Chester bursts into motion, snatching Ember off the floor and backpedaling toward the corner. Holds-the-Fire's body swivels to face him and takes a lurching step forward. The wolf-zombie starts squirming, baring teeth, an unearthly growl-hiss burbling up from its throat.

"Saw! Grab her!" Chester stage-whispers, hoping his fear communicates the urgency he dare not raise his voice to express. He already knows where that sparkly red leads—and even if wolf and girl merely plan to tear each other apart, the cabin is tiny and Anton is right outside.

Muddy red overtakes Esau's orange for a moment as Holds-the-Fire advances and he flattens himself against the wall. "I literally just said I'm not—"

"Saw!" Chester hisses, sidescrambling and retreating through the bathroom doorway for another few feet of lifeline. "It's not a Chryssy thing! Separate them or we're dead!"

Esau's eyes flick around Chester's form. Then—before his orange even fully crystallizes into brown—he springs forward, tackling Holds-the-Fire. They go down and tumble across the floor, Holds-the-Fire in eerie silence and Esau grunting as fresh yellow flares up.

In Chester's arms, the wolf's squirming slows. Vivid, urgent colors start blasting the insides of his brain—the telepathic channel both Ember and Holds-the-Fire had been using, but wordless and primal, a desperate dark orange distress call.

Through the doorway, Esau throws Holds-the-Fire into a wrestling pin, holding her to the floor—and then there's a soft pop and crackle as her shoulder disengages at an unnatural angle, her arm snaking past his to grab the back of his head. Sparkling red flares as that arm jerks, shoving his face into the concrete floor by her head with a muffled crack. Esau twitches, yellow exploding. The red arm smashes his face into the ground again, and he goes limp, colors fading to a dull and motionless yellow.

In Chester's head, the dark orange redoubles, washing out his vision. Everything blurs away except Holds-the-Fire, and the sparkling red around her body ignites into a forest fire.

Rage batters him. Holds-the-Fire is the Wrong, which can only be ended by filling his teeth with her throat-blood.

The emotion makes no sense—he loves her. But red and dark orange are a howling monsoon, the force of them blasting at rational thought. He can dimly see Holds-the-Fire stand up, shoulder popping back into place, Esau's body rolling off—and her attack on his brother becomes the tiniest, most inconsequential sin topping off the infinite transgression pile.

No! This isn't right. Chester's core howls back in protest. He loves her. This is artificial rage, sparkling and incandescent, the source-slash-consequence of their feud, and he is being attacked as surely as he was by Chryssy's cyan in the main hall.

It's the bloodstones, driven mad. Like back in the forest, Ember and Holds-the-Fire's proximity has reignited their metaphysical feud—but now they've been drained of any possibility of love which might temper it, and they're on the brink of their storms' fury consuming everything.

Holds-the-Fire advances, the sparkles of her red sharpening in his vision into claws and fangs. Kill or be killed. The storm intensifies as she approaches, and all Chester can do with the last scraps of his dissipating volition is to shift Ember into one arm, pivot, and shoot out a hand to hold back the girl he loves—

A second hurricane screams in as his hand makes contact, and Chester is ground zero for their collision. Words blast in from one side and color from the other, melding into explosions, raw and overwhelming, at the center of his perceptions

fix me kill her fix me kill her

and the world grays

and slows

to a

crawl—

* * *

The storms violently eject Chester into a wall of cyan. There's no sensation to the impact except for a spike of abstract floaty pain buried deep in his chest. He's lost and the world is spinning around him, but at least here the mad pressure of the winds isn't battering every inch of him. He takes a moment to catch his breath, and vertigo's iron grip relents.

Chester gets his hands underneath him, head swimming. A box-shaped cyan cave, one side open to the howling red chaos. It's shifting around him as he takes stock—even here, the storms have force, dragging him back outside. Chester scrambles madly for purchase as he realizes he's sliding across the smooth, featureless surface—

—and spidery hands grab his arms. The world lurches. Gravity disengages; the cyan whirls to sit around and atop him, a tiny blue shack hovering above infinite red, with an apocalyptic storm battering its walls.

He realizes it's his painting room in the ashram, or some weird inverted-color version thereof. Four walls (and a ceiling) of bright cyan, one with ugly spiderwebbed cracks like a car windshield after the impact of a Chester-sized bug. This time the carpet is not placid blue ocean, but red lava, bubbling and roiling as the frail walls groan and flex. He's standing on the uneven surface, fighting for balance, with two identical gleaming figures of living red gemstone violently yanking him back and forth.

There's a sharp stab of pain down his center, as if their tug-of-war was tearing him in half. Each jerk unleashes a burst of color and meaning. fix me kill her fix me kill her—

"Stop!" Chester screams, and the echo of his cry reels the figures into stillness. The cyan sanctuary pulses, explosively ejecting the artificial colors of the gemstone monsters' commands. And for a moment the only sound is the groaning of the walls and the muted ferocity of the storm beyond.

That, at least, is a glimmer of hope. For whatever reason, Chester is sufficiently valuable to the bloodstones that they shifted their fight inside his brain rather than tearing him apart for being in the way. He has leverage here, however temporary.

"I thought you wanted to help me!" he pleads, hoping that they can still be reasoned with if he refocuses them on something besides their fight. "Why are you doing this?"

Chester sees both figures shift out of the corner of his eye. His arms are still stretched out in the creatures' grasps, and it's hard to see them both at once. But from what he can make out by turning his head back and forth, his question seems to have focused them into eerie synchronicity.

Then two mental voices erupt in precise unison—again, the sensation of an explosion in his head as one produces words and one produces emotion, arriving simultaneously but with different inflection from each side.

My power claimed you, the voices brown-say. Then a fractured stereoscope of images collide in his thoughts—Ember standing on his chest in the parking garage, Holds-the-Fire broadcasting a taunt at him from the edge of Anton's ranch. But just as the pressure of parsing that duplication is starting to build up in Chester's head, the voices snap back into perfect sync.

You are not the Voidstone's to control, the two gemstone figures continue, dark orange. (Their usual plea for help—no longer mind control.) You are mine. And now you must help me.

Thoe two overlapping images (which still hurt his brain; he tries not to focus any further on them) tell a story that makes immediate sense, for once. Chester's access to telepathy came from the bloodstones building a link into his brain to exchange color and meaning through. The blue flood of Chryssy's vashitva must have been similar enough that they were forced to defend him to protect their link. But that's not the big epiphany here.

Fact: Chester does have a unique link to the bloodstones.

He was… attuning, was that the word?… to them with every thought he and their wielders exchanged. Plenty of others can say the same, but he's pretty confident that nobody else in the world has befriended Ember and Holds-the-Fire. He is the only outside party attuned to them both.

That first encounter with the gemstone monster came when two different bloodstone links met inside his brain and his consciousness wasn't there to get in the way. And his rapport has only escalated since then—

The splitting pain reignites through his body as the gemstone figures resume fighting over him. The storms outside rattle the walls.

"Ow! Stop!" Chester pleads. "You're going to kill me if you keep this up!"

Both figures flinch back at the accusation, in mirror image. Then disengage one arm to point past him at each other, in perfect unison.

No! She will! their voices cry in stereo. Help me and we'll kill the impostor!

Fact: He's been thinking about the Wrong in the wrong way.

It clicks with the suddenness of an optical illusion shifting to a new perception. There are two bloodstone fragments—Ember's scepter and Holds-the-Fire's crown—but each of them feels like both Wolf and Wrong to him, depending on how he looks. That's because he's the only one seeing from both bloodstones' perspectives.

Both bloodstones see the other one as Wrong. That's why their fights are so immediate and intense!

Hang on. Ember told him the two halves of the bloodstone set were separated a long time ago and thrown into different worlds. Do they just… not recognize each other? Is that the entire problem here?

"I think we can fix this if you let go and listen to me," Chester says. Neither releases him, but the splitting pain recedes, and the immense mental pressure of the raging storm seems to fractionally ease. "I'm no expert on magic but I know your story. You two are a set. You're both real. There's supposed to be two of you."

No! the synchronized voices protest, jabbing spiky gemstone fingers vigorously at each other as the storm outside re-intensifies. She broke me! I need her power to rebuild us!

"Are you listening to yourselves?" Chester shouts—then makes an effort to suppress his frustration. If he gives in to red, everything is lost. "Okay. Listen. Which of you is the crown?"

The two figures point at each other even more vigorously, although their unison cracks into dissonance for a moment as they speak. She (destroyed/stole) the crown.

"Uh?" Chester says. "Then who's the scepter?"

The same answer comes back, though when the synchronization cracks this time, the two halves switch source. She (stole/destroyed) the scepter.

A throbbing ache entirely separate from the storm's pressure seeps into Chester's brain. "Then who am I speaking to?"

I am the (crown/scepter).

Fact: Magical artifacts can go crazy.

"That doesn't make sense," Chester says. He is way off the International Superspy Chet Land playbook, but maybe he can still make headway with basic logic. "You both just accused each other of destroying one piece of the set and stealing the second. That doesn't leave anything for you to be."

NO! The cyan bows inward as the bloodstones' rage builds to new heights. The spiderweb of impact cracks expands, new fractures skittering across the damaged wall. I am the (crown/scepter) and she broke me!

"Who broke you?" Chester asks, flailing to zero in on the issue before his fragile shelter collapses entirely. "How?"

Overlapping images blast simultaneously into his brain again—this time, even more disorientingly, of the same scene from two different perspectives. A frozen moment in time, two petite bipedal ice-blue dragons in the throes of shimmering red rage. Chester's never seen them but he knows that it's Holds-the-Fire and Ember, locked in mortal combat in the other world. One wears a red-gemmed circlet and is leaping for his throat, claws outstretched; the other is mid-swing with a red-gemmed scepter about to connect with his head. Both bloodstones are crackling, searing, their full power unleashed against each other. Unstoppable force and immovable object, about to explosively collide.

Dammit. He thought he was making progress, but the stones won't budge, and he can't make the math add up of 2 bloodstones x 2 perspectives = 6 different fates. Chester needs to talk to someone besides the insane artifacts.

"Alright," he says, bracing himself for more conflicting nonsense. "Where is your wielder?"

The gemstone figures just stare at him in silence before their grip around his arms tightens again. Fantastic! They've gone crazy in the least helpful way possible.

… But at least their non-answers answered his question. If they can't perceive their wielders by looking outward, there's only one direction they can currently be.

"Can you point to Holds-the-Fire?" he asks before their tug-of-war can resume.

This time, there's no synchronicity. The gemstone figure gripping his left arm continues to stare at him in silence, while the right-side figure points at Lefty agitatedly. kill her kill her kill her—

That's all Chester needs. He focuses every scrap of love he can feel for Holds-the-Fire into his left hand, and lunges leftward. With a sudden burst of motion, he slams his palm down on Lefty's chest and pushes.

There's no resistance to the emotional transfer this time. (Using the bloodstones' link makes it easier?) Lefty spasms, electrified, glistening with blue light from within. It lets loose a high-frequency keening howl that descends choppily from an unearthly register toward a very Holds-the-Fire-like scream.

The walls shake and partially collapse, fierce winds blasting into the sanctuary from Righty's side. Righty erupts into bristling spikes, screeching in triumph, and raises jagged fists for a killing blow.

But Chester's not done. He turns squarely to the second gemstone figure, bracing as hot wind hits him full in the face, and focuses his love for Ember. It's vastly less intense, and she doesn't make his heart flutter or stir up naughty thoughts—but there's no question Chester cares. She does matter. She deserves far better than this.

As the gemstone figure leaps in, he screams and throws a palm strike at its chest, pushing

and red winds blast away the last of the meditation room as gravity carries him away into the storm—

The howling winds recede, and Chester stirs back to awareness in an unfamiliar cave.

At first Chester wonders if maybe what he did resolved the bloodstones' fight, and he's waking up after surviving the zombies and escaping from the ashram. But red light from the cave entrance quickly rules that out. Outside, a storm rolls in the distance, clouds illuminated with Tartaric menace, lightning crackling through the churning maelstrom—and instantly, he knows that's the storm of the bloodstones' emotions. Wherever he is, it's still in thought-space, in that weird frozen moment.

Chester shifts his focus to the cave, and the first thing he notices is a pervasive, thick canine musk. (There's an immediate sense of comfort to it, silent familiarity.) The cave is dim, and everything has a red cast to it. The walls are stone, and presumably the floor too, though years of dirt and dust and shed fur have removed any harsh edges from the footing. By the entrance, a long, straight stick has been jammed into a small crack in the earth; dried moss has been wrapped around its top end, and the moss is smoldering, its smoke filling the cave with an earthy, acrid scent which drives the insects away.

"Here we are again," a familiar voice pink-grumbles.

How tedious, a nearly identical voice pink-replies.

It's them! Oh, sweet merciful heavens, it worked.

Chester turns, focusing on the voices. To one side, Holds-the-Fire is sitting up from a makeshift nest of small animal pelts. To the other, a tiny bipedal ice-blue dragoness (tiny for a dragon, at any rate; she's nearly his size) is sprawled weakly against the cave wall, breathing heavily with jaw hanging open. She is moving, but every movement seems a significant effort. Holds-the-Fire, too, seems hesitant in her motions, but when she makes them, they are purposeful and calm.

The dragoness—that's definitely Ember, Chester realizes, but in her true form from her home world; she's identical to the bloodstones' earlier vision—pushes herself to her feet, leaning heavily against the wall. "You look different from last time," she says, a weak flutter of creamsicle as she gasps for breath.

What did you expect? Holds-the-Fire says, her pink shading into red. She smoothly stands up, matching Ember's height but seeming nevertheless to loom over her. You broke my bloodstone. I cannot be a wolf now. And if you seek forgiveness, you can go hunt in the fire-char.

"Yeah, well, you broke my bloodstone, so you can go chase your tail and bite it," Ember snarls, stirring up what red her weakened colors can muster.

… "worked" might be too strong a word.

Chester struggles to his own feet, the motion unexpectedly taxing. "Stop," he pleads, fighting for balance on rubbery legs. "Both of you."

Their two forms spike an identical peach (Ember's much fainter). They turn their heads, as if they're seeing him for the first time. Then they chorus, in regular non-magically-synchronized unison: "Chester?"

He stumbles between the two, raising a palm toward each. "Stay with me. I need you both in control. Your bloodstones have gone crazy and they're making you fight."

Their peach goes in different directions. Ember's wavers into a skeptical gray. Holds-the-Fire's stirs briefly through indignant muddy yellow. But they both collapse back into restrained, simmering, and entirely non-sparkling red.

I need no bloodstone to know who cost me everything, Holds-the-Fire red-says. We have been over this.

"Maybe if she were begging us for help to fight its control, that might matter," Ember red-growls. "But I see now that she's never going to want to be better." Her gaze flicks past Chester to bore into Holds-the-Fire's eyes. "Let's settle this."

You are as weak as last time, Holds-the-Fire red-says, shifting into a half-crouch. But now you have no scepter to save you.

"No!" Chester shouts. His gut plummets as disaster looms. After everything he's done—after learning magic for a shot at saving them both, and draining his love to return them to consciousness—he's about to lose everything because they both want to fight.

The bloodstones tried to warn him the poison was a feedback loop, and he didn't listen.

He tries one more time as the storm outside cracks and rumbles, looming closer in toward the cave. "I know you both want revenge. I know you both have reasons for revenge. But can it wait until Chryssy isn't about to use everyone's stolen powers to take over the world?"

Ember wavers—black seeping into her red—but Holds-the-Fire barely registers a ripple of pastel-red exasperation. Step out of the way, Ches-ter, and I will reconsider your place in the pack. This will be quick, and we may speak of how to challenge your Chryssy after.

"No," Chester shouts, "because Anton will hear you fighting and we'll die!" He turns to face Holds-the-Fire. "But also because you're better than that," he says, looking into her eyes. "You want to do the right thing. You came to the ashram even after everything I'd done. You know that Ember brought you back home and spared you even after everything you did to her people. I know that's the person you are, too. Please, Holds-the-Fire. Please."

Black suffocates her red, for a moment—but so, too, does beige, that ugly shade of the pain from Chester's betrayal. She closes her eyes, those colors warring.

"I'm not," Ember quietly says from behind him.

Chester turns around, adrenaline icing his veins. Her black—already diluted—is losing intensity entirely, fading toward a complete lack of colors which shimmering red is bubbling up to replace.

He didn't give her enough love. He was rushed, and he didn't care enough, and she's already burning through the last of Chester's energy gift, slipping back into the embrace of mindless hate.

"Not better than that, I mean," Ember continues, her eyes starting to redden. "I'm tired, Chester. So tired. I gave her two second chances and look what's come of it. She's already cost me everything." The shimmering red kindles, intensifies. "The one thing I can do while I still have any power left is set this right."

I came here merely to return your woman-box and take back my fire, Holds-the-Fire says, though there's a flash of tenuous, black-flecked cyan which quickly dissolves back into red. It was foolish in its entirety, but it at least gave me this chance. I cannot throw it away. Her edges, too, are beginning to shimmer—not from lack of energy but from a willing embrace of their feud.

Chester—about to reflexively protest that there's something more to it than that; that she was willing to fight Anton to save him, and that she trusted him and tried to shoot Chryssy at his word—hesitates, the words burning on his lips. Because he sees one tiny, desperate chance.

He splays himself as widely as possible between the two, using the only obstacle he's got left. "Holds-the-Fire," he says urgently, "look at her emotions."

She hesitates. It's just a sharp Chester-focused pink splitting from the main mass of red—but she hesitates.

Ember steps up to his back, her own emotions stirring up into a weak pink, one last stand against the shimmer. She taps him on the shoulder with a razor claw. "Out of the way, Chester. I won't ask again."

Ches-ter, Holds-the-Fire pink-says. What are you trying to accomplish? She is… She trails off, the red and pink dissipating in a sharp spike of peach, which dissolves into creamsicle confusion.

There's no time to confirm any further that she saw what he needed her to see—Ember's about to close their window. Chester whirls around, summons up every last scrap of love he's capable of feeling for anyone, clamps his hands down on Ember's scaly shoulders, and pushes.

There's resistance this time. Her consciousness—what little there is of it—instinctively fights the change, and he can't afford the preparatory step of filtering the love down from emotions to energy. He sees Ember spasm in his grip, a wave of cyan colliding with her sparkling red. "Fight it!" he shouts. "Focus!"

Ember grabs him by the robes.

She yanks Chester forward, so close to jagged draconic teeth that he can feel the unnatural heat of her breath. "What did you just do to me," she hisses. The collision of cyan and shimmer-red has exploded into a muddy swirl of colors, which resolves as she speaks into indignant muddy yellow and a spike of Chester-focused red.

Non-sparkly. Thank the heavens.

"I woke you up, but hang on to that anger," he says, and cranes his head around to look at Holds-the-Fire. "You see the difference, right?"

Ember smashes him into the wall of the cave.

There's no pain from the collision—it's mindscape, not stone—but Chester, already weakened, is thoroughly discombobulated by the intensity of the strike. He groans, going limp and waiting for the world to stop spinning. Ember stalks forward, matte red, claws poised.

Holds-the-Fire sidesteps into motion as Ember advances, diverting the two of them into mutual circling. For once, she's studying Ember not with red, but with light violet.

Ches-ter is correct, she says. Your anger had crown-feel earlier. Now it is pure.

"Does that matter?" Ember snarls, staggering heavily inward to hasten the spiral dance. "Let's end this."

Holds-the-Fire's feet dance over the rock. She floats backward as they sidestep, maintaining distance and shifting into brown.

It means you stole my crown rather than destroyed it, she caramel-says. It means if I end you I can take it back.

Chester makes a strangled little sound as Holds-the-Fire takes the epiphany he fought so hard for and runs with it in the exact wrong direction.

His hopes bleed out. What else could he possibly try? The bloodstones are determined to fight, Ember and Holds-the-Fire are determined to fight, and nobody will listen. There's too much pain in them—pain Chester can't simply erase.

… Or can he?

Chester's gut twists. There is one option he hasn't tried.

Ember laughs, bitter muddy yellow, as the two of them circle inward. "I wish. I ended up with the jewelry, but because of you it's an inert hunk of rock. Trust me, if it worked I wouldn't be here."

They've said it over and over again—all their worst pain stems from when their fight broke their stones. That's when they lost everything. That's when their grudge became irreparable.

The bloodstones' pleas for repair are unthinkable. It's sheer madness to power up the force which, out in reality, is animating the fight about to kill him. But he's out of thinkable options.

"Nobody would be here if the bloodstones weren't broken," Chester says. "Which is why, if you'll just listen to me, we can get them fixed."

Their heads both swivel to him, amid a burst of violet.

Chester stares back, forcing himself to inwardly commit to the stupid, insane, desperate idea. He can't solve this with a lie; Holds-the-Fire will see right through it. But it's not a lie if it's the new plan, right?

"They've been begging for repair since the beginning," he adds, leaving out that he has no idea where to start with that or whether the plan is even workable. "But if you give in to their insanity and fight, we all lose. We have to do this together. Please just stop."

The emerald green of hope tentatively stirs inside Holds-the-Fire and Ember, but they break their stares at him to glance at each other, and other colors quickly attack. Holds-the-Fire's green immediately is shrouded in gray, and Ember's becomes mired in black denial.

"Stupid idea, Chester," Ember snarls, vigorously battering at that emerald with red to keep her anger kindled as she circles Holds-the-Fire. "If you give her the crown back, she's just going to attack Equestria again."

If you believe that, you are both arrogant AND an idiot, Holds-the-Fire says. The sentiment's sharp pink pierces her mask of gray, and for a moment, she's an open book again. And Chester sees what she was trying to bury: that emerald green igniting to full intensity.

Chester's own hope cautiously rekindles.

Holds-the-Fire locks eyes with him for a moment, and gray slams back in. But she finishes her explanation to Ember. I needed a pack then. I lead one now, if I can keep it. If I had my crown back, I would not care a claw's width for the world of fire.

"That's true. I can vouch for it. She just wants to do right by her pack." Chester braces himself and staggers back upright on half-numb limbs. "Think about what we said back in the truck, Ember. I believe in you both. Will you trust me and give her that chance?"

The combatants circle in silence for several moments as the tenor of Ember's black shifts, its sharp edges turning inward. Her red roils, suddenly hemmed in by her doubts. As she's near the closest point of the circle to Chester, Ember misses a step in her circling dance with Holds-the-Fire, stumbles, and catches herself.

Then Ember whirls on Chester, her red finding an outlet.

"No!" she screams, tail lashing, claws trembling. "Because nobody should have the bloodstones! Look at the trouble they've caused! We don't deserve them!" White bursts open around her, raw and ugly, mixing with red at the edges and adding self-loathing to her anger. "I don't! I never did!"

Chester frantically backpedals, then falls over as his legs give out underneath him. But at the first eruption of anger, Holds-the-Fire is already in motion. She springs between Chester and dragon, pivoting mid-air to drop into a deep three-point crouch facing Ember.

No, Holds-the-Fire red-says with bared teeth—and for a moment a fight seems inevitable, until a jumble of other colors swirl up. The red recedes to a simmer, curling around a core of brown with a hint of dark blue. I will not allow your stubbornness to cost us both this opportunity.

"What opportunity?" Ember snarls back, struggling to maintain her red as the self-loathing bleeds it out. "All I ever wanted was to be a normal dragon. But even with the stone that's never going to happen. I'm a useless runt. I've never been strong enough to do anything myself." Her limbs start to tremble as bright yellow stirs up into the hollowed-out anger. "So either I can keep living a lie, or I can finally dragon up and do the right thing."

Holds-the-Fire spikes peach. Then, as the dragon's pain starts truly bleeding out, she shifts into pinkish-yellow.

Chester, knowing their history, struggles to understand those reactions. Ember is wilting, inches from taking herself out of the fight and ending the threat—and yet Holds-the-Fire is suddenly in distress.

Then he remembers: Holds-the-Fire is still reading Ember's emotions, processing them fresh and raw.

She's reacting to Ember's pain.

Author's Note

One small piece of context for those who dove into the novel from scratch:

The cave that Ember and Holds-the-Fire recognize — as well as the frozen moment of mutual draconic destruction shown to Chester by the bloodstones — were previously seen in Fang and Flame. The bloodstones have brought the pair back to the mental space in which they rejected the possibility of compromise. Fortunately, they also have a mediator this time around... and is that, finally, the color of progress?

Chester, Ember, Holds-the-Fire, and the bloodstones will return on Sunday, Sept. 22 with "The Better Me"!