Anton—hastily dressed in a singed flannel shirt, jeans, and his now-charred Stetson—hucks an unresisting Chester into the dark stone cabin, then shrugs Holds-the-Fire's limp body off his shoulder and drops her to the ground just inside the door.

He pulls his revolver from the holster he buckled on, spinning it around his finger a few times, then shades muddy yellow as he points it down at the motionless girl. "You sure I can't shoot her? Just a little?"

Chryssy steps inside, squinting in the darkness. She raises a palm, and a ghostly green flame bursts from it, sending ominous pale light around the cabin. "You won't do a thing to them until I find out what they all know. Then they're disposable." She whips her head back to glare at Anton for a moment, still simmering red with fury. "Except for Chester. Now that I know all his sins—no thanks to you—I will personally be making an example of him tomorrow."

"Okay, but it'd be easier if—"

"Do not test me right now," she hisses, red re-intensifying. "Or would you like to join him? Say it. 'Yes, Chryssy.'"

"Yes, Chryssy," Anton mumbles.

She continues red-glaring at him for long moments, then crouches down, shimmering gold stirring up, next to one of the other crumpled forms Chester hadn't noticed until now. A person, but drained like Holds-the-Fire, barely breathing and with an animal-like lack of color. It's Sunset, by the rage-and-pain hair.

Chryssy touches Sunset's cheek with her other hand, then frowns. "It's not working with her, either."

"They're immune?" Anton asks, then blossoms into a sadistic magenta smile. "Then I'll dig it out of them the old-fashioned way."

"No. I'll handle it." Chryssy shades a distrustful maroon. "Clearly my power connects to something within consciousness—it won't work when they're out like this. I'll sort that out tomorrow, too." Abruptly, she stands and exits the cabin. "You will address a more urgent problem—and you'd better not screw this one up."

"Yes, Chryssy," Anton says, pale yellow, as he exits with her.

The cabin door slams shut, and the room goes nearly pitch black. There's the click of the deadbolt engaging, and then long scraping noises from outside—a thick wooden bar being slotted in across the door.

The stone cabin had always struck Chester as uncomfortably prison-like. It's beginning to make sense why Chryssy had ordered it built.

He lies there for a while as his eyes adjust and the noises from outside die away. But with only tiny slit windows high in the six-inch-thick walls, the room is dim even in the daytime, and given the hour, he can't make out enough detail even to see Holds-the-Fire's body.

Reluctantly, he sits up—every muscle protesting—and pushes himself to his feet. He knows there's a single small light bulb in the bathroom in the back; if he can find its pull-chain in the dark, at least that will be enough light to see how badly she's hurt.

"That's interesting," a voice says, with no sign of color or source. "Did you manage to avoid being drained?"

Chester screams and startles. His body protests at the sudden motion, and he sags against the wall, waiting for the pain to subside. And then he realizes why the voice sounded familiar.

"Celestia?" he asks. It does sound kind of like her, but weak and whispery. He hopes it's not her ghost.

"Oh!" The voice seems to perk up for a moment before returning to its faint, thready baseline. "Hello, Chester."

Now that he's orienting to the sound a little more, he thinks he catches a hint of her trademark periwinkle in it, barely brighter than the static his eye fills the darkness with. When Chester blinks, in the afterimages, he can see that same color in a crumpled body on the far side of the cabin. That faintness would be startling for anyone, but for her, it's like staring at the sun and seeing a candle.

He works his jaw, completely at a loss. "You don't look so good," he finally manages.

"Understandable. I can barely move my lips. All I've got left is a mere residue of my power. But for a pony like me, residue is still something. And on the bright side, I'm conscious this time."

"As opposed to when your world's Chryssy did the same thing?" Chester guesses.

"Both times, actually." Celestia forces a weak noise that sounds like a chuckle. "I was rather looking forward to meeting one who was harmless without her magic, and finding out what makes her tick, in hopes of finally redeeming the original. You would think I'd have learned by now not to underestimate her."

That sets Chester's guilt to twinging. "Listen," he says. "I'm so sorry. This is entirely my fault. I called her and told her about you. At the time I didn't know she was in league with Anton. And I didn't know she was evil. Now she's got unstoppable magic powers, and she's going to take over the world, and I've doomed everyone."

"If she hasn't taken over the world yet, then you're still ahead of the curve. She seems not to understand most of what she can do." Celestia pauses. "Although if she comes back, uses Sunset's power to scan me, and learns that she can raise and lower the sun now, you might be in some trouble."

"Um." Chester can feel his eye twitch.

"It's fine. I believe in you. We've even got a template to follow. You don't happen to know an itinerant stage magician, a reformed dictator, and my counterpart's ex-fiance Darrell, do you?"

"Uhh." The twitching increases. "No?"

"Still fine," Celestia says. "We'll improvise."

Chester has no idea if that's a joke or entirely unwarranted optimism. He wishes she had enough energy for him to tell the difference.

"Please don't take this the wrong way," he says, "but you seem way too cheerful given what's happened."

"Mm-hmm," she agrees. "Please don't get me wrong, Chester, this is quite a predicament. But in Equestria? This, right now, is an average Saturday morning."

Chester allows himself a shudder. "Then I'm not cut out to be a villain hunter. I can't handle this."

"Nobody can, their first time around. But I've been around long enough to recognize people who rise to the challenge."

Up until he actually heard that compliment, Chester couldn't have articulated exactly how good it would feel. Nothing had ever been good enough for the Holy Mother. He tried, he tried so hard, to do the right thing and improve himself, and it just led to an unbroken string of failures. It led to this.

There's a large chunk of his brain that's positive Celestia is just buttering him up (especially given the current lack of color feedback). But today has been a crash course in the notion that maybe, all along, it wasn't him that was the problem. And her words are sweet sunlight to an idea taken root.

Doubts quickly storm back in, but for a moment there, it was awfully beautiful.

"Listen," Chester says uncomfortably, "I'm going to go turn on the bathroom light. Then I need to check on Holds-the-Fire. She might have been hurt pretty bad in that last fight with Chryssy."

"By all means. Would you be a dear and check on Sunset, too?"

"Yeah. In a minute."

Chester shuffles slowly to the back of the cabin, keeping one hand against the wall. He gropes his way along the divider between the main area and the bathroom, through the open doorway, and then sweeps his hand forward until it catches something dangling. A gentle tug later, light pierces his eyes.

He turns back to the main room, blinking the spots out. Yes, that definitely does look like Celestia crumpled up against one side wall of the cabin. She's ragdolled in a folded-up position which looks profoundly uncomfortable, but at least her eyes are tracking his. Reflexively, Chester limps over to her and straightens her out, laying her on her back.

"Thank you," Celestia says, lips moving sluggishly. With visible effort, she gives him a smile.

"Speaking of which, what… happened to you and Sunset, exactly?" He needs to ask about the demon thing, but that seems like a question to work his way up to. "After we split up."

"Long story." Celestia deliberately, slowly blinks. "You'll get a shorter version than I'd like. But it was obvious Anton was living alone, and Scorpan's always been harmless without his brother, so we agreed there was no harm in making contact to see if we could get ahead of a potential problem. Unfortunately, he met us at the door with a gun."

"My fault," Chester mumbles, similarly unfolding the limp Sunset. She's got bruises all over, and what looks like a number of bullet holes in her clothing and jacket. There's no blood, though, and her skin is unbroken underneath them. Maybe Chryssy had been bulletproof, after all.

"That's last year's taxes, Chester. Anyway, the real problem was that we had it all wrong. He's not actually your version of Scorpan."

Chester moves over to Holds-the-Fire, who is limply tented where Anton dropped her, face and knees on the floor and elevated butt propped against the wall. She looks a bit crispy—smeared with ashes, and smelling of burnt hair—but at least he can't see any ugly skin burns or blood pools. He winces in sympathy, grabbing her arm to pull her flat.

The colorless body grabs back, fingers clamping around his sleeve.

Her head rotates at an unnatural angle to stare at him. Her eyes are bright, solid,

broken

red—

"Ah, Chester," Celestia says from behind him, "could you perhaps stop screaming before you attract attention?"

Chester—who belatedly realizes he is indeed screaming his head off—manages to thrash free, tearing most of his sleeve off in the process. Holds-the-Fire's body twitches and then goes limp again, toppling over to the floor. Chester crab-scrambles backward to the middle of the cabin, huddling in the beam of direct light from the bathroom and hyperventilating.

"I couldn't see any of that," Celestia calmly says. "Please tell me what happened."

Chester stammers, brain rebooting. "Z-zombie!" he finally manages in a screechy falsetto. "Zombie girlfriend!"

"Don't be silly. Zombies are folk tales." Celestia hesitates. "Though, off the top of my head, there's four parasites, eleven banned magic spells, two legal but rare spells, and at least four types of possession which might make you think that under the present circumstances. Was it the Holy Mother who brought your friend into the cabin?"

The question is so casual and specific it can't help but help Chester focus. He swallows through a dry throat, eyes locked on Holds-the-Fire's form, who is again still but for a tiny rise and fall of her chest.

"Uhh," he says, forcing his voice back down, "no? No. It was Anton."

"Not a Marey Lloyd then, she wasn't invited in. She's not still chasing you, is she?"

Chester freaks out anew, taking his eyes off Holds-the-Fire long enough to shout at Celestia. "Why wasn't that your first question!?"

She locks eyes with him. "I'll take that as a no. Which means we're safe for now. Say it. We're safe."

"We're safe," Chester repeats, not feeling it in the slightest.

"We're safe. Breathe."

Holds-the-Fire, indeed, still isn't moving. He stares at her intently as the seconds tick on. And, at Celestia's prompt, he breathes.

"So, funny story," Celestia says. "On our world, my faithful student and her friends clashed with a bandit gang when visiting family out west."

"Right," Chester says, eyes still locked on Holds-the-Fire. He allows Celestia her digression. Hearing her voice is helping to ground him.

"Do you know the number of threats they saved the entire world from? A bandit gang would barely have been a speed bump, except Twilight decided that she didn't want to abuse her powers by using them to solve something so trivial. So they tackled it the old-fashioned way. Diplomacy, trickery, misdirection. Out-thinking their foe."

"I'm going to stop you before this turns into an entirely implausible pep talk on how I have everything I need to deal with the Holy Mother," Chester says. Slowly, with effort—and a continued lack of motion on Holds-the-Fire's part—he's forcing his panic back onto its leash.

"Would I do that?" Celestia asks. "But actually, it's about Anton. I mentioned he wasn't Scorpan?"

"Oh," Chester says, "right."

"Indeed. The bandit leader styled himself King Longhorn, though I didn't learn that until I compared notes with Sunset—Twilight never even mentioned his name in her friendship letters. Him living in Canter Creek perhaps should have tipped me off, but I wasn't even thinking of that bandit as a villain worth considering. Anyhow, Anton Longhorn is your version of him—though here, he took over the ranch he was denied in Equestria, and these days his crimes involve shady lawsuits, counterfeit land deeds and crooked judges."

"Yeah, this is still in implausible pep-talk territory," Chester says, a trifle bitterly. "The outthinking-him bridge has been burned. At this point, if I open my mouth, he'll put a bullet in it."

"Fair. Sometimes the only way to defend your principles is to fight for them. But never underestimate the power of an open ear and a well-placed word." Celestia pauses, and takes a visibly shaky breath. "Ignoring my sister is how I lost her to darkness. Fighting her was the only reason the sun rose the next morning. But it was forgiveness, and the hoof of friendship, which brought Luna back."

Chester considers that. Pep talk or no, it's a huge relief to have something else to focus on.

If it came to it, could he forgive Chryssy? It's clear now that she never saw him as anything but a tool. And now that he's no longer useful, he's been demoted to insect—something to be casually crushed on her rise to greatness.

Come to think of it, it's not just him. Chester didn't miss her resentment earlier as she brought Anton back into line—and the casual pain she once inflicted on Esau is burned into his memory.

He mentally sifts through the endless stream of new devotees he once helped to bring into the ashram, and the endless stream of bitter and burnt-out departures. He never saw her give anyone any more attention than the bare minimum to keep them useful.

Has she ever made a genuine connection to anyone in her life?

"Anyway, Chester," Celestia says into the silence, "you deserve an answer to your question."

He focuses back into the moment—noting in passing that Holds-the-Fire still hasn't so much as twitched. "Sorry, what?"

"About why I didn't ask the zombie question first. From the first time I met you back at the airport, when you were trying to fish information out of me, I knew you were brilliant. But you were also overwhelmed, and that's why you locked up and let slip more than you should. So my answer to you is: Because you can handle this, even the weird and scary parts. But only if you're focused."

He gnaws on that, and realizes what she did. "The jokes. The stupid question. Your story about Anton. I'm a bundle of raw nerves right now and you're bleeding off the pressure. You have been since they threw me in here."

"Guilty. I'm sorry. I'll put on my princess tiara and pass a law against it immediately."

Chester can't hold back a laugh. "Thank you for that. Calming me down, I mean. You're very good at that."

"Thank you for saying so. It's nice to feel appreciated."

Chester lets out a long breath. He does feel much calmer. The magical unicorn world is lucky to have someone like Celestia. And maybe—if he somehow gets out of this alive—he should see if the principal version runs Canterlot High the same way. He has always wondered what high school is like.

He sits back up and braces himself. "I should go figure out what's going on with Holds-the-Fire."

"That's the spirit." Celestia forces another thin smile. "Will you prop me against the wall this time so I can see?"

"Oh, right," Chester says, and does.

"Hmm," Celestia says as he's making certain her body will stay upright on its own. "So that's what your girlfriend looks like."

"What? She's not…" It takes Chester a second, and he feels his cheeks start to burn. "That—I—that just came out! Chryssy's siddhi made me love her! Even more, I mean! I didn't know what I was saying." He can see Celestia open her mouth and hurriedly adds: "Anyway, it doesn't matter what I want, that door is closed. I really screwed things up. I hurt her bad and she kicked me out of her pack."

And then she came back for him, an inner voice whispers, and distracting feelings start to stir up. The heat in his cheeks intensifies. Maybe there is still a chance.

"I should clarify that I'm purely teasing," Celestia says. "I know you're capable of reading my emotions, but from your reaction, your power doesn't seem to be working."

Chester forces himself to take a breath and calm down. "Only because you're so faint right now. I saw Anton and Chryssy's colors just fine before they left."

"Interesting." Celestia's lips twitch. "Was I right the first time? She didn't drain you?"

"No. She tried, a long time ago. She had a… very bad reaction to it."

"Hmm," Celestia says, then again: "hmmm." Her eyes flick around Chester's form. "We actually are still on template if you do have your powers. The other you defeated Chrysalis by feeding her more love than she could eat. So if you just had a big source of it…"

And that gets the distracting thoughts screaming at full intensity. How amazing would it be if he and Holds-the-Fire reconciled to defeat Chryssy, and saved the world with their love as a power source? But—no. He can't do that to her. Love doesn't work like that, and even if it did, it would be beyond gross to ask her to love him for tactical reasons.

Not to mention… "What does that even mean? How do you feed people emotions?" he challenges.

But even as he says it, his mind is madly analyzing the idea. In a sense, wasn't that exactly what Chryssa-swamini did to him, by bombarding him with cyan? If he knew that siddhi—no, that's a non-starter.

Or is it? He had always assumed Chryssy's mastery of it was due to her transcendence. But if she only ever stole it from Sister Mandy, it isn't a transcendent power. It's something even he, hypothetically, might be capable of.

"I admit I don't know," Celestia says, "not being a changeling. But from your face, I suspect you do."

Chester cudgels his thoughts back into submission. "Be that as it may. One thing at a time. Holds-the-Fire is an amazing girl and I've caused her an amazing amount of trouble. Saving the world can wait until I figure out what happened to her."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Celestia says, and shuts up to let Chester focus.

Chester steels himself anew, creeping on hands and knees back toward Holds-the-Fire's motionless form. She doesn't respond to her name. But as he inches closer, he can see her muscles start to twitch. He hurriedly backs away and she goes still again. The magic distance to… wake the zombie up?… seems to be approximately within arm's reach, and there seems to be just enough of a spin-up period that he can back away safely.

"Hmm," Celestia says. "Who exactly is Holds-the-Fire, anyway?"

The question confuses him, until he remembers that the Celestia he already clarified that to was the fake one back in the ashram. "This world's Ember. But don't call her that."

"Ah. That does make sense, yes. The two of them have a history. Sunset and Ember filled me in on that back in the car."

Chester nods. "Why do you ask?"

"Because she's acting like she's got a secondary power source, and that might explain why."

"… you're going to have to explain that one to me from scratch," Chester says.

"Okay. Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, the age of dragons ended, and the age of ponies began—"

"You know what I meant." Chester fixes Celestia with a glare—then catches what she's doing, and immediately feels sheepish. "… Am I getting overwhelmed again?"

"An entirely reasonable reaction given how you clearly feel about her. But to your question. Did you happen to notice the geode that Sunset usually wears?"

Chester had, in passing—it just hadn't seemed worthy of notice as anything other than a fashion accessory. A small red rock on an unobtrusive chain, it had been mostly tucked inside her shirt, and it hadn't sparkled when she did her mind-reading. He thinks he can see where this is going, though, and his brain leaps forward several steps in the conversation.

"Are you saying that's a magical artifact like Chryssy's black necklace, or the bloodstones Ember and Holds-the-Fire keep mentioning?" Now that his brain's pointed in the right direction, he connects another piece. "Sunset's necklace had something to do with her turning into a demon."

"Smart colt." Celestia hesitates, fractionally. "Grub? Hatchling? Kid?"

"Grub?" Chester asks, confused.

"Have it your way. Grub." Celestia twitches one eye in an approximate wink. "But yes. Long story short, it's a conduit for Equestrian magic. When used with friendship in your heart, it channels the pure power of the Elements of Harmony. But before her redemption, Sunset went out of control by using magic for selfish reasons, and the demon was the form she took as the magic took her over."

Chester doesn't like the direction this is going any more. "So when Chryssy ambushed you and drained you, Sunset went mad with grief, turned evil again, and tried to avenge you?"

"What?" Celestia asks. "Oh, stars, no. The Holy Mother drained us both before we even knew that she was there."

It's a relief to have his theory shot down, but Chester's lost again. "Then how did Sunset transform?"

"Simple. She still had the geode pouring power into her, which kept her upright. But the Holy Mother had just drained away all of her love—along with all the positive emotions which kept her use of magic pure. So the magic drove her crazy and she tried to kill Chrysalis so she could take over the world again."

Chester winces. At least that explains the "assassins" thing.

"On the bright hoof, the Holy Mother won that fight, so my first big adventure here with Sunset in the human world doesn't have to end with her as a villain. On the dark hoof, the Holy Mother took Sunset's geode, so at minimum she's got Harmonic magic, unicorn magic, and alicorn magic to draw from. On the third hoof, if we wake Sunset up, she'll be powerless but back in control."

"So wrapping this back around to Holds-the-Fire…" Chester stares at her from slightly outside the danger zone. "There's a piece of the broken Bloodstone Crown still inside her. I've seen that. You're suggesting that something's activating it somehow? Is it going to drive her crazy with power too?"

"Not necessarily," Celestia says. "Magical artifacts are unique and finicky, and Holds-the-Fire's relationship with hers will have rules different from Sunset's. But given that the Holy Mother drained enough love to place her in a coma—and given the level of attunement she had with the crown when she invaded the Dragon Lands—if she's moving under her own power, the crown almost certainly has to be that power source."

"Okay," Chester says slowly. "That… could be it. It's… possible something is waking the bloodstones up."

His gut clenches as he considers the idea that the thing is him. He can't imagine why he'd be special in that way, but it does feel like his experiences in weird mental space have been getting more intense, and the zombie awakening is impossible to ignore.

"I think you mean you," Celestia says, and yeah there was no way she was going to miss that one.

Chester gives in. "Okay. Me. How?"

"Well," Celestia says, "I should note that I have no experience with those artifacts in particular, merely a great deal of general experience with the shapes that magic takes. And so I would start by pointing out one relevant fact, which is to say, artifact attunement typically requires extended contact and I'm confident you have never touched a bloodstone in your life. With that in mind, my theory is: I have no idea."

He gives her a dirty look. "I don't want to criticize the jokes keeping me from having a meltdown, but I was really looking for an answer there."

"I wish I had one," Celestia says. "My apologies."

Chester sighs. Add another fact to the pile of true things which make no sense.

He sits back gingerly and rolls the whole bloodstone mess around in his head for a bit. Maybe he's been infected by the bloodstones too, and he's now a third part of the set?…Okay, but how? Celestia's right; he's never even seen an actual physical bloodstone, and it stretches belief to think that the weird, broken fragments that can barely even beg him for help would be capable of transforming him that way. No, that's a non-starter.

He has definitely interacted with them, but so has everyone else Ember or Holds-the-Fire ever targeted with telepathy. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like any of the others have had those weird mind-space interactions. But that's just a chicken-or-the-egg problem—if those are what makes him unique, then why did he have the first one?

And what was with that question back in the cyan ocean? Are the bloodstones poisoning Ember and Holds-the-Fire themselves being poisoned? Is all this leading to him corrupting Ember and Holds-the-Fire in some way? The thought is outlandish, impossible—but that would be just his luck, to finally realize the truth about Swamini-ji's lack of transcendence only to discover that he too is so irrevocably transgressive as to destroy all the magic he touches.

Fortunately, that train of thought is interrupted by loud scraping from the front door.

Celestia's eyes drift questioningly between Chester and the door. He does some mental math. While it's possible this is a rescue, they should probably prepare for the worst. "Play dead," he whispers to her, and she promptly closes her eyes.

There's a loud thunk as the wood crossbeam drops off to the side of the door, and then the deadbolt unlocks with a sharp click. Chester realizes belatedly that if they all play dead, the light and the shifted bodies are going to look suspicious as Tartarus. He staggers to his feet just as a pink-hued Anton wedges the door open with one foot and then kicks it outward, revolver in hand and a yellow-hued robed body over his shoulder.

Anton blinks, taking in the tableau of the dimly lit cabin. His colors shift smoothly into bright, suspicious maroon. Then he wordlessly levels his pistol straight at Chester, thumbing back the hammer with a click.

Chester's life flashes before his eyes, but no bullet comes. A terrified heartbeat later, he slowly raises his hands, hoping that's what Anton is looking for.

"You just can't quit stirring up trouble, can you, son?" Anton maroon-says, a low growl.

"I-I had to go to the bathroom," Chester stammers, letting his genuine fear sell his story. "Then I checked to see if they were all okay." His instinct is to keep babbling and shift into full grovel mode, but he keeps that well in check. It's a known bad idea with the bandit king.

Pink re-intrudes on Anton's maroon. He shifts his shoulders, rolling the limp body down into his grip, then effortlessly hucks it into the center of the room. It ragdolls to a face-up stop, and Chester's heart drops into his gut.

It's Esau.

Anton's maroon simmers, then dwindles away into gray disinterest; his pink ratchets up, though it's diffuse enough that it doesn't seem to be aimed at him. "Eh, whatever," he pink-says. "You ain't getting out of here before morning. So you wanna play dress-up with your dollhouse, that's on you. Some of us want to finish our jobs and get to sleep."

He re-holsters his pistol and slams the door shut. Chester hears the sounds of the deadbolt re-locking, then the crossbar being slid back into place.

Author's Note

The plot thickens! And Princess Celestia gets a full chapter to do what she's best at.

Fact: In Welsh traditions, a Mari Lwyd is a horse-skulled being which visits neighbors during wassailing to cause playful havoc. Presumably Equestria has some similar folkloric tradition.

Fact: The chapter title is a nod to SF author Cory Doctorow, and I hope he gets a bit of whuffie out of this.

Finally, another reminder that I'm posting three chapters per week for the next two weeks, shifting to a Su/Tu/Th schedule. The next chapter, "Siddhi Lights," will publish Tuesday, Sept. 17!