The Twilight Potion

Foreword by Dawning Starlight:

At first glance, it seems that a potion that transforms normal ponies (similar creatures withstanding) into an Alicorn avatar ought to be impossible. Unlike the transformation to, say, a dragon or a kirin, beings whose average levels of innate magic (AIM) are not so dissimilar that the energy required to sate the minimum requirements for existence could be easily supplied over the few seconds that a potion has to act, Alicorns require energy of another order of magnitude that is impossible to supply in a safe manner.

Apologies. That was a very long sentence.

Imagine a healthy pony of average build and activity. This average pony, whether unicorn, pegasus, or earth, contains the same AIM level, and to increase it to that of a kirin might require a fair infusion of mana and a small calorie burn- the directives of which can all be contained within a flask no larger than ninety milliliters. The subsequent jump between kirin to Alicorn is several thousand times more vast.

The first roadblock in its impossibility is the sheer magnitude of liquid mana it would require to satisfy the magic state. As you most likely know, potions must be fully consumed within thirty seconds or the enchanted liquid binding the empowering elements- mana in this case- begins to be metabolized, the spell becomes likely to fizzle, and the unused mana causes horrifying bouts of violent diarrhea. In all my travels and insights, I have never met a pony capable of downing several gallons worth of mana potion within thirty seconds, and very few who could entertain holding up a jug that severely heavy.

The second roadblock is the question of power transfer. After the potion is consumed, the spell must begin and finish quickly so the magic within the being does not degrade its process. Thus, the energy to complete the AIM jump of pony to Alicorn must be transferred through the body of the subject in a terse time frame.

Researchers have theorized, in an apparent solution to both problems, that a pony might be tied to a lightning rod and drink the uninfused potion at the precise moment they are struck by lightning. Disregarding the fact that this approach only provides 10% of the energy required to complete the transformation, the end result of a pony-sized ash pile illustrates quite clearly the problem of roadblock two.

That is where conventional research lets infinite power lie. No sane magician to date dares to pursue the clearly foolhardy cause of super strength, wings, and a horn…

Because they are all wimps without law degrees. As a lawyer, I am aware that even the most immutable of ethics laws have their workarounds, loopholes, and grayfields; magic is no different.

Recovered debris of an ancient changeling artifact reveals the possibility of changing a pony from an empowered Alicorn to a disempowered, lower form and back again. In the process, the entire genetic footprint of the subject Alicorn changed, being visually and audibly unrecognizable; biologically a different pony altogether and retaining only the cutie mark. It was from this state that the amulet could then transform the disguised pony back into her original form, fully empowered and most notably, alive. It would seem as though transforming any given pony into the biological twin of another pony who is already an Alicorn causes a magical hiccup that forces their bodies to simply assume their AIM status is as high as it ought to be, circumventing the difficulties of attempting to transform the subject to an Alicorn in their own likeness.

Okay, yes. I stole Princess Celestia’s changeling amulet from the School of Magic before it could be destroyed. Full disclosure, I copied down the enchantment into a cellar’s worth of magical primers and tested out my transformation theory over trials worth forty gallons of Twilight’s blood. …But it works! I haven’t quite figured out how to change the Alicorn ponies into Alicorn versions of themselves after the initial transformation, so they all just look like Twilight, but hey, it’s more than the last thousand years’ worth of artificers could come up with! So… No hard feelings?

“Dawny, could you please loosen these chains?” Princess Twilight whined, trying to shift the enormous, inch-thick chains that banded her wings and held each of her four limbs tautly out in a spread eagle position. “Remove the wing band, maybe? It’s starting to make me a little antsy…”

The fact that the chains were connected to the rusty gears of an old prison rack weren’t exactly helping her nerves.

“Princess,” the mad warlock glanced placidly up from her cluttered workbench and set down a bowl filled with potion. “If you were a pegasus, a unicorn, or an earth pony, this wouldn’t be such a problem.” The purple earth pony gestured to her hoof manacles, the clamplike wing band, and the small brick that sheathed Twilight’s horn and strapped down around her face like a topsy-turvy gag. “And you know testing lust potions requires this level of security. You’re not you when you’re lusty, and the entire town does not want to know who you become.”

Dawning Starlight’s laboratory underneath the Castle of Friendship was where ponies went for exotic brews, both of the drinking variety and of the spiking-somepony-else’s-drink variety. There were, of course, other suppliers, but as a researcher and the security chief of the country, Dawning Starlight tended to have the freshest and most innovative stock, and when ethics precluded the sale of certain products, most could count on Dawny to have no scruples whatsoever.

Plus, most ponies didn’t exactly relish in having limericks spat at them while they buy intimate gear.

The need for the lab and the associated paper trail to be hidden meant that, even though she was technically a royal officer, Dawny essentially lived and worked in a dungeon. Despite the fact that her equipment consisted mostly of rickety hand-me-downs from various magic academies and arcane curios from Zecora’s workshop, the studies of the purple earth pony alone gave her the edge she needed to go about her work- with one notable exception.

“But lust potions influence a pony’s emotional state,” Twilight countered. “If I’m in a sore, bad mood, the potion won’t be as effective, right?”

The orange gem that sat in the place of Dawny’s right eye swiveled around to reveal a deep blue moonstone, and a scan of moonlight washed over Twilight as her security chief read her every intention. The moonstone swiveled back around to the sunstone, which glowed as a flare of yellow spirited up another length of chain and squeezed it tightly around Twilight’s barrel.

“Manipulation isn’t a good look on you, boss,” the purple earth pony tsked, ignoring her Princess’s yelp of discomfort. “Especially not before the potion.”

“Did you at least finish setting up the kit yet?” She groaned.

“Not yet. Now hush.”

Potion kits, while not unheard of, were a rather exotic complication in which the customer often ended up mixing the potion themselves, usually with some exotic ingredient that only they would have access to. Most potions, from lust potions to complicated transformation elixirs, were produced and sold as-is, since all that was required was to produce a general effect. For lust potions especially, this practice had led to some… misfires.

Twilight had agonized over using these in her personal life for that every reason and had been mortified to learn that her princely brother and sister-in-law were such avid customers of the trade. To her, it was only a matter of time before some terrible accident might befall the use of these libido-boosters and some poor bystander that ended up as collateral damage, and smear their reign over the Crystal Empire.

That had been the catalyst for the Homing Lust potion, the working prototype of which came in a discreet cardboard box, and had to be mixed on hand. The crucial difference between this brew and any other of a dozen brand-named lusters was that when the mane of any particular target was added to the mixture, the pony who drank it developed stirrings for them- and only them. Castle maids rejoice in newfound safety.

“Wait, is that Shining Armor’s mane?” Twilight squeaked. “Could we, I don’t know… Use somepony else’s?”

“No,” Dawning Starlight never looked up from the simple cup where she percolated the potion, the silky white mane of Twilight’s brother already dissolving into the mix.

“Can I ask why?” Twilight usually never cracked a certain level of shrill petulance when presuming to command others. The prospect of falling head-over-hooves in love for her brother seemed to crack that emergency glass.

“I have a few mane samples at the moment other than my own,” Dawny murmured, her eye glowing a little brighter as, in addition to the constant mixing, she magically pulled several drawers open and several vials from them. “Let’s see: Several of these are Fluttershy’s, because she never says no… A couple from Pinkie, since I wanted to study her… And some from you, funnily enough.”

She explained quickly, as the potion neared readiness, how ethically unsound it might be if Twilight were to drink the homing potion, escape, and have an “encounter” with one of her best friends. The problem only got worse if the victim instead became the researcher in the same room as her, and the potion probably wouldn’t work if Twilight attempted to attract herself to, well, herself. At least her brother lived many, many miles away, where Twilight probably wouldn’t be able to reach while under the effects of the potion, and even if something did happen, the disaster might be at least a little more palatable for discussion if it stayed within the family.

“Now open wide~” Dawny poured the finished pink draught down Twilight’s throat.

“Tastes like cherry… strawberry, maybe?” Twilight licked her lips. “It’s good. I know it’s kind of a strange moment, but I think I needed a little pick-me-up.”

Dawny’s head snapped up to attention. The solar gem in her eye swiveled again to its lunar form and she scanned Twilight again to see if she was pulling her hoof. No such luck.

“I didn’t put anything in there to make it taste like that,” she warned, swapping again to pick up a notepad and quill. “You feeling anything out of the ordinary? Symptoms of any kind?”

“A little hot maybe,” Twilight panted, seemingly unaware of the healthy pink blush passing over her features. “But that’s by design, right? I mean this is a lust potion, after all…”

“Sounds about right,” Dawny absentmindedly agreed, penning down a few notes.

Unintended ingredients appear to be present… Consider current trial as failure. Remember to check powder cabinet for possible taint- who sent me that stuff anyway?

Twilight’s eyes had begun to wander throughout the room. It did not go unnoticed or undocumented that the most common path of her gaze leered in the direction of the Crystal Empire.

“How about your thoughts?” Dawny asked, the prospect of a juicy trial run helping to drive the worry away. “Anything of a more… amorous… nature with your brother? At least more than usual?”

Twilight flushed, jerked on her chains, and made to shake her head, before noticing the cold, flat glare of Dawny’s moonstone eye staring her down.

“Tell me in your words, or I’ll narrate them in mine,” she warned.

“I- I miss him,” Twilight mumbled. While the homing lust potion might have eroded certain inhibitions, it certainly hadn’t decreased her ability to feel embarrassment. Dawny almost felt a twinge of regret as her ruler turned herself into a bumbling, blushing mess in front of her- and all the while wrapped up in a maze of chains. It would taste a lie to say the combination didn’t flick a few levers on in the purple pony’s brain. “More than usual, I mean. It feels like I haven’t seen him in ages…

“Shiny…” Twilight’s breathing continued to accelerate, pressing into the third quartile of acceptable rates. Dawny watched with interest as her pupils began to dilate and her sense of presence seemed to fade. “Oh, Shiny…”

Again, as the purpose of a homing lust potion was to prevent a potentially disastrous mishap, enhancements to a pony’s virility were supposed to come with, emphasis on the with, special safeguards on the eligibility of the target. While these safeguards had been tailored to be vaguely broad for the purpose of a “broad enjoyment,” rational thought especially played a discerning role, and as far as either of them knew, Twilight harbored no secret ambitions of stealing her brother away from his lawfully wedded wife. This was why Dawny watched with increasing concern as the potion’s effects spread beyond the pale and Twilight leaned against her restraints, surreptitiously testing how far she could move with the chains- and testing whether or not escape was a possibility.

“He’s your brother, remember?” The warning came as both a sensibility and a probe.

“Dawning!” Twilight squawked, registering her friend’s presence as if noticing her for the first time. “Let me down! Let me down!”

“But he’s your brother-”

“I don’t think I care anymore!” Twilight howled as her wings rumbled against the steel band, bending it out of shape. Erratic sparks of pink pegasus magic filtered into her feathers, melding and hardening them into razor-sharp blades. Although most trained razor-wingers couldn’t quite manage the jump from dragon scales to solid steel, the strongest magic practitioner in the nation might just manage. “I NEED IT! I NEED HIM!”

Five of the rivets holding the right side of the wingband popped loose and Twilight spread her wings, casting the huge steel bond violently off to the left. Wings dripping with molten magic energy, the insane grin Princess Twilight turned on her basement mare made the mad scientist seem plaintively reasonable in comparison.

“How has this gone so wrong?”

Twilight violently freed herself from the chains binding each of her primary limbs, roughly severing them with a mixture of sharp strokes and brute force. A ripple of searing-hot telekinesis magic popped the manacles around her hooves like kettle corn, and she stepped forward exultantly into the laboratory’s floor to declare in a thundering voice that reverberated through her entire castle:

“I am going to mate with my brother, and there is nothing you or anypony else can do to stop me!”

Dawny’s magic eye slid over into a dusty corner where she kept all of her just-in-case magic supplies as Twilight, too inebriated to notice, opened up her mouth to deliver another breathless spout of mad lust. She had scarcely begun the next incoherent statement before a helmet-shaped hunk of black metal crunched onto her face, sending her skidding into the far wall as the metal plates interlocked around and contained her head.

This particular piece of equipment, a Compliance Bridle, ranked among one of the few state-of-the-art items in Dawny’s inventory. Along with a generous helping of ingredients, the helmet had been gifted by Princess Cadance for the “emergency” use of tranquilizing unruly ponies. Once latched on, a mind-bending slurry of sensory deprivation and fatigue spells began to affect the wearer, quickly starving even the most overstimulated of minds of any comprehensible input. So starved, the general effect was that the brain began to lose any reason to remain awake, and after a few moments of confusion, resigned itself to sleep. At this point, as long as the helmet remained powered and structurally intact, the pony would remain dormant until a certain desired time; for example, once the effect of the harrowingly failed homing lust potion wore off.

Dawny caught the Princess as her legs buckled under her, steering the rapidly tiring Alicorn into a more secluded area of the workshop. She curled Twilight up into a cute little muzzled feather ball, draped a sign that read: “Horny Pony, Nobody Touchy” around her, and tucked her sleeping friend underneath a table.

“Well, that was… something,” Dawny murmured, looking down at the neatly composed transcript of the entire event on her notepad. “What in Tartarus did I put in there?”

Just to be safe, she shuttered the lab, drawing down a heavy security door to lock anyone out who might have a problem seeing their ruling monarch stashed unconscious under a tablecloth, and perhaps even more importantly, to keep said snoozy monarch safely tucked away, far, far away from her brother.

For all that its close connection to Harmony afforded the land and its inhabitants in magic, the Crystal Kingdom, like anywhere else, had to contend with the same municipal difficulties that vexed territories the world over. At that particular moment the question on the royal platter was “waste disposal.” Unlike their organic imports, crystal goods that were not completely used up by the Empire’s relatively small population did not decompose in the landfill, and the overflowing condition of the Empire’s facilities, combined with the unusually small space with which city planners had to work with in the magic dome, made the problem quite urgent. The lazy engineers who had allowed the problem to grow so vast had already been sacked, of course, but the problem itself still remained.

The engineer who came up with the solution risked their job by presenting such an odd idea, but upon close inspection it was eagerly accepted on its merits. The royalty- Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor- would host a large delegation of exchanges from the poorer provinces of the Dragon Lands, who, all the while enjoying the hospitality of their neighbors in the frozen north, might be obliged to use their biology to “convert” this crystal waste into material more suited for disposal. In other words, they were going to pay dragons to eat their garbage.

“Honey, are you sure about this?” Shining Armor whispered to his wife as they stood to attention on the scaffold, overseeing the final preparations for the welcome festival.

“I’m surprised, Shiny, that you’d make such a rookie mistake!” the pink Alicorn recoiled from him, feigning offense. Everything in her posture reeked of injured dignity except for a disarmingly wry grin, which rather ruined the picture. “Every stallion worth his salt knows not to insult his wife’s judgement within her earshot.”

“I know, I know,” he conceded the point. “But still, I mean…”

It was set to be the greatest festival in the Empire’s (admittedly short) recent history, built to gratify both the city’s residents and their dragon guests for however many weeks and, if necessary, drakish delegations it took to get the job done. Most shops provided a tithe of their best wares as gifts, particularly clothes and jewelry, so racks of these colorful velvet vests and silk robes lined the avenues in and out of the square to compensate the dragons for their troubles. Around the Crystal Heart in the city square were an assortment of tables, heavily supplied with bottomless casks of the very finest drinks the nation had to offer. Hopefully the grand taste of the Sweet Apple Acres’ entire export of cider and Celestia’s ancient port stores meant that, on average, their guests received a dignified meal.

Following this theme, pony partygoers- including the Prince and Princess- were afforded only the humblest of fares that the Equestrian Trade Commission allowed to market. Everyone was to be served out of a single, huge cauldron of murky carrot stew and afforded a single loaf of grainy hardtack bread to mop up the thick liquid- solidarity with the dragons that were, again, literally eating their trash. While the quality of the crystal was by no means appalling, it did not go unnoticed that the Empire would receive the poorest of dragons, the ones who rarely saw a truly appetizing gem and the ones most likely to consider the scrappy, odd-tasting detritus a decent meal. Everything else, then, was merely a truly earnest attempt to sweeten what might otherwise be considered a profoundly arrogant request.

Shining Armor gasped as he felt a cool, hard presence brushing up against his foreleg. Looking down revealed the faint glint of a glass flask and viscous magenta liquid percolating within. His wife, meanwhile, waited patiently for his gaze to return to hers, flustered with the realization of what the Princess of Love had seen fit to bribe him with. He stepped back, spluttering a little and flushing even more as he realized that, yes, he was going to accept.

“P-point taken, Princess,” he stammered, standing upright with a few extra things at ramrod attention. “You do have a way of planning these things.”

Cadance only smiled, tucking the lust potion back under her pink wings with a rustle of feathers and magic. She turned to leave, taking a few steps before glancing expectantly over her shoulder.

“The usual formula?” Shining squeaked out of his dry throat.

“Oh, Dawny is a brilliant warlock, that’s for sure,” Cadance sultrily consulted the potion with her, a simple but potent concoction of Rapture Rose and a few other spices and mana for some spunk; a broad spectrum sledgehammer of an aphrodisiac not unlike any other of the dozen or so she’d ordered from Dawning Starlight that month. Her eyes flicked greedily in Ponyville’s direction for a moment. “But I think even she has outdone herself with this one.”

“Ooooh!” Cadance suddenly observed a small pink bouncy ball jackhammer its way up the steps of the scaffold and up to her. “Princess Princess Princess!” The little ball grew hooves, legs, and a head, popping outwards into a vaguely pony shaped object.

Her husband scurried away as fast as his hooves could carry him, lest Pinkie Pie announce his “vulnerability” to the five-hundred odd construction ponies retrieving supplies for and setting up the festivities.

“Ah, just on time,” Cadance greeted her guest with a gracious bow. “What do you need, Pinkie?”

“Weeeeell, I saw the strangest bulletin today! Says here-” Pinkie extracted a creaseless flyer from her mouth, which detailed the numerous celebrities involved in the celebration. Such large names as Rarity and Sapphire Shores found themselves on the tailor’s list, and Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts were booked for several performances throughout the week. More bafflingly, it was stated that Princess Twilight Sparkle would be staying for the entire duration- a most presumptuous claim- and perhaps most strangely: “I’m the chief caterer? For a party without any cakes?”

She dragged up a blackboard detailing Cadance’s entire plan with pinpoint accuracy, the two-item menu circled in bold red.

“Aaaany cakes? Any at all?” Pinkie shoved the blackboard off stage left and back into the ether. “What’s up with that?”

Cadance held Pinkie’s petulance in a philosophic gaze moment to tamp down its heat. Once the little pink thing remembered that she might actually expect an answer to her question, she lowered her hackles and cocked her head, looking more like a curious puppy than a bomb about to go off.

“Pinkie, this event is extremely important to the kingdom,” Cadance took her aside in confidence. “The rest of your friends, while they might have offered, aren’t spending their time-” She indicated three separate lines of magnificently designed dragon cloaks hung out for display. Though Rarity had dutifully departed from her signature frilly style to cater to a draconic desire for the simple, stark, and utilitarian, her subtle insets of embroidery and severe garnet or onyx cabochons lent these heavy canvas garments an air of punctuated dignity. “-setting up this festival for free. I paid them handsomely, because I needed the best of the best. The best designers, the best performers, and the best caterers.”

“Princess, I’m a baker,” Pinkie pointed out. “Not a stewer. Besides, your guests won’t even be eating the stew! They’ll be eating…”

She squinted at the contents of the Crystal Empire’s dump, gleaming both in the distance and nearby as it was carted into a great food pile by the heap.

“...Whatever that stuff is.”

“Ah, yes,” Cadance allowed an exultantly crafty look to pass over her features. “But they’ll be drinking the finest Equestria has to offer. To cleanse the palate, you know?”

It was certainly true that with an entire square to fill with drink vendors, Apple family cider and Royal port would find themselves stretched thin. Already, the Princess had been confronted by arguments between the individual kiosks over who was receiving their proper share of the supplies and confronted with the very real possibility of a shortage.

“Twilight speaks very highly of your abilities. I know it’s not your expertise, but surely you could find us two more credible options? I know Sugarcube Corner has some shakes on the menu, for example…”

Pinkie Pie raised a highly suspicious eyebrow and opened her mouth to call the Princess, among other things, a deceptively doddering bubblegum tart. There was, however, apparently some part of her inner pink mass that enjoyed the sound of “best of the best,” and her suspicious eyebrow disarmed itself and stowed away for later. Maybe, she mused, that was a title that she could take home and become doubly indispensable at celebrations the world over.

“Okay,” she slowly agreed. “Don’t move. Be right back with the goods.”

Cadance watched with interest as Pinkie backpedaled, seemingly making sure the Alicorn obeyed, and ran at full tilt down to the train station. The Princess craned her head just in time to see Pinkie hurl the conductor from the locomotive and roar away, driving the hijacked train at full tilt back toward Ponyville. So far, so good.

While there were certainly more high-end options available, Sugar Cube Corner’s rich milkshakes weren’t exactly slouch standalones. The fact that the nobility overlooked their presence at most galas hardly meant that the Cake family would forgo quality, not when Ponyville sported such a robust student and foal population to sell to. Occasionally, Princess Celestia might personally swing by for a crate or two, and that was an advertisement well worth the work. It was only natural, then, that after she was released on bail, Pinkie ordered three of the caboose passenger cars to be filled with refrigerant and packed to bursting with milk, ice cream, and fresh fruits. That was the easy part.

“AAAUUUGHHH!” A key lime pie blasted through the lower window of Sugarcube Corner, narrowly missing a passerby and splattering all over a signpost. “Why don’t we make any other drinks?!” Pinkie exploded, chucking cakes this time- one blotted out the display window and the other followed the key lime pie, disassociating in midair and adding a dollop of very real frosting to Sugarcube Corner’s cakelike outer facade. “I’m… oof… Breaking things… To emphasize just how cross I am right now!”

To say that Sugarcube Corner sold nothing else drinkable was a bit of a misnomer, but this perplexity made the situation all the more infuriating. At that very moment, Pinkie had removed all that she could find, and while fresh fruit juice was a serviceable refreshment on a hot summer’s day, it paled in comparison to its peers at the festival, including the milkshakes she’d just sent off. For lack of better words, it was simply too plain and boring to be considered the “best of the best,” and yet it was all she had. There would be no point in outsourcing to another caterer- the whole point was for her to provide the catering- and it wasn’t as if the other hallmarks of drink making hadn’t already been consulted for delivery.

Pinkie Pie bonked her head on the wall, rubbing the reverberation into her brain to really get those creative juices flowing. It would have to be something she added to the drinks to spice them up a little, she reflected, looking out at the streets of Ponyville for a sign. Inspiration came soon enough, as Tempest Shadow and Lyra Heartstrings passed through the avenue.

”… Oh, but I always have time for my most prized agents,” Tempest could be heard, speaking in relatively open confidence through the broken glass.

“Are we your agents?” The sea-green unicorn grinned cattily back at the admiral. “Last I checked, the Separation of Services Act places me and Bon Bon under Dawning Starlight.”

”That’s why, my dear, I always have time for the two of you,” Tempest produced a magenta potion and several lengths of rope from her saddlebags, quickly dropping it by mouth into Lyra’s. The two shared a quick, businesslike nod, and trotted off in opposite directions.

The gears in Pinkie Pie’s rain chugged with renewed interest, and happy, inspired steam poured out of her ears. The exchange reminded her that Equestrian officials of a certain rank, including Tempest Shadow and herself, were entitled to almost unlimited laboratory access, along with whatever happened to be available inside. While some of these potions were undoubtedly unsafe to drink, some, like transformation potions, were important for meeting with foreign diplomats who might feel comfortable speaking with someone of the same species or, in Tempest’s case, afforded the user specific strengths isolated by species barriers. Likewise, these potions held some value for those who wanted to take advantage of the physical variations between species and genders for other purposes.

This was the primary difference between Grand Admiral Tempest and someone like Chief Justice Starlight, for while both followed rules and regulations with unvarying rigidity, Tempest cared less about the official rules than her own, which inevitably led to crates of unmarked potions mysteriously making their way into midnight barracks parties. When the chaotic and varyingly erotic hullabaloo of constant transformation- among still other potion effects- was compared to the relative dull of a stallion’s drinking party, it could not be denied that the simple addition made cheap beer a lot more interesting.

So Pinkie explained, her face crammed through the tiny porthole in the laboratory’s armored security door.

“And as entertaining as that would be,” Dawning Starlight snapped back. “I’m not going to help you poison Princess Cadance’s entire dragon delegation! At least not today. I have some things to attend to.”

“But Tempest-”

“Tempest bought that potion from me yesterday,” Dawny read her mind and interrupted her.

She slammed the steel hatch shut in Pinkie’s face, turning back to the still-sleeping Princess and a new prototype of the homing lust potion. At least, she would’ve, if Pinkie Pie hadn’t somehow managed to find a completely silent way through three inches of solid steel and behind her. Because, of course, because.

”Come onnnn, I’m already here!” She whined. “Just point me towards the potion rack and I won’t bother you! Promise!”

Dawny groaned and waved her off to an enormous table covered in bottles, tagged in red, yellow, and green- otherwise unlabeled- and filled with different colored liquids.

”Red ones are unsafe to drink, or they cause something unsafe to happen,” Dawny had already returned to mixing the potion. “Yellow ones are… disruptive, but they’re fine, really… Green ones are the subtle ones. Flavors and whatnot.”

Pick the yellow ones, is what Pinkie heard, and to be fair, they made up so much of the table’s proportion that she would probably have had to select a few anyway. The question, then, became “which one?”

Despite the derogatory comments some felt compelled to make about her level of competence, Pinkie had at least the foresight to realize that turning the dragon delegation, the Crystal nobility and a greater portion of their people into frogs would not be ideal for the festivities or the eating of crystal garbage. And considering that she did not know which of the potions might turn the drinker into a frog and Dawny didn’t appear to be in a telling mood, some strategery had to be made.

Firstly, the fewer potions that she gathered to mix into the drinks, the lower the chance was that one of them might be the froggelixer. Building off of that, hopefully the potions that looked and smelt the same were the same, and perhaps near the associated ingredients as well. Pinkie thusly passed over the uniquely colored ones and the ones nearby lowly ingredients like extracts of small animals or golem enchantments. Near the back of the table, where more massively stored liquids were kept she found a series of potions practically humming with energy- perhaps too much for a simple conversion- and all similarly colored to boot.

The ingredients, stored in mass, had an entire shelf dedicated to their storage marked “Princess Blood.” Of these, there were three types: “White Princess Blood,” “Blue Princess Blood,” and “Purple Princess Blood,” listed in increasing order of their contents; the vat marked “White” contained only a few vials worth, the one marked “Blue” several liters, and the one marked “Purple” was filled up to the very brim, with several gallon flasks of it corked and set off to the side. Pinkie found it amusing and a bit strange that each of these vats, however marked, all contained seemingly the same red liquid.

The difference seemed to come out in the potions underneath them, though. The crackling, sparkling draught within the respective bottle did indeed appear white, blue, or purple, all run through with pink motes of sequinny light. Unsurprisingly, the purple ones made up the vast majority of these, and with so much supply it was hardly a shock that they made up nearly a third of all the potions on the table. Humming, Pinkie Pie gathered up all these bottles in her forelegs and walked on her hind legs to the still-closed and never-before-opened-in-recent-memory steel door.

“Hey, Dawny, would you mind-”

The solar stone in Dawny’s eye roared with energy and the five-ton security door crashed upward into the ceiling. She didn’t turn to check whether or not the little pink headache had chosen to leave, and in spite of her frustration, was too engrossed in debugging her earlier failed experiment to slam the door again behind her.

“Thank you!”

Pinkie Pie bounced up and out of the stairs leading down to the Castle of Friendship’s basement, making all haste for Sugarcube Corner. She mixed as much of the vaguely grape-tasting, fizzy potions into the fruit juices as was possible without truly changing the taste of the drink, ensuring to properly test each one to make sure of uncompromised quality before carting these preparations to the train for transport to the Crystal Empire.

“P-Princess!” The Ponyville terminal guards saluted Pinkie Pie as she approached. “Are you… aware that the Crystal Empire has requisitioned the train for the transportation of… uh- festival goods?”

“Well, of course I’m aware, silly!” Pinkie Pie stamped her hooves impatiently and flared her Alicorn wings. “I’m the one who told you about the whole thing!”

“Wait-” the second guard cocked his head. “No, it was the pink one, right? The one we arrested earlier, the one who ‘hijacked’ the train, right? What’re you-”

The first guard gave his partner a sharp nudge in the ribs.

“Of course, Princess,” the second guard mumbled. “Carry on then.”

Then the two of them cantered off somewhere far away from the weirdness.

Shrugging the whole thing off, Pinkie Pie loaded up the “enhanced” juice and clambered back into the locomotive, shutting the door with the hum of lavender magic and relighting the coal fire at the same time. She only looked down at herself when the train got up to speed and blew her purple mane back into her face, and found Twilight Sparkle where Pinkie Pie used to be.

“Ah,” she shrugged again. “So that’s what the potion does. Cool!”

The delivery went off without a hitch, precipitating a number of relieved congratulations from Princess Cadance. The supplies were quickly hoisted off the ice-filled train cars into dedicated refrigerators, and Pinkie Pie set herself to mixing the milkshakes for the dragons, who arrived shortly thereafter. Since the shakes were best when made to order, they were the scarcest, and by some unfortunate mistake a whole half of the dragon delegation was too young to drink alcohol, the “magically enhanced” juices ended up the primary refreshment for them and the ponies sitting down for the commencement of festivities.

Although no bones were made about the civic duty of the crystal ponies to eat the poor carrot slop they had been provided in solidarity with the dragons, who dutifully brought plates of the crystal detritus to table, it could hardly be enforced and there were a number of them, nobles especially, who sickened at the sight and chose to forgo food for drink. To their credit and the dragon’s amusement, unlike the literal trash they had been tasked with eating, their host’s stew truly was a revolting mixture. Whatever unscrupulous shark sold them the liquid chose only the most putrid of carrots- the ones unlikely to sell at market- to boil for hours on end in the presence of a dozen other mystery goods until they were more like a semisolid orange sludge than any recognizable vegetable. At most anypony could manage was a small bowl of the stuff, the dragons eagerly turned back to their garbage after the slightest sip, and even Princess Cadance had to admit that, yes, it was easily the worst thing she’d ever tasted.

Shining Armor and the small contingent of Royal Guards he’d brought with him from Canterlot watched with immense interest as their subjects turned green with the effects of the Guards’ old rations and subsequently attempted to drown themselves in sweet fruit juices to wash out the rank taste. On the bright side, this allowed him to score some extra points for the Equestrians in the iron stomach contest, using only a plain glass of water to wash the revolting food down.

It wasn’t long before things started to get even more interesting.

“Ow!” Twilight Sparkle yelped after cracking her teeth on a crystal panel. “What… what in the…”

The former dragon looked for her talons and the scales of her arms, finding only downy purple fluff and hooves where they used to be. At least she still had her wings, but these too had changed, becoming softer and lighter- and to top this strange transformation was a single lavender horn, coursing with the billowing, thunderous power of earth, wind, and star.

“Twilight?” Shining Armor rose to his hooves. He hadn’t seen the transformation that so quickly overtook the dragon. “What’s going on? When did you get here? And… What exactly are you doing?”

“Twilight” hardly had the time to be horrified by the novelty before her partners at the table began to change themselves, crystal ponies fading from their gemmy, geometric coats and sprouting lavender fur and dragons slouching awkwardly in their upright posture as their upright bodies shortened and widened into the quadrupedal barrels of a small, cute pony. All changed stature and hair color to match Twilight’s, looking at each other in bewildered panic. Though her husband was spared, Cadance was not, and the newly anointed “Twadence” looked down at herself in benign interest.

“Huh? Oh… Right,” she mused inwardly. “Well, it’s not every day you get to romp around in the body of your beautiful sister-in-law. If you’ll excuse me, ladies~”

Three hundred Twilight Sparkles and Shining Armor watched as Twadence meandered off to a vaguely private corner and the sounds of vigorous self exploration- the origins of which could barely be called ambiguous- wafted back over to them. Then three hundred Twilight Sparkles turned back to the only royal officer they had left.

“Oh boy,” Shining Armor gulped.

Quickly the crowd got through some basics: No, Shining Armor didn’t know what exactly was going on or how to turn them back. However, he and a few other choice stallions that didn’t transform had only drank water, so… take that as they might. Yes, they ought to call the military. Tempest Shadow might be able to find the real Twilight Sparkle and set up some damage control. And no, Sergeant, making out with one of the transformers did not make you a prince.

But barely into Shining’s efforts to wrangle the problem, a particular hiccup of Alicorn ascension began manifesting itself, beginning with the very first transformer.

“P-Prince Shining,” she stepped forward, wings rising. In fact everything about her body was rising, from the individual hairs on her back to the ambient temperature, smoldering with mana and ozone as the lavender faded from her eyes and an outpour of bright white light took its place. “What’s… happening to me?”

Twilight- or her stand-in- let out an earsplitting cry as a huge blast of white energy rippled through her body and sailed from her horn, atomizing a sizable chunk of the Crystal Empire’s gathered trash before glancing off the remainder of the pile and sailing up into the higher atmosphere. If the dragon were a pony with a cutie mark, this missile might have had the honor of painting the sky with its colors; instead, the magic warhead simply exploded, cratering part of Mount Everhoof’s peak and sending angry pulses of aurora out to dance with the windigos. Her energy spent, she slumped down onto Shining Armor, breathing heavily along with him. The two of them then slowly tipped over to the ground, where they could both rest in shell-shocked and charred stupidity.

The Twilightized crowd watched in awe as the formerly average adolescent dragon unleashed enough energy to power their homes for a decade in a singularly awesome fireworks display. The awe changed, rather quickly, to dread as they realized not only how painful the process had been for her, but that they were next. Poor steamed Prince Shining simply was too tired to resist the headless-chicken panic that then overtook them.

By the time Tempest Shadow arrived with help, the city was in a state of utter chaos. The terrified Twilights panicked as they ran away from their violently discharging counterparts, often only to collapse in pain themselves and add to the awesome display. While the dragons and other foreigners only had identical white flares to launch, ponies that underwent the transformation retained their cutie marks and so the sky lit up with the brilliant flashes of color and the uniqueness of their endlessly varying shapes. A shame, then, that it sounded so much like a warzone.

“Get this crowd contained!” she barked commands to the pegasus warriors filing out of the train behind her. “I want hospital staff out here setting up field centers within the hour. And you-”

Tempest snapped up Dawny by the scruff of her neck and dragged her toward where Shining Armor and Cadance tried, in vain, to placate the crowd.

“You’we gong to tell them exshactly how to fix this,” the taller pony still somehow managed to sound authoritative speaking through a mouthful of fur.

“The potion’ll wear off in a few hours!” Dawny squawked, tugging fruitlessly to free herself from the Admiral’s iron grasp. The much stronger pony evaded her flinging and a bolt of lighting cracked out of her broken horn, zapping her captive. “Yeow! There! Now take me back to Ponyville! I need to fix it!”

“What? What’s going on in Ponyville?” Shiny asked urgently. Old habits of the Canterlot Royal Guard died hard, it seemed, as he somehow forgot the state of bedlam his own kingdom was in.

“It’s in my lab,” Dawny tried to explain. “There’s an experiment-”

“Another failed potion, I expect,” Tempest rolled her eyes as she set the agitated researcher down. “Listen here, Dawning: I don’t care what insane petri dish you have brewing back in Ponyville. You’re not just some crackpot scientist who lives in Twilight’s basement. You’re the Security Chief of Equestria, and I expect you to start acting like it.”

“Hold there, Admiral,” Prince Shining stepped forward and peered down at Dawny. “You think this potion’ll wear off on its own?”

“I know it will,” Dawny nodded earnestly. “It’s a common safety mechanism. There’s really no reason for me to be here, and I think you in particular might appreciate my keeping that other experiment contained…”

“But there is!” Princess Cadence cut in quickly, identified by her crown and restyled mane. She turned for a moment to her husband to ensure he remained unconvinced of Dawny’s correctness. “Dawny, you run one of the country’s largest breweries. Ponies know you and your expertise, and, to be fair, you did brew this potion. If you stay and help reassure them that the potion will wear off, I guarantee we’d appreciate that very much.”

“Well…” As much of a reputation Dawny might have garnered as a snarky little minx, she could hardly mouth off to a direct request from one of the Princesses. She looked up to Shining Armor for some reprieve.

“Don’t look at me,” Shining raised a hoof in protest. “I questioned her judgement once already today, and I’m not making that mistake again.”

“Drat,” Dawny muttered. “Fine. Princess, you’re with me. I’ll need a test subject to determine the actual time frame of the wind-down.” Then, she muttered underneath her breath as she led Cadance away to the hospital: “It’s your funeral.”

If the homing lust potion had faded entirely over a single moment, the real Twilight Sparkle might have stayed asleep until she were in a more convenient state. Instead, as is naturally the case, the hazy tendrils of the potion gradually relaxed its grip on her mind, bringing her more and more mental acuity while still leaving Twilight a poor, bothered mess. The Compliance Bridle around her head hummed with the effort of keeping her under, the thick black glass of the steel goggles flickering with dull lavender as Twilight’s visceral subconsciousness wrestled with the fatigue spell.

Her legs and wings twitched in varying degrees, hazily attempting to scrabble upright. One particularly violent series of flaps sent her rolling out from under the table, leaving Dawny’s sign behind and depositing herself in the middle of the floor. The sudden stimulus provoked her body even more, and she actually managed to hold her head upright and wonder for a moment what was going on.

It’s not entirely certain what happened next. Perhaps rolling across the floor accidentally knocked a component of the Bridle loose, although the wrought-iron construction had been reinforced for just such an event. Another theory is that Twilight attempted to cast a spell to protect herself- however unlikely that outcome was given the magic nullification enchantments and fatigue spells within the equipment, nothing changed the fact that no sooner had she performed that particular motion, little pink sparks began to dance near the metal covering her right temple. A few seconds later, these sparks coalesced and popped like a firecracker, illuminating the right lens of the Bridle with a violent pink flashbang. The explosion cracked the metal, and its hinges gave one last groan before falling cleanly off of Twilight’s unharmed face.

The sound of a ten-pound steel helmet meeting rock floor brought all the light back to Twilight’s brain that the explosion failed to, and she curiously prodded at the mangled metal mess with a hoof before turning back to the laboratory door. While the closed security door could never dream of holding its own against a fully powered, determined Alicorn, it could certainly tire her out, so that when she eventually pried the thick metal apart, Twilight might never make it to the Crystal Empire before the potion wore off.

Thanks to Pinkie Pie, the door was wide open.

Thus unimpeded, Twilight let slip a breathy sigh of anticipation, and clambered her way drunkenly up the stairs to her castle proper. Once out in the open, she enjoyed the perfect, open freedom to fly lopsidedly- yet vigorously- in the direction of the Crystal Empire.

By the time Twilight found her way through the northern ice wastes and to the Empire, night had fallen over Equestria. Being several hours after the initial transformation, Dawny’s estimate for the Twilight-tized ponies and dragons had begun to become due, and she and Tempest Shadow duly organized the peaceful wearing off of the potion in various field hospitals and medical centers. Keeping the law and order intact as relatives of these ponies inquired after the well being of their kin superseded the power of Tempest’s Shock Guard and required the joint strength of the Crystal Guard as well; most of these guards and indeed the whole senior castle staff found themselves employed in this way. Exceptions to that rule of course included anyone who transformed, including Princess Cadance, who at the time had been relegated to a hospital bed of her own, and staff that were otherwise needed, like Prince Shining Armor and his attendants.

“You’d think he’d at least have the decency to stand down here after forcing me to stay,” Dawning Starlight groused.

“He does have a lot of things to attend to,” The Twilightized Princess Cadance reasonably pointed out from her hospital bed. She would have gesticulated a little more forcefully in the defense of her husband, but the thousand-and-one health monitors that strung her up like a doll made it difficult. She watched in patient amusement as Dawny buzzed between the various stacks of machine paper and dutifully jotted down the proper notes- if a bit huffily.

“I mean, it’s not like I’m not getting work done,” she went on. “This is actually some pretty interesting stuff, and it’s important for my Alicorn studies, so you know… thanks.”

“...No problem,” Cadance eyed the wires suspiciously.

“Speaking of, you feel any more… magicky than before?” Dawny readied a notepad. “I wanna know just how similar this made you to Twilight. Coincidentally, it helps with the whole ‘transformation’ thing, so I’d advise answering honestly.”

“Not particularly,” she pushed a small shower of pink sparkles out of her horn. “It still looks like my magic, at least.”

“Good, good,” Dawny nonchalantly retrieved a long dowel-shaped object from her tools, brandishing the rubber-tipped wand with a burst of orange magic. “Now we’re going to test how magical surges affect your transformed state. Who knows, maybe it’ll wear off faster…”

To be clear, it was common knowledge that Princess Cadance strove in her own time to entrench herself deeply in the fetishistic community, so deeply in fact that being ministered by a mad scientist in a hospital bed might find itself in the hallmarks of her tamer exploits- especially among those she forewent herself and instead chose to inspire in other ponies. However, the particular personage of this arrangement, along with its calmness, overwhelmed even her sensibility.

“Is- Is that a vibrator?” Cadance squirmed in her bed a moment, curious eyes fixed on the device before returning to Dawny.

“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter,” the purple earth pony tutted, swatting the Alicorn of Love on the head with the vibrator before returning to her work. Even though not a mote of perverse hunger passed her voice or face, it would taste a lie to say the dominion over a Princess in such a state did not please her, and she smiled wickedly as the device whirred to life. “It’s a scientific vibrator. Now hold still...”

Cadance’s willingness to be tested on and essentially dominated by Dawny represented a bit more than her commitment to her people or Dawny’s revenge. As an Alicorn, her magical metabolisms moved so much faster than the average pony’s, and as such she tended to process potions much faster. By recording the time it took an Alicorn to process a pot- even those that transformed them into a different being entirely- the time other beings could take to do the same was just a few simple unit conversions away. Much of the active personnel found one excuse or another to watch and wait for the exact moment Princess Cadance reverted, since that time represented their only hope of their shifts ending. Besides, they’d bedded Cadance inside, where it was warm.

All this coalesced into a night of unusually perfect emptiness around the town square and the castle, so very stark that there simply was nopony to notice as Twilight arrived, crumpling onto the stairs upon landing and oozing into the castle halls. Thankfully possessed of enough intelligence to make her way through the castle corridors, she slunk in a practiced path through the crystal corridors until, veritably frothing at the mouth with need and dripping with the selfsame anticipation, she creaked open her brother’s chambers and crept inside.

“What a day,” he sighed, peering over several drafts of apology letters to the Dragon Lands. Undoubtedly Princess Ember would have some very unpleasant things to say about what happened to her subjects… Whatever it was that happened to her subjects. And Twilight…

Twilight leapt airily up onto his desk, sending his papers flying and staring crazily down at her brother, gasping with the potion-induced hunger. But, strangely, he didn’t seem all that concerned.

“Cadance, what … Ah, well. Hello, dear,” he smiled up at Twilight. “I guess you couldn’t even wait until the potion wore off, huh?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Twilight cocked her head, only slightly fazed by the question.

“I just wondered what my sister might think about us… you know… when you’re still romping around in her body,” he shrugged noncommittally, taking the opportunity to run his hoof along Twilight’s hind legs to emphasize the point. The lavender Alicorn flinched and squeaked, sensitive to that touch, and to this he gave a quick kiss and a wink. “Oh, who am I kidding… This probably turns you on. … How was Dawning Starlight? I know sometimes she gives a good ‘stimulating’ foreplay…”

“Invasive, as usual,” Twilight’s brain dully applauded her brother’s marvelous insight into her condition. After all, aside from that odd comment, everything seemed more or less in line. Encountering no resistance, she continued to sidle toward her brother like a predatory cat, and the two of them continued like this until Twilight found herself standing over him on the royal mattress. “But that’s Dawny for you.”

“Oh, give the mare some credit,” Shiny smiled. Though the good-natured Prince had never been one for reveling in the faults of others, he spoke of a special warmth for the eccentric supplier that kept him and his wife so happy. After all, was it not Dawny that sold Cadance her latest batch of lust potions, the promised bribe of which he was so certainly accepting? “Hasn’t she ‘out-done herself’ with this batch of brews?”

“Oh, that she has,” Twilight’s tongue flicked in and out, moistening her muzzle. “I don’t think…” She gasped, stopping to catch her breath. Perhaps the homing lust potion gained in strength over her in that moment, exultant at finally reaching its target, but for whatever reason a firm burst of wind magic rippled through the room, silencing his writing candles and banishing the natural iridescence of the magical crystal castle. The only light thereafter came from Twilight’s sultrily narrowed eyes, burning with a sinister lavender light. “I don’t remember ever feeling this way before~”

Then she rushed forward, lunging and latching onto her brother, kissing and convulsing with such force that she might have been mistaken for a leech attempting to suck out his soul. She flared her wings in the ultimate display of dominance, unleashing an even stronger magic blast from her feathers before wrapping them around her brother and diving deeper into the bed.

Of course, this wasn’t how Twilight usually behaved during her intimate pursuits, and there was much to blame on the vastly malfunctioning homing lust potion for that. Though vast wealth and want for image afforded the seniority of the Equestrian government immense privacy, there were still some very specific grapevines that these officials, especially the Princesses, were expected to use for their “relief.” Usually, Twilight would slip in a whisper to her chambermaid about a pressing “need,” and that night, a catalogue of strapping, high-profile stallion models would find itself neatly tucked underneath her covers. Proper procedure then dictated that she mark, with invisible ink, which stallions she wished to see, if she wanted to see multiple at once or a sampler over multiple days, etc, and then to dispose of the booklet in the trash can in her room. Her first time, and many times after that, had thusly some at the hooves of those stallions, delivered in secret by guards to her door. She would blush, whispering shyly as she invited them in, they did their work and left, the Princess temporarily sated and the stallion prostitutes’ saddlebags heavier with many hundreds of bits. The icy exchange often chilled the warm presence of afterglow far too quickly, and her libido successfully quelled, Twilight often cried the rest of herself to sleep.

So, perhaps, in a way, Shining Armor was her first.

“Yes! Yes! It feels so…” However worrying that was. “Amazing! Now I remember… I’ve definitely never felt this way before!”

Certainly there were some memory games afoot as she bounced up and down on Shining Armor, shooting pleasure through her brother’s assets and wrecking her brain with that electrifying blast. Conveniently she forgot, rather selfishly, that not only that her lovely partner was none other than her brother, and that they might surely produce a truly wretched child, but married to her beloved Cadance, her beloved former caretaker and a wonderful, if sexually deviant friend. Yet Twilight remembered, with the impossibly vast ecstasy of anticipation, that after her brother filled her up with the magical warmth of breeding, he was the sort of upstanding stallion who would keep that warmth cozily burning as he slept with her ‘till morning. Her heart melted, she screamed in pleasure and gladness, and then she tried to push the pedal past the metal and down through the floor.

“Cady- Hahhh…” Shining Armor gasped for breath, doing his best not to black out as Twilight rapidly squeezed all of the feeling out of the back half of his body. “What’s gotten into you…”

The hardcore, almost violent method of womb-wrecking thrusting Twilight indulged herself in simply was overwhelming the poor stallion, and he was quickly nearing his limit… of patience. While, yes, the rapid movements of his sister’s carnal walls around him undeniably felt wonderful, it also felt like his cock was going to snap in half. This particular feel of twiggy stress was also the only sensory sensation poor Shining Armor seemed to feel in the entire lower portion of his body, so much so that while the pleasure from his “corona ball” was very much being transmitted, the Prince hardly had the personal courtesy of knowing how close he was to climax. He only knew that he hadn’t released his finality yet, because if he had, the whole ordeal might have ended already.

And this is not to say either that Shining Armor was a wimp in the sack either, or by any measure a weak pony. As Cadance’s husband, he fell victim not only to his wife’s crackpot domestic policy but also to her near-endless knowledge of, and imagination in, the breadth and application of the fetishistic underworld. Accordingly, their games were played like games of cat-and-mouse, campaigns of perverse strategy in which the two constantly fought over dominance, conceding and taking the reins in a quest for maximum pleasure and exploration. Often, Princess Cadance orchestrated complex chains of events, unfolding in the very unlikeliest of ways just to bring new fetishes to their doorstep. From long nights and sometimes even days of careful practice, Shining Armor knew how to tie ponies down just loose enough so that it wouldn’t hurt but tight enough to drive them crazy with submissive vulnerability, how to properly melt into a tender kiss and segue into gentle ministration, and much much more, though his affinity for manipulative parley still greatly lacked. In that sense, his current situation was that of a talented fencer tasked with battling a locomotive- and Prince Shining Armor was tired of being run over.

Careful not to be too rough, he shoved on Twilight’s midriff, unsheathing himself from his rider and rolling to the side to dodge her grab. With two hooves he held down her wings and realizing he had no other limbs to work with, snapped with his mouth desperately at anything other than his dying, bluer-than-usual member that he could satisfy his dread sister with.

It was at this point that another quirk of the Crystal Empire and its castle became rather important. While most of the rooms, like the kitchen for the pleasure of its diners, or the barracks for the privacy and freedom of the guards, were almost perfectly soundproof, the royal bedchambers were not. As a matter of fact, after the unfortunate demise of Princess Amore and under the brief but paranoid reign of the usurper King Sombra, construction ponies ensured that, while still being structurally stable, the royal suite was perhaps the least soundproof room in the whole kingdom; the idea was that no intruder might sneak in and attack the king in his sleep without being discovered.

But of course this measure was not without its problems, and Sombra did sacrifice some primacy of safety for greater dignity for himself and his slave harem in the form of a small crystal ball, containing a silence ward. The fragile ward masked all sound in the room, provided the small sphere remained perfectly intact, and the thing was kept on the royal bedside, reachable in case of a struggle, where it remained for several hundred years of relative peace.

“G-ghhaaahh…” Twilight reclined on the bed, legs splayed out and twitching at the admittance of such a huge, comforting presence. Several times larger than Shining Armor’s own capability, the orb seemed to be the limit of Twilight’s passion, working like an enormous nether pacifier.

“You’re… really energetic today, honey,” Shining Armor panted, cooling off a sudden burst of magic he’d used to temporarily bind his sister on the bed and apply the “stopgap,” as it were. “Hopefully this keeps you awhile…”

He took the opportunity for a quick breather, and once he’d finished his little recharge, grabbed ahold of the crystal ball’s base with a zap of tingly telekinesis and gave it a little tug. The lack of movement the makeshift experienced was only as surprising as the time it took for Shining to look up and behold his sister’s expression, taut as she held back the object inside her with her own magic, eyes sharply in a lustful splendor.

“Cady…” he warned. “Come on, let go…”

He pulled again. Twilight indulged herself in continuing the tug of war.

“I don’t know what this thing does!” Shining yanked insistently on the base. “It could be important!”

“I don’t caaare…~” Twilight mumbled in a singsongy voice. “Oh, keep going~”

“Oh, fine! I’ll just… do it… myself-” And then the bottom base snapped off, breaking the integrity of the silence ward and shooting the crystal ball even further into a fleshy abyss of sorts from which it might never return. “Cadance!” Shining Armor admonished, a flush overtaking his white-coated muzzle. “Aw, brilliant. That’s stuck now. I hope you enjoy explaining this to the doctor…”

Unlike her feeble comrades, Admiral Tempest Shadow did not yearn for the comfort of warmth, or at least, she was smart and dutiful enough to secure that commodity on her long patrol route through the city. Trotting through the courtyard, she was the only one to hear Shining Armor’s shout of “Cadance!” wafting softly but clearly from the castle’s superstructure. Familiar as the great commander was with the design of the various palaces and the particular history of the Crystal Palace and Sombra’s paranoid choice for soundproofing, she knew there would be only one reason why such a sound might be out for her to hear.

She dashed back to the hospital, where the soldiers had begun to cheer.

“Thank Celestia, we’re almost over!” they exulted, patting the newly reverted Princess Cadance on the back as they welcomed her back into the world. “How long before the others?”

“Just a few hours,” Dawning reassured them, stepping toward the door to address the worried families outside. “Why don’t you all relax? I’m sure the Princess, the Admiral and I are more than enough to keep this situation under control-”

“Soldiers!” Tempest Shadow threw the door open, walloping Dawny in the process, and galloped through at full tilt to the mildly surprised Princess and a platoon of shocked soldiers. “Someone’s broken into the castle. Circle back, double time!”

Nobody moved. The general consensus was just to stand there, shell-shocked and consulting with their peers on what exactly was going on after such a long day. Somepony in the back coughed.

“NOW!” Tempest turned toward the nearest Shock Guard and snapped a lightning bolt at him through her broken horn, watching in contempt as the befuddled sergeant yelped and bolted for the door. “Move it or lose it, you sorry excuses for proper soldiers! You’d better pray you catch the intruder before I catch up with you, or you’ll be rubbing the dings out of your butts till the day you die…”

She trailed off as she and Shock Guard got farther away, barreling towards the Crystal Castle. The Crystal Guard stayed frozen for a few more seconds before one of the guards turned to follow.

“Wait,” Princess Cadance calmly stopped the crystal pony with a hoof on his shoulder. “Stay here. In fact, all of you…” she dragged her eyes around the room, making contact with every one of her loyal soldiers, ensuring they didn’t get any bold ideas. “All of you should stay here. I’ll go.”

“We are not afraid of any enemy, Princess!” the soldier she was holding back declared. “We serve and fight for the Empire and at your pleasure!”

“A brave sentiment,” Cadance nodded wisely, sizing up this loyal stallion for later. “One we should all be grateful for. But tactically, I cannot in good conscience leave my good citizens unguarded, not in this vulnerable state- Therefore, I alone go to join them.”

That seemed to be enough for the guard, who honestly appreciated the opportunity to rest, but not for Dawning Starlight, who stepped forward with incense.

“But he’s your husband!” she screamed, scandalized. “Show some respect for his well-being! Why would you keep the guard here, when they could guide Tempest Shadow’s ponies through your castle? You know they can’t know where they’re going…”

The trouble with navigating the Crystal Castle in particular was that, as a structure that was less built as was generated, from ground floor to the highest steeple, it featured a great many organic inflections and imperfections within its walls, resulting in secret passageways and corridors that led right into dead ends. These passages were of course less used by the guards and servants, or anyone that spent any appreciable length of time there, but to the inexperienced eye of foreign soldiers, any one of these passages represented a possible escape route for the intruder or a shortcut through the castle.

“Why, Dawny, you surprise me,” Cadance smiled with a silkiness that bordered on wickedness. “You surprise me. Are you so unconfident in my abilities as a leader and a fighter?”

“Yes,” Dawny nodded vigorously. “Are you expecting another emergency?”

“You never know, right?” Cadance sidled closer to Dawny, close enough that the perturbed pony could feel her breath as she whispered: “If you’re so worried, you could come too… See if you know what’s going on…”

Dawny squeaked and skittered back from Cadance upon feeling a telekinetic “dilation” poking around behind her, staring in shock at the Princess’s predatory glare. The lunar stone rotated in her eyes to face her, and the purple earth pony tried to swallow down the heart in her throat as the light blue scan of a scrying spell washed over Cadance. The Princess smirked and turned away, leaving Dawny with a growing pit of dread in her stomach and herself with a newfound appreciation for Princess Celestia’s super strength spell-blockers.

The lobby of the Crystal Castle was in a state of utter bedlam when she materialized inside. She smiled as she watched the hapless guards, who, just as Dawny had warned, were tripping over themselves with absolutely no idea where to go.

“We’re back from the northeastern corridor!” one group reported.

“Anything to report?”

“What do you think?”

Tempest Shadow seemed to have gone, tirelessly chasing down Shining Armor’s more impassioned cries of “Cadance! Cadance!” and occasionally she could see doors violently opening and shutting on the second floor as the commander rushed between them- sometimes breaking them off of their delicate hinges in the process. Princess Cadance ignored the soldiers arguing around her and went on.

“Oh, we’re back, we’re back!”

“Found at last!”

“It’s been four years!”

Most of the soldiers chose to regroup in the first floor foyer, so while there were always a certain density of guardsponies around the stairs leading to the second floor, their relative small number and reluctance to continue exploring the castle meant that Cadance scarcely saw a single soldier diving through the deepest depths of the castle’s cerulean upper corridors- at least, not other than the one she was looking for. She continued at a leisurely, trotting pace until coming close upon the Admiral, at which point Cadance took several deep breaths and galloped severely to intercept her.

“Admiral!” Her wings fluttered most convincingly as the Alicorn drew alongside her partner.

“Good to see you, Princess!” Tempest growled, some of the frustration at her failing to properly navigate the upper floors spilling into her voice. “Perhaps it’s not too late to reach your husband-”

“Aaah! C-Cady…!”

“-It would appear that he’s putting up a good fight,” the Admiral nodded. “Shall we?”

“Of course!” Cadance led the Admiral through a series of twists and turns, through several false walls and to one of her many “lairs” within the castle. “It’s a shortcut to our chambers,” so the devious Princess said of the door and the dark, unlit room within. “We’ll get the drop on the intruder this way.”

Tempest nodded with all the compliance of a good little soldier and crept over the threshold, immediately buzzing a little blue lantern of sparking lightning from her horn as she made her way to a fairly obvious crevice in the corner of the room- another one of those quirky crystal inflections that, to Cadance’s credit, actually did lead to their room. As Tempest Shadow stepped further and further into the trap, the darkened navy crystals that made up the floor and the lower walls began to hum and glow a dark magenta, setting the sultry mood for two cloaked figures to emerge from the corners.

“Who dares?!” Tempest Shadow wasted no time in targeting the closer one with a barrage of lightning bolts.

Moving with trained ease and calmness, this figure’s horn shone yellow before deflecting each bolt to dissipate against the walls, and sending the last one to crackle over Tempest Shadow’s armor. Before the Admiral could launch another volley, a yellow concussion blast from the selfsame fighter picked Tempest up off her feet and threw her towards the doorway, colliding with a rosy barrier Cadance had erected at the portal. Tempest glared in confusion up at the sheepish Princess.

“What is this?” she asked, a hard edge of betrayal sneaking into her voice.

“This isn’t a betrayal, Tempest,” Cadance tried to impart the very most calming tone into her voice. The awkward grin and flush taking to her features was merely a natural bonus. “You’re my friend… And can’t friends do favors for each other that coincidentally benefit both parties from time-to-time?”

“Some favor,” Tempest groaned, re-adjusting her armor as she rose to her feet, casting a suspicious glance at the figures behind her. “What’s the deal?”

“I’m afraid I just need you out of the way for a teensy bit,” Cadance giggled. “A game with Shiny, you know…”

“I should’ve,” Tempest groused, her disposition instantly growing doubly dour. “And how have you deigned to pay me for whatever role I’ve played in you and your whacked husband’s sex games?”

“... Sex games?” Cadance’s sheepish, overly wide grin got a little wider.

The two cloaked figures shook off the canvas covering their heads, revealing Lyra Heartstrings and Bon Bon, both smiling widely at their Admiral. While Bon Bon at least had some decency to stand at awkward attention in the rest of her cloak, her unicorn wife had no such inhibitions, and she provided Tempest with an airy advertisement of her sea-green flank that left very little to the imagination. Completing the perversion came a sultry wink on the part of the agent and a splutter from the admiral.

“Traitors…” That was the only word Tempest could think of to say.

“Now, now,” Cadance tutted. “These are some Very Helpful Ponies. Intelligence gathering wouldn’t be the same without them. Now go on, have your fun, enjoy your reward… I know I’ll be enjoying mine~”

Though it was at this point Cadance let the doors shut behind her and, indeed, she barricaded it soon after, she couldn’t help waiting the theatre of foreplay out, listening through the door. As soon as the action between the three of them began did Cadance start up again, now totally unimpeded, to her quarters, but she made her way breathing sharply, squeezing and pleasuring herself to the tune of that imagination. Scarcely noting the twists and turns that had by now become instinct, Cadance lost herself in the remembrance of Tempest’s first indignant refusals, blustery and yet infirm as she retreated from Lyra’s probing hoof. This quiet, shy resistance of the Admiral continued until she clacked against the wall- to think, and certainly Cadance gasped in devious pleasure at that thought: that the great and powerful Tempest Shadow could ever be so fearful and demure? Yes, the poor little thing must’ve closed her eyes in nervous fear as Lyra pried that prideful epaulet away from her shoulder, sending it and the Admiral’s protections clattering away to the ground. Good girl; and then following with a silent, deep kiss with that sultry click as the two separate… Tempest would have known at that moment she was safe, and taken that invitation to tumble more roughly and loudly with Lyra and her partner.

When Cadance at last stumbled up the doors to her bedchambers, she herself hardly knew from whence she’d come, but could easily be tracked by the water-trail, and camouflaged herself in the silent aftermath of the heavy smell of sex quite well. Thus hidden by scent, she flapped over to the bed, peeling the sodden covers back to reveal the little purple prize.

Success.

“Was there really ever any doubt?” she patted herself on the back on another caper well done. Although this one might perhaps require a more delicate approach…

She removed Twilight from her bed and slowly unwrapped the ball of lavender pony in her hooves, retiring to a corner far enough away from her husband so that whatever might follow would not wake him. Cadance splayed her sister-in-law out over her lap, nestling her head in her wings for the application of tenderness and a hoof between the girl’s legs for an application of dazing happy zaps. A kiss on Twilight’s forehead woke her up from her sleep.

“S-Shining?” Twilight asked, conscious of nervousness for the first time in a long while; the potion had long worn off.

“Not quite,” Cadance smiled tenderly down at her sister-in-law.

Twilight’s pupils shrank to pinpricks as she realized who she had addressed, and she opened her mouth to scream. Cadance quickly anticipated the move, and Twilight’s historical yell was sadly strangled in its throat by a mouthful of pink fur.

“We wouldn’t want Shiny to wake up, now would we?” Cadance quietly urged her to see reason.

Twilight shook her head and the tension in her body calmed momentarily, though her pupils still looked so small that they might have collapsed into themselves and formed black holes. Her voice trembled when she next spoke, and the shameful words came out so softly as if spoken by a dead pony. Which, of course, if it had been anypony else’s husband, she might well have been.

“O-oh, Celestia,” she paled, feeling with alarm the huge crystal ball still slightly distending her abdomen and the sticky warmth the fixture held deep within her. “What did I do?”

“Well,” Cadance curiously pressed down on the hard lump and savored in Twilight’s stifled gasp. “You appear to have lain with your brother.”

“Cadance, you have to believe me,” Twilight stammered, defaulting to the predictable next reaction: tears. “I couldn’t- I couldn’t-”

“Shhh…”

“He’s your husband!” She excoriated herself, sobbing into her former babysitter’s offered wing. “He’s my brother! That’s your marital bed! What is wrong with me?”

“Oh my…” Cadance thought it would be best to let the tears run their course.

“I regret everything! I regret everything I’ve ever done!”

She waited until Twilight at least entered some kind of pliable state before continuing- after all, it would hardly do to try to make an argument to her while the poor pony was still whipping herself. Thanks to a combination of a tight hug and some whispered soothing- an ageless cure-all indeed- the time it took to bring Twilight back up from rock bottom was fairly low.

“Y-you mean you’re not mad?” Twilight finally whispered.

“I’ve been madder,” Cadance shrugged slyly, whispering back in confidence: “You know, with me around, Shiny sleeps with a lot of mares. I hope you didn't think we were an exclusive couple.”

At that, Twilight had to blush. She knew something of the sort, of course, but it was the sort of matter one could know and at the same time deny- it seemed as if that would be impossible going forward.

“Would you do it again?” Cadance suddenly asked, beginning a soft press on Twilight’s vulnerability so that her answer might have a slightly lewder tinge.

“He’s my brother!” Twilight exclaimed, reddening intensely.

“And you’re my sister-in-law,” Cadance pressed down a little more insistently. “Here we are.”

“This-” Twilight gestured to where the Princess sat, making circles on her midriff with her hooves. “This is different. Me and Shining Armor are bio-”

“There are spells for that. Now tell me- honestly, Twilight- whether or not you want to see him again.”

No tricks. Twilight bit her lip at the absence of them. Of course there would always be a divider between the two of them- that being the presence of family and a shared youth- preventing them from enjoying the mantle of true “lovers,” and there was even a part of Twilight yet that hoped that these factors could bring them closer. And she remembered again those cold, empty nights with the other stallions. Twilight recalled every single one of their faces and the polite but ultimately businesslike way in which they conducted affairs; just as soon as they’d finished their contract of activities, each one would invariably pack up, tip his hat, and leave. They didn’t care about the needy mare they left behind, oh no, not those new faces, but a familiar one? Her brother? Why, she knew from filial experience that nestled in his hooves she might never cry herself to sleep again.

All that was left was Twilight’s pride, bruised as it was with already one application of her brother’s seed and a two pound crystal ball, faltering but holding steadily in place for the moment.

“I shouldn’t…” She moaned torturedly.

“You should,” Cadance petted her head, speaking seriously for once. “He’ll be good for you.”

It would taste a lie to say that it wasn’t exactly what Cadance wanted, another satisfying fetish under her belt, when Twilight agreed, and perhaps her powers of precognition were indeed so great that she saw this outcome too in the long list of benefits- for whatever reason as she tucked the smaller Alicorn in with her brother and clambered in to sleep after her, Cadance did smile not with the perverse twist of lust, but the warm tidings of love.