She Slays

Chapters

Chapter 1: She Slays Hot Demon Bad Boys
Chapter Two: She Slays Good Boy Energy Cosmic Caregivers
Chapter Three, part One: She Slays the Very Stars Themselves
Chapter Three, part Two: She Slays the Most Dangerous Demon In The World
Epilogue
Prologue: She Slays Rock Hard Ethereal Gatekeepers

Chapter 1: She Slays Hot Demon Bad Boys

It was a well established fact of arcane magical study that different materials reacted to magic in different ways.

Gems were one intuitive example. A pure diamond cut to shape by an expert craftspony could focus magic much better than a common river stone. Gold could be melted and poured into fine lattice shapes to enhance the power of a crafting table. But what about everyday objects? Could sewer pipes be enchanted to be more resistant to clogs? Could certain kitchen countertop materials soak up antibacterial wards better than others? Could the rubber sole of a boot be made more durable without impacting cost or feel?

This burning question was why professor Pixkin was currently climbing up the steep face of a volcano wearing a different shoe on each hoof. It was also why he had recruited a local hiker to trade in her pretty composite hiking boots for a rubber rain galosh, a sneaker, a slim running shoe, and a singular croc. He was in the business of creating such enchantments. And, hooves crossed, this little expedition would pay dividends a thousand times over.

He couldn’t help but notice how, despite his numerous explanations of the theory behind the boot enchantments, she still stepped lightly and avoided the parts of the ground that smoldered. A lesser scientist would have been offended by her hesitancy. Pixkin took solace in the knowledge that he’d saved her from a very unpleasant walk. The machine-pressed composite soles of her hiking boots would have melted half an hour ago.

The pair made it to base camp with all eight shoes intact. The camp consisted of several structures built atop a massive pad of aerated concrete, which shielded resting hikers from the ambient ground temperature. This unfortunately meant they wouldn’t have an opportunity to test any more shoes until they departed for the next leg of the journey. To add to the unpleasantness, the place reeked of sulfur and sweat and floral notes of burning garbage. Hikers seemingly oblivious to the heat and smell lounged on every available surface, swilling kombucha and munching stale granola while swapping trail stories. Pixkin steered clear of them. He wasn’t here for leisure. He was here for science.

“Cozy Glow, could you please remove your hoofware?” Pixkin asked. Cozy Glow didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes were glued to the distant crater of the volcano and the red glow within.

Pixkin waved a hoof in front of Cozy Glow’s face. Her nose wrinkled. She stepped back. “Gosh, sorry. Did you say something?”

Pixkin chuckled. “Your shoes,” he repeated. “Let me take a look at them.”

“How come you can just slice them open like that?” she asked as Pixkin dissected her digs. “Aren’t the wards supposed to protect them?”

“Against heat, yes,” he said as he sawed open the heel of one unfortunate croc. “But a sharp rock doesn’t cut using heat. It uses a jagged edge.”

“So if I had stepped on a sharp rock, and the rock pierced the shoe, I’d still get hurt?”

“Yes. And the gap in material would also mean a gap in the enchantment.”

“Shouldn’t you like, I dunno, make a ward that protects against everything?”

Pixkin chuckled. “An everything ward can only be sold once.” He finished taking samples and sealed the spent shoes in plastic bags. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to make the rest of the climb.”

“Awww. That’s forever away!”

“Don’t worry. You’ll be adequately compensated for your efforts once I take these enchantments public.”

“I’m not worried about that. I just don’t know how I can sleep down here with it being as hot as it is.” Her wings twitched. “Could you enchant my primaries?”

Pixkin shook his head. “This spell could be unsafe for ponies. I couldn’t do that in good conscience.” He offered a reassuring smile. “Here. Take these.” He hoofed her four more random shoes. “Let’s try and get some rest. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Home that evening consisted of a two-room aerated concrete shelter lined with bunk beds. Cozy Glow was lucky enough to snag one of the three pegasi hammocks—really little more than a bolt of fabric chained to the roof of the shelter. Professor Pixkin’s back ached watching the young mare nestle herself in.

As the professor was getting ready for bed, he heard Cozy Glow’s voice and looked up. Her head was partially peeking over the hammock’s edge. She looked down on him with wide, curious eyes.

She pointed at the professor’s backpack. "Which ones are the best so far?”

"So far the galoshes are faring best.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think that's because they aren't made of mesh, like the sneakers and the joggers. And they don't have big holes in the side like the crocs."

“Wouldn’t the crocs have better heat dissipation though? Because of the holes?”

“You’d think that. But the enchantment can’t enchant what isn’t there. Most of your hoof would be fine. But if you were to, say, submerge your hoof in magma, you’d have a whole mess of circle-shaped burns from where the material isn’t.”

“Oh.” Cozy Glow nodded. “I’m glad I didn’t submerge my hoof in any magma today.”

“Quite.”

The professor rolled over to go to sleep, but Cozy Glow continued, “I’m also glad you’re working on this. And that I’m helping you work on this. You’re going to save a lot of hikers from getting sweaty crispy hooves.”

The professor laughed. “Tomorrow will be the real test. The heat will only get stronger as we approach the lip of the volcano.”

Cozy Glow’s wings buzzed in excitement. The chains groaned as her hammock rocked from side to side. “I can’t wait to get out there. It’s so cool getting to participate in real science!”

A lightness fluttered in the professor’s chest. He remembered what it was like to be young. To be thrown into the deep end without a paddle and actually swim. Cozy Glow reminded him a great deal of himself. Imagine his good fortune to have run into her randomly at the trailhead! The world was full of happy coincidences like that.

Early the next morning, he was awoken by a soft fluttering sound. He cracked his eyes open and found Cozy Glow rummaging through the bag of shoes from the previous day’s hike. She took two pairs of galoshes out and stowed them away in her personal bag.

He considered sitting up and asking her what she was doing. But he already knew the answer. They woke up for real a few short hours later. Cozy Glow pretended she didn’t have the galoshes, and Pixkin pretended not to notice they were missing.

Jutting from the rock surrounding the lip of the volcano were thousands upon thousands of bones.

A thousand years ago, two armies had met here. The battle raged for years. In a desperate effort to break the stalemate, sappers had burrowed holes into the earth and laid explosives in the tunnels. They thought that if they could only destroy the enemy camp from beneath, they could finally achieve the route that had eluded them.

The sappers dug deep and laid their mines with care. On the appointed day, the general gathered with his cabinet and lit the fuse personally. But the sappers had missed something important—something they couldn’t have possibly discovered during their construction efforts. There was both a faultline and a powerful leyline running beneath the battlefield. An explosion of just the right size at just the right depth could disturb the leyline, which in turn could rip the faultline apart. This had the potential to trigger, among other things, large volcanic eruptions.

Histories of the battle tell of how, as the fuse’s flame raced deeper into the mine, the general and his soldiers heard the sound of laughter coming from the depths.

Cozy Glow tripped over a femur.

“Rrr—stupid little—” Her heavy pack of shoes and focusing crystals and stolen galoshes shifted painfully on her back. She bit her lip before any curse words could come out. “I mean. Fascinating.”

Professor Pixkin plodded behind her at a glacial pace, pausing periodically to check on his various pieces of hoofwear. His gait shifted awkwardly from one side to the other, the result of one of his test shoes being a four-inch platform boot.

“Fascinating indeed!” he said, bending over to pick out a chunk of tibia that had become lodged in the sole of one ballet flat. “Looks like the top quarter is missing entirely. This pony’s leg must have been blown clean off.” He looked around at the bubbling wasteland. “I wonder if we can find the pelvis.”

“Think your enchantments would work on bones?”

“Pssh, certainly not. And the ethics of such a thing... hmm...” Pixkin quietly slipped the tibia shard into his pack. “Hmm.”

While Pixkin’s back was turned, Cozy Glow yanked the bone out of the ground and hurled it into a nearby magma river. It hit the surface and shattered. A moment later, it was reduced to dust and ash. The molten magma hadn’t even bothered to eat it.

She would share that femur’s fate if she wasn’t careful. The sparkling trail of magic that had guided her from the Secretkeeper’s shrine now led right to the lip of the volcano. The message was clear: go in.

It took them well into the afternoon to pick their way through the magma field. Their efforts finally paid off when they arrived at a relatively flat spot at the lip of the crater where the magma lake could be observed directly. Using one magically-enhanced pump, Cozy Glow scraped away the bits of molten rock and ash to make a space for their equipment.

Pixkin looked down into the chasm with awe. The near-gale force wind pouring out of the cavern whipped his greying mane back into his face. “Isn’t this incredible?”

“It sure is something,” she replied.

Together with Cozy Glow, Pixkin removed a bundle of shoes from his bag. The aim was to toss them one by one into the volcano and see how long the enchantment lasted before it inevitably succumbed to the heat.

“I’ve been meaning to say something since we started this climb,” Pixkin said, “but the climb left me so out of breath I wasn’t able to get it out.”

“Oh yeah?” Cozy Glow started to rummage around in her own bag. “And what’s that?”

“Thank you.”

Cozy Glow paused. She turned around slowly. “Uh. What?”

“What indeed! What if we had never run into each other? What are the odds of two explorers meeting at the impasse of a daring ascent? The fact that we are here at all is an extraordinary miracle of chance.”

Cozy Glow beamed. “Gosh, that’s nice of you to say.” She removed a flip flop from her hoof and tossed it playfully in Pixkin’s direction. “You should be congratulating yourself for all your hard work!”

“We’ll see about that. The awards I get are dependent on the quality of data I present.”

“So true.” She risked a glance down into the volcano. The heat made her eyes water. “So how does this enchantment work, anyway? Like, the specific magical bits.”

“I’m not sure it would be productive to share the arcana specifics with a pegasus.” Here he quoted a line from an old magical textbook that had since fallen out of favor with general educators. “The horn is the larynx through which magic is spoken.”

“Oh.” Cozy Glow’s face fell. “So I’m not smart enough to get it?”

“No, no—not at all.” The professor realized his error and backtracked. “The different pony races feel magic differently. It’s not to say you couldn’t.”

Cozy Glow’s mile returned. “So you’ll show me?”

Pixkin’s face contorted into a wink. “I only share proprietary arcana with my grad students.” He sighed audibly with relief. “Yes, it takes intense study to understand this level of arcane depth.”

“Oh, okay. I understand, professor.” Cozy Glow started rummaging through her own bag. The professor was surprised when, a moment later, she removed one of the galoshes she’d pilfered the night before. Then another. Then a third and fourth.

“I stole these,” Cozy Glow said. One by one, she put them on. “I knew we were gonna be at the hottest part of the volcano, and you said yourself the galoshes were the safest shoes you’d tested so far. I guess I was just nervous.”

The professor’s face softened. “Cozy Glow—”

“Please don’t make me take them off!” She took a hesitant step back. “I just... I don’t know. I’ve seen how your spells work. I trust it. I trust it so much. Please, just let me keep these on. Just for today. I’ll give them back, I promise.”

Professor Pixkin considered Cozy Glow with his watery grey eyes. “In truth, I saw you take them last night. I suspected such was the case.” Cozy Glow opened her mouth, but Pixkin cut her off. “You’ve been doing a great service to me, helping to test my enchantments. I can hardly fault you for leaning on a safe bet in a dangerous place.”

“So you’re not gonna throw me into the volcano?”

“Heavens, no! Even if I did, I’m fairly convinced you could tap dance on the magma down there without burning your hooves.”

Cozy Glow’s shoulders relaxed. “Thanks, professor. Your students are real lucky to have someone as nice as you as their teacher.”

“Actually... I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

“About what?”

“Cozy Glow, you have shown an incredible acumen for adventure. You’re a top-rate climber and a sharp thinker. The New Yorky-Terrier University could use a mind such as yours in our magical studies department.”

“Woah, wowzers! Are you offering me a spot?”

“Well, you’d have to apply first. There’s a standard to uphold.”

“I don’t have a lot of formal experience.”

“If an application with your name on it happened to find its way onto my desk, I see no reason why I couldn’t help it along in the process.” He smiled at her, his eyes expressive and alive in the magmalight. “Do you understand?”

Cozy Glow smiled back. “I understand.”

She flared her wings and took to the air.

Pixkin let out an audible gasp. “No! Get down here! The thermals will cook your wings!”

Before the words were even out of Pixkin’s mouth, Cozy Glow had finished drawing the rune from the Secretkeeper’s scroll. She’d practiced it several hundred times since she’d first committed it to memory. The edges were sharp, the lines precise. The magic fed off the clarity of the rune and shone an order of magnitude brighter. Cozy Glow passed through the light and felt it cling to her fur like static electricity. Magic a hundred times more potent than the professor’s pitiful protective ward encased her body.

“Thanks for the boots,” she said over her shoulder.

She turned to face the volcano. The reality of her impending descent hit her like a wall of superheated air. Fear nipped at her hocks. But even gods could feel fear.

She snapped her wings tight against her sides. She dropped like a stone.

Pixkin watched her fall into the volcano, his face frozen in slackjawed horror. “Wait!” he screamed after her, “I changed my mind! I want those boots back!” But the reverberating roar of the volcano drowned him out.

Cozy Glow hit the magma pool at terminal velocity. The magic kept her from being instantly burned alive, but the force of the impact knocked the air out of her lungs. She breathed in sulfur and choked. The spell didn’t provide oxygen. The realization sent a jolt of panic through her body. The magma closed in around her. She reached up, grasping for what sliver of sky she could see. The molten living earth consumed her. She sank.

The river flowed with surprising speed, carrying her deeper into the mountain. She held her breath as long as she could, but she couldn’t last forever. Toxic fumes saturated her lungs. The momentary relief of breathing gave way to an awful burning sensation, like someone had lit a roaring bonfire in her lungs.

Just when she thought she would smother in this undignified dark corner and be consumed by the flames, she broke through. Or rather, she fell through. The magma river spat her out headfirst into—guess what—another pile of bones.

The protective rune saved her from being cut to ribbons. She slid down the side in a shower of bone shards, finally coming to rest at the base of the pile. The spell burned through her magic reserves and faded out. She couldn’t tell if it had held for two minutes or ten. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t move.

When she had hacked the toxic air out of her lungs and gulped in some of the new fresh air around her, she got a second wind. The first thing she did was stomp around in the bone pile under her. Pixkin’s magic galoshes had miraculously survived her journey. Their grippy outsoles provided an excellent platform for her to exercise her anger.

“Losers!” she screamed at the pile of bones. “Dumb stupid losers!”

Something stirred in the walls. She whirled around. The cave she’d been dropped into was at least a hoofball field long and just as tall, with leering stalactite pillars clustered around the middle. Magma flowed through the walls, lighting the cave from within. The earth rumbled continuously, an unbroken song of creation and destruction.

The rumbling got a little less poetic. The walls moved again. Something was under the surface, pushing up the stone like a hyperactive cat trapped beneath a bedsheet.

“You’re not hiding from anyone,” Cozy Glow said, unamused. Speaking made her woozy all over again. She staggered. “Come out here.”

Solid folds of rock shifted aside. The cavern groaned as the rock compacted, making way for its master. A sharp face of patchy brown fur gave way to armored scales and a slender snake’s body. On its face was the proboscis of a star-nosed mole. The fleshy fingers probed the air. Probably to smell her.

“Gross,” she said out loud.

The molesnake coiled into a tight knot. Its scales shimmered ruby red in the magmalight. Its voice was deep and cacophonous, the sound of tectonic plates colliding. “You are trespassing.”

“You look like you got hit by a carriage,” Cozy Glow said.

The molesnake looked momentarily taken aback. Its tail flicked from side to side. Barbed scales glanced over the ground and sent sparks sailing off into the dark.

Cozy Glow waited patiently until it opened its mouth to speak again, then interrupted it a second time. “Actually, no, you look like you got hit by a whole caravan of carriages.”

A rock came free from the wall. It was, ironically, about the size of a carriage. Cozy had only a fraction of a second to duck. It clipped the top of her mane and slammed into the far wall with a reverberating bang.

Cozy Glow turned her head slowly towards the molesnake, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

“I know who you are,” the molesnake said in an accusatory voice. “You killed the Secretkeeper.”

“Were you two friends or something?” Cozy replied.

“I am bonded to him. When you drove the dagger through his heart, it was as if you were killing me.”

“Ugh, so melodramatic. Why do you demons always have to be like—” She threw her voice low and gravely. “We are boooonded. We have maaaaaagic. Grow up!”

“I am older than time itself. Eons passed me by before your kind dragged itself from the primordial mud.”

“All that time, but you still couldn’t fix yourself up enough to get a better looking boyfriend!”

The molesnake slithered towards her. Cozy Glow tensed.

“You’re scared,” Cozy Glow said. “Ha! You’re scared of a little filly.”

“I fear for the world if I fail to contain you.”

“Yeah,” said Cozy Glow, “you should.”

The demon seemed to teleport. One second it was swaying in front of her. The next it had already sprung into the air. Its tail whipped towards Cozy Glow.

She leapt at the same moment, but she was not as fast as the demon. One of the barbed scales on its tail caught Cozy Glow in the leg. She was swept off her feet and flung into the far wall like a ragdoll. Before she could react, a shower of smaller rocks flayed her back and bent the feathers of her wings.

The molesnake jabbed at her with its tail. She flung herself off the wall at the last second to avoid being impaled, landing hard on her belly. She got to her hooves only to have a second spray of rocks fly into her face. The flat side of the demon’s tail caught her in the side. She went airborne again.

Still fighting to fill her lungs, Cozy Glow popped up and went on the offensive. She snapped her wings out with enough speed to cavitate the air. Her hollow bones vibrated with power. Pure magic coalesced on her wingtip in the form of a finely-honed blade.

With a roar, she slashed the demon’s back with enough force to cut a pony cleanly in half. Her attack glanced harmlessly off the demon’s back. It didn’t even flinch.

The demon countered with a flurry of blows from its tail. Cozy Glow parried, then dove in for another attack. Despite being a tenth the size of the molesnake, Cozy Glow’s attacks seemed sluggish in comparison. Blow after blow yielded little more than scratches on the molesnake’s scales.

The molesnake threw another rock at her. She flinched, leaving one side open. The molesnake rushed in, wrapping her up and squeezing her with all its might. It put its nose right up to her face and let loose a deafening roar. Its star-shaped nose opened up, trembling, sniffing the air.

The demon’s body radiated a deadly amount of heat. As she smothered, she felt her skin start to blister. She tried to scream, but it had already squeezed the air out of her lungs.

Desperation turned to blind panic. She yanked one wing free. Those feathers that weren’t scoured away by the demon’s sharp scales immediately burst into flames.

She screamed and let loose a wild slicing glaive of magic. It missed the demon by a mile and hit the ceiling, dislodging several stalactites.

The demon threw Cozy Glow against the wall and dove out of the way of the falling rocks. She hit the wall and blacked out for a split second. When she awoke, she was on the ground. The demon advanced on her. She rolled over and threw another glaive of magic at the ceiling. The move bought her a precious few seconds to regain her bearings.

The repeated thunk of falling rocks gave her an idea. She aimed her next slice at the ground in front of her. The impact shattered the stone floor and threw a spray of rock into the demon’s face. Its starmole nose spasmed erratically. It hissed, briefly exposing a long forked tongue.

In the moment it was distracted, Cozy Glow sent a second glaive of magic into the ceiling. A second stalactite fell. This one found its mark, falling directly onto the demon’s back.

Shattered rock and chunks of scales fly everywhere. The demon shuddered and lurched sideways.

Cozy cried out victoriously. But the elation was short-lived.

The molesnake let out a roar that shook the high walls of the cavern. The deep obsidian red of its scales erupted into violent flashes of light. Pure magical fire coursed beneath its scales. Two seams on either side of the mole’s head split open, and the skin tore—no, blinked open. Two glowing orange eyes swiveled in their sockets. Where Cozy Glow expected to see irises, there were instead mandalas.

The molesnake closed the distance, until its long fleshy starmole nose was almost touching Cozy’s snout. The mandalas in its eyes appeared to rotate slowly, spiraling inward in perfect geometric unity. She couldn’t look away. The patterns went deeper and deeper, until she was practically falling through it.

The demon wiggled its head to one side. Cozy Glow leaned with it. It moved the other way. Cozy Glow followed.

She was trapped. Her mind screamed, break free! But the magic in the mandalas immobilized her. She scrambled backwards, but she couldn’t look away, couldn’t turn away, couldn’t even blink.

The head moved closer, mouth opening. Waves of heat washed over her. The skin of her snout blistered and peeled. She started to pant. The air was so hot it made her lungs ache.

It was going to eat her, she realized. Rage welled up inside her. The way the molesnake’s fangs glistened in the magmalight, the way the soft palate of its mouth quivered in anticipation, the way the corners of its mouth turned up as it drew her deeper into its spell—it was more than she could bear. A scream bubbled up from her throat, piercing over the rush of blood in her ears.

The molesnake breathed out. Superheated foul breath smacked her across the face. She stumbled backwards. Something hard brushed against her leg, cutting a deep gash into her flesh. The pain sent a shiver through her body. It didn’t break the demon’s hypnosis, but it gave her a split second of lucidity.

As the demon wound up to strike, she fumbled blindly for the object. Her hoof closed around it.

She leapt forward at the same time the demon struck. Instead of biting her in half, Cozy Glow passed cleanly through its jaws and into its mouth. Magma and unnatural magic fire illuminated its quivering pink insides.

The demon’s jaws snapped shut, plunging the sub-cavern of its mouth into total darkness. Cozy Glow landed on its forked tongue. The landing was springy and soft, like a flesh trampoline. But the relief turned to searing pain a moment later. Its saliva was caustic. And it was everywhere.
Of course. Stupid. She should have known. She fell over with a cry of pain. The object she’d picked up almost slipped from her grasp. She dove for it and managed to snag it, at the cost of landing belly-down on the demon’s tongue.

Her underside blistered instantly. A strange flickering light filled the molesnake’s mouth. Cozy Glow looked around and realized the light came from her tail. It was on fire.

She had to act now or she’d surely die. With a herculean effort, Cozy Glow stood atop the demons’ tongue. Pixkin’s magic boots held out magnificently, protecting her hooves from the demon’s caustic tongue.

With a roar, she stabbed the object into the soft palate above her.

Boiling hot blood gushed out of the gaping wound. The demon wrenched its head upwards. Cozy Glow was barely able to keep a grip on the object as she was thrown around the inside of the demon’s mouth. Finally, there was an agonizing moment of weightlessness. Then a horrendous impact against the stone.

Cozy Glow, along with the object she’d used to stab it and about a hundred gallons of blood, spilled out of the demon’s mouth in a torrent. The sensation of solid ground beneath her hooves sent a jolt of energy through Cozy Glow’s wrecked body. She rolled out of the puddle of caustic fluid. Somehow, she was still holding the object she’d used to stab the demon. It was covered in blood and lacking its usual magical luster, but she still recognized it as a broken shard from one of the molesnake’s scales.

A sick, wretching cough filled the air. She saw the molesnake was still alive, leaking more blood, twisting its body into itself. Its head was immobile. The shard of scale must have severed some important nerve. Its eyes flickered dimly. The mandalas in its irises spun faster and faster as the molesnake’s breathing slowed. The hypnotic magic was gone. She could look freely without fear.

She climbed atop its head, wedged the scale shard between its eyes, and stomped on it.

Using a rock for leverage, Cozy Glow pried open the dead demon’s chest cavity. A thick quivering outer membrane encased the heart. She placed the scale shard against the membrane, then hammered it with a rock. Dark blood spattered everywhere. It sizzled with blistering heat where it fell on her fur. Cozy Glow growled and swung again. Pain brought her anger bubbling back up to the surface.

“You like that?” she said.The outer layer of skin gave way. The scale shard tore through muscle with a wet sucking sound. “You like that?” The scale shard glanced off the membrane and ripped through the demon’s lungs. She lined up for another strike. Her fur was on fire again. “How about you find your boyfriend in Tartarus and tell him how badly I smoked you!”

The membrane finally gave way, snapping back like a severed achilles’ tendon. Blood flooded out, drenching her hooves, seeping into her open wounds. She howled in pain and elation. The demon’s heart was hers at last.

She leaned her whole body into the open chest cavity and sank her teeth into the heart.

The heart was bigger than a Yakistani feast and twice as stomach-turning. By the time it was done, she was out of breath, retching, and covered head to hoof in burns. Bits of molten rock clung to her coat, cooling into black pumice. Her lips split in canyonous cracks. Her stomach was on fire. Blood beaded between her gums and her teeth. The soft palate of her mouth hung in ragged strips.

The endless rumble of the volcano dulled slowly, until its rumbling ceased entirely. What was left in the absence was a silence so perfect it felt dead, like the earth had ceased turning and the magnetic core at the heart of everything had finally grown cold. She felt like a god in that moment. Was a god. She had been here before, the perfect stillness before the beginning of the universe. She would be here in the stillness after, the great final death of everything. Everything but her. She couldn’t die. She was a god.

As the magma cooled, the red light faded. Cozy Glow saw the familiar trail of magic leading her back towards the rim of the volcano. There it snaked up the sheer wall of the main magma vent, illuminating a series of hoofolds she could use to climb up to freedom.

“Three hold the key,” she said aloud. The words echoed in her head. Three hold the key. Two more to go.

Cozy Glow looked down at her legs. Pixkin’s magic galoshes were singed and fraying at the edges, but they’d held up admirably. They would be a great help with the impending climb.

That was where the good news ended. What fur she had left above the boot line clung to her in patches. The skin beneath was charred. A spasm shook her, an automatic spinal cord response to impending stimulus of pain. One down. Two more to go.

She got up. She fell over. She got back up again. She walked towards the wall and started to climb.

Chapter Two: She Slays Good Boy Energy Cosmic Caregivers

In the quaint hilltop town of L'épine, the church bells started to ring.

A teenage filly named Clearwater skipped down the town’s main avenue. This road was the axis on which her young life revolved. From her thatched roof home at the edge of town, it was a straight shot down the cobblestone street to school. Beyond that was the general store, then the tavern where she sometimes had to pick dad up after he and the other lumberjacks celebrated their temporary victories against the endless forests, then the cluster of older cottages where her friends lived and played.

At the very center of town, the hub from which everything else radiated, was the church.

She bowed her head reverently to the monk attending the door. The monk dipped his hoof into a bowl of clear water and anointed her forehead. “Peace and clarity,” he said.

“Peace and clarity,” she echoed back.

Inside, soaring stained glass windows threw splashes of colored light against the walls. Pairs of massive stone columns soared five stories into the air and met in arched points in the center of the ceiling. With weekly communal worship still a few days away, the monks had stacked all the benches against one wall so they could clean the floors. At the center of the circular chamber stood a raised well carved from a single massive piece of clear crystal. A continuous stream of water bubbled from a hole in the top and flowed down in a tiny waterfall. The sound of it filled Clearwater’s heart with calm. She was safe here. She was home.

The high priestess noticed Clearwater walk in. She set aside the brush she’d been using to scrub the floor. “Peace and clarity, Clearwater.” The space drenched her low voice in heavenly reverb. “Can I be of service?”

“Peace and clarity,” Clearwater said. “The stranger in the care of my family grows stronger, but her pain is still great.” Clearwater prostrated herself on the floor. “On her behalf, I beg a portion of healing water from the well.”

“You honor us, and the well, with your service to this stranger. You will receive the water you require.”

Clearwater kept her head down as the high priestess retrieved a ceremonial stone vase and placed it beneath the waterfall. The sound reminded her of a stallion using the toilet, but she brushed those thoughts away without breaking her composure. Be serious, she repeated in her mind. This is serious.

As she waited for the vase to fill, she noticed the floor smelled faintly of soap. The ceremonial chamber was huge, and could contain several hundred ponies at a time. Keeping the floors clean must have been an incredible labor for the high priestess and her attendant monks. Why bother? The prostration was purely ceremonial. Clearwater had never heard of a request for healing water being turned down. But maybe that was because no one had ever abused the privileges of the well. Clearwater wondered if she would ever become wise enough to understand why all this ceremony was necessary.

Clearwater returned home with the vase of water. Inside their humble thatched roof cottage, her mother Clarity was kneeling in front of Cozy Glow, coaxing the mare’s hind leg into a modest bend. Cozy Glow cried out and covered her face with her hooves.

“It’s not going,” she said, “You’re gonna hurt it. Stop.”

“Stay relaxed,” Clarity cooed, “it’ll go.”

“It’s not. Going.” Cozy Glow groaned in pain. “Stop it, stop it, stop it—”

Clearwater prepared a numbing salve out of herbs and healing water and applied it to Cozy Glow’s burns. Most of the young mare’s skin had come back okay, but her fur was still patchy. She wasn’t sure if it would ever grow back right.

Clearwater moved her attention from Cozy Glow’s lightly-damaged limbs to her belly, where the worst of her burns were. Cozy Glow sobbed as they spread the salve over new skin. The sobs subsided, and for a moment Clearwater thought she had actually passed out from the pain. A moment later she realized Cozy Glow was holding it in. She stared at the ceiling with half-lidded, unfocused eyes. Her limbs trembled uncontrollably.

When they were done, Cozy Glow curled up into a ball and wouldn’t move. It wasn’t until Clearwater put a cool towel on her head and spoon-fed her some porridge did she finally start to relax. The two spent the evening sitting beside each other. At some point, Cozy Glow gingerly wrapped her arms around Clearwater’s torso. Clearwater couldn’t hug back because of all the bandages, so she played with what was left of Cozy Glow’s mane instead.

Clearwater’s heart overflowed with love. She was reminded in that moment that she was a well of sorts, too. The same way the well gave them water, she gave the world love. She was powerless to stop its flow, the same way the well couldn’t stop its flow of water. Love was eternal—the water of the soul.

It took nearly a month of full-time care before Cozy Glow was able to function normally again. In that time, Clearwater and her mother Clarity were unable to work. The whole community rallied around them, providing food for their pantry and copper for their coin purse. The expectations for the community of L'épine were clear: help strangers, then help the ponies who helped the strangers. The help poured out to Clearwater like, for lack of a better word, a well.

One night, Clearwater returned home from the church to find Cozy Glow on her knees scrubbing the floors. Their thatched roof cottage only had one room, but it was fairly spacious. Scrubbing the floor was usually a two-pony job that lasted all day. Cozy Glow had somehow managed to do half the cottage in the hour it had taken Clearwater to run to the church and back.

“Cozy? What are you doing?” Clearwater set her vase of healing water down. “You’ll hurt yourself. Stop it.”

Cozy Glow kept on scrubbing. Her eyes were clear and laser-focused on the seams between two floorboards.

“Cozy Glow. Hey.” Clearwater carefully stepped around the part of the floor Cozy had already completed. “You’re gonna bust a stitch.” Cozy didn’t stop until Clearwater put her hooves on the sponge. “Take it easy. What’s wrong?”

Cozy’s eyes stayed down on the floor. “Let me finish the floor.”

“Cozy—”

“I wanted to do something nice for you.” Her voice turned dark. “Let me do this.”

The way Cozy Glow spoke scared Clearwater a little, but she relented and let Cozy finish the rest of the floor. She put a kettle on to boil and arranged slices of candied sweetbread on a pair of plates.

“I...” Cozy looked from Clearwater to the tea. “I’m not hungry.”

“Yes you are. I’ve done that chore a million times before. You can’t fool me.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“The tea will help with that.”

For a split second, it looked like Cozy Glow was about to hit her. Then her face fell and her shoulders slumped. She took the teacup and sipped it hesitantly. Clearwater waited patiently until Cozy Glow was ready to speak.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Cozy Glow said.

“Of course.”

“Why all this?”

Clearwater blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You, Clarity... the town. I don’t get it.”

“You don’t get kindness?” Clearwater said. She meant it as a joke, but Cozy Glow’s glower only grew deeper.

“It would take years to repay you for everything you’ve done.”

“I don’t want you to repay me. I want you to relax so I don’t have to stitch you up again.”

“But you’d do that. If I ripped them open right now for no reason other than to prove a point, you’d just get the sewing kit.”

Clearwater sipped her own tea. “What about it?”

“That’s not...” Cozy Glow huffed. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Actually, it makes a great deal of sense. Where else would the town’s surplus go to, if not for helping those in need?”

“You could keep it.”

Cleawater shook her head. “You’re thinking like those bankers in Canterlot.”

“It’s not... you’re thinking about this all wrong. You... ugh.” A rivulet of tea spilled over the lip of Cozy Glow’s glass and ran down the side. “You shouldn’t be doing this. You should have—”

“Let you die in the mountains?”

“Yes.”

Clearwater shook her head. She took Cozy Glow’s hoof. “You’re a good pony. But you’re also a prideful pony. Pride makes you fragile.”

“I am a—” Cozy Glow stopped herself. “I’m not weak.”

“I didn’t say you were. I just said you were fragile.”

Cozy Glow looked up at Clearwater. “Do you feel called to be here?”

“Absolutely. I feel called to help ponies in need wherever they are.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, do you feel called to be here specifically. Like, here in L'épine.”

Clearwater considered the question. “I mean. I was born here. I feel connected to the well in a way that would make it very difficult to leave. If some higher power wanted me to be somewhere else, I would have been born there instead. But I wasn’t. I was born here.”

Cozy Glow nodded. “This might sound weird, but...” She bit her lip.

“It’s okay. Whatever you say, I promise you won’t sound as crazy as worshiping a hole in the ground.”

Cozy Glow chuckled. “Thanks. I was trying to say that I was called to be here too.” She took a long breath. “Someone else could have found me. Or I could have been found by a pack of wolves. But you found me. You, of all ponies.” She pointed at Clearwater. More tea ran down Cozy Glow’s cup. “Fate brought me into those mountains, and it’s fate that made you find me, and it’s fate that made you bring me back here.”

“Why do you think fate brought you here, specifically?”

Cozy Glow’s eyes moved to the window. Her eyes snapped back to Clearwater. “I don’t know.”

They drifted off into silence. The candles burned low. Clearwater set out blankets for Cozy Glow and bundled herself into bed. Her mind continued to work long after the last light had been snuffed out, turning over Cozy Glow’s words. Fate. Violence. Higher powers. It all seemed so foreign. The world was so much bigger than the little town of L'épine. That frightened her.

Cozy Glow believed some very toxic things. She might be smart enough to say them directly, but there was something frightening brewing behind that mare’s eyes. Clearwater couldn’t fix her. She could only do what she knew was right and hope Cozy Glow saw the light. The well could flow as well as ebb. The choice to love rested on even the most minute decision. The weight of all those little decisions threatened to crush poor Clearwater. When she slept, she dreamed of falling, of weight on her chest, of the ground falling away beneath her.

The next morning, Clearwater woke to change Cozy Glow’s dressings. But Cozy Glow was gone. Her bedsheets had been thrown aside in a tangle. One of their loaves of bread was also missing from the pantry.

Invisible to Clearwater, invisible to the rest of the world, a glowing trail of magic led Cozy Glow towards the center of town. To the Church.

The church door was guarded by a monk, so Cozy Glow had to sneak in through one of the back windows. She entered into an antechamber serving as the church’s sacristy. Peering out, she saw the main gathering space with the well in the center. The high priestess chatted idly with an attending monk as they scrubbed the floor.

Cozy Glow waited until they turned their backs, then dashed silently to the well. The fountain where the water cascaded down was much too small for her to fit through. Searching for another point of access, she discovered a trapdoor at the base of the well’s raised platform just barely big enough for an adult pony to squeeze through. She lifted the stone tile away as quietly as she could, silently cursed herself for eating that entire loaf of bread, and squeezed in.

She found herself in a sort of crawl space beneath the altar. Bioluminescent moss lit up at her touch. Glowing green fungus made a trail to the well hole. A single pipe brought water up from a deep bore. The hole was—again—just barely big enough for a single pony. Certainly not big enough for flight. She’d have to climb down on the pipe.

“Why’s it always gotta be a cave?” Cozy Glow muttered to herself as she gripped the pipe. “Can’t one of these guys live on a beach?”

The condensation grew worse the further down. Her descent turned to a barely-controlled slide.

Without warning, the confining walls of the well bore disappeared. The sudden change made her panic and let go of the pipe.

Before she could snap open her wings and stop the neck-snapping fall, she landed headfirst in a deep pool of water. She broke the surface sputtering and shivering, but alive. The waves kicked up by her landing activated more of the bioluminescent moss on the walls. A pale greenish glow crawled up the walls.

Cozy Glow flapped her wings once to clear the water away, then twice to get airborne. As she watched, the water beneath her slowly formed into a whirlpool. It drained into an unseen chamber, leaving a massive clump of debris and moss at the bottom.

The clump stirred.

“No,” Cozy Glow said. “You gotta be joking.”

Algae and fibrous strands of moss flexed like muscles. With a gaseous sigh, the clump of moss rolled into a sitting position. A bedrock face appeared. Then a pair of glowing green eyes. Waterfalls of tears cascaded down the demon’s broad face and pitter-pattered against the floor.

“Are you alright?” Its voice was muffled by all the moss and debris around its head. “I felt you fall.”

Cozy Glow said nothing.

“Don’t be afraid. I want to help.” The demon leaned closer, squinting. It smelled like chlorophyll and conifer needles. “Are you a villager?”

Cozy Glow eyed the demon as it stood up to its full height. Its two hands were made of jagged bedrock, as were its wide-padded feet. It took another step towards her.

“I can’t see,” Cozy Glow said, inflecting fear into her voice. “I hit my head on the way down, and now I can’t see.”

“You’re safe now. I can help you.”

“Is there still water down here? I don’t want to drown.”

“I protect this well and bless the ponies who worship it. You have my word that you will come to no harm.”

Cozy Glow faked a sob. “Please. I just want to go home.”

The demon held out a hoof, into which Cozy Glow settled. She curled up into a ball and made a whimpering sound. All the while, her eyes were scanning the demon for weak points. Its eyes were partially crusted over, the light fluttering faintly. She realized that it probably couldn’t see her very well. Good.

“I can raise the water level to push you to the top of the well,” it said. “All you have to do is float.”

“No!” Cozy Glow shrieked. “I don’t want to drown. Please.”

“I promise you—”

“No!”

The demon considered her with its cloudy green eyes. “How did you fall down here?”

“I was with the high priestess. There was something wrong with the well.”

“You are one of the new attendant monks?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

Her ears pinned back. She got ready to dodge. “Please just help me.”

She barely had time to bolt out of the demon’s hand before the other came crashing down on top of it. The whoof of air propelled her into the wall at bone-jarring speeds.

“You deceive me,” the demon said, its voice turning dark. “You are not who you say you are.”

The fear and panic slowly melted off Cozy Glow’s face, replaced by a snide, sinister sneer. “Took you long enough. Jeez. I thought I was gonna have to keep that schtick up all day.”

“I have felt rumblings in the earth. Rumblings of death.”

“That would be me.”

“The mountain grows still.”

“Also me.”

“The stars are consumed with worry.”

“Let ‘em shiver.”

A low rushing sound filled the cavern. Out of the corner of her eye, Cozy Glow noticed a small ring of water collecting at the bottom of the pool. She blinked, and it was already up past the demon’s bedrock toes.

“I know what you seek,” the demon said. “I will not allow you to have it.”

“What are you, my dad? I don’t need your permission.”

“Permission? What you’ll want from me soon enough is mercy.” The demon peered at her. “You’re little more than a child.”

“Hey, c’mon, I’m just small for my age.”

“Why would you place this terrible burden upon yourself?”

“Burden?” Cozy Glow laughed. “It’s not a burden. It’s a revolution. And you’re gonna help me start it.”

“You’ll die,” the demon said matter-of-factly. “You will start no revolution. Win no battles. Conquer no courts. You’ll die scared and alone.”

Cozy Glow’s mouth twitched in annoyance. “You’re saying that because you’re afraid. Afraid of a little filly. A little—”

“I’m trying to save your life.” The demon’s hand came up. Cozy Glow flinched, but it made no effort to attack her. “I persist down here in this well because doing so helps people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Help. Let me help you now. Abandon this path.”

“Don’t make me laugh. You stay down here because you’re scared. You have all this power, all this potential, yet you’re too scared to use it.”

“What would you use it for?”

Cozy Glow paused. The rushing sound grew quieter. The water level rose in silence. “Control.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all? With the power of your heart, I could unite the world. Imagine how many ponies that would help.”

The demon smiled sadly. “Perhaps you are too young to see the true nature of power.”

Cozy Glow grit her teeth. “Say that again.”

“I beg of you, heed my warning. I only want to—”

“Say that again.”

A stare-down ensued. Cozy Glow was too proud to blink. The demon had no eyelids. The water rose past the demon’s navel.

The demon finally broke the silence. “You have so much life to live. Why would you wish this upon yourself?”

“Because I’m a god.”

Cozy Glow rushed the demon. Her wings snapped down, cavitating the air. Magic beaded on the cutting edge of her wings. But she never got the chance to strike. The water frothed white and shot up, filling the rest of the cave in a fraction of a second. Cozy Glow was flung violently against the top of the wall. Stars swam in her vision. She sucked in a lungful of water and choked.

Visceral panic took hold as she inhaled more water. Through the foaming water, she saw the light of the well bore a few meters away. She swam towards it. The current pushed her along, an unsubtle kick in the rear by the demon. It wasn’t trying to kill her, she realized. It was trying to shoo her out.

She blushed red. That was somehow worse than if it had tried to kill her.

The water pressure in the well bore took hold of Cozy Glow and shot her upwards. She smacked the stone pad on which the well sat, and a moment later she was forcefully ejected out the trapdoor.

Cozy Glow, and about a thousand gallons of holy water, spilled into the main chamber of the church. The wave swamped the high priestess, who was on her knees scrubbing the floor. Several attendant monks rushed into the chamber to investigate the noise and were also swept off their hooves.

Cozy Glow retched up the water in her lungs, waited for the water to recede, then dove back into the well. Too young—her flank, she was too young. She’d make this demon respect her. Then she’d kill it.

The water level had retreated to where Cozy Glow could fly around the well chamber comfortably. She slapped the water and shouted, “Come out here! Hey!” She received no response. “Fight me!” Still nothing.

Thinking fast, she shouted, “I’ll burn down the church!”

A ripple passed through the water. A bedrock hand shot out of the depths and knocked Cozy Glow across the room. She expected to fall into the water, but to her horror the water level dropped from over a hundred feet to nothing in the time it took her to unstick from the wall. She splayed her wings out, barely able to slow herself before she hit the ground. The impact was still enough to rattle every bone in her body and leave a nasty bruise on her belly.

“Don’t do this,” the demon pleaded. It towered over her, its shoulders nearly half the height of the well chamber. Tears from its waterfall eyes splashed all around her. “You deserve a chance to live. To right your wrongs.”

Cozy Glow snarled and shot towards the demon. Its colossal size and the cramped confines of the well chamber meant it couldn’t dodge as she sliced a glaive of magic through its shoulder. The razor-sharp tip of her wing sank into its mossy flesh until it struck bedrock bone.

She circled around to observe the damage. Fresh moss was already growing back, repairing the wound. She would have to find a weak spot if she wanted to do any damage.

An idea occurred to her. What if the demon wasn’t solid all the way through? What if only parts of it were made of rock? She felt rock in its shoulder when she sliced through it, but what about center mass?

A wicked grin twisted the corners of her mouth. As the demon lined up to swing at her, she dove under its fist and pumped her wings as hard as she could, gathering what speed she could in the enclosed space. At the last second, she flipped herself over and planted her rear hooves square in the center of the demon’s chest.

The impact shook the well chamber and sent a jet of moss and debris shooting out the demon’s back. Cozy Glow retreated to inspect the damage and found to her immense satisfaction that she’d kicked a hole clean through to the other side. The demon may be big, but it had no structure. It was rot all the way down.

She rushed in again, this time aiming for its face. This time, the demon reacted. A jagged piece of the demon’s knuckle caught her in the leg, gouging a deep cut from her cutie mark all the way to her knee. A strange sickeningly sweet floral scent filled the air. A strange off-white powder erupted in her face, like the demon had thrown a fistfull of baby powder. A burning lance of pain shot up her hip.

It took her a precious second to realize what had happened. That second doomed her.

The powder was spores. She’d breathed some in. Some still lingered in her mane. But more alarmingly, a fine coating of the powder had gotten in the fresh wound.

The spores took root in her flesh. She blinked, and pale grey shoots were already rising, peeling apart the cut to allow for more shoots to surface. They spiraled up and looped and tangled over each other before sprouting flowering caps.

Cozy Glow screamed. She took hold of a clump and pulled hard. She felt a deep ache, like a bad muscle cramp. She pulled again. Her whole leg moved. She felt the shoots inside of her, constricting her movements. In her desperation, she tried to bite them off to no avail. The rough rubbery fibers left a bitter taste in her mouth.

The mushroom caps trembled in unison. They released their own miniature clouds of spores. Cozy Glow tried to pull away, but some of the cloud got on her face. Almost immediately, her eyes started to water. Her nose ran uncontrollably. Her lungs would not fill with air. She choked on her own saliva.

The demon rose above her and swatted her out of the sky like an insect. She had the presence of mind to fold her wings so they wouldn’t break on impact.

The impact sent a shower of rocks flying into the air. Something in her chest went click, accompanied by a sharp jolt of pain. Her lungs deflated and refused to work. Primary feathers caught against the rocky floor were shredded to ribbons.

So much for flying out, she thought.

Another glance down revealed the mushrooms were wrapping around her leg, immobilizing it, constricting the flow of blood. She was on the clock now. Unless she was somehow able to find a way to reverse this, the demon had already killed her.

I can figure this out, she thought. I can win. I’m a god. I’m—

One of her ribs moved independently of the others. Her whole body seized up. Agony swept her nerves.

Her resolve started to crack. I can figure this out, she said, but she could no longer ignore the panic creeping into her thoughts. Every attempt to bring her breathing under control brought her new depths of agony. A fearful whimper escaped her lips.

She collapsed onto her back. As she laid there, eyes watering uncontrollably, unable to draw in a breath from the continuously flowering toxic mushrooms, she felt a new, oddly calming sensation: rain. Through the poison spore cloud around her, she was just barely able to make out the hulking shape of the demon standing over her. It wasn’t rain, she remembered, but tears.

What a weepy sadsack. She tried to tell it as much, but all that came out was a wet croak.

“If I let you live,” the demon said, “you must agree to an accord.”

“Eat a cow pie,” Cozy Glow hissed. Her words came out slurred.

“You will never again seek the Secretkeeper’s power. You will spend the rest of your life as an attendant monk in the church of the well. You will never leave L'épine as long as you live.” A shower of tears fell over Cozy Glow. It momentarily cleared the air of poisonous spores, allowing her to take in a burning gulp of air. “You will have your life. That is most important.”

The tears of the demon numbed Cozy Glow’s many wounds. The open cuts in her skin started mending themselves. Where the tears landed on her fungus-choked leg, the stems detached themselves from her leg. She caught a few drops in her mouth and found those little drops were enough to slake her thirst. More tears fell into Cozy Glow’s eyes. When she blinked them away, she found she could see further than she could before.

That was when she noticed the tears weren’t coming from the demon’s eyes. They flowed down its face from a hole in the top of its head.

Her stomach flipped. Was it spinal fluid? Some other kind of fluid?

The demon saw the disgust on her face. “Peace, child. I am a living well. The living well. Worship me, as they do, and I can grant you many blessings.”

“Screw your blessings!”

“One of those blessings is humility. With it comes perspective, and empathy, and—”

“Shove it up your blowhole!”

“Very well.” The demon lifted its hand to squash her.

“Wait!” Her voice cracked. “Don’t.”

“You leave me no other choice.”

“No. Please. I agree to your terms. I yield. Don’t kill me.”

The demon’s bedrock hand hovered over Cozy Glow. The weight of all that rock fell upon her with immense gravity. It rendered her mute in the face of its killing potential.

The demon lowered its hand.

“Fly up to the church. Tell the high priestess nothing of what has transpired here. They may resent you if you told them about your plot to kill me.”

Cozy Glow found her voice. “What about my leg?”

“Bathe it in healing water every day for two years. The water will reverse the fungus’s paralytic effects without permanently damaging your leg.”

“What if I run away?”

“You won’t. You gave your vow.”

Cozy Glow sniffled. “Vows can be broken.”

“What is your relationship to the mare named Clearwater?”

The question took Cozy Glow completely by surprise. “I. Uh.” She staggered, grasping for words. “What? You’re down here. How did you—”

“I am the living water of L'épine. I hear what goes on. Clearwater has asked for enough healing water to fill a reservoir.”

Cozy Glow scowled. “That water didn’t heal me. It took two months before I could walk again.”

“She needed to learn patience, and you needed to be humbled. I took a crack at both problems at once. She passed with flying colors.” Its voice swelled with something like pride. “She’s an example to live by, wouldn’t you agree?”

Cozy Glow glow muttered in agreement. Her voice was high and thin, wavering like a foal’s.

“Last night,” the demon continued, “when you washed her floor—why did you do that?”

“I dunno.”

“I’d like you to think about why you made that choice. The answers may prove illuminating.” The demon’s bioluminescent green eyes wrinkled at the corners. Its mouth, set in stone though it was, curled up in what could generously be called a smile. “You’re part of L'épine now. Though something tells me you’ve already felt that way for some time now.”

The demon shifted its body away. The healing tears moved off. Cozy Glow stood up to her full height and flared her now-healed wings. Tears—her own tears—stained her face.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

“You’ll see me in every cloud. You’ll hear me in every gust of wind. Most importantly, you’ll feel me in the love you share.” It pointed to the well bore, the sole point of natural light. “Go. Submit yourself to the high priestess.”

Cozy Glow nodded. She flapped her wings and flew up to the well bore. As the smell of cool outside air tickled her nose, a smile played across her lips.

Her wings snapped shut against her sides. She gave a cry of alarm and pitched backwards in an uncontrolled backflip. She lashed out windly and struck the rim of the well bore with a great crack. A shower of jagged rocks and blood fell alongside her.

The demon saw this and stepped beneath her, arms extended to catch her.

Right where Cozy Glow wanted it to be.

She rolled over and snapped her wings out, shooting forwards like a bullet. The ringing in her ears was deafening and the splitting headache threatened to tear her brain apart, but Cozy Glow’s aim was true. She plunged into the watery well at the crown of the demon’s skull.

Down she swam. The voice of the demon rumbled like a thunderstorm. Her natural pegasus buoyancy fought her every inch of the way. But the further she swam, the more invigorated she felt. Her wounds sealed shut. The headache vanished. The mushrooms in her leg sloughed off in clumps. She would have paused there and soaked forever had she not felt the familiar dull ache of hypoxia in her lungs.

The water grew warm. The smooth tube opened up to a dark cave not unlike the well bore opened up to the cave.

She snapped her wings through the water with enough force to cavitate the air. Magic beaded on her wingtips to serve as a source of light.

In front of her, pink and pulsating, easily the size of a house, was the demon’s brain.

A repeating series of impacts made the inner well of the demon’s head tremble. Cozy Glow imagined it beating its head against the walls of the well, desperately trying to get her out. The image made her smile. She was going to enjoy this.

She unleashed a pent-up glaive of magic from one wing. Her swing was slightly slower due to water resistance, but it was still powerful enough to cleanly slice through the front of its brain. The second strike blew out the back of the demon’s brain, reducing the cerebellum to floating pink mush.

Just as she wound up for a third strike to sever its brain stem, the demon’s head shifted violently. The demon lost all control of its motor functions and lashed out wildly with its now-useless arms.

The strike hit the rim of the well bore. The earth trembled.

“Cozy?” Clearwater came around the bend. “Cozy Glow?”

Clearwater had circled the entire town looking for Cozy Glow. Her search had been methodical, starting at the outskirts of town and working in.

There was only one place left to search: the church.

Clearwater swayed side to side impatiently as the attendant monk anointed her head. She got two steps inside before slipping on a patch of holy water and falling flat on her face.

The church was in complete disarray. The stacks of pews had toppled in a heap. The brass candelabras had been overturned. Only the stained glass windows still provided light. Several incense thuribles had been overturned, spilling sweet-smelling ash into the water. Two attendant monks held a painting of the town’s founding over their heads so it wouldn’t be ruined. Their legs were trembling with effort.

The high priestess was huddled up with the remaining attendant monks near the rear of the church. Clearwater splashed her way towards them. “Hello? High priestess? What happened here?”

The high priestess turned to face Clearwater. The look on her face was confused, bordering on frightened.

“Clearwater, my child. Fate brought you here at this moment.” The high priestess’s robes fanned out around her, soaking up water. “Where is the outsider in your care?”

“I—uh—was about to ask you the same thing—”

The high priestess grabbed Clearwater’s shoulders with alarming strength. “Tell me where she is, child!”

Clearwater flinched. “I don’t know. I—”

The sound in the church shifted. The water in the well slowed to a trickle. Then it stopped. Clearwater and the high priestess both turned their heads in unison. Clearwater had never heard the church fall truly silent before. It sent an uneasy chill up her spine.

“High priestess,” Clearwater said, “what did she do?”

The earth rumbled beneath their hooves.

Inside the demon’s head, Cozy Glow started to drown.

An intrusive thought swam through her mind: second time today, The infinite healing water flooded down her nose and into her lungs. It plugged her ears. The corners of her vision swam. Her magic flickered. The familiar pang of her chest contracting in the absence of air set off alarm bells.

Except—wait. Those bells weren’t just in her head. The toll became a chorus. Then a cacophony. They were muted from traveling through layers of earth and water, but they were very real. And they were getting louder.

Cozy Glow started to swim up towards the light, but she was already starting to black out. She scrambled desperately at the exposed bedrock bone until wisps of red blood burst from her hooves. The light grew brighter. Her legs kicked furiously. Then they stopped working. She floated up, but too slow. Her vision closed to a pinprick of light.

She opened her mouth on reflex—and breathed in a lungful of dank, musty cave air. Her body didn’t know what to do. She vomited up a lungful of water, then the bread she stole from Clearwater’s pantry earlier that morning.

Her vision came back just in time to see the well ceiling buckle.

Fear took hold. She dove back beneath the living water. Earth rained down above her. Rocks the size of houses crushed the paralyzed demon, partially burying it in rubble. A particularly huge rock struck the demon’s head. Cozy heard its skull crack. Its head snapped sideways. More water buffeted her from side to side. She swallowed buckets of it, felt the taste turn from pure living water to a foul slurry of debris and bits of demon brain matter. She felt a chunk of something soft momentarily lodge itself in her nose. Then the force of the water cleared it, sent it down her throat and into her stomach.

The demon settled on its side amongst the ruins. Its skull split apart. The living water began to drain from the bottom. The vortex sucked Cozy Glow down to the bottom of the brain chamber, past its spinal cord, and finally out onto the jagged rocks of what had formerly been the center of L'épine.

She hit her head first on the lip of the demon’s fractured skull. Then a second time on the rocks below. The first hit actually saved her life, in a way. If it hadn’t concussed her, she wouldn’t have gone limp and ragdolled her way down the rest of the debris.

As she laid there, blood pouring from a dozen gashes in her head, she was momentarily blinded by a bright yellow light. For a moment, she thought she was dying. Then her eyes adjusted, and she realized she was looking at the sky. The sun was out. It was morning. The well ceiling had collapsed, taking the center of town down with it.

The church still stood.

At first, Cozy Glow couldn’t believe it. She thought her concussion was somehow making her see an afterimage of the church suspended in the air. But it was real. The church, however many hundreds of tons of polished stone and steel and glass, was balanced perfectly on the single pipe running down from the altar to the bottom of the well.

The town—what was left of it—came alive. Little dots of ponies appeared at the lip of the crater. A few almost fell in. Trumpet calls echoed through the mid-morning haze.

As Cozy Glow watched, the church door opened. A familiar pony peered out. Cozy Glow looked up at her. Their eyes met.

The pipe buckled.

Cozy Glow wondered if the collapse would ever end. The church just kept on falling, an endless crashing cascade of stone and glass. Only after what seemed like an eternity did the violence subside, leaving in its stead a silence more cavernous than the cavern in which she stood.

It’s not a cavern, she thought absently. She stepped over a hoof that had no owner. It’s a crater.

The church fell slightly sideways, spilling itself into one corner of the cave. Twisted steel spun out like fingers curling up from Tartarus. The tall arched roof had split down the middle like an exposed ribcage. In the center of the church, the decorated body of the high priestess laid beside the shattered well.

Rock dust lingered in the air. She tried holding her breath at first, but after being nearly drowned twice in a row, her body just wouldn’t let her. She breathed in the fine particles, felt them cake her throat and the inside of her nose. A wave of tiredness hit her, so intense she fell back onto her haunches. The sound of a landslide filled her ears. Stars cascaded over her eyes. She looked down at her hooves to try and steady herself. She saw the mushrooms enveloping her leg had all fallen off. Her fur on that leg was entirely gone. It looked like she’d taken a blowtorch to her leg and burned it all off.

Clearwater laid face down on a pile of shattered stained glass. She wasn’t moving.

Cozy Glow stood up slowly. She limped over to the demon’s exposed chest. Part of its rib cage had been cracked open by falling keystones. Bedrock bones jutted through the skin at impossible angles.

“Hey.” She patted the demon’s mossy hide. “Thought you were pretty smart, huh?” A joyless laugh escaped her. “Well, who’s the smart one now?”

Cozy Glow snapped her wings downward with enough force to cavitate the air. With her magic blades in place, she started slicing through the layers of moss covering the demon’s heart.

“Thought you could outsmart me?” she grunted. “Thought you could manipulate me—” She put a little extra into the next swing. “I scrubbed her floor so she’d love me. I wanted her to live.” Her voice rose. “You took her from me. You. Took her. I could have used her.” She swung wildly into its guts. “It’s so annoying. I need lackies.”

She reached the demon’s heart. An inequine howl rose from deep in her belly. The organ popped like a blister when she bit into it. It tasted of sweet decay, like rotting garbage and psychedelic cactus juice. She screamed and sobbed and stuffed herself until every last scrap had been devoured.

The town of L'épine was in such a panic that no one noticed Cozy Glow climb out of the sinkhole and slink off.

Chapter Three, part One: She Slays the Very Stars Themselves

Penumbra was getting paid an obscene number of bits to live out her childhood dream and elevate the scholarly efforts of her fellow batponies. Neither of those things made it any easier to get out of bed.

It was nearly evening. Work wouldn’t start for another hour, but as the team’s leader, Penumbra liked to get up early to get oriented. She wiped the sleep from her eyes as she stumbled from her suite. The observatory’s crew quarters were cavernous and designed without any windows. Penumbra loved it. That’s what happens when you actually consult batpony architects, she thought with a smile.

A long windowless hallway ended in a Y-shaped fork. Her sensitive ears picked up faint hoofsteps from the left. Probably Cozy Glow, the observatory’s sole pony worker, coming back from one of her long morning hikes in the surrounding mountains.

I’ll talk to her later. Penumbra turned right. The hallway opened up into a glass-walled corridor lined with dark laboratories. Each one was dedicated to one of the many various niche astrological fields the crew of the observatory studied. Penumbra passed them by in reverent silence. Walking down these halls was better for her mood than any steaming cup of coffee.

The crown jewel of the observatory was the largest mirror array in the world, a dazzlingly complex contraption made of hundreds of finely tuned discs of glass finished in vacuum-deposited aluminum. Every other lab depended on the array’s enormous data output. Their mission was lofty: solve the mysteries of the universe. Nothing less would suffice.

Penumbra picked up a checklist on a nearby work table and commenced evening inspections. She booted up the mirror aligners and found them already in good working order. Next she unfurled her wings and flew to the top portion of the array. This part tended to get a little gunky from exposure to the elements. But someone had already scraped it clean. The next item on the checklist was also complete. As was the one after that. It soon became clear her efforts were redundant. Someone had already gone through and completed the telescope’s pre-operations checklist.

Penumbra returned to the fork in the hallway. This time she went left. This corridor led to the observatory’s main reception area. On special occasions, this space would be filled with the heads of universities and important government liaisons dressed in tuxedos and waitstaff carrying hors d'oeuvres on fancy platters. Most of the time, it served as the crew’s living room.

The room was dark—another glorious windowless victory for the design team. The luxurious red carpet was all crumby from last week’s potato chip party. White suede couches bore cola stains across their backs. Wet laundry hung off the opened lid of the grand piano.

In the wet bar-turned makeshift kitchen, Penumbra saw Cozy Glow rifling through a tin of leftover jollof rice. The rice was at least a week old and clumped together into starchy rocks. Cozy found a few of the smaller ones and popped them into her mouth. Her jaw worked back and forth, grinding it down.

Penumbra waited until Cozy Glow had softened up the rice. Then she said in a loud voice, “How’s it taste?”

Cozy Glow painted the interior of the refrigerator with half-chewed rice. She whirled around only for her hooves to slip on the tile. She landed hard on her belly.

Penumbra caught the tray before it could fall and gave it a testing sniff. Fresh food was hard to come by this far up the mountain. The most recent investor conference had been almost a week ago, and the catering they’d left behind would only remain edible for so long. When the jollof rice was gone, it would be back to canned food.

“I take it the food’s only gotten worse since yesterday,” Penumbra said. She offered Cozy Glow a hoof up. “How are the slopes?”

“Abysmal,” Cozy Glow said. “I found one cave that led nowhere, then another that was too small to squeeze through.”

“You could just knock the rocks out with a hammer if you’re dead-set on getting down there.”

“Not without bringing half the mountain down on top of me.”

Penumbra nodded. She opened the freezer compartment. Inside were ice packs, some frozen burritos, chimicherrychangas, gak strips—basically nothing edible. She nosed through the detritus to the very back of the box. There, hidden behind the ice maker, was a pint of her favorite ice cream, Munchy Mare’s Raspberry Triple-Chocolate Obliterator.

“You worry me when you go caving by yourself,” Penumbra said. “It’s a silly way to sign your death warrant.”

“No need to worry! I can take care of myself.”

Penumbra grunted. “Good hikers can still get hurt.” She grabbed a tin of pre-ground espresso beans from the pantry. “Find anything good?”

“Rocks. Snow.” Cozy Glow shrugged. “When I find what I’m looking for, you’ll know.”

Penumbra took out a tin of espresso. “Breakfast of champions,” she muttered, more to herself than to Cozy Glow. She added the grounds to the kitchen’s fancy stainless steel espresso machine, then scooped ice cream into a decorative ceramic cup and placed it beneath the spout. A burble of steaming black liquid poured over the ice cream. Affooo-gatooo, Penumbra rolled the word around in her head as the heady smell of coffee filled her nose.

“I couldn’t help but notice someone did all the pre-checks in the main observatory,” Penumbra said. Her eyes remained focused on the espresso as it slowly melted the ice cream. “Did you see who might have done that?”

A wrinkle appeared in Cozy Glow’s forehead. “No. Sorry.”

“Well, whoever it was, that was very nice of them. They could teach me a thing or two about getting up early and getting the job done.” She shifted the cup from one hoof to another. “I called our sponsors. They’re going to see what they can do about getting you a paycheck.”

“I already told you—”

“Yes, I know, you don’t need it. But you do. You’re not much younger than me, but you’re so naive.”

“Believe me, that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“If you were smart, you’d leap on the chance to write a scathing letter to the director asking him why he hasn’t paid his best employee for an entire month.”

“Exactly. It’s only been a month. The parcel service doesn’t exactly do daily delivery up here.” Cozy Glow smiled. “I just wanna give him the benefit of the doubt, y’know?”

Penumbra noticed Cozy Glow was looking at her affogato. Without a second thought, she hoofed the cup over to her.

“Can I give you some advice?” Penumbra asked.

Cozy Glow took a sip. “Of course.”

“You’re not doing enough for yourself. Life is indifferent. You have to learn to be your own advocate.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re owed a debt, but no one is going to get it for you. You have to take it.”

Cozy Glow’s eyes turned down. She was quiet for a moment.

“Say that again,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

“You have to take it.”

Cozy Glow stared into the little melting island of ice cream land in the ever-expanding espresso ocean. “Thank you.”

Penumbra left to take care of some paperwork, leaving Cozy Glow to finish the affogato by herself. She hated sweets, but the bitterness from the coffee and the mild caffeine buzz made the drink tolerable.

The kitchen soon came alive as the rest of the research team rolled out of bed and prepared for the evening operations. She stepped outside to get away from the crowd. Within second, the liquid espresso in the decorative mug froze.

She stepped right up to the edge of the mountain and peered over. The trail that led from the valley below up to her isolated perch would have been invisible to the naked eye, had it not been for the trail of glowing magic outlining it against the white. She followed it with her eyes up the many rises and switchbacks, up to the ledge where it terminated at the front door of the observatory. The longer she looked, the further the sun set, the more pronounced the trail became. Her frown deepened. Ice crystalized on her eyelashes.

She had been working this god-forsaken outpost for a full month with nothing to show for it. The demon was out here—maybe it was right under her hooves—but she just couldn’t find it. This wasn’t like the other two trials. There were no convenient caverns beneath the facility hosting any giant demons. She knew. She’d checked.

Her eyes moved to the silhouette of the observatory, the dome, the bump of the telescope pointed towards the sky. She’d spent all this time searching for a cave. But what if the demon wasn’t in a cave? What if the magic trail had led her here for another reason? Something to do with the observatory itself?

A harsh gust of wind snapped her out of her thoughts. She took her frozen cup and trudged inside. It was worth a shot. She had to try something new. Anything.

Unlike the other team members, Cozy Glow didn’t have specific tasks to perform during the observatory’s nightly uptime. She spent the time scheming and napping, only shaking herself from her thoughts when the hands of the ornate golden clock in the main gallery passed four AM. The clock hadn’t chimed since one of the crew had filled its internal gear mechanism with cheez-whiz two weeks ago, so she made little bong sounds herself to pass the time. She listened as the crew made a pit-stop in the kitchen for dinner, then returned to their living quarters. She waited some more. Sometimes a few of them liked to do little late-night rendezvous with their fellow researchers.

The clock’s hands, lubricated generously with processed aerosol cheese, moved silently past the quarter of the hour.

Good enough. Cozy Glow stood up. Silent as a mouse, she snuck down the lab-lined corridor to the main observatory room. Normally, the observatory shutters would have made a horrible squeaking sound. But multiple weeks of Cozy Glow’s thorough pre-test checks, which just so happened to include lubricating the shutter tracks and wheels, meant they opened with barely a sound. The computers were all up to date and booted without issue—also her.

The telescope’s main signal booted up.

Cozy Glow stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do next. She settled on keying in a set of random coordinates. The telescope’s internal parts shifted. A light on the computer went yellow, then green. Cozy Glow peered through the lens.

At first, all she could see was darkness. She zoomed out slightly and saw a lone galaxy several hundred light years away. She zoomed out again, following the long arc of a gas pillar up a hundred light years and a hair to the left. She let the tapestry of the universe guide her hoof. She saw supernovae, black holes colliding, stars being born and killed.

It was beautiful. But none of it was what she was looking for.

She let herself wander aimlessly through the universe until a flashing light caught her eye. A pulsar, moving so fast it flickered in the lens. She zoomed out a little and realized it was one of three bright flashing stars stacked in a perfect triangle shape, as if set there by a master jeweler.

A smile creeped across Cozy Glow’s face. Hello. She zoomed out more. A line of stars took shape. The spiral arm of a galaxy torn apart by a rogue black hole formed a curved snout beneath the triangle—no, it was not a triangle, it was eyes, two on the bottom and a third in the center of a wide forehead. Clouds of gas formed an elongated, pointed horn. Cozy Glow zoomed out more. Galaxies formed the delicate curvature of a neck, and collarbones, and a back, impossibly slender and made of white dwarves. A system of a hundred red giants formed a beating heart. Wings of stardust flashed brilliantly against the black.

She zoomed all the way out. A constellation she had never seen before came at last into view. An alicorn made of stars, dominating the sky where none had been the night before.

The eyes began to flicker in unison. A pit formed in Cozy Glow’s stomach. The smile fell off her face. She tore herself away from the lens. Stupid, she chastised herself. Don’t be silly. She returned to the lens. The feeling of unease redoubled. She couldn’t shake the feeling that this constellation of a trillion different stars was somehow looking at her.

Then it blinked.

Cozy Glow launched herself away from the lens with so much force she cracked the glass wall behind her.

The following evening, Penumbra rolled out of bed and made her way to the telescope room. She booted up the mirror aligners only to find they hadn’t been updated. A faint line creased her forehead. She flew up to the top of the array and found the top part gunky and uncleaned. The rest of the items on the checklist were similarly not completed.

“Huh,” Penumbra said aloud.

While the rest of the team was still filing into the kitchen for their morning coffee, Penumbra went down into the basement, past the boilers and arcana crystals and chilled server rooms, to the little storage area in the back they’d insulated and repainted for use as a makeshift bedroom for Cozy Glow.

Penumbra knocked on the door. “Cozy? Cozy Glow?”

She tried the handle and found it wasn’t locked. She eased the door open. Cozy Glow was sitting on her bed, her back to the door. She mumbled incoherently to herself. She clutched a hoof-drawn star chart.

“Hey.” Penumbra knocked on the door, louder this time.

Cozy Glow snapped her head up. “Huh? Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed. “Hi Penumbra.”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah!” Cozy Glow put on a strained smile. “Awfully early for you to be up.”

“Morning pre-checks and all.”

Cozy Glow’s smile faltered. “Oh tarfeathers. Penumbra, I’m so sorry—the time just got away from me, and—”

“It’s fine, I covered it.”

Cozy Glow punched her mattress ineffectually. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been so preoccupied with—well—it’s not important.” She tucked the papers behind her. “I’m sorry you had to pick up my slack.”

“It’s literally my job. And it’s not technically your job to do those pre-checks, either.”

“Still.”

Penumbra asked if she could come in. Cozy said yes. Penumbra sat on the edge of her bed, the way her own mother used to when she was just a filly. Yikes, she thought, do they see me as the team mom? Ugh.

“You doing ok?” Penumbra asked.

“Yeah. Never better.”

“Are you feeling any isolation?”

“I have the whole team here.”

“All the same. It can sneak up on you, even if you’re careful.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m really fine.”

“I believe you. I also want to let you know that you’re entitled to two weeks of leave, and that doesn’t include the time you spend getting off the mountain. It starts when you hit base camp.”

“That sounds like a rule you came up with.”

Penumbra nodded. “It was. Everyone needs a break. This team works so effectively because we have measures in place to minimize burnout. This mountain’s no good for anyone in the long term.”

Cozy Glow looked like she was about to say something, but stopped short. One hoof went to her star chart, toying with the edge.

“Let’s say I were to take over the pre-checks for a bit. You’d get a few extra hours of sleep. You could hike some more. Does that sound good?”

“No, not really.”

“Then I’m ordering it.” Penumbra detected a note of motherly sternness in her voice. Jeez, she even sounded like her mom now. “I want to arrange a short vacation for you—”

“No.” Cozy Glow drew back. “The work’s not over.”

Penumbra smiled. “I like your spirit, kid. That’s why I’m ordering you to do it.”

“I don’t technically work here. I don’t have to take orders from you.”

“Then I’ll kick you out for trespassing. The choice is yours.”

For a second, it looked like Cozy Glow was about to break down. She balled up the drawing papers in her hoof. Her eyes unfocused. Then the moment passed, and her grip relaxed, and her eyes were back, sharp and clear as ever.

“At least keep me around until the next scheduled resupply,” Cozy Glow said. “That way we don’t have to drag the hauling team up here just for me.”

Penumbra nodded. “I can live with that. Until then, we’ll share pre-check duties. Sound good?”

“Yeah.” Cozy Glow worked her jaw back and forth. “Penumbra?”

“Yes?”

“I... uh...” She tapped her chin. “This is gonna sound so random. I’ve been thinking about how else I can contribute to the observatory. And I have this idea for a big project in my head. Something that’ll change the world.”

“Is that what you’re drawing?”

Cozy Glow nodded. “It’s not finished yet. But I was hoping to get your advice on it. At least, the planning of it. I’m running into a wall.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Okay. So let’s say...” Cozy Glow scrunched up her face in thought. “Let’s say there’s a significant investor out there. And the success of the project hinges on getting their eyeballs on the proposal. And I want her to come up here and see the project I’m making. Because that’s the only way the proposal will sway her—if she’s here, on the mountain. But she’s really busy, and doesn’t have time to come all the way up here for something that might not be worth her time. How do I convince her to come out?”

Penumbra considered the question for a minute. Then she said, “Force her hand. Show her an offer she can’t refuse.”

Slowly, like water freezing to ice, a smile crept across Cozy Glow’s face. “Yeah,” she said, her voice low and withered. “That’s a great idea, Penumbra.Thanks.”

Cozy Glow stopped going on hikes. While her batpony teammates worked, she sequestered herself away in her basement lair and plotted.

Show her an offer she can’t refuse. Penumbra’s advice brought forth a great burst of creativity. She couldn’t go into space and meet the demon on its home turf—her near-asphyxiation in the volcano was a painful reminder that her protection rune couldn’t supply her with a source of breathable air. What if she could somehow lure the demon to her? That would require bait of a magnitude Cozy Glow couldn’t conjur.

That is—until she realized she didn’t have to conjur anything.

The star demon was an alicorn—admittedly one made of stars, but an alicorn all the same. There were also alicorns—much more accessible alicorns—right here on earth.

One was in the crystal empire, surrounded by a populace as strong as they were suicidally zealous. Cadance was a powerful mage in her own right, as powerful as any demon. Fighting her without some kind of ace up her sleeve would be ill-advised.

So she turned her sights on the distant plains of Equestria. The nation was small, though mighty, with its alicorns and princesses and coffers full of gold and castles cast in marble and gems. The nation took part in no wars. Its citizens rarely ventured outside of its borders, except to export their entertainment and their designer sunglasses and their signature saccharin brand of friendship. The sisters of Canterlot had been bested before by forces within Cozy Glow’s purview. But again, all those defeats had come with some kind of trump card. Initiating a fight with them would be as simple as dangling a few of their subjects off the edge of Mount Canter. Finishing that fight—which would be two-on-one, by the way—would be another matter entirely.

That left the newest member of the alicorn family. Twilight Sparkle. She was powerful as any eldritch Canterlot princess, but her lack of experience made her weak. At least Celestia and Luna had a thousand years of perspective tempering their actions. Twilight Sparkle could barely solve friendship problems.

And wouldn't you know it—she was in the process of opening up an international school of friendship. They didn’t even check visas. They just let you in.

This was going to be easy.

Before she could enact her master plan, there was one final thing she had to do at the observatory.

She waited patiently for the batpony team to finish up their evening tasks and return to bed. Only once all the late-night rendezvous were complete and the only sound in the observatory was the soft howl of the wind outside did Cozy Glow make her way to the telescope room. She moved with deliberate, silent strides. Her mouth was set in an inscrutable line.

They couldn’t know about the star demon. Maybe the team wasn’t able to see it. Some of the team had been working the observatory for over five years. If they hadn’t already seen the demon up there, they were unlikely to find it now.

But she couldn’t take that chance. Not with what was at stake. She just couldn’t leave this thread unsevered.

During Cozy Glow’s many fruitless searches of the facility for a secret space big enough to hold a demon, she had came across something else: the observatory’s fire suppression system. It held enough liquid foam to smother a small pan fire in the kitchen. Beyond that, it was useless. It was a fatal flaw, but one easily overlooked. The batpony architects had probably been so preoccupied with their crusade against natural light they had simply left the system as an afterthought.

Cozy Glow thanked the batpony design team for their gift. Then she trundled outside to siphon the gas from the emergency generators. The luxurious great room carpet would serve as the perfect fuel, but it needed a little something to get things going. Just a little nudge.

Chapter Three, part Two: She Slays the Most Dangerous Demon In The World

Cozy Glow always thought that, after she gained the power to destroy the world and took her place as the world’s unquestioned monarch, she would be immortalized in stone.

This was not what she had in mind.

With the great battle between herself and Twilight Sparkle complete, Cozy Glow had time to reflect from her new prison of stone. The immobility of her body combined with her conscious mind quickly made her spiral into consecutive panic attacks. She felt her heart not beat, her lungs not move. She felt like ancient wine in a jar, all the heartening alcohol turned to poison, all the meaningful moving parts reduced to solids, never to be drunk. And of course she had to be trapped next to her idiot co-conspirators. Damn Grogar and his bell.

That night, she stared down the alicorn in the stars.

It appeared without warning, The sun set, and the stars came out, and there it was. No fanfare. No great cataclysm. It simply hung there in the sky, its three-eyed face staring down at her in inscrutable silence.

A tense staredown ensued. The demon, with its eyes made of stars, couldn’t blink. Cozy Glow, frozen in stone, couldn’t blink either. Their staredown could have lasted forever.

The star demon finally broke the silence. It flapped its wings and floated down to earth. It was smaller than the other two demons—perhaps twice as tall as Celestia. Still religiously impressive. Its body shimmered with rippling stars and miniature galaxies like an ursa. The space in between glowed like twilight.

Its voice was a void, a release of energy in a vacuum. Black holes colliding in deep space. “I hope you’re satisfied.”

Cozy Glow really wished her mouth wasn’t frozen.

“After everything you’ve done, I see no reason to trust you with forgiveness. You had so many opportunities to see the error of your ways. You failed so many times.” It marched around her in a slow circle. “Many mortals spend their whole lives wallowing in failure. They only see the light at the last moment. I celebrate those mortals. Even at the brink of death, their hearts remain open to change. To love.” It stopped somewhere behind her where Cozy Glow couldn’t see. It put its lips to her stone ear and whispered, “I don’t think you’re one of them.”

A scream rose up from the depth of Cozy Glow’s chest—except it didn’t. She was stone all the way through. Nothing vibrated. Nothing moved. Only her mind was free to rage.

“I pity you,” the demon said. “You are a rat in a sticky trap. You twist and turn and all you succeed in doing is burrowing deeper into the glue. You lack perspective. If you had that, you might begin to understand.”

Cozy Glow wanted to say, “Tell that to your friends I ate, weirdo.” But she couldn’t.

“Before I carry out my judgment, I would like to show you what mercy feels like. You don’t deserve it, but that’s not the point.”

The demon’s ethereal horn flared to life. Glimmering white magic enrobed Cozy Glow. Warmth spread through her body. Cozy Glow’s mind recoiled, overcome with shock and adrenaline. She was so cold. She hadn’t even realized it until now. She was desperately, hopelessly cold, and the alicorn demon’s magic was the sole source of warmth in this entire frozen wasteland of a world. For once, she was glad she was encased in stone. She would have wrapped herself around the star demon’s leg and wept if she could move.

The magic worked its way through her body, restarting her heart and inflating her lungs. The stone of her face turned back into skin. Her dry eyes blinked. The scream trapped in her lungs since she’d been turned to stone came out in a choked rasp.

The magic releasing her from her prison stopped at her neck. She could move her head a little. That was it.

Cozy Glow sucked in a breath of fresh air. The feeling sent a jolt of alarm through her brain. Part of her was moving, but part of her couldn’t. The next breath hitched in her throat. Adrenaline flooded her brain. I’m paralyzed, she thought, and she knew it wasn’t true, but the part of her brain that operated on instinct could feel her face and nothing else. The body assumed injury. The panic worsened.

Panic bloomed like a poisonous flower. Cozy Glow snarled at the alicorn demon. “I’ll eat you.” Her words slurred into sobs. “I’m a god. I’m a god. I’m—”

“So you say.”

The star demon cut off its magic. The cold again swept over Cozy Glow, a desperate, lonely chill. She tried to scream, but she was already stone.

From the depths of shadow beneath her wings, the star demon pulled a knife.

No. Cozy Glow raged against the magic binding her in place. But the spell held true. All she could do was watch as the star demon stepped in front of her and gripped the blade in one hoof. Its grip glowed with stardust. The tip shimmered with primordial radiation.

“You are no god, Cozy Glow.” The demon stepped forward. “You are a demon. Your lust for power has plagued this world for too long. If you are not stopped, more will die. For this, I will kill you myself.”

Cozy Glow would have tensed if she could have. Her frozen muscles screamed to move. Fight. Anything. But she was trapped, a target nailed to a board. She didn’t stand a chance.

The star demon drove the stardust dagger into Cozy Glow’s heart.

The power of the blade shattered the imprisonment spell. Stone snapped back to skin. Flesh reformed around the dagger. The stone bodies of her idiot co-conspirators shattered into dust. She inhaled a lungful of it and choked.

Cozy Glow collapsed. She lifted her head up to look at the knife protruding from her chest. The blood came a second later, beading around the blade.

“You... can’t...” Cozy Glow couldn’t speak. Some unseen force was constricting her chest. Bubbles formed where the tip of the dagger met skin. She forced herself to breathe, but all she could manage was a wheeze. The dagger burned inside her. Her insides were on fire. “No,” she struggled to say. “I’m a god.”

The star demon took a step towards her. Cozy Glow scrambled away. She tried to stand, but her legs couldn’t hold weight. The impact jostled the blade and sent a fresh wave of pain ripping through her. She cried out.

“I didn’t want this,” the star demon said in an unwavering voice. “I’m sorry.”

A surge of rage filled Cozy Glow’s belly with fire. She dragged herself to her hooves and threw a haymaker at the star demon. Her hoof passed right through its snout like it wasn’t even there. Stars shimmered, dispersed, and reformed. The momentum of the punch sent Cozy Glow toppling over. She landed hard. Tears leapt from her eyes. Her vision closed to a pinpoint. She tried to grab the knife, but her hoof passed through that too.

Must be made of magic, she thought to herself. Tough luck. Her breathing started to slow. Her limbs trembled. The light faded. Her magic slipped away like vapor. So close. She—

Wait.

Magic.

Of course.

“Mom.” Cozy Glow summoned the loudest voice she could muster. “Mom,” she said again. She hacked out a clot of blood and swooned. “Help me. Mom. Help.”

The star demon flinched. Yes. Her face twisted in a mad grimace. “Mommy,” she cried out, writhing on the ground, kicking up dirt. She felt more blood in her mouth and spat it out. It rolled down her chin and painted her chest, mingling with the blood from the knife wound. Two tones of red mingled on her pale fur. “Moooom.”

The alicorn turned away.

Cozy Glow struck.

She snapped her wings upward with enough force to cavitate the air. Magic formed on her wingtips. She drew the protection rune in the air above her, then pumped her wings down and launched herself through it. A jolt of electricity coursed through her. Her outline glowed pale blue.

She touched the blade. her hoof didn’t go through it—but that was where the good news ended. The stardust was alive with radioactive energy and hotter than the surface of the sun. Clumps of fur sloughed off where she touched it.

No time for hesitation. The star demon was turning around, alerted by the crack of Cozy Glow’s wings. Cozy Glow bared her teeth and gripped the stardust blade. Skin sizzled. She yanked hard, trying to keep the blade straight so as not to further damage her heart. The blade started to slide out, bit by agonizing bit. A growl morphed into a scream. Electricity leapt from the blade and scarred her arms and face. She gripped the blade with her other front hoof. The smell of burning fur invaded her nose. Blood spurted across her face in time with her frantic heartbeats. She tasted it and gagged. So close. One more pull and it would be free. So close—

The blade came free. She would have dropped it, had her skin not become partially-welded to the hilt. A fountain of blood erupted from the gaping hole in her chest. Patches of her fur were on fire, but a terrible creeping coldness crept up her legs. Her vision closed in. She had seconds left to live.

With a furious roar like an alicorn’s royal voice, Cozy Glow pumped her wings and lunged with the knife outstretched in front of her, aiming straight for the star demon’s third eye.

Her aim was true. The eye—a marble-sized star—exploded in a blinding supernova. Dozens of orbiting planets flew off in every direction, destined for a slow dark death in the void.

The star demon let out a piercing metal-on-metal shriek. Its remaining two star eyes exploded, sloughing off their outer layers in brilliant waves of color before fading to dim cores. It didn’t fall so much as it fell apart. Stars cascaded across the ground, sending up little plumes of smoke where their heat lit the grass on fire.

Cozy Glow had no time to waste. She pounced on the body. Already her vision was fading. Blood still poured from her chest. Her victory would mean nothing if she didn’t get the demon’s heart. She located the brightest star in the puddle of galaxies that used to be its chest, a pulsar spinning at the rate of a pony heartbeat. More blood leaked from Cozy Glow’s mouth. She coughed and couldn’t get her breath back. Her thoughts grew sluggish. The light was going out. Now or never.

She sank her teeth into its still-pulsing heart.

The star let out a scream like molten glass being quenched in water. An explosion of energy sent shockwaves through Cozy Glow’s body. One molar exploded with a dry pop. Then another. The top layer of skin sloughed off her upper palate. Her tongue was cauterized instantly.

A new sound filled the air: magic, and a lot of it. Cozy Glow looked down and saw her wounds knitting themselves shut. Muscles reached out like so many vines snaking up a fence, searching for purchase, finding bones, reknotting, intertwining. She sucked in a gasp of air and felt her lung recompressing. A glorious roar escaped her. Lightning arced from her wingtips. Her mane burned. Her heart beat furiously in her chest, harder and faster than it ever had before. The feeling of life filled her. She flung herself into the air.

“I’m a god!” she cried in a voice that was both hers and the star demon’s. “I’m a god!”

She pointed a hoof at a nearby outcropping of rock. Lightning leapt from her hooftip. The rock vanished into a cloud of dust. She flapped her wings and broke the sound barrier. It was practically teleporting. One second, she was in the Canterlot sculpture garden. The next, she was half a mile above the city.

She steadied her breathing. Lightning was good. Powerful wings were sexy. But neither of those things were what she craved. The power to control the world. She fought for it. She killed for it. She nearly died for it. Now it was hers.

Except, it wasn’t.

Her heart was beating out of her chest. Her wingtips bristled with energy. Every cell felt alive, immortal, free. But she was still the came Cozy Glow as before. More powerful, yes. But she’d felt the power of an alicorn when she was being sealed in stone. That power was the weight of a galaxy. This was a pinprick of light in comparison.

Cozy Glow grew angry. She lashed out at nothing. Miles below her, the top of mount Canter crumbled. A howl of rage welled up inside her. It traveled all the way around the world and echoed from behind her. This wasn’t enough power. Where was the power? She wasn’t a god. Not yet.

She needed to go further. Yes. Her lips parted, revealing pointed predator’s teeth. More. She needed more. She thought back to the Secretkeeper’s proverb:

Only then will your heart be transubstantiated into that which ends the world.

She laughed. Forests bent and swayed in the wind. Of course. The proverb was literal. Her heart was the key. Her heart.

She put her hoof to her chest. Doubt flashed through her mind. But she couldn’t give in. Not now. She had already come so far. What was one more step?

She flapped her wings once and shot down to where the star demon’s body lay. Her landing nearly dislodged Canterlot from its foundations. Canterlot Castle crumbled around her. A scream went up throughout the city. The sound made Cozy Glow smile. Those were her future vassals. Her pawns. Her playthings.

She picked up the star knife from the dirt. Its hilt no longer burned her. She flipped it around, set the blade just beneath the left side of her rib cage, and pushed. The blade slipped without resistance. She drew it partway across her sternum. Again there was no resistance—but this time there was blood. Torrents of it. It gushed from her like a fountain in the great garden. A tide of it swept over the stones. It pooled, rising past her hocks.

Her blood was infinite, she realized. She was infinite. She was a god.

She stuck her arm into her chest cavity and gripped her own heart. The heart of a living god.

“Power!” she cried. “Give me power!”

She wrenched out her own heart and devoured it.

Epilogue

The observatory fire moved too slowly to be of any real danger. No, the real danger was the smoke.

Two of the fourteen observatory staff—dedicated scientists, renowned writers of peer-reviewed literature, friends to many—were smothered by smoke in their sleep. By the time the fire alarms finally went off, there was nothing any of the remaining twelve could do but grab their parkas and dash into the freezing night. The fire suppression system served only to make their only escape route slick with an ineffectual layer of foam.

Outside, huddled together against the bite of the wind, they heard the telescope’s mirror pieces crack and pop like so many kernels of popcorn on a searing red plate. A horrible groan signaled the mount listing and finally succumbing to the sea of flames. The main power source exploded. The backup generators whirred to life, sputtered, and died. The lights went out.

Their choices were limited: stay put and freeze to death, or attempt to fly down the mountain through winds strong enough to rip the wings off their backs.

The team looked to Penumbra. A jolt of fear shot down her spine, deeper than any chill. She was the leader. She had to make a call. Panic felt a lot like hypothermia, she realized.

“Well,” she finally said, “I’m scared of freezing to death.” She unfurled her wings, testing the air. “Let’s die in the air. Like bats.”

Penumbra took the lead. The other eleven followed. Without light, there was no way to tell up from down. Ice accumulated on their eyes and froze the leather of their wings stiff. The wind pushed them bodily into the mountain. Blood gushed from open wounds and fell into pitch blackness. Ponies screamed in the night. The night screamed back.

Penumbra dislocated both her wings early on. She also lost her hat somewhere along the way. She’d go on to lose both ears to frostbite. But she got all eleven colleagues down alive.

As she gathered the remnants of her team together at the base of the mountain, she looked up at just the right moment to catch a rare break in the clouds. The observatory glittered atop the mountain like a burning star.

When Penumbra wrote her account of the disaster for the authorities, she listed Cozy Glow’s name along with the other two scientists who had perished. Cozy Glow had been a last-minute addition to the team—an unsanctioned, unfunded, unapproved hitchhiker. She had also been one of the hardest workers on the team, a truly enthusiastic learner with a passion for space equal to any hardened astronomer. With a little string-pulling in the administration department, Penumbra was able to quietly retcon Cozy Glow into the academic roster as a doctoral student. An honorary PhD was the least she deserved.

Penumbra took an extended leave of absence to heal her body and mind. She was several hundred miles away from Canterlot when she felt the tremor. Once again, the night sky gained a burning star.

Canterlot was still burning when she arrived at the doors of her alma mater, Canterlot University, three days later. The campus had been spared the worst of the damage. The astrology department’s prized refraction-mirror had been knocked out of its housing, and most of its reflective mirrors had been shattered. Repairs would take years. But no students, staff, or faculty had died. The same couldn’t be said for the surrounding neighborhood.

Penumbra threw herself into the reconstruction efforts—after submitting notice that she would be cutting her leave short and would need to start getting paid again, effective immediately.

One long and lonesome night, Penumbra was under the hub of a large motor screwing a delicate gear into place. A colleague, an astronomer named Sunrise, was seated on the other side of the motor, working on another component of the motor. The sound of their tools echoed in the cavernous workroom.

Something that had been working its way around Penumbra’s mind finally bubbled to the surface. “Hey, Sunny?”

“Yes, doctor?”

Penumbra rolled her eyes. Doctor. So formal. “Was it really a meteor?”

“What do you mean?”

“The thing that almost knocked Canterlot off the mountain. Was it really a meteor?”

“Of course it was. That’s what the princesses said.”

“Right, right. Buuut, if it was really a meteor, wouldn’t the team have seen it coming?”

“Some things slip through. Meteors can be too dark to see. Or they can move too fast to be tracked accurately.”

“True.”

Sunrise raised an eyebrow. “Do you think it was something else, doctor?”

“No. I don’t know. I overheard some of the grad students discussing alternative theories.”

“Alternative theories? You mean conspiracy theories.”

Penumbra chuckled.

Sunrise set his tools down and walked around the engine to look Penumbra in the eye. “Which grad students, doctor?”

“I don’t know. There were a few of them.”

“Describe them to me.”

“Sunny, don’t do this.”

“This is no laughing matter. Ponies died.”

“Then be mad at me,” Penumbra said. “I’m sorry for laughing. Don’t pick a fight over it.”

“There are no alternative theories to what happened that day. Only baseless conspiracy theories.”

“The princesses have lied before.”

Sunrise’s eye twitched. “You weren’t here. You didn’t see it.”

Penumbra bit her tongue before she could say, Seems like no one did. “You’re right. I’m letting my mind wander. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Entertaining a dangerous conspiracy theory is not something you can just wave away. Do you seriously believe the princesses would lie about something like this?”

“I don’t know—no, I guess not.”

“That’s not good enough. I was here, doctor. Two of my neighbors got killed. My mom had a chandelier fall on her. She was in the hospital for a month.”

“Oh. Sunny, I didn’t know that. I’m—”

“Did you even stop for a second to consider the things the meteor broke besides the telescope? Doctor?”

He almost hissed the last word. Doctor of sticking her hoof in her mouth, she thought. “Sunny—”

“Look, let’s just drop it and get back to work.”

“No. Sunny, I’m sorry, okay? Really. I didn’t know. I don’t really believe that stuff. And I certainly didn’t intend to poke a sore spot.”

Sunrise slowly unwound the tension in his shoulders. “Okay. Apology accepted.” Moving slower than before, Sunrise shuffled back to his spot on the other side of the motor. Penumbra couldn't see him. But she relaxed when she heard the sound of his tools tinkering away again.

After a few minutes of silence, Sunrise spoke up. “What did the grad students say?”

Penumbra pursed her lips together. “It was pretty dark.”

“These are dark times, doctor.”

Penumbra sighed. “Apparently, someone heard from a royal guard friend of theirs that they found a body right at the point of impact.”

“That’s not possible. They would be vaporized.”

“Yes. Apparently, it was completely unscathed, except the heart was cut out. Like a ritual sacrifice. They found bits of it in between her teeth.”

“That’s—that—” Sunrise’s voice became strained. “That’s not—”

“That’s not possible,” Penumbra jumped in. “It’s just a stupid rumor. You know how these kids can get.”

An audible sigh came from the other side of the motor. “I ought to report this to the administration.”

Penumbra risked a joke. “Maybe you should give your students less homework. They’re clearly sleep deprived.”

The scrape of tools stopped. A moment of tense silence passed. Penumbra silently held her breath.

The scrape of tools resumed. Sunrise gave a low chuckle. “Perhaps you’re right.”

The town of L'épine never recovered from the disaster that befell it. Those who survived were scattered, their faith shaken and their lives uprooted. The healing well that had sustained them for centuries had been consumed. They would spend the rest of their lives constructing new myths to explain that fateful day.

Clarity, mother of the late Clearwater, spent the months after her daughter’s death trying to make sense of it all. A piece of her heart went down in that crater, a piece she could never recover. She hadn’t just lost a daughter—she had lost a charge, too. Cozy Glow was listed among the missing, presumed dead. Clarity spent weeks wandering around town dressed in black. Sometimes she fasted. Sometimes she prayed. Mostly she sat at the lip of the crater that had consumed her life.

Prayers are never answered in straightforward ways. Clarity’s prayers were answered in the form of a crier arriving from out of town. He circled the dirt road that had been built around the crater, stopping a stone’s throw from where Clarity sat.

He took a minute to catch his breath as a crowd formed around him. Then he announced his news: Canterlot had been attacked. The princesses were urging every healer and builder who heard this message to head to Canterlot to help the wounded and assist in reconstruction.

Few stepped forward. The town, already put through their own nightmare, was hesitant to help. Clarity was just processing the information when she realized she was on her hooves. She moved with purpose she hadn’t felt in months, walking to where the crier stood and announcing in a loud and clear voice, “I’ll go.”

An hour later, she was off, the remnants of her life packed into a single saddlebag. She left her empty cottage and whatever was left of her old life behind her. Let what hasn’t rotted, rot, she thought.

As she passed the town limits, she swore to herself she’d never come back. She cursed the town and all the destruction and pain it had wrought her. The town of L'épine receded into her past, never to return.

Canterlot, by comparison, was not faring much better. The city’s gorgeous architecture, the proud spiraling Saddle Arabian-inspired spires capped with shimmering gold, were reduced in number by half. A haze of stone dust clung to the city. Rockslides were a daily occurrence. Most of the town’s earth ponies, along with a fair number of unicorns, streamed out of the city. Others persevered. The fear of falling impacted the flightless in many different ways. The two most common were pragmatism and dogged denial.

Precious days had passed since the initial disaster, yet the need for doctors and healers was just as high as ever. Clarity was immediately sent to a temporary hospital erected against the western exterior wall of the castle. She was setting broken bones and running medical supplies within five minutes of arriving. There were dozens of patients for every healer. She didn’t have time to think. It felt good.

Rumors flowed from room to room. Some thought the disaster had been brought on by the arrival of a new alicorn. Others were convinced one of the princesses went rogue, a la Nightmare Moon. One older mare sporting a gnarly concussion even claimed it was a beast from the stars.

Clarity paid them little mind. She wasn’t here to spread rumors. She was here to help. And that’s exactly what she did.

To say professor Pixkin was happy with the outcome of his expedition was like saying non-foliated metamorphic rock was the same as foliated metamorphic rock. It wasn’t.

Pixkin made it off the volcano. Most of his equipment, including all of his remaining samples, did not. It would have been impossible for the aging professor to carry back his many samples and crystals and measuring devices all the way down the side of the mountain. An entire year’s worth of extensive private funding went up in smoke somewhere on the south face of the volcano, left in a neat pile like a sacrifice to the monsters that lurked below.

He left Cozy Glow—and her bizarre apparent suicide—out of his final report. A death in the log books meant official investigations and governmental investigations. He wasn’t afraid of investigations. What really kept him up at night was the thought of word getting out. A death, even a suicide like Cozy Glow’s, would be forever linked to his enchantments. His dreams would be shattered like so many bones against the magma river—turned to dust, unworthy of even being eaten by the pyroclastic flow.

But it took more than watching a crazy mare throw herself into a volcano to keep professor Pixkin down. He was back at New Yorky-Terrier University the very next semester, picking favorites and doling out busy work to grad students. He was there the day Canterlot was destroyed.

He was in class at the time, lecturing about pyrite with his usual boundless zeal, when two royal guards in full armor walked in the room. They approached the desk and whispered in his ear, “The princesses request your presence. Lives are at stake. Do not appear alarmed or you’ll scare your students.”

The professor’s wig nearly shot off his head. “The princesses?”

In just a few short hours’ time he was touching down on the south lawn of Canterlot palace, courtesy of a private royal guard chariot ride. Not that he could see where he was—the entire city was completely shrouded in smoke.

The briefing was short and to the point: the city had been hit by a meteor, which exploded in the north gardens. Many of the foundation pillars that connected the city to the mountain had sustained damage. Some had broken entirely. He was being brought on to help survey the damage, as well as assess the integrity of the mountain in preparation for drilling new supports.

The scale was monumental. A full half of the stone and concrete supports had shattered. The process of reconstruction would take decades.

Still—with new challenges came new opportunities. And what better testimonial for the efficacy of his enchantments? This was a project truly befitting his talents. Shoes were small potatoes in comparison.

On his first day on the job, a cadre of royal guards led him through the ruins of the north gardens. Almost none of the grand architecture in the immediate vicinity had survived. The famous topiary had all been vaporized. The stone tiles marking the old walking paths were all reduced to jagged rubble. Pieces of so many statues littered the ground. A low cloud of dust lingered in the air. The ground felt sticky and had a faint red tint to it.

“This doesn’t make sense,” professor Pixkin said to the guards escorting him. “A meteor would have punched through the city like it was paper mache. The odds of it exploding just above the ground are astronomically low.” He blinked away rock dust. “No pun intended.”

The guards exchanged a look, but said nothing.

One of professor Pixkin’s white eyebrows rose. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“That,” replied one of the guards, “is none of your concern.”

Prologue: She Slays Rock Hard Ethereal Gatekeepers

Cozy Glow poured her magic into her wings. She snapped them down with enough speed to cavitate the air. A glaive of magical energy shot from her wingtips and slammed into the Secretkeeper’s chest. The golem let out a scream like stars being shredded in a black hole. Then its body disintegrated into a million fragments of stone.

Buried in the rubble of her defeated foe was a simple parchment scroll. The ink shifted before her eyes, cycling through a dozen dead languages before finally settling on modern Equish.

Cozy Glow reclined atop a smooth, flat boulder that had once made up part of the Secretkeeper’s stomach. She squinted at the words on the parchment. Then she squinted a little harder.

“Tranbu... trasbu... transus—ugh.”

She set the parchment down roughly and hopped down to her saddlebags. She scrambled back up the rocks, cursing around the pocket dictionary clamped in her teeth.

The scroll read, Stop reading. Save yourself. The blood of your loved ones and their yet-born kin of a thousand generations will wash over you. You will drown in it, yet you will not die. You will drown for a thousand years—

“Drama, whatever.” Cozy skipped to the next paragraph.

The heart of one wicked soul will never outweigh the harmony of collective. Only in legion will the wicked one devour the world. Three hold the key. Destroy them and consume their hearts. Only when you feel their sinew snap between your teeth and their muscles burn the pits of your stomach will your heart be—

Cozy paused and looked over to the pocket dictionary. “Trans... sub.. stan... tiated. Transubstantiated. Geez.”

—will your heart be transubstantiated into that which ends the world.

Beneath the warning was a rune in the rough shape of an ouroboros. Cozy Glow committed the rune to memory, then set to practicing it. She lashed out with her wing fast enough to cavitate the air. Magic coalesced on her wingtip. She drew the rune in the air. It glowed pink, then blue, then black. A winding trail of magic, sparkling like so many fireflies, appeared on the ground, leading towards the entrance of the forest.

All around her, the mists surrounding the Secretkeeper’s otherworldly home were fading away. She looked out hungrily at the night sky above her, all those millions of stars. They would be the jewels of her crown. They were hers. They—

The stones beneath her shifted. Cozy Glow went tumbling down the abdomen of the secret keeper. She smacked her head a dozen times on the way down. Each impact was enough to cripple her, if not kill her outright. Cozy Glow did not die, however. At every impact, a glowing pink shield appeared, absorbing the blow.

The final bone-jarring impact on the ground knocked the wind out of her. She sat up slowly, wheezing, bruised, but alive. The guide spell was also a shield. How convenient. She filed that tidbit away for later.

She bared her teeth at the dead Secretkeeper. She tried to scream at it, but all that came out was a squeak. The impotent sound cast her into a blinding rage. Her hoof found a small stone that had once been a part of the golem’s liver, and she chucked it squarely at the dead demigod’s head.