lit by the golden glow spilling from the windows of the houses. The gray stallion drank in the sight, feeling as if he were about to burst with joy. He wished he knew a song to sing, but nothing came to mind, so he settled for happily humming a simple tune. Until recently he had been content to leave music to its muses, but the feelings within him demanded expression!

Atop his back, Verity lay awkwardly, back to her normal impassive attitude. In her front hooves she clutched a bouquet of wildflowers they’d gathered on the way back into town.

“Pink is the mane on my true love’s head,” Concord began, trying to put words to the tune, “She uh, works in a bakery selling bread...”

“She isn’t in love with you,” Verity stated, fiddling unconcernedly with the bouquet. “And her mane is brilliant rose.”

Concord nodded. “Maybe she isn’t yet, but we’re going to fix that tonight! She’ll come around once her friend gives me a once-over.”

The filly held her tongue. She personally put no stock in predictions of the future, but didn’t care to rain on her big brother’s parade. Maybe he was right. Ever since she passed Inside, she had begun to realize the size of the chasm between what she knew and what she understood.

“Good evening, Conky,” a familiar pony called from across the street. Concord snapped out of his happy daze as a pair of mares approached from the opposite direction. Though he would much rather be off, courtesy dictated he at least stop to greet them.

“Hey Fortuna, you were right!” he told the unicorn. “I went and showed her a bit of my skills and she completely changed her tune. We’re on our way to meet her right now!” He pranced in place giddily, nearly throwing Verity off his back.

The other pony with Fortuna blanched and looked away.

The unicorn playfully tapped her in the ribs with a knee. “Well cousin, don’t you have something to tell him?”

Just Deserts pawed at the dirt and bit her lip. “Hi Concord.”

“Hey there, um...” the stallion’s mouth worked silently as he tried to recall who the strange-looking pegasus was. The moment stretched into an awkward silence.

“Psst, Ver! Who’s that?” Concord at last whispered over his shoulder.

“It’s Just Deserts,” she responded louder than he would have liked.

“Well hey there, Desserts! Now I remember ya. What’s up?” He bellowed, trying to make up for his faux pas with cheer.

She winced at having her name mangled by a fellow spirit. “I, well...” she began, trying to sound as collected as she usually did, but it had suddenly become difficult. She assured herself it was yet another side effect of Ms. Sparkle’s poor-quality summoning spell. It was a miracle they all hadn’t fallen to pieces already!

“...Fortuna and I made a plan to truly fix things up around here, but it could get really messy. I was thinking, maybe you could go with me—with us, that is, and make sure it all goes off peacefully?”

Concord looked apologetically into the pegasus’s hopeful aquiline eyes. “That sounds real nice and all, and I hope it all works out okay, but I’ve got me a previous engagement, if you know what I mean.” The goofy grin spread anew over his face.

Just Deserts turned to look back up the street she’d come down and frowned darkly. “I think it’d be much better if you came with us instead, Concord. We need to do our duty, not dally around with some... some sneaky, manipulative, unjust mortal.”

“Aw, she’s not that type,” Concord assured her, starting down the street again. “Anyway, I promised to meet her and to not use any super-equine powers until she says it’s okay. I have to keep my promises, right?”

“I guess,” Just Deserts mumbled surlily. “If anything, ah, happens between the two of you, and you want to come help, I’ll be up north in Canterlot!” she called after him.

”Fortuna and Desserts in Canter-trot. Got it. See you two later!” he shouted back, not bothering to turn. The pegasus looked dismally after him.

“Don’t be so down, Justy!” the unicorn cajoled the disappointed pegasus. “You told me you made sure that pink pony would see him as her greatest fear, right? You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Hmph! Who’s worried?” Just Deserts retorted. “What do I care if he wastes his affections on that airheaded reprobate?”

Fortuna raised an eyebrow. “His what?”

“Skills! I meant ‘skills’.”

“Of course, dear. Come on, we’ve got a train to catch.” It was all Fortuna could do to keep from bursting out laughing. Spirits on their first time being enfleshed were always so amusing, what with the absurd ways they tried to deal with their new mode of existence!

Twilight Sparkle sat in the dark beneath the library, unable to move a muscle. It felt bizarre, being imprisoned in her own skin. Worst of all was the terrible calmness that suffused her body even as her mind panicked. Her pulse remained steady, her breathing was slow and automatic, she wasn’t even perspiring from stress. It was like she was experiencing the sensations of a completely different pony, one that hadn’t just been zapped by a pair of spirits, robbed of the Element of Magic, and made privy to their plans to overthrow the princesses!

She had tried over and over again to cast a spell, any spell, but a void had sprung up between her will and her horn, swallowing every command she attempted to send across. Other than that, her thoughts were entirely clear. That unicorn-spirit-thing had been right; this wasn’t some paralyzing drug; she’d been altered on a fundamental level.

Not sure what else to do, Twilight began counting her heartbeats to try to stem the flood of purely mental fright threatening to overthrow her reason. She had only got as far as two hundred seventy-one before the door to the basement opened again and another pair descended.

“Twilight?” Pinkie called hesitantly down the stairs, “I thought I heard the bell above the front door ring but I was right there and I didn’t see anypony. Were there any invisible alchemists down here? ...Hey, how come the lights are off?”

“And could you just tell me what to send to the princess?” Spike added. “It’s been a long day; I need my rest!”

The petrified pony enjoyed a small bit of comfort. At least her friends were okay! What had the pegasus done to Pinkie Pie, though?

Twilight heard Pinkie’s distinctive gasp at the foot of the stairs. “Oh my gosh! Twilight! What’s wrong? What happened to you-know-what? ...Hey! Can you hear me?”

She felt herself roughly prodded in the side with a hoof, sending her wobbling back and forth like a bowling pin.

Pinkie screamed. “Oh no! They got her!” she wailed. “They froze her insides and turned her to a Twilight-shaped grape pony-sicle! Oh Twilight, I tried to warn you! Why didn’t you listen?” The unicorn was suddenly swept up into one of Pinkie’s crushing embraces.

When the distraught mare finally let her go, Twilight felt a cool, trembling claw held up to her nose, then pressed against her neck. Beside her, Spike heaved a sigh of relief. “She’s okay, Pinkie.” he said. “Well, not okay-okay, but she’s still alive. Look at this big red welt on her neck. It’s like she got stung by a giant hornet or something.”

“Or needle-poked by a giant alchemist!” Pinkie replied. “Or by a regular-sized alchemist with a great big giant needle! And he took the secret thingy too! What’ll we do!?”

Spike had no idea what sort of secret Pinkie was talking about, but if Twilight hadn’t felt the need to tell her own loyal assistant, he doubted it could be all that important. Twilight had told him about the mythical alchemists, though, and shared her opinion on the matter. “If you didn’t see anypony go down here, Twilight must’ve just had an accident and pricked herself with something or had a spell go wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time, so don’t go calling out the Wonderbolts! We’ve just got to get her some medical help ASAP. Run and go get an ambulance or a doctor or... or something! I’ll stay here and make sure nothing else happens to her, okay?.”

“I can’t, Spike! The alchemist is out there somewhere just waiting to do that to me, or worse!”

Twilight was surprised, and by the sound of things, Spike was too. She could be dying for all any of them knew, and Pinkie was too scared to even go outdoors and get help?

“Pinkie, our friend is in trouble and you’re, like, the second-fastest pony I know. Go run for help!”

The mare whimpered, then mournfully steeled herself. “You’re right, I gotta, no matter what. It’s been really awfully wonderful knowing you both.” Tearfully, she dashed up the stairs, through the door and out of the library. “Help! Alchemists! They got Twilight Sparkle! He-e-elp!”

As the frantic pony’s shouting receded into the distance, The immobile unicorn suddenly felt Spike jump up and hug her nearly as hard as Pinkie had. “You will be okay, right? You even got turned to stone once and bounced right back!” he said, sounding more worried than he had with Pinkie. “Celestia’s top student can’t die from some silly accident, can she?” She felt a hot tear soak into her coat. She would have given anything to comfort him then, to give some sign she was still there, but she could do nothing. Her assistant clung to her in silence for another twenty-three maddeningly regular heartbeats.

“Speaking of, I guess I oughtta let the princess know what happened,” Spike mumbled, sniffling and letting go. Twilight heard a rustle of paper and then the scratching of a quill. “Twilight... can’t respond... parol- no, uh, immabil-... can’t move... Sent for doctor... will notify... situation changes... Apologies, Spike!” There was a muted roar as the dragon incinerated the message with his breath. “Figures this would happen right after you got that real important letter, huh?”

He paced around the room in silence for a couple minutes.

“I’d better get upstairs so I can meet the whoever it is when they get here. If you can hear me, um, sit tight, okay? Everything’s going to be alright.”

Twilight heard his clawed feet padding back up the stairs. He didn’t sound so sure himself, but her assistant was probably right. Pinkie was going for help, Princess Celestia had been alerted that something was up and Twilight was still surrounded by her friends and neighbors, whatever happened. They would figure out a way to free her from whatever spell or power had frozen her here, those two spirits’ plot would be foiled and everything would go back to normal.

Wouldn’t it?

After getting lost a couple times before having Verity give directions, she and her brother finally found their way back to the Golden Oaks Library. Despite the late hour and the slight chill in the air, the door stood wide open. Standing beside the door silhouetted by light from within was a tiny, worried-looking purple dragon.

“Library’s closed,” the dragon said, craning his neck to look anxiously up and down the street instead of at Concord. “There’s been an—” he gulped, “an accident downstairs.”

“Pinkie told us to come here, though,” Concord said. “Is she around?”

The dragon appeared startled. “Wait, Pinkie sent you? Wow, that was fast. Sorry doctor, I thought she was going to get an ambulance, or that whoever she sent would at least have, y’know, doctor-stuff.” Spike glanced at Verity and the bouquet she held. “Oh, so I guess that’s some sort of herbal medicine?” He stepped inside and hurriedly waved the two ponies in. “I’m Spike, I live here with Twilight. C’mon, she’s down in the basement.”

Concord put on his shiniest, goofiest grin and followed the dragon into the library and downstairs. To his dismay, the “she” to which the dragon referred was not Pinkie Pie but her friend the unicorn. The pale purple pony sat as still as a carving, with her head lowered, her ears back and her eyes squeezed shut, as if perpetually bracing for something unpleasant.

“She went downstairs about half an hour ago talking like she’d be right back,” Spike explained. “Pinkie went to talk to her and then came back up and she’d been alone since then. A little bit later, we both went down to check on her, and the lights were out and she was like... this.”

Spike gave Twilight a light shove in the side, causing the inert pony to rock back and forth a couple times before settling back on her hooves. “Sorry, Twilight,” he whispered.

“I checked her pulse and breathing, and they were both there, but then I noticed—”

“So... does this mean she can’t tell Pinkie what a great guy I am?” Concord interrupted.

From her immobile vantage point, Twilight felt her earlier confidence vanish. That was the voice of stallion who’d suddenly appeared in this basement earlier today with his little sister. More spirits; they had to be! What did they want now?

The dragon stared at the gray pony. “I... um... yes?”

Concord rubbed his chin and nodded sagely. “Guess I’ll have to get her fixed up then. Diagnosis, Ver?”

“Her will’s been disconnected from her body,” the filly stated.

Concord nodded happily. “Oh, good! That’s no big deal.”

Spike nearly melted with relief. “So she’ll be okay? You can heal whatever this is?”

Don’t trust them, Spike! Twilight tried to think as loud as she possibly could. Get out of here before they get you too!

“Sure! I can just—” The gray stallion paused and frowned. “Nope, nope. I promised Pinkie I wouldn’t do any of that stuff.”

The dragon stared at Concord and Verity in utter perplexity. “You promised Pinkie not to help Twilight? But you said she sent you here!”

The stallion shrugged. “I gotta wait until Pinkie says it’s okay. Can you do anything for her, sis?”

Verity thought for a moment, then nodded. “I can call somepony else who can.” She went back to fiddling with the bouquet.

After a moment’s pause, Spike spoke up again. “Well? If you can get help, do it! ...Please?” These were the strangest medical professionals he’d ever seen.

The little filly cleared her throat.

“And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,”

“—And out of the swing of the sea,” said a melodious voice right behind Spike.

The dragon yelped and whirled around to see a rakish looking unicorn stallion who’d appeared as if from nowhere.

“Wha-what’s going on?” The dragon cried. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

Concord waved to the new pony. “Oh, that’s just ol’ Verse. He’s always popping up in the places nopony expects.”

“For who has sight so keen and strong, / That it can follow the flight of song?” Verse asked, proudly tossing his head.

“This is crazy!” Spike yelled, jumping between the spirit-ponies and Twilight. Life in Ponyville had its regular oddities every so often, but everything that had happened this evening was just too much. “You’re all crazy! You aren’t doctors, stay away from her!”

“I never said we were,” Concord admitted. “But a doctor can’t help her; Verse can.”

“Liar! Get out of here!”

Verity made a noise of irritation and began tearing petals from the daisies in the bouquet to vent her anger. This was the second time she’d done just what was asked of her, and the recipient of her goodwill had been angry instead of grateful. Stupid ponies. Stupid dragons.

When none of the trespassers made a move to leave, Spike filled his lungs and punctuated his command with a warning puff of dragon-fire. He hoped Twilight couldn’t see all this; she’d been quite adamant about never having any open flames in the basement.

The ponies skipped out of the way to the edge of the room, Concord suffering a small white patch of singed hair on his left shoulder. “Hey, the proof’s in the pudding right?” he said, unperturbed by the attempted immolation. “When she’s better, we’ll all look back on this and laugh.” He motioned to the other stallion. “Go for it Verse! Do your stuff!”

Twilight had heard the roar and felt the heat from her assistant’s fiery breath, but she was only disappointed that it seemed to have failed. Spike, leave me! Run! She inwardly screamed. You can’t fight them! Why, oh why can’t you understand me?

“He can’t understand you because you’re not actually saying anything.” Verity said, rolling her eyes.

Twilight silently boggled. You can hear me? she thought, trying to imagine herself actually saying the words.

“No,” the little spirit replied, slipping from Concord’s back to the floor. “But I know what you’re trying to say.”

None of the others seemed to notice the filly’s statements. Spike was too busy guarding Twilight and trying to coax another blast of fire from his innards. Concord was juking about in an attempt to keep the dragon’s attention on him while Verse stared at the ceiling and tapped his chin, trying to recall something.

Tell them to stop! Twilight mentally pleaded. Please!

Verity ignored Twilight and instead took a bite out of the bundle of flowers. She was done taking requests from ponies. It wasn’t even really part of her purpose, anyway.

On the other side of the room, Verse began his recital. He sat on his haunches, threw his head back and raised his front legs high in the air like an evil sorcerer in a cheesy adventure film.

“Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.”

Twilight felt strange, or, rather, she didn’t feel, and that was strange. The sensation of being trapped in place began to fade, replaced only with a loose, airy numbness.

“Sunder me from my blood that in the dark
I hear that red ancestral river run
Like branching buried floods that find the sea
But never see the sun.”

“Verse, whoa, wait!” Concord, still running about, hollered at declaiming unicorn. “Sunder? You’re sposta stitch her back together, not tear her the rest of the way apart!”

The poet paid him no heed, but continued:

“Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes
Those rolling mirrors made alive in me
Terrible crystals more incredible
Than all the things they see.”

Awareness of everything in the room burst upon Twilight in a blaze of light. It was like she was looking in every direction at once. She could even see herself, scrunched up on her feet right where Just Deserts had left her. It was all extremely disorienting. What had Concord meant about being torn apart?

“Stop! Don’t do it!” Concord yelled, sliding to a halt and looking, mortified, at the purple unicorn.

Spike seized the opportunity to grab his tail and tried to drag him back toward the stairs. “Everypony just shut up! All of you, get out of here and quit bothering Twilight! This isn’t funny!”

The spirit unicorn smiled impishly and launched into the final stanza:

“Sunder me from my soul, that I may see
The sins like streaming wounds, the life’s brave beat
Till I shall save myself as I would save
A stranger in the street.”

In spite of what she expected, it didn’t hurt at all. Twilight simply felt herself rising up into the air to hover just below the basement ceiling. Directly beneath her sat a unicorn mare with a distinctive bright stripe in her dark mane, but that wasn’t her anymore.

But then... what was she? She could see everything in the room except herself. Was this what it was like to be a spirit?

Still being pulled by the tail by her exasperated assistant, Concord flopped to the floor and put his front hooves over his head. “Ohh... Pinkie’s gonna hate me for this!” he groaned.

Verse, however, looked extremely satisfied, turned and walked briskly back up the stairs. Concord leaped back to his feet and hurried after, now dragging Spike behind him. “Wait, Verse, come back! You gotta fix this! Pinkie’ll think I did this and she’ll never even talk to me again!” The unicorn laughed, broke into a run and disappeared through the door to the ground floor.

Concord rushed after, causing Spike to lose his grip and bounce back down the stairs. The gray stallion left the basement, but popped his head back through the doorway a couple seconds later. “Listen, Twilight, if you can still hear me, just stay right there with the, um, the rest of you. Don’t go into any lights, swirling portals, fiery abysses or the hooves of any long-lost ancestors, okay? I’ll get Verse and be back in a jiffy and I’ll make him fix you up right. Trust me!” He disappeared again.

“What the heck is he talking about?” Spike wondered. “They didn’t even do anything, did they?”

Forgotten by the other spirits in a corner of the room, Verity continued devouring the bouquet. She knew the answer to both questions, but didn’t feel like sharing it at the moment. She could tell that Twilight had floated down to hover right above her.

You’re Verity, right? Twilight thought at her. Please, I don’t know why any of this is happening! Who are you ponies? Why are you doing this?

Verity pretended not to hear. Based on what she’d seen so far, this pony really wouldn’t like the answer.

Author's Note

Poetry in order of appearance:

From "Heaven-Haven" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

From "The Arrow and the Song" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The Sword of Surprise" by G.K. Chesterton

Chapter IX

“Faster, faster! He’s out there watching us, I just know it!” Pinkie shouted to the pair of earth ponies pulling the ambulance. In spite of how she zig-zagged back and forth from one spot of cover to another, she still had to slow down to keep from outpacing the white, cross-blazoned wagon as the three of them hurried through the moonlit streets back to Golden Oaks Library.

The emergency responders, Ponyville General’s own Nurse Tenderheart and Traction Splint, an intern from Baltimare, ran as fast as they could to keep up with Pinkie. The powder-blue nurse pony was worried. She’d seen enough of Pinkie’s antics in the past to get used to her bottomless energy and strange moods, but it felt different tonight. There was something guilty and frightened and hopeless that seemed to hang like a shroud over the mare who was normally Ponyville’s four-legged ray of sunshine. The nurse knew the signs, and that pony was definitely in some kind of altered state.

“So haveya... told the cops ’bout... this guy pretending... to be an alchemist... or whatever?” Splint asked between gasping breaths as he pulled the ambulance along at a gallop. The stallion, while quite skilled at medicine, wasn’t at his physical peak.

“I would, but there’s no time! Twilight isn’t safe, and besides, I don’t have any proof yet.” Pinkie sprinted ahead to an intersection to check around the corners, expecting an ambush from the shadows at any second. “But he’s a really, truly, one-hundred-ten-percent evil alchemist! I know it!”

Tenderheart shushed Splint when he began to reply. “That mare is on the verge of a breakdown. Don’t egg her on!” she hissed to the trainee.

“Now Pinkie,” she said to the pink pony in as comforting a voice as she could muster while running, “You said your friend got poisoned in some sort of laboratory accident? Are you certain you weren’t exposed to any of it yourself?”

“W-what? No!” Pinkie exclaimed. “It wasn’t an accident, it was an attack!” The color drained from her face as she considered the second part of the question. “But, well... I’m not really sure. I mean, when he got everypony at Sugarcube Corner, he must’ve used a gas so I must’ve breathed in some too.” She flattened herself against a wall before peeking down an alley. “That’s when he lied to me about who he was and I totally believed it! I bet the gas made us all suggestive and stuff.”

“Suggestible,” Splint corrected her. Tenderheart shushed him again.

“Pinkie Pie,” she said, speaking as she would to a foal, “There are some dangerous chemicals out there that can make you see things that aren’t there, or make you think that somepony’s out to get you when—”

“Yes, that’s it!” Pinkie interrupted, nodding rapidly. “That's what he did to Cosmic and that other guy, it must be! So you believe me, right? Twilight didn’t and... and she...” The mare shuddered.

“Don’t you worry, Pinkie,” Tenderheart reassured the frantic pony, “We’re going to take care of Twilight, and then we’re going to give you something that’ll make you feel better, and after that you can tell us all about this big, mean alchemist, okay?”

Her co-worker blinked. “She will? But I thought we were going to tranq—”

Without missing a step, Tenderheart swung her head over and sideways-headbutted the clueless intern.

“Ooh, you’re drifting a tad there, Splint!” the nurse said with false cheer, giving him a warning glare. “Just keep your eyes on the road and let me do the talking, okay?”

The olive-green stallion shook his smarting head. “Betcha... five bits... she just hallucinated it all... and her friend’s fine,” he sullenly mumbled between pants. The trio rounded the last corner and came in sight of the library.

“Whoa!” the other pony of the team hollered. Tenderheart and Splint dug in their back hooves and skidded to a stop in the loose grit of the town’s streets. Despite the late hour, the windows of Golden Oaks Library were all lit up, and the glow from within reflected off the helmets and spears of over a dozen royal guardsponies standing in a cordon around the building.

“Five bits? You’re on,” Tenderheart deadpanned. Splint sighed and began undoing his harness while Pinkie let out a squeal of relief and rushed toward the soldiers, shouting unintelligibly about Twilight and alchemists.

Meanwhile, in the basement below the library, there was even more shouting going on. For once in her life, Twilight didn’t mind a noisy library at all. In fact, she wished more than anything else she could join in.

“There’s no mystery about it, sister; this has their hoofprints all over it!” Princess Luna bellowed, punctuating her statement with a stamp that left her own print in the wooden floor. Her sibling and co-regent simply would not see see what was right in front of her snout, and it exasperated her.

Princess Celestia did not immediately respond, instead focusing her concentration on yet another amalgamation of powerful spells she sent washing over Twilight Sparkle’s motionless body as rays of golden energy. Spells that softened petrifaction, thawed frozen time, alleviated numbness, broke trances, and a dozen other things, even one that purged venom, all coursed though the little lavender unicorn, found nothing for their virtues to heal, then dissipated back into the ether. A pang of dread grew steadily beneath the sun princess’s serene countenance.

Twilight watched the spells fizzle from her imperceptible vantage point, her own heart sinking in tandem with her mentor’s. When both princesses and a retinue of royal guards had teleported directly to the library in response to Spike’s cryptic message, Twilight had been sure the matter would be settled in moments. Celestia had to have encountered this sort of thing before in her centuries of rule! There was no way Luna, who could see into ponies’ own dreams, could fail to notice her floating here!

But... they hadn’t. Twilight had flitted around the room and did everything she could to get their attention. She tried thinking at them as loud as possible, going back into her abandoned body, which was disgusting, and she even made one attempt at passing through the princesses which was disgusting and also deeply disrespectful. They hadn’t noticed any of it. She had found where Verity had hidden herself in a cabinet and demanded, pleaded, even tried to annoy her into speaking for Twilight, or doing anything to reveal herself. Verity ignored her so utterly Twilight wondered if she’d become imperceptible to the spirit-filly along with everypony else. While she’d wasted her efforts, Spike had told the princesses what he’d seen as well as he could understand it. Celestia was baffled, while Luna seized the opportunity to resume what was apparently a long-standing argument between the royal sisters about the existence of alchemists in the present day.

“Do you not see?” Luna tried again, “The unaccountable inflation of the gold supply, that mysterious outbreak in Bridle Vale, and now this! It’s all of a piece. This is what I have been saying all along; the Order of Alchemists has not been eradicated! They have only skulked in the shadows, biding their time, waxing stronger, and waiting for the chance to strike! If you had done as I—”

After having borne her sister’s spiel in silence for as long as she could stand, Celestia rounded on her, all of a sudden looking so furious that even Luna was shocked, and the rest of her rant died on her lips.

“Alchemists? Alchemists!?” she shouted back. “My most faithful student, my greatest hope for the future has been grievously hurt or worse, the sixth element is lost again and you’re still talking about a bunch of muttering, peeping old fools who were dust a millennium ago! You sent the element to her. If you thought there were alchemists hiding behind every tree... why? Were you using her? Are our subjects just bait to you? An acceptable sacrifice if you can prove your pet theory?”

“Sister! How dare you?” Luna cried, incensed, “Not only did I warn her of the danger, I would have done far more had I not trusted your word that the order was as extinct as the smilodon.” She scowled toward Twilight’s body, “I freely admit that was a mistake.”

Celestia whinnied in frustration. “Don’t you place the blame on your imaginary conspiracy! To let her keep the Element of Magic herself was just asking for trouble. She may have tried to damage the element to study it and it blasted her in self-defense. She could have even tried to summon a spirit for all we know!”

Twilight felt a sense of chagrin, and would have flushed if she still had a circulatory system.

The younger princess shook her head with her usual brusqueness. “You told me that the art of drawing spirits from the vasty deep had been forbidden, forgotten and then entirely lost to history,” Luna argued. “Besides, even if she had, the spirits are harmless so long as they aren’t physically embodied. Are you saying your student is such a prodigy as to single-hoofedly re-discover summoning, yet also such a fool as to make that elementary mistake? Twilight Sparkle of all ponies ought to know the danger posed by an enfleshed spirit!”

What did that mean, Twilight wondered.

“Something else, then! There are hundreds of horrible things that may have happened. You shouldn’t have done this. She wasn’t ready!”

“I had to, sister. The elements are ours to keep no longer. She and her friends have been chosen as the new bearers. Though I take no joy in what befell Twilight Sparkle, we could not justly deny her request.”

“Couldn’t we?” Celestia asked. She reached out a hoof toward Twilght’s frozen form, faltered, then withdrew, her anger at her sister’s rashness fading back into doubt and remorse. Her senses could detect no magic in the petrified pony. Not only was there no externally imposed enchantment of some malicious spell, but even the inner spark that all unicorn ponies ought to possess was absent. This should not happen to a living being. It should not be able to happen, and now that it had, even the Princess of the Sun wasn’t sure what it meant or what to do. She only knew that it was bad; very bad. “If you had known it would all turn out like this... ”

Seeing her sister so worried made Luna immediately regret her outburst. “I did not... I am sorry. I only thought...” She lowered her head and spoke softly, but with iron conviction. “You remember the final time you wielded the Elements of Harmony. They were right there with you when the need arose. What if they had not been readily at hoof on that day? What would have befallen you, or our subjects, or, or... ” her voice faltered, then regained its strength. “I would not see that happen. I will not. I will not rest until the perpetrator of this foul deed has been captured, forced to undo her evil, and left to rot behind bars or moulder as stone. This I swear upon my crown!”

Twilight thought it was a moving speech, but her mentor only shook her head. “This is not the time to go flying around, terrorizing our subjects until you can browbeat a pony into admitting being an alchemist, Luna!” Celestia admonished. She was unimpressed by the oath, which she’d heard variations of ever since her sister started on this conspiracy kick. Worse, she took these promises very seriously. “We need to get Twilight to the palace. She’ll be safer there, and I can get Equestria’s best magical minds to take a look at her. Have the guard go and escort the other bearers to Canterlot as well.”

Luna smiled slyly. “The alc—ah, the thief’s goal was almost certainly to steal the Element of Magic, not to harm Twilight Sparkle. As you said, none of this would have happened to her except that the element was with her at the time. We need every stallion of the guard back at the palace to defend the vault lest the thief or any accomplices attempt to seize the others. Besides, surely Twilight Sparkle’s fellow bearers have retired for their night’s rest by now. I will send the guards back myself, and then use my singular talents to apprise the other bearers of the situation, rouse them from slumber, and bring them safely to Canterlot.”

Celestia looked skeptical. “And you won’t be turning Ponyville upside-down hunting for alchemists the moment we’re away, will you?”

“Sister, please!” Luna protested, affecting a wounded tone. “Surely we are above such crass deceptions. Twilight Sparkle is my subject and my friend. As I bear the brunt of the blame for her state, I must... ‘travel on one limb for the extra mile!’ I must redeem myself!”

With a sigh, Celestia relented, wondering if Luna mangled modern aphorisms and figures of speech on purpose for their disarming effect. “I understand. Go, then, and bring the bearers to the palace as soon as possible.” She lifted Twilight’s paralyzed form off the ground with telekinetic power, but paused before teleporting the two of them away. “Please, please don’t drag another terrified pony back in chains as a ‘suspected alchemist’ again.”

“There would be no point; you always ignore me and let them go,” Luna grumbled. “But never fear, even if my intuitions are somehow misplaced, I will pursue the truth fearlessly no matter where it leads.”

Celestia decided this was the best she was going to get, and, with Twilight’s mortal portion in tow, vanished in a flash of radiance.

“Now,” said Luna, smiling deviously, “to deal with our little eavesdropper!”

Does she mean me, Twilight thought. Princess Luna! You know I’m here? It’s me, Twilight!

She placed herself directly in front of the princess, but Luna passed right through her on the way to the back of the room. As Twilight collected herself after the gross perspective, the Princess of the Night strode up to the cabinet where Verity had been hiding and threw open the door. The tiny pony within, instead of being startled, gave Luna a bored glance and then turned her back to the princess.

For her own part, Luna was the more surprised. She’d been expecting some thuggish alchemist with a poisoned side-spur, not a little girl. Why in Equestria would a filly be down here in a cabinet? Was she another victim of the alchemist? The spell Luna had prepared to incapacitate the interloper faded from her horn and she leaned down to peer at the blue pony.

“Come out of there at once and tell me who you are and what you are doing here,” Luna demanded. Remembering she was speaking to a small child, she softened her voice as much as she could manage and added, “you need not fear me, little one. I am your ruler and protector.”

The little pony appeared neither comforted nor frightened but indifferent, and continued to ignore her.

“Have you been wounded? Did you see who assaulted Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked.

Please, Verity, tell her everything, Twilight pleaded, hanging unseen over the princess’s shoulder. She’s good, she can help us!

Verity scowled into the dark. More questions, more demands, and no doubt more abuse and defamation if she obeyed. She snorted derisively.

The immortal Princess of the Night was not used to being treated in this manner, and found she didn’t much like it. Some ponies feared her, others bowed and scraped or slathered on the courtly cordiality, and a small but growing number liked her and counted her as a friend. Never before had a pony deemed her unworthy even of acknowledgment! She frowned severely at Verity’s back.

“Now see here, youngling! Do not turn your back upon your princess! Answer her when she asks you a question! Offering the chilled shoulder is no way to treat an elder.”

“It’s ‘giving the cold shoulder,’ ” Verity muttered, unable to resist correcting the error.

“What?”

The spirit-filly turned to face the princess. “The idiom. You got it wrong.”

“Clearly you understood me, what does it matter if—” Luna caught sight of Verity’s mismatched back leg and gasped. “Your leg! What is—how did—oh, oh no!” In an instant, her surprise was replaced by hostility and her horn lit anew with a threatening azure aura. “Get out from there, spirit! It seems I owe my sister an apology after all. Tell me what you did to Twilight Sparkle at once or suffer the consequences!”

Somewhat cowed by the power of the spell Luna had prepared, Verity clambered out of her hiding place. “I didn’t do anything to her,” she stated truthfully.

Luna telekinetically lifted Verity up by her trotter, leaving her dangling upside-down before the princess’s scowling face. “Lying, mischievous imp! Tell me the truth or I’ll trap you in stone forever, just as I did your wicked cousin!”

At being accused of dishonesty yet again, Verity’s patience ran out entirely. The look of blazing, abject hatred she shot at the princess actually caused Luna to take a step backward and brace for an attack. “Stupid, misguided pony!” Verity snarled, “you don’t deserve to know the truth!”

As she spoke, the entire room seemed to shimmer and distort like the air above a dark road on a hot, humid day. Princess Luna gritted her teeth and began casting protective spells over herself, still holding Verity in a magical grip.

“You’ll get an untruth instead,” the spirit continued. “That’s all you ponies want to hear, after all. Know this: You didn’t think I was here, you never saw me, and you definitely never bothered me with inane questions whose answers you refuse to accept.”

The world now looked so twisted and smeared that Twilight could no longer identify what she was seeing. What was going on? Was Verity doing this or was Luna?

Before she could wonder further, the room suddenly snapped back to clarity. Things were not as they had been before the distortion descended; the cabinet was shut, Verity was back inside it, and Luna was in the center of the room where she’d been standing when Celestia departed. In fact, the basement was still brightened for a split second by the residual glow of Celestia’s teleportation spell. It was as if the previous minute had never been.

“Now,” said Luna, smiling deviously, “To deal with... with...”

She paused and blinked, drawing a blank. What had she been about to do? Then she remembered.

“...to send the guards and the bearers on their way and begin my investigation!”

Luna briskly ascended the steps back to the library’s ground floor and Twilight followed her, gnawed at by a sense of existential dread.

In the darkness of her hiding place, Verity whimpered as porcupine quills slowly protruded through the hair of her mane.

Chapter X

Lieutenant Stalwart Steel, the ranking officer in the squad of guardsponies surrounding the library, was having his skills and training tested to their limits.

“—And then he just made everypony in the shop get all spaced-out and everything, except for the two guys that hit me, I mean. They were acting all scared all of a sudden and not like eek scared or what-about-the-economy scared but straight-up go-crazy-right-there-on-the-spot scared,” babbled the familiar-looking pink mare, trying and failing to shake Stalwart by the collar of his barding for emphasis. The pony had sprinted up out of nowhere and begun gesturing wildly and talking a league a minute right in his face some time ago, and he wasn’t sure she’d so much as paused for breath since. “These two ponies from the hospital said he did it with a gas, just ask them!” she continued.

“We didn’t really—” Nurse Tenderheart explained from the sidelines, but Pinkie was far from done.

“So I think I tricked him and I ran to get Twilight because Twilight’s really smart (but you probably know that. Did you ever meet her when she was in Canterlot?) and she’s always prepared and for another reason I promised not to tell anypony about but then I realized he had tricked me too and I ran back here even faster but she wouldn’t believe me and then she was all scrunched up like this:”

The chirping of cicadas became audible again for a brief moment as Pinkie Pie did her best impression of Twilight’s current state. It was all Stalwart could do to remain at attention.

Pinkie couldn’t bear standing still for long, though, and burst back into frantic motion. “And-and Spike told me to go and get help and I did because that’s what friends do even though he’s out here hiding and he’ll turn me to gold or something but I went anyway and got an ambulance so please let us in because Twilight needs help and I don’t wanna stay out here with the alchemist!”

Stalwart hadn’t moved a muscle since taking his post, but hearing the ‘A-word’ finally made him flinch. And from a pony other than her highness, at that! If Princess Luna overheard, things would get... complicated. Still, it was his duty to stand here and keep ponies out of the library until ordered otherwise. He and his stallions remained at their posts and stewed in a sense of impending disaster.

Pinkie Pie began telling the story again, this time with greater embellishment, apparently under the impression he hadn’t heard her the first time. Suddenly, Stalwart noticed one of the ponies that had pulled the ambulance signalling to him. While the chunky stallion was carefully filling an injector syringe with clear liquid, the mare in the nurse’s cap pantomimed behind Pinkie’s back. Tenderheart pointed to the pink mare, then crossed her eyes and waved a hoof in a circular motion beside her head. Indicating her assistant’s needle, then Pinkie’s rump, she leaned her head to one side on her front hooves and closed her eyes, feigning sleep.

Stalwart’s relief, though hidden, was nearly palpable. This excited pony was sick or crazy, the medical professionals would take care of her and her highness would be none the wiser. Breaking protocol, he lowered his gaze to look directly at Pinkie, hoping to keep her attention long enough for the paramedics to carry out their plan. The nurse nodded and winked at him, and motioned for the other to approach and administer the drug.

“Oh, hello! Yes!” Pinkie said, cheered to finally have elicited a reaction. “I’ve been trying to tell you why you need to let us in to see Twilight. You see, there’s this guy going around saying he’s a... a...” Pinkie’s voice trailed off, her eyes widened and she looked at something above the lieutenant’s head. The two paramedic ponies gasped, then bowed low, shaking in fright. To either side of him, the other guardsponies snapped into even more rigid postures of attention. Gritting his teeth, Stalwart did the same. A shadow fell over him from behind.

“Oh! Princess Luna! Thank... thank yourself you’re here!” Pinkie Pie cried from the other side of the cordon. “I need to—”

“Yes, yes, I am very welcome,” the Princess of the Night quipped from the library’s doorway, so preoccupied that she didn’t even look to see to whom she was speaking.

Undetected by all, Twilight also flitted outside behind Luna. Okay, so a spirit can make things ‘un-happen’ when they want to, she reasoned to herself, but Concord and that other one, Verse? They seemed a lot more easy-going than Verity... dumber, too. Concord said he’d be coming back here. Maybe Princess Luna can just settle things peaceably with them, and they’ll tell her happened to me. Twilight remembered how Luna had reacted when she guessed what Verity was, though. What would happen when an immortal alicorn princess squared off against those things? The only other times she knew of when ponies had battled spirits were Discord’s two defeats, first by both princesses back in ancient times and then by Twilight and her friends. Neither would have been possible without the power of the Elements of Harmony, and her own had already been stolen! Did anypony else know about the other two spirits who were going to Canterlot right now to try and overthrow the government? She had so many vital things she needed to tell everypony, but none of them could hear her! It was infuriating. I just wish there was something I could do! Twilight didn’t scream into the sky.

While Twilight invisibly bemoaned her fate, Luna addressed her bodyguard. “Lieutenant,” she said to Stalwart, “you and your stallions’ duty here is complete. You are to return to Canterlot at once and report to the captain. Relay my orders to treble the guard around the vault. Be wary; the night promises to be an interesting one.”

Stalwart turned and saluted smartly, making sure not to leave a gap in the lines that Pinkie could squeeze through. “Yes, your highness.” He turned to his stallions. “Baldric, Dress Blues, remain here as her highness’s bodyguard.” He leaned closer to the pair and continued in a lower voice, “Make sure she’s not bothered by any over-enthusiastic subjects, Am I clear?”

The two guardsponies snapped a salute, glancing over at Pinkie. “Imperial crystal, lieutenant!” Dress Blues barked.

Noticing that their ruler’s attention was no longer on them, Tenderheart nudged Traction Spint, who was still bowing with his belly in the dirt. “Psst! Go and dose Pinkie quick before she hurts herself or causes a scene!” She hissed. Had she known royalty was making a surprise visit to their little town, she’d never have let this unwell pony near them. They were all lucky Pinkie hadn’t already attracted the ire of the princess or goaded the guards into action. Splint gulped, took the syringe in his mouth and crawled toward the pink pony, who was still jumping up and down, trying to get Luna’s attention over the guards’ heads.

“An escort won’t be necessary;” said the princess, “I have duties that demand swiftness and subtlety. Guards clanking about in armor will only be a hindrance,”

“Your highness, Princess Celestia’s orders concerning your protection—” Stalwart began.

”Are subject to review, amendment and veto by her co-regent!” Luna shot back, letting her annoyance show.

“But your highness—” Stalwart started to say.

“No ‘buts,’ Lieutenant!” Luna bellowed, slipping back into the Royal Canterlot Voice. “You have your orders, now imitate a tree and begone!” Her horn glowed and the entire company of royal guards vanished in a dozen separate flashes of blue light. Protection, indeed! She knew the guards had been ordered to keep her from embarrassing her sister. If Celestia could only see that there were more important things than decorum on the line here!

Now that the ponies blocking her way were gone, Pinkie rushed up to the princess. Splint lunged with the needle just a moment too late, missed, lost his balance and fell. Back beside the ambulance, Nurse Tenderheart facehoofed, picturing the three of them imprisoned for harassment of royalty, or worse.

“Princess Luna! Excuse me? Hey!” Pinkie called out, unaware she’d only narrowly escaped. “What’s going on? Is Twilight okay? I went to get an ambulance but your guards wouldn’t let me in when I got back!”

In the light, Luna finally recognized the bearer of the element of Laughter. “Pinkie Pie,” she exclaimed, “You are up quite late. Good. Twilight Sparkle is under the ministrations of my sister in Canterlot, and you and your fellow bearers must go to her at once. There is a villain at large in Equestria this night.”

Finally! Another pony who knew something was up! Pinkie felt her fear begin to diminish in the princess’s presence. “I know, that’s what I’ve been telling everypony, but none of them take me seriously! Twilight didn’t, and he got her!”

Luna’s eyes widened. “You know what happened? Tell me! Who did this?”

Pinkie told the story yet again in a firehose-blast of words. “I was with Twilight doing secret things and then this filly appeared and I asked why she wasn’t in school and then her brother showed up and I gave them a tour and when we were alone he said I was like stained glass and I think he has a crush on me or maybe it was just faking but then I went to work and there were so many ponies even though it was raining and I asked why and one of them said there was a fire but—ulmph!”

Luna held a hoof over Pinkie’s mouth. “Pinkie Pie, you are not making sense. What does this have to do with Twilight Sparkle?” She removed her foot and the flood of words continued.

“I’m really sorry princess but I was getting to that! At the store that guy from before comes in and does something to everypony in there and made them go all loopy and weird and he lied to be about who he was. I asked those two other ponies who came with me and they said it was probably a gas.”

Luna’s eyes flicked up from Pinkie to notice the Spint and Tenderheart hanging back in the darkness. Just beyond the light of the library, they would have been little more than silhouettes against her starry sky to the vision of an ordinary pony. Why were they sneaking about like that? She was certain she’d allayed the fears of the townsfolk last Nightmare Night.

As the princess scrutinized the paramedics, Pinkie chattered on. “I said he wasn’t really a pony and he played along, but when I was running to go and tell Twilight, I realized what he really was! He was actually an... an alchemist!”

Pinkie thought Luna would be a bit more receptive, but she wasn’t expecting the princess to pull her close and stare into her eyes with a hopeful, furious intensity. “Truly? This is not one of your jests? You’ve seen one of those fiends at last?”

Twilight really wished she still had a hoof and a face to smack it against. Of all the times and ways for Pinkie to completely mis-read the situation in that unique way of hers...

“You actually believe me?” Pinkie cried, similarly surprised and elated. “I mean, of course you do! You were the one who warned me about alchemists, after all. I’m being totally super-serious; there’s an alchemist after me right now!”

Traction Spint, a rather single-minded pony, took a cautious step toward Pinkie. Luna noticed something shiny, slender and sharp clutched in his jaws.

“Ambush!” the princess yelled, simultaneously shoving Pinkie out of the way with telekinetic magic and launching herself hooves-first at the startled intern. With one booted foot she sent the needle spinning into the darkness and with the other swept Splint’s feet from beneath him, sending the pudgy stallion crashing to the ground on his back. Before he even realized what had happened, one of Luna’s wings was resting against his neck, its pinions transformed to razor-sharp blades.

“You in the shadows, surrender at once if you value your compatriot’s life!” Luna commanded Tenderheart. Terrified and shaking, the nurse pony crawled forward and placed her front hooves over her head.

Pinkie looked confused. “Princess, what are you doing? They’re just here to help Twilight. I brought them here.”

“Oh?” Luna said, keeping Splint in place with her wing. “Then why was this one creeping up on you with a needle filled with who-knows-what at the ready? Explain that, if you can!”

The pink mare blinked down at Splint. “He was?”

Splint managed a squeak in his own defense, then fainted.

“She—Pinkie’s not well, your highness,” Tenderheart said, voice quavering. “She’s been having paranoid delusions. She needs to be sedated before she hurts herself or somepony else. We just—”

“Delusions?” Luna snapped. “Delusions of what?”

The nurse pony gulped. “She told us alchemists are after her,” she explained, forcing a laugh to illustrate how ridiculous it was. “You see? It’s nothing. She needs help.”

The princess glared daggers at Tenderheart, who hid her face, trembling. Luna normally hated when her subjects cringed from her, but in her righteous indignation she found it rather fitting right now. “Oh, I see,” Luna said coldly, “I see very well indeed. You think her mad to believe in the alchemist threat. Well then, I am as mad as she. Will you stick your drugged needles in your princess for her own good? ...Answer!”

Pinkie rushed between the two ponies and stood protectively beside Tenderheart. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” she insisted. “They just don’t understand. He’s really tricky, but I know you can get him, princess! You’ll catch him and then everypony’ll know we’re right, right?”

Luna held her glare at the nurse for a moment longer, then snorted and allowed her anger to cool. She took her wing off Traction Splint’s neck and folded it back to her side. Pinkie was right; it would do no good to scold her loyal, if misguided, subjects while their foes were free to work evil. The only way to vindicate herself was to finally get her hooves on some real, undeniable proof that the alchemists still existed and bring it to her sister and the public. Saving Equestria once more as she had of old would be the icing on the cake.

“Be off, both of you, and stay out of our way,” Luna commanded. Tenderheart nodded rapidly, scrambled forward, bit her assistant’s tail and began dragging the senseless pony back toward the ambulance. Pinkie moved to help, but Luna pulled her aside.

“Pinkie Pie, if I am to catch this villain, I will need your aid.” Luna said, placing a hoof on the smaller pony’s shoulder. “I know you are afraid, and with good reason. The order of alchemists is a vicious and wily foe that has eluded even my sister for many generations. Will you be brave and stand with me against them?”

Pinkie chewed her lip. She didn’t feel brave right now. Something inside screamed at her to stay far, far away from Concord or awful things would happen. Ever since she realized what he was she’d been scared: not the fun, exciting kind of scared, but the kind that made everything feel cold and gray and bitter.

But that was why she had to be brave, wasn’t it? No matter what her instincts said, she couldn’t live like this; it was completely un-Pinkie. She couldn’t bear to look into any more shadows expecting to see enemies instead of friends. She had even been unwilling to help Twilight at first because of what Concord might do to her! The memory made her burn with shame. No more, Pinkie resolved. Maybe Concord would boil her up into a cauldron, or force her to drink a mind-twisting potion so she was never herself again, or even turn her into a shiny lump of pony-gold for ever and ever. It didn’t matter. Anything was better than living out the rest of her days crippled by fear.

Pinkie gulped, then nodded to Luna. The princess smiled proudly back.

The resolution made Pinkie feel marginally better. Not only was Princess Luna here with her, who apparently knew a thing or two about alchemists, but all her other friends were still nearby, except Twilight, who was definitely safe way up in Canterlot with Celestia. When Concord got Twilight, she was all alone. The rest of her friends and a princess would be more than a match for any nasty old alchemist!

Twilight was (figuratively) beside herself with anxiety. Pinkie and Luna were actually going to waste precious time on this nonsense when there were real threats on the loose? Equestria needed all the help it could get right now! If only she hadn’t been torn from her mortal body by Verse’s weird spirit magic, then maybe Celestia could have fixed her! If only Just Deserts hadn’t paralyzed her in the first place... heck, if only Twilight hadn’t lost her mind and decided to want-it-need-it the Crusaders way back then! Was this what it was like to be taken over by an enchantment, forced to watch helplessly as everything around her went wrong? The former unicorn thoroughly repented of her rash actions. Twilight wafted back into her home. She couldn’t bear to witness any more of this farce.

“It makes my heart glad to have you at my side, Pinkie Pie,” Luna said. “Now tell me—”

“What about my other friends, I mean the rest of the elements, um, your highness?” Pinkie blurted, remembering her manners right at the end.

Luna nodded. “Ah, yes! I promised Celestia I would gather them.” She shut her eyes as a nimbus of magic whirled around her horn.

“Gather them? You said earlier we’re supposed to go to Canterlot but then you asked me to stay here and help you and I was just thinking that if we told my other besties what was going on they could maybe help us out,” Pinkie hastily clarified, not liking the idea of her best friends being whisked across the country while she was stuck here with Concord on the loose.

Luna’s eyes snapped open. “Done!” she announced.

Pinkie frowned. “Done? But... what did you do? Are my friends coming?”

“I wasted my time, is what I did!” Luna replied, frowning off into the distance. “No, your fellow bearers are just as oblivious to the threat as my sister. We will be better off without their interference.”

The younger mare wilted a bit. She wanted to argue, but Luna was now the only pony standing between her and the alchemist, and besides, it was probably unwise to contradict royalty. Pinkie ruefully remembered being insouciant to Celestia on the value of eternal chaos that came with chocolate rain. It felt like a lifetime ago; the lifetime of an entirely different pony. But, when Concord was out of their manes for good, everything would be okay again, wouldn’t it? Everything would go back to normal, and then so would Pinkie Pie.

She hoped.

Chapter XI

The sun stood alone at the peak of a blue heaven. Below, a carpet of churning stormwrack hid the ground beneath from view. Here the air was eerily calm, but on every side, towering walls of cloud loomed, twisted into a cylinder by howling, raging winds.

It was the eye of a hurricane.

And Rainbow Dash was going to ride it.

She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten up here in the first place. She was sure it didn’t matter. Here was the chance of a lifetime! How long had it been since the international branch of the weather patrol had even allowed one of these monsters to get anywhere near Equestria? Not since before she was born.

Everypony said it couldn’t be done. You might as well ask an earth pony to plug a volcano or a unicorn to duplicate the sun as expect a pegasus to tame a hurricane at the height of its power, or so the conventional wisdom ran.

Then again, everypony had said the same about the Sonic Rainboom. Rainbow smirked, stretched into a glide and began flying toward the eyewall.

Just as she was about to enter the storm, everything went dark. the pegasus veered off and looked about in confusion. The sun had vanished from the sky as if somepony had turned it off with a switch. Instead of a bright blue sky, a dark, star-studded abyss stretched above her. The moon sat in the sun’s place, shining its pale reflected light across the cloudscape. Before Rainbow Dash could register just how bizarre this was, a shadow swept across the disk of the moon and resolved into an enormous face with eyes of blank white luminescence.

“RAINBOW DASH,” the face thundered.

“I, ah, yeah?” the pegasus replied, perplexed but only a little bit frightened. She went into a climb so she wouldn't have to crane her neck so far back to face the thing at the top of the sky.

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THE PERFIDIOUS FIENDS WHO CALL THEMSELVES ‘ALCHEMISTS?’ ” the face asked, spitting the final word with obvious distaste. Dash could’ve sworn she’d heard that voice somewhere before.

“Um...” the pony stalled, caught flat-hooved by the question. “I think one of the Daring Do books was about them? Yeah! Daring Do and the Alchemist’s Atelier! I read it last month.”

“THEN YOU UNDERSTAND THE THREAT THEIR EXISTENCE POSES TO EQUESTRIA AND THE VERY HARMONY OF THE WORLD?”

Rainbow looked askance and scratched the back of her head. “No, not really. Daring Do is adventure, not fantasy. Alchemists are all long-gone. See, it turns out it’s a only a trick by this gang of—”

“NO SPOILERS!” the face boomed. “I SEE YOU ARE JUST LIKE ALL THE REST. FINE THEN! ARISE AT ONCE AND ONE OF OUR SERVANTS WILL GUIDE YOU AND YOUR SAND-IN-THE-HEAD SKEPTIC FRIENDS WHERE THEY OUGHT TO GO. PINKIE PIE WILL JOIN YOU ONCE WE HAVE FOUND THE REAL CULPRIT.”

“Rise?” Dash said, squinting at the shadowy face. “How much higher can I—wha? Aaugh! Help!”

While she had been looking upward to converse with the startling visage, Rainbow Dash hadn’t been paying attention to where she was flying. At that moment, she entered the eyewall of the hurricane unprepared and instantly lost control. Winds buffeted her on every side as she tumbled blindly through the pitch-dark storm. The dense clouds clung and wrapped around her, pinning her wings and legs. Far below the ground was approaching fast, and she wouldn’t see it until it was too late, if at all.

Dash screamed, but no sound came out, or it was lost in the fury of the hurricane.

“Rainbow. Rai-i-inbow! Wake up, dear!”

The sensation of falling ended abruptly as Rainbow Dash felt something cold, unyielding and perfectly flat beneath her. She opened her eyes to find herself lying on a chilly marble floor. The fluffy comforter from her bed was tangled around her body. Dash extricated her front hooves and rubbed her eyes.

“Whazz goin’ on?” she mumbled, not entirely sure this was real. She was in the middle of a bare room, fancy-looking in spite of its emptiness. There were no windows and no furniture except a few light fixtures on the walls. Three of her other friends, Rarity, Applejack and Fluttershy, were standing over her, all looking varying degrees of tired, disheveled and anxious.

“We’re up in Canterlot, sugarcube,” Applejack explained. “Jes’ popped in one by one. I was first.” The farm pony pointed to a sign on the room’s wall next to a pull-cord and a reinforced metal door.

Canterlot Palace Designated Long Distance Teleportation Arrival Zone #2
Keep room clear at all times
Incoming visitors, please wait for processing
In case of emergency, pull rope
ENJOY YOUR VISIT TO THE PALACE!

Dash stood, stretched her wings, and regarded her friends. They’d clearly all been transported right out of their beds too. Fluttershy was in her nightgown, Rarity had her eye mask tucked above her horn and Applejack, well, she still had her old stetson somehow. It wouldn’t surprise the pegasus if AJ slept in that thing.

“Any of you know who the hay did this and why?” Rainbow asked, yawning at the end.

“Ah-nope,” said Applejack. “Thought I’d had my share of weirdness for the day when Apple Bloom brought that note home from school, too.”

“I have no idea either,” Rarity admitted, “but we should probably wait for Twilight and Pinkie before we go wandering off.”

“Oh, um, Twilight’s already here and Pinkie won’t be here for a while yet. She’s got to do something else,” Fluttershy said, not liking to contradict her friend.

The other three ponies all looked at the quiet pegasus. “You know what’s up, Shy?” Rainbow asked.

Fluttershy hesitated. “I thought I did. None of the rest of you had dreams? Maybe it was just a coincidence.”

“No, I did,” Rarity said, “but I don’t think it had anything to do with this. Some pushy VIP dropped in on the boutique unexpectedly, and I suggested as tactfully as possible that she visit some other time. There were all these deadlines I was trying to meet and she only wanted to talk nonsense about old myths anyway.”

Applejack doffed her hat to scratch her bed-head. “Shucks, I don’t hardly ever recollect dreams. Ain’t got time with how hard I work all day. ...Ah, no offense, y’all.”

Dash tried to remember what she’d been dreaming, but it was all slipping away. “I was about to be even awesomer than usual, but then suddenly I’m spoiling one of the Daring Do stories for somepony. Nothing about getting sleep-teleported to Canterlot.”

Fluttershy pawed the floor, sorry she’d brought it up. “It must have just been an ordinary dream then. Never mind.”

Unwilling to sit around in the metaphorical dark, Dash went over to the door and pulled on its heavy iron ring. It didn’t budge. She began banging a hoof against the frame.

“Rainbow, manners!” Rarity chided. “The sign said to wait. We’re guests at the palace, not invaders.”

“Manners? We got dragged out of our beds and across the country in the middle of the night! You don’t do that to a pony and then make her wait in a closet with no explanation!” Rainbow Dash complained. “I don’t care if the princess herself did it, that’s all kinds of rude.”

Rarity rolled her eyes and tried to tame her only-slightly-unruly mane with magic. “At least let me get presentable before you break down the door.”

Unwilling to wait another minute, Dash tugged the emergency cord. A bell chimed somewhere outside the room. “Hey, anypony out there? Let us out! Or, uh, in?” She shouted, then pressed an ear to the door. After the bell’s echoes died, Rainbow could hear constant sounds of commotion, but they all seemed to be coming from far away. “I don’t think there’s even anypony on duty out there.”

The four friends began to grow worried.

“This is outrageous!” said Rarity. “Every time I’ve been here, the guards and palace staff were impeccable. I wonder if something’s the matter?”

“I’m sure they have a good reason,” Fluttershy said. “What if they just needed to get us away from where we were?”

Applejack gulped. “Ya mean like maybe they stuffed us in here for our own safety? I don’t like the sound of that. Is somethin’ bad going down back in Ponyville?”

Dash rejoined the trio, spread out the comforter on the floor and flopped onto it. “Well, it looks like we’re not going anywhere, nopony’s showing up to answer our questions and I know I’m not getting back to sleep. What should we do?”

The other three ponies joined her on the blanket, glad to have someplace to sit other than the cold marble floor.

“Maybe you should tell us what you saw in your dream anyway, Fluttershy,” Applejack suggested. “Pinkie and Twilight still ain’t here, like you said, so it might be our only clue as to what in tarnation’s happening.”

Fluttershy looked flustered, but nodded. “Um, well, alright. I hope it’s not too... weird. At first it was like an ordinary day, except the trees were made of jelly and all the animals’ eyeballs were on fire. It seemed normal at the time so...”

Twilight Sparkle (or what remained of her) floated dismally through her home. Spike was upstairs in his little bed, fast asleep and apparently troubled by unpleasant dreams. Other than this, the library was quiet and desolate. For a pony who hadn’t seen the point in social interaction for a good chunk of her life, suddenly not being able to communicate with anypony felt like torture. All she could do was watch and listen and...

...read?

That was it! The rest of Princess Celestia’s letter was still down there in the basement; Twilight had taken it with her when she went to go check on the Element of Magic. Celestia had suspected early on that Twilight might have summoned up some spirits; maybe her mentor had written advice for what to do in this situation!

Twilight zipped back to the basement, going right through the door. Halfway down the stairs she came to a sudden halt.

Voices. The spirits were back.

“What a crazy night, huh sis?” Concord drawled from below. “Verse breaks Pinkie’s friend, then while I go catch that mangy poet again, you’re saying some big princess came and stole her meaty part? Did the rest of her stick around at least?”

“She went outside, but she came back. She’s in the stairwell listening to us right now.” The filly, who had appeared irritated and standoffish before, now sounded more depressed than anything.

“Oh, sweet,” Concord exclaimed. “Hey there, c’mon back down!” he called up the stairs. “I got Verse here again, just like I said I would! It’s not my fault that big white pony ran off with your mortal coil, alright? Don’t pin that on me when you tell Pinkie about me. Just stay here with us for now, okay?”

Hesitantly, Twilight descended the rest of the way to the basement. She honestly wasn’t sure what more these spirits could do to her, and anyway, just to have somepony... something acknowledge her presence was heartening. Concord and his ‘sister’ (did spirits even really work like that?) were standing in the middle of the room. Weird black-and-white striped spines that hadn’t been there before poked out through the filly’s wavy mane. In a corner of the room, the one called Verse sat, smiling off into space, tapping time on one hoof and moving his lips in noiseless recital.

First things first: Twilight hovered over to the table where the crown had once sat. There was the letter, right where she’d left it! ...Right how she’d left it too, alas; rolled up into a tube. She somehow managed to move her viewpoint inside the missive to at least see the visible bit of the letter’s inner surface, but because of the way the scroll was rolled, all that was exposed was the princess’s letterhead. She tried to shrink herself even further and travel inside the spiral of the paper, but not enough light penetrated the sturdy parchment for her to read. Defeated, Twilight miserably flowed back out into the room. Would everything go wrong for her from now on?

While Twilight tried and failed to decipher the scroll, Verity and Concord continued conferring. “So we’ve got two-thirds of the things we need to get this pony back in and on her feet. Where’s her body at right now, Ver?” the stallion asked the filly.

“The royal palace, in the infirmary.”

Concord laughed. “Aww, nuts! Guess I should’ve gone with Fortuna and that Desserts lady after all. That’s a long way away. ...Hey Verse, can you zap us up to the palace like you brought me back here?” He called over to the preoccupied unicorn-spirit.

“Who travels alone with his eyes on the heights,
Though he laughs in the day time oft weeps in the nights;

For courage goes down at the set of the sun,
When the toil of the journey is all borne by one.

He speeds but to grief though full gaily he ride
Who travels alone without love at his side.”

Twilight could almost see the gears turning inside the gray earth pony’s head as he tried to interpret the poet’s reply. “Um, I guess that’s a ‘no,’ or maybe a ‘whatever, do it yourself,’ ” Concord decided. “Okay, okay, what other options do we have?”

“Canterlot may be reached by hoof, train, and flight. The palace itself is open to direct magical teleportation within specific un-warded areas.” Verity piped up. Twilight noticed the blue filly seemed perfectly willing to answer her brother’s queries without the recalcitrance she’d shown Twilight or Luna.

The spirit stallion shifted from one hoof to another, looking doubtful. “That’s all good, but which way is the best?” he said. “We’ve got no money, we don’t know anypony, I promised not to use my powers and I wanna get this done really soon so Pinkie doesn’t get the wrong idea.”

Verity tried to let the fullness of reality flow through her with a response, but instead she only sat there with her mouth hanging open. That wasn’t the sort of question she was meant to answer. It was all airy and probabilistic and future-oriented. She slumped in disappointment.

Noticing Verity’s reaction, Twilight slid closer to the pair, a faint glimmer of an idea hatching in her mind. I know what you should do, Twilight imagined whispering into the filly’s blue ear, which twitched in response. Just take my advice and everything will be fine.

Could this be true? Verity recalled how her previous encounter with the princess turned out before she overwrote it. Why should she listen to another limited, ignorant, deceitful pony? Then again, Twilight Sparkle was used to being Inside. Perhaps she could offer some helpful insight?

Verity reviewed the events of the unicorn’s life in the twinkling of an eye. A childhood and adolescence spent in the acquisition of knowledge, using her limited perception to its fullest in order to understand the world around her. A futile but noble endeavor; the spirit approved. Then, only a couple years ago, her studies were interrupted by a command from above: “Go and make some friends!” It was completely outside Twilight’s experience.

...And yet, she had done it! She moved among strangers and grew close, intertwining their lives together. There were other ponies who shared her joys and sorrows, who put themselves in peril for her sake as she did for theirs. Between them rested a power emanating from deepest Outside, beyond even Verity’s vision; the manifestation of harmony her brother called the “Big Six.”

This interconnection between separate beings was something that Verity hadn’t ever really experienced close-up until now. It seemed extremely useful. She wanted to know what Twilight had in mind, but Verity found it harder to simply read Twilight’s unspoken thoughts and intentions from the ether, now that the pony had been sundered. Remembering her lesson from earlier in the day, she raised a hoof in the air.

“Hey, uh, watcha doing there, Ver?” Concord asked. “Need better reception?”

“I want to ask Twilight a question.”

Yes! Twilight thought, doing a little loop in the air out of joy. You don’t have to raise your hoof to talk to me. Just ask away!

Verity lowered her hoof with a snort at the sheer arbitrariness of it all. “What do you want us to do?”

Okay, remember how you rewound or undid time or whatever it was when Luna found you down here? Twilight began.

Concord swung his head one way and then another as if expecting to see the former pony floating around the ceiling somewhere. “Is she telling you something?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I wanna hear too!” the older pony whined. “Tell me what she’s telling you... um, please?”

“If you could do that again, but—” Twilight continued, then stopped in surprise. She could’ve sworn she heard her thoughts echo in the room. The voice was a bit higher-pitched, but otherwise sounded exactly like hers. “Did I actually say that aloud? I can talk again?”

“No.” Verity said.

“But then how—”

The same instant Twilight thought the words, she noticed that Verity’s mouth opened and spoke them aloud, sounding almost exactly as Twilight would have.

Concord laughed and stamped applause. “That’s amazing, Ver! You’re so talented!”

“O-okay,” Twilight and Verity said. “But listen, I need you to do that thing you did to Luna before, except I want you to say that I never messed with the Element of Magic, that I never summoned you all here, that Luna never even sent it to me!”

At the princess’s name, Verse fell silent. He turned to look across the room at Verity, a flicker of interest in his eyes.

“Ver, what are you two talking about?” said Concord, looking shocked. “What did you do? Didja... did you tell a lie?”

“The lamp hummed:
‘Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,’ ” said Verse, and then laughed at a private joke.

“Yes,” Verity replied, looking guilty. “Luna was shaking me and yelling at me and saying I didn’t tell her the truth. Spike got mad at me for doing what he asked and so did Cherilee, and they each called me a liar too.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

Her brother sidled up to her and put a leg around her shoulders. “It’s okay, Ver. Just because two ponies and a dragon say it doesn’t make it true. Lots of good folks get misunderstood. It ain’t their fault.”

“Excuse me,” Twilight interjected through Verity, “You really need to listen to me! If you can just tell a tiny little lie one more time everything will go back to the way it was! None of this has to happen!”

Concord looked disapprovingly in a direction Twilight wasn’t. “Now don’t you start too!” he scolded. “Can’t you see how much they hurt her? The Big Six oughtta treat ponies better.”

Verity leaned against Concord and buried her face in her hooves as her pent-up emotions overflowed. “It’s true!” she wailed. “I told a lie and the universe just broke itself to make it true! I marred harmony! I ruined everything!”

Her brother held her close and tried his best to stroke her mane without getting stabbed on the spines. “Shh... hush. You (ow!) didn’t ruin anything. We’re all (ouch!) still here. Nopony can just break the (eep!) universe. You know what I think happened?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right; you got a second chance. Just remember this and never ever lie ever again, okay?”

“Okay,” Verity said, wiping her eyes and nose. Suddenly she threw back her head and screamed. “NO! AAAARGH!! LISTEN!”

Concord released the filly and stared at her wide-eyed.

“That was Twilight,” she explained.

“Well we’re listening. What is it?” Concord bent over to pull a few spines out of his forelegs with his teeth.

“Verity, I need you to say that I never summoned any spirits. All sorts of awful things are going to happen otherwise. Please!”

Her brother shook his head. “She just said she wouldn’t lie anymore! The universe might really break this time. And why do you want us gone so bad? I would’ve never met Pinkie if you never summoned me.”

“Because your buddies Fortuna and Just Deserts are trying to overthrow the government!” Twilight made Verity shout. “They’re the ones who froze my body in place, then they stole my Element of Harmony and said they were going after the princesses! It’s going to throw the whole world into chaos! We have to stop them!”

The gray pony shrugged. “It’s just spirit stuff, like we do all the time from Outside. I’m sure they know what they’re about.”

Rage and frustration manifest differently when one lacks blood pressure to raise or vision to cloud with red mist. Twilight’s perspective bounced around the room like a ricocheting bullet. Her mistake could doom the world, and all she had to rectify it were these... idiotic spirits! They didn’t care about ponies, or harmony, or anything! She had no idea what Verity or Verse actually wanted, and Concord just went on and on about...

Twilight came to an instant halt.

“If you don’t help me stop them, Pinkie will never forgive you.”

Concord looked like he’d been struck. “R-really? No, that’s not true! Pinkie wants to be friends with everypony! She likes me!”

“Why don’t you ask Verity what Pinkie thinks of you right now?” Twilight slyly asked.

“Fine!” Concord said. “You tell her, Ver! Pinkie likes me, she’s just a bit scared because she knows I wasn’t a pony before this morning. Right?”

Verity looked into Concord’s eyes but said nothing.

“C’mon! Tell her!” he insisted, red-faced and growing frightened.

The filly slowly shook her head. “No lies. Pinkie Pie is terrified of you. She thinks you’re an evil alchemist.”

“What!?” her brother cried. “How? Why? What happened?”

“Spirit power. Punishment. Just Deserts convicted her of seducing you and changed Pinkie’s thoughts,” Verity said, answering the last three questions in order.

Twilight felt a certain grim satisfaction to finally discovering what had happened to Pinkie. She also felt a bit ashamed, not having been able to tell her friend wasn’t herself when she burst into the library that evening.

Concord fell back on his rump, staring blankly at the floor and trying to process what he’d just learned. He was a spirit of peace! Everything was supposed to work out around him! All the beings he touched got along! Why did everything have to fall to pieces now? What did that justice spirit think she was doing?

Twilight moved in for the kill. “Concord, listen to me. We can help each other. Pinkie had her mind scrambled by an evil spirit before, and I saved her. Only a powerful magician who is also a close, intimate friend can separate the foreign, imposed thoughts from the real ones. There’s nopony else who fits that description but me. Get me back into my body and help me get the Element of Magic back from those other spirits. If you do this for me, I’ll bring Pinkie back to normal, and she’ll be so happy! And when I tell her I couldn’t have done it without the help of a certain good spirit...”

The look the stallion gave the empty air around him was so pathetically grateful and full of hope Twilight actually felt guilty about how she intended to zap him back ‘Outside’ (wherever that was) the first moment she was able.

“Deal,” Concord said, standing back up with a look of resolve. “But I’m a spirit of peace. I can’t fight, especially not against family, and Verity’s just a witness and Verse... Verse is all kinds of unreliable. What can we do?”

The disembodied unicorn gave the matter a brief stack of thick thought. They needed to get to Canterlot as fast as possible to head off the other spirits and get her body. Luna’s teleportation magic was the best way to do that, but Pinkie thought Concord was an alchemist, and feared him. Luna thought the same, and would be just as hostile if she knew them to be spirits. If anything happened to Verity, Twilight might never be able to make herself known to anypony ever again. In light of this, there was only one course of action that she thought had a chance of success.

“We’re going to give the ponies exactly what they want.”

Author's Note

Poetry in order of appearance:

from "The Traveller" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

from "Rapshody on a Windy Night" by T.S. Eliot

Chapter XII

In a flash of magic, the Princess of the Night had whisked herself and Pinkie from the street before Golden Oaks and deposited them on the tiny, uppermost balcony atop Ponyville’s town hall. The rest of the town spread out around them in all directions. It was the best vantage point in the little town.

Luna threw back her head, pointing her horn at the sky, and cast a mighty spell. A flare of light rose straight up from her into the air.

Pinkie oohed appreciatively, then gasped in dismay. “Why'dja do that, princess? Now he’ll know where we are!” she complained. Her fears about the alchemist had been growing and growing ever since she’d agreed to help Luna catch him. The words, ‘you shouldn’t be here; you should run away’ repeated themselves over and over again, louder and louder in her mind. She could hardly think of anything else.

Instead of speaking, Luna simply held up a hoof for silence and watched the flight of her spell, still rising like a rocket. The point of magical light lost momentum high above the town, hung in the air for a moment, then burst, sending a growing, ring-shaped wave out and down to land about the outskirts of town. The light of the moon and stars was tinted an unearthly shade of blue and the air grew still.

Pinkie opened her mouth to ask what had just happened, but Luna expected the question. “I have domed the entire town in an impregnable shield,” she explained. “Our quarry is still here, like as not; alchemists lack the self-mastery to turn and leave behind something they desire. You, in this case.”

Luna’s reluctant ally gulped and peeked over the edge of the railing down on the sleeping town. “But... but he had to have seen that! He knows right where we are! Magic us out of here before we’re trapped!”

Annoyed at Pinkie’s lack of confidence in her abilities, Luna joined her at the railing and scanned the landscape. “No, this location is ideal. He knows where we are, and he knows the only way out is through me breaking the spell. The town hall and the square around it are deserted at this hour, and he must approach over open ground, in full sight of us.”

Pinkie squeaked and scooted back from the edge. She didn’t like this plan at all. “What if he takes a pony hostage, or if he just burns down town hall? Shouldn’t you try to get the drop on him instead of waiting?” she asked.

The princess shook her head and began casting spells of detection, searching the area beneath her barrier for any gray stallions matching the description Pinkie gave her. “Just because my domain is the night does not mean I prefer sneaking about and stalking prey like some nocturnal predator!” This preconception was something of a sore point for her. “Nopony will be dripping upon anypony else. To chase after an alchemist is to play right into his hooves. He’ll be at his weakest when we force him to come to us. Have patience.”

Deferring to Luna’s apparent greater experience, Pinkie Pie held her tongue and took up watch on the other side of the balcony.

Several minutes passed in tense silence.

Finally, Pinkie couldn’t take the unnatural quiet anymore. “What if we sort of got together one of those pitchfork-and-torch mobs and asked everyone in Ponyville to help us search?” she suggested. “It’d be like an alchemist-catching midnight block party, but for every block at once! Everypony’d have so much fun and it would be so safe since they’d all be there, and we’d find him in no time!”

The sudden distraction destabilized Luna’s searching spell, which was just as well since it wasn’t finding anything. She was certain that the alchemist was still nearby, just able to hide from her magic somehow. The odd interference she was getting through her spell was proof enough. It was supposed to sweep the town for a pony matching the description Pinkie had given her; an unmarked, uniformly gray stallion about Pinkie’s age. She hadn’t found anyone who fit it yet, but what she was finding was certainly caused by some alchemist’s trick deceiving her spell. According to it, Twilight Sparkle was both nearby and absent, three ponies in town were both older than her stars yet hadn’t been alive more than a day, and all of their positions were impossible to pin down. Luna smiled coldly to herself. Yes, this ‘Concord’ was still here, and he was running out of options. Struggle as he might, there was no escaping her!

“You saw what happened when we involved other ponies in our quest,” Luna reminded Pinkie. “My own guard balked at my orders and a pair of physicians tried to have you committed. The more ponies get involved, the greater risk there is of them being harmed, or worse, being tricked into doing our enemy’s bidding.”

“What about Spike, then? Why’d you make him go to sleep? If he can’t help us, shouldn’t he at least be with Twilight?”

Luna snorted. “Trust a dragon around ruthless villains who can make lead into treasure? Far be it for me to make that mistake twice. The steps my sister will take to save our friend Twilight Sparkle are likewise nothing Spike ought to witness. You must understand; alchemists are unbelievably wily. Their cunning is legendary and they never do anything straightforwardly. That is why we must be prepared for anything; it is not as if he will simply announce—”

“HEY! Hey Pinkie, izzat you?” Called a mellow voice for the ground. Pinkie squealed in fright and flattened herself against the floor.

Luna goggled. “Is that... is he... ?”

“It’s me, Concord! I’ve been looking for you all over!”

“He must think we don’t know what he is,” Luna surmised. “He’s still trying to pass as an ordinary pony.”

From below, one of Concord’s companions hissed something at him. “Oh, right!” he continued. “As you know, I am an evil, uh, al-chem-ist! Also, I'm coming up there to get you... Muh-hah-hee-haw!”

Not believing her ears, Luna magically rendered herself invisible for a moment and peeked down into the square. There, advancing fearlessly toward town hall in the tinted moonlight, was a trio of ponies. One was wrapped in an oversized hooded cloak that had been stained with a wide variety of chemicals, one was a spaced-out-looking unicorn and the other was a little filly who walked with a limp. Could Pinkie have been right about the hostages? But just calling out and announcing himself like that... it didn’t match the way he’d been hiding from the spell. Besides, if alchemists really went around shouting out their identities nopony would doubt whether they existed!

“So that’s your alchemist, Pinkie Pie?” The Princess of the Night gave Pinkie, who was still hugging the floor, frozen with fear, a skeptical look. “I’ve heard of obfuscating stupidity, but this is pointless. He’s just given away any advantage he could have used against us. Also, his clothes are sloppy. They’re usually quite fastidious. Might he not merely be some crude decoy, or even a careless stallion who carried a jest too far?”

“He’s not! It’s not!” Pinkie insisted. “He must be doing some sort of double-triple-meta bluff to get you to not take him seriously! Pretty-pretty-please don’t leave me, your great, merciful, nice, friendly, smart highness! I don’t have anypony else but you!”

Luna was more and more certain that one or both of them were being put on, but the words struck a chord in her, and Pinkie’s terror looked all too real. “Fear not, Pinkie Pie. I will not abandon you. Follow my plan and we will discover who this fool is once and for all.” She leaned down and whispered her strategy into the distraught mare’s ear.

Though she wanted to get away more than anything, Pinkie quickly agreed to it; what other choice did she have? She just hoped and prayed that Concord wouldn’t be able to trick Princess Luna with his slow-witted folksy act.

When the conspirators left the library’s basement, they had found Spike in his bed, cast into an enchanted sleep. Owlowiscious was watching over him protectively and drove them away. He seemed to think Twilight’s voice coming from a strange pony was some sort of trick.

They abandoned the library, and Verity’s knowledge led them toward where Pinkie and the princess had gone even before the flashy spell had walled off the town.

“Concord, if you keep on acting like some laid-back bumpkin, you’ll never pass for an alchemist.” Twilight scolded through Verity as the spirit and her “brother” climbed the spiral staircase to the hall’s roof. “I thought when you told me you were capable of lying without breaking space and time, you’d actually be good at it!”

“I hadn’t ever done it before,” Concord said defensively, itching maddeningly beneath his new clothing. The hooded cloak was nothing more than the cloth from Twilight’s lab, ‘enhanced’ with chemical stains from the same and pinned sloppily at the base of his neck. It was hot, hard to see from and made his back feel all tingly. Other than that, a utility belt filled with stoppered test tubes of various harmless compounds rounded out his alchemist disguise. “Anyway, it’s not acting. That’s just how I am!”

“Seventy-three members of the Order of Alchemists had accents that were considered rustic for their time,” Verity noted, not liking Twilight criticizing her brother through Verity’s own mouth.

Twilight had reconnoitered the roof while the spirits were entering town hall, and she’d seen how Princess Luna had reacted to Concord’s theatrics so far. “I’m sure that’s true, but it doesn’t matter,” Twilight said, trying to moderate the annoyance and worry in her voice, “All that matters is what Princess Luna thinks an alchemist looks, acts and sounds like.”

“An’ what’s that?”

Verity checked. “She thinks they’re haughty, cultured, decadent, even more cunning than she is and completely amoral.”

Concord grinned and started tugging at the cloak. “Guess I can take this rag off, then.”

“No! No, leave it on,” Twilight insisted. “We’re committed now, so we can’t all start changing things and going off on our...” She realized something was missing. “Okay, where did Verse wander off to this time?”

“He climbed out a window two floors back while you were up on the roof,” Verity answered.

Twilight was beginning to get used to the constant stream of nonsensical actions from her new companions, and took the news in stride. “Fine, whatever. He would probably just get in the way. Let’s get this over with.” She turned her attention back to Concord, who had thrown back the hood and was trying to shake some volume back into his mane. “Concord, you have to try and follow Luna’s lead. Pay close attention to her and live up to her expectations for what an alchemist is. Pinkie will think you’re the real deal no matter what, so use that to our advantage.”

The cloaked stallion nodded. “No sweat. Bein’ agreeable is my normal M.O.! Ooh, and me and Pinkie will be working together!” He squealed with delight like an oversized schoolfilly.

“No! No squeals! No getting all googly-eyed. You have to be an evil, heartless alchemist, got it?”

Concord nodded soberly, but he was only half-listening, if that. Imagining Pinkie being released from her curse and seeing him as her hero occupied most of his conscious attention, and climbing the spiraling stairs without tripping on the cloak demanded the majority of the rest.

The spirits weren’t the only ones she worried about. Twilight had little confidence in her own ability to trick one of her best friends and an alicorn princess. Other than a brief stint as the silent Mare-Do-Well and a role in the Hearth’s Warming pageant (which was the same every year), she hadn’t done much in the way of acting since the play her class put on in magic kindergarten. She had been cast as the Principle of Contagion, only had to memorize two rhyming lines, and flubbed them badly from stage fright. How could a pony go from that to improv? Still, the fate of the world was on the line. She’d give it her all.

“Okay, Verity,” Twilight continued, “you’re sure it’s all right for me to speak through you for a while? I’m going to have to say a whole lot of things that aren’t exactly truthful. We can’t save Pinkie and everypony else if the planet cracks in half when I make you tell a fib.”

“It’s not the same. I’m just lending you my voice. Your lies are still on your own head.”

Twilight detected disapproval in the spirit’s tone, but still, everything seemed to be as ready as she could make it on such short notice. In fact, losing Verse and his constant babble might even help their mission! They climbed the last few flights to the door leading to the roof in silence. Concord shoved the door open, eager to see Pinkie again.

In spite of the princess’s pledge, Pinkie Pie was up there all alone, huddled fearfully against the railing when the door slammed open and Concord made his entrance with Verity close behind. The pink mare stared at him wide-eyed but didn’t move or speak.

His role instantly forgotten, Concord’s cheeks flushed and he trotted forward, signature grin once again splitting his face. “Hey, hey, don’t be afraid,” he said consolingly, lowering his head and folding his ears forward to look as non-threatening as possible. “That thing I said on the ground, don’t pay it any mind. I didn’t realize how much it would hurt you.”

The mare stood stock-still, not even daring to breathe. The tracks of tears darkened her cheeks

“Pinkie, I never meant to scare you,” Concord swore. Tenderly, he raised a hoof to wipe away a teardrop from his beloved’s face.

The moment he touched her, the image of a frightened pink mare melted into a cloud of magenta smoke.

Concord raised his head, surprised. “Uh... wha? Pin—”

“NOW!” called a terrible voice from above.

Before he could finish the thought, a barely-visible ripple in the night air flashed down on him from above and knocked the spirit stallion flat onto the ground. Something made of cold metal pressed against his back with enough force to pin him to the floor. He tried to struggle, but the leg holding him down was as unyielding as a mountain. Verity watched the scene unfold with a slight twinge of fear.

“So, the ‘evil alchemist’ reveals himself at last,” said a disapproving voice from the distorted air. “How did you expect this to go? Surely you knew I was up here.” Princess Luna let the invisibility spell on herself drop and returned to opacity wearing a grim and triumphant smirk.

Remembering Twilight’s orders to go along with this big pony’s suppositions, Concord nodded as much as his position would allow. “Yep, yes I did. I knew you were up here.” He tried to look around. “Is Pinkie Pie up here too, or was that a trick all along?”

“She is safe from you. You will not defile so much as a hair on her hide, you lecherous, treasonous dog!”

“I won’t?” Concord said. “Uh, ah, no! I won’t! Because... because I’m an alchemist, which means I’m bad, and bad ponies shouldn’t be allowed to defile hairs, ’specially not hairs as nice and poofy-curly as Pinkie’s, no-ma’am!”

Twilight would have winced. For all the chaos he’d indirectly caused, this spirit of peace had no idea how to act menacing or villainous.

Luna removed her hoof from Concord’s back, trusting to her magic to keep him sealed to the floor. “Cease your foolery!” the princess ordered him. “What did you do to Twilight Sparkle? Where is the object you stole from her? Reveal your scheme at once!” Luna was perplexed by her captive’s behavior. Not only was he dressed in a filthy rag and chattering like a jackdaw, but he just lay there without struggling, making no attempt to reach his phials to fling acid or spray poison gas or even detonate a smoke bomb. Maybe the order had gone downhill since its heyday, but this was just shameful. She carefully relieved him of the belt anyway just to be safe and stowed it in a pocket of folded space.

“My... my scheme? Uh, I definitely have one of those!” Concord said. “It’s... It’s... hold on, it’ll come to me...” Twilight had coached him on what to confess to as they were traveling to the square, but he couldn’t remember any of it now.

Twilight metaphorically stepped in to help the floundering spirit. “I heard him say he was going to use a mutation potion to turn all the ponies in town into mixed-up monstrosities!” she made Verity blurt from the sidelines, speaking in falsetto to disguise the filly’s near-perfect reproduction of her voice. “He tested it out on me, and just look what happened!” Twilight hoped desperately that this lie would account for Verity’s mismatched appearance to Luna.

“Yep, that’s it! That’s the one. You got me.” Concord assented, giving Verity an un-subtle theatrical wink.

The princess turned and paid close attention to Verity for the first time since... well, technically for the first time ever. Twilight flitted anxiously back and forth, hoping Luna wouldn’t arrive at the same conclusion as before.

The alicorn’s eyes narrowed. “You have the voice of Twilight Sparkle, hide it though you try.” Keeping Concord prone with magic, she stepped warily toward Verity. “A plot to give ponies ugly deformities?” she continued. “It’s cruel enough, but alchemists would never do something so blatant and pointless. I can tell you are still hiding the truth from me. There are more likely ways for a pony, or should I say, a being to come by these unnatural additions.”

She was starting to suspect the truth! The filly yelped and backpedaled to the far railing. “No, no! It’s not that! Please!” Twilight frantically blurted.

“And what would ‘that’ be, little ‘pony’?” Luna asked, readying another spell.

For the first time since climbing out onto the rooftop, Concord realized the thinness of the ice he was on. He’d pretty much coasted by on his powers for all of his spiritual existence, but just going along and doing whatever seemed easiest wasn’t going to cut it this time! That big princess was about to figure out that Verity was a spirit, and Twilight said that would ruin everything! Pinkie was depending on him!

...Well, actually she wasn’t because she didn’t know, but that was part of what he had to help Twilight fix! The stallion’s mind raced.

“Okay, okay, I’ll talk! Just don’t hurt her!” he said.

Luna didn’t even give him a backward glance. “Alchemists care nothing for other ponies. Try a better trick.”

“Verity, she, uh... she’s not a pony.”

“Concord, what are you doing?!” Twilight hissed, completely forgetting to disguise her voice. Was he just giving up?

“Yes, I had gathered that,” Luna said with a roll of her eyes. “You must have used the stolen Element of Magic to summon a—”

“See, uh, I made her. With alchemy. She’s one-a those, ah, fake ponies like you make in a bottle?” Concord bluffed, trying to sound as sincere as he could while having no idea what he was talking about.

Luna paused and stared at Verity, head cocked to one side. “So this is the equinculus? The legendary lesser pony of artifice? It does not look like much.”

Concord pretended to be ashamed. “Yeah, an equi-calculus. I, er, I made her wrong, though. She was supposed to be a copy of Twilight Sparkle. I got the voice and the mind right, but the rest, well...”

His captor pursed her lips. Why was he being so forthcoming? Was this just to stall for time? Still, bringing back an actual equinculus would be indisputable evidence. She unwove the spell of eradication from her horn.

“A fake to mislead us while you dragged the secrets out of the real bearer. I see. You are saying you failed, then.”

“Yeah. My, uh, evil alchemist buddies left me behind to take the fall. I told them I could make it look like a spirit instead, but it would take too long. They weren’t happy. Not real understanding types, you know.”

Luna nodded, slowly allowing herself to become convinced. She spoke to Verity again. “So, little creature, you have the mind of Twilight Sparkle? How could mere alchemy grant you that?”

“I... don’t know?” Twilight said, thinking on her figurative hooves. “But it’s true, your highness! I am Twilight, or I think I am. Do you remember when you visited Ponyville on Nightmare Night, and I found you by the bridge? I took you to my friend Fluttershy so you could learn to talk like a nor—er, like you do now.” Twilight could tell Verity was amused by how the plain truth was serving to mislead.

The Princess of the Night was startled. “Y-yes?”

“I was Star Swirl the Bearded, remember? Hoof-stitched robe, bells on the hat, the whole shebang. You were the only one who recognized my costume.”

Luna shook her head in wonderment. “That is uncanny. It recalls events that none but she and I were present to witness. I did not think alchemy could perform such a wonder, but neither do I see any other way for this to be.”

“That’s because us alchemists are all se-ee-cretive and myst-e-ee-rious,” Concord said, sounding more cheerful than any pony magically glued to the floor ought. “I’m an alchemist and you caught me! So where’s Pinkie?”

“She has been among us all this time, hidden by my spells of invisibility and silencing,” Luna said. “Pinkie Pie was supposed to shut and block the stairwell door to prevent your escape, but she seems to have lost her nerve.” She released the spells that were hiding the pink mare with two flashes of her horn. “No matter. Pinkie Pie, I have the situation well in hoof. Come forth and identify this miscreant!”

Nopony responded. Luna, and Concord looked one way and then another for the freshly un-cloaked pony. Other than them and Verity, the rooftop deck was deserted.

“Pinkie!” Luna commanded more forcefully. “He cannot harm you now. Show yourself at once.”

Again, only silence answered the princess’s words. Twilight remembered her own studies of invisibiliity, being warned repeatedly to never, ever make another pony undetectable because of the difficulty of finding them to undo the spell. That didn’t seem to be an issue for Princess Luna’s powers, but where could Pinkie have gone? The only way off this tiny balcony beside the door was...

The same thought occurred to Twilight and the princess simultaneously.

Luna’s eyes widened in shock and she rushed to the railing to look down the steeply-sloping roof. “Oh no, oh no! Could she have—? She was so afraid...”

“No! Pinkie, no!” Twilight shouted, and zipped out from the building, trying to find her friend.

Concord wasn’t sure what was making Twilight and Luna so excited, but whatever it was it involved Pinkie and it seemed bad. “Psst, Ver!” he hissed. “What’s going on? Where did Pinkie go?”

His sister blinked and instantly knew the answer. “Down.”

Twilight saw it a split-second before the princess did: a path of damaged shingles ran straight down the precipitous roof and bounced off the side of a steep roof-ridge covering one of the hall’s dormer windows. The trail of destruction ended at the lower balcony, where a spot of bright pink lay surrounded and partially covered by roofing debris. In the dimness and distance, she couldn’t see whether Pinkie was okay, and suspected the worst. Twilight and Luna vaulted the railing, all else forgotten, and dove toward the scene of the disaster.

Chapter XIII

Far up the mountainside, deep within the palace that towered above Canterlot, Princess Celestia stood at the bedside of her most faithful student. One of the doctors had used a spell to force Twilight’s voluntary muscles to relax, and now, to all outward appearances, it seemed as if the unicorn in the hospital bed was merely sleeping.

Outside the flurry of activity around the patient and the princess, the palace’s infirmary looked desolate, even considering the lateness of the hour. Many of the staff were overdue to arrive and begin their shifts. The medical ponies still waiting to punch out and go to bed were quite annoyed, but unwilling to leave the infirmary unattended.

The chief physician on duty, a burgundy earth pony named Pastille Panacea, shook her head as she deftly removed the electrodes glued to Twilight’s skull. “Begging your pardon, highness, but are you certain this pony isn’t under a spell?” she asked, dipping her head in the slightest hint of a bow. Luna had picked Panacea to head the infirmary at night not only because of her medical expertise, but also for her marked indifference to courtly protocol when it interfered with her duties. Several of the royal physicians of previous generations had proved unwilling to question or contradict their rulers even if they thought them mistaken.

Pastille notably lacked this trait, which was alternately comforting or annoying, depending on the circumstances. Right now it was the latter. Celestia had fielded the same question three times already while the doctor had examined Twilight.

“No, doctor. There’s no spell on Twilight that I or my sister could find. Have you discovered something?” In spite of her worry, the princess made herself smile to reassure Panacea that the question had caused no offense.

As usual, she needn’t have bothered. The doctor pulled off the last electrode and exhaled sharply, clearly frustrated. “I have discovered this is the healthiest pony who’s ever had the misfortune of being under my care, and yes, I am including you in that list. Keep packing away baked goods like you’ve been doing and you’ll only live half of forever.”

Celestia gave the doctor a sharp look. This really wasn’t the time.

“Anyway, blood’s clean, organs are working fine, no nerve damage, and her brain, well!”

“...Well?”

Panacea tapped a printout with the back of a hoof. “That gray mush of hers is hopping like an awake pony’s would be, not an unconscious one. I think I can safely say there is no reason known to mundane medical science why Miss Sparkle is not up, about and bouncing all over the room.” She shrugged. “Thus... magic.”

The princess sighed to herself. Even educated earth ponies and pegasi had a tendency to lump anything beyond their present understanding into the category of ‘unicorn stuff’. “Thank you for your help, doctor. Can she be moved? I’d prefer to keep her somewhere more secluded until the wizards arrive.”

Panacea nodded distractedly as an orderly cantered up to her and whispered something urgent-sounding in her ear. “Of course, to help with the magic,” she said, taking a step backward. “She’ll need hydration eventually, but for now she’s stable as a rock. Move her anywhere; heck, use her as a paperweight if you want.” The bell above the infirmary’s entrance rang as several ponies entered. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there might be patients coming in I’m actually capable of helping.” She turned and swiftly trotted toward the entrance.

The orderly, a recent addition to the staff, blanched at hearing the doctor addressing royalty so boldy as she loosened the wheels on the bed and prepared to take Twilight wherever the princess requested. The physician had gone too far once again, but the princess understood Panacea’s frustration; not only was the hour late, but to be one of the premier doctors in Equestria and yet unable to do anything for the pony lying in the bed could fray one’s nerves. Celestia could relate all too well.

As she walked alongside the bed to the well-guarded guest suite she’d picked out earlier, the princess wondered what was keeping the magical experts. It had been two hours and none of the unicorn wizards she’d called had responded to her summons. Sure, it was the middle of the night, but a royal summons ought to carry a bit more weight than a few hours’ rest. Most of the recipients lived in Canterlot, for pony’s sake! She briefly entertained the idea that her sister’s worries were finally correct before dismissing the notion with a dainty snort.

But why the hold-up, then? Was she too lenient with them? Were her subjects growing careless and decadent? Had taking over management of the heavenly lights from the ancient unicorns ultimately weakened the tribe? She thrust the questions aside with an effort of will. It was the worst possible time for the unanswerable what-ifs and might-have-beens that regularly troubled her thoughts. More immediate concerns presented themselves.

Following Canterlot’s winding corridors, they arrived at a hall of guest rooms deep within the palace complex. After the attendant had telekinetically placed the student upon the suite’s lavish bed, Celestia dismissed her, instructed the guards outside to let nopony enter, and shut and locked the room’s door.

At least one question had been settled by the doctor’s examination: Twilight was still very much alive. Whatever was suppressing her nature was neither a mundane disease or toxin nor a form of unicorn magic. If the origin of the ailment was some exotic power, most likely the cure would be as well.

It was a long shot, but if nopony else could figure out what had happened to Twilight Sparkle, perhaps she could ask Twilight herself.

The princess magically reached into a private storehouse of artifacts and magical reagents she’d locked away as too dangerous for common ponies to dabble in. From this stockpile she withdrew a large silver basin, shining like a warped mirror, and three diamond flasks containing clear liquid. Celestia broke the seals on all three and poured their contents into the silver vessel, filling it nearly to the brim. After several minutes, during which time there was some minor commotion outside, the ripples subsided and the water grew still. Her reflection, unnaturally clear, stared back at her from the basin. There was a mischievous twinkle in the reflection’s eye which she was certain her own lacked.

That was all for the material components. She gently lifted her student’s still form with telekinesis once more and carried her to hover directly over the basin, facing down. Celestia called the incantation from memory. It ought to work even if someone other than the subject spoke the words.

The princess stood well back from Twilight and the basin and cleared her throat. “And into her own reflection she stared—”

There was a sharp knock at the door.

Celestia’s eyebrows shot up. She had given explicit orders to her guards not to let her be disturbed for any reason. They should be right outside the suite’s doors, ready to turn away any curious courtiers and servants.

“—yearning for one whose reflection she shared—”

Whoever it was hammered on the door again, louder. The princess could tell from the sound that their hooves were shod with metal.

“Your highness, we have to—” began a stallion outside.

“Shh! We’re not allowed to call her that anymore!” another said.

The voices belonged to the royal guards on watch outside the room. Why couldn’t they address her by her title? If it was a rebellion, it was the most halfhearted one she’d ever witnessed.

She would deal with it later. Right now, no matter what, she had to finish the incantation.

“—and solemnly swore... no, sweared not to be scared at the prospect of being doubly mared!”

As she finished the grammatically-questionable rhyme, a single ripple rolled outward from the center of the magical water, and Twilight’s reflection in the basin began to take on depth.

Celestia returned the original to the bed, tucked her in and affixed a magic marking, invisible to any eyes but hers, to the bottom of the real Twilight’s left front hoof. She hoped this would avoid a repeat of the confusion that resulted the last time a pony had tried to harness the power of the Mirror Pool.

Meanwhile, the percussion on the door had switched from urgent knocking and requests to steady, frame-rattling kicks. Whoever was outside was trying to break it down. The princess wasn’t sure what they expected to accomplish. She could vanish away with Twilight at a moment’s notice, unless—

A tingle of static electricity made the fine hairs of Celestia’s back stand on end. So they had some sense after all. Apparently several unicorns on the other side of the door were uniting their power to cast a space-flattening spell, making teleportation impossible within a 100-meter radius. The room she’d chosen, with its hardened walls and lack of windows, had gone from a place of safety to a trap. Celestia began focusing her magic energy on bolstering the heavy oak door, which was already beginning to crack and splinter under the steady pounding.

While the princess’s attention was occupied, two lavender hooves, perfectly dry, threw themselves over the edge of the silver basin, followed by a spiraled horn and straight, dark mane with two lighter stripes. The exact copy of Twilight Sparkle looked around, stepped casually out of the vessel and trotted up to Celestia’s side.

“Excuse me, giant pony,” the specular unicorn said, paying no attention to the magical and physical struggle unfolding before her, “which way to the nearest library? I’ve got some reading I need to catch up on.”

The door began to spark and smoke as the ponies outside cast spells to disintegrate its very fibers. Other than directly attacking, there wasn’t a lot Celestia could do from this side of the door that a group of well-trained unicorns outside couldn’t undo in a moment. She’d had a good three-century streak going of not having to personally harm any of her ponies, and she didn’t want to break it without knowing exactly who was trying to get in and what they wanted.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t keep stalling. Celestia telekinetically grasped all the room’s furniture other than the bed and piled it into a barricade in front of the door. A spell from her horn instantly fossilized the heap into stone. That ought to buy a few more minutes, she thought.

“You can’t read right now, little pony,” the princess told the false Twilight. “First, I need you to tell me what you know about yourself.”

The other Twilight looked disappointed. “But, my research...”

“Just answer my questions and I’ll give you free rein of the whole royal archives. How would you like that? Think of it as a test.”

The smaller pony squealed with anxiety. “Eep, a pop quiz? I didn’t study!”

Celestia patted the copy with a wing, trying to keep her impatience from showing. Twilight’s supplemental letter explaining the Mirror Pool Incident with Pinkie Pie had been vague on how much the magic dopplegangers knew about the pony they mimicked, but it was dead-on about how annoying they could be.

The princess tried to hide her impatience and calm the creature. “But it should be easy; it’s all about you,” she assured it. “First question: do you know your name?”

“Uh, um... Twilight Sparkle! Is that it? Can I go now?”

“Not yet.” Celestia directed its attention to the original in the bed. “You and your ilk are able to to broadly impersonate ponies without ever meeting them before. Somehow you just know about them. I need that innate knowledge now. Do you know what happened to her? What caused her to be this way?”

Meanwhile, the ponies outside the room had finished breaking the door off its hinges and were starting to chip away at the mountain of stony furniture.

The fake Twilight noticed the real Twilight for the first time and appeared shocked. “That’s... me? No, it can’t be. That’s scientifically impossible.” She reached out an inquisitive hoof and poked Twilight in the cheek. “You’re scientifically impossible!”

Celestia slapped the impostor’s leg away with sudden violence. “Don’t play games with me, mirror-spawn!” she growled. “I care deeply about this pony and you are not her. I know the spell to send you back where you came from, and you’ll wish I cast that instead of what I’m going to do to you if you don’t tell me what I want to know right this instant!”

The other Twilight squealed in terror and ran back toward the basin. Celestia was quicker, and the silver vessel and its contents slid to the side just as the mirror pony leaped to dive back in. The frightened mimic crashed to the bare floor and lay there, shaking with fear, as the princess approached.

“Well?” Celestia asked icily.

“I can’t! I can’t tell you!” it wailed between sniffles. “I’m not allowed; she doesn’t let little lowly speculars like me get in the way of her work.”

The princess leaned forward intently. “Who doesn’t?”

Behind her, the pile of stone furniture blocking the door exploded in a burst of magic, raining chips and dust over the room. She feared Twilight would be harmed by the shrapnel, but the pieces of debris transformed back into light, blunt chunks of wood the instant they struck another object or the ground.

“Celestia!” commanded a hazy figure in the doorway, “you’re under arrest by order of the new ruler of Equestria!”

“We have to do this. Please, please don’t hurt us,” a quieter voice further back added.

“...And then while Princess Luna was explaining to me about the danger of alchemists, she grew two more heads on each side of her neck that looked like my parents, except they were constantly changing color and they asked me over and over where I’d put my report card. I could tell they were so disappointed in me for not having it, but they were trying to hide it because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I started to look inside the teacups because I just knew it was in one of them, and if I didn’t find it then my evil twin would become their real daughter and I would disappear forever!

“While I was searching, Luna made this sort of strangled growly sound from her normal head like Twilight does around Pinkie sometimes and she just vanished in a puff of smoke and I woke up...um, here? Why is everypony looking at me like that?”

Her audience had hung on every word. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were staring at Fluttershy as if she’d grown a second head herself, and Rarity clearly wanted to do the same, but was struggling to maintain a more tactful demeanor.

The unicorn was the first to break the awkward silence that followed the end of Fluttershy’s narrative. “My! That was very... what fascinating dreams you have, dear,” she said, laughing nervously. “Mine are positively hum-drum in comparison.”

“That was shore, ah, something?” Applejack agreed. “Guess I’m really missin’ out.”

Fluttershy shrank and hid her face behind her mane. “Y-you mean everypony else doesn’t have dreams like that? Every single night? And they can’t remember every bit of them all the time? A-am I crazy?” As she spoke, her voice softened more and more until ‘crazy’ came out as an incomprehensible squeak.

“I wish I dreamed like that; it sounds like a real trip!” Dash said, giving the other pegasus a playful punch in the shoulder.

Rarity nodded reassuringly. “Indeed! With that amazing imagination, it’s no wonder you’re so creative and artistic.”

“But that’s the trouble with the whole thing,” Applejack said, looking reluctant. “What with all the head-sproutin’ and burning critters and evil twins, might the princess warning you about bogeymares from some old pony tale just be a, um, ‘normal’ part of the dream?”

“Well, maybe,” Fluttershy admitted. “I just thought that since she said Pinkie and Twilight were doing something else, and they still aren’t here... but you’re probably right.”

Rainbow Dash sighed loudly. “Gah! Does it even matter if we never get out of this box? We’ve been sitting here nearly an hour. I’m going stir-crazy over here!”

“Maybe we oughtta try the bell one more time?” Applejack suggested.

Dash stood and stretched her hind legs. “Maybe we should just kick that door in!”

“I think the royal palace’s defenses can handle anything four ponies can dish out.” Rarity said dryly. “Did you make sure it didn’t open the other way when you tried earlier?”

“Of course I did!” Rainbow retorted. “Look, maybe I go through windows more often than not—”

“Or walls,” Applejack added.

“Yeah, but I think I know how a door works.” To prove her point, she stood up on her hind legs and leaned against the heavy steel door.

It swung open on well-oiled hinges, causing the smug pegasus to lose her balance and fall with a yelp.

The rest of the ponies groaned.

Applejack threw her hat to the ground. “Consarnit Dashie!”

“You mean we could have been out of here an hour ago!?” Rarity cried, then remembered her manners. “...Ah, not to say that we didn’t like hearing your story instead, Fluttershy dear.”

“I-it’s okay,” The soft-spoken pegasus replied.

Abashed, Rainbow hauled herself back onto her hooves and stared the door. “Well I didn’t see any of you trying to open this thing. I coulda sworn I tried pushing it before; I know I did!”

A smiling unicorn peeked from behind the massive door, giving the pegasus a fright.

“Oh, that’s just the way of things,” the strange pony said pleasantly. “Wise ponies say it’s insanity to do the same thing and expect different results, but they’re just trying to convince themselves that they can understand the world, and thereby control it. They can’t.”

Dash took a step back into the arrival chamber. “Who are you? Did you unlock the door?”

The unicorn tossed her black, braided mane proudly. “Dame Fortuna. I open and close all the doors, in a manner of speaking.”

“So you work here in the palace?” Applejack asked from further inside the room. “Can you tell us what the hay’s going on tonight?”

The unicorn laughed and beckoned for them to follow her out into the hall. The four friends gratefully complied, glad to be out of the bare room.

“There’s been quite a big shake-up in Equestria recently!” their guide announced giddily. “A revolution in the heart of the palace!”

“A revolution?” Rarity gasped. “Good heavens! That must have been all the commotion we heard outside.”

Fluttershy fearfully peeked down the corridors as they passed, expecting to see hordes of rebel ponies boiling out of the doorways. “It’s so quiet now,” she said. “Is it over already?”

“It is!” chirped Fortuna. “Very efficiently handled all around. Some of our best work.”

Dash looked over the strange pony with distrust. No one should be so chipper bearing news like that. Was the mare a gloating traitor leading them to some sort of trap? Did she recognize them as bearers of the Elements of Harmony? Did she know where their own loyalties lay?

“But we won, right?” Rainbow asked, carefully choosing her words. “I mean, the bad guys lost?”

“That depends on your perspective,” Fortuna said with a knowing wink. “An associate of mine sees villains and criminals everywhere she looks, but my cousin can hardly bring himself to dislike anyone. In my opinion, it’s best not to bother categorizing everyone into teams like that. The just, the unjust, us, them;... they all go around on the wheel. You should take them as individuals.”

The group turned a corner and came upon a trio of royal guard pegasi lying in the middle of the hallway, groaning and quivering pathetically.

The four friends halted in shock, but the unicorn kept walking, picking her way through the fallen stallions. “Take these strapping fellows, for instance,” she said. “Royal guards. Fine, upstanding guardians of the public weal, right?”

Fluttershy rushed to the nearest guardspony and checked him for injuries. To her surprise. his body was unwounded. One of his eyes, moving independently of the other, fixed on the yellow pegasus, wordlessly pleading for help.

“What happened to them? Are they going to be okay?” She urgently asked their guide.

The red unicorn grinned. “Oh, they were found guilty of numerous crimes, and had the gall to reject our merciful ruler when she gave them a chance to atone for their misdeeds. Do you know what ‘proprioception’ is?”

The other ponies stared blankly at her. “Is pro-pyro-whatsit the crime they did?” Applejack asked.

“It’s how you know where all the parts of your body are in relation to each other even when you can’t see them. They don’t have it anymore. Rather hard to trot about or even stand if you suddenly find yourself without it. Whichever body part they’re not focusing on tends to wander. Imagine, going from agile warriors to having less coordination than a newborn!” Fortuna tittered into her hoof as if the stallions’ plight were funny.

“Poor dears,” Rarity cooed, eyeing the handsomest of the bunch with sympathy. “We can’t just leave them scattered out here in the hall like dirty laundry!”

Applejack lifted one of the stallions’ hooves, which twisted and jerked in her grip. “If the princess did this an’ left them here, though... should we interfere?”

“So... these guys were with the rebels?” Rainbow Dash asked, still guarding her words.

Fortuna shrugged. “Probably? I really wasn’t listening when she passed sentence; there were so many! You can ask her yourself when time comes for your audience.” She turned to continue on down the hallway.

When none of the other four made a move to follow her, she turned back and sighed with restrained impatience. “There’s nothing you can do for them, and they won’t be getting any worse just lying there. She won’t be happy if you’re late.”

The four friends reluctantly left the wretched guards and continued following Fortuna toward the throne room. They began to pass by more ponies in the hallway. A distraught courtier crawled after a haughty-looking mare with a tiny filly, both pointedly ignoring him as he begged her to remember that he was her husband and the father of their child. Just a few feet away, a gray-maned pony with reading glasses went over and over the same list of tax records, looking for discrepancies and errors, unable to stop even for a second. As they got closer and closer to the throne room, more and more ponies crowded the halls. Each one seemed frightened and miserable, and no two were condemned to the same fate. Whenever one of the friends asked Fortuna about them, the simpering unicorn simply confirmed it was the will of Equestria’s sovereign and urged them to keep moving.

Applejack silently motioned for Dash to fall behind, then leaned over to whisper in her ear after she thought they were far enough behind that the strange unicorn couldn’t overhear.

“Does it seem a mite odd that the princess would do stuff like this?” the farm pony asked. “I know she put her sister in the moon and turned that Sombra guy into a shadow in a glacier or something, but just doing things like this to ponies and leaving them scattered all over the palace?” Applejack expressed her opinion of the punishments with a shudder.

“She never said Celestia did it,” Dash hissed back. “She just keeps saying ‘our ruler’ and stuff. If there really was a revolution and the rebels won, then somepony else is responsible for all this.”

“But who could possibly do all this, and when?” Rarity asked, lagging back to join the conversation. “You don’t just seize the seat of government overnight and nopony else notices. Whoever did this to all these poor ponies must have been astonishingly quick about it. Creative, too.”

“And really powerful,” added Fluttershy, scarcely audible. “Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe we should try to escape and gather other ponies to help.”

Even though all four mares were now hanging back and whispering together in a tight group, Fortuna didn’t seem to mind. So long as they kept following her, they could say whatever they liked. She knew it would all be over soon.

Dash’s brows lowered at the other pegasus’s mention of retreat. “Nuh-uh. We’re the Elements of Harmony! Whatever’s going on here, I wanna stop it. If we trust each other and stick together, we’ll always come out on top!”

“But we ain’t,” Applejack reminded the bold pegasus. “Together, I mean. With Pinkie and Twi missing, we can’t do any of that fancy magical harmony ray stuff. We’re just four friends up against, um...”

The group had to skirt around a pony who was lying in the middle of their path, hugging his barrel and rocking back and forth, gibbering to himself. “She knows! They know, they all do. Or they will. Soon. They’ll find out and it’ll all be over. They’ll hate me forever! How could they not? Why was I so stupid!?” The babble trailed off into a shrill, keening noise as they passed on.

“...against whatever did that,” Applejack concluded.

“I’m not running away.” Rainbow Dash declared, raising her voice.

“That’s good, because we’re he-re!” Fortuna said, jolting the mares out of their huddle. The unicorn telekinetically flung wide a pair of huge double doors at the end of the hall, bowed and stepped aside.

The throne room beyond the portal was packed. A long, twisting line of fearful ponies of all ages and descriptions wended its way through the room up to the dais, kept in order by similarly frightened and rueful guards.

Perched atop the golden throne at the end of the room was a misshapen monstrosity cobbled together from the mismatched parts of a variety of animals.

While Dash and the rest stared at the scene in shock, Fortuna pushed the four through the doorway with a magical shove, then shut the doors fast behind them. Their booming report echoed across the vast chamber.

The thing dwarfing the throne raised its head, the only vaguely pony-looking part of it left, and its golden eyes shone with glee as it looked at the new arrivals.

“At last, at last!” the creature said. “Bailiffs, bring these ponies to the front of the line. We have much to discuss.”

Chapter XIV

Pinkie Pie’s eyes slowly opened. The starry sky above her was broken by a dark silhouette whose eyes shone faintly blue and whose horn gleamed and crackled with a spell. There was something else next to it too, something very familiar.

“Ugh… Twilight? You’re okay?” Pinkie asked. She tried to raise a hoof toward the figure, then winced with pain and set it back down. Pinkie’s everything hurt, her head was ringing, she was half-buried under broken shingles and she was lying on top of something lumpy and irregular. How had she gotten here? She had been up on top of the roof, and that scary alchemist was coming closer and closer, and then...

“Still yourself, child. It is I. You had quite a fall,” said Princess Luna. The magic power jumped from her horn in a line of blue fire, illuminating a brow knit with concern. The magic rolled across Pinkie’s body, and the stunned mare’s aches and pains vanished in its wake, as did the familiar presence she dimly sensed beside her.

“I just thought I saw Twilight for a second,” Pinkie said. “But she’s not here, is she?”

The part of Twilight Sparkle that was there wanted to cry out in the affirmative, but she knew it would be useless. She was still getting over the shock of seeing her friend lying on her back half-buried in a pile of shattered shingles. From way up at the top of the roof, Pinkie had reminded her of a dead mouse Twilight had found found belly-up behind a bookshelf when she was a little filly.

“Our friend Twilight is safe.” Luna said brusquely. “Why did you not follow my plan? What folly possessed you that you would leap from the parapet?” Her bright eyes widened in shock and dismay. “Oh... O heavenly lights, did you give in to despair? Did you not trust I could keep you safe from harm?”

The accusation made Pinkie look away guiltily, not because Luna’s assumption was true, but because of how it must have hurt the princess to conceive of it. “No, no!” Pinkie said consolingly. “I would never... I just got more and more scared the closer Concord got, even after you made me un-seeable and un-hearable, and I just had to get away. But Concord was coming up the stairs and I can’t fly so I tried to climb down the side of the roof like I’d seen Dashie do once, but I couldn’t see my own hooves and I could barely see the roof because it was dark and besides I think she used her wings a little too and-and... whoopsie-daisy, I slipped!” Pinkie ran a hoof through her dust-coated mane. “I thought I was a goner,” she added in a much quieter voice.

Luna was glad that Pinkie was relatively unharmed but still somewhat offended at her lack of faith. “As did I. It looked most dire from above. I have heard you sometimes perform feats that defy understanding, but to be merely bruised after such a fall... I do not use the term ‘miracle’ lightly—”

Something groaned beneath Pinkie.

After quickly double-checking that Pinkie had no broken bones, the princess swiftly lifted the pink pony back onto her feet, revealing a stunned, flattened-looking white unicorn lying on his belly right underneath where Pinkie Pie had fallen.

Pinkie squeaked apologetically. “Oh! I’m sorry mister! ...So that’s what the lumpy thing I landed on was.”

Twilight was astounded. It was Verse! The loopy, incomprehensible spirit had gone off on his own, apropos of nothing, and somehow ended up in exactly the right place to break Pinkie Pie’s fall. Was it a freak coincidence, or did the spirit-stallion do this intentionally?

The princess recognized him too. “That is one of the ponies who approached with your alchemist!” Luna announced. “Now all three are accounted for.” She pointed an accusing horn at Verse. “What were you doing lurking about down here? Are you another of his unnatural creations?”

The unicorn peeled his face off the floor and gave her a dazed look. His mouth moved, but no words came out.

"I guess I fell on him kinda super-hard.” Pinkie said. To her own surprise, she didn’t feel the least bit afraid of him, even though he’d been with Concord a moment ago. Somehow, the unquestionable certainty that told her Concord was a fearsome alchemist was absent from his accomplice.

Luna leaned down and put her ear near the unicorn’s muzzle. “He’s trying to say something!” she said. “Speak up, fellow. What is it?”

Eyes still rolling and unfocused, Verse feebly beckoned for her to come closer. Luna and Pinkie both complied. Unbeknownst to them, Twilight drew nearer as well, even though she was expecting just another farrago of rhyming nonsense.

She wasn’t disappointed. The battered stallion was even worse than usual.

“My beautiful, my beautiful,
Who standest proudly by,
It was the schooner Hesperus
The breaking waves dashed high,” Verse whispered in a wavering wheeze.

Pinkie stared in bafflement at the declaiming stallion. “I think I may have cracked his noggin. He’s talking all crazy,” the earth pony said sheepishly. “Can you fix him like you did me?”

“Hush. I see now. He wishes to tell us about his master, for whom he certainly has no love,” the princess explained. “Alchemists will drug recalcitrant servants to erode their ability to betray them or even think clearly. Our prisoner had a similar fate in mind for you, no doubt. Let him speak further.”

That did sound like something Pinkie had suspected a while ago, even before she’d figured out what Concord was.

Just as Luna had thought, Verse had more to declaim. In spite of his injuries, he seemed to delight in having an interested audience once more.

“Why is the Forum crowded?
What means this stir in Rome?
Under a spreading chestnut tree
There is no place like home.”

“I can almost grasp his meaning,” said Luna. “A stir... at home? Canterlot? Is that the alchemists’ plan?” Something about this pony tugged at her memory, though she was certain she’d never seen his face before. Was it the words? Some seemed so familiar.

Their unseen eavesdropper harbored no such suspicions. Verse had never made much sense up till now, Twilight told herself, not even before he took a pony to the head. She dismissed her previous theory that he had come out here on purpose to catch Pinkie. Who knew if he actually ‘intended’ anything at all? The spirit might even be more like a living library than an intelligent being, just wandering around and responding to whatever prompt he was given with a vaguely-related piece of poetry.

“When Freedom from her mountain height
Cried, ‘Twinkle, little star,’
Shoot if you must this old gray head,
King Henry of Navarre.

“If you’re waking, call me early
To be or not to be,
Curfew must not ring tonight—” He broke into a fit of hoarse coughing.

“The mountain, the star, this night... yes. You have said enough, good stallion,” Luna said. “I begin to understand. Rest yourself now. We will see to it the alchemists who did this to you never harm another pony.” She had made up her mind that this unicorn was no threat now, if he ever had been before. The ancient scraps of memories his words evoked were strangely pleasant.

Verse’s recital trailed off, and he let his head sink back to the balcony floor, satisfied. Luna stood back up and gave Pinkie a grim look. “I swore I would protect you, but I need to return to the palace at once. Both you, Concord and the equinculus are coming with me.”

“If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll just stay down here, your highness.” Pinkie Pie glanced guiltily toward Verse, who smiled back, showing a gap where one of his front teeth had been. “What if this poor squished pony needs, uh, medical resistance?”

The princess peeled Verse off the ground, used her magic to sculpt the suspended pony back into more or less his original shape, the set him back down.

“Pinkie! Quit playing games. Your behavior borders on offense. You were in even more danger from your own blind fright than from that wretch above. We will conquer your fears, but you must first face them!” Luna said.

“Okay, sure, just—just not tonight, alright? It’s all too much to deal with all at once and I haven’t had any sleep or food or anything and I just need a week or so to take it all in, and maybe a tray of cupcakes and a hot bath and—”

Running out of patience, Luna shut her eyes and rubbed one of her temples. “Very well. Tarry here and do not stray. We will be traveling to Canterlot shortly.”

The princess turned abruptly and re-entered the stairwell. She could rise back to the roof with a snap of her wings, but she wanted a moment to cogitate on the meaning of the unicorn’s words before speaking to that alchemist again.

Pinkie sat down next to Verse, feeling relieved at even a brief reprieve from Concord. Still, she thought, the princess was right, wasn’t she? What had Concord done that justified her tempting fate on a steep roof at midnight? Something just didn’t fit.

While the princess was making her way back up the stairs, Twilight shot up to the rooftop before her, finding Verity and Concord right where she’d left them. Concord, still magically pinned, was trying to hold back tears with limited success.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Twilight said through Verity, surprised to find herself actually feeling sorry for the spirit. “Pinkie’s not hurt at all. I think Verse accidentally saved her somehow.”

“I know. Sis told me.” Concord managed between sniffles. “I still did this. I could have hurt her so bad! If Verse hadn’t wandered out there...”

“Shh! Don’t talk like that. It was the others, the ones that got me, that made her that way, remember? Just stick to my plan and we’ll fix everything.”

The earth pony spirit halfheartedly struggled against his bonds. “If it weren’t for your dumb plan, Pinkie never woulda taken that dive! How can we do anything if everyone thinks I’m public enemy number one? They’ll probably just leave me in a cell to rot.” Unable to break free, he sagged in defeat. “Oh, Pinkie....”

“No! You can’t back out now,” Twilight threatened. “Princess Luna will outright destroy you. When she figured out Verity was a spirit, she was all ready to blast her to atoms or turn her to stone on the spot!”

The stallion’s eyes went from sad to scornful in an instant. “And how’d that work out for her royal lunacy?” He asked. “I may be caught, but I’m not the one in danger here, Sparky. I’ll gladly take all this and worse, because Pinkie’s worth it, but other than that you’ve got no weight to throw around.”

“Don’t get mad at me,” Twilight protested. “I want to get Pinkie back to her old self just as much as you do. What are you going to do without my help? You promised her you wouldn’t use your powers, and Verity doesn’t want to do whatever she did again either.”

Concord’s eyes seemed to harden into orbs of polished flint. “Then you better hope this hare-brained plan works somehow. If it doesn’t, or if the choice is between either using my powers or letting Pinkie get hurt again, I’m going to take the direct approach and beg forgiveness later.”

“The ‘direct approach?’ ”

“I declare peace. I’ll fix all of you. You and all the ponies and everything else are never going to be able to even think of getting between Pinkie and me ever again. You won’t be able to think of much of anything, really. You’ll just lay there all peaceful-like.”

“You can’t just turn everypony into vegetables! Isn’t that wrong, like what Verity did was?”

“Yes,” said Verity.

“That's because it’s a horrible thing to do! Pinkie would hate you forever.”

Concord wore a smug grin. “Nobody would mind afterward. And who says she’d have to know I did it? We just found out I can lie, so I can say what’s necessary to keep the peace. Maybe I’ll tell her I saved her from whatever got all the rest of ‘em. She’d be eternally grateful.”

Twilight was aghast. “You’re a monster, just like the rest of them!” she blurted.

“Don’t get all high-and-mighty with me, Sparky. Bet you didn’t get whammied by a spirit of justice for littering. We can do it your way for now, but don’t even think of tryin’ to stop me. One way or another, I will get what I want.”

As he spoke, a patch of gray hair dropped off from beneath Concord’s cloak, and then another and another.

“Mm… ahh,” he sighed. “My back finally stopped itchin’.”

Twilight slipped her perspective beneath the cloak, worried that the chemicals she’d used to stain the disguise were having some harmful effect on the spirit.

It wasn’t the chemicals. A large patch of Concord’s back was now covered in silvery fish scales.

Twilight made the connection. Just Deserts had that scorpion tail and then those eyes. Verity had been a whole pony before, but now one of her back legs was hairless and she suddenly got those striped quills after her confrontation with Luna. And now this! All three were spirits. When spirits did something they shouldn’t, they got animal parts. The more they did, the more they got, until…

What had Luna said? ‘Twilight Sparkle of all ponies ought to know the danger posed by an enfleshed spirit.’

“You’re all turning into draconequui!” Twilight made Verity yelp.

Concord blinked mildly at the outburst. “Pinkie said something about that before. What are they?”

Verity checked. “ ‘Draconequus’ is the species name ponies gave to a summoned spirit who refused to go back Outside.”

“Yeah, Discord! You know, the evil spirit of chaos? You’re turning into evil spirits too! You’ve got scales on your back because of that awful plan. You have to stop being cruel and thinking about hurting everyone just so you can have Pinkie!”

“Were there any draco-equus alchemists?” Concord pondered. “Maybe if I went whole-hog she’d snap out of it.”

“Pinkie isn’t able to see you for what you are unless I heal her,” Twilight reminded him. “Please, please don’t give up yet. The plan will work! Listen, literally nopony else, including Celestia, thinks alchemists are real. Luna’s going to want to parade us around as proof, and when we go before her sister, she’ll recognize my voice and I’ll explain what’s going on and she can help us.”

“Princess Celestia believes that alchemists are real,” Verity interjected, annoyed at how Twilight was counting her chickens before they hatched.

Twilight was caught short by the statement. “What? But she always told me there weren’t any, and they probably never existed in the first place! She wouldn’t lie to me!”

The filly fixed Twilight’s point of reference with a withering look.

“Okay, okay, you’re the truth spirit,” Twilight hastily backpedaled.

“Witness.”

“Whatever! Still, if we can barely convince Luna we are what we say we are, and she really wants it to be true, there’s no way that Celestia will buy it. Then, when—eep!”

The door swung open, and the Princess of the Night emerged from the stairwell. The alicorn looked at the alchemist and his creation and smiled at them with cold cheer. She could tell the proud, power-hungry pony had been crying while she was away, but his face now looked conniving and surly. This was more like what she expected from an alchemist. So he had decided to drop the act at last!

For a split second Twilight was tempted to make Verity tell Luna the truth; that dangerous spirits were abroad in Equestria again, and that they had to be stopped, no matter the cost. Fear kept her silent. What if the spirits won when she forced them to act? What if they lost and Verity was turned to stone or banished, making it so nopony was able to notice Twilight ever again? She’d just have to stick to the plan too, now. It was agonizing.

“I apologize for making you wait,” Luna said sarcastically. “You’ll be glad to know that Pinkie is well. Also, that unicorn whose wits you addled has sold you out completely.”

“He did?” Concord and Twilight said in unison.

Luna swished her tail and smiled, gloating. “Are you surprised? Why should a servant who is treated so poorly keep any secrets for you? This is why the wicked will always succumb in the end; you see the world as enemies and victims to exploit, not as friends and neighbors.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s sweet,” said Concord, “but you actually understood what he was trying to say?”

“My wit easily overcame the chains you laid on his mind. He informed me by allusion and metaphor that I was being distracted, ‘standing by,’ while the ship of state is in danger. The main thrust of your allies’ plot will be in the place that I call home, none other than the palace in Canterlot. I am unsure about the ‘old gray head’ and the king, but I have my suspicions it is the very leader of your Order! Furthermore, I know that your plot is being carried out this very night.”

She had gotten all that from Verse’s random nonsense? No, surely this was just Luna’s hopes of vindication driving her imagination, Twilight reasoned. Regardless, it was awfully close to what was actually happening.

For his own part, Concord was still shaking his head at the idea of Verse sharing pertinent information.

“Psst,” Twilight hissed at the stallion. “She is onto us. She figured it out.” Twilight wished she could wink at him, but Verity seemed unwilling to relay expressions.

He got the message, but hesitated. Concord was beginning to wonder whether his benefactor was being totally honest with him. She didn’t really seem all that keen on his obviously meant-to-be pairing with Pinkie Pie. He hoped the threat of pacifying the world would keep her in line, but if she got her hooves back, and then got those hooves on Magic again, there’d be nothing he could do to about it. He narrowed his eyes and kept mum.

Luna took his anxious glower as a sign that she’d hit the mark. “Now you begin to understand the folly of your cause.” She paced in a circle around him. “But do not lose heart. It is not too late to redeem even one such as yourself.”

Corcord cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh? I thought I was part of some evil secret society that goes around terrifyin’ poor sweet mares.”

“Indeed, but you folded like a moist towel at my slightest spell, your unnatural ‘copy’ of Twilight Sparkle hardly looks like a pony and you do not strike me, overall, as being the cutler’s keenest work. You say they abandoned you, and why should they not? You need help. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by cooperating with me instead.”

His eyes widened. “Everything? Even Pinkie?”

The princess regretted her choice of words immediately. “I am afraid arranged marriage is out of fashion these days, if that is what you mean. However, I suppose you have a better chance with her if you reverse your cloak and aid me rather than face the full penalty for your crimes. Do you know what they do to alchemists, little fool?”

Concord misunderstood the phrase and clutched at his disguise, suddenly self-conscious at the transformation that Twilight thought proved he was a spirit.

Verity paused from running a hoof over her new quills to chuckle humorlessly. “Every pony charged with practicing alchemy for the last six hundred years has been summarily acquitted by Princess Celestia, including those you personally accused.”

Luna shot Verity a nasty look, then recomposed herself and smiled coldly at Concord. “Your creature is as knowledgeable as she it mimics. If I were to attempt to see you jailed or tried, my poor, misinformed sister would have you released the moment she found out.” Her smile turned to a toothy snarl. “That is why I will not trouble the Equestrian legal system this time. I will not have my effort wasted and mocked and laughed at by the very ponies I spend my very life protecting! Never again, do you hear!?”

The change that had come over the princess had Twilight worried. It sounded rather like her reasons for becoming Nightmare Moon all those centuries ago. First spirits turning into draconequii, and now this! She was having second thoughts about her plan to trick Luna into giving them a free ride to Canterlot. How would the princess react when she discovered the truth?

Concord was more confused than intimidated. “So, uh, what are you gonna do?”

Still worked up at the memory of past humiliations, Luna paced and stamped. “Me? Me!? You will be doing the work, villain! You will tell them everything, swear whatever oaths they demand, submit to whatever spells and tests and questioning, and you will prove to them that I! Am! Right!”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“If you refuse, I will personally make you reconsider. First I will mauve you on an uncharted, barren island with neither food nor fresh water for a fortnight—”

“Um, I said ‘okay’.”

“—Then, if that fails to loosen your tongue, I will cast you upon the moon where my own pets will hunt and worry you without respite—”

“ ’Scuse me? Hello? The answer is yes.”

“—and then, I will take my own hooves and... and....” She ceased pacing and stared at him wide-eyed. “You’ll do it? Really? Just like that?”

“Uh huh.”

“Done, accepted and bound!” With lightning quickness, Luna pointed her horn and cast a spell at him. Blue light swirled around his neck, transformed into a midnight-colored choker, and then faded away. Twilight recognized the spell as a geas forcing the subject to abide by an agreement. She had no idea whether magic like that would actually work on a spirit.

The fury disappeared from the princess’s face at once. Luna reared and pawed the air in elation. “Hooray! Ha-hah, at last! Things are finally looking skyward! She dispelled the dome over Ponyville with a flick of her head, letting undiluted moonlight stream down once again. “PINKIE,” she called out in the Royal Canterlot Voice, “OUR VICTORY IS AT HOOF! READY YOURSELF, WE ARE GOING TO CANTERLOT FORTHWITH.”

Lights flicked on behind windows across town as the princess’s deafening command roused the inhabitants from their slumber.

Twilight allowed herself to feel a bit of hope too. In spite of Pinkie’s fall, Luna’s suspicions and Concord’s growing corruption, they were still on track somehow. She could salvage this mess. Pinkie would come to her senses, the spirits would all be sent away or captured, and Equestria would be saved once again. Once she and Verity got to the capitol and she could speak to Celestia, everything would be sorted out in no time!

The glowing sphere of Luna’s powerful teleportation spell expanded from her horn to engulf the entire roof of the building. Then, with a static pop, the magic dissipated. All the ponies and spirits had been whisked away to the mountain.

But one who was neither had been left behind.

Wait, no! Stop! Come back! Twilight howled silently.

Author's Note

Sorry about the even-higher-than-usual amount of standing around blah-blah-blah in this chapter. The next one should have more action.

Poetry:

From “The Overworked Elocutionist” by Carolyn Wells

Chapter XV

Celestia had permitted her disloyal guards to escort her to the nation’s ‘new ruler’ without a fight, but only on the condition they left both Twilights be. The frightened ponies had been all too happy to accept her terms. She had wondered at the time what made them so willing to go after her in spite of their terror.

Standing before the thing that loomed hugely over her throne, she understood why. The princess had been expecting to lock horns with a mere upstart; somepony staging a coup who erroneously thought the stolen Element of Magic would grant its holder irresistible power. A new draconequus was something else entirely. When polluted spirits like this one were abroad, there wasn’t much an ordinary stallion could do but keep his head down while the great powers fought it out.

For that matter, there wasn’t much an alicorn could do either. This new draconequus seemed as immune to ordinary magic as Discord had been all those years ago. Only the Elements of Harmony had won the day that time, and now one of the bearers was out of commission and Magic itself was missing. Still, long experience permitted her to cling to hope. Harmony would be restored once again. The elements would come through... somehow. For now, it was her duty to resist this spirit’s influence with all the strength she had. By surrendering she at least had fixed its attention on her, buying her sister and the other bearers time to work something out.

It wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough.

Whinnying a battle-cry, Princess Celestia reared and charged her horn for yet another attack. The turncoat royal guards supposedly holding her captive ducked and scampered out of the way of enormous surge of power. The entire throne room was thrown into stark contrasts of brightness and shadow by the radiance of her magic.

The traitors were not her target, however. Celestia’s blast of magical power flew over their heads to strike at the looming monstrosity towering at the end of the room. Multicolored explosions blossomed across the misshapen creature’s body.

She’d lost count of how many times she’d tried this already, and always with the same result. At least it brought her a moment’s relief from the poisoned words.

When the smoke cleared, the enormous draconequus still slouched, unharmed, on Equestria’s throne. “Miss Celestia, you know that I am right,” Just Deserts calmly reiterated. “Do not add wasting everyone’s time to your rap sheet; it’s already far too long. We cannot proceed until you accept that your rule has been an unmitigated disaster from the start.”

The alicorn at the foot of the dais was quickly re-surrounded by the cadre of terrified guards. She glared defiantly up at the draconequus. When she spoke, her voice was steely, but she was panting from exertion and a drop of perspiration slid from beneath her mane. “I’ve dealt with your kind before, spirit. There is still room in the statue garden for one more. Unless you want to join your predecessor, get off of my throne, get out of Equestria, and let my ponies be.”

Just Deserts wiped a spot of ash from her face with a blue, gnarled lobster claw. Her other upper limb, warty and webbed like a toad’s, clutched an overflowing manila folder. “Your attempts to change the subject back to me are childish and unworthy, Miss Celestia. But since you raised the issue, let us consider my distant cousin. He calls himself a spirit of chaos, yes?”

“He was an evil spirit, just as you are, but all his power was useless against the magic of friendship. It will be the same with you unless you stop this.”

“And did his deeds match his claims? Did he cause chaos?”

When Celestia refused to answer, Just Deserts continued; “I call myself a spirit of justice. Ask any of your ponies whether my verdicts are just. Do you have a problem with justice, Miss Celestia?”

The usurped princess shot off another, weaker salvo of magic bolts at the spirit. Again, they impacted harmlessly on the draconequus’s patchwork hide. “This is not justice! You’ve twisted their minds! I’ll have justice when I make you pay for what you did to these ponies; and I will, even if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Do not pretend to put them before yourself, Miss Celestia,” Just Deserts retorted with a snaggle-toothed sneer. “Your theatrics may play well to the crowds, but your record tells another story. You don’t make anyone pay. You dealt with cousin Discord, Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, even your own sister in precisely the same way. You make the minimal effort needed to remove them or bottle them up, and then sit back and wait, for centuries if necessary, for another pony to come along who will actually fix the problem. Every time, the easy way out, not even sparing poor Luna. Why, you’re even doing it right now, excusing your own cowardice and laziness by calling it a ‘diversion’. Now I ask you, is that any way for a ruler to act? You haven’t helped your ponies or anyone else. This world has become a minefield of your unfinished business, to say nothing of the worlds-wrecking monster you personally created.”

The princess knew she shouldn’t rise to the bait, but curiosity got the better of her. “I have done no such thing!” she shouted back. “If you have an accusation to make, quit beating around the bush and say it. Who is this monster you think I made?”

The draconequus clicked her tongue. “Discarded and replaced, I see. How callous of you. You’ve become so enamored with your latest student that you have forgotten those who came before.”

Celestia’s breath caught in her throat. For a moment, concern replaced defiance. “...Sunset Shimmer. You’re talking about her! But she is no monster, just a prideful, ambitious pony. What do you know, spirit? Where is she? Is she well?”

“She is not a pony anymore, but she was always a monster. In your arrogance, you thought you could mold her nature to your will, but all your lessons did was empower her. She who would have been a petty tyrant now has the downfall of two worlds within her grasp, all thanks to your meddling.”

“She is responsible for her own behavior,” Celestia insisted, telekinetically lifting a damaged pillar to swing like a club at the spirit.

Just Deserts caught the blow on her claw and shattered the improvised weapon. Her lopsided head nodded solemnly as shards of broken stone clattered down over the room. “All your subjects are, and I will correct each and every one of them. However, as their princess, you also bear a share of responsibility for their actions. This is the weight of a crown. Do not pretend you were unaware.”

Celestia found herself starting to nod sadly in agreement before she caught herself. The effect of the draconequus’s powers was accumulating. From the moment the alicorn entered the throne room, even as she struck at Just Deserts with every deadly spell she could muster, the spirit had been calmly, methodically picking her life apart, just as it had already done to so many of her poor ponies. The accusations echoed in her mind.

She had no right to rule ponykind, the spirit had said. She had used her dominion over the day to overawe the ponies’ legitimate rulers, forcing them to bow to her overwhelming power.

She had infantilized the ponies. When her time at last came, they would be cast adrift, unable to govern themselves and utterly at the mercy of the world’s evils.

She had been false. She wore a mask for her subjects, a mask for every ambassador, masks for her enemies, even a mask to hide secrets from her sister. She was a flesh-and-blood mare play-acting the part of the culture-hero. Was the pony behind these disguises the all-wise, all-gifted princess that the others saw? She didn’t know. She didn’t dare find out, lest the edifice come crashing down.

All this and more the monster had said. Some of the charges were ridiculously far-fetched, and some even contradicted each other. She was both too harsh and too lenient; simultaneously a proud, self-aggrandizing egotist who demanded worship and a flippant pleasure-seeker who did not carry herself with the dignity her position required. She ought to have laughed it all off. She ought to have been able to ignore everything that came from the spirit’s mouth.

She couldn’t. They were all her own words; all fears and doubts and regrets that had hounded her throughout her long life. There were so, so many and she remembered them all so clearly. Why wouldn’t any of the ponies here speak up for her? Were they too scared of the draconequus, or... or did they agree with it, and they were too scared of her to say so before?

Discord had proudly named himself the spirit of chaos, and chaos was indeed what he created. This one claimed to be a spirit of justice. What if it was true? What if this was justice at last?

No. No! It was getting to her. She wanted to flee, only for a minute, only to clear her head, but that she couldn’t do that either. Even if she got away, this spirit would just go back to tormenting more of her little ponies, thrusting them into personal hells to satisfy its twisted sense of justice. She had to stay. She had to fight. She had to resist, even if she didn’t think she ought to, even if every rebuttal she mustered tasted like a lie in her mouth. The ponies had to be protected. There was a reason, greater than everything else. As the draconequus droned on from atop her throne, Celestia struggled to recall the truth that had made all her choices so clear and right before. It seemed to flit just out of reach of her thoughts. It was because... because...

And then something came to her, not exactly what she wanted, but she clutched at it like a drowning horse biting a rope.

“Spirit,” Celestia said at last, “the Elements of Harmony have defended and guided these ponies for ages. If you are right; if we all deserve to fall in guilt and madness for the things we’ve done... why? We know they aren’t just magic tools. Only the virtuous can wield them, and only for a righteous cause. If we ponies do so much wrong, if we are in such need of punishment, why did they keep saving us?”

Just Deserts reared out of her seat. “You want to lecture me about the elements?! Don’t you dare profane the Big Six!” she screamed, losing her cool disdain for the first time since her ascension. Other ponies, still queued up at the far end of the room awaiting their turn, cowered or flattened themselves against the floor as the giant creature’s bellow shook the room. “The bearers you foisted them upon were awful! I interviewed them shortly before you arrived. Not a single one was worthy.”

The alicorn’s heart sank. This spirit had attacked the bearers piecemeal, just as Discord had, but this time Twilight wouldn’t be able to rally them again.

“The Elements of Harmony belonged to them! Where are they?” the princess said. Her voice sounded small after the spirit’s roar.

In a single motion, the draconequus stuffed Celestia’s overflowing permanent record beneath a wing and withdrew a fistful of shining golden jewelry: all six Elements of Harmony. “I am a spirit of harmony!” Just Deserts declared. “By definition, the elements and I are united in purpose. I will find new bearers for each, and I will not settle for any less than paragons, even if that means no pony touches them for another millennium!” In the dimness of the moonlit hall, the artifacts seemed to quiver in her grasp, as though they were alive and trying to escape.

The very sight of them was comforting, even in the possession of a polluted spirit. Celestia felt a surge of hope. “But I had little to do with it. The elements themselves chose those ponies. You have no right!” she shouted back.

The thing on the throne cracked a smile. “Then why did I find them locked up in your treasure room, Miss Celestia? But let us set the issue to rest.” She placed the elements reverently on the ground before her throne. “If any think themselves worthy to wield these emanations of the Big Six, let them try! If they can use them against me, I will accept the reproof. That will not happen, however. I and they are of one accord.”

Celestia’s eyes widened as she stared at the jewel-encrusted crown and necklaces laid before her. There was still hope! The spirit was certain it was doing right and that the elements couldn’t be used against it, but had never actually put the matter to the test. Just Deserts had used her powers against the bearers while they were separated and unequipped. The princess’s own right to use them had ended with the banishment of her sister, but if she could reunite them with the current bearers once again...

“That is just, o spirit,” she said, reverently lowering her head, “Thank you for allowing us to prove ourselves. I see you still have many more ponies to... to judge. I have been looking for promising candidates among my subjects to bear the Elements of Harmony for generations. I know of certain prospects that could shorten the search.” It was the truth. She had chosen her words carefully; no doubt justice spirits, even corrupt ones, could smell falsehood. Celestia took a cautious step up the dais toward the necklaces and the crown, keeping her expression ingratiating but her eyes averted from those of the throne’s occupant. “I can help you. If you will only allow me to take—”

A scorpion tail with the diameter of a moderately-sized tree trunk crashed down scant inches in front of the princess’s nose. Just Deserts withdrew it slowly, leaving a crater of shattered stone, hissing venom and pulverized carpeting in the middle of the dais steps. “Oh, you’ll help me all right,” the spirit said, “but not that way. I haven’t even passed sentence on you yet.” The monstrosity thoughtfully stroked its chin with the toad-limb.

Her time was running out. Celestia tried to grab the elements with telekinesis, but Just Deserts’s tail flicked again, forcing the princess to dodge and breaking her concentration.

“No need for that, Miss Celestia. I have reached a decision.” the spirit announced. The draconequus leaned down to the alicorn’s level. Its huge eyes rippled with polychromatic light, growing brighter and brighter until nothing else was visible.

Celestia quickly stepped backward and hid her own eyes behind her auroral mane. She still felt the spirit’s gaze burning into her.

“Since you are so eager to help, you will begin making restitution for your crimes by helping me with your sister.”

In spite of everything, Celestia smiled. That meant that Luna was still out there somewhere! “Do what will with me, but I’ll never harm her! Go and do your own dirty work,” she said.

The blazing eyes looked at her with bemusement. “But I don’t want to harm her; this will be her reward,” they said. “After all, justice flows both ways. You’ve been hiding something from her. All I ask is that you give her what she’s been searching for.”

Celestia’s blood ran cold. “No! Not that. I won’t. It’s... it’s just a pretense. She wouldn’t understand!” She searched about for some way of escape, but there was nothing left in the world except herself and those horrible eyes.

When the spirit spoke again its voice seemed to come from everywhere around her. “What is there to understand? Do the same thing you’ve always done. Wear the mask you wore for them for her instead. That is what you do, is it not? You worked on that image for so long, and just think how happy she’ll be...”

As she stared into the eyes, the princess’s panic faded away, replaced by a cold determination. Without another word, she turned and galloped from the throne room.

Just Deserts gave a sigh of satisfaction, settled back into her seat and snapped her claw twice. “Bailiff, bring forth the next pony.”

Chapter XVI

I got left behind! I’m trying to get to the palace, but I can’t tell where you are. I’ll catch up! Just try to stay somewhere I can find you, alright? Twilight silently broadcast, hoping Verity wouldn’t speak it too loudly.

There was no response to Twilight’s message but the chirping of nocturnal insects.

The ex-unicorn had no idea whether Verity was voicing her thoughts anymore, or even still listening to them at all. Even if she was, Twilight doubted the cranky little witness spirit would send any sort of reply back.

Trying to speak further would probably be unwise. Either she’d be wasting time, or Verity would be up there repeating everything she said to anypony who was listening. Luna would probably find it suspicious, to say the least. Now wasn’t the time for talking, anyway. She had to get to Canterlot!

In this form, traveling short distances within Ponyville had been easy. She just looked at where she wanted to go, thought of going there, and darted to her destination at the speed of thought. Did that mean she could zip up to Canterlot in the blink of an eye?

There was no time like the present to find out. She pointed her view at the mountain city, took a moment to steel herself, then gave the mental command to move.

It wasn't quite the exhilarating experience she had expected. Most disappointingly, it wasn’t instantaneous, though she was certainly going faster than an ordinary pegasus could fly. The landscape shot by beneath her in eerie silence. Because she had no body, there was no sound or feeling of wind whipping by. In fact, other than the moonlit city steadily growing larger to her vision, it didn’t feel like she was moving at all.

The disembodied pony couldn’t wait to get back to normal. Being without mass, sensing without eyes or ears; everything about this bodiless existence was wrong. She especially missed being able to feel things. Even being tired or hungry or itchy would be wonderful in comparison to this complete lack of tactile sensation.

But then again, she may have gotten off lightly. At least her mind was still working right, which was more than she could say for Pinkie. And what if the other spirits had caught the rest of her friends after Luna sent them all to Canterlot? Would the all be brainwashed too? She should have made Verity tell her everything when she had the chance, but she was in such a hurry and hadn’t quite come to grips with the spirit’s nigh-omniscience before they were separated. It was probably too late now. What if the spirits had—

With an effort of will, Twilight derailed that train of thought. Trying to guess what the spirits were up to before she had more information would just drive her to hopelessness. She’d find out soon enough, and once Princess Celestia learned the truth, the two of them would be able to handle whatever these spirits could dish out! She would just have to react to whatever situation presented itself swiftly and appropriately.

Canterlot was now getting quite close. She could make out individual lights in the shining city; streetlamps and storefronts and windows still lit late into the night. The palace, also brightly lit, rose far above it all.

In a few more seconds, Twilight was drifting over the white stone of the palace’s outer walls. Something was clearly amiss; the grounds and ramparts were deserted. normally the night guard would be out on their rounds, like they had been during her and Pinkie’s “heist” of the time spell. She was about to slip in beneath the main gate and begin searching when she noticed a ray of light escape a balcony door as it swung open.

An oddly-familiar unicorn stuck her face through the door, stared stupidly at the moonlit cityscape, then hung her head in defeat. “This place has too many doors! I’ll never find that library,” she complained. With a sigh, the pony withdrew inside, leaving the door ajar.

Twilight immediately put the hunt for Concord and Verity on the back burner. The pony’s face wasn’t just familiar-looking; it was the face she saw in the mirror every morning! Was that really her estranged body? How was it up and about while she was separated from it? What did it mean? Quick as lighting, Twilight altered her course and slipped through the open balcony door in pursuit.

Once inside, after a moment of uncertainty, she spotted a flicker of magenta-on-deep-blue tail disappearing around a corner. Twilight followed and found herself (in at least two senses) at an intersection of hallways.

The unicorn that looked and sounded exactly like her peered down one passage, then another. “I can’t be lost!” she complained. “I practically grew up here! I should know this place top to bottom. I should know this!”

Twilight would have certainly noticed another pony with the same body, voice and cutie mark roaming the palace, even back when she cared nothing for friendship.

On a whim, she stuck her perspective inside the unicorn’s body the way she had earlier when she was trying to reunify herself in the library’s basement. It had been really unpleasant that time, but she wanted to be sure this was really her.

Twilight would have gaped had she been able. Instead of the darkness, motion and awful noises she’d experienced before, this body was like a hollow shell, the same color inside as outside, and filled with a luminous pink mist that swirled and parted before her. Whatever this creature was, it wasn’t a pony. Was this what spirits looked like on the inside? She hadn’t checked any of the rest.

The being’s sides began to twist and shake around her.

“Hoo-ha-ha! Stop! Stop it! That tickles!” The voice seemed to come from all around her.

Twilight slipped back out of the thing that looked like her to find it rolling on the floor, laughing. You felt that? She thought as quietly as she could.

“I, uh, n-no!” it said, trying to keep a straight face. “Ponies can’t (hee hee!) feel things that don’t have bodies.”

But you can hear me.

“Yeah!” It paused a moment in thought. “...Uh, I mean ‘no,’! I can’t hear you.”

But you heard what I said! Twilight thought more loudly, forgetting that Verity might be repeating her words. You just answered the question!

“Oh, good point. ...I mean, ‘what’?”

Just tell me, what are you? You look like me on the outside, but... she thought at it.

The hollow unicorn stood and capered about. “I’m Twilight Sparkle! I’m the smartest, friendliest, magical-est horn-pony in ponyland, and I’ve never been anything else! It’s really great.”

No, I’m Twilight Sparkle and you’re a hollow thing filled with glowing smoke. Twilight explained impatiently. I need to find my real body, but nopony else can see or hear me. If you could help—

The double stamped and shook its head. “No, no, no! I’m the real Twilight Sparkle and you’re not! All my pony friends will recognize me, like, um... Applejoe! And, er, Flittershade! ...Flappershoe?”

The pieces came together. The pony-shaped shell over the pink gaseous form, the enthusiastic but unskilled impersonation, the lack of guile and the trouble with names... this was a Mirror Pool duplicate, no doubt about it. Twilight and her friends had sealed the entrance to the pool’s grotto, and she had sent Princess Celestia the only samples of the magic water along with her friendship report. Twilight couldn’t imagine what had compelled the princess to make one of these troublesome things, but it ought to know where her body was, at least.

Oh I so don’t have time for this, Twilight silently groaned. Listen, I have had it up to here with dumb supernatural creatures appearing out of nowhere to ruin my life. You said you want to find the library, right? If I tell you how to get there, will you do me a favor? There’s another pony around here who looks exactly like me... you; us. I need to find her.”

The duplicate grew anxious and covered its ears with its front hooves. “You don’t look like anything at all, and I can’t hear you anyway, because I’m Twilight Sparkle and there’s no other pony like me! I’ll find the library all by myself because I’m so smart.”

You’re not fooling anypony; you know that, right? Twilight asked in a tone of pitying scorn. That big white alicorn who pulled you from the water knows what you are, and so do I and so will anypony who knows the real Twilight Sparkle at all. It’s a real simple spell to send you back wherever you came from. Any unicorn could do it.

The fake pony said nothing, but gulped and began to shake.

But since I’m the real original Twilight Sparkle, I could give you a few pointers on being me, and all you have to do is help me find my body, okay? If you lend me a hoof, I promise I won’t help them send you back ‘outside,’ or wherever it is you guys come from. Deal?

The specular pony on the floor raised its head again and stared directly at Twilight’s point of reference with a strange look in its eyes.

“If you’re Twilight,” it said slowly, “that means that Twilight Sparkle is separated from her body. That’s logic.”

Twilight began to miss the other spirits. At least they didn’t caricature her like this. That’s what I’ve been saying! Will you help me or not?

“But I’m Twilight Sparkle,” it continued. “But I’m still all in one piece. It’s a contradiction... Oh! I’ve got it!”

What? What have you got?

The imitator sprung at her, mouth wide and swallowed the point from which Twilight viewed the world. She was once again surrounded by the mirror pony’s hollow insides and pink mist. “I have a plan. Just hold on to this for a second, okay?” The pink mist whirled past her, leaving the unicorn-shaped shell dark and empty.

Wait, hold on! What do you—

“—mean?”

And then, in an instant, she was standing on four hooves, looking out of eyes, hearing from ears and occupying space. Other than an unsettling empty feeling, it felt just like her old body. The cloud of glowing pink mist swirled above her brand-new head.

Ha-ha! a voice echoed in her head. Now I am the real Twilight Sparkle perfectly and you aren’t! I tricked you, because I am a genius egghead. Later, chump—I mean, friend! I’ve got reading to do! The mist flowed away down the hall, fading into invisibility as it departed.

Though her instinct was to point out the flaw in the mirror pony’s logic, Twilight instead bit her tongue and watched the thing leave.

After she was sure it had departed, she leaped and clicked her new heels with a laugh. What a stroke of luck! She could talk and act and be seen again! Biting her tongue even hurt a little! How wonderful! Next, Twilight tried to draw upon her magic power. The faux horn glowed magenta and spat a few sparks, but did nothing else.

Well, it wasn’t perfect, but still! She could go to get Celestia now, and then they could find Luna and fill her in, together they’d save Pinkie and everypony else and defeat the spirits and get her back into her real body and—

“Fancy running into you here,” a languid voice said from behind her.

Twilight whirled around. The red unicorn with a braided black mane was trotting calmly up the hall toward her.

“Honestly, what are the chances?” Fortuna asked, smirking.

Chapter XVII

“I got left behind! I’m trying to get to the palace, but I can’t tell where you are. I’ll catch up! Just—” Was all Verity said before Concord urgently drew her aside, placed a hoof over her mouth and urgently shook his head. The filly gladly took this as permission to quit speaking for Twilight and clammed back up. It had been getting tiring, helping that unicorn dig herself deeper and deeper in lies and deception. Verity hoped she’d stay away for a good long time.

The group of ponies had materialized Canterlot Palace Long Distance Teleportation Arrival Zone #2 not more than a few seconds ago. Luna, aiming perfectly, had arrived at the dead center of the room, facing the exit, with Pinkie Pie and Verse appearing to one side of her while Verity and Concord popped back into being on the other.

Concord glanced worriedly up at the princess, afraid that she’d heard the vicarious outburst and surmised something, but his captor was having troubles of her own.

Luna whinnied and shook her head as arcs of wasted magical energy crawled across her horn. It was as though the spell had tried to pull along a sixth target and failed. Something was up, something she hadn’t accounted for. Had another conspirator been there, watching them undetected and somehow resisting her spells? The alchemist grinned sheepishly at her from where he stood next to his equinculus, who had been trying to say something about a rendezvous before he silenced it.

To her vision, the collar-mark of the geas still hung hazily about the stallion’s neck. That ought to have comforted her; she was in control now. However, something was still—how did ponies today say it—piscine about the whole situation.

Luna was about to address this issue when Pinkie spoke up from her other side. “Hey, that looks like Dashie’s!” the earth pony said, picking up a corner of a blue blanket lying in a heap in the corner of the room. She sniffed it tentatively then wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. “Hwoof! Yup, it’s Dashie’s alright.”

The princess tilted her head. “You can tell by the smell?”

Pinkie nodded. “Uh-huh! Rainbow told me once how she likes to fly around to get all tired out and wound up in the evenings. Then she jumps right into bed with a book and reads until she falls asleep, so that would make it get all gross, right?” She lifted a corner of the blanket to which was attached a tag with ‘RD’ scrawled on it in red ink. “Also this. What’s it doing all the way up in Canterlot, though?” She looked up from her find back at Luna, then noticed Concord standing nearby.

With a shriek, Pinkie dove beneath the blanket and hid herself, trembling with renewed fright. It probably looked silly to everypony else, but covers kept you safe from dangerous, scary things, or at least so she’d thought back when she was a little filly. Her Granny Pie had taught her that smiles and laughter were a whole lot better than hiding under the sheets, but Pinkie just hadn’t been able to muster any of those since her terrible realization that afternoon. There was no reason to be happy until that awful pony was out of her life for good!

“What’s he still doing here?” she complained. “Why haven’t you put him in a dungeon yet or something?

Concord winced, but he knew he shouldn’t take it personally. Pinkie couldn’t help it, and she’d be this way until Twilight (or somebody) fixed her. Still, he hated to think that he was making her feel worse just by being here, but it was either this or breaking his promise.

...Or was it? Twilight had said she could get Pinkie back to normal, but Verity said that other spirit, ‘Desserts’ or whatever, was the one who changed Pinkie in the first place. Hadn’t she told him she’d be up here with Fortuna? She had seemed pretty friendly that one time they’d ran into each other in Ponyville. Maybe he didn’t need Twilight after all? Maybe he could just find Desserts and explain what was going on, and she’d rescind the penalty. Yeah, that would fix everything!

Concord’s foolish grin reappeared for the first time since Pinkie took her plunge off the town hall. Punishing her had to have been some sort of mistake, anyway. How could she do anything wrong? Pinkie was the perfect pony!

Luna watched the two ponies with an inquisitive eye, mistrustful of Concord’s sudden cheery expression. “I suppose your friend was holding it too tightly when I brought her here, and it was pulled along as well,” she answered Pinkie dryly. Being wary of alchemists was sensible, but this alchemist? Even with that equinculus, he’d been nothing but a foolish, erratic pushover so far. It was starting to remind her of her own reception by the pink mare on Nightmare Night. Was there really something wrong with the little earth pony? Could those quacking doctors back in Ponyville have been half-right after all?

“My friends are all here?” Pinkie squeaked.

Luna nodded distractedly, scrutinizing Concord again. “They are. As for him, I still need to tighten him for information about—”

Pinkie Pie launched from beneath the comforter and out the room’s door like a pink-and-magenta bullet, throwing the blanket over Concord’s head and blowing Luna’s starry mane into disarray in her wake. “Gonna-go-find-them-thanks-bye!”

“Pinkie, wait!” Luna cried. “His servant said the other alchemists would be here too! They might be—”

Out of sight down the hall, Pinkie screamed.

Concord and the princess gasped in unison. “Don’t you dare move a step outside this room,” Luna commanded him as she charged through the door. Why was it ajar? Where were the guards on duty, she wondered, then shelved the questions for later. Pinkie Pie was in trouble!

Heedless of the order, her prisoner followed as well as he could. Still blinded by the heavy fabric over his head, Concord ran straight into the wall beside the door and bounced off before dazedly tossing the blanket aside and giving pursuit.

Verity and Verse trotted up to the doorway. The filly lifted a corner of the discarded bedclothes to find what she already knew was there: another piece of fabric tangled among them, originally white but covered in chemical stains. It was Concord’s improvised cloak, all that had hid his partial transformation. It had come undone when he freed himself.

A smile tugged at a corner of Verse’s mouth.

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,
Gang aft a-gley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promis’d joy!”

Verity frowned at the dirty disguise. The things Verse said usually turned out to be true in some sense, but they were only apparent in retrospect. Whose scheme was he talking about? Which of them would come to grief?

Just asking would be a waste of time.

Without another word between them, she leaning against him to support her mismatched leg, the two spirit ponies walked through the doorway to catch up with the others.

In another part of the palace, Twilight Sparkle’s new form hunched into a defensive stance as Fortuna advanced. That thing had said she was a spirit of fortune, Twilight reminded herself, and she’d made Twilight’s magic fizzle effortlessly during their confrontation under the library. Just as well that this mirror shell couldn’t even do basic magic. What could she do? What could any pony do against fortune? How did one fight the physical embodiment of ‘things that just happen’?

“Yes, you’re just the one I’m looking for,” the red unicorn said. “How fortuitous that old Celestia called you from the waters before her appointment, no?” She paused and raised an eyebrow when she noticed Twilight’s anxiety. “Say, are you feeling well?”

Twilight was feeling confused. Celestia called her from... water? And why shouldn’t she be concerned? It didn’t make any sense, unless...

...Unless this spirit thought she was still the Mirror Pool duplicate instead of the (sort-of) real Twilight Sparkle! Could that be it? Verity knew Twilight’s condition because knowing things was her purpose, and the Mirror Pool ponies seemed to absorb a few facts about whoever they reflected, but maybe a spirit of fortune could be fooled by appearances?

Fortuna stood before her, looking mildly uncertain. “What’s the matter? Say something! I meet no one by accident. You are who I’m looking for, aren’t you?”

The mostly-faux unicorn’s mind raced. What could she say? What would calm Fortuna’s suspicion? How would a real Mirror Pool pony act in this situation?

...Oh, right.

Twilight stood up straight, unfocused her eyes and put on an air-headed grin. “I’m Twilight Sparkle! Uh... books are neat?”

The spirit rolled her eyes and snorted. Twilight maintained eye contact and kept smiling for all she was worth. Despite it not having an actual source, she felt a heartbeat racing somewhere in her empty chest.

After what felt like an age, the spirit nodded. “Of course you are, poppet. You’re doing a fine job.” She turned to leave, then beckoned to Twilight. “Now come with me, if you would.”

Twilight gulped and followed. She seemed to be getting an inordinate number of opportunities to mislead everyone tonight.

“I know I told you lot to stay out of our way earlier, but things, as they always do, have changed.”

Fortuna didn’t slow or look back at her, but as the silence lengthened, Twilight realized the spirit was waiting for a response.

“Uh, right! You sure did tell me that.” Twilight fibbed. “What’s changed? Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong!” Fortuna replied a little too hastily. “Things are merely different, and so require a different approach.”

Twilight felt a glimmer of hope. Any trouble for these spirits was an advantage for everypony else. “Okay, what’s ‘different,’ then?”

The other pony glanced about, as if worried that she’d be overheard, then looked back at Twilight shrewdly. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell you,” she said at last. “Speculars do lose their individuality and memories when they go back Outside.”

“Of cou—” Twilight caught herself. “—I’m not a specular, I’m Twilight Sparkle!”

The other unicorn nodded and winked at her. “Right, right. Good catch. Anyway, all of us seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked since ‘you’ let us in, and I’m going to need your help to get things back in order again.”

So the spirits had a plan? They weren’t just an assortment of supernatural beings she’d summoned at random? Twilight listened intently.

“Your sort know how it is; it’s so easy to get carried away with opportunities in here. Why, I couldn’t resist, myself. I got to torch the livelihood of the richest pony in Ponyville!”

Twilight did a double-take. “Wha? That was you? You started the fire that burnt down Barnyard Bargains?!” She glanced over Fortuna’s body. She didn’t seem to have any mutations. Was she telling the truth?

The other unicorn nodded. “It was supposed to be a complete reversal of fortune; the mighty, fallen! The great, brought low!” Her lips pressed into a moue of annoyance. “But all that Filthy Rich fellow cared about was whether anyone was hurt, and when nobody was, he just shrugged, and said ‘oh well, it’s insured,’ and gave his workers the week off. Can you believe it? The nerve! The cheek! ‘Insured!’ I guess I’ll just have to burn something he can’t replace next time... or someone.”

It took all of Twilight’s neophyte acting talents to hide just how much this conversation was creeping her out.

“So, uh, but that’s not why you came here?” she ventured, trying to look nonchalant.

“Oh, of course not! Small potatoes, all of it,” Fortuna said with a dismissive sniff. “We’re here to correct one very specific imbalance.”

“And you want my help? What is it?”

Fortuna chewed her lip. “Well, yes, I can use you, but not with that directly. Two of my compatriots have gotten sidetracked in such a way that, ah... well, let’s not mince words: they’re bound to come into direct conflict before long. You understand what that means, I trust.”

Twilight smiled a little in spite of herself. Dissension in the ranks of her foes! Wonderful news! Which spirits did Fortuna mean, though? That Just Deserts creep, obviously, but who else? Concord would let the world go hang as long as he had Pinkie, and Verse and Verity didn’t seem to actually want much of anything. Had Twilight summoned even more spirits than she knew?

“It means you won’t be able to do whatever it is you’re trying to do,” she guessed.

The other pony laughed harshly. “That’s putting it lightly! The way things are going, spirit will fight against spirit before too long. Really, truly fight. The kind of power we can bring to bear when we can’t reach a compromise... well, let’s just say we’ll all be out of a job if it comes to that. You won’t have ponies left to mimic, and even I can’t keep stirring the pot when it’s been shattered into a million pieces, now can I?”

The feeling of schadenfreude at the spirits’ falling out vanished. Twilight recalled Concord’s threat to pacify the world and Verity’s abuse of her power to rewrite past events. Sure, whatever they were originally planning was probably pretty awful too, but two reality-warping spirits having it out over Equestria had the potential to make the reign of Discord look like a picnic!

Twilight shuddered. “How do we keep that from happening? What do you want me to do?” She asked Fortuna.

“I want you to keep being Twilight Sparkle,” The spirit said with a twinkle in her eye. “She’s not just about books, you know. She’s also a bit of a heroine when needs must. I know you can’t really use them like she could, but if you could just act like you’re going to do that thing where you unite with the Big Six and save all your little friends from the big bad spirits, I think we can bluff them into backing down. Just follow my lead and I might be able to set you up as Twilight Sparkle in perpetuity!”

Not believing her ears, Twilight tried to hide her amazement. “I, uh, sure, I can do that. ‘Twilight Sparkle to the rescue!’ Ha-ha? It won’t even be fake, because I am Twilight Sparkle! I just need the other five bearers, they should be around here somewhere, and, um, all six Elements of Harmony?” Was this really happening? Could she get everything she needed on a silver platter, just for the asking? Was fortune literally turning in her favor at last?

Fortuna raised an eyebrow at her.

“Um, I mean, the ‘Big Six!’ Those. Yes. Please?”

The spirit unicorn smiled and increased her pace. “Oh very well, I’ll see if I can scrounge a few together.” She chuckled to herself. “I’m not sure you’ll get much use out of your friends, however. Come, there were four of them right in here last I saw.” She took a turn off the main hallway and down a side passage.

Twilight followed, too excited to bother wondering what Fortuna meant.

Author's Note

From "To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough" by Robert Burns