Occasionally, Chester has tried discussing color-sight with people who don't share it. And one mistake they almost always make is assigning morality to the spectrum: cool colors good, warm colors bad.

That's an idea which only makes sense to people without color-sight—people who think of rage and fear and pain and hope and compassion and joy as rigid categories rather than guide-markers. The truth is more complex. It's muddy-orange shame which leads to the muddy pale orange of being sincerely apologetic. Chester has seen olive-green lust and radium-green desperation motivate people to do the ugliest imaginable things. And mixing purple joy into red—turning anger into magenta schadenfreude—never fails to make his skin crawl.

But the purest example of good warm colors, he reflects, is in someone seeing pain and responding to it with pinkish-yellow distress.

It's a more dangerous and unpredictable state than deep blue empathy, but there's a fire to it which makes things happen.

* * *

When the flow of words out of Ember slows, Holds-the-Fire straightens. She wrestles with her distress for long moments, a whirling mess of new color bursting forth. And what it finally resolves into is muddy red outrage.

How dare you, Holds-the-Fire says, standing to her full height and bristling.

A weak brown breaks through Ember's pain, and she stands a little straighter herself. "Well, if you'd kick your bloodstone addiction—"

Holds-the-Fire cuts her off, outrage bubbling over into genuine anger. How DARE you think yourself that weak.

Ember blinks, peach matching Chester's own surprise.

I was perfect. I was unstoppable. And in a moment you took it all away. Holds-the-Fire's anger, too, is pierced by yellow; she curls her hands into trembling fists. You think you are the only one who was not born as they were meant to be? I have not even claws or fangs! It was only the bloodstone that let me TRY! Her own pain, now, is off the leash, bleeding out at full intensity. When you destroyed it I had to re-learn everything like a wet, mewling pup. All I had was the knowledge that your tools and knowledge had humiliated me. Her body hitches, and the cave's silence is broken by a choked, bubbling sob. I had to learn how to be YOU, because there's more power in you than the crown had at its peak. And I have failed, over and over, at the simplest of things! I could not even shoot Chris-sa with the gun! Something which would have been trivial for you! Holds-the-Fire steps forward and shoves Ember hard in the chest; the dragon spreads her wings to compensate and catches herself with a single step back. So how DARE you insult me by thinking yourself so useless. What, then, does that make me?

The question hangs in the air for a moment. Then Holds-the-Fire crumples, yellow bleeding off into white. She sinks to the ground, clinging fiercely to her knees and rocking on the balls of her feet. The cave fills with a soft, crooning howl Chester last heard when she was giving in to despair back at the boulder.

Ember freezes—and then her colors, too, sweep away in a tide of pinkish-yellow distress. She's not reading emotions like the other two, but Holds-the-Fire's pain is now blindingly obvious, regardless.

The dragon's eyes flick around the cave and settle in on Chester, giving him a silent stare whose dark orange says all that needs to be said.

It's the breakthrough Chester had been praying for all along, but now that the moment has arrived, he's caught as flat-footed as the other two. This is an emotional minefield and none of them have a map. All he can think of is to point at Holds-the-Fire's back and mime a hug.

Ember shades black, grimaces, and shuffles forward toward Hold-the-Fire. Orange stirs up as she stares at the girl, and intensifies as she dances uncomfortably back and forth, trying to summon up enough brown to make the approach. Finally, she glances back at Chester, shaking her head and silently pleading for another lifeline.

Chester winces. Right. He and Holds-the-Fire at least share an emotional language now, but Ember wasn't there for that and is still terrified by basic feelings—much less the crazytown of trying to comfort her bitter rival, who is her extra-dimensional self, inside a magical artifact's pocket dimension. He is wondering how in Tartarus he's going to coach her through that with hand gestures when he remembers they've got telepathy.

He mentally facepalms and tries to bring the situation under some semblance of control. Okay, no hugs. Tell her you're sorry? he suggests to Ember in a private broadcast.

"Right," Ember says, voice shooting up in pitch. Her orange muddies into embarrassment as she realizes that was her out-loud voice.

The noise unballs Holds-the-Fire slightly, and she looks up with a thin tawny resentment stirring up amid her white. What now?

"I," Ember starts, voice cracking like an egg. Orange brightens again and overtops into terror, and she forces out before she seizes up entirely: "I'm sorry I'm an idiot!"

Chester doubles up on his mental facepalm as pink washes through Holds-the-Fire. I… suppose that is at least an effort, she replies, colors draining back away.

This may require a more desperate save. Tell her what you said to me in the truck? Chester privately suggests. Fortunately, words are already tumbling out of Ember in a terrified avalanche, and already seem to be falling in that direction.

"It's true though," she says. "You're the better version of me. You thoroughly destroyed me—just, kicked my butt around the landscape—and then I had one good moment. When the scepter broke—which wasn't even mine in the first place—I only had one chance and that was to build myself into a crappy imitation of you, because you're the effortless leader I could never be, you're actually strong instead of making all this up as I go along, and I'm scared to death that at any moment everyone will realize I have no idea what I'm doing." She sinks to the ground, head in claws, making a weird grackley sort of sound, and sits next to Holds-the-Fire in mutual despair.

Chester crawls forward toward the pair, hoping to salvage this a little more hands-on, when what looks like a sob wracks Holds-the-Fire's body. But it's accompanied by a flare of dry lilac-gray, and soon other silent laughs shake her, amusement mingling with muddy yellow bitterness.

It takes Ember several moments of renewed terror to parse that, and several more to also catch the irony. But then she, too, laughs—a sharp, sibilant noise from somewhere deep in the throat. She buries her muzzle between her knees, all muffled sounds and twin colors, holding herself until her body shakes subside.

Chester merely lets his breath out, finally daring to ratchet his adrenaline down. Progress?

Ember takes a deep breath and unfolds a bit, sorting through whirling colors, which are trending toward brown until a spike of orange cuts through. "Whooo," she says, fanning herself with one hand. "I…. um." She glances around the cave, orange building, then punches back through it with brown and goes for broke. "I've been through enough with Princess Twilight to know what she'd want me to do here. And I don't know how I feel about this"—it's true; her colors are a mess—"but I know I should try. We've got a villain's butt to kick and Chester's been begging for us to talk practically since I met him. So… since he trusts you. Can we maybe give working together a shot?"

Holds-the-Fire, too, unfolds her limbs. She gives Chester a long stare, her feelings entirely unsettled—though with some renewed stirrings of green, which she catches and smothers back behind gray.

Then she turns to Ember. Ches-ter has hurt me, she gray-says. But he only did so to protect you. You have caused me pain, too. But we were fighting over your pack, and it is a poor leader who holds grudges after a challenge. A twinge of yellow surfaces. I think again you prove yourself superior. So if you see Chris-sa as a threat to the world… that threat includes my pack as well, and I will make the attempt.

Progress! Chester's not certain what color a sigh of triumph is, but he definitely just breathed one.

I still will not allow you to impede Ches-ter's attempt to restore the bloodstones, Holds-the-Fire adds, though in the wake of her declaration, there's no red to it. Just brown with a touch of blue, calm resolve.

Ember nods, then winces amid a spike of cream. "Look, I may have," she starts—then pauses as she wrestles with fresh terror—"overreacted a bit about that." She pauses to take several heavy breaths, the orange fading. "If he can fix the bloodstones, we might need them to deal with evil local Chrysalis. Last thing I remember is her coming up to my hiding spot, pretending to be Celestia, then she drained me when I turned around. Did you really take a shot at her with your gun?"

Spikes of chartreuse and cream stab Holds-the-Fire, the guilt of inadequacy, and Chester steps into the conversation before she can get caught up in that. "Honestly," he says, "I'm not actually sure how to fix the bloodstones yet, but I think we've already made progress. They don't seem to be trying to make you angry any more. I haven't seen any sparkles since you two opened up."

Holds-the-Fire nods, but Ember just shifts to creamsicle confusion. "Sparkles?"

Crown-feel, Holds-the-Fire says. Do you not get something similar from the scepter?

"Uhh, no? What are you talking about?"

Chester intercepts the question. "She's been using the crown to interact with her wolfpack for so long that she's developed something very similar to my color-sight. Don't worry about it. I'll teach you when we have more time." He turns to Holds-the-Fire. "There's probably a better word for it than crown-feel, though. I've seen sparkly red from you, and sparkly gold from both you and Chryssy, and that sparkly mirror color from Sunset, and I thought sparkly blue was Chryssy's enlightenment but she stole that from Mandy…" He trails off for a moment, then forces himself back on track. "Most of those might have come from an artifact like the bloodstones, or… they called Chryssy's necklace a voidstone. But some of them clearly didn't. I'm starting to think that the sparkles just mean I'm seeing magic."

Holds-the-Fire tilts her head, light violet. Perhaps. When the cliffside led me into the world of fire, there was crown-feel then, too. It is something I have not felt again until today. Colors whirl for a moment as she thinks. Wait, Ches-ter. What you earlier called the color of transcendence—it is this sparkly gold you now speak of? I do not believe there was magic to that. I was not using the crown on you at the times you reacted so strongly.

He has to think about that for a moment. "No," he says. "But I think you were under its influence. Just like when you felt sparkly red, that was the crown pushing you to be angry because it was angry too. So maybe, just like amber means greed, gold means hunger, and it turned sparkly because of the stones' cravings. You and Chryssy wanted something so badly because your stones also pushed you to want them."

Her colors whirl in thought, but Holds-the-Fire ultimately ends up creamsicle. My crown speaks to instinct. Why would it make me want tools?

Chester thinks about that one. It's a very good question, but… "I don't know," he admits.

"Maybe we should think about something more important," Ember cuts in. "Why are we still here?"

It's Chester's turn to be confused while Holds-the-Fire goes light violet. I am not certain. She glances at him and immediately adds context. The last time Ember and I were in this cave was the moment before— she hesitates, a bit of cream blossoming—we broke the bloodstones.

"Ah," Chester says. "Yeah, they showed me that fight."

"They wanted us to talk out our differences," Ember cream-adds. "But we… didn't."

You would not back down from defending your dragons, Holds-the-Fire says, then shades into yellow-gray—not quite guilt, but regret. And I would not back down from my challenge. She looks Ember straight in the eyes with brown certainty. You were correct to take your stand despite my power. It is a leader's job to protect the pack. Do not belittle your courage.

"….T-thank you," Ember violet-stammers.

Holds-the-Fire turns back to Chester without acknowledging the sentiment. It is no coincidence we have returned to my cave, here in this place. The bloodstones speak to us no longer, but it is clear from this setting that they desire a halt to our battle. We have fulfilled that. So why have they not returned us to the world of forests?

The three of them lapse into mutual thought.

"Maybe we could get angry and fight each other again?" Ember black-says.

"Please don't," Chester immediately says. His mind flashes back to the cabin, where he's virtually certain the two bloodstone zombies are still poised to tear him apart.

Ember shades a defensive muddy brown. "I didn't mean for real." Though there's a flash of cream guilt alongside the mildest stirring of red as she thinks about it. "But that's what booted us out of here last time. So, you know, just long enough to get back to reality."

Perhaps we have not fulfilled the bloodstones' conditions after all, Holds-the-Fire says, with the slightest stirring of orange-red distaste. She eyes Ember again, black creeping in. Does it want us to be pack? I can forgive you if my crown is to be restored, but I think our hunting grounds should not overlap.

Ember stares back, her own doubts echoing Holds-the-Fire's. "Yeah, I… you did a lot. I'm trying to give you a chance but friendship's… gonna be hard."

Chester hesitates, hoping for some sign from the bloodstones. But there's only an uneasy silence as girl and dragon stare at each other and him.

… hold on.

"There's another difference this time," he says. "I'm here. And I can see from both bloodstones' perspectives. Maybe you need a pair of fresh eyes."

He glances around the cave as he thinks… and there is another difference. He had been so focused on the pair's uneasy reconciliation that he hadn't noticed a gradual shift in lighting. The cave's illumination has receded from Tartaric red into a deeper and more faded hue, a maroon that paints the shadows on the cave floor as simultaneously warm and unnatural.

He turns to the cave entrance, freshly examining the ominous distant stormfront that has been the sole point of external interest. A single crack of lightning punctuates the silence, then the low protracted rumble of its thunder. There's still a touch of red internally illuminating the clouds, but the roiling maelstrom has cooled into billowing thunderheads, gray-black and still and sharp-shadowed. The air hangs oppressive and smothering now, rather than electric and intense. And that crack of lightning moments ago was notable because there haven't been any others in a while.

An idea creeps in, one he's oddly certain of but not certain why. "I think I need to go back into the storm." He talks through it in search of logic. "That seems to be where the bloodstones live, kind of. I've talked to them before. And if they're not talking to you, here…"

Holds-the-Fire and Ember glance at each other, both still mired in black. "I don't have any better ideas," Ember says, and Holds-the-Fire stares at Chester, not disagreeing.

Again Chester feels an odd intuition. "I don't suppose you two can make the storm come closer to the cave entrance?"

"Uh," Ember creamsicle-says, "I thought you said you didn't want us fighting."

Holds-the-Fire, staring out the cave entrance, has a sudden spike of violet. No. When the storm overtook the cave last time, the cause was our fight, but something feels different to it now. Her colors whirl for a moment as she chases an elusive conclusion. Whatever has changed… perhaps we have stalked it, but not pounced it. Her focus shifts to Ember, and she shifts into a gray not unlike the storm.

That gets Chester thinking. "Actually, can you both want the storm to be closer?" he corrects. It seems like a subtle distinction, but it crystallizes something he has subconsciously noticed ever since reality first broke around him: There's power in their emotions here. The landscape shifting is no coincidence; it feels like a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Ember has been staring back at Holds-the-Fire, going gray as well. At the request, both fade into various shades of black.

I… can try, Holds-the-Fire says, but the brown that stirs up inside her is half-hearted. (Ember's is no more persuasive.) And, indeed after long moments there's no further motion outside.

Chester sighs. "Okay, we'll circle back to that one. I'll… be back soon, I guess."

He walks over to the cave entrance, eyeing the still-distant stormfront. There's no way to gauge how distant—no landscape features, no horizon, no sun or moon. It could be a long walk. He trudges out into the barren stillness of the mindscape.

Dammit. He really wishes he could speed this up.

Gravity obligingly upends.

Chester yelps and flails his arms as he goes into freefall. The world spins around him, the ground now a cliff face rocketing by just out of reach, and the storm now the cliff's shrouded base. He accelerates even further through the frictionless air, and the cloudbank reaches up to envelop him—

Chester picks himself up in the midst of still, silent gray fog.

"Hello?" he calls. There's no reply, no echo, no sound of any kind. Just swirling mist in every direction. He's inside the storm—but he's alone.

He takes a moment to collect his thoughts. Okay—there's power in his emotions here, too. A moment of burning desire catapulted him to where he needs to be. This is easy, then: he really wants to talk to the bloodstones and get this sorted out.

He waits. Then glances around the fog.

… Why can't this ever be easy?

He truly does want to talk to the bloodstones; that's not even gaming the system. If that didn't work, then he doesn't think any amount of extra wishing will make it so. Chester sighs, then sits down to think.

Fact: They went silent around the same time they stopped trying to provoke Ember and Holds-the-Fire into fighting.

They're still active. The three of them are still trapped in this weird space. They still want something. But communication is a complete bust right now. Perhaps they can't?

Fact: They're broken.

They said some insane things. Maybe they've just gone deranged; if so, they're broken by definition. But he's got no chance to logic through literal insanity. His best chance is to work from the assumption that they still follow some sensible internal thought process—and are just broken in how they see things.

The one which identified as the crown said "she"—Ember or Holds-the-Fire, but because of the overlap of their answers, he's not quite certain—destroyed the crown and stole the scepter. Vice versa for the scepter. They also knew that they were broken; both sides of the chorus begged for repair. So the crown and scepter's bloodstones are both simultaneously destroyed, broken, and stolen? No, not quite: they see themselves as both destroyed and broken—separate things, those—and their counterpart as stolen.

… ugh. It's making his head hurt just as much this time around.

Fact: This is one of those puzzles he's going to have to solve from the outside in.

He tried to build the frame by working with Ember and Holds-the-Fire, and that got him no closer to a solution. Fixing the bloodstones requires understanding the bloodstones. But he simply isn't capable of seeing from whatever shattered perspective the stones were speaking to him from. He needs more context.

Chester stands up and paces in little circles in the mist. (Some tiny whisper of panic stirs up that he's going to get lost by moving. The rest of him points out that if wishing to be in the right place didn't make a difference, then walking won't, either.) He needs context that won't be distorted by whatever way the bloodstones are currently broken.

… that's doable, hopefully.

"I want to know the history of the Bloodstone Crown," Chester announces into the mist.

There's a lightning-crack, close and loud, assaulting him with hot and physical pressure. His vision instantly whites out, then becomes a sea of iridescent shapes, writhing and oscillating through the spectrum. They abruptly gather into sharp, distinct shards of color, locking into specific shades, whirling into a mutual dance and subdividing to crowd his vision. The shards retreat in size, colors growing denser until suddenly they snap into a mosaic and there's substance to

lying on a desk, staring up into the face of a robed woman, furred feline features and long wild hair. Excitement and triumph. (There's not actually any color around her; he simply knows that as a fact of her.) "I've done it, Rep!" A large dragon, midnight-blue of scale, sharp-beaked, green-eyed, stares over her shoulder (loving, elated). "What will we do with them, Kay?" and her smile spreads into fangs (greedy) and

he's curled up atop the woman's head, soaring above the clouds, as directly below him her hair whips madly in the wind carrying her laughter (exultant, rapacious). "Tremble, ponies, for I am your doom!" She clutches his other half in one outspread fist, and the other unleashes her magic into the clouds. Beneath her, the back of that midnight-blue dragon (helpless), wings laboring, who carries them at the head of a great and terrible army (submissive) which conquers the world and nothing can go wrong until it's

gone

his other half no longer sings in harmony, where is the scepter and where is its

magic

so. much. magic. It overwhelms even him and he is elsewhere when

the now-furless sorceress (indignant, vindictive) picks him up. The dragons which once answered his call are silent and the susurrus of a million new voices babbles in

the dead of night, fleeing through the forest atop her (terrified) head, shouts and torches closing in. Her (disoriented) magic reaches for a source no longer present and he, too, without his other half is ineffectual, but he knows to

watch from the crude furniture of the hut in the woods as she (determined) consults spells, brews potions. Nothing. Her (devastated) magic is gone. But even if he hasn't enough to dominate, he has enough to share and

shape

taking her (smart) raw material and rebuilding the harmony over years and

years later she (brilliant) too is

gone

and in a dim, rotted hut a wet, black nose whuffs over him and fangs clamp in—

—and Chester returns, blinking the spots out of his eyes, to the gray fog.

The memories appeared in a single intense burst, and it takes him minutes to sort through them. So much, so dense! But as he pieces what he learned together, the full picture begins to emerge.

It's enough for him to guess the outlines of what he needs to do next, but it's not enough. He's never been able to be satisfied with only half the story.

He braces himself this time, having a better idea of what to expect. "I want to know the history of the Bloodstone Scepter," he says, and lightning cracks—

(—and the first two scenes repeat, identical in vision and tone, until)

he is hers (megalomaniacal) no longer. A midnight blue claw clutches the shaft of the staff he is mounted in, and the one she called Rep (regretful, heartbroken) stares into the reflection on his surface. "I'll do everything I can to save her," says a bearded pony (placatory) in a tall jingly hat, but she doesn't matter, his other half is

gone

and there's magic (overwhelming) and he is

alone

save for the dragons he can still hear. Rep broods and sobs. He empathizes, distantly. Without his other half, he is disoriented, half-blind. Finally, Rep picks him up. "At least I can make things right with the dragons." He may not have that power any more. His domination is tentative, now, barely a thin whisper in the dragons' roaring chorus. Not that it matters. Rep will not use him. He is a symbol, a mere reminder of his people's shared liberation, until

Scales laughs, sharp and hissing, her purple claws closing around him. Rep stirs in slumber, awakens, but Rep no longer matters: he is stirring now, eager for claws willing to put his power to use. Scales tasted it once in the sorceress' thrall. Now she scoffs as Rep begs. "You've got a stick that can control the entire Dragon Lands and you're just throwing dinner parties?" He can appreciate the irony of her craving for the old ways for he, too, needs them back

atop the crystalline throne with a wielder unhesitating in her embrace of power, if meager in her ambitions. In her claws he exercises regularly, burrowing back into the minds of dragonkind, learning how with his whispers to shape their roars: "Dance for me." And his ache for his other half grows with his power, overflowing as he reaches back to his wielder, takes that flame of instinct and

kindles

a roaring pyre, but soon a new claw claims him, even stronger, and a new pyre to kindle, and a new claw even stronger and new claw stronger and new stronger and—

—out in the fog, Chester swims back into his own head.

He takes a long breath as vertigo slowly recedes, and once again spends a few minutes replaying the new burst of memories and sorting them into context. That was a lot to take in. But there's no longer any question: it was the answers he needed.

He spares a solemn moment for the tragedy of the exiled sorceress and the lovesick dragon lord. (And wonders if all the magical unicorns in Sunset and Celestia's world look like that bearded one did—spindly, blobby butt-tattooed things.) But all he can do now is make use of their stories.

He's got bloodstones to fix.

Author's Note

You go, Chester. You got this.

Fact: The sorceress and the dragon in the flashbacks are based on the old G1 villains Katrina and Rep, who never made a reappearance in Friendship Is Magic, so I gave them a cameo to weave their G4 counterparts into the prehistory of the Dragon Lands.

Fact: The tale of Scales and the Ancient Dragon Lord (also briefly seen here from the scepter's perspective) is from S8E15 and marks the earliest canon appearance of the Bloodstone Scepter. The kind-hearted Ancient Dragon Lord we see in the show is very different from everything else we've seen about dragon culture, and I couldn't resist weaving in that dangling thread.

We're doing one more week of accelerated Su-Tu-Th posting, so tune in Tuesday, Sept. 24 for "Secret Of The Stones"!