Sunset was ready for the vortex of light blinding her with so many colors she couldn’t remember them all. What she wasn’t ready for was the uncomfortable sensation of her body twisting and reshaping itself. She was sure she remembered something like that from the first time she had crossed the portal, but her mind had been focused more on what she had done than on what the portal did to her.

She felt bones being enlarged and others shrunk, and some disappeared while others grew. Her entire body was being reshaped, and she was really glad that it didn’t really hurt. Though it was definitely uncomfortable to feel her fur growing out of her skin, and her fingers retreat to give way for her hooves. However, she did feel elated at the feeling of her horn jutting out of her forehead. Finally.

Something that felt like a particularly strong gust of wind pushed her forward. She knew from experience that that feeling heralded her arrival, so she braced herself. Since she was ready, she was able to perceive the exact moment she crossed the mirror’s surface. Stepping on wobbly legs, Sunset felt her stomach hurl as her sense of balance was suddenly way off, as if her body was trying to fall…

She huffed at her own stupidity, letting herself fall on four legs.

She looked at her sides, even if the darkness didn’t really let her see much of herself. There were no wings attached to her sides. She sighed disappointedly, then looked around, searching for white fur, be it from an alicorn or a royal guard. She looked to her left, then to her right. She was alone.

Something smashed onto her from behind, as if somepony had dropped a bag of potatoes onto her, and fell to the ground. Of course, Twilight had crossed right after her. Sunset wanted to be mad at her, but she should’ve stepped out of the way in retrospect.

“Ow…” Twilight moaned from somewhere above. Sunset couldn’t blame her.

Still, they couldn’t afford to dawdle. Sunset pushed Twilight off her and scanned the room. It didn’t look like the artifacts vault. In fact, it didn’t look like any room she was familiar with. To the left of the mirror there was a nondescript wall that split into two small hallways, each leading to a red door with golden frames. To the right there was a curtain. Looking up, Sunset realized that the room was extremely tall. She couldn’t even see the ceiling, considering they were in almost total darkness.

“On your hooves, Twilight,” Sunset whispered, looking at the near-black blob that she was reasonably sure was Twilight’s body. “Something’s not right.”

The blob shifted, confirming that it was indeed Twilight. “Am I a pony? I can’t see my arms. Oh, is that a tail? This feels so weird.”

Sunset considered casting a light spell, but since she didn’t know where they were, she decided to hold off on that. She didn’t want to risk triggering any magic sensitive alarms. Instead, she walked, as silently as she could, towards the curtain. Carefully, she slid her hoof between the curtain and the wall, and pushed it away just enough for her to take a peek. She gasped, recognizing the room beyond even if she had never seen it from this angle.

It was the throne room.

Why was the portal right behind the throne room? Did Princess Celestia move it there to capture Sunset as soon as she returned? But if that was the case, then, where was she? The princess was many things, but Sunset was sure she wasn’t the kind to play around. If she wasn’t there, ready to throw Sunset in a dungeon, that meant that the princess either didn’t intend to, or simply believed the letter Twilight had written, saying Sunset wouldn’t return.

And that still begged the question of the portal’s location.

Hesitant, loud steps sounded from behind. “Walking on all fours feels really weird,” Twilight said as she approached Sunset.

Sunset let the curtain fall, covering them in almost total darkness again. She hadn’t planned for the mirror to have been moved, but it didn’t really ruin her many plans. She just needed to adjust the route, which was decidedly easier now. She was more well acquainted with the palace’s layout of the general areas than she was of the restricted ones.

“You better get used to them fast, Twilight,” Sunset said. “I need you to follow me as silently as you can.”

“I can do that,” Twilight replied, though she didn’t sound very confident.

It would have to do.

“Alright, come on then.”

Sunset crossed the curtain, careful not to disturb it too much. Despite the hour, the throne room was illuminated by the moon, its light filtering through the massive windows on the eastern side, casting dark shadows on less than half of the room. Sunset walked carefully, acutely aware of the slight echoes their hooves made. There were no other sounds, so she could hear her own breathing. To say that she was tense would be an understatement.

Halfway through, Sunset became aware that only her hooves were making sound. She held back a huff and turned around to see what Twilight was doing and tell her a thing or two.

She froze just as she opened her mouth.

Twilight had indeed stopped walking, right above the thin shadows of one of the windows’ frames. She was looking outside at the night sky with a mesmerized expression on her face. A face that Sunset was seeing properly for the first time.

Bathed under the silver moonlight, Twilight almost appeared to glow. Her big amethyst-violet eyes, somewhat clouded by the lens of her thick glasses, reflected an almost perfect image of the mare in the moon. Her mane, a blue as deep as the night sky, fell in neat, straight bangs to cover most of her forehead and the side of her neck, with two neat streaks running across, one pink and the other purple. The glasses that had come with her sat neatly upon her delicate muzzle, which lifted a bit at the tip of her nose and made a soft curve down to her mouth, where thin, soft-looking lips hung ajar. Her cheeks were a bit puffy, giving her jaw a slightly rounded curve down to her neck, around which was the best friends necklace she’d given her.

Said neck led to the rest of her body, which Sunset now noticed was covered in soft lavender fur which seemed to shine silver at the very tips, giving her an ethereal look. Twilight’s shoulders were small and arched tenderly to her forelegs, which followed a slender curve to her knees, bending ever so slightly to her thin pasterns, upon which her fetlocks caressed her hooves.

Twilight’s withers established her rather short stature, cresting at little more than a hoof from the ground. Her belly and her back both made a deliciously gentle curve towards her hindquarters, giving her a most feminine figure. Her flanks, adorned by her Cutie Mark, spoke of a lifetime sitting around to read, but with a decent enough lift one wouldn’t notice unless looking for it. And her tail, which followed a similar straight cut pattern as her mane, was giving soft, absentminded flicks —a sign of Twilight’s captivation by the night sky.

The last thing Sunset noticed was the horn that jutted out of Twilight’s head. Average in length, with a soft rounded tip and a thick base. While some in Canterlot favored long and sharp horns due to a stupidly misguided belief that longer horns meant larger mana pools, any unicorn worth their salt would know better. Twilight’s horn was the picture of health, as the ridges spiraling down from the tip looked wide enough to allow for proper mana flow.

“So beautiful…” Twilight whispered.

Her words seemed to awaken something inside Sunset. She broke out of her trance and noticed that her breathing was hot against her face, and her heart was beating with fast and furious beats. And when she remembered to close her mouth, she felt her lips uncomfortably dry. She tried to speak, but her jaw felt like it was made of jelly, and the pit of her stomach felt as if she had swallowed a swarm of parasprites.

Sunset swallowed dryly as warmth spread through her entire body at the sight of Twilight's glimmering form. She wanted to deny, right there and then, that she was most definitely not feeling what she was feeling, but the rational part of her brain refused to let her play dumb. Still, acknowledging those feelings didn’t mean that she had to accept them. It didn’t matter that Twilight was impossibly beautiful as a pony, Sunset couldn’t allow herself to be distracted at the moment. They needed to keep moving.

“Twilight,” Sunset hissed. “Get moving.”

Twilight flinched, snapping out of her reverie. “Right, so-” she stopped when she looked at Sunset. “Oh my goodness! Sunset, is that you? You look adorable!”

Sunset felt herself blush in equal amounts flattery and indignation. “Can you tone it down?” She said, still hissing. “Or do you want the whole castle to know we’re here?”

“Sorry,” Twilight said, taking a hoof to her mouth.

Huffing, Sunset turned around and continued the trek towards the room’s entrance. This time, her heart sounded louder than the clopping of their hooves in her ears. She reached the massive double doors and, signaling Twilight to stop for a moment, pressed her ear against them and waited.

She knew that the antechamber to the throne room was usually unguarded at night, but she didn’t want to take any chances. When she was reasonably sure that her knowledge was true, she pushed one of the doors ajar and slowly stuck her head out. Confirming that the coast was clear, she held the door so that Twilight could go through first, which meant she left her soft lavender fragrance lingering in the air for Sunset to fill her lungs with and—

Focus! Sunset admonished herself, ignoring the heat in her face and making sure the door made as little noise as possible when it closed. Once in the antechamber, which was almost as big as the throne room itself, Sunset felt brave enough to try casting a spell.

She closed her eyes and started channeling her mana through her horn. The action came so naturally to her that she barely had time to register the relief she felt. Recalling the different arrays she had learned was also extremely easy, and this time she did marvel at the thought. She had never thought much about it, but her horn really did help in spellcasting in more ways than just mana channeling. For while she had struggled to remember arrays as a human, now she did with as much clarity as she did the colors.

She pictured her magic flowing in the air around her horn, energizing fixed points in the Harmonic Veil in a specific pattern. Hundreds upon hundreds of pulsations made up the different arrays that made up the spell she wanted to cast, and eventually became a full magical circuit. What had taken her two years of hard work, several failures, and minutes on end waiting around for a stupid machine to work, she did in only a couple seconds.

Her horn flashed a dim light, and the light became a translucent wave that spread through the antechamber. It was a basic scanning spell. It detected any alterations in the Harmonic Veil and returned the values. To her surprise, there were no magical wards or alarms anywhere near the throne room. At least, not any that her basic scanning could detect. Still, she wasn’t confident enough to try teleporting, at least not within the castle. The effects on the Harmonic Veil would remain for days, and she’d be alerting anypony that cared to pay attention.

Sunset let her scanning spell dissipate safely. It also hadn’t detected any unicorn magic, which wasn’t exactly good news. It meant that the guards outside the antechamber —and she knew there had to be at least two— were earth ponies or pegasi, and Sunset and Twilight would be unable to outrun them.

However, it also meant that they would be more easily fooled by magic than a unicorn.

Once again Sunset channeled mana through her horn, constructing the circuitry for a muffling spell on both hers and Twilight’s hooves. It was an intermediate level spell that suppressed soundwaves. Sunset had used it to sneak into the restricted section of the royal library the first few times. Why had she neglected to use it that last time was a question for the ages.

Twilight gasped, no doubt at the tingling sensation from the spell, and raised a hoof to look at it. Sunset shoved hers onto Twilight’s mouth to shut her up and spun her ears to listen to the door. There was a slight shuffle, but otherwise it didn’t seem like the guards had been alerted.

She pushed Twilight into the corner adjacent to the exit and stepped next to her. Ignoring the warmth that irradiated from Twilight and her own thundering heart, Sunset concentrated to construct the much more complex circuitry for a light bending spell. It created an invisible bubble around her and Twilight, then, from their perspective, the bubble seemed to break into hundreds of ethereal triangles and shifted languidly in the air, shrinking and growing and returning to their original place. From the outside, it would look like an inconspicuous shadow in the corner of an already dark room.

Her preparations complete, Sunset moved on to the distraction phase. This next spell was easy to craft, the circuitry taking form in a mere second. The difficulty began when Sunset wrapped the arrays with her mana and detached them from the air around her, then carefully moved them to the other side of the antechamber. When they reached the doors to the throne room, Sunset fed them with mana, starting the spell.

The sound of rattling windows came from the double doors, loud enough to be heard. However, Sunset had modified the soundwave production, suppressing the highest and lowest notes, which meant that the sound gave the impression of coming from inside the throne room, instead of from the doors.

The doors to the antechamber opened, obscuring them further from sight. Twilight flinched, but fortunately didn’t make a sound as a guardstallion —an earth pony— walked into view, his golden armor reflecting the dim light of the corridor’s lanterns. Sunset waited with baited breath as he reached the middle of the antechamber, and to her massive relief, a second guard, this time a pegasus mare, followed him inside. The sound of rattling windows within the throne room was indeed strange enough to make both of them investigate, but it wouldn’t be that big of a deal that they’d raise any alarms when they found nothing.

Sunset stopped feeding the spell with magic, and the sound immediately went out. The guards flinched, looked at each other, then nodded before they pushed the doors open to investigate.

As soon as they turned towards the windows and were effectively out of sight, Sunset walked around the antechamber’s open door. Her movement destroyed the bubble for the light bending spell, but she paid it no mind. Taking a peek at the main corridor, she confirmed with a silent sigh that there were no other guards in sight.

She signaled Twilight to follow her and quickly made her way out of the antechamber. Or as quickly as she dared to walk. The muffling spell on their hooves was fragile, and a casual trot would break it.

The main corridor was a very wide hallway that served as a direct path from the palace’s entrance to the throne room, with clearly designated waiting areas for ponies to wait their turn for day court and stay out of the way for the palace staff to still walk around. It wasn’t as tall as the throne room, but it still had enough space for pegasi to fly comfortably.

There were two hallways at each side of the main corridor, and a massive gate at the other end, which was the entrance to the palace. The pillars separating each hallway had lanterns that held pearls enchanted to give off soft white light, illuminating the corridor just enough to see properly, but not so much that the guards would be blinded.

Sunset eyed the main gate for a second. It was too far for them to try to reach it, considering they had to walk. The guards would be back before that, and they’d be in big trouble. Fortunately, Sunset had already accounted for that. She went to one of the hallways on her left, making sure that Twilight was following her.

From there, the trek through the palace was much easier. The increase of furniture and tapestries provided a myriad of hiding places, which they took whenever a guard walked by. Sunset cast light bending spells whenever they hid, just for good measure, which was starting to take a toll on her after the twentieth time. Those who thought the palace was empty at night were idiots.

“Are you alright?” Twilight whispered as Sunset dropped the bubble.

“Yeah,” Sunset lied. The spell wasn’t impossible to cast, but it did consume a large amount of mana. She was developing a headache and was getting exhausted. She wouldn’t be able to cast it many more times.

Fortunately, they had finally reached their first destination of the night. Turning a corner, Sunset walked up to a nondescript door made of dark wood. It was locked, but it was a very simple hook latch. Simple manipulation with her mana got the door open. She ushered Twilight inside and closed the door behind her, letting out a long winded sigh.

“What is this place?” Twilight asked as she turned around inside the room. It was dark, but a small, well placed awning window on the western wall, which bordered one of the inner gardens, let in enough light to see.

Two rows of shelves lined the other two walls while a single desk sat at the windowed wall. The shelves held cardboard boxes, each marked with a name tag and a number.

“It’s the uniform storage room,” Sunset replied as she walked to one of the shelves. “We’re going to dress up as palace staff so we don’t have to sneak around as much.”

“Oh,” Twilight said. “This feels more and more like a heist.”

The chirpiness in her voice made Sunset roll her eyes. “What are you… Oh, right, you wouldn’t know.” She looked into a box and saw a bunch of uniforms neatly folded inside.

Unlike regular spellcasting, levitation didn’t require circuitry. She channeled her mana through her horn, then used it to bend the Harmonic Veil around the clothes. Carefully manipulating it to hug the fabric, she made sure to employ just enough mana to fully envelop them, but not too much that they’d even get wrinkles. There were important aspects like control, balance, and strength. But the key aspect was establishing a proper mana flow to absorb back most of the expended mana. Otherwise, levitating something ridiculous like a slip of paper would exhaust her mana pool in seconds.

With her aura gently hugging the clothes, Sunset levitated them towards Twilight.

“You look like a ten,” she said. “If it’s too big we’ll simply use a lace.”

Twilight lifted a hoof, and the clothes fell on it, then to the floor. “Uhm…”

Sunset closed her eyes and sighed. “Right… Lift your left foreleg.” Twilight did so, and Sunset levitated the black sleeved shirt, manipulating it within her aura to unfold it and properly slide it down the leg.

After the shirt was properly buttoned, she fastened an equally black skirt around Twilight’s barrel, which was a bit loosely fit, so she used a lace to fix that. Then came the heavy white apron, which used laces to tie itself behind the neck and over the back. By the time the cuffins and the headband were in place, Sunset’s heart was beating in her throat.

Maybe dressing Twilight as a maid hadn’t been a great idea. Sunset was glad the uniforms no longer included stockings nor hindleg cloth rings or she was sure she’d be having a nosebleed.

“This is so cute!” Twilight said as she looked at herself. “This feels like dressing up for Halloween!”

Sunset rolled her eyes, which had the unintended —yet welcome— effect of taking them off Twilight. She huffed at her stupid body betraying her and forced herself to focus as she took another uniform, size eleven, and put it on. It was rather snug on her shoulders, which meant she’d grown quite substantially while in the human world.

“Oh my goodness, Sunset! You look adorable!”

Sunset felt herself blush, and this time even her tail swatted nervously. She frowned. “Stop calling me that!”

Twilight offered her a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

“Now, follow me. And stay quiet.”

Sunset led Twilight out of the storage room. Now that they were in disguise, Sunset allowed herself to walk more confidently and a bit faster, but without breaking into a trot, as she didn’t want to draw attention.

“So,” Twilight whispered beside her. “Where are we going now?”

Sunset looked around to make sure there were no guards on sight, then replied also in a whisper. “The administrative office of palace affairs. I need to know the current situation so that we can move around better.”

“What if someone sees us and asks us things? You know I’m not a good liar.”

“Keep your gaze forward and your gait confident,” Sunset replied. “Then they’ll assume you’re just there doing your job.”

She was proven right as they crossed paths with five different guards on patrol. They all looked at them for a brief moment before nodding and continuing on their way. Maids working at night was a more common sight than ponies realized, after all. The palace was really big and there weren’t enough maids to clean all of it in time. Though it was true that the night shift had the least active staff, and only the new hires and those being punished ever got assigned to it.

Three sets of stairs, four corridors, and one roofed bridge later, Sunset and Twilight arrived at the office of palace affairs. Just like the uniform storage room, it was locked with an easy to maneuver hook latch. Sunset wondered if maybe Princess Celestia was too trusting on her guards to fend off intruders. Then again, nopony ever expected said intruders to pop into existence right inside the palace.

With a light shake of her head, Sunset entered the office, urging Twilight to follow her, and closed the door. She cast a dim light spell and moved the light to a corner so that it wouldn’t be as noticeable from outside, then quickly stepped to the desk and started reading through anything that was already at hoof.

Twilight’s clothes shuffled as she reached out to take a binder from a shelf. Sunset looked up just in time to see her struggle to keep a grip on the binder and barely managing to balance it on her toe. The way her muzzle scrunched up in concentration was simply adorable, and the way her eyes seemed to glitter…

Sunset shook her head. Just stop! She levitated another sheet of paper and read it. Then read it another time just to confirm she hadn’t misread it.

It was a notification to all palace staff that Princess Celestia had gone out on an emergency political summons up south earlier in the day and would return in three days. The notification didn’t specify what the summons was about or in exactly which city, but if it would take her so long, Sunset could only guess that something big was happening.

And that was such good news she barely contained the urge to dance in joy.

With the big alicorn out of the picture, all her plans were suddenly much easier to accomplish. Speaking of which, Sunset rummaged through the desk’s drawers until she found a level two cleared map of the palace. Not fit for public viewing, but not showing the locations of any vaults or secret passages or anything of the like either. Perfect for the staff to do their jobs and know where everything was.

Gulping dryly, Sunset unfolded the map until she found the section for the northwest wing, fourth floor. Thirty moons ago, only one of the four rooms of that specific section had been occupied. By Sunset. And according to this map, which Sunset made sure to confirm was up to date, nothing had changed.

She still had a room assigned to her. Not only that, but a maid called Gusty Skies was assigned to clean it every moon. Sunset couldn’t understand why, since Celestia had terminated her apprenticeship and banished her from the palace. Why keep her room? It didn’t make any sense.

Regardless, this opened a golden opportunity, and Sunset always took all the opportunities life threw at her. She put everything where she had found them, going as far as snatching the binder Twilight was reading and putting it back in its place.

“Hey! I was reading that!”

“Change of plans, Twilight,” Sunset said, dismissing her light spell after reaching the door. “Follow me, and remember to look like you belong.”

“Change of plans?” Twilight asked, tilting her beautiful head. “I don’t even know the original plan.”

Sunset huffed. “Just shut up and follow.”

“Geesh.”

The administrative office of palace affairs was, unfortunately, located in the north-eastern wing, third floor of the palace. Which meant they had to walk for a whole thirty minutes through corridors and stairs. By the time they reached the door to Sunset’s chambers, her hooves were as sore as if she had run a marathon. A quick glance at Twilight told her she wasn’t faring any better.

Sunset stopped right in front of the door, which was made of the finest wenge wood of a natural dark wine coloration. It was decorated with very intricate swirling patterns made of gold and silver, trying to depict the swirling of unicorn mana. This door alone cost the same as a house in any given village.

“Where is this?” Twilight asked as she gazed at the door.

“It’s my room.” Not letting Twilight ask more questions, Sunset lit up her horn and cast a scanning spell, directing it at her room. The returned values told her that her old wards were still there. Weakened and almost faded, but there. Of course, they were completely pointless, since she hadn’t used her room in thirty moons, but the fact Princess Celestia hadn’t removed them was… strange.

“Come on,” Sunset said, shaking her head. She didn’t know what the princess’ intentions were, but it was no use trying to figure them out. She opened the door with her magic and entered, closing the door after Twilight.

The walls and doors were thick enough that almost no sound made it through, however, just as a precaution, Sunset cast a muffling spell on the door.

When she turned around, she saw Twilight looking around with her mouth slightly ajar. She couldn’t fault her. Her chambers were almost as large as Twilight’s house, though the ceiling wasn’t much taller than one story. A massive princess-size bed sat at the middle of the far wall, made of expensive wood by the best craftspony in Canterlot. The mattress was covered in the finest cotton and silk sheets, dyed red, and a delicate, white canopy hung from the ceiling to cover the three open sides.

Night tables of the same wood flanked the bed, each holding expensive potted plants Sunset didn’t remember the name of. A large desk made of mahogany sat at the other side of the room, a solitary lantern on one side. She knew that the drawers held falcon feather quills, ink bottles, and quality parchment. On the wall above the desk hung a solar clock, enchanted to detect the position of the sun in the sky with a margin of error of only three seconds.

On the wall opposite to the door, there was a huge window with a great view of the mountainside, though it was currently hidden behind dark red silk curtains. A massive wardrobe sat neatly at the window’s left side. A slightly hidden door next to the window led to her personal washroom. The rest of the walls were covered by shelves with dozens of books.

“I think I’m in paradise,” Twilight said, walking up to the middle of the room and turning her head around, trying to look at everything at once.

Sunset cranked her neck up, looking at the chandelier, and sent a single spark at the ruby located at its base, which activated the enchantment that made the crystalline stones at the ends of its arms shine a white light.

“You can take that off, now,” Sunset said as she removed her own maid uniform.

Twilight blinked, then looked down at herself. “Oh, right!” She sat on her haunches and tried to pry the laces free with her hooves, failing miserably. “Uhm, a little help?”

As it turned out, undressing Twilight was worse than dressing her. Sunset wouldn’t be surprised if her whole fur turned a deep shade of red. Fortunately, Twilight seemed too enthralled by the books around her to notice.

“We’ll sleep here for the night,” Sunset announced as soon as she calmed herself. “If all my things are still here, we won’t need to search around the city. Not for books, at least.”

Twilight nodded. “Ok.”

Sunset sat at her desk and let out a tired sigh. She was back in Equestria after so long, but her room was just as she had left it. She had made many plans to avoid Celestia, to trick the staff room into believing they were just random newcomers and sleep in the staff dormitories. But instead she could use her room and didn’t have to worry about Celestia.

She allowed herself a smile. Things were going better than expected.

Author's Note

A bit of a long chapter, and it's only the first night. Also, what's this? Sunset's feeling feelings? Outrageous!

If you liked it, please do leave a comment! I wanna read everything you have to say!