Dinky Doo: The Scion of Wind

Chapters

Chapter 12.6: The Longest Day
Chapter 10: The Scion of Wind
Chapter 1: The Unicorn Who Could Fly
Chapter 2: The Pegasus Who Was Old Enough to Drink
Chapter 3: New Beginnings
Chapter 4: Super Special Cutie Maneuver Alpha Double Sigma Delta Beta!
Chapter 5: Strife
Chapter 6: A Call to Action
Chapter 7: Alone
Chapter 8: En Route to…
Chapter 9: Disquiet
Chapter 11: To Never Look Back
Chapter 12: The Longest Day
Chapter 13: Denouement
Epilogue

Chapter 12.6: The Longest Day

Blood spurted out her mouth in reply.

The white mare flinched; her surprise evaporated as quickly as the splatter on her cheek.

The tar-stained eye widened.

Within the immaculate folds of her burning magic, the foal finally had the sense to thrash about, desperate for any hope of escape.

The long spiraled horn hummed, ready to burn to life again.

"Silence, impudent runt!" she snarled at her prey, which was now inches from her muzzle.

Frozen, the periwinkle foal gave the faintest of whimpers. Her lip was trembling, her heart was pounding, ready to leap out of her chest. Were her golden eyes dilating? She dared not look away from the hateful face of her captor.

Yet, the details she could focus on were not much better.

Behind the mare, the sky was blood-red, cloudless; the once-verdant fields — now ash.

"No, don't hurt her!" cried a voice, which the white mare seemed to take no notice of, for she had eyes only for the crumpled heap in her telekinetic grasp.

With a forked tongue she traced her fangs; she smacked her lips appreciatively.

Then her eyes flashed.

At the end of her horn bloomed a ball of swirling fire, which made the captive foal hiccup inside her magical prison. Out of options, the foal kept trying to push herself from the safest corner of the prison.

"Dinky!" cried a voice that, again, the white mare took no notice of, since she was too busy relishing the sight of her prominences dancing around in her victim's shrunken pupils.

"Dinky, DINKY!" the white filly shrieked, her squeaky voice cracking.

Tears trailed across the blackened grass. She galloped and galloped, desperation in every dry pant and every hiss of a hoofstep. Her fuchsia hair dragged thinly and lamely behind her.

"Sweetie Belle, you dummy, no!"

An orange filly started into a gallop. In seconds, she caught up with her white-coated friend.

A yellow filly who lacked a bow wasn't far behind.

"It's too dangerous! C'mon! It's too late. We can't do nothin' here now. We gotta get outta here. Now!"

If the white filly was paying any attention to her friends, who were galloping on either side of her now, she didn't show it. She raced further ahead and sidestepped a volcanic geyser, her eyes fixed stubbornly on the bully of a white mare.

The white mare perked her ears up. "Oh?" she crooned, a slight glance over her shoulder.

Pausing its idle undulations, her burning tail stood up straight as though it had been caught red-handed. It twisted into itself, its tendrils coiling over each other over again. Tighter and tighter into itself the tail wound…

Ash clumps were spraying past the white filly as she ground her forehooves to a halt. Mouth agape, she watched, paralyzed.

"Oof!"

The yellow filly stumbled, falling onto her.

The orange filly's hoof skipped a step, her wings fluttering feebly before her momentum parted her from the ground.

Dazed and sweating, there the little fillies lay.

They looked up.

Now a fully braided serpent of flame, the tail was ready to swoop upon the prey under its glow.

"Mhmhmhm," the white mare chortled to Dinky over the screamed terror. "Humorous, isn't it? That these foals could ever think they could stand up to me, the Bringer of Day Eternal!"

Paralyzed, Dinky could say nothing; she roved her eyes over her friends' faces for the last time.

The point of the fiery tail winked a deadly promise.

Finally, Dinky gasped herself awake. "Applebloom! Scootaloo! Sweetie Belle!"

But they could not hear her over her screaming.

"Ah," the white mare purred, eyes closed. "Music to my ears."

Helpless, Dinky watched the fiery serpent dive. She could blame only herself in that moment. It was her fault for dragging her friends into this. It was her fault for what was going to happen them now. It was her fault for being foalish enough to go with him to Haissan in the first place…

She couldn't look.

Chapter 10: The Scion of Wind

Crunch.

Crunch-crunch.

Along the sand the fillies marched.

Crunch, crunch.

On the grassy hill they set their sights.

Wary of the forest's growls they huddled close and tight.

Faster on the sand they hurried more and more.

Crunch, crunch, crunch-crunch-crunch.

Then a sheet of ocean found them. "I think we better hurry," Scootaloo said, lifting her left hoof to shake the water off it.

She made to catch up with Applebloom.

The sand Scootaloo was galloping on was different. The trees were different; even the air smelt different. The more of it the group trodded, the clearer it felt that they were on foreign soil. Their spirits were down, their gait sluggish. Most of them had only acquiesced to making the rest of the journey.

"Even if we could," Sweetie Belle had sighed before disembarking, "we wouldn't feel right just leaving you here all by yourself."

The trip that had followed had been silent for the most part.

Nopony, least of all Sweetie Belle herself, seemed to notice Dinky marching to the tune of Sweetie's cover of Hush Now, Quiet Now. Dispirited, Dinky marched normally, relatively speaking, since the rest of the group traipsed their way to the agreed-upon itinerary, which was agreed upon only arbitrarily, since none of them actually knew the way.

"Oh, if only we ended up on the same beach as last time!" Scootaloo had said. "Maybe we would have run into Zoccolo again!"

Everypony still had mixed feelings upon the shifty unicorn rogue, whom they had encountered the last time they arrived on the coastline of Stirrope.

"Come on, y'all," Applebloom called over, with Scootaloo waiting beside her. "We oughtta hurry while it's still light out."

"Coming!" Dinky called back, a hoof up. "Sweetie Belle — "

But she was already scampering fast after her oldest filly friends. Once the Cutie Mark Crusaders were together again, they marched pointedly onward, their hoofsteps in tandem.

Head slumped, Dinky, the only non-Crusader member of the group, went on.

The vibrant dawn had started blending into daylight almost two hours ago. The air was fresh and cool; a little salty on the tongue, too. The surf raked over the dark beach and receded, leaving behind foamy bubbles, which latched onto the unfamiliar grains. Rejoicing in the summer heat, the foam and bubbles fizzed apart, sounding a little like the inside of one's ears after they were done popping.

Another growl came from the forest, startling Dinky enough to send her veering closer to the tide.

Not long after, she regrouped with the others, with Sweetie Belle being too pre-occupied to take notice of her fur standing on-end.

In silence the four trudged on.

Although once or twice, Scootaloo shot the top of Dinky's back a sulky glare, as though she were blaming the book that Dinky had strapped to it for the mess her fellow Crusaders were now in. Still dangling from Dinky's neck was her flute case, which was probably a bad idea to open, given her earlier success with her pseudo-lullabic march.

It was Applebloom who broke the silence. "So, Crusaders. Y'all think we're gonna get our Cutie Marks by helping Dinky get to Haissan?"

The other two offered noncommittal shrugs.

"I mean, we didn't get our Cutie Marks the last time we did that," Scootaloo said.

"True, true," Applebloom said, nodding. "But this time's different."

Sweetie raised an eyebrow. "Really? How so?"

"Because this time," Applebloom said, rocketing her hoof up, "we're doing it so that she can learn to use her alicorn powers!"

And then her hoof squelched into a particular wet pit of sand; it looked sticky and sounded suction-y. Applebloom pulled herself out and shook off the muck.

"But she doesn't have alicorn powers," Sweetie Belle reminded Applebloom.

"But her dad's an alicorn," Applebloom maintained.

"Does that really make Dinky an alicorn?" Scootaloo said. "She's got no wings."

"Yeah," said Dinky.

"But that don't mean she got no alicorn magic on 'er, right?" Applebloom said, appealing to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo specifically.

Again they both shrugged.

As the bottom of her hoof was getting damper, Dinky shifted away, causing the Crusaders to veer closer to the forest and Sweetie Belle to pout disapprovingly at her.

"I mean," Scootaloo said to her fellow founding members, "Mr. and Mrs. Cake are earth ponies. Does that make Pound and Pumpkin Cake earth ponies?"

"No, they're a pegasus and unicorn," Applebloom said.

"Respectively," Sweetie Belle added succinctly.

"Mm-hm," Applebloom said with a wise nod. "But it's still weird how her magic don't come out like the rest, innit?"

As she said this, she watched green winds cyclone about Dinky's nub of a horn; so did Sweetie and Scootaloo. It was true that Dinky could manifest alicorn wind magic, in addition to her own unicorn magic.

"Isn't she technically an alicorn, though?" Scootaloo said with an eyebrow quirked and a hoof half-raised.

"Ugh, Scootaloo, we just went over this," Applebloom said, eyes lowered at her.

"Not my point," Scootaloo said quickly. "My point is that Dinky sort of started out an alicorn."

Dinky was starting to get self-conscious at this point.

"She was a unicorn at birth, Scootaloo," Sweetie reminded her.

"No, no. Don't you remember what she told us?" Scootaloo said, pausing for any sign of affirmation. "She has the soul of an alicorn. So technically…"

Dinky remembered what her mom had told her: News of an alicorn foal would have attracted too much unwanted attention. Ditzy had therefore elected to circumvent that by appealing to the aid of the Alicorn of Earth. The alicorn agreed to magically split Ditzy's yet-unborn alicorn foal into an unborn pegasus and an unborn unicorn. But some things, the alicorn had maintained, could not be partitioned, even by the strongest of magicks. The soul of an alicorn was one of them. And now that soul lay within Dinky — no, it was Dinky.

"I see your point," Sweetie Belle said, nodding.

"Ya do?" Applebloom said, confused. "So which is it? Is she, or is she not an alicorn?"

"Yes and no," Scootaloo and Sweetie said.

"Wha…?"

"Oh!" Dinky said, "we're here!"

The shininess of the grass was overwhelming, almost as much as the sun that bore down so intensely upon it. The hill looked like it was radiating a glow not unlike that of either Sweetie Belle's or Dinky's horn.

Turning their attention from the conversation, the Crusaders climbed. Each of them was visoring her pained eyes, trusting her hooves to feel their way up the slope. "Wait," Scootaloo said, turning, "what are you doing, Dinky?"

Dinky was wiping the sand off the foot of the hill like it was a small shoe-rug in an unfamiliar pony's home. "Sorry," she chuckled nervously, "force of habit, I guess."

Scootaloo clicked her tongue. "Weirdo," she said, letting Dinky catch up with her.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, went their trek uphill, without beat or rhythm.

Sweat was dampening their necks. The incline was steepening; their panting growing as the air thinned. The rise in temperature was coinciding with the slow ascent of the sun, whose rays seemed to shine accusatorily upon their backs. It was getting humid. Wind visited them in only a few strands, sparse and sporadic, without offering more than two seconds' succor.

Hairs were popping loose from Sweetie Belle's curls; Applebloom had to stop to refasten the big signature bow atop her head; Dinky learnt there was a right way and a wrong way to mess up Scootaloo's manecut. Dinky's own mane had been getting longer; so much had been happening with the Doo family that there had been no time to arrange a visit with the stylist. And maybe that wasn't a bad thing, since Rarity had implicitly shared the opinion that her mane wasn't in need of trimming. Right now, it was loose, wild, and had lots of cowlicks, which Dinky usually straightened into place using her wind magic.

This time was no different.

She gave a toot without tone, a toot that looped around to tend to the stray hairs, caressing them into line with the rest. The toot that followed reached Sweetie Belle, who only then noticed her hair being put back in much the same manner. "Oh," she said, faintly surprised as she turned. "Thanks."

Coldly, she turned away.

Disheartened, Dinky paused; to the distant ocean she seemed to speak. "Am I doing the right thing?" she asked, without really knowing whom she was asking. For reasons that she couldn't quite explain, she knew that she wasn't talking to nopony.

Nopony answered.

The ocean continued to swish idly by, oblivious and uncaring.

Dinky heaved a sigh that was heavy with sorrow and fatigue, then moved on.

As she regrouped with the Crusaders near the top of the hill, stomachs began to growl, hers included.

"You think there's a town nearby?" Scootaloo moaned.

Without realizing it, she and the others had reached the end of her slanted trek, where there was no longer any need to answer that question. Atop that hill, they stood side by side, the fillies four. No further words were spoken. It was as though a pact of silence had been made. Nopony had needed to make it. Nopony had needed to speak up, or to even acknowledge it. It simply was, and there it simply loomed, just like the cool of the breeze now steady on their necks. Bangs swayed, Applebloom's and Scootaloo's; curls bobbed from side to side, Sweetie Belle's; a mullet billowed up and down, uncannily like the mane of a certain Alicorn of the Sun, Dinky's.

An encore from the Growl of the Stomachs killed the moment, and Scootaloo wasn't happy about it. "Aww…! Applebloom…!"

"Wasn't me," Applebloom said with a shrug.

Sweetie Belle and Dinky Doo also shrugged.

It wasn't the Growl of the Stomachs at all, but the debut of the Growl of the Forest.

"What the…?" Sweetie said, about to turn around.

But before she could, either the force or frightful power of the growl sent her off the hilltop.

She screamed — nor was she the only one, for all her friends had been sent tumbling down the hill.

Tufts of grass flew up in their wake, offended.

Grinding against the slope with her forehooves was Applebloom, whose teeth were gritted; sliding down the hot mud beneath her belly was Dinky; rolling down the hill was the log that was Sweetie Belle; Scootaloo was trying to scramble and thrash back up like a swimmer in the Equestria Games who would lose points for lack of grace and finesse.

A barrier of sand encircled the foot of the hill, and it was as tall as a speedbump.

When the fillies crashed into it, the slope of it sent them ricocheting feet into the air, where they continued their screams and wriggled their legs helplessly, trying in vain to control their trajectory. Once more they hit the ground, and it was greener but no less bouncy than the sandy speedbump.

The dust, clouds of sand, the grassy vapors didn't have time to thin to reveal Dinky and the Crusaders, lying in a painful heap.

Getting off a balding patch of grass, Scootaloo spotted it. "Incoming!"

A seaside plateau had been waiting patiently below for them, offering to them a full view of the ocean, endless and blue. The push and pull of the tide were distant. Rolls of ocean came for the plateau's tall ledge; some were assimilated back into the sea before they could reach it; others ramped up the cliff, cresting skyward in a parade of fleeting rainbows. A tall wall guarded against such maritime intrusions, protecting a village from the seaside. Meanwhile, thick wooden stakes protected the village from enemies who would approach on land. A sandy road wound from the wooden gate of the village, disappearing into the stony bridge of a river and then reappearing to sneak its way between tall crowns of grass.

An acre of such grass was shivering. Kneeling on it were long-snouted ponies, who lifted their heads up from their bowing. They could only watch, too far away to help.

The ground was quaking more and more.

Still crumpled on it were the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Horror grew in their eyes. Their legs were paralyzed with fear; they may as well have been clamped down.

It was coming.

They were screaming.

It was roaring.

Parting the dust, it snorted, the groans that followed aching terribly. Each of its tusks was as long as the length of a filly; the curve of each was a scythe, ready to reap, to steal what had been sown. It was twice as wide as Applebloom's brother, and thrice as tall. It easily could have been mistaken for a black hairy hill. The beetle-like dots that were its eyes reflected the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who were huddling together. A strange tongue poked out of its panting mouth and licked what little could be seen of its lips. Its breath was so bad that it could be wretched at it from over half a mile away.

A quarter of a mile.

An eighth.

To the sky, Sweetie Belle screamed, "Help!"

Teeth gnashed, Dinky slid in front of her and Applebloom and Scootaloo; her horn was lowered.

The thing, the wild boar kept charging, despite the fact that it was doing so in-place now. That it was getting no closer to its prey did not become apparent to it immediately. Noticing the translucent swirls of grass-green raging against it, it snorted and dug its hooves into the sand to stop itself from getting pushed back. As though it were a warrior braving the extremes of a snowstorm, it stalked forward, insistent upon sating its long-deserved hunger. Its beady eyes now reflected not three, but just one filly.

Her coat was periwinkle. Scratches marred the scowl on her face, upon which a freshly bloodied slash lay. One of her eyes was twitching; still, she persevered and increased the energy being pumped into her blast: A tornado that spun violently out of her horn.

So there they were, predator and pony, each standing their ground, many meters away with, a magical green cyclone between them.

The boar didn't give up.

Neither did she.

The boar was still putting one hoof in front of the other.

No matter what, Dinky would not let it come one step closer.

The boar lifted its hoof to find its next hoofhold, then paused; it couldn't.

Eventually, all its hooves left the ground. It squealed, it tried to thrash all its weight against its unlikely prison. A spherical cage held it tight, spun together by the green strands that had been accumulated from the wind tunnel it was still struggling against. Now all it could do was wriggle its tiny limbs helplessly as the battle was lost. It was lifted higher into the air, ready to be shown the exit; it cast one final leer at her adversary: a small periwinkle pony.

Mane whipping about, Dinky roared.

With that, the last of her magic unwove itself from her smoking horn, compressing like a spring into a shining ball of energy that floated, hesitant, before disappearing from its place with a boom.

It was the last thing that the boar saw before ball and foe connected.

Now, both were just a glittering speck that disappeared into sunlight's stare before re-emerging once more to besmirch the otherwise spotless canvas of sky.

In the distance, leaves poofed up like confetti; it could have been that a falling star had just struck the forest.

It could have also been like a cannon had just gone off in Dinky's ears.

Dinky was panting, her fur wet with heat and fatigue.

And then she collapsed.

"Dinky!" cried a trio of voices.

"That was, like, the coolest thing I've ever seen!"

"Yeah! For a second there, I thought our oats were gonna get fried!"

"But she showed that overgrown bully of a pig what's what! Wait, Dinky. Are you okay?"

Opening her eyes by way of a response, Dinky nodded with a weak groan.

And she was about to drift back into sleep again — until the distinct scent of fried seaweed wandered into her nostrils from a basket that was suddenly sitting in front of her face. Her stomach growled loudly enough for the Crusaders to jump and turn around, thinking the beast had returned. Dinky had no energy to chuckle at them.

But she did have enough to watch the ponies deposit colorful baskets within hoof's reach.

"Oh?" Applebloom said, turning around to find a fruitful basket in front of her, one of many that now surrounded the group. "Offerings? For us?"

The pony who nodded evidently spoke no Ponish; but Applebloom's meaning was clear enough for them to respond to it. After that pony shifted out of line, another came to deposit another basketful of offerings. Like his fellow villager before him, he also had a long snout. Fabrics hung loosely from his body, the better to sway in the renewed wind. Dinky silently compared his dress to that of the Regent, who wore garments that might have been more regal.

The procession came and went, its appeal lost to the Crusaders, whose eyes were drawn to an acre of grass.

That acre was shorter, more crumpled because it was evidently often knelt on.

On it now knelt ponies local to the peninsula. They were filing into a rectangular formation. From afar, it looked seven ponies wide and eight ponies long, with a few meaner rows tucked closer in to preserve the symmetry. Watching it reminded Dinky of a checkerboard that her mom had showed her once after the finer intricacies of chess had failed to interest her. The ponies were all facing the same direction; each of their muzzles was close to the grass; on each of their backs sat a colorful basket, a symbolic offering, by the looks of it.

The eighth-to-last pony set her offerings before Applebloom, who asked, "Hey, what are they doing now?"

"Bowing, I think," Scootaloo said, squinting alongside Dinky.

"Oh, to Dinky's — to Alula, I mean," said Sweetie, joining Scootaloo and Dinky.

"Oh, yeah," Scootaloo said. "I see the dude on their funny shirts that they're not even wearing."

The dude in question was a crudely stitched alicorn floating on his hindlegs. A lighter shade of blue was painted on the tip of his horn. He wore his wings over his body; from their folds protruded a hoof, as though to direct the three waves of wind before him to go forth.

"There are Haissanians?" said Scootaloo; she stopped angling her body to peek at the Haissanians. "All the way out here?"

"Technically, no," Sweetie answered. "We're not in Haissan yet. But these ponies do seem to worship Alula, which is why they've bestowed their offerings unto his daughter. Or maybe it's because he used to be the Element of Generosity. Or maybe, they're honoring his memory by manifesting that Generosity, you know, since it's only a day until his funeral. Or maybe — "

"Can we please skip the lecture, Sweetie Belle!?" Dinky moaned.

As it transpired, the crops of the foreign peninsula were more edible than anticipated.

Applebloom was munching on a foreign apple. Swallowing it, she remarked that she's had better, to the snicker of her friends. Sinking her teeth into one, Dinky silently remarked that it definitely tasted different from the ones back home; not sweeter, but saltier and more sour. Turning it over, she wondered if it really was an apple, since apples typically weren't supposed to be an unusual mix of blue and yellow. Ultimately, she shrugged and continued eating, deciding it wise to not question the apple expert of the group.

Ponyville was a landlocked village, meaning that all its seaweed was dried and imported from far-off lands. Haissanian seaweed was prepared dried and fried; it was twisted into a well-knotted stalk the length of a cornstalk. Salts and seasoning decorated it like ornaments on a pencil-thin Hearthswarming tree. After turning it over in her levitation, Dinky crunched on it. Between her tongue and the roof of her mouth was where she could usually absorb all the different flavors at once. She could definitely taste the freshness of the salt; it was hard to not lose herself in the spices and sauces that decorated the tightly bound films of flavor. Her eyes were lost, dream-like as the mix of flavors stung her happy mouth. It was only after so many minutes when she decided she had absorbed all she could. She had to joust at the flavor-drained seaweed with her tongue's tip, since it was stuck to the roof of her mouth, like it usually was. When she finally did get it, she ceremoniously rolled it up like a red carpet, and gulped it down.

The topmost treasures of one basket hid bumpy berries, which were greeted with a chorus of "Ooh's". The berries were crunchier than any berry had a right to be; they were also sweet albeit tinged with a sourness not unlike that of lemons. Juices exploded from where the berries were bitten; everypony was soon laughing at each other's stained faces.

Everypony except for stubborn Applebloom, who was circling her hoof around the berry trove. "Ain't no way, no how, none of these is sweeter than any apple we Apples grow! Hmph!" she said, turning her snout away from it, not deigning to even consider it. She uncrossed one of her forelegs, though, to pick up, scrutinize, and likely criticize the blackness of the oat she was turning over in her hoof.

"Suit yourself," Dinky said, pressing her mouth to the wonderful juices again.

"More for us," Scootaloo added, taking another.

Nopony really paid much attention to the wrinkly lettuce or to the funny-colored hay; many more delicacies waited to be explored, and their full impact could not be appreciated the fuller their stomachs got.

Applebloom found roots that smelt bitter and funny; nopony tasted these.

Yams were among the assortment, as well. They were bright orange and sweet to boot. Licking up the starchy sweetness into a pile on her tongue reminded Dinky a bit like the Nightmare Night pumpkins that Pinkie Pie had once decorated with cake frosting 'for their dental hygiene'.

A pang of longing struck Dinky then; she longed for home.

To be honest, she still had mixed feelings about it; she still had mixed feelings about going to Haissan. If she had to be honest with herself, she sort of wanted this. What she did not want, was the Crusaders, having to abandon their lives just so she wouldn't need to be scared on this journey. Guilt was returning to weigh her stomach down, alongside the shameless amounts of food.

It had not been this full since her birthday party, which felt like so long ago now. The offering baskets were about halfway empty when the Crusaders had had their fill. Sometime during that big lunch, troughs of water had appeared without their knowing to complement the happy feast; they had been completely full then.

Now, they were completely empty — well, almost empty, since Sweetie Belle was still draining the last of hers. She exhaled, satisfied. "Thanks for the food!" she called over at the still-bowing ponies.

They did not answer; nor did they make any indication of having heard her.

"Do they even speak Ponish?" Scootaloo asked.

"Dun' look like it, no," Applebloom said with a head-shake.

"Hmph!" Sweetie said, crossing her forelegs before slouching on the ground. "Well, it wouldn't be very good manners if we didn't tha — !"

Her last syllable elongated into a belch, one that she seemed unable to help. Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Dinky sat staring at her for many moments. All the while, Sweetie was still belching; now she was darting her eyes, mortified, to each of their theirs. Dinky wished she had learnt how to cast a spell functioned as a stopwatch, because she could have sworn that she lasted for at least a full minute.

Realizing what had happened, she covered her mouth with a small squeak.

Laughter exploded, thanks to Applebloom and Scootaloo, who were pointing at her.

"Now, now, Sweetie Belle," Scootaloo said in a bad imitation of Rarity, "such uncouth behavior is most unbecoming of a proper mare."

Sweetie narrowed her eyes to slits, her face as red as that of somepony who had sampled the hot chili peppers. The hooves covering her mouth came undone as Applebloom gave her a playful pat on the back. She appealed to Dinky for help, but found none. "Aw, you too, Dinky?" she whined.

The sun was coursing slowly across the sky.

Laughter was had; so were seconds; as was a fun afternoon. It was a welcome reprieve from the strife that had hung over their heads for barely a week. They were now on foreign soil with no means of navigating to Haissan. But this was a matter that was pushed all-too willingly to the back of their minds. For the time being, at least. Once she sobered up, Dinky felt it was ready to be broached.

"Zoccolo?" she chanced; Applebloom was crossing her forelegs in an X over her body.

"Nuh-uh," she said, flinging her forelegs apart. "Absolutely not. No way. Negatory. Nosirree, see."

Sweetie's cheeks flushed again, but not with embarrassment. "Last time we trusted that low-life crook, he almost got all of us in big trouble," she said, pushing herself off the grass. "Personally, I think we should never try to find him again. If we see him, we run."

Dinky got up too. "So how else are we supposed to get to Haissan?" she said. "We don't know the way. Unlike last time, nopony speaks enough Ponish to show us."

"And we'd better hurry soon," Applebloom said, "or else that Equestrian warship'll find us."

Dinky couldn't help but detect a tinge of hopefulness in her tone; but she had no right to be angry at her.

Sweetie Belle was pacing, thinking aloud as Dinky, standing up, and Applebloom and Scootaloo, leaning back against the grass on their forehooves, watched. "It is strange," she said, more to herself. "You would think it would be here by now. But it's not. It took off just before we did. It should be here, searching for us. But it isn't."

"Maybe it's searching other beaches for where we could be," Applebloom offered.

"Maybe," Scootaloo said, "but it is a big coastline. They're not going to be able to find us in an afternoon." Then her eyes wandered elsewhere. "Wait. Are they still praying?" she asked incredulously, jabbing a hoof in the direction of the foreign ponies.

"It's a Haissanian tradition," Sweetie expounded, stopping her pacing to do so. "Every morning, they pray to Alula; they're probably doing it for longer than usual today, since it's so close to his funeral and all. One important thing about Haissanian prayer is that they have to always be facing the capital of Haissan."

She resumed pacing.

Applebloom stood up. "C'mon, Crusaders. There's got to be a way to get Dinky to Haissan!"

'Tenacity'. Twilight Sparkle had taught Dinky that word during the former's eponymous time. In words that Scootaloo had said were like, twenty percent cooler, it meant, 'a stick-to-it-ive-ness', 'a never give up, can-do attitude that's the mark of a real winner'.

Desperation hung heavy over the group.

The circle of baskets and food was just a distraction.

No matter how much they tried to hide it, the Crusaders wanted nothing more than to go home. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Dinky, who imagined Daring running off to try her hoof at adventuring solo; she had always loudly complained to her niece about having lost her edge since being domesticated. The Crusaders wouldn't feel right just leaving Dinky alone on foreign soil without the comfort of her friends; Dinky didn't feel right dragging them on this journey.

The truth was, Dinky was really scared. She was scared of going on her own. She didn't know what she would face. She didn't know when she would be done. As selfish as it was, she wanted her friends with her through it all. Deep down, she knew that this was a journey she had to face alone, if she couldn't admit it to herself yet. Every moment spent on that plateau added to her guilt; the right thing to do was right in front of her.

Just then, something familiar passed over her shoulder. Wincing, she chased after it with her eyes. "That can't be right," she said in less than a breath: The airy streams were flying off into the blue unknown. She was still staring at where the wind, or whatever it was, had dissipated. She had the feeling that she alone had felt it; the Crusaders were still brainstorming; the praying ponies were heading to the river to welcome somepony who had just arrived by canoe.

Something was coming to life inside Dinky. She didn't know what it was, but she did know that she didn't exactly care. Her only instinct, then and there, was to follow it. Within her it burnt bright; she trusted it to guide her next footsteps.

"Dinky…?" came Sweetie's voice from faraway.

Above a sea of billowing grass stood a green dune. There was nothing particularly special about it; it just felt like the place to be. So on it Dinky stood, holding her head up proudly, all the better to look upon the sky, endless and free. The crook of her hoof was lifted to chest-level. In that moment, she knew where her next step was going to take her, and it was nowhere on the ground.

She heard the Crusaders walk up to her.

"Dinky, are y'all alright?" said Applebloom.

"Sh! Applebloom. Can't you see she's having a moment?"

Their eyes were on her; this was her spotlight, but that didn't mean they couldn't share it with her.

"I have a plan," said Dinky before turning around. "That Haissanian who ponynapped me told me Alula couldn't use his magic to fly all the way to Haissan."

Well, it wasn't exactly what he had said, she quietly admitted.

Sweetie and Applebloom were staring at Dinky like she had just grown a second head. Fear had widened their eyes; the two fillies were shaking their heads frantically. Widening Scootaloo's was not fear at all; this filly was nodding goadingly.

"We oughtta wait for the Equestrian warship to come back for us," Applebloom said. "Maybe if we ask, we can explain to them what happened. Maybe we can even get them to take Dinky to Haissan without any fuss."

Scootaloo scoffed. "You want to wait for them to finish searching an entire continent for us? Get real!"

"Says the pony who wants to fly all the way to Haissan!" Sweetie shot back; she addressed Dinky. "Even with wind magic, there are still a bunch of things that could go wrong."

"So you'd rather wait here," Scootaloo continued, "and wait for an airship that might not even come?"

Sweetie sighed, rubbing her brow. "I'm just saying," she said, "that for all of us fillies to fly all the way to Haissan all on our own — "

"Better than just standing around than doing nothing."

An orange hoof stomped, rousing the grass.

A white hoof stomped back. "Seriously, Scootaloo. Dinky. We have to wait."

"Don't worry, Sweetie Belle," said Dinky, "I did this like fifty times before."

"All the way across a continent, Dinky?" she asked incredulously.

Dinky dipped her head.

"Oh?" Scootaloo said, her voice rising in pitch and sass, "so it's about how you feel, not what Dinky feels now? Weren't you the pony who said this was her journey, not ours? Didn't you also say we should support her in any way we can?"

"Scootaloo."

"We could be the first fillies to fly all the way from the edge of Stirrope to a continent. Imagine how cool that'd be!" Scootaloo said, fluttering.

"Maybe we'll even get our Cutie Marks in it!" Applebloom chimed in.

"Not helping," Sweetie grumbled.

"Weren't you also the one who said we shouldn't be stopping Dinky from broadening her horizons?"

Lowering her gaze, Sweetie glanced her guilt at Dinky. "Yes," she muttered.

Silently, she acquiesced.

"I still think going to Haissan's a bad idea," Applebloom said. "There're dangerous ponies there! Remember?"

"Applebloom," Scootaloo said, "all the dangerous ponies we needed to worry about aren't a problem anymore. Now shh."

Now Sweetie had somepony to empathize with.

Everypony was turning to Dinky now, waiting with various levels of enthusiasm for her direction.

Pacing back and forth, Dinky was trying to think.

In theory, her plan was simple. In Haissan, she would just show off her magic. The ponies there would recognize it and welcome her as a friend. As a friendly favor, she would have no problem obtaining an airship to send the Crusaders back to Equestria. What would happen to her afterward was not worth thinking about right now. Right now, she had to focus on actually getting to Haissan, first and foremost. That was the hardest part.

The previous afternoon, she had combed through the book given to her. Unfortunately, she had not gotten far when the night had eventually overtaken day. She had been looking forward to reading at night. The thought of reading on a cozy seat in tune to the gentle rush of sea and oddly comforting hum of the submarine engine was a thought that had appealed to her. And it would have been all the more serene, with everypony asleep, and with the moonlight upon the pages. But no moon had appeared to lend her extra reading time, nor to breach the black of the ocean's watery surface.

Cycles of pages began flipping through her mind. She did remember reading two spells, that in conjunction, could solve her transportation problems.

But she had to double-check her spellbook just in case. Yanking it off the strap, which she had found in the submarine, she laid it open before her nose, oblivious to Sweetie Belle looking over her shoulder. "Uh, Dinky," Sweetie said, a hoof in a crucial part of the bookmarked spell. "Since when did you learn to read Haissanian?"

Sweetie withdrew her hoof to let Dinky magically close the book and resettle it into the strap on her back.

"Sorry, Sweetie Belle," Dinky said, "I'll explain later."

She charged her horn and inhaled at the same time.

As she did so, the pieces of the puzzle were fitting together in her mind. It took all her strength to restrain her excitement. There were unknowns; she could iron those out as they came. Of one thing Dinky was certain, though: She could not do this alone.

Magical specks appeared, fading in from the leylines that Dinky harnessed.

"Visualization," Twilight had said during one of the first Twilight Times. "That's the key to targeting an object of your magic."

The target in question did not exist yet. But according to Alula's spellbook, visualizing it was the first step to materializing it.

Dinky remembered the old raft she had inflated out of boredom, and it was precisely that which her magic was forming an outline of. The blinking lights on the raft yet-to-be might have suggested that she had put one half of a set of Hearthswarming lights on it.

Dinky blew.

Her breath did not come fast or abrupt, like when she had soared thousands of miles into the air. Her breath was slow and measured. She tried to make the air denser before it came, and it worked. Cloudy white-green snakes slithered into the magical outline that she had laid out. They slowly entered, inch by inch, inflating the magical blueprint; they were spreading, expanding to fill each unoccupied nook and cranny.

And then she was done. She stopped her horn; the breath that followed was of not of effort, but of relief.

"Hey, Dinky," Applebloom asked, prodding it. "What in tarnation is this?"

"Our ride," Dinky panted, tired but steady on her feet.

Shrugging, Applebloom gave it one last prod before jumping on. "Whuh, whoa!" The surface was undulating beneath her hooves; that was normal. Then she started jumping on it. "Hey, look," she said to Sweetie Belle, laughing, "you don't even need to be a pegasus to be on this thang!" She jumped up and landed, the raft of clouds bouncing beneath her hooves. "Solid as a rock."

Tiny orange wings buzzed as Scootaloo belly-flopped onto it, sending cloud puffs flying up. "And it's soft like a bed, too," she said, pulling her face out of the fluff of the cloud. Then she noticed Applebloom. Cloud puffs covered her like she was a snowpony; she spat a puff out. "I mean," she added, helping scrape the puffs off, "it's been forever since we had a real bed to lay on."

"Scootaloo, it's been two days," Sweetie said as she climbed in after Dinky; once aboard, she looked up and prodded some invisible calculations. "But technically, it's actually a little bit more than that, since we're in an entirely different timezone and all. So it's a little closer to two days and five hours since this time two days ago; it'll be two days and six hours once we reach Haissan."

Scootaloo was making a face. "What are you, an atlas?" And just like, that Sweetie Belle's face was just as unamused, weary, and as statue-like as Applebloom's. "What?"

Excitement hung thick in the air.

The day was waiting to be seized.

Dinky had her aunt Daring to thank for teaching her about the word 'scion', and what it means.

What Cutie Mark Crusaders and the Scion of Wind were about to do was many things:

It was stupid.

It was crazy.

It was never going to work.

But they were going to do it, anyway.

Hearts were thumping: some with apprehension; one with excitement; and at least one with burning tenacity.

Peering over the edge of her raft, Dinky closed her eyes. Imagining herself back at the Ponyville marketplace, she started to suck in a really, really big breath; it was hardly hard to picture Scootaloo as Dinky's lungs filled. And it really took a long time for them to do so, way longer than the time it took for Sweetie Belle's legendary belch to finally end; Dinky knew that the memory of it would give her comfort for years to come.

She blew.

Chapter 1: The Unicorn Who Could Fly

Dinky Doo was a unicorn filly who lived in a small town called Ponyville. Her coat was the color of a periwinkle in bloom, her carelessly bouncy mane the color of the bleached petals of a sunflower. And she had been a much younger foal then. No bags underlined her eyes; each of her steps had a bounce to it; each of her ears stood straight and alert, the better to listen to the local market, its hustle and its bustle, the airy chatter that floated about, the waving and recognition between friends and the smiles that epitomized the small town.

Though the excitement of the shopping season was invisible, it was infectious in ways that words failed to explain. But it was no matter, since it was more something to be felt than rationalized. Understanding this, Dinky just let it flow through her; her steps became skips, her smile into hums that went unheard by all but herself.

Then she heard something. But she couldn't skip quite high enough to see what it was — or rather, who they were. Many adult ponies were gathering around the spot; there were too many heads for Dinky to see over, even at the top of her highest skip.

So she stopped skipping and looked between her eyes. She thought about using magic; her mommy always warned her against using a very special brand of magic. Dinky's last adventure had taken her to a city in the middle of the desert. That city was called 'Haissan', and up until some moons prior, an alicorn named Alula had ruled there. It was there where Dinky learnt the secrets of her birth: She was the daughter of Alula, and Dinky could use wind magic because Alula could use wind magic.

Now Alula was dead.

Now Dinky was the only pony in Equestria who could use wind magic. And she had to be careful about where she used it. The entire reason why Dinky lived in Ponyville to begin with was because her mother, Ditzy Doo, had wanted to avoid drawing Alula's eyes and those of any predators who would take Dinky away from her.

Infusing her horn with a green aura, Dinky blew through one of her nostrils. The stream of air pushed on the ground, propelling Dinky into the air, where she could glimpse the market better. Wooden stands were scattered about the thoroughfare. Some were parked in the cool shade of the bordering buildings; most were arranged in the middle of the grey cobblestone square, reminding Dinky, upon a second blow of her nostril, of the hedges of a maze garden where a certain draconequus had been released not too long ago.

In the middle of a street stood a stand with a cream-colored mare behind it. "Carrots! Get your fresh carrots right here, see!"

Most ponies feigned fascination with her shriveled roots, then were on their way.

Moaning her sympathy, Dinky watched her deflate.

Then she heard it again, the same voice that had compelled her into using wind magic; snort-hopping again, she craned her neck over.

"Cherries! Oh… cherri-i-i-ees! Fresh offa Do-odge Ju-u-nction!" a quavery voice was practically singing. A piano-ivory hoof was raised theatrically, sticking out like a sore hoof. It looked like something Rarity would do… if she also sounded like Applejack, Dinky thought near the apex of her hop. "Only two-o-o bi-i-its!" the beauty-marked mare sung again, as ten golden pieces knocked on the flat of her stand. "Why thank ya kindly, good sir," she said, as the bits disappeared into a trapdoor; removing her hoof from a lever, she produced five small bumpy bags and slid them towards her patron. "Now you have yerself a wonderful day, there." Giving her cherry-laden patron a familiar pat on his back, she looped back into her chorus: "Cherri-i-ies!"

The cherry pony loosened the strap on her bag so that she could gesture her hoof over her sweet but sweaty wares. Ponies were leaning in closer, their heads stooped, their eyes enraptured. Then came her customers' part: a chorus of 'Oohs', followed by a jingle, a jangle, and jingle-jangle of bits upon her would-be humble stand.

After all her shoppers finally left to pursue the other venues of the market, Cherry Jubilee finally had a moment to herself, which she used to throw a teasing eye-flutter in the direction of the carrot stand, which was as empty as it had been during the entirety of the cherry-related transactions. The carrot vendor pouted, her hooves crossed.

"Aw, poor Golden Harvest," a voice said right by Dinky, startling her into stumbling in midair. She was backflipping wildly; then snorting a scatter-gust that let her float above ground, Dinky landed safely and breathed. "Oops, sorry. I didn't mean to do that."

"It's okay, Miss Pinkie Pie," Dinky said. Her voice was about as high as Sweetie Belle's, but her tone lacked that refined enunciation that was characteristic of smart ponies like Sweetie Belle and Twilight. Instead, Dinky's tone was sort of floaty, a little like the one her mommy used to use in public. Dinky waited to snort-hop again, then caught up to Pinkie's height. "What are you doing here?"

"Just on my after-lunch pronk. You?"

"Just on my after-lunch hop."

Dinky spluttered, and then she and Pinkie exploded into fits of laughter. They kept laughing even as they hopped and pronked, immune to the gasps beneath them. The crowd kept parting for them to land, and to soar again. Then they whipped their heads around at the same time, in the direction of something that had pierced through the tumult of the market-goers.

It was a neighborly drawl, and it was simply too cute to ignore. "Apples! Git yer fresh apples right here, see! Fresh offa the orchard."

Everypony was dropping what they were buying to see. Some produce vendors were frowning, outraged at being ignored. One of them was Cherry Jubilee, whom Golden Harvest was fluttering her eyelashes at, with the flat of her hoof cratering her cheek and seeming to be why her mouth was peeled back in a smug grin.

Shining proudly on a great big sign was a red barn, which sat quietly in the background to yield the spotlight to three apples painted on the foreground. The sign was mounted onto a shiny wooden stand that was about three times as wide as the others. It was also three times as manned, Dinky realized with a smile, as two familiar fillies poked their heads from above the top of their workstations to join the yellow filly right in-between them.

"Now, now, fellas," the first filly said, "there ain't no need to shove or nothin'. We got plenty 'nough fer everypony."

"Everypony form an orderly line!" the marble-white filly called between her hooves. "We won't take your order unless you're in line!"

"Yeah," the orange filly said, pointing over a lopsided pair of ponies. "So get in line, lady."

The lady's eyes stretched wide in anger. "This is an outrage!" said the lady; the orange filly merely raised her eyebrows. "We are in line."

Frowning, the orange filly pushed herself up to check that the lady and her daughter were standing inside an imaginary boundary that demarcated 'the line'. Or at least that's what it seemed like, until the orange filly grinned devilishly at the daughter.

"Sorry," the orange filly said, getting back into her seat, "but them's the rules, lady. Back of the line!"

She pointed an imperious hoof, at which the pink mare's eye twitched.

An elbow on the stand, the orange filly watched her with nothing but amusement.

Finally, the mare snorted. "Hmph!" she said. Snout upturned, she turned, dignified, and marched away. The surrounding ponies scurried away, clearing a wide berth between themselves and the mare who acted like she had much better things to do than spare her gaze upon the peasants shrunken before her. "Come on, Diamond Tiara."

"Yes, Mother," the smaller of the ponies droned.

And she scampered through the parting in the crowd — that is, until a whistling sound made the little pink pony jump with a pig-like squeal; landing, she turned.

The orange filly was pulling her eye down, a tongue stuck out.

The pink filly gladly returned the gesture.

"DIAMOND TIARA! YOU CAN PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS LATER!"

Shooting the orange filly one last glare, Diamond Tiara disappeared into the crowd.

The orange filly was watching her rejoin her crumpled-faced mother at the back of the line, which was about twenty ponies long now.

Putting her hindlegs up, the orange filly nested her head against the back of her forelegs. "I can't wait to do that again when they come back," she said with a twisted snicker, angling her head towards her friends expectantly.

As it transpired, her friends weren't paying attention. "Hi, Dinky!" Applebloom and Sweetie Belle said.

"Hi, Applebloom!" Dinky said, waving at the highest point of her snort-hop, but disappearing before she could wave again. So she hopped again. "Hi, Sweetie Belle!" And again. "Hi, Scootaloo!"

Dinky was about to ask about their latest crusade — an anxious non-spoilt customer badgered Scootaloo; another started giving his order to Sweetie; Applebloom was already waving off her first customer of the day — but then she took the hint.

"Huh?" she said.

A cream-colored hoof had hailed her. Somepony called her name again, and was waving a wrapped bundle her way. "Lilies? They're in season!" she said, excitement raising her voice to a song.

"No, thank you, Miss Roseluck," Dinky said, continuing to snort-hop over the heads of the market patrons. "I'm just looking for my mommy!" She hopped again. "Maybe later, though." She hopped higher still, and waved, unaware of the ponies pointing at the little hooves wobbling above their heads. "See ya!"

"Ooh!" said Pinkie, landing in front of Roseluck's stand to lean her snout closer to the proferred lily bundle. "I'll take some!"

Roseluck smiled. "That'll be six bits!"

Dinky landed beside Pinkie as the trade was taking place.

Once it was done, the two resumed soaring over everypony's head like a joke that nopony else but they could get.

Sadly, the springing and the snorting could not last.

"I gotta get back to Sugarcube Corner," Pinkie explained (Dinky went 'Aww…'). "Sorry. Catch ya in a bit!"

"Bye, Miss Pinkie!" Dinky said, waving after her.

With a kind tilt of the head, Pinkie waved back.

And then she pronked out of sight, leaving Dinky hopping all by herself.

Wiping the sheen off her brow, Dinky looked up: it was a hot day. And the cobblestones were hotter, which did not surprise Dinky as she sprung her legs against them. Like a cat ready to pounce, she crouched low.

Onlookers pointed as they walked around her. Their murmured concern was coddling albeit fleeting, lost within the busyness of the day, lasting for as long as she was in sight and within earshot, as far as Dinky was concerned.

Dinky felt her chest puffing out, her lungs expanding with the fresh full scent of Equestrian air.

And then she blew. "WOOOOHOOHOOOO!"

She was launched a good twenty meters into the air before the shoppers noticed what was up: Her!

Diamond Tiara and her mother were squinting up.

Twenty bits lay forgotten under Sweetie Belle's hoof, and so did the bag of apples that sat between her and Fluttershy, who stared, mouth agape.

Dinky was waving feverishly as she continued to ascend. If any of the Cutie Mark Crusaders waved back at her, Dinky was probably too far up to see them. Or maybe, she wondered, she just didn't squint hard enough to see them.

It was a very clear day. No clouds to remind her of their frigid wrath; just the sun and its heat on her back as she watched the marketplace shrink into the ground. Hooves were pointing, mouths were gasping; she felt all of Ponyville looking her way.

Dinky blinked.

And now it was all a big muffled blur of shapes and dots that were hazy in the heat.

If Dinky had to imagine what parachute-diving was like — and she had to imagine, since her mommy wouldn't let her try it, no matter how many times she asked — she would probably say it was how she was soaring into the air at that moment, except in reverse.

Visoring her eyes, she squinted eastward. "Whoa…" she breathed.

A giant mountain speared high into the sky, barely seeming to move as the little foal continued her ascent. White towers clung to the rocky face, standing white and majestic against the bright blue skies. The Castle City of Canterlot seemed to glow against the midday sun, its radiance like that of the Princess who called it home.

"Home…" Dinky murmured. The word brought a smile to her numb jiggling cheeks. To the great skies above she looked. Freedom tingled through her skin; wonder shone through her golden eyes; adventure burnt like a trapped ember within her little heart. She glanced down. "Home…"

A sigh escaped her lips — followed by a gasp. "Whoa, slow down there, kid."

Dinky was swinging back and forth like a pendulum that included her hindleg.

Keeping her feathery grip on it was a blue mare with rainbow-colored hair and violet-colored eyes. With a sleight of wing, the mare draped Dinky onto her back. "Yo. Kid," Rainbow Dash said, cricking her shoulder to gaze wearily at Dinky. "How many times are you gonna do this?"

Dinky giggled into her hoof. "I don't know," she said in a would-be innocent voice.

Dash rolled her eyes. "Alright, you know the drill."

Once Dinky wrapped her forelegs around Dash's neck, Dash was off.

No matter how many times Dinky was scolded by Rainbow Dash, shooting herself miles into the air would never not be fun for Dinky.

Her muzzle was squished against the back of Dash's head. Dash and Dinky were both sweating beneath their fur.

Both of Dash's hooves were aimed straight for the bundle of shapes and dots that was Ponyville. Both of her wings were flat, cutting through the unexpected thickness of the air.

Personally, she felt it was criminal to not exercise her birthright, her inheritance.

Dinky took in the sights. At her current altitude, the barn where Applebloom lived looked small as it passed fast below. Under the heat and its waves, it was oddly jaggy.

Winds were streaming past the duo. "What?" Dinky gasped over her shoulder.

"I said," Dash was shouting over the excited squees of the wind, "we're almost there!"

Dash turned up her wings, like they were sails for the sunlight beating down on her. She flapped once, pausing for a second before she flapped twice more.

She passed the town hall, which was the tallest building in Ponyville. Dinky watched it shrink into the background; the familiar tumult of the market was returning to her ears. "Alright," Dash announced, "we're here!"

It took Dinky a second to recognize the market square.

Ponies stopped their shopping to stare up at the two; a few faces were familiar. Most foals were pointing, their eyes sparkling with wonder and awe as Rainbow Dash watched the ground she was flapping gusts against. Some foals were unnecessarily tugging for their mothers' attention, unabashed by the layers of dust being swept against their flanks.

And then Dash landed, with Dinky disembarking, landing beside her not long after.

Had Dinky not spotted a grey mare shoving her way through the crowd of ponies around her, she might have assumed she wasn't in trouble. But she had, and therefore she was.

Wrapped over the torso of Ditzy Doo was a light-green explorer's vest. Sweat beaded at the end of each stray strand of her shiny yellow mane. Throwing aside her plinth hat, Ditzy shook off the sweat and the heat and stomped against the cobblestone, which to Dinky's surprise, did not crack under her. Her eyes were golden, much like her daughter Dinky's. Unlike Dinky's, her eyes were mismatched; her left eye seemed to rattle with each footfall, while her other eye glared straight ahead.

In unison, Dinky's and Dash's eyes shrunk. "Uh-oh," they said.

Dash saluted Dinky. "Good luck, buddy," Dash said.

She arched her back, set her sights skyward, and flared her wings.

And then her hooves left the ground. "Hooool' up there, pardner."

Scoffing, Dash looked behind her. "Seriously? Again? You really gotta stop doing that one of these days."

Chuckling giddily between strands of rainbow-flavored tail was an apple horse who was the color of a fresh orange. "Yep. Cooome on," she drawled, while Dinky was wondering what the deal was with her color scheme. "I think it's time we owe Miss Explorer here the truth, plain and simple, see."

Dash huffed, her hooves crossed. "Fine."

And she landed, turning around to find Applejack, Ditzy and Dinky facing her.

"You mind telling me what you've been doing with Dinky, Rainbow Dash?" Ditzy asked in a low voice.

"Hey, don't look at me!" Dash said, putting her hooves up and darting her eyes around. Everypony was staring at her, some even throwing accusatory glares her way, which despite her predicament, she had to roll her eyes at. Dash gestured around to the watching crowd. "Just ask around! They saw what happened. This is like the twentieth time this week."

Ditzy raised an eyebrow. "Twentieth time for what?"

At this point in the conversation, Dinky had a mind to run for it. Muttering something about getting Mommy's hat, she did — only for Mommy to spread her wing wide to block her. Ditzy looked over her shoulder on her bad side, and though her eye didn't quite show it, the gesture of a warning look was not missed by Dinky.

Dash stammered; Ditzy remained silent, expectant.

"Alrigh', alrigh'," Applejack was calling to the crowd. "Ain't nothin' ta see here. Quit yer idlin' about. I'm sure we all got busy-making to do." But the onlookers remained as still as statues, their eyes shameless. "Go on, git! That there Summer Sun Celebration sure ain't gonna make itself all nice and dandy, ya hear?"

Everypony was staring at Applejack now.

One pony went on his way, and his friends followed; like a disease, the order spread throughout the crowd. The tumult of the market was returning; Diamond Tiara's mother was groaning loudly about taking orders from common peasantry. As Roseluck completed the rest of her transaction, she beckoned for her patron's ear to gossip in; Cherry Jubilee finished stuffing her customer's bag with five more cherries than what had been paid for; yawning, Golden Harvest smacked her lips, inwardly cursing her luck. The Cutie Mark Crusaders did their part by resuming business as usual, taking orders, raking in bits, filling and pushing apple bags, calling for the next customer in line with varying degrees of politeness. They only snuck surreptitious glances at the scene that was now unfolding.

The explorer's hat lay some distance away. Concealing it from sight and reach was a constantly shifting maze of legs, fillies, and tail swishes. Dinky waited, and waited… And then she aimed a stream of magic that wended its way through that maze. The hat was struck high into the air, where Dinky was better able to will it into her telekinetic grasp. Ditzy's hat landed on top of her; Dinky had to push it up so that it wouldn't fall over her eyes. "Mommy?" she said.

"Sorry for yelling at you like that, Rainbow," Ditzy said, kicking the ground.

Applejack prodded Ditzy's explorer's vest. "Shame on ya," she said, "fer lettin' poor lil' Dinky here gallivant about all on her lonesome!"

That earned her looks from Ditzy and Dash.

"Um, totally not the time, AJ," Dash snapped.

"Or the place," Dinky piped up. "Ponies are still gawking at us."

Applejack cleared her throat. "I'll, uh, go check on how Applebloom's doing with the stand, then," she said, jabbing her hoof over her shoulder at the aforementioned stand, which she saw was now serving Diamond Tiara's mom.

Applejack did a double-take.

A commotion was in progress: Scootaloo was trying to send Diamond Tiara's mom to the back of the line again; Diamond Tiara's mom wasn't looking too happy about it.

And then Applejack galloped, raising a hoof above herself as she shouted over her shoulder, "Catch up with you later, RD!"

"You know it, AJ!" Rainbow Dash hollered back with a salute.

Ditzy hoisted Dinky onto her back.

"Whu-whoa," Dinky yelped, almost rolling right off.

"Come on," Ditzy said calmly, as Dinky clutched onto her neck for support. "We can talk at my place." Without warning, she took to the air, stopping to wait for Dash, who was staring at a nondescript section of the crowd. "What is it?"

"Thought I saw something back there," Dash muttered, catching up to her, still casting anxious glances below.

"Probably just Zecora," she droned. "Come on. It's this way."

"Um, Mommy?" said Dinky.

"Hold on tight, Dinky," Ditzy said without looking at her.

Dinky pursed her lips. "Okay," she mumbled into her golden mane. Nuzzling in its shiny warmth gave her comfort. A moan hummed between her lips. The sky seemed to exhale around her. This was freedom, she thought with an undertone of irony. Feeling her ears pop, she clung tighter to the grey neck and closed her eyes.

As a little foal, she used to be taken on rides like this at night. The experience never got old to Dinky, who had been born without wings. Ditzy would fly through the airspace above Ponyville, while Dinky would be atop her, being her eyes. They weren't able to go out whenever the moon was new, though, since even Dinky had trouble seeing stuff completely in the dark. Mother and daughter would still crash sometimes, though. Even so, Dinky could never help but giggle.

Neither could Ditzy. Her laugh was Dinky's laugh. Her eyes were Dinky's eyes. Her life was Dinky's life.

The sky continued its hollow toneless hum.

Then a wrinkle pulled at Dinky's shut eyes.

Why couldn't she feel the sun on her back anymore?

Why did it sound like the winds were getting stronger?

Their howls were becoming clearer, their restiveness more palpable by the second.

Lightning struck. "Wait… I know this."

Her horn was shining more brightly than usual. Her hooves were no longer dangling over a grey-furred torso; now they stood, small but erect, upon rippling green grass.

She lifted a hoof to find a daisy had been hiding under it. What's more, all around her, identical daisies had sprung up unbeknownst to her. Each had a golden core. The white petals moved oddly in the wind, almost like they were more made of fleeting fire than fragile fibers.

Thunder boomed, recalling Dinky to her surroundings.

She was standing inside a garden. It had felt like just yesterday when she was galloping anxiously to the source of the answers she had been seeking at the time. Now she stood still, with all the answers in her heart and all the turbulence it carried.

The strands of her mane were whipping about.

The flashes of lightning were hot against her solemnly shut eyes.

The walls were rectangular, an enclosure for the garden within. Now, the walls were breaking apart.

Broken stone and orphaned trees swirled helplessly about Dinky. Dust specks were pecking at her face, as though to remind her of the destruction taking place before her.

Voices beckoned to her, forced her to look.

And when she did, she couldn't move. She could only watch, trembling, powerless to help them. They were more than just specks in her golden eyes; they were her stars, to whom she looked for guidance when she most needed them. Their screams were louder to her heart than the cyclonic roars were to her ears. She was shouting over and over again. "Mommy! Aunt Daring!"

"Yes," came a voice. "I'm here."

Dinky looked around, confused. The voice had issued seemingly from nowhere. And as gentle as it was, it was clearer, louder than the winds that slapped at her. She wished for all of it to stop.

A swooping sensation overcame her.

Turning her hoof over, she gasped: Though it was exactly the shade of periwinkle, she could see right through it, at the grass and the curious flowers, and at another unicorn filly the color of periwinkle. That filly's eyes were closed; she was lifting her foreleg to her chest. The filly didn't seem to be moving; nor did the flowers around her. The gusts were just grey brushstrokes that were painted over the airborne debris and the lost ponies; their screams and hers — extinguished.

The only thing that was alive in that mural was the magic swirling about the unicorn filly's horn.

Blinking out its light, Dinky spotted Ditzy and Daring. Yet, what were they now, but dying stars set against a mural of chaos and pain? Still, Dinky had to try to reach out. And as soon as she did, the futility of the gesture made itself known: She drifted away, from the other her, the palace, and her family. The more she tried to reach out, the more she was pulled away.

She tried to open her mouth to call out for them again, but found she couldn't. She felt like she was drowning.

Soon, she was far enough to see it: The scene at the palace seemed to be frozen in time, an island of detail and trauma, floating in the middle of a dark void where nothing else existed, not even the sound of her screams.

No matter how much she swam to it, it only seemed to get farther away. The longer she swam, the more it occurred to her how hopeless the motion was.

She stopped.

The emptiness was seeping into her. Hugging herself, she tried to ignore how much her veins were freezing.

In her dull stare, there she was: Another her, a beacon that was fading fast.

Dinky blinked.

And then the other her was gone.

The real Dinky curled up.

It was hard to tell how long it had been before she heard a voice. Unfortunately, it was one she could not rise from her despair to answer. When it came, excitement swooped over her like a blanket over her slumbering form. Still, she did not stir.

The voice came again, as clear as though Ditzy had just whispered right into her ear. "Mommy?" said Dinky, opening her eyes.

Nopony answered.

She curled herself up again.

A force came, one that pushed her forward, and then pulling her back.

And then forward.

And then back again…

It would be a short few hours before the Running of the Leaves began. Red and gold painted the treetops, underlining a crisp autumn morning. A clean dirt path lay nestled within, waiting to be trampled upon. A cool force swept through it. Miraculously, not a thing budged: Not the dirt, nor the trees, nor the leaves — save for one.

An exotic leaf was flapping off the end of a branch, eager to be free. And then it got its wish: Leaf and wood parted.

The leaf swerved into a loop that sent it spinning wildly above. Once it was high enough, it froze, seeming to have decided that was how high it would go that day. Its fun was had; and so it swayed, back and forth, back and forth, meandering its way down, ahead of schedule.

When the leaf touched the ground, Dinky heard it: Somepony groaning from faraway.

"M-mommy?" she thought verbally. No longer did she have a mouth to speak. No eyes with which to look; no body — not even a see-through one.

That's when a jolt hit her body. Suddenly her mind was travelling a million miles away.

The wrinkling nose didn't feel like it was hers; not at first. The same word was being murmured over again, mindlessly and out of instinct. The head was rolling from side to side, as if to shake off invisible flies. The chest was pounding rapidly. Now that her fur was fully tangible again, it was renewed with forgotten sweat.

Familiar light shone against her eyelids. Familiar too was the fabric on which she lay. She knew where she was, but half of her still felt like she was napping in the middle of the sea, on a liferaft that felt and smelt just like the Doo living room sofa.

"Home…" she echoed for the second time that day — or was it still today? Dinky rubbed her throat; her voice did not quite feel quite like her own yet.

There came a metallic whine, one that she had learnt to associate with sweet things.

That was when Dinky fully awakened, her ears perked up. She peeked over the back of the sofa.

"Muffins!" a certain somepony sang, shutting the oven door. "Oh, Dinky. You're awake."

The voice almost sounded disappointed; Dinky had to repeat it in her mind, sure that she had mistaken the tone.

A tray clattered on the wooden coffee table before her.

"So," said Ditzy said, plopping down two cushions over, cross-legged. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What? Tell you about what?" The longer she found herself in the deadpan pupil of her mother's eye, the more Dinky started to remember. "…Oh. Oh," she said, bowing her head. "Oh." Looking up again, she started to beg. "I woulda told you sooner, but — "

"You were having too much fun," Ditzy interrupted, folding her forelegs. "Rainbow Dash told me." Dinky swore under her breath. "Language, young mare."

"Sorry, Mommy! Sorry!" said Dinky. But Ditzy's face was as rigid as a gargoyle's. "I promise not to do it again!"

Ditzy pointed to the muffin tray. "Eat your dinner, Dinky."

Dinky glanced out the window. "But it's not even sundown yet!"

"And use your hooves," Ditzy suggested, taking to the air.

"My hooves?" she said, nonplussed; she peered over the back of the sofa. "What for?"

And just like that, Dinky was talking to an empty staircase.

A slam came from upstairs, specifically from the direction of Ditzy's bedroom.

A sigh deflated out of Dinky. She found herself blankly appraising her dinner: Twelve muffins. From them billowed thin trails of smoke that made her retch her tongue out. "Again?" she said, shoulders slumped.

She did not look forward to salvaging whatever nutrients the ash had spared. But she hadn't eaten since that morning.

Deciding she would make do, she spotted the least-burnt muffin of the batch. A levitation spell would have easily extricated it from the melted bread and sugar. So that's what Dinky decided on, despite her mommy's 'suggestion'.

"Huh?"

When Dinky had concentrated into her horn, she found that it did not hum or whir like it usually did. Something was buzzing above her, like an invisible fly. She groaned knowingly, and tapped her horn anyway; something metal was muffling it.

"Figures," she said, falling forward to plant her chin on the armrest.

A glance at the wallclock told her that a little over half a day remained until midnight.

The ghost of a familiar aroma teased her again; her eyes wandered back to the smoking mess. She thought of how much love her so-called mommy had put into baking this. Something awful churned within her, and it sure wasn't the travesties that were mocking her at that moment.

Springing a hindleg back, Dinky kicked.

The clattering of the tray was lost in the muffle of the living room carpet. Muffins rolled ashen trails along the floor, and those trails spiraled into patterns that an overly avid art aficionado would be mad enough to declare 'genius'.

Clamping a woven yarn-like pillow over her ear, Dinky buried her face into the pocket of a back-cushion.

She had just slept; her dream was already an unimportant, long-forgotten mess of vagueness that she couldn't be bothered to care about even if she weren't upset. The day wasn't over yet.

Worse things had stopped Dinky Doo.

Chapter 2: The Pegasus Who Was Old Enough to Drink

"Psst, kid. Kid. Hey. Kid."

"Mgruhh… buh…"

"Kid. Wake up."

"Mgruhuh…? A-aunt Daring?"

Dinky was blinking the blur from her vision to find that somehow, it was dark already. Blinking at her were a pair of eyes. Unsurprised, she groaned and tried to sink back into her armrest.

A hoof jabbed her in the belly before she could. "Kid, this is important," hissed a scratchy voice.

With one hoof, Dinky was massaging her belly; she was stretching the other high above her as she gradually settled into an upright position. "Couldn't you have waited 'til m-m-morning?" she whined, scratching the crust off her eye.

That earned her a violet roll of the eyes.

"Look. Kid. Keep your voice down," the mare hissed to Dinky, who was refamiliarizing herself with the sofa cushion as best as she could in the dark.

Dinky smacked her lips. "What do you want?" she croaked.

The table lamp came on.

Dinky was revealed, sitting with her forehooves planted in front of her. A bored look was on her face; the bags beneath her eyes suggested that she wanted nothing more to return to the bliss of that dream she could hardly remember at this point. Her mouth inflated into a big O as she gave a much-needed yawn.

Settling her bare haunches onto the coffee table opposite was a mare, her coat like the color of late-summer goldenrod. Her mane was of stripes of differing shades of grey. She didn't have her usual hat on; instead, unceremoniously flattening the top of her bangs was a simple brown mailmare's cap, complete with a colorful logo of an envelope with wings. An equally brown collared shirt adorned her chest and smothered her pride; ever since her sister Ditzy had forced her to don the whole outfit, she never stopped complaining about how it made her look like company property. Her only silver lining was that it didn't obscure her cool new mechanical wing. After her latest adventure, she had lost her real one — along with most of her bits, which had gone into replacing it.

Daring Do spread her wing to the fullest extent possible, like she wanted to show off how it shone like obsidian in the criss-crossed rays of the lamplight and moonlight. Except at the moment, she was actually spreading it to clear the rest of Ditzy's junk off the table, even though she had plenty of space to park her bare haunches on it already, where Ditzy least wanted it. Noticing Dinky, she scoffed. "Kid, what is it now?" she snapped, following her eyes to the staircase. Daring started, and swiveled Dinky's head back to face her. "Hey, c'mon. It's okay. Don't rat me out, kid."

Dinky lazily flicked the hoof off her chin.

"Anyway," Daring went on, swiveling her forelegs forward as though to let Dinky in on the big picture. "Kid. Get off the cushion. I need to check on somethin'." Dinky's eyelids squelched as they blinked, one after the other. "C'mon, we haven't got all night."

So getting up, Dinky walked one cushion over and watched the one she had been lying on get thrown aside.

The curve of the tongue was pointed up; the careless gaze somewhere on the ceiling; the foreleg lodged into the inner pocket of the sofa as Daring dug through it. "C'mon, c'mon…" she muttered.

Dinky couldn't really tell why her eyes, which were watching Daring's latest excavation, were half-open. Be it out of exasperation or drowsiness, Dinky did not really know. Nor did she really care.

From the goldenrod lips came a gasp. Triumph had seized her heart, stiffened her wings, natural and otherwise. Her gaze was suddenly blank, unseeing; then they lit up. Slowly and carefully, Daring Do reeled back her hoof, taking an awfully long time to extricate, from the Crevice of the Doo Living Room Sofa the artifact she had sought. And so from the crevice the end of the hoof emerged, and Daring held atop it, high and proud above her head, with a smile stretching the ends of her face —

"Seriously, Aunt Daring?" Dinky said flatly, staring at the expensive glass bottle as it was emptied from the other side. "You woke me up just to get cider?"

Aunt Daring held up a hoof, then with it, flicked off her mailmare cap before expertly sliding apart the buttons on her vest. The sight would have been indecent to Dinky, had she not known that her aunt always wore under her package-brown non-explorer vest, her jungle-green actual-explorer vest. Still, Dinky couldn't help but be impressed how none of the drink got on the adventuring attire signature to the brave adventuress who lived and chugged before her: Daring Do.

"Hey, kid," the aforementioned brave and totally-not-drunk adventuress exhaled, finally putting down the bottle; she smeared the magenta off her mouth. "Don't judge. Momma needs her juice."

"Aunty," corrected Dinky, her forelimbs judgementally knotted.

"Right, right," Daring droned absently as she straightened out her vest, "you know what I mean."

Giving it one final pat, she crossed her hindlegs and snatched up her bottle again. She held it against the lamplight and squinted, shaking it a bit. "So, what are you doing crashing on the couch anyway?" she said conversationally. "I thought this was my cot." Eyeing Dinky, Daring raised the cider to her lips again and was about to drink. But then she noticed the glint, the sad wink of metal on Dinky's horn. "Oh," she said quietly, setting the sloshing glass down again. "She finally found out, did she?"

Dinky bowed her head, either in shame or by way of answer.

Giving a sympathetic hum, Daring leaned back on her forelegs to stare thoughtfully at the ceiling. "She was supposed to be the smart one in the family. The detective." She shook her head. "I guess love makes you blind. Am I right, kid?" she said, leaning forward to give a playful jab to her niece's shoulder.

But Dinky didn't so much as flinch; she mumbled something.

"What was that?" Daring said in a slight slur, angling her ear to Dinky, who repeated herself in a whisper; Daring snorted. "Fair enough, kid. She has enough on her plate."

And then Daring relocated her bare haunches off the table, and onto the carpet. What she didn't relocate was her drink, which she started to eye ruefully. "What am I gonna do, Aunt Daring? You're the one who told me to broaden my…" Lip wobbling, Dinky screwed her eyes up. "'Four-eye-scones'," she finally said, voice shaking with uncertainty. "This is your fault."

Daring looked surprised at the amount of accusation in Dinky's eyes. "Sheesh, don't let me take all the credit, kid. But yeah," she said, facing the window. "I guess it kinda is." Dinky followed Daring's gaze, and sighed with her. "And it's 'horizons', kid," she added, her tone underlining the word in question. "Put it in your journal later, will ya?"

The chirp of unseen crickets doped rhythm into the ambience of the night. Not a thing stirred. Neither had said a word, and yet, both Dinky and Daring blended in with the unspoken cues, as though they understood themselves to be part of some play for which they were both performer and audience. The hollow winds hummed their low hymn; leaves jostled and scraped across the empty streets, glimpsed by the moonlight before slipping shyly away. It was as cloudless as the day before; moonlight started to peek into the living room as an uninvited but not an unwelcome visitor.

It shone upon a patch of carpet, from which Daring averted her gaze. "Pretty night, eh?"

"Yeah… Princess Luna's the best."

Daring's ears perked up. "Who?"

"Princess Luna," Dinky repeated, the end of her cheek puffed out.

"Princess Moona. Got it."

And then Daring gave Dinky one of her trademarked winks.

Dinky spluttered as she tried to restrain her giggles. But who could have blamed her? Dinky found it hard to straighten her face with Daring giving her a look of both adoration, charm, and humor. "You're funny, Aunt Daring," Dinky said, finally giggling; she returned her gaze outside.

Daring followed Dinky's cue this time. "Yeah… I guess I am."

And with that, she fell backwards, her plinth hat shadowing her eyes. Ditzy's gossip was not wrong: Daring did snore like a pig.

Dinky pounced off the sofa.

Tucking her muzzle between the folds of Daring's forelegs, she bit and she pulled. Wrestling it out of her hooves was hard even with magic. Dinky's neck was stretching and tightening with the effort of it. Finally, she jerked her head away; she wheezed, her tired breath a hollow congratulation.

Clink; the empty cider bottle had wandered to the tray of ruined muffins.

Meanwhile, Daring continued to snore happily. If Dinky didn't know any better, she would have said that the adventuress was now wearing a satisfied smirk on her face. Shaking her head at her, Dinky marched silently past. She gripped the neck of the bottle with her teeth, shook off an ant or two, then marched back. Hurling the bottle onto her most recently occupied sofa cushion, Dinky went for the sofa cushion that had been carelessly tossed aside.

The Mystical Bottle of Funny Juice disappeared back into the Crevice of the Doo Living Room Sofa.

The cushion slid over it, with Dinky patting it back into place.

'A close to the story,' she silently recited to herself with a silent hum.

Dinky resettled herself on the cushion like a Diamond Dog that would guard and conceal its sole secret. Shaking her bangs out of her face, she rested her head on the crook of her foreleg. For a while, she just stared lovingly at her aunt Daring. For about eight years of her life, Dinky had not known that she was her aunt; nor had she known about the secrets that her mommy had done so well to protect.

Snores were rumbling more loudly from Daring Do. She lay; her back was flat on the carpet, her hindlegs sprawled shamelessly far and wide for none to see, and still shadowing her eyes was her signature plinth hat.

Dinky smiled, but not because she found the sight funny. Peacefully shutting her eyes, she curled closer into herself. "Good night, Aunt Daring."

"Sweet dreams, Dinky."

Chapter 3: New Beginnings

"So if this precedes… hm… that… then this can only mean… Hm… Hmph. No. No, no. No."

"Hm… Well, actually… you may be onto something."

"No. No, no, no. I'm not. It just can't be it; it simply can't. You see here? Here. This swirl, the curve of it… It's part of the rest. But in context, it… it just doesn't fit."

Lying open on cream-colored grass was an old, otherwise nondescript book. Its cover had been crunched ominously apart to reveal densely packed text, which had been printed on pages that might have been white and pristine once, but were now yellow with age. There were enough of these pages that the book was thicker than a whole hoof. Dust had puffed up to greet Ditzy Doo when she opened this book, like it was one of Dinky's pranks.

Sitting before this book was Ditzy Doo, once more in her explorer's vest. She had not washed from it the sweat of the day before.

Frowning at some pages, Ditzy slid them callously away. Decades, perhaps centuries of forgotten grainy detritus percolated from the caramel-colored blur that followed. Her snout wrinkled, and her eyes stung; worse things had stopped her. She leaned in closer to the text and figures that were fleeing past her scrutiny; they seemed reticent, shy.

Ditzy was regarding them, meanwhile, like she regarded Dinky once after walking in on her in the shower. Dinky had just been taking a shower, like on any other night. Yet, it had been on that particular night when she decided to be embarrassed to be caught naked. "Dinky, we're always naked," Ditzy had droned. "I've seen you naked before."

"Not while I'm wet!" Dinky had replied, utterly mortified; Ditzy had given her a flat stare, blinked lethargically, and walked away without another word. "Wait, you forgot to close the door!"

Ditzy still remembered it like it was yesterday. With that same stare she had given Dinky, she studied the slowing pages. After they stopped, Ditzy made no effort to flip through them again.

Beside her, her colleague poked her snout closer to the tome.

The colleague was equipped with travelling gear not unlike Ditzy's: The vest was light, had plenty of pockets, and it was hoof-woven with rough fibers that would camouflage blend in with most jungles in Southern Equestria. The plinth hat was light and sturdy, and whatever disadvantages it had were well-worth the extra protection. At the moment, one disadvantage was that it pushed the highlighted bangs further into the eyes of Ditzy's colleague, a lavender unicorn mare, whenever she tilted her head down to read; she was still getting used to it. Pushing the hat back up, she squinted at the book; her mouth creased down.

"Yeah… that definitely doesn't look right," Twilight Sparkle said bluntly, drawing back to let Ditzy close the book on the lost cause. "Is there something on your mind, Miss Doo?"

The hilltop that Twilight and Ditzy were sitting on was tall, lonely, and imposing. From there, they could see the surrounding treetops; each one was sprinkled with dim layers of light in the otherwise gloomy realm. The forest was hissing all around. Strands of wind were slithering up the hilltop. The creamy crabgrass beneath Ditzy's haunches was nodding, a blade or two prodding her for her attention. Her golden locks loosened themselves from her sweat and frustration. "Miss Doo? Ditzy?"

A sigh squeezed out from between grey lips. "Dinky's growing up, Twilight."

Twilight hung a foreleg around Ditzy's neck and angled her neck to give her a solicitous look. "Oh? In what way?"

Ditzy absently caressed a bald dirt patch as she answered. "Ever since we came back from Haissan, things just haven't been the same. She's got her Cutie Mark now. She's going to the market on her own, picking up groceries when Daring and I are too busy. Not to mention her magic's getting way better. Not that I'm ungrateful, obviously," she added half-apologetically to Twilight.

Twilight giggled. "Obviously," she said, trying her hoof at tracing her own patch of dirt. "If it helps, Sweetie Belle is a much faster learner. So you're not the only mom who feels like that."

Parting hoof from dirt, Ditzy appraised her work; she could safely say it was the most work she had been able to do since she started researching the mysteries of the Wabe.

To Ditzy Doo, macaroni art was a tired cliche thing. Her opinion of it had not changed, not even after she had become a mother, and certainly not even after her own daughter Dinky Doo had presented her own contribution to the starchy craft to her for her approval. At first, Ditzy had been half-appalled and half-surprised; but then, whatever feelings she had melted into adoration at the sight of Dinky gazing up at her, the innocence and naïveté of youth shining like the sun through the gold of her little muffin's eyes. Therefore, Ditzy had raved her fake amazement about it once she brought Dinky home.

Now, Ditzy could no longer remember the adjectives she had used to describe Dinky's macaroni art. Her rational mind could explain many things. What it could not explain was why the memory of that piece of macaroni art had chosen to stay with her mind for all these years.

It was like a stray dog that would follow a pony wherever they went, no matter how many times the pony would scold it. In time, the pony would warm up to the stray. In time, they would finally do what dog and pony knew was all but done.

It was a time-worn story, one that Ditzy also thought to be cliché.

Before her it now lay: a muffin engraved onto the strange soil, a perfect facsimile of what Dinky had made that day.

"Nice drawing," said Twilight.

"Thanks. It's not mine."

"You know," Twilight said, trailing off.

"What?"

"If Dinky's growing up so fast, then she probably has you to thank for it."

Ditzy laughed. "Really? I feel like I've been a lousy mother lately."

"Psh, nonsense, nonsense! Your work here is important, Dit — Miss Doo."

Twilight cleared her throat while Ditzy snorted, smiling. "Please, Twilight. 'Ditzy' is fine. But lately, she also isn't. Is her work here important? Is her need to cope with the mystery of her father's death really more important than the care and attention her foal needs right now?"

Twilight paused for a moment before answering. "Fair enough," she said, settling on that. "Still, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Ditzy. Your work is important, too. And so are you."

A hopeful smile crossed Ditzy's lips. "Thanks, Twilight. You have no idea how much I needed to hear that." A weight was lifting off Ditzy's shoulders; it wasn't just Twilight's foreleg. And it could have just been Ditzy, but she thought that the wrinkles she had accumulated in the past few moons were uncreasing.

Twilight was sitting prim and proper with her forehooves planted in front of her, her hindlegs wound about them like a river about a stalagmite. She was gazing high above her; it wasn't exactly hard for Ditzy to imagine, in that moment, Twilight as a little filly, staring expectantly for her teacher to start lecturing.

Her curiosity was infectious, which was why Ditzy also turned her eyes to the spectacle.

Looming overhead were little shadows, and littler still they became as they drifted soundlessly towards her face. In anticipation, Ditzy watched; and she couldn't help but be reminded of the stars in her oft-dazed eyes. A feeling ran over her face, one of expectation: that the ethereal things would freckle her face like snow on a quiet wintry night. Feelings mattered little in this strange dimension; she had winced, even though she had felt absolutely nothing.

Tree branches littered the skyspace in clusters; eager and endless, they seemed to be vying for the heavens shining high above. The higher the branches reached, the smaller, blurrier, and less existent they seemed to become. They seemed to be basking in the facsimile of sunlight, the sole source of illumination in this mystical world.

That illumination was peeking past the branches, and at the mares sitting beneath the canopy they formed.

The otherworldly radiance was wasted on Ditzy's mismatched eyes.

"So?" came a voice from faraway. "What do you make of it?"

Ditzy rattled the nausea from her head. "Looks sort of like your library back home, that's for sure," she said to Twilight. "With… some notable differences."

"Of course, of course," said Twilight, nodding. "Although it seems to have changed drastically since the first time I came here. For one, it's certainly more arboreal in shape and form. For instance, the dial part seems to have manifested elsewhere. Perhaps further up…?" She did not wait for Ditzy's answer. "Hm…"

Twilight took a moment to squint more at the carvings of the tree-like structure. It was tree-like in that it both sprouted and gnarled from the base of a tree trunk. It towered over the hilltop and the forest too, a sentinel for it all. It looked wooden, too; but so far neither Ditzy nor Twilight had dared to confirm by way of touch that the Sundial was indeed made of wood. Ditzy's father had died tampering with it; ever since Ditzy and Twilight had discovered it in this new form, they did not risk following in his footsteps.

Ditzy gritted her teeth at it as it stood there, spiraling without aim or purpose into the bright unknown, oblivious to who it had taken from her. Her dizziness and frustration concealed other feelings that arose within her every time she approached the Sundial, feelings that seemed to dissipate before she had a chance to vocalize and therefore validate.

Of those feelings, she had been able to discern two.

One of them was not a personal feeling — it was a feeling that somehow, the Sundial was alive.

An intrepid sun-like ray was peeking at a patch of dirt; from it, a thin cream-colored something was coiling up, as though to rise from a long nap. Ditzy had to blink hard, just to make sure her eye was working properly: The tentacle was bouncing up and down, swaying to and fro, like an excited dancer who finally had her turn in the spotlight. "Still not making sense of it," Ditzy murmured, edging her hoof away from the dancing grass blade.

Twilight huffed. "That's the Wabe for you," she said, stretching her forelimbs.

She and Ditzy stood up.

A bright oval sat at the foot of that uneventful hill.

The oval turned into a square.

The square became a rectangle.

It was something shaped suspiciously like a pegasus.

Then it was spinning by too fast to Ditzy to keep track of it. On every previous visit to the Wabe, Ditzy had always hung back, claiming that she was on the cusp of finally uncovering the meaning of some rune while delegating to Twilight the logistics of getting back to their world. Ditzy lacked the enthusiasm to hang back during this visit.

"Intuitive, right?" Twilight said to Ditzy, who was stroking her chin at the spinning mirror.

"Yeah," replied Ditzy, who hadn't seen this many colors since the last semester of her doctoral studies at Canterlot U, when she bunked with a freshman by the name of Tree Hugger. "I'm pretty sure I could figure it out with a little bit of trial and error."

The Wabe was purported by Twilight and Pinkie to be connected to every point of space, to every point in time that ever happened and / or existed.

A noise was made, interrupting Ditzy's thoughts.

The mirror was now an oval again.

Not until the image in it stopped rippling and the room of a Pinkamena Diane Pie came into focus did Ditzy recognize, upon her second hearing of it, the noise that a noisemaker made.

An indigo hoof pressed against the inscrutable surface, which lit up. At that moment, it became apparent how sharply the colors and saturation of Ponyville clashed with the gloomy darkness of the Wabe.

Twilight leapt through, rainbow halos echoing in her wake.

It wasn't long before she poked her head back through. "Coming?"

"I'll catch up," Ditzy said, still squinting. Holding her hoof up in goodbye, she hoped her smile was convincing enough.

Twilight's face was almost as hard to decipher as the Sundial. "Be safe."

Then she popped back into Pinkie's room. Ditzy watched her approach the stairs, glance at the grey mare at the other side of the mirror, then trot down.

A chorus of partygoers greeted her as she disappeared downstairs: "Twilight!" Then another round of noisemakers hailed her, this time mixed in with party poppers and something that sounded suspiciously like a party cannon.

"Agh, Pinkie!"

"Oopsie, sorry," Pinkie giggled.

What little Ditzy could see of the exchange she slid away.

Now she sat, alone and a dimension away, with nothing else but the echo of a party for company. The smile she had faked for Twilight was now a wistful grimace. Ditzy felt so alone, so away from it all, and in more than just the physical and metaphysical sense.

The mirror before her was a link, a nexus point at which all elements of space-time converged.

So Ditzy worked the mirror.

In the darkness, the forest rustled around her, more restive than usual. The wind seemed to hiss warnings between the trees.

The pictures and visual noise passed over Ditzy's listless eyes.

It was hard for Ditzy to say how she knew to stamp on the mirror when she did. Her lack of surprise was equally hard to explain.

The mirror was showing a scene from some years ago.

Ditzy planted both forehooves on the grass and watched.

The room was large enough for two patients.

A mare was being led into it, and then she was being led out on a wheelchair, her stomach less full and her forelegs heavier. Another mare came in, and came out. From Ditzy's perspective, it took only a few seconds for this cycle of action to run through to completion. But she knew from personal experience that it took more than a few hours, maybe a few days.

It might have looked like Ditzy was just outside the ward, peeping out from the naughty side of the window. Beside the window was a bed, which was being occupied a certain sleeping mare. That mare's belly was no longer swollen. Though disheveled, her golden locks were fuller, more saturated than the present-day Ditzy's locks.

Unbeknownst to Ditzy, she was winding her hair about her hoof.

Soft snoring punctuated the otherwise quiet ward. "Is that what I look like while I sleep?" she muttered.

She gasped: The image was undulating from her words.

She sat, frozen, fearful. Would somepony notice? she thought, before shaking her head; she had been alone in that ward that day.

Sunlight spring spilt in through the window, casting enough glare over Ditzy's face that she could look to her heart's desire. And to her heart's desire she looked. In her younger self's forelegs was a bundle; it squirmed, it whined, as though it could somehow sense Ditzy beyond the looking-glass. Its eagerness, its longing tugged at her, and she was only all-too willing to oblige.

She knew it was wrong; she also knew she did not care.

The little hoof poked out, anxious to get her mother's attention. Soon, she would get it; just for a little while, Ditzy assured herself. So onto the periwinkle hoof she locked her eyes on, desperate to reach out; Ditzy's own was approaching, ready to breach the surface.

Clear ripples billowed from where the grey hoof kissed the mirror.

"I would not do that if I were you."

Gasping, Ditzy wheeled around, her wings flared, her body lowered. "Who's there!?"

He stepped out from the shadows between a pair of trees. His legs were long and a shade or two greyer than Ditzy's. The lines beneath his eyes were like carvings of a weathered stone bust. The bells on his starry blue hat jangled, which was when Ditzy realized whom she was antagonizing.

"Starswirl the Bearded," she breathed, standing up; folding her grey wings, she curtsied. "It's an honor, sir. Twilight told me all about you." Not to mention stuck out like a sore hoof at Nightmare Night by dressing as him.

Starswirl the Bearded passed her by, and Ditzy turned to see him pausing his hoof over the reflection of personal memories she was embarrassed to let anypony see. "This portal," he said, his growl quiet, "is a curse." White swirls fumed from his nostrils as he shifted his gaze to Ditzy behind her. "Everypony has moments in their lives they wish to relive. They remember such moments with excessive fondness. They take the present for granted. They would forsake what little life they have left mourning for that which is lost to them forever." Shaking his head, he turned around and lit his horn, which reflected the same white energy encasing the mirror. "They forget to live, Miss Doo. Time is but a hollow word in this realm. Here, one could waste away before this accursed contraption without end. Best to live in the present, I think."

Sweeping past Ditzy, Starswirl made for the darkness between the trees.

Ditzy waited until he disappeared.

And once again, she was alone.

She sighed.

Another chorus of noisemakers called for Ditzy's attention; Pinkie's room was in view.

Lifting her forehoof, Ditzy stepped through.

She hadn't noticed how muffled and subdued the Wabe was, not until she was out of it. Nor had she noticed how stuffy it was there, until a rush of air swooped upon her from an open window. Hanging onto her hat, Ditzy looked at the day: it was still young and bright. Sunlight bounced violet off the carpet, and teal off the blanket that was tucked neatly onto the bed; it was enough to hurt a pony's eyes.

And Ditzy loved it.

Her skin was tingling as it re-acclimated to the cheery ambience of Ponyville.

The panels beneath her were vibrating with cheers of glee and youth that she had long forgotten. "Wait, did you hear that?" said somepony on the ground floor.

With a renewed smile on her face, Ditzy walked down the stairs.

"Mommy, Mommy!"

Surprise took her, in the form of her little muffin.

"Heh, heh," chuckled Ditzy, love radiating through her body from where Dinky was hugging her. Mother tousled daughter's mane. "Happy birthday, Dinky. Go on, play with your little friends now."

"Okay!"

When Dinky withdrew, she blew streams of starry wind to untangle her mane.

Watching her scamper off, Ditzy continued to hold her smile, which was a mask now.

Faces formed the fabric of the party's livelihood. Over the past eight years, Ditzy had come to learn and love the look of many of them: Berry Punch, a pink earth pony who was standing on her hindlegs chatting and chugging animately with a glass of her-colored punch and a circle of her non-beverage friends, which included the local apple farmer Applejack; the Doctor, who was by no means popular with the foals but was acquainted closely enough with Ditzy to have been invited. Then there were the younger faces whom she had known as fillies: Twilight Sparkle, whose vest and hat were being gushed over by Rarity. Lemonheart, Minuette, and Twinkleshine, three unicorns from Canterlot, were joining in. Lemonheart tugged at the vest, which Twilight gladly explained the materialistic composition of, while Minuette pushed the plinth hat off her head and Twinkleshine patted the hat right onto her bangs again. Twilight thanked the two. "You're welcome," Minuette and Twinkleshine chorussed. Then Twilight resumed explaining the more delicate nuances of camouflage to a dreamy-eyed Lemonheart, who was nodding her head vaguely, going "Uh-huh" in regular cadence. Meanwhile, Minuette and Twinkleshine looked at each other before slamming their red, taut faces onto the floor, hoping that it would muffle their giggling while their hooves would curtain it. Scoffing, Rarity rolled her eyes at the whole affair. It was clear that Dinky had made many friends at school, because many of them had shown up; of them, a white unicorn filly was talking with her right now.

Tables were laid out on the ground level of Sugarcube Corner. Trays of cheesecake, gelato, and so many desserts that would be typical of a confectionery were out for anypony to take. A single bowl of punch sat on the table nearest the center of the ground floor; it was the same table with a dark-goldenrod foreleg leaning on it.

"What?" the mare there was saying, giving an unconcerned glance at her metal wing, which she flexed. "This ol' thing? I got it after a fight with an alicorn."

A chorus of breathy "Awe's" showered the mare, who took another sip of punch from a glass.

"Yep, yep," Daring said, as Ditzy walked over, "true story. You can ask my dork of a sister."

She raised her glass, a signal for the schoolfoals to swivel around and cause Ditzy to freeze midstep.

"Ooh…"

"Aah…"

Ditzy felt like she was on-stage. In the audience stood Daring Do, whose eyes she had shaded by tilting her plinth hat at an expert angle forward; her teeth were flashed in a grin that was way too cocky for anypony's good.

"Wow, so you're Daring Do's sister?"

"That's so cool!"

"And I thought you were just Ponyville's goofy mailmare! Ouch, hey!"

"Did you fight Ahuizotl?"

"Forget that. What about that alicorn you and Daring fought?"

"Scootaloo, you were there!"

"Whoops," chuckled an orange filly, rubbing her now twice-bruised head. "Heh, heh."

A great pink bow sat atop the head of a yellow filly, who was clicking her tongue in disapproval, the shake of her head reminiscent of a mother who knew better. Then she peeked an eye open; she and her friend Scootaloo spluttered into a giggling fit — a fit that ended in a hiccup as their attention was seized, their amazement causing their mouths to fall open.

Nor were they the only ones, for standing proudly on the table Daring had up until a few seconds ago occupied was everypony's favorite blue pegasus mare. "Alright, kids. Who wants to hear the story of how I saved a filly from thousands of miles in the air?"

"Ooh, ooh! Ow, stop doing that, Applebloom!"

"You were there for that, too."

"Yeah, but…"

"Didn't you, like, almost crash into town square?" asked a pink filly, raising her hoof. "Hey, my tiara! Give it back!!!"

"Whoops," said Scootaloo, dimple-faced.

Impatiently snatching her royal headgear back, the pink filly readjusted it onto her head, where it rightfully belonged. Then she blew a quick raspberry at Scootaloo, who playfully returned the gesture a second later.

Rainbow Dash cleared her throat.

"Ooh, ooh," whinnied a grey-blue colt, jumping up and down, "tell us about the time you fought that alicorn from that sandy place!"

"Yeah, well," said Dash, brushing her chest unconcernedly and inspecting her hoof afterwards. "That's a really long story, if you really wanna hear it."

The sparkles in Scootaloo's eyes only grew. "DO I!?"

Applebloom buried her face in her hooves.

"…just until the end of the party," Daring was whispering by the punch table; downing the rest of her glass, she wiped her mouth, and exhaled a refreshed breath before setting the emptied glass down. "Look, what are you getting so worked-up over? I made her ride on my back all day."

"So what were you doing?" Ditzy demanded, jabbing her sister in the vest.

"Delivery duty, obviously," she droned, rolling her eyes until they were locked in a withering gaze with her sister. "For both of us," she added, slapping the grey hoof aside and jabbing her sister in the vest. "Plus the load you missed yesterday. Your boss is scary, Ditz. Also, he's got bad taste in literature, I tell ya."

"Sorry," Ditzy forced out of her breath, eyes averted.

"Yeah, sure," Daring said, blowing a lock of her black-grey mane up and also looking away, except she was cooler and more aloof at it.

"…was a cyclone, see. It was conjured by none other than the evil Alicorn of the Wind, Alula! Hey, he-eey," moaned Dash, wings drooping. "I was just getting to the best part!"

Even Scootaloo had turned away to pay her attention to something other than Rainbow Dash.

Shrugging, Rainbow Dash took the metaphorical leaf out of Scootaloo's book; she leaned forward and mounted her chin on her hoof.

All the other party-goers went respectfully silent.

Three confetti squares were rustling like leaves on the bakery floor before they slid into place, connecting end to end like the cars of a train. The train ran its course between a yellow and orange paper square, which wobbled, as though sensing a more fun party; they raced after it. One after the other, they connected to the tail. Other squares jostled in-place; then they were drawn to the sides of the magically-guided construct. Pairs of squares magnetically fitted themselves to the sides of an assimilated confetti square and formed a triangular steeple over it.

Once it was about as long as Discord, the confetti tent-train took to the air, eliciting amazed breaths. Bathed in a green aura, the triangular head of the train twisted, the motion cascading down the rest of the segments that made up its body; the motion sounded like a series of paper dominoes falling, one after another.

It soared; it dove; it undulated like a serpent over the heads of its small breathtaken admirers.

Daring and Ditzy glanced at each other, thinking the same thing. In their younger days, they had gone on a few expeditions to the far reaches of the world. One expedition had taken them to the Dragon Lands. It was on the eastern reaches where they had met a friendly dragon, which was not unlike the one that was at the moment spinning above them like a rainbow halo.

After Ditzy waved, the paper serpent careened away. Watching it were a few colts who looked like they were in half a mind to reach out for it, even though it was high out of reach. The energy radiating from it became greener as it wound close to Dinky, who stood atop a table, her eyes shut in concentration. She seemed to be willing it to weave through an imaginary point just in front of her horn.

Through that needle-hole the paper serpent was threaded. It went around in a wide loop and circled back, drawn to the part of its body stuck in the needle-hole. Once it pierced that part, the scraping of paper became louder, more frantic as it looped back, its destination the same. Over and under, and through the point it wound. The radius of its loops was shortening.

Before long, a giant orb of confetti was gyrating in front of Dinky.

Her audience was getting antsy: Snips and Snails were bouncing up and down, respectively; Scootaloo and Dash were leaning closer, mesmerized; Twilight was squinting her eyes, not angrily, but likely to scrutinize the leylines of the wind magic of an alicorn god as implemented by a unicorn filly.

The orb was getting smaller and smaller, the sound of its scrapes louder and louder. The tightly packed bundle of wind, paper, and color was collapsing in on itself.

And then it did — sort of.

Instead of imploding, it exploded into a maelstrom that blitzed throughout the entire room.

Ditzy opened her eyes to see Dinky, panting and sweating.

The fillies and colts for whom she performed did the same.

They all stared at her; she was looking to them for approval. The silence was thickening between audience and performer.

Ditzy held her breath in suspense; she was worried.

Like the ball of wind for which the silence had been kept, cheers exploded. The floor was trembling with twenty, maybe thirty pairs of stomping forehooves.

"Yay!"

"That was so cool!"

"Did you see that? It soared right over me!"

"Nuh-uh, no, it didn't. It soared over me!"

"They don't teach magic like that at Princess Celestia's School of Magic."

"You don't go there!"

"Actually," Twilight said, putting her two cents in, "they don't. You see, Dinky's magic is unlike yours or mine…"

"Where'd you learn to do that, Dinky?"

"Oh," said Dinky, red-faced, tired, but happy, "it just came to me."

She jumped, astonished, as did the foal who had asked her, and his friends too, for all the way in the back, Daring Do was wringing her hoof up in the air, going, "Woo! Way to go, kid!"

Blushing, Dinky kicked her leg bashfully.

"Stop it," Ditzy said, smiling, "you're embarrassing Dinky."

But not only did Daring not stop it, but she was also clicking her tongue while pointing Dinky's way, embarrassing her more. Catching Dinky's eye, Ditzy gave a motherly wave, which Dinky returned, but not before something pink erupted her a couple of feet above her comfort level. Carrying Dinky Doo in both her forelegs and standing erect below her was a certain somepony who screamed, "LET'S GIVE IT UP FOR THE BIRTHDAY GIRL!"

Without preamble, Pinkie Pie threw Dinky into the crowd.

Airborne, Dinky yelped uncertainly.

Even once she was caught by crowds of friends and families, the alarm on her face had not gone away — not immediately. But as she was billowed across the room by adoring hooves, an itch appeared on her cheek; it turned into a smile. It wasn't long before she was giggling in earnest.

Ditzy and Daring were watching, both equipped with drinks.

They sipped them in tandem.

"I think you've been a bad influence on her," Ditzy muttered to Daring.

There was no hint of reproach in her tone.

The wave of crowds tossed Dinky up and up into the air.

Dinky was spreading her forelegs high above her to relish in the moment, her laughter giddy as she felt adored by so many: the Cutie Mark Crusaders, their sisters, Berry Punch, Bon-Bon, Cheerilee, and others too.

Something like pride was plastered onto Daring's face, watching her niece be celebrated by crowds of adoring ponies.

Daring smirked at Ditzy. "Yeah… I know," Daring said without a trace of shame. Then she drained the rest of her glass; she shook and examined it. "Say, this stuff ain't half-bad. I'm gonna go mingle. Try not to be too sad when I come back, eh?"

Giving Ditzy a playful slap of the wing, Daring trotted off to say hi to Berry Punch; Berry Punch greeted Daring like she was an old friend whom she had not seen since college.

A small metal ring had rolled into the curl of Ditzy's wings, and with a sleight of wing she tucked it away.

"Aw…" came a chorus of disappointed ponies.

Angling her head in their direction, Ditzy wondered what the fuss was about.

Engulfed within a violet cloud of magic was an alarmed Dinky Doo. "Now, now, everypony. That was too close to the ceiling," Twilight said to the grumbling crowd. "Now, I'll supervise while everypony keep having fun. This way, we can be safe and enjoy yourselves. See, Miss Doo? Your daughter is in capable hooves."

Miss Doo gave Miss Sparkle a kind nod without telling her that everypony behind the latter was stalking off, muttering mutinously as they returned to their usual circles. Even Cheerilee was wearing an expression that suggested that her buzz had been killed.

"Aww, Twilight," Pinkie moaned. "Look! You made everypony go away!"

"It's their own fault; somepony could have gotten hurt if I hadn't stepped in in time."

"But what fun is there without a little bit of excitement?"

Twilight sighed.

While she and Pinkie launched into an argument about how the party should have been run, Ditzy found the cashier counter.

Nopony was attending it per se. But a pair of plump blue forelegs were crossed over where orders were usually taken. With kind but tired eyes, the mare looked in on the party-goers from behind the counter; she did not say a word even after Ditzy appeared on the other side of it. Turning around, Ditzy put an elbow on her side of the counter and said over her shoulder, "They grow up so fast, don't they, Mrs. Cake?"

"I know what you mean," Mrs. Cake said, nodding. "Oh?"

Something had poked out of her pale rosy mane: a cream-colored foal, staring at the shadow cast into the mother's adoring eyes.

Not long ago, that cream-colored foal and their twin had been the impetus for an international rescue mission that revealed Doo family secrets and uncovered a plot to destroy Equestria.

If Ditzy had to be frank, she couldn't remember which twin was the pegasus and which was the unicorn.

The foal plopped out of the swirly berry mane, wings abuzz, and landed into the Mrs. Cake's forelegs. The foal made some sounds and tried to reach for Mrs. Cake's nose. Mrs. Cake made a funny face and said close to her foal, "So there you are, my little Pound Cake."

Which meant, Ditzy mentally noted, that the unicorn twin, the one with the pumpkin-colored hair, was Pumpkin Cake, who was at the moment using magic to yank on Pinkie's hair. "Ow. Ow. Ow," Pinkie went robotically. "Quit it!" she whined playfully. Pumpkin made a half-hearted imitation of her whine: 'Quit it!' But as not all her teeth were in yet, she couldn't quite form the words.

Meanwhile, Ditzy noticed Pound Cake trying to reach for her.

"Oh? Oh?" Mrs. Cake said, looking down at Pound Cake, then up at Ditzy, "I think somepony wants to say hi~."

Smiling tiredly, Ditzy extended a hoof to meet that of Pound.

They touched.

Giggling, Pound clapping his hooves excitedly, as though to recreate the moment.

Seconds passed before he stopped giggling foalishly and started to make weird shapes with his mouth. Ditzy knew from firsthoof experience what it was time for.

After Mrs. Cake patted his back enough times, a tiny burp burst out of Pound's mouth.

He began sucking on his little hoof.

Mrs. Cake plucked it out of his mouth, which was still stuck in an O-shape. "That's enough out of you, little mister," she said in a mock-firm voice, complete with her free hoof being waved in mock-admonition at him. Spotting it, Pound tried to wrap his mouth over it, only to end up sucking a baby bottle instead. Mrs. Cake's face flushed with motherly affection, watching her little pony.

Ditzy sighed wistfully. "Wish they could stay like that forever," she said, eyeing the foal with sad and shameless envy.

Milk spilt to the sides of Pound's cheeks; Mrs. Cake removed the bottle. Then her cradle of her forelegs was being prised open. "But they can't," she crooned. "Sooner or later, we gotta let them go."

And her forelegs finally loosened.

Pound was bobbing up and down, trying to buoy himself to a steady hover.

The mothers moaned sadly, watching him fly, his flight shaky but determined, over to Pumpkin and Pinkie.

Both Cake twins were now sitting before Pinkie, gazing curiously at her. Drool oozed out of the side of Pumpkin's open mouth. "Two for one, eh?" Pinkie said with a lopsided smirk. "Why not!"

And she raised her forelegs high above her, parted them, and swooped them in a hug. "Huh?"

They weren't in her forelegs; instead, they were watching her from within the safety of a violet cloud of levitation magic. Giving her a reproachful glare was Twilight. "Pinkie! Don't scare them like that!"

"Aww, but they know that game; I was just gonna hug them. Honest! Also," she added, "you didn't do it right; you forgot to say you had a message from somebody. Oh, and you were supposed to pull out an envelope or something. I figured you all of ponies should have an envelope on you all the time, seeing as, you know, you always get mail from Princess Celestia."

"First of all, beside the point, Pinkie," Twilight snapped. "Second of all, all the mail Princess Celestia sends me comes through Spike; it doesn't come in envelopes."

"Oh, that's okay. You can just buy 'em, a bit for five at the local post office. Look! I see two ponies who are working there now. Oh, wait; no. They're not working there, right now. They're just partying and talking here, now, and not working over there or in here… now. Right? … Anyway, maybe you don't wanna bother them while they're not working at work but at a party not wanting to do or think about work but just partying like they want to do, because what else do you do when you come to a party, am I right?" Pinkie said, nudging Twilight with an elbow with a wink.

Twilight looked grumpy. "Pinkie, I'm not spending money for envelopes."

"Aw, come on, Twi. They gotta eat, too."

"Not what I meant."

"Oh? Then what did you mean?" Pinkie asked curiously, hopping in place as she waited for an answer.

Twilight grunted behind scrunched lips.

"You know," said Mrs. Cake, once Twilight, through some miracle, relieved Pinkie of her foalsitting duties ('Aww', Pinkie had said), "I really can't thank you enough for rescuing my precious baby boy and girl. If it wasn't for you — "

Ditzy started. "Hey, hey, hey. Hey," she said, giving up since Mrs. Cake was already smearing the tears onto her apron. "Hey. Come on. It really wasn't a big deal."

The counter rumbled, causing the mothers to flinch and look up.

Standing proudly on the part of the tabletop not occupied by their forelegs was none other than Daring Do. The strike of her pose, the fire in her eyes, and that unquenchable thirst for adventure — it was criminally incomplete without a special effects and fanfare to backdrop her.

"C'mon, Ditzy," said Daring, looking down on Ditzy, this time in a purely literal sense, "you know it was a big deal. In fact," she added, tossing her bangs at Mrs. Cake, "you can read all about it in a few moons in…!"

And then she leapt, backflipping over Mrs. Cake's head. Suddenly pulled close to Daring, Mrs. Cake watched, confused and flustered, as Daring spread her hoof in a dramatic arc above her, as though to show the simple old baker the stars, when in truth all both of them could see were ceiling tiles. "Daring Do and the Revenge of — brr… Brr!?"

A hoof had gotten stuck in her mouth before she could say more. Eyes flickering around, Daring noticed the wing binding her to the side of Ditzy's torso, then the foals laughing as Ditzy carried Daring to the doorway. Daring drooped her eyelids, both annoyed and impressed that her sister was able to ponynap her on a single wing.

"Well," Ditzy said loudly, waving to Mrs. Cake while using a cheery sing-song voice. "It's been nice catching up with you, Mrs. Cake! I'll send a missive for the strawberry cupcake recipe, in case you forget!"

Mrs. Cake was waving back. "Only if you send me your recipe for those strawberry muffins that are all the rage with the foals!" she called back, sing-song.

In truth, Ditzy had been meaning to ask her about it.

"Hey!" In truth, she had also meant to keep her sister's bragging mouth properly gagged. Onlookers were turning their way. "I was just about to tell — "

" — Dinky that it's getting late, and that her bedtime's coming up soon?" Ditzy laughed loudly, passing her little muffin and her little friends on the way to the door. "You heard your aunt, Dinky! It's time to go home!"

Whipping her head about, Dinky galloped to catch up.

As she approached the exit, she waved back at her friends. "See everypony tomorrow!"

"Later!" Scootaloo said with a salute.

"See ya tomorrow, Dinky!"

"Take care!" Sweetie Belle said.

Giving them one final wave, Dinky turned away and leapt out into the night-time streets.

The tumult of the party was getting fainter behind the Doo family.

Ponies were closing up shop for the day. In some houses, lights were popping up; the sound of running water and boiling pots were heralding supper. The last rays of sunlight were streaked across the sky, but were fading behind curtains of darkness and violet, like fresh scars that were beginning to heal.

As the night encroached, and the Doo family walked on, it was getting harder and harder to see safely ahead.

After fifty or so paces of suppressing her shivers, Ditzy gave in. "Put this on, muffin," she said, stripping her outer vest, and proffering it. "Get on Mommy's back and hang on tight."

Stripping her own vest, Daring draped it over Dinky, who stuck her forelegs through the second set of sleeves. "I'll lead the way," said Daring once Dinky was clutching onto Ditzy's neck.

Then the Sisters Doo were off.

As much as Ditzy tried to imagine it, no squeaking or any amount of metallic noise came from any of Daring's wing-flaps. In fact, if Ditzy didn't know any better, she could have sworn that Daring had gotten her wing dyed black, like Ditzy had done during her idiotic teenage years.

Rooftops were drifting by fast below her.

Holding Ditzy's plinth hat tight, Dinky pointed. "Look, Mommy. It's Zecora again!"

"It's not nice to point, Dinky," Ditzy said without looking.

A few more minutes of flying took the family to an array of multi-family townhouses. A streetlamp was posted between each complex. The Doo family was surprisingly well-off, considering that for about eight years of her life, Ditzy had had to subsist on a mailmare's income. Still, it was enough to keep her and Dinky fed. Most of her neighbors were families who fared hardly better than she did. Dining rooms were lit, and most of them were beside windows that showed humble scenes of chatter as late dinners were had. Each complex had an elevated porch; Daring was already flying over to Ditzy's.

Daring was unlocking the door when Ditzy flew Dinky over to it. Tucking the key away, Daring held the door open, sinking into a low bow. "After you, Your Majesty," she said unctuously as Dinky bounded past her with a swift 'Thank you!' "Oh, and you too, Ditz."

Ditz flashed her a playful tongue, then stepped in.

The first thing she noticed was the whooping and bumbling taking place upstairs. On any other day, Ditzy would have told Dinky to keep it down 'for the neighbors'. The living room was as dark as the night behind her. So putting Dinky from mind for now, she scrambled for the light switch. Unfortunately, it was on her bad side. Fortunately, eight years of living here had installed into her muscle memory the general location of where it was.

The lights came on.

Ditzy stepped inside.

Behind her, the front door swung into place; Ditzy could already hear Daring flying her way over to the couch.

Daring was now lying on it, head cradled in her forelegs. "Yo, Ditz. What's up?" she asked, since Ditzy's jaw was open; she glanced at the coffee table, and did a double-take. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now, for all we know, some great, understandably out-of-shape bear could have marched right in here, and — "

Ignoring Daring, Ditzy made for the coffee table.

There, two gleaming envelopes lay, one addressed to Ditzy and one to Daring, who breathed her relief.

"We got mail?" Daring said, getting up; hers disappeared under the swoop of a wing.

"One for each of us," Ditzy said, holding hers up in her own wing.

The envelopes were dark blue, lined with ice-blue tape; the color scheme was just like Alula's.

Ditzy couldn't stop her heart from pounding. It was getting harder to draw breath by the second. Her living room kept popping in and out of focus; the strobed lighting was making it no easier. Though she had to lie down, every part of her was paralyzed with fear.

Her wing slipped, and in it were two envelopes. "All of us."

This couldn't be happening. Panting, Ditzy tried to stave off what was all but stated to her, saying to herself that this wasn't happening, as though that would change the reality of her situation.

"It just can't be happening,," Ditzy wheezed, lying on the couch. "Not again…"

Her eyes flicked up: Dinky was still working off the energy in her room. Soon, 'the neighbors' would have something to say about that. The thought of her little muffin brought her back to her senses — but soon after made her realize the full weight of the situation, now that her little muffin was involved again.

What did this mean? Why was this happening now?

The room was spinning — why was it spinning?

Old wounds were opening up in response, as fresh in her head as they were almost a decade ago.

"What does yours say, Daring?" Ditzy asked, the words tumbling from her lips.

Daring had the parchment spread to its full length by the tug of both her wings.

"'To Miss Daring Doo. We of the Haissan Royal Palace cordially invite you to the funeral of Sultan Al-Qafzah al-Ula ('Alula', as He was known personally to you). All invitees are required to attend. We shall be expecting you at noon at the Royal Palace on the longest day of the year. We shall not tolerate your absence.'"

Chapter 4: Super Special Cutie Maneuver Alpha Double Sigma Delta Beta!

Golden Harvest was packing up for the day.

The carrot trade was not as lucrative as the other wares Ponyville had to offer. The cream-colored mare did not mind it too much. She contented herself with being just one band of the rainbow that was her hometown. One upside of being such a humble business, she assured herself, was that packing her cart for the day wasn't too much of a hassle.

The stand-part of her wooden cart had already been folded into itself. Humming a distant tune to herself, Golden Harvest found a lever. Each pull on it inclined the cart upward with a click. Bending low and humming absently, Golden Harvest found the forewheel she was looking for. Right now, it was on its side, parallel to the ground; it was a simple but effective design choice for the cart to stay in-place when being used as a stand. But now, it was done being a stand; as it was coming time for the sun to set, it was coming time for it to be a cart, ready to roll after another day of its proud owner convincing buyers of the value of carrots: they were a staple part of broths, salads, and many other dishes that she herself used the underappreciated root for. Snapping the forewheel ninety degrees from the lazy position it had been in all day, she edged around the cart.

"Oh?"

One of many knots held the cart together; the one Golden Harvest was observing had come loose. So she sighed and bent down perfunctorily. She fumbled, hoof and teeth; it had always been the trickiest to tie properly. The cart was equipped with a pair of thin metal rods, essential for transit. Unlatching the right, she guided it to bite a spoke of the forewheel.

After doing the same for the left, Golden Harvest hovered her hooves over her work.

The wind slapped the wooden cart; though the cart, her life's joy, jostled in-place, it did not roll away.

Letting her hooves fall, Golden Harvest breathed a breath of relief, the sort of breath that is synonymous with a job well done.

Strictly speaking, business had been relatively slow for her during this Summer Sun Celebration, so there wasn't that much work to be done in the way of selling. Of course, that only meant that aside from the surplus she'd give to charity and salvage for some of her more creative recipes, the work she had done harvesting her carrots was for nothing. It was a sad reality for farmers who specialized in the less popular crops of Ponyville, nay all of Equestria.

A thump came seemingly from nowhere.

From the side of the cart protruded a knob, which Golden Harvest opened to reveal a short drawer. Inside it was a rope-bound stack of papers, recipes for which anypony could use carrots and the wares of her fellow vegetable vendors. She had collaborated with them before; she had exchanged recipes, ideas, and samples of her flavors, and they had reciprocated in turn. She refused to be patronized; so if say, one of the Apple family, said, "Boy, howdy. Dun' these apple juices liven up them there, erm, bitterness of that there carrot of yers," Golden Harvest would kindly and honestly disagree, then walk on. She conceded that her humble root did not complement all of Ponyville's flavors. But it would be a disservice to carrots to pretend otherwise.

And she would simply move to Tartarus before she accepted the patronage of a customer who only faked interest and gave her any business out of pity.

Shutting the drawer and locking it, Golden Harvest spat the key upwards and angled her mane so that the key would land in it on just the right spot.

For many ponies, it was the last day for gathering their produce-related provisions for the upcoming festival — she had been told by a passing Mrs. Cake that it was sure to be a doozy.

For Golden Harvest, it was a slow but successful business day. The bits jingling inside her cart's built-in coffer, whose lock she had already double-checked, were proof of that.

The next sigh she sighed was one of bliss.

She looked around.

Her fellow vegetable vendors had already packed up and gone home for the day.

Wherever Golden Harvest looked — and she had to visor her eyes to look, because the sun was just beaming too happily at her — the streets were empty. Wind streamed across the contentment on her face. Sweat droplets had been glistening on her fur; she had not known they were there until the streams of air reminded her that they were cool and refreshing against the bare of her skin. Few were ever lucky enough to truly appreciate the peace, the quietude of moments like these. She breathed it in through her nostrils, and for years to come she would remember it with nothing but fondness. In hardship it would bring her solace; on slow business days she would inevitably have, it would give her something nice to daydream about; when she eventually had kids, it would give her something to bore them to tears with. It was insignificant, ordinary, yet indescribably good. Most importantly, it was hers. Nothing could possibly ruin it. "GANGWAYCOMINGTHROUGHSORRYMISS!!!"

She blinked and missed it: a blur of orange whose detail she could spare no time to discern, because it had unsettled the knot she had spent, like, ten minutes finally getting right. Eyes widening, she clinched it beneath her hooves; she breathed.

Another whoosh came, unsettling the spoke on her well-worked forewheel. "Awful sorry 'bout her!"

Golden Harvest pouted at the youngest of the Apples.

Next, two unicorn fillies dashed around the cart. "Sorry about the cart!" they said over their shoulders.

A series of crashes followed this apology.

Golden Harvest winced, afraid to open her eyes.

But just as the sun must rise each morning, so too must her eyes open; a pony couldn't drive her life's joy blind, after all. Courage — that was what it took. What she was looking at had to be some joke, a mirage of the heat, she kept telling herself.

To her knees she dropped, over the mess her shaking hooves were hovered. In just a few seconds, her precious cart had been mutilated into a travesty that was well beyond her desire and ability to describe. Her well-tested recipes, products of years of taste-testing: spirited away by the wind before she could even say goodbye. Every sad glint of her hard-earned bits: rolling away where they could find their way into a colt who thought it was his lucky day, oblivious to the misfortune that had made it so. Worst of all, her carrots: like runaways who made their mothers wonder what they had done to upset them.

The only silver lining that Golden Harvest could count, not that it was of any comfort to her whatsoever in light of the tragedy for which she would mourn without end, was that the alleyway the fillies scampered off to was one she never took her cart through. Why? That was for the fillies to find out, she thought bitterly; but she knew, deep down, that no amount of passive spite she dished out would ever return her beloved to her.

A yellow hoof splashed into a puddle that was strangely colored and scented. "Yuck," Applebloom retched, trying to shake it off. "Scootaloo, what the hay? This alley ain't no place for nopony, least of all young fillies like us! I thought you said you knew where you were goin'!"

Scootaloo dashed around a trash can. "I do," she said, once Applebloom did the same and was in sight again. "This is a shortcut that no one ever takes to Carousel Boutique."

"Gee," Applebloom droned, staring her accusation at the muck still clinging to her hoof, "I wonder why."

Scootaloo pouted. She was too busy trying to come up with a retort to notice another puddle of ick she was coming up on; she splashed right into it. "Aw, it won't come off!" she moaned; Applebloom snickered evilly. "The one time I leave my scooter at home."

"Never mind that," Sweetie Belle said, causing both Applebloom and Scootaloo to look behind them, "where are we going? Which way?"

She was staring at a point past her fellow Crusaders, who realized she had meant the fork in the road.

"Um, left!" said Scootaloo, rounding the corner accordingly.

Applebloom followed soon after.

Nodding at each other, so did Sweetie and Dinky.

Around the bend awaited an overfull garbage bag; it sat right in the middle of this part of the alleyway. Dinky and Sweetie slammed their bodies to the alley walls to avoid it, much less gracefully than they had with poor Golden Harvest's cart. But Dinky didn't have time to feel guilty; she had to keep her senses focussed on the dangers of taking directions from Scootaloo.

Though Dinky had sidestepped the garbage bag, more obstacles lay in wait for her and Sweetie. Both of them leapt over a nasty pool that extended from one side-wall to the other. Once they did, Dinky had to lag back and veer towards Sweetie's side, since there was a garbage bag on Dinky's side that was too fat and tall to clear. Next, there were garbage cans hugging both walls; a small crevice between them was the only way through. Nodding to Dinky, Sweetie lagged back and let Dinky dash through; and as she did, the garbage cans just barely grazed her shoulders. Sweetie caught up to Dinky soon after. Both noticed the garbage can turned on its side. The unicorns leapt, had their hooves kiss the garbage can, and leapt again. Airborne, Dinky saw Scootaloo in the lead, with Applebloom racing after her.

The way ahead was mostly clear of obstacles, except for an rotting old something blocking the only end of the alleyway.

Scootaloo swore. "Cart, cart!" she said to Applebloom, looking to her for direction.

And without hesitation, Applebloom gave it.

"Super Special Cutie Maneuver Alpha Double Sigma Delta Beta. GO!"

Lowering her head, Scootaloo slowed down as behind her crashed water, tides of sea and salt that sloped up the sidewalls as though to attempt to climb it before giving up, slamming together in a crest before Sweetie, who had called it to her aid, before setting their sights for the sliding hooves of Applebloom, who turned around to match the hooves of Scootaloo in a well-practiced buck.

Soaring, Scootaloo spread her forelegs up, her wings buzzing as she screamed her joy for all of Ponyville to hear. "WOO! I'M FLYING, I'M FLYING! WOO!"

Meanwhile, Applebloom was sliding, sliding and turning, and ducking on the slide of seawater. Then, seeing the bottom of the cart too low for her to slip under, she collapsed herself onto the ground. All her limbs were spread apart from her body, and each of her hooves was spraying foam and salt into the hot air; her belly was coasting along the water. Applebloom aimed her head at the gap beneath the cart, like a seamstress would a needle through a thread.

The closer she got to her target, the smaller it looked; Dinky was holding her breath in suspense.

The big pink bow slicked back for a split-second before disappearing beyond the cart.

This lit Sweetie's face up with courage; after Dinky nodded, Sweetie slid on.

Dinky could hear the summoned seawater evaporating behind her; Sweetie disappeared through the gap, and then so did Dinky.

Now that she was on the other side, with Applebloom and Sweetie Belle beside her, Dinky took the cue to shoot herself airborne with a huff of her breath.

Except the breath she huffed shot her nowhere; it was ordinary, like the sort of breath a pony would blow to shoo a fly, or the sort a teenaged colt would blow on his overlong bangs. Even though she knew it was no use, Dinky blew again and again; she shot a look of panic at Applebloom, who could only share rather than assuage it. The look was shared also by Sweetie Belle.

"Incoming!"

Screeching their hooves to a halt, the trio wheeled around. What they saw in the sky made their pupils shrink to pinpricks, as the thing they saw grew ever larger, ever louder too, moreso as Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Dinky Doo came to echo Scootaloo's screaming.

Carousel Promenade was a far cry from the inner sectors of Ponyville. Though it was not nearly as developed, it was a great deal more sophisticated. The roads here intersected and intertwined; they were made of a very precise mix of sand and dirt, rather than the drab cobblestone that was so commonplace in the streets. In fact, there was hardly anything 'common' about the place at all! Businesses were set up in tents here, occupying premises with the birds that nested in the trees and the rabbits that occasionally poked their heads out of their eponymous holes. The premises were au naturel, as the dominating business-mare here preferred it. Her headquarters for business was the only one not set up in silly circus-like tent, as she had called it upon a cursory scan of the promenade; she had wanted her business to be distinguished from all the rest, a true rarity.

Perched around the rim of a tent as it happened were a family of birds; they were watching with vague interest. They flapped their wings offendedly before they took off.

Dinky was lying with the Crusaders atop light sandy gravel. Feeling like she had chipped a tooth, she experimentally sucked a breath, only to find that the inside of her mouth tasted like weird salt. Groaning, hers included, vibrated her eardrums painfully. She tapped on her horn: her hoof struck the culprit of this wipeout, the metal cap fixed tightly over her horn.

It took a while for her to notice the sting of her belly and the heated grains beneath it.

It took less time for her to notice the shadow that loomed over her.

An accented voice spoke. "Oh, my. Are you girls alright?" Before any of the fillies lying on the ground could answer, the owner of the voice, a mare, called for somepony who was far behind her. "Applejack? Darling? I'm afraid the girls have had a bit of an incident."

"On it!" Applejack called back; a large cloth was blown away by the wind, causing the accented mare to gasp, scandalized.

The ground was thumping in rhythm with Applejack's gallop.

Dinky was bit up by the scruff of her neck and thrown up. Then she landed on a pony who smelt like a weird mix of hay, apples, and perfume; Dinky's forelegs and hindlegs were draped over Applejack's back. Another filly landed on top of Dinky, puffing her breath out. Without delay, Applejack trotted off.

The groaning on top of Dinky was familiar. "A-applebloom…?"

Applebloom sounded too beat to answer. "Now, hush yer breath, little one," Applejack said. "Let's hurry and git you two inside."

Bouncing up and down too quickly for her comfort, Dinky personally felt like hurrying was only making it worse.

A series of chimes jangled from above. Following the trio inside was a hot summer's sigh, which did not last long inside; in seconds, it expired in the quiet air conditioning.

Applejack threw the fillies onto a random surface, which happened to be really soft and velvety; Dinky couldn't help but snuggle with it. Guiltily, she compared the comfort it offered to that of the sofa her mom was able to afford on her salary.

The door opened again. "Set the girls down over there, darling. I've got just the thing to put them right again. Be back in a spell."

The accented mare trotted daintily away on the carpet.

Meanwhile, Applejack hoisted Applebloom and Dinky atop her back again.

Dinky was deposited onto a chair, and so was Applebloom. Were Dinky in less pain, she would have laughed at the funny noise the chair made when she shifted her rump on it.

She barely heard the accented mare come back. "Took ya long enough, Rarity," Applejack said.

"So sorry," the accented mare, Rarity, replied. "It's not often I must dust off my first-aid kit." Then it was to Dinky she spoke. "Now, hold still. Your wounds are the worst yet, but they are still but a trivial affair, one that I sincerely doubt cannot be settled by the tender application of a few of Nurse Redheart's personally recommended home-care remedies."

And with that came a wet dab on the scorched underbelly of Dinky Doo, who sucked between her teeth. That action, coupled with the coolness of the air finally made her ears pop. "So sorry, darling," Rarity said, now loudly and clearly against her eardrums. "I promise that you need bear with me for only a few minutes longer."

And as she worked, spreading cool minty cream over Dinky's underbelly, she unconsciously muttered narrations of what she was doing at the moment, and what she was doing next. For example, she said, under her breath, things like, "A few dabs of ointment there (that should stem the bleeding for a spell)," and, "Perhaps a numbing agent here is in order," after which she rustled some out of her kit.

Though Dinky was neither a paying customer nor an impatient pony (not recently, anyway), the pace at which Rarity worked sure suggested she was both. And yet, 'a few minutes' still felt like a few hours. During those 'few minutes', Dinky's hooves were dunked in a cream, and it wasn't like any her mom made at home. For one, it made her snout wrinkle. Thankfully, she was not being forced to eat it; instead, it was being jabbed and rubbed aggressively over her forelegs. She tried to not let her shudders show.

A spray bottle assaulted her eyes the moment she opened them; Dinky yelped. "Oh? Sorry about that," Rarity said. "That's not the last of it, I'm afraid."

Following the apology were a couple more merciless sprays. Each one was abundant with a thousand tangy specks of pollen, which attacked her face like a horde of bees. The distinct aftertaste of lemon tickled her nostrils. As much as she tried to hold still, Dinky could not help but squirm, desperate to get away.

At one point, she just went whole hog and started into a dash.

"Now settle down there, lassie," said Applejack, seizing her by the scruff of the neck. Dinky was set back on her seat again, her foreleg pinned to the hoofrest. "Now this is fer yer own good."

After this was over, Dinky would learn to have a lot more sympathy for Applebloom whenever the latter complained about having a sister who was too rough with her.

"There, all finished," said Rarity, wasting no time clopping away. "Now time for my next patient."

Victim morelike, thought Dinky, pitying whoever it was going to be.

"Ow, ow, ow. Sis, stop! That hurts!"

"Hush now, Sweetie Belle, darling," Rarity droned kindly, busying herself over Sweetie's repeated instances of 'Ow'. "Be a good foal like Dinky, and be — " she grunted " — still. Come now, Sweetie," she said a little more forcefully and sing-song; again, she grunted. "It will get infected if I don't do this — properly. Whew."

The familiar slap of cream came on another of the Crusaders. "Ouch, hey! What the hay, Sis?"

"Now co-ome on, Applebloom," drawled Applejack, like she was bored and done with this. "Time's a-wastin'. Ya heard what Rarity said."

Whining and moaning, Applebloom wriggled her little legs to push Applejack away, while Applejack evaded and dabbed; Applebloom bucked, but Applejack blocked and dabbed with all the deftness of a master fencer, one whom her student was simply no match for.

Now that the sting on her eyes was fading, Dinky could see her surroundings more clearly. She was sitting on a chair that sat atop a thick stainless steel rod that protruded from the ground. Across from her was a mirror with an arch of blurry white orbs over it. Sweetie Belle was on her immediate left, Applebloom on Sweetie's immediate left, and snickering on Dinky's right was Scootaloo, who said, "Heh, heh, heh. Well, I'm glad I'm not them. What the — Hey, hey, HEY! No. No, no, no. Not the face, not the face, not the — "

Dinky privately giggled to herself.

There was something about the vanity, though; maybe it was the haze in her eyes? In any case, she roamed a hoof over her flank.

"What is it, Dinky?" Sweetie asked, blinking in rapid succession. Then she coughed, her lungs filling up with the fumes wafting from Applejack's direction.

The mist was wafting menacingly towards Sweetie and Dinky; the latter was already wincing in anticipation.

Like the billions of stars in the night sky, the spray glittered in the room. Even if Dinky did want to open her eyes again, she wouldn't. Applejack was still being tough with Applebloom; by the sounds of it, Rarity was still treating Scootaloo with all the gentleness of a minotaur.

"Aha!" said Rarity, sounding like she had a hoof up; a lightbulb might have been shining above her. "I know just the thing!"

A drawer slid open, and was slammed carelessly shut.

At Carousel Boutique, nopony was safe, especially Scootaloo, from whom Dinky was starting to learn new swears.

Somewhere up in the clouds, Rainbow Dash was probably putting down her seventy-third reread of Daring Do and the Sapphire Statue to poke her snout about. "What's that sound?" she would say, before deciding it was nothing, shrugging, and returning her attention to the book.

Somehow, sometime later, it stopped.

Something that sounded like a large fan came on: The buzzing, the rush of air that was blowing the mist out of the door, and finally the relent of the dreaded lemon vapors. The sharp odors were fleeing out the door that Applejack was holding open.

The fan shut off; Applejack let the door fall back into its hinges and walked back to her ward.

Applebloom was still whinnying cutely and flailing her legs about. "Ah don' wanna, Ah don' wanna, Ah don' wanna!"

Dinky and Sweetie Belle exchanged grins; they were thinking of the time they had to give Opalescence a long-overdue sponge bath.

"And voilà! I now pronounce you…" Rarity said, bowing before Scootaloo; the mist was clearing dramatically, its color assimilating into clarity, its sharp odor and sting becoming but a faint ghost of a memory. "Fabulous!"

"Well, shoot!" said Applejack, "if ya had time to trussy her up like tha', ya coulda helped me with this one!" She pointed down at Applebloom, who was still whinnying, "Ah don' wanna!" while wriggling her little legs to push away Applejack, even though it had been minutes since Applejack stopped.

"Well," Rarity shot back in a dropping tone, "excuse me if I care for the fashion of our future generations! Hmph!" Pointing her snout up, she trotted around to the front of the chair. "I simply must say: That Rainbow Dash shall indeed owe me her gratitude after she's seen what I've done to… this — " Folding her forelegs over the hoofrest, she adopted a face of shameless interest before saying in a baby voice, " — poor widdle filly's mane."

She had punctuated each of the last six syllables with a tap of Scootaloo's chin.

Dimples cratered Dinky and Sweetie Belle's cheeks.

Pouting, Scootaloo crossed her little cute forelegs. "What are you two looking at?"

Sweetie spluttered. "Nuh-thing," she said, very interested in the ceiling, while Dinky was enjoying the leathery texture of her cushion.

"Ah don' wanna, Ah don' wanna, Ah don' wanna — "

Applebloom gasped, finally realizing it was over.

Opening her eyes, she turned her head in the direction of Scootaloo and puffed in her cheeks. Whether Applebloom's eyes were watering with the last remnants of lemon mist or with the same contagion that Sweetie and Dinky were having a poor time fighting, it was hard to tell.

Then Dinky, Sweetie Belle, and Applebloom finally burst out laughing. Their faces were red and suffocated; all three of them were pointing at Scootaloo.

Dabbed onto the eyelids was mascara that was the same light-purple as Rarity's. How Rarity had managed to make what little hair the mane had into only a slightly less voluminous facsimile of her own was a complete mystery. The rosiness in the cheeks burned over her actual blush. "It's not funny," said Scootaloo, finally slapping Rarity's hoof away.

And Rarity held it to her mouth, transfixed upon the little orange filly in sheer adoration. She moaned; and then she bit her lips, eyes sparkling, to bite back a squeal that was just waiting to shatter glass.

Just then, bright orange rhombuses, the logo on her doors, bespeckled her flawless white complexion. Rarity blinked a few times, seeming to be coming out of a trance. "Oh, my," she said, blinking the glare from her eyes; squinting, she visored her hoof over her face. "It's getting to be a bit dark, darlings. My, where is that Rainbow Dash when a pony needs her? Much too busy napping, I suppose."

She gave a disapproving snort.

After two beckoning stomps, she trotted to the door. "Come, Applejack! Together we shall walk these fillies home!"

Dinky was wondering which Canterlot knight Rarity had robbed of their chivalrous tone.

Deciding that it was about time for her to leave the comforts of air conditioning behind, she leapt off her seat. She landed, but wobbled a bit; angry buzzing pins seemed to sting at every one of her limbs.

"Can ya walk?" Applejack asked.

Stamping the numbness from her legs, Dinky looked up and nodded; as did the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

Green sparkles seized the folds of a clean white rag and guided it into a water tray; the rag dunked itself twice and flew on its way. But then it paused; a snoozing white cat was raising her paw vaguely, as though to catch something, maybe her favorite toy mouse. The seconds that followed were suspenseful: Sweetie watched, anxious sweat budding on the side of her head. Then the floor thumped, resting on it the flat of a paw, over which the dampened rag soared. Shaking a sheen of yellow dew off herself, Opalescence snuggled her head closer to her forelegs to continue her nap.

The rag went to rest on an orange hoof. Without letting her eyes leave the fussy cat, Scootaloo wiped Rarity's additions off her face.

As she did so, Applebloom spoke with Applejack.

"So what were ya doin' here, anyway, Sis?" Applebloom asked.

"Oh, ain't nothin' too special. Just an outfit fitting fer somethin', because apparently, I can't just march into the royal chapelroom in the buck-nude," she grumbled.

"Royal chapelroom?" Sweetie said, both her horn and eyes shining now. "You don't mean — "

"Buck-nude?" Applebloom said, nonplussed while Dinky laughed at the imagery.

A freshly smeared rag was dropped to the floor.

"Maybe 'nother time," Applejack chuckled, walking the four to the door as Scootaloo messed up her hair, a tongue stuck-out, "but for now… Let us — " Applejack poked her snout up. " — tarry not, for that there evenin' — she waxes, and the day — " She draped a helpless hoof over her forehead as she led the girls outside. " — She wanes without us. Come, come, no dawdling, girls. Let us make that there way ta-wards that yonder maiden of faintin' and fancy-talk, see!"

And then she pointed outside at Rarity, whose surprise at being addressed thus flattened to annoyance.

Chuckling giddily, Applejack raced across the lawns of Carousel Promenade with Dinky and the Cutie Mark Crusaders giggling and galloping closely behind her. The grass was cast into half-darkness; it was stiff and warm, with the heat of a nearly full summer's day. Now, the sun was ready to nest onto the horizon; it seemed to wink at Dinky, who had to blink it away.

Dinky had heard Ditzy say once that the residential squares nearer Carousel Promenade were too expensive for them to live in, due to the fact that it was so high-class. She was looking at one of the aforementioned squares now, thinking that it was more a long rectangle with houses on either side; each house had its front door facing the long street. It was there where Rarity was currently standing, seemingly alone. There was an impatient air to the hoof she was tapping on the pavement; her puffy face was getting scarier as Applejack and the fillies approached. Shadows encroached upon Rarity from behind in criss-crosses.

From those shadows approached a figure.

Applejack gasped. "Who's there!" she snarled, hastening her hooves. "Don't y'all take another step, varmint!"

Dinky and Scootaloo squinted at the hooded figure. "Zecora?" they ventured.

Applebloom was shaking her head slowly. "That ain't Zecora."

What's more, the figure was still striding casually towards Rarity, who was backing away from them now.

"You asked for it, creep!" Applejack bellowed, leaping clean over Rarity, her head aimed to tackle.

But she missed, and she knew it, as she slid far and fast across the pavement. Her snarl was pointed up at the figure, which had taken to the air between her, and Rarity and the fillies.

The figure had ascended to heights too high for an earth pony to attain.

They slammed back onto the cobblestone street, right in front of Rarity, whose horn was alight.

"S-stand back," she said, "I-I'm warning you…!"

Behind the figure, Applejack was scraping up dust with her hoof, her bull-like eyes dead-set on her target.

The figure stood, unabashed, their head raised as though to appraise the unicorn and fillies.

Metal clinked on cobblestone.

"Applejack!" Applebloom shouted.

"Everypony!" Sweetie added.

"Move!" they said.

Applebloom, Sweetie, and Scootaloo tackled Rarity from the side, sending her tumbling far away from Dinky's line of fire.

From the periwinkle horn burst a swirling ball of wind.

The air rumbled, briefly wavy and billowy as the ball drilled through it.

"Whoa, nelly!" Applejack said as her hooves screeched to a halt.

The cloak was blown straight off.

Everypony gasped.

Digging his hooves into the street was the stranger. From his bowed muzzle rumbled an angry growl.

Green skeins of energy were gyrating around a periwinkle horn. Magical winds compounded over each other, overlapping and intertwining in arcs and hissing prominences. The force of it made the golden mane shine more as it whipped about. It took Dinky all the strength the could muster to keep her hooves from sliding backwards.

She fired again.

The stranger winced only for a second before disappearing behind an interlocked pair of wings.

And then he was being pushed back, no matter how much his hooves protested to the street pavement, by a radiant orb of wind. Whish whish whish whish, it went, as it ground against the folds of his shuddering wings.

Gnashing her teeth, Dinky summoned more energy and roared as fiercely as she could.

Hair-thin streams brightened into existence, and they were spinning into the wind orb like tides into a whirlpool. The flux of magic was all too palpable, not to mention conspicuous: Long bands of green were unfolding out of the magical orb like glowing petals of a flower.

Dinky stalked forward, a growl on her face, a glow to her horn.

"You get 'em, Dinky!"

"Show that loser who's boss!"

"Don't give up!"

The cheers of the Crusaders were her strength; they were the reason why she was able to put one hoof in front of the other, against the powerful push that her own magic exerted on her. A line of sweat streaked over the side of her face; ignoring it, she focussed onto a leyline. The taste of victory teased her tongue. Enticing her further was the image of the intruder being sent hurtling so far away that he would be nothing more than another speck in the many-hued sky.

All the ponies' eyes were on her, their breaths held in hopeful suspense; Dinky could feel it as she marched on.

But then, a sound awakened her:

The distinct clink of a cracked window. Doors were banging desperately, in and out and over again, like a mad-pony was trying to get in. A scream wrung her ears.

Why was it getting hard to breathe? she wondered breathlessly, now sweating more out of anxiety than out of strain.

Wincing, Dinky heard her. "Miss Rarity!?" she said.

Her connection to the leyline snapped in two.

Her horn faded as the rest followed suit.

The unknown pegasus's wings exploded with a thunderous boom.

Threads of wind raced frenetically about. Windows were shattered, and the ponies looking through them were sent into throes of panic. Houses were being slashed across their faces, bricks cascading loose from the resulting scars. Cracks appeared spontaneously on cobblestone. Ugly craters kissed the doors, the resulting splinters of wood hovering airborne for a fleeting second before being spirited away by the chaotic storm of energy. A cowboy hat flew off.

Sheltering the Crusaders with the wide side of her body was Applejack, who gnashed her teeth, wincing at and watching the magical backfire as it was dying down; the worst of the storm was over. "AJ! AJ!? Wake up!"

Dinky was watching it all, like she was a million miles away from her own eyes. She could hardly think. She could hardly move. As much as she tried to remember where her legs were and how to move them, she could not get them to budge; they felt like tree roots binding her stubbornly to the spot she was barely aware she was at.

It never seemed to end.

And yet somehow, it did.

For a long while, the only thing Dinky was aware of was her thumping heart.

Something within her awakened.

Gasping, finally herself again, Dinky cried mutely about: for Sweetie Belle, for Applebloom, for Scootaloo, whipping her mane about to see where they were. All the while, she had the feeling that even if they were in plain sight, she wouldn't see them.

The stillness, the silent remains of the destruction were eerie.

Nopony seemed to remain in the twilit street.

Nopony else except for her and him.

The stranger was observing the smoke and destruction, seemingly with great interest. "Ah, I am most impressed. You truly are his," he said, facing Dinky, whose eyes widened: The stranger was thin and tall; his muzzle was long, curved in a slight hook that could only mean one thing.

Dinky was pointing with a shaking hoof. "Y-you…! Y-you're Haissanian!"

Eyes locked, amber into a striking shade of yellow. The Haissanian strode forward, his brown tunic swaying. The sun glimpsed at him midstep; had it not done so, Dinky would have thought his coat to be black, instead of an extremely dark shade of green. The closer he got, the more Dinky could see the scaly texture of his wings; the crinkles in his eyes were not kind, like the ones in Mrs. Cake's, but shrewd.

Dinky thought she was hallucinating the voices of the Crusaders.

"You stay away from her!" shouted the voice of Applebloom.

"Yeah, get outta here, Long-Snout!" came the voice of Scootaloo.

"If you do anything to our little sister…!"

Folding a wing over Dinky, the Haissanian held Dinky up, scrutinizing her in what little remained of the day.

His feathery grip was constricting her.

She did not squirm. She did not struggle. All her senses were numb. Nothing was making sense anymore. Why was Dinky seeing two, no three of the Haissanian? Feeling as though even her magic had deserted her, she felt her head slump over.

"Indeed you are his, little foal," spoke the Haissanian; his voice was like how she imagined Dr. Caballeron's was, but way less rapid, and smooth with all the unctuousness of a snake. "But something is not quite right. You have fallen flat of, how you say… expectations." Pausing, he poked his snout close to her ear. "I sense great power within you, Daughter of Al-Qafzah al-Ula, power that is gone to waste. These foul Equestrians… they hold you back! You can be better than them, all of them, even that shameless tyrant! All you must do… is come with me."

"Not on your life, creep."

The vise-like grip shook open as though stung by flame.

Dinky was released.

In the hooves of her savior, she felt the warmth of the grey chest against which she was nestled. The familiarity of it revived her senses: tingles were spreading throughout her body; color was seeping back into her pupils. She blinked, her heart seeming to rise as she recognized her at last. "Mommy!"

But Ditzy did not acknowledge her; she was too busy staring hard at the Haissanian, who Dinky angled her head to see was still stumbling backwards from the blow that had been dealt.

Recovering, hissing his hate, the Haissanian wiped the corner of his mouth. His eyes flitted up, to Dinky, then to Ditzy, who held Dinky closer to herself while fixing him with a defiant stare. The Haissanian matched that stare with a bemused smirk. "Ah, if it isn't the concubine."

Dinky winced.

The Haissanian's snout was being smacked back and forth. With each blow, it jiggled and curved in ways that Dinky suspected were not meant to be curved or jiggled. He was being backed towards the outer wall of a house. His invisible assailant stopped, as though to give him a moment to catch his breath. He understood that as his cue to spread his wings and leave.

Snap.

So went a piston that slammed him flat against the street, over and over again.

The Haissanian shakily held up a hoof, as though to beg for mercy. Ragged breaths hissed in and out of his snarling teeth; his eye was swollen; the wings he had tried to spread were crumpled and crooked, not unlike the swatted fly that Ditzy seemed to be eyeing him as.

It wasn't over.

Thrust back onto his unwilling legs, he took more blows, as though he were a magnet for the assailant whom Dinky could see only by their shadow. And that shadow continued to strike, zooming from side to side; each time it blipped over him, his face was decorated with new bruises.

For once, Ditzy did not avert Dinky's eyes, which were drawn to a group of shadows waxing in from the east.

"Miss Ditzy! Miss Daring!"

"Miss Twilight!" Dinky called out.

A final flurry of punches sent him staggering towards a wall. A kick to the chest slammed him against it; his head recoiled and was about to droop down. But then his chin flew up, shadowy specks arcing high between the Haissanian and the silhouette whose body was still completing the arc of its backflip-kick.

A barrage of goldenrod blurs bulleted into his stomach, and, blowing a steady breath, she flew up and whipped the monochrome bangs out of her sweating face. She hovered over him, forelegs crossed. "Anything else you wanna say about my sister, you rotten Haissanian?" Daring Do asked in a low, measured voice.

Nopony relished at the sound of his whimpers.

Miraculously, one of his eyes was spared. It found Twilight, galloping up fast to the scene, flanked by a shadowed entourage. It found Daring, who pounded her hooves together and cricked her neck. It finally fell on Ditzy, who was still holding Dinky; she drew back, defensive.

A bestial grin curved his lips. "Ciao."

Pop.

A red flash stung Dinky's eyelids.

And the Haissanian was gone.

Curses and hysterical screaming echoed oddly in the streets. Ponies were trotting to a halt. Questions were raised, concern was moaned. Wailing and panic were exploding throughout the street, having been dormant for as long as the Haissanian's visit.

Was it the red flash of a pegasus teleporting out of sight? Or were her ears ringing again because she just couldn't handle any more? Only the beat of her heart was real to her. She found herself staring ahead without really seeing. When she blinked, the sun was almost gone. The rays of it shone on scorch marks, exactly where he had lay.

He might have exploded into thin air.

Chapter 5: Strife

News of the encounter spread the next day. It found its way into the discussions of dinner tables the night before; it kept ponies awake into the night. It was the first and only thing that early risers gossipped about on their morning jogs. The residents of Carousel Promenade made their woes loud for all to hear; they had been told to vacate the premises by a Miss Twilight Sparkle and a group of her closest friends.

It was in hushes and whispers that ponies spoke that day. It was in huddled herds they trotted. Frantic glances were cast over shoulders, around street corners, at rooftops, and even through the windows of friendly neighbors. Gathering provisions for the Summer Sun Celebration was a task that the townsponies seemed to do just to keep their mind off the issue, which continued to loom over their heads like a miasma.

All the same, the Celebration was only three days away.

Preparations still needed to be taken care of.

Streamers still needed to be hung over each cottage. They needed to be strung in wide playful loops from the fringe just below the rooftop. They needed to 'say' that were the owner of the cottage were to be prompted, strangers would gladly be welcomed for a dinner of salted sunflower shrubs and honey-soaked oats.

Flowers should have been begging to be adopted from the care of a Miss Roseluck. But her flower stand was noticeably missing from the market, as was the rest of the latter's usual post-produce decor.

Foals should have been laughing. They should have been taking refuge from the sweltering heat and tumult of busy shopping inside the cooled walls of Sugarcube Corners. They should have been enjoying sundaes, laughing around tables as they traded stories about their plans, not big plans mind you but simple yet careful plans, for the day of the Celebration.

The streets shouldn't have been balding, with only a few pastel patches of ponies to keep them company. Spoils from the produce trade from the day before lay sad and forgotten. Any hustle and bustle that may have lingered was just gone now. The excitement at the prospect of a visit from the Princess of the Sun herself felt like an idle daydream recently.

A blanket of disquiet had fallen upon the village.

An earth pony, a stallion, was walking around town. He was walking as though a swarm of parasprites might appear out of nowhere and gobble up his shopping if he took a wrong step.

When his muzzle clunked against something like a wall, he jumped.

From the second-floor window of the Golden Oaks Library, Dinky watched him run. With listless eyes she stared: his bagful of noisemakers and ribbons was strewn in a forgotten trail. It was hard to see what colors he had bought; it might have been that Dinky had gotten color-blind recently. But the truth was that the magical dome covering her sanctuary was more purple than it was translucent. Dinky didn't care, in any case.

A toneless sigh fogged up the window.

She remembered when this town used to be so happy.

"Doing okay there, champ?"

The window unfogged, revealing a short purple dragon behind Dinky, who lay on Twilight Sparkle's bed. Dinky glanced at the dragon, then resumed her regularly-scheduled programming of Dinky Doo and the Big Scare She Made.

Spike pulled himself onto the bed so that he could better scout Dinky's face for a reaction. "Can I get ya anything? Cookies, punch, muffins…?"

He paused for an answer; Dinky turned her muzzle away, sorry to disappoint.

So he tried something else. "You know, it's still not too late to have breakfast. I can have it heated up for ya in a hot second," he said with a wink.

No reaction.

Dinky didn't mean to be so cold to him; she just couldn't help it. The more seconds passed, the more Dinky pitied him. Another sigh fogged him from the window's reflection. "You don't talk much, do you?" Spike said.

Dinky blinked boredly at him, then at the window again.

"Oh, so you've been reading out of Twilight's library?" he said, picking up the books lain carelessly over Twilight's bedspread. "Magic, huh? Oh! Are you another fan of Daring Do?"

"I'm her niece," Dinky said, and when Spike picked up Daring Do and the Sapphire Statue, looking as though he would restock it by mistake, "and that's mine." It occurred to her that the tone she had used sounded too threatening, so she added in a would-be foalish whine, "Can I have it back, now?"

So she did. "Are you done with these magic textbooks?" Spike said, scanning the mess of textbooks. Each textbook was marked on the spine with a sticker that meant it belonged to the library; Dinky had noticed this as Twilight led her through her shelves earlier that morning. "I can restock these for you if you'd like. And," he added, "I can get you some more. I know this library like the back of my hand."

Spike was jabbing a thumb-claw at himself; his chest was puffed out, his eyelids complacently closed.

How could Dinky not say no to that face?

"Can you get me some books about wind magic, please?" she asked.

"You can count on me!"

"Sorry for making a big mess," Dinky said.

Spike was scooping the textbooks into his claws with perfunctory agility.

A tall stack of books now stood high between them.

Laughing, Spike poked his head out its side. "C'mon, this is nothing. You should see the messes Twilight makes when she doesn't have ponies over," he said, finally softening the expression on Dinky's face; he jostled the textbooks into a slightly less lopsided stack. "Well, I'll see what I can find. Be back in a jiffy!"

"Take your time," Dinky called after the walking stack of books. "No rush!"

She winced; it sounded like a bunch of books were falling. Pulling the covers off herself, Dinky skipped off the bed, onto the floor.

Then, bracing herself, she stared down at the ground floor. Rearing back, she jumped. She hit the ground harder than she had thought. Shaking off the pain, she rushed for the staircase Spike had disappeared into.

Lighting her horn, Dinky trotted carefully down the stairs.

It didn't take more than ten trots to find Spike.

Lying on the floor was a copy of The Do's and Don't's of Offensive Magic. It was an older edition, but the information printed in there never really went out-of-date, Twilight had assured. It was the last book that Spike needed to collect.

He tossed it onto the stack he had set on the floor and stooped down to hoist the book-stack up again. But then he started scratching the side of his face, as he watched a green aura spirit the books away. "Huh? I didn't know you could do that."

"I learned it in Twilight Time!" said Dinky.

A trail of her books was now bobbing behind her. She didn't feel like using her wind magic to hoist the books up; her regular unicorn magic sufficed.

The stairs spiraled into the middle of a large musty floor. Traces of dirt littered the otherwise shiny marble that Dinky and Spike scraped beneath their hooves and feet, respectively. The ceiling was low. The shelves were arranged in a circle around the staircase; they grew out of the floor to kiss the ceiling. As Dinky walked between them, she saw the wall at which the shelves terminated; it was as green, white, and black as the floor. Except it was curved sharply up, almost like the graph of a really tall math function that Twilight had shown her on a chalkboard once; she had said something about x never being zero.

She had led Dinky down a cursory examination of her stores that morning.

Now, Dinky led the books Twilight had lent to her down the aisle whence they had been extracted.

With the books floating high above her and Spike, Dinky unwound the fabric of three of her magic clouds. Three books fell like hail, one after the other; Spike caught each and every one.

He traced a claw over the spine of a book, muttering something as he roamed his talon over the many books that lined the shelf. Pausing a talon before a faded spine of a volume and that of a less faded volume, he prised the slight gap between them and slipped the book in.

"Let's see, here…" he said, tossing up the next book like it was an excited foal; he held it like one, too.

"You make librarian work look so easy," she remarked, watching Spike shove the last of the third batch in. The Do's and Don't's of Offensive Magic fit in with a satisfying squelch.

Spike meanwhile was having his claws beckon for the next batch.

Deactivating her horn, Dinky let the batch fall into his grasp.

"Yeah, well," Spike shrugged, pushing one of the books in with a groan; he squinted at the last. "When you live with Equestria's biggest bookworm for fourteen years, you're bound to learn something."

"So you really get to help Miss Twilight with all this?" Dinky asked.

"More like I have to," Spike grunted, absently inspecting the next item to be stocked.

"Uh, which way are the Daring Do books?" Dinky asked, feeling weird saying the name of the book series, now that she knew the full history behind it.

"Eight o' clock from the front of the staircase."

"'kay, thanks!"

"Thanks for the help!" Spike called, as Dinky scampered between the shelves.

As there were exactly twelve gaps between the basement shelves, Spike's directions weren't hard to follow. Dinky had just left two o' clock; it wasn't exactly hard for her, since all she had to do was go to the section directly opposite her, while dodging a staircase along the way.

The second Dinky entered the eight o' clock shelves, it became muffled; Spike's stocking sounded distant. It wasn't hard for Dinky to imagine a pony sitting here for hours in the silence of solitude, reading far removed from the tumult and happy clamor of Ponyville and those who inhabited it.

Lost in her thoughts and excitement, Dinky missed it; she braked on her hooves and doubled back to an otherwise nondescript section. Planting her butt on the cold dusty floor, she stared up.

Spines of fresher, more colorful books towered above her. Even though she owned the whole collection back home, looking at a copy of the same collection elsewhere filled her with a fuzzy feeling; obviously, Dinky Doo wasn't the only Daring Do fan in the world, but it always made her feel good to be reminded of that. Twilight's collection was older and more worn than Dinky's; but that didn't matter much to Dinky, who was feeling the joy of being brought together with other ponies by the joys of reading. She didn't meet them, but she knew that she read the same books as them; in particular, she couldn't help but want to meet the pony who had inspected Griffon's Goblet some months prior. She smiled; a pegasus feather was sticking out of the spine, and its shade of blue was hard to mistake. Dinky had a shrewd feeling that her vague daydream-y wish had already come true.

Clapping the book shut, she reshelved it and sat down again, exhaling a satisfied breath. She could stare at these books for hours.

She closed her eyes.

She was strapped to a table inside a chamber of traps that would soon be her tomb. Walls were groaning, as desperate and as scary as a mummy trying to hug her. Sand was pouring in from unseen orifices in the walls. Snakes slithered amongst the rising sands, ready to swoop in upon their long-awaited feast like sharks in the sea. Spikes were bared, like the teeth of a vicious beast; but Dinky heard an actual Spike she knew calling her name, so she stopped, with great but practiced effort.

A neighboring gap stood between the eighth book and an adventure that Dinky was personally acquainted with. She could imagine, in a few moons, a new addition being shelved, and every filly in town clamoring for it. Dinky knew she would be one of those fillies; it would be really weird, but also really fun reading about an adventure she had just had.

But what about the adventure that was going on now?

She closed her eyes to imagine again. She saw the images, without needing simple but elegant prose to evoke them: the unknown Haissanian, the ongoing investigation, and the strange things going on around her. With a sigh, she wondered that maybe the strangest thing about it all was herself. "It sure sounds like another Daring Do adventure," Dinky said, blowing wistfully as trotted up the stairs, and having only the vaguest clue how she had gotten there. "Why can't I be a part of it?"

"Sorry, Dinky," Spike said, "what was that?"

"Sorry, Dinky," Twilight had said earlier that morning, leading Dinky through the stairwell. "I don't have the time to show you around the library. Matters more imperative demand my attention right now, I'm afraid." Twilight seemed to notice Dinky's ears droop. "Ask Spike. He'll help you with anything you need. He's also a good sounding board if you ever need to talk." She had glanced in a direction; she had giggled. "Once he wakes up, that is." Above mare and filly, a number of extracurricular textbooks had been floating; the magic encasing them had shifted from violet into green, as Dinky willed them into her magical grasp. "Good luck!"

A grey hoof had been on Dinky for seconds before she realized it. "Chin up. Mommy will be back as soon as she can," Ditzy had said, kissing her on the cheek. "Play nice with Spike, now."

"We'll be back before you know it," Daring had said with a wink.

She had closed the door almost six hours ago.

"Something the matter, sport?" Spike asked, now on the ground floor.

Dinky was still in the shadowy staircase. For some reason, it took great effort for her to lift her hoof. "Mister Spike?" she said, crossing into the light.

"Puh-lease! Just call me 'Spike'. Mister Spike is my father," he said in a throatier voice, with a weird deep chuckle to go with it.

"Spike," Dinky said with pleading eyes, "you live with Miss Twilight, right?"

"Well… yeah."

"And she saved the world lots of times, didn't she?"

"If by 'lots of times', you mean 'twice', then yeah," Spike said carelessly. "But she can't take all the credit. She couldn't have done it with the help of her best friends, not to mention the Elements of Harmony."

"And you lived with her for over fourteen years?"

Spike paused, darting his eyes around for a second or two. "Uhh… what's this about, Dinky?"

"Do you ever get jealous that she's doing all this awesome stuff, while you're stuck at home, just doing nothing?"

"I mean, I'm not doing nothing," said Spike defensively. "I keep her books organized. And boy, it sure ain't fun. Sure isn't easy, either, especially with how Twilight is."

Dinky had backed him into a wall without really realizing it. She didn't seem to notice the sweat budding nervously on his brow. "Don't you ever get mad that you're stuck here, while she's doing all this awesome stuff? Don't you ever feel like you're living in the shadow of such a great pony? Don't you ever feel like you could also be a great if she just gave you a chance?"

Dinky was looking to Spike for an answer.

Spike meanwhile was scratching the bottom of his neck, like he was tugging on the collar of a tuxedo.

The door burst. "Mail call!" sung a scratchy voice, before Daring noticed Dinky coming up to her. "Hey, kid. You alright?"

"Fine, Aunt Daring," Dinky huffed, as Spike fastened the door behind her.

Daring led Dinky to a table, where the former laid a mess of letters.

"Wait, Aunt Daring," Dinky said, after taking her seat and looking up at her. "You said this morning that the post office is closed because of… the thing that happened." Even mentioning it was hard; she mentally shook it off.

Daring sat.

"Yeah, well," she said like she did whenever she finished lifting her weights; she sat next to her niece, a foreleg casually leaned on the table. "Funniest thing happened, kid. While we were scouting the scene for clues, that stinker of a boss came up to us. He told us that there was a change in plans. I told your mother I could pull double-duty for both of us again. Oh, and speaking of your mother, she wants you to put this on," she said, unceremoniously slipping the magic inhibitor back onto Dinky's horn. "So anyways, I was called back. They said it was an emergency or whatever. So here I am, stuck delivering the mail. Yet again. To apparently everypony in town." Daring rolled her eyes, and they landed on Spike. "Say," she said, rubbing her chin, "you're a bit far from the Dragonlands, aren't you? What's your story?"

"Aunt Daring…! It's not very polite to ask."

Aunt Daring ignored her.

"It's okay, it's okay," Spike said to Dinky. "My name's Spike. I was adopted and hatched by Twilight as an egg. Long story. Pleased to meet ya, Miss Do!"

Chuckling genially, Daring extended her hoof. "Please," she said as she and Spike shook limbs, "call me Daring. Miss Do was my mother. Well, actually, she wasn't," she added, while Dinky was shooting a smirk at Spike, "not technically, but I won't bore you with the finer details, so anyway, I got a letter for you and the pony who lives here. Give me a sec… Hm… Okay. Golden Oak Library… Golden Oak Library… Aha! Two of them, one for you and one for the pony who lives here."

"You mean Twilight?" Spike asked, taking the envelopes, which would have seemed ordinary if not for their golden glamor.

Daring was too busy tossing three envelopes Dinky's way to bother answering. "Stash these away for us, eh, kid? Also, one of your mother's stops took me to the local apple orchard," she drawled, ("You mean Sweet Apple Acres?" said Spike), "whatever it was called. One of the farmponies there wanted me to give this to you."

Daring slid an envelope Dinky's way.

It was rougher and sandier than the other three.

"Kid, why are you sniffing the letter?"

Dinky giggled behind the letter. "No reason."

Daring chortled back. "Weirdo," she said, getting up.

"When are you and Mom and Miss Twilight going to be finished?" Dinky asked.

"Dunno, kid," Daring said, shrugging. "Look. Kid. These things took time, even back in the day. Right now, we're trying to find out where the perp went. We think he might be hiding around the house. We checked, but…" To finish her thought, she shook her head. "Oh, yeah. I also went and fetched this for ya while I was there."

Catching her old flute case between her hooves, Dinky looked up.

"In case you get bored or somethin'," Daring absently continued, turning mid-sentence to check the clock. "Anyway, these letters sure as hay ain't gonna deliver themselves."

So, saluting Dinky, and then Spike as an afterthought, she trotted towards the door, pulled it open, and was off. The gust she left behind slammed the door shut. The silence that followed held.

A low whistle broke it. "Now, that's one cool mailmare. You should feel really lucky to be related to her, eh, Dinky?" Spike said, prodding her with an elbow.

Prising it perfunctorily off, Dinky changed the subject. "What did you get a letter for, Mist — I mean, Spike?" she said as he unfolded it.

He held it up for her. "See for yourself," he said as she squinted at it.

"'Dear Spike'," she read aloud; she read the rest silently, her mouth moving at the start of every other sentence her eyes scanned through. "Mom never told me the Princess sends invitations to the Summer Sun Celebration." Or maybe Dinky was just too hyper to care; or maybe Ditzy just didn't bother, knowing that she'd be too hyper to care. Dinky was definitely too hyper to care about Spike doing something as mundane as refolding parchment, no matter how glittery it was.

"Weird thing is," Spike said, tucking the invitation back into its envelope, "we, which is to say Twilight and I, don't usually get letters by envelope. All our mail from the Princess usually comes through my dragon breath. Not that I'm ungrateful, obviously."

"Maybe she thought you were having lunch."

Spike snorted. "You're funny, Dinky," he said, before glancing at the clock like Daring had; a thumb was suddenly jabbed at it. "Well, speaking of lunch, it's time I go make us some. Because it sure as hay ain't gonna make itself, right?"

Doing a passable imitation of Daring's salute, he waddled into another cove. It was from there where he called to Dinky, who was still in the bedroom / antechamber. "It shouldn't take more than half an hour!"

The running water sounded familiar, but somehow also different when it came out of a faucet that wasn't Ditzy's. A ripping sound came, followed by the rustle of plastic bags. The kitchen and its ornaments sounded like they were being jostled out of their comfy corners. Water bubbled; frying pans hissed; idle humming backdropped the busy workings of Spike the Dragon.

Imagining him wearing an overlarge chef's hat, Dinky clamped her flute case shut, an envelope within it.

With the flute case wrapped over her neck and dangling from it like a necklace, she glanced outside.

The shadows of the branches above were faint and close to the roots of the magically-sheltered library: Over half the day had gone by. During it, Dinky had learnt to enjoy the simpler moments in her life, for such moments were so fleeting, so precious and few. Listening to a little dragon cook up a storm was certainly one of those moments.

The musty scent of country wafted into her nostrils.

With a happy yawn, Dinky stretched her forelegs.

She pulled the simple letter closer to her.

She had to shear the envelope open with her horn the old-fashioned way.

'Old-fashioned'.

The word echoed inside her head. Images were flashing inside it, unbidden and unforgettable. Suddenly, she wasn't there, not completely, sitting at a table in the Golden Oak Library. Carousel Square. Dusk. Wind blades were slashing wildly like an angry beast. More screaming; Applebloom begging her sister to wake up.

The guilt was heavy.

Somewhere in the background, Spike was singing merrily, about laughter and singing, and circles of friends.

Gasping back into herself, Dinky wiped her brow, surprised, when she looked down, to see a letter open before her.

Hiya Dinky,

Applebloom writin'!

And Sweetie Belle, too!

The latter's spell-writing was getting better, Dinky noted. A smile visited her lips; playing in her mind now was the scene of them writing the letter side by side.

Hope yer doin' well. Things are goin' okay* up here at Sweet Apple Acres.

*Okay and boring. Applebloom's big brother is watching over us now.

Sweetie Belle draws the nicest stars.

They're not stars, Applebloom; they're asterisks. They're supposed to mark stuff that might need to be explained.

Anyway, Big Mac's been watchin' over Applejack and Rarity too.

Dinky gulped.

Listen. Dinky. Applejack's awake now. She says "Don' worry about me none, ya hear? Y'all just focus on stayin' outta trouble." If ya ask me, she looks embarrassed enough what with not bein' able ta tackle that pony all the way ta timbucktoo.

Rarity's alright, too. She's shaken, but mostly about the Boutique being condemned☆☆*.

***That's… erm fancy-talk fer "Nopony can go in, or anywhere near the place."

Hey!

At least not 'til yer folks are done takin' a look at it.

Yeah, yeah. …Oh. Speaking of, we have to cut this letter short. I think your aunt's getting grumpy at how long we're taking.

Anyway don't keep yerself up feelin' guilty or nuthin'. AJ is embarrassed enough.

Your magic was so amazing, Dinky. It's not like anything we learned in Twilight Time.

Sweetie Belle! We can go on about gushin' 'bout Dinky's magic later! C'mon! Her aunt's givin' us a mi-ighty funny look. She's crossin' 'er forelegs, tapping 'er hindlegs… Anyway hold on. I think I saw an envelope somewhere. Y'all fold it up nice and tight hear?

…Wait, why are we putting this conversation in writing?

Anyway, hope to hear from you soon! Hopefully, the mailmare Daring Do (heh, how many times do you get to say that in a lifetime?) won't be too grumpy waiting for you to write your reply. She is your aunt, af

A gash in the letter cut her off, along with the rest of the paper.

"Help! Somepony, please!"

The plea prefixed pounding of purple palisades. The pony's pounding sounded like pounding on a bouncy beach ball.

Stuffing the Apple envelope, the letter with it, into her flute case, Dinky scampered through the open doorway.

'What you do matters,' she had been taught, and in that moment, no other thought persisted in her mind.

Lowering her piano-ivory hoof, the mare let her gaze drop down. "Oh." Her saddlebags jangled onto the ground lamely.

Dinky stopped dashing, sliding to a halt a foot or two away from the purple barrier. "Yes?" she said. "Can I help you with something, Miss…?"

"Jubilee," the mare said awkwardly; clearing her throat, she straightened up. "Cherry Jubilee, love."

"I'm Dinky. Nice to meetcha," she replied, extending her hoof.

But it rebounded off the barrier; the poing it made tickled Dinky's fur, making her feel a little like she had been accidentally zapped by one of Rainbow Dash's lightning strikes on Nightmare Night by mistake.

"Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho!" Cherry said, a hoof over her mouth. "My, oh, my, Miss Dinky. It does seem we can't engage in the usual platitudes and pleasantries in these here troublin' times. But ain't you the talk of the town, little missy! Facin' off in a quick-draw against that vile villain of a pony all by yer lonesome. Why, yer parents must be so proud of what a brave young filly y'all are!"

If Ditzy had been the one to say those words, Dinky would have been whining, cheeks red, 'Mom…!' And then Ditzy would continue smiling her pride and ruffling Dinky's hair, despite how much she was embarrassing her; that had only been because Dinky had played an extra in a Hearthswarming play. But as Dinky was talking to a complete stranger, she contented herself with staring at the dirt she was kicking up. "Yeah, I guess…"

Cherry was hoisting her saddlebags onto her back again. "Anyhoo, are yer Mommy and Daddy home, young one?"

Dinky shook her head.

"Well, then perhaps y'a-all can aid a troubled mare with somethin' mighty small. That is, if y'a-all don' mah-nd."

"I don't."

Cherry grinned appreciatively. "Don' suppose y'a-all know nothin' about where I can find that mayor's office, then?"

Dinky didn't, so she shook her head.

"Well, ain't that a shame," Cherry said, kicking the ground with a harrumph.

"Why do you need to see Mayor Mare?"

"The trains."

"The… trains?"

"Yes, m'dear," Cherry repeated, "the trains. I'll have y'a-all know I had a roundtrip ticket ta head back ta Dodge Junction. I keep a mighty fine cherry orchard there, ya see. Them cherries will a-go pining for me 'f I'm away fer too long. Oh, do forgive me, younglin'. So sorry for makin' ya listen to an old mare prattle on."

So, pulling a slip of paper out of her saddlebag, Cherry pressed it against the barrier.

"As y'a-all can see, the ticket gone promised a train'd stop here two rings befer high noon. And by my reckoning," she said, aiming her muzzle skywards. She squinted at the sun, which cast a short shadow beneath her. "'t's almost an hour after by now."

"Sorry, Miss Cherry," Dinky droned, almost saying 'Cheerilee'.

"Psh, come now," Miss Cherry said, waving a flirty hoof at Dinky, "ain't there nothin' to say sorry fer, lil' filly."

"Lunch is ready!" a voice called, startling Dinky and Cherry. "Dinky! Dinky! Dinky? Dinky, where are you?"

Poking his head out the doorway, Spike craned his head around; then he spotted them.

"Oh, mah," Cherry said, covering her astonished mouth, as Spike came waddling over, "a dragon? Here in these here parts?"

The 'Kiss the Chef' apron was coming loose from his waist. His hat was shorter than Dinky had imagined, and it was teetering back and forth as Spike slowed his footsteps to stand beside her.

He looked up at the would-be visitor. "Oh, hi! My name's Spike. Can I help ya with anything?"

"Oh, mah," Cherry Jubilee said, biting her hoof, "why ain't ya the cutest little thang?"

Her pupils were glittering with adoration; Spike rolled his eyes.

"Miss Cherry wants to know where Town Hall is," Dinky said, gesturing to Cherry, who was still ogling Spike like Rarity would if she also sounded like Applejack.

"Oh? Town Hall?" Spike said; he pointed over her left saddlebag. "Head straight behind you, keep going until you hit First Street. It'll be on your left. Can't miss it; it's the tallest building in town."

Blinking, Cherry drew back, her enraptured pupils shrinking to their normal size. "I'm sorry, dearies, did y'all say something?"

It was like she had just noticed the dragon and the filly talking to her behind the purple barrier; the dragon and the filly sighed. "Head down straight behind you, keep going until you hit first street. It'll be on your left," they droned in perfect harmony.

"Oh, oh, why yes," Cherry said, flustered; turning away, she headed in the indicated direction and poked her muzzle over her shoulder. "Thank y'a-all for the directions! And do have yerselves a Happy Summer Sun Celebration!"

"Goodbye!" Dinky said, waving.

"See ya!" Spike said, also waving.

Lowering his claw, Spike walked back to the library with Dinky, who was slightly taller than him, in tow. "Listen, kid," he said to her, "you can't just go running off like that. There's somepony very dangerous in Ponyville."

"Yeah, I know," Dinky said with a roll of her eyes.

"Kid, at least try to take this seriously."

The door had been left ajar; once the duo reached it, Spike let Dinky in, and himself afterwards.

Dinky stepped inside.

But her forehoof paused; under it lay a slip of glassy paper. It was beside a copy of Griffin's Goblet, whose folds it had probably slipped out of when Dinky leapt off the bed to help Spike with the fallen books.

Daring was smiling up at her, a foreleg roped a little too tight around Ditzy. Between the Sisters Doo was Dinky's own face, smiling the first day all three of them returned to Ponyville as a family. The photo was extremely rare and valuable, and obviously not because this was one of the few pictures of Daring Do in the world without an autograph on it.

But lately, Dinky found her feelings about it to be more mixed: shaking them off, she stepped over the photo without a word.

'These foul Equestrians… they hold you back!'

Shaking off those words too, Dinky seated herself at the table where Daring had negotiated all her mail. No mail lay upon it now; nor did it cross Dinky's mind to ask where her family's invitations had gone. The sight lying before her had pushed it out of her mind. The black of her pupils grew to consume the spectacle; she didn't bother sucking up the drool that was oozing from her mouth.

Steam was meandering from a dish of stacked tofu marinated, red and tangy. Healthy green leaves protruded out a bowl that upon closer inspection, sheltered diced tomatoes and sliced bits of small mushroom stalks; their severed tops, too. Forming the core of the arrangement were deviled eggs, with a necklace of red onions and olives huddling them close together. Dinky recognized one of the dishes, but something about it was different: It was a spice-scented bowl of hay noodles, quite unlike the kind she and her mom ate together whenever the latter's bit reserves ran low; it was richer in that it was stewing in richer soups; the splatter of gourmet sauce atop it tingled Dinky's nose, and that was when she knew that it was a stop that wouldn't go unvisited by the end of this culinary adventure. Beside the noodles sat another, no meaner arrangement of hay. Dinky had never seen hay prepared seasoned before. Minute garlic bits were mixed, almost melted in with the oily strands. Two cubes of sugar sat on a tray beside the dish.

"In case it's too salty," Spike explained, as Dinky lapped it happily up like the pigs she helped Applebloom feed.

Dinky got busy slurping and licking and gulping and making a bunch of other shameless noises that Ditzy would scold her for; that is, if she were here to do it. Food had never tasted so good before in her life. If Dinky wasn't careful, the tastes hugging her tongue might have lifted her back into the sky.

Spike examined his claws, uncaring if she was listening or not; she definitely wasn't. "I know you didn't eat breakfast. So I decided to make your lunch extra special. I guess it's a bit too late to go, 'Ta-da', or 'Bon-appetit', eh?"

Dinky was too busy inhaling the buttered hay to respond.

Smiling his satisfaction, Spike crossed his arms, and left her to her devices.

Twenty minutes into the feast, the door creaked open. "Muffin, we're back!" somepony sang.

Sniff, sniff, so went the grey muzzle, before it curled up. "Why, Twilight," Ditzy said over her shoulder, "you didn't tell me you hired a personal gourmet chef."

Giggling as she walked in after Ditzy, Twilight said, "Spike gets bored when I'm away."

"It's true," said Spike, crossing his arms smugly.

He was leaning against a wall, watching the sauces fly from Dinky's general direction.

"Well, Monsieur Chef de Cuisine," Twilight said, about to step out again. "Why don't you whip something up for Miss Doo and I? I'm going to go tell the girls to stop the search."

Dinky whipped her head up. "Search?" she mumbled through a helping of hay noodles; she gulped. "Is that what you were doing all morning?"

Opening her mouth, Twilight found Ditzy's gaze. "Sorry, Dinky," Twilight said, shaking her head slowly, "but I'm afraid it's not my place to say."

With that, she was out the door, whose knob was radiating with purple magic before it kissed the doorframe.

Spike returned to the kitchen.

Now he was humming a new tune, one that Dinky was already catching onto. Her musical mind, nurtured one busy afternoon by a Miss Octavia Melody, was automatically transcribing it into letter notation. She paused her eating to see the letters in her mind:

F#4-A4-F#4-E4 A4

D4-E4-D4-C#3 A3

Surprised, Dinky found herself not only bobbing her head with the notes, but whistling them, too. She also found her mom beaming down at her in pride. "It's like it was a blessing that I couldn't find another foalsitter that day," Ditzy said, before walking away.

Letting her latest helping of noodles ooze out her mouth, Dinky got off her seat.

"Wait, Mom."

It was then when she remembered her foray into the salad bowl. During it, Spike had told her that he was going to leave her mail on Twilight's bed, which was where Ditzy was headed to now.

"Mom!" Dinky called again, starting to get frustrated. "What were you and Twilight and Aunt Daring looking for? Where's Aunt Daring?"

Inches from two golden envelopes, the grey hoof paused. "What was that Muffin?" Ditzy said absently, mildly surprised that Dinky had followed her; she turned away. "I think your aunt is still delivering the last-minute mail, dear."

"The search. The search, Mom. Were you looking for the bad pony?"

"Sorry, Muffin. Mommy just found a clue," she droned with a hint of irritation in her tone.

"Liar!" Dinky roared, making Ditzy jump.

"Muffin," Ditzy said, turning to find her red-faced and upset, "what's gotten into you?"

"What got into you!?" Dinky threw back, a sting budding at her eyelash. "Ever since Aunt Daring moved in, it's like you don't even care anymore!"

Ditzy huffed, and was about to return her attention to the mail. "Dinky. Please. Mommy's very busy right now."

"With what?" Dinky shot back, making Ditzy freeze and turn back to face her, "grown-up stuff? You can check the mail anytime! You're a mailmare!"

Slapping herself on the face, Ditzy muttered, "That's… not how my job works."

"Then how does your job work? Do you even work there anymore!? What were you even doing when I was at the market!?"

Ditzy drew back, her mouth bobbing up and down as she struggled to form a retort. "H-how…?"

"Aunt Daring."

Ditzy's mouth creased to a line. "Oh," she grumbled.

"Lately," Dinky continued, "I feel like she's been doing a better job at taking care of me than you! You aren't even around anymore. You're never around anymore. You're just always away, always doing your 'top-secret project' that you don't even tell your own sister about! What kind of sister and mom are you… Ditzy Doo!"

Panting, Dinky felt moons of frustration overheating her body — frustration that she glared at her mom. Her hurt, her anger was infused with every vile thing she was thinking about the legendary Ditzy Doo, proud adventurer, ace detective, and now, bad mom. No guilt nagged at Dinky. She was not going to apologize for anything she had said.

Not this time.

Golden eyes trembled through Ditzy's tears. "Muffin…"

The wood sounded like it had almost snapped beneath Dinky's hoof. "And don't try to say you're sorry! You say that every time you come home late. You say that every time you forget to pick me up from school. You say that every time Aunt Daring has to pick up Hay Burger for dinner!"

"But… but you used to love Hay Burger…" Ditzy whimpered, her lips barely moving.

"Not every night!" Dinky yelled, stamping the wood floor again; this time, cracking it and making Ditzy's wing ruffle. "Huh? What's this?"

Something had pecked at Dinky's hoof, something dark-blue lined with silver: a letter.

Panic seized Ditzy's good eye. "Dinky, no!" Ditzy said, diving for it, but missing, since it was on her bad side.

Dinky was breaking the silver seal… She was spreading the letter flat… She was scanning the contents.

"You!" Dinky shouted down the landing, where Ditzy lay, scared, "you hid this from me?"

No longer was Ditzy scared; her frown was stiffening into a snarl.

Flying up, she pointed. "It's for your own good, Dinky," she growled. "Don't you remember the last time we went to Haissan?"

Dinky growled back like a defiant dog.

"Give it here, Dinky," Ditzy said, hoof outstretched.

"No."

"Dinky."

"No!"

"Dinky Doo!" Ditzy said in a tone she had never used on her little muffin.

Hissing between her teeth, finally tearful, with something whorling above her, Dinky said, "I. SAID. NO!"

Boom.

The world was silent. The ringing was back. Something was pounding on the inside of her head. Was it her anger? Her fear?

Something was cratered into the ceiling like a swatted fly.

The last of the summoned leylines were swirling, dissipating as the full impact of what had been done sunk in.

Blood was dripping onto the floor.

Nearby, two halves of a magical inhibitor rolled towards each other and clinked, before wandering away, broken and useless.

"What… What… did you do?" said a pony holding a door open; then that pony yelped, pushing a dragon out of the way.

What had she done?

'What you do matters'.

The words rung mockingly inside her head now.

'These foul Equestrians… they hold you back!'

Outside the library, rays fell warm against her coat; but they could do nothing to pierce the darkness spreading within her.

'I sense great power within you…'

For the walls of the magical purple dome she charged.

'Power that is gone to waste.'

And then she was through.

Everything was buzzing.

It was all fuzzy and meaningless to her.

Dinky ran and ran. She didn't know where to go. She was a monster. She replayed the fight inside her head, over and over again. She was a monster. She deserved it. She wished she could redo that moment. She wished there was a way to turn back time. But as far as she knew, there wasn't. She had to live with herself for the rest of her life. Where would she go? Who would accept her? What was going to happen to her mom? Was her aunt Daring going to go away now? She hated herself; her fear was twin with hers. She tried to forget the sight of her mom, just like how she tried to forget how she had hurt Applejack, fewer than twenty-four hours before. She was a monster. She was a monster. Out of breath, she wished things could go back to the way they used to be.

She was panting, over and over again, with the sun beaming down at her, oblivious to her crimes.

Blinking, Dinky rubbed her eyes.

Surprised, she found herself looking at a familiar porch. Not-so-familiar police tape cordoned it. In another world, in another pony's life, a best-selling author was bowing that somepony in. Dinky tried to sniff for the familiar musty aroma. It was gone. Or had she just grown up too much to be able to smell it anymore?

All that was left in Dinky Doo was bile, repulsion at the pony she had grown into.

All that rung inside her head now was a cacophony of her own shame, repeated a billion times, the better to torture herself.

No semblance of rational thought survived within it.

She had to push out her memories of her family. She was a disgrace to them. She didn't deserve them, not as she was, and not after what she had done. How could she look back on them now? How could she reminisce fondly of all the moments they had shared? She wished she could have forgotten. She didn't want to remember their voices, Daring's and Ditzy's, anymore.

No other voice was allowed inside her heart, save for his…

'You can be better than them, all of them, even that shameless tyrant! All you must do…'

"…is come with me, Dinky Doo."

Chapter 6: A Call to Action

It was a day later.

I was in a ward in Pony Town Hospital.

A bright six o' clock was outside.

Birds were chirping happily. Three of them swept past the ward's only window, almost like they wanted to spread their joy to the ponies inside. If that's what they were doing, then it sure wasn't working.

I was still brooding. I was still silent. I was still leaning against the wall.

She was still asleep. At least, that's what the rhythm of the heart monitor kept beeping to me.

Each time I chanced a glance at her, my hope dimmed. This time was no different.

Abandoning my stoic posture, I put my forehooves on the cold hospital floor. I walked over to find her, still unconscious.

Sweaty golden locks thatched her face; I raked a hoof across them. "Oh, Sis…"

A basket of bandages adorned her head. Otherwise, she looked perfectly normal. Was she that way when we fought over that stupid alicorn sultan eight years ago? Looking back on it now, I realized just how stupid I was. I realized how much I had taken her for granted. I realized how much time I had wasted on that feud.

Part of me wanted to make this seem like it wasn't much of a big deal. She had always come home late at night more tired than when she had awoken. She rarely took a second to rest after I moved in. She had been overworking herself, and now, she was having a long, well-deserved nap. She did look almost like she was sleeping.

Except I knew better.

Sharing a room with this mare during college told me better. She used to talk in her sleep, you know, and I hated it. It really sucked on a night before an exam, when your nerves were wrung already; imagine trying to sleep when you're constantly being startled by words that were way too coherent to be sleep-spoken.

She also snored as loud as the wild boars we encountered in Southern Equestria. She was aware of this habit of hers, and how it could jeopardize missions where we were supposed to lay low, incognito, on the down-low, and all the other ways to say 'inconspicuous'. Anyway, that's why she always kept watch over our camps. She did it while hopped up on at least a gallon of coffee; I started to feel bad for her at some point.

Now, I wished I could hear her snores and sleep-mumbles again, just so that I would know that she was okay.

A single breath slipped into the ward just then, as quiet and as unwanted as a ghost. On instinct, the hairs of my coat were pricked up. I backflipped over the bedside nearest the window, and landed on the side nearest the door. My wings were flared, my body lowered. "Who's there!? Oh. It's you, Butter Sky. Butter Sky and friends," I added in correction, folding my wings back.

Three ponies went into the room, none of which was Butter Sky, who was slowly slipping back into the corridor with a barely audible utterance of 'Sorry'. The blue one I knew from my most recent adventure trying to save the Cake twins. Her name was Rainbow Dash; I'll refer to her as 'Dash' for brevity's sake. So Dash flew over the head of Butter Sky, fluttering in like it was just a normal day. The pair of unicorn mares that followed weren't much better; by the look of their trots, you'd have thought they were exploring the Canterlot Maze Garden on their Sunday walk.

The white unicorn liked calling ponies, 'darling'; it was too close to my childhood memories for my liking, honestly. But what can you do? Let's call her 'the fussy one'.

The lavender unicorn had no significance to me, so I'll scant on any details about her. Obviously, I won't be calling her 'the lavender unicorn'.

She leaned in close to my face, doubtless ignoring the dead expression on it. "How is she?" she asked.

I shook my head. And then I started shaking it for different reasons; soft things were tickling my face, littering my seeing space. "It had something to do with Long-Snout, didn't it?"

"Rainbow!" Toilet Sparkler — I think that was her name, an unfortunate one at that — hissed with more reproach than I cared to muster at the moment.

"That positively ghastly outfit from the other day?" the fussy one drawled; she had her forelegs leaned over the bed, unceremoniously beside its comatose occupant. "Doubtless the royal guard shall settle this matter forthwith!"

"Rarity!" said Sparkler, before shooting Fussy a glare to match.

But Fussy looked like she was too busy pointing her snout up and trotting past me to care. You'd think she was royalty by the way she strutted out of the ward.

"Sorry about them, Miss Do," Sparkler said, earning her a huff from Dash — a huff she didn't seem to hear. "Please, can you tell us what happened?"

Why was my heart beating so fast? I didn't want to think about it. It was still too much.

"I-I…"

My eyes darted from Sparkler, to Dash, then to Sis behind me. The truth was: I was scared. I didn't know if she'd be herself when she woke up. I mean, if she woke up. Last time, it took the love of an alicorn to restore her health; well, that and that alicorn's magic, obviously. It was bad enough that this had already happened once, and at my hoof, no less.

A hoof touched mine then, as lightly as the breath she had first startled me with. Her eyes were blue. Slowly I felt my mind drifting elsewhere. I thought of a tranquil sea on a quiet summer's afternoon. Salt and slosh swished and swayed on the tide; they rode off on the glimpse of a breeze.

I blinked. There was something about her, that Butter Sky.

…

I don't want to bore you too much about what happened next.

Long story short: After she was done hugging me, I told them what had happened. Luna's teat, it was embarrassing. The whole time, she was touching hooves with me like my mom used to. I mean, not that I didn't appreciate it; her warmth gave me strength. None of the other three seemed to notice the comforting gesture. Nor did they blame me for what happened with Ditzy, or losing Dinky, for that matter. Wish I could say the same for myself.

I was done talking. I had said my piece, all I had heard and seen, which didn't amount to much, in my opinion.

Fortunately, they disagreed.

They began to confer amongst themselves about the whereabouts of my ward. It occurred to me that I would be her only guardian for a while. It was a thought that scared me more than all the boulders and spikes and snakes — and you know the rest, since it's not exactly an unpublished secret — in the past few decades.

"She ran to the Everfree Forest!" Dash ejaculated. "It's the only place she'd be."

"Rainbow," Sparkler said sharply, "that doesn't make any sense. First of all, Dinky couldn't run anywhere. My magic forcefield prevents any unauthorized ponies from leaving the vicinity."

That killed Dash's buzz, but not for long. "Y-yeah, well… Maybe she teleported out of it! …What? What?" she said at Sparkler, who was already shaking her head.

"Also impossible, Rainbow Dash," she droned with a condescending shake of the head, before locking eyes with her. "My magical forcefield is immune to being compromised by spacetime displacement magic. Before I left yesterday morning, I made sure to reinforce the spatial anti-decompression matrix in my spell. Even though I argued that it was quite unnecessary, Ditzy forced me to do it. Far more importantly, I tempered my existing barrier magic with artificial pseudo-solid gravitational boundaries. I even augmented the anti-compression matrix with thaumatic-resistant nodes! I thought it was a necessary precaution. I had thought it would have helped. But… maybe it was because I had cast it improperly. In my defense, it was on such short notice, and these weren't exactly your run-of-the-mill spells, which is why I had cast an alarm spell on it to let me know if any of these measures failed. I would have thought it would have gone off, but…" she trailed off. Sparkler blinked, noticing the eyes staring at her. All of them, including mine, were completely blank. Groaning, she cast us exasperated looks like a jaded professor would. "Ugh. It means that nopony could teleport in, and nopony could teleport out. Not even I could break into my own treehouse, even if I wanted to."

Dash narrowed her eyes. "What about Long Snout?"

"We've been over this, Rainbow Dash. That Haissanian was a pegasus, not a unicorn, not an alicorn. A peg-a-sus. And I'm pret-ty sure you don't need me to explain what that means in regard to his magical ability. Or lack thereof, in any case," she finished with a leer at nopony in particular.

Crossing her forelegs, Dash looked elsewhere. "He sure disappeared off Carousel Square fast. Speaking of which," she said, "weren't you supposed to figure out how he did it? Pegasi aren't supposed to be able to use magic."

"For the last time, Rainbow, I don't know. And in any case, if somepony had teleported inside, Daring would have heard it. Right?"

"Yeah," I said, "and I'm also telling you I saw Dinky run out the door with my own two eyes."

Sparkler didn't respond right away.

We all watched her purple legs move back and forth, back and forth. Apparently, pacing helped her think, just like somepony else I knew. Experience with these types has taught me that it was better to just stay silent, and not interrupt them. Whenever she got like this, Ditzy seemed to be stuck in her own little world of facts — facts that required all her focus in order to assemble into a coherent conclusion.

Sparkler stopped pacing.

"This… this isn't making any sense!" she said to us, her voice an octave higher than usual. "I'm the pony tutoring Dinky. I should know: She doesn't have the ability to generate magical force-fields yet, let alone disintegrate them! And neither she nor Sweetie Belle are anywhere near the level of teleportation yet. This isn't making any sense, not unless she's been conducting a profound amount of independent research without my knowing!"

She was looking me for affirmation; I shrugged. "Not that I know of."

"Then what? What!?" she shouted to the ceiling, as though to beseech it for answers.

She pressed her face against the floor, and hid beneath her forearms; she let out a sad moan.

It was hard to watch.

I exchanged glances of pity with Butter Sky, then Dash, then with an orange-colored mare with a trio of apples for a Cutie Mark. I recognized her from the day the Haissanian attacked. She hadn't been wearing any bandages on her head when I had delivered her SSC invitation the day before, and she wasn't wearing any now. According to her, the blow that had knocked her unconscious was nothing.

She had appeared in the ward after Butter Sky.

The apple one, or Apples, as I decided to nickname her, stepped forward. "Erm, sugarcube," she said, a gentle hoof on Sparkler's shoulder. "Maybe we oughtta search for that Haissanian pony again? Just to be sure he don' have 'er?"

I was grateful that somepony decided to focus on the part of the mystery that involved a foal going missing.

A flash and bang came, this time purple.

Suddenly behind Apples, Sparkler turned her around to face her. "We searched all day yesterday," Sparkler said, shaking her, "and we found nothing, AJ! Nothing! NOTHING! And even if we did search, what would we prove if we came up empty-hoofed again? Huh? Huh? NO-THING! The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, Applejack! Nopony in town has seen her; we confirmed this just a few minutes ago, and we have compiled enough evidence in general to conclude that Dinky is gone, i.e. absent! Yet, does that not also qualify as the absence of evidence of her being here? What, then, can we conclude, girls? Girls?"

Beside me whimpered Butter Sky. I held a protective hoof across her, and so did Apples. "Whoa, calm down, Twi," Dash said, waving her hooves down.

Sparkler was looking at each of us in turn with frightening desperation.

Striding towards her, I did what I did whenever Ditzy got like this: I slapped Sparkler with my wing. In hindsight, I really shouldn't have used the cool mechanical one, because afterwards, she was wincing, massaging the redder-than-blush blemish on her cheek.

"It's for your own good," I said firmly, walking back to comfort Butter Sky.

And as I did, Dash landed between us to chip her part in. "Twi. Listen. You told us yesterday the Haissanian was after Dinky. Just Dinky."

Sparkler sighed through her nostrils. "That's what Ditzy told me, anyway. I mean, that might have been mother's intuition speaking on her behalf, but — "

"Twi," Dash said, cutting her off, "let's start with the facts."

"Facts? Facts? What facts? We have no facts here! We know absolutely — "

"Breathe, Twi-light," Apples reminded her.

"Twi. Twi." Dash paused to choose her words carefully. When she spoke, she did so slowly. "We just came back from searching the town — again. None of the townsponies know where Dinky is. But listen, Twi. We may not know where she is. But we do have a pretty good idea of where she isn't."

"Oh?" I said, leaning closer.

My interest seemed to bolster her confidence.

We were all listening. Apples was listening, a foreleg around Butter. Butter was sitting on the floor, looking up at Dash like the latter was a teacher about to give an interesting lecture for once. Most importantly, Sparkler had also leaned close in to listen, her ears alert, her eyes, though bloodshot, were fixated on a suddenly uncomfortable Rainbow Dash, who cleared her throat.

"So anyways, we don't know where she might have gone. But we do have a pretty good idea of where she might not have gone. Fluttershy, what did the hot-balloon mare say when Pinkie made you talk to her?"

Butter Sky was tracing circles in the floor, at which she mumbled a series of barely intelligible sounds. Dash and I gave her identical withering stares. "Fluttershy says, 'She said the hot-air balloon hasn't been back from its trip to Canterlot in days'," Apples said, loudly and clearly for her.

Dash was nodding. "Exactly, exactly," she said, like something was going according to plan. "And Applejack. What did the train station pony say when you asked him?"

"He said, 'Ain't no foals came by for no ticket or no ride. Ain't no grown ponies, neither. Ain't no trains runnin' for almos' a week now'. Dunno how that's supposed ter help us, but," Apples said with a shrug.

"Wait. I think I understand now," Sparkler said, her pupils lighting up. "I get it. Rainbow Dash! You're a genius! How did I not see it before?"

"What can I say, Twi?" Dash said, raising in her arms in a would-be careless shrug. "I learn from the best."

She gave me a knowing wink, which was my cue; smiling, I began to recite the quote.

"'Once you have eliminated the impossible'…"

"…'whatever remains'…" Dash supplied.

"…'however improbable'…" Sparkler said.

"…'must be the truth!'" we three exclaimed.

And then we laughed our exultation. But victory was far from ours.

Sparkler was hugging Dash, their cheeks smushed together. "Rainbow, you're a genius!"

"No, not me," Dash said, pointing. "She's the genius."

I rubbed the back of my mane. "Actually…"

I stepped aside, and turned around to let Sparkler's and Dash's eyes find the true originator of the quote. Relatively speaking, anyway; Sparkler knew this as well. "She actually took it from —

"Sir Arthur Colton O'Bale," Sparkler and I said.

"Via his world-famous detective character, Sir Sherclop Pones," she added as a footnote, with her hoof raised and her eyes closed knowingly.

Sharing this inside joke was overwhelming, empowering. I felt infused with new life. I was drunk on a euphoria that fanponies probably felt whenever they were gushing over my stuff. Isn't it just the best when you and a pony you've known for a while realize that you've both been in the same fandom the whole time, with neither having thought to ask? My chest was swelling warmly, moreso than it had done in a very long time.

Sadly, Dash killed it; it wasn't her fault, though. "Who?" she said to Sparkler.

"Not important, not important," Sparkler said, and it was her turn to wave Dash down. "What is important is the matter at hoof."

Apples raised her hoof like she was in class. "Uh, can somepony fill us in on what's goin' on?"

"Gladly, my dear Applejack," said Sparkler, still in excited-fanfilly mode. "Since we know neither the hot-air balloon nor train has taken any passengers for a few days now, we know Dinky couldn't have gone far. But we also know she isn't in town anymore — more than a couple of ponies can attest to that."

"So what? Y'all sayin' the foal's gone up and pitched up a tent in that there Everfree?"

Butter Sky shuddered, at the name apparently. Crouching, I rubbed her shoulder to better calm her down. "Sorry," I said, "what's the Everfree?" Again, the shudders came.

"Ah, ya know," Apples drawled absently, "big scary place, lots of weird scary critters. Ain't nothin' there that grow natural. Weather's slippier, too. Ain't no way nopony would go there unless they were really itching for adventure and a wee bit more."

"Or if their name is Zecora," Dash chimed in; I shook my head. "What?"

"Rainbow. I have a feeling Dinky doesn't want to be found. If she went into hiding, then she wouldn't go to somepony we know." This somepony wasn't somepony I was personally acquainted with, to say the least, but the name had come up too many times for me to not bother asking about it. Apparently, Zecora was a zebra who used to wear a cloak whenever she went to town. The Haissanian had also had a cloak on him. I still found it weird that everypony thought he was Zecora even though that scare had long passed.

"So… where would she be hiding?" Dash asked, in regard to Dinky.

'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'

"However improbable," I repeated to myself, the conclusion slowly rising to my reluctant lips. I think we all had been trying to deny the painfully obvious (painful for me personally) out of wishful thinking. It was then that I realized that until the amount of justification for it was too much to ignore, we had just been avoiding the worst possible conclusion: "Dinky is being taken by him to Haissan."

"It's settled, then," Sparkler said, stamping the waxed floor. "We depart for Haissan immediately. Girls. Move out!"

Sparkler galloped out of the room, with Apples and Dash not far behind.

Dash poked her head back into the room. "Yo. Fluttershy. Daring. Comin' or what?"

Still sitting on the floor, Fluttershy nodded; standing beside her, I shrugged, 'What can you do?'

After a playful roll of her eyes, Dash zoomed out of sight.

Scraping the floor awkwardly, I muttered, "Hey… thanks."

Butter Sky gave a little head-tilt. "What are friends for?" she said with a smile to match.

The words she left me with that day stuck.

"Friends…" I echoed. "Friends."

We never did have the chance to make many of those back in the day. No, we were too busy making enemies. Foraging through temples, earning the ire of the local guardian and keeper and what-have-you was one way to make an enemy. Our go-to was crashing through foreign marketplaces, and being too busy to acknowledge let alone pay for the collateral damage we left behind in those chase scenes that were always fun to write. Occasionally, antics like these earned Ditzy and I self-proclaimed archnemeses. One 'archnemesis' would always shout dramatically into the sky, 'Sisters Doo!' as we got away.

Ditzy always found that cute. That was partly why I had included that in some form with villains like the fictional Ahuizotl. I wondered if any of our actual enemies would take pity on her as she was now.

Dash was calling for us again.

Fluttershy fluttered onto her hooves and pranced away; she wouldn't have been too out of place in a field of sunflowers.

"I'll give you two some privacy," she said over her shoulder as she rounded the corner and out of sight.

That it was almost time to go, that there was no more time to dawdle idly by was palpable in my veins.

I peered into my Sis's face one last time.

Still asleep.

Her hooves were crossed in a wide-X over her chest; her mouth was hanging open. Still, no annoyingly loud snores issued from it.

She had not risen, not even to engage in our little literature discussion and amateur P.I. work. I promised, once she woke up, to tell her all about it.

A pair of goldenrod lips pecked her unknowing cheek. "See ya soon, Sis."

Turning away, I unfolded my wings.

It had gotten even brighter out. The summer air blew against me with all the gentleness of sandpaper.

But enough about the weather.

"There you are, slowpoke!" teased a mare.

That mare sounded like she was playing on a pogo stick, somehow fast enough to keep up with my wing-strides. When my eyes adjusted, I thought they were playing tricks on me, because that was precisely what she was doing. She was following me, and so were her round blue eyes. I didn't have time for that.

I thought I heard Dash in the distance calling me over.

I increased my speed; the pogo stick kept up.

"So what fun nickname are ya gonna give me? Huh? Huh? The bouncy one?"

I ignored her, only for my eyes to sting with bitter wetness. "The bubbly one?" she said.

A barrage of soft rocks pelleted my face. "The kooky one?" she said, laughing. "Get it? Koo-oky?"

Also, she was carrying a jar of… well, I'll let you figure that one out.

The distinct blow of a noisemaker came. "The noisy one?"

A shower of balloons scattered into the sky. "The ballooney one?"

Colorful streamers corkscrewed across my vision in perfectly straight paths, making her giggle. "Yeah, they do that. Sometimes. Maybe. Always. So anyways, the messy one?

"Ahh? Ahh?" she aired hopefully.

I flapped faster to let her get acquainted with a gust I had been dying for her to meet.

But they met, exchanged hello's, and went on their separate ways, so to speak.

"The cymbal-lic one?"

A clap of you-know-what's followed.

"The symbolic cymbal-lic one?"

When this was over, I'd have to ask how she fit all this stuff in her mane.

"The one from the really stern family?" she said, suddenly solemn, complete with a bubbling pipe in her mouth.

"Or the rubber-chicken-y one?"

Squeak-squeak.

"Or the normal-chicken-y one? Pa-KAH!"

"The pastry-y one?" Slurp. "Mmm."

"The rocky-y one?" Thud.

"The cake-y one? Mmm. (Again. Tee-hee!)."

"The comby-haired one…?" she said with an eye-twitch that made me do a seriously concerned double-take to find her in a costume of black wool.

"The black sheep? Ba-a-a-a!"

"The black sheep, but with a painted pink coat? Ba-a-a-a!"

"The black sheep in a family of grey ponies, except with a painted pink coat? Ba-a-a-a!"

"The pink sheep in a family of grey sheep, with cotton candy wool? Ba-a-a-a!"

I think I'm gonna need therapy after this.

"The pink pony in a family of grey but figuratively black sheep who are standing on top of a really stern stern of the S.S. Rock the Rocky Ba-a-a-oat, except they're all eating cotton-candy wool as symbolism of the fact that they all love each other very very much, and they would do anything for each other, even play the combs and cymbals for each other until that boat flies away on a skyway that leads to the mystical chicken-y land of fun and Mrs. Cake's super-duper-secret collection of cake-trees and delicious mouth-watering ice cream banana-fluff berries sprouting from those trees, which were also made of bubbles that kept making noise that their next-door neigh-eigh-eigh…"

…

To be honest, I sort of tuned out the rest of that.

Not gonna lie: It took three whole minutes for her to catch her breath after that maze of relative pronouns, adjective clauses, and a bunch of other linguistic jargon I won't bore you with. She was reinflating her breath like a self-inflating balloon. No kidding. Hm. Maybe 'the ballooney one' did have some merit, after all.

"The one-mare band?" she offered next, re-emerging with…

That's when I gave up. "How about the pink one?" I offered, eyeing the shiny thistles of her coat. "Pinky, for short?"

Pinky gasped into a smile. "Ooh, ooh! You mean like for the short Pinkie finger?"

I wrinkled my muzzle. "Finger?"

"Never mind," she said happily, eyeing the flat of her hoof for some reason.

Then she took a deep exaggerated breath.

You don't want to know what she did next.

Anyway…

Sweet Luna's teat, it took forever to get to Rainbow Dash and co.

Turns out, Pinky was part of her troupe. Who woulda thunk, right?

I caught up with Dash on wing. We couldn't go too fast. We couldn't leave behind the unicorn, the earth pony, and the pegasus, who apparently didn't like flying. And I wasn't going to call her out on it. But that sure does sound like an opening line to some joke, I'm not gonna lie. It also sounded like Hearthswarming, or maybe a motto that Princess Celestia might have hanging in her castle somewhere.

"What were you and Pinkie Pie even doing back there?" Dash asked me, awakening me from my boring literary musings. The wind was flapping through our manes. Sweet Celestia, she looked so beautiful for a sportsmare. "Well?"

"Oh," I stuttered, trying to remember.

Then there she was, below us, bouncing, this time without a pogo stick. Giving me a wink, she bounced on. "I don't want to talk about it," I grumbled.

And I still don't.

"Where are we going?" I asked Sparkler below.

"The train station," she answered, looking up at me, "Rarity's withdrawing her bits. We can take a train from Canterlot, and hitch a ride on an airship from there."

"Roger that," I said, saluting her.

Waiting for us at the train station was an entire herd. I hadn't seen a crowd that packed since the Animareacon seven moons ago. I had had to booth it by a couple of experienced authors and some fresh blood, published and otherwise. Security guards had been posted at the exits, trained to calm any riots and some of the more — ahem — passionate con-goers.

Something like that was happening at the train station. Except these guards were probably far better-trained, and they were definitely way better-equipped. My hindlegs were already throbbing at the clank of their mail. What can I say? They had learnt to expect pain after too much experience kicking body armor.

The guards were trying to corral the civilians. It had become so packed that the latter had to stand on the ground around the station, instead of on the wooden platform. We had to, too.

"I gotta get back to Dodge Junction! My cherries — they'll be a-dying if Momma don't git back to 'em, post-haste-like, hear!"

"But what about my reservation at Blueblood's royal hotel? It's simply to die for!"

"Forget tha', mate! Us Appleloosans'll be facin' a horde of angry hungry buffalo 'f we don' get these pies down over there on the pronto."

"…offering an indoor casino, five-star chefs, and special seating for this year's Summ…"

"We gotta get back to Trottingham, now. Our vacation ended days ago. I'll never hear the end of it from my boss if…"

"…wantin' their share…"

"…poor baby girl…"

"…else am I supposed to flaunt my bits…"

"Please."

"Please!"

"Stop advertising fer that prissy blueblood fer us, will ya, mate?"

"Excuuu-use me?"

"Oh, my boutique in Manehattan. How she pines for me!"

"Oh, I know your pain, darling."

My ears perked up at the sound of that nickname.

Fussy had a sympathetic hoof on the shoulder of a tall teal unicorn mare. An overly large sunhat sat on the mare's streaked orange mane, and when the teal mare turned, her ears jangled with what my well-practiced ears discerned as four-, no, five-carat sapphires.

Letting out a dramatic gasp, Fussy froze and pointed. For the duration she pointed, it might have been that she had gone deaf to the tumult around her. "Your earrings," she began softly.

"And your Cutie Mark," the teal mare continued, also pointing.

Clamping their hooves together, they jumped up and down.

"A match made in heaven!" they gushed.

Loud and high squealed the fashionistas, uncaring for and / or oblivious to the dirty looks being cast their way. Parting away from them, the mob parted away from them, covering their ears as the guardsponies paused their unfortunate duty of crowd-control to do the same.

Minutes passed until the mares finally fainted onto a regal-looking couch, which was pushed into place, right on cue, by a small, slouching dragon.

"Whew," he went, wiping his brow as the tumult resumed.

Sparkler spotted him. "Spike. Spike! What's going on? Here, too?"

"Yep," he said, panting.

The knocking was getting steadily louder until the crowd turned their attention to the platform where they would usually be waiting. There, a line of groundbound soldiers were pounding the blunt of their lances on the wood.

Pegasus guards flew up to our level to surround Dash, me, and more than a handful of angry pegasi. These guards also had lances, which for the first time weren't being pointed at me. The heads of the lances were made to stare idly up, while the pegasi pointed their muzzles at the platform.

A more decorated guardpony emerged, the headstallion by the looks of it.

All eyes were on him.

He told everypony to settle down. According to him, the train had been cancelled on orders of Princess Celestia. He continued on, saying that no more trains would be running until after the SSC. We were ordered to disperse, the pegasi above and the earth ponies and unicorns below. He said that he didn't want to use force; I meanwhile, really needed the exercise.

I soared into the air and was about to perform one of my trademarked piledriver kicks!

"Daring!" Dash said.

I descended to her level again. "Fine," I huffed, forelegs crossed.

The other civilian pegasi were flying away. I meanwhile was trying to catch the eye of a pegasus guard.

It took, like, five years for him to turn and stare boredly my way.

"Ya like?" I said, flexing my mechanical wing; I wiggled my eyebrows at him for extra effect.

But he merely shook his head and motioned for us to descend.

I obeyed, but scoffed as I touched the ground; his loss.

Sparkler was more tenacious than the ponies scattering this way and that. She was arguing with the headstallion. I saw Sparkler's ears droop when she was told that there would be no exceptions. Dash, Pinky, Apples, and even Butter Sky flanked her. The headstallion's soldiers did the same for him. Even after the mention of a foalnapping, his answer did not change. He did tell us, to our surprise, that an airship had already been sent to retrieve the filly in question. We were told, yet again, to vacate the premises. As lances were being pointed at us this time, we had no choice but to obey.

"Let's go, girls," Sparkler droned, slumping past us.

Once we were back in town, Dash and I took to the air again, per our usual.

But sadly, the troupe had to go their separate ways. Apples mentioned something about having an orchard to get back to. Butter Sky was apparently a pet owner — a pet owner whose angel-bunny got cranky if he wasn't fed on-time. After those two left, Sparkler said she had an idea; Pinky bounced after her. "Aww, but Twilight…! I didn't even see your lightbulb go off!"

Now, it was just a dragon between me, a pegasus, and two sleeping mares. …Well, that sure sounds like the premise of a cheesy foaltale. I mean, if you forget to mention that the dragon in question isn't exactly big or menacing. He sure was sweating, though, lugging that huge couch through town for presumably the second time.

Atop the couch still lay Fussy and her soulmate, looking as content as though they were sleeping atop clouds.

Trading looks with Dash, I hoisted one end of the couch up. "Whoa, hey!" yelped the dragon, at whom I flashed one of my signature winks.

"We'll take it from here, dude," Dash said to him, holding up the other end of the couch.

"Aw…" the dragon said, slumping his shoulders.

He might have been raised by ponies, but boy, could he whip up a dish like a native from the Eastern Dragonlands.

Dash and I carried the couch in the direction of the local apple orchard. I could have sworn that the whiter of the sleeping mares had shot me a peek during the trip. But there were other things on my mind, things I had kept silent on the way to the train station, things that I no longer felt like keeping to myself.

"Is it just me," I whispered, leaning over the sofa, "or are there more guards stationed around the town than usual?"

"Maybe they're here to investigate… like us."

I was glad former partner's tone had some skepticism in it. "I sure hope you're right."

We passed two guards that continued to watch us as we left town.

The heat was making the outer reaches of the orchard look wavy. We followed a dirt path into the vast open fields. Neither Apples nor her big red brother was tending the fields once we reached the place. 'Probably having lunch or something', I silently assured myself. The soil in the fields looked damp from my altitude. The pig sty, on the other hoof, was perfectly moist, kept wet and icky by the occasional pig rolling happily around in it.

Neither Dash nor I said a word.

We merely lowered our altitudes as we flew on.

We were getting ready to land when Dash glanced at Fussy's soft, contented snores.

Something was lighting up inside Dash's eyes when they locked with mine.

"Wait, wait, too high, too high," she mouthed to me.

I lowered my altitude in tandem with hers; then I took her cue to stop.

"Better?" I mouthed back.

And then it was like I was looking in a cyan-tinted mirror, baby.

My hooves slipped. Whoops.

"Wah!"

The peace and quiet of the country was disrupted. Nopony got hurt in the production of our joke — except maybe the couch. The end I had been holding was higher up in the air than the other; the couch was half-sunken in dense, gooey mud and other stuff that farm-pigs liked rolling around in. Shrill whines disturbed the peace of the farm, rattling the fresh scent of country air. Screaming and running frantically around the couch were ol' Fussy and the teal mare. They kept yelping and yelping like spooked dogs.

Our hooves were now free to point, and point they did.

Our laughter was not missed by Fussy and her gal-pal, who overcame their shock to glare up at us. We didn't even try to act ashamed. We were treated to a throaty retch for our lack of effort. "Rainbow Dash! Do you have any idea how much it will cost to have that fainting couch replaced!" ol' Fussy scolded, gesturing to it.

Her fury seemed to melt the filth right off her coat.

Dash's face was as red as a beet. It was hard to tell if the breath she was struggling for was even for an answer. "Whatever! You got like a billion in your closet!"

The teal mare, drenched in filth, snarled. "My!" she said, whipping her disheveled hair about herself. "What uncouth behavior!"

"Hmph!" ol' Fussy squeaked, pointing her muzzle up; she made to strut out the pig sty. "Come, Miss Saddles. I can have a bed for you tonight in Carousel Boutique, my usual premises. If we are lucky, we can have Mayor Mare lift the condemnation that's been placed upon it. No, no. Do not look. We mustn't stoop to their level."

"It's not like you can soar to our level, either!" I shouted between my cupped hooves.

I pounded hooves with Dash.

Miss Saddles shot me a disgusted look before turning away.

"C'mon, c'mon," Dash said, elbowing me, "we gotta tell Scootaloo what we just did. C'mon."

She led the way back to town, over the guards, and to Scootaloo's house. Now that our load was lighter, the trip barely took twenty seconds.

The line of cottages we arrived at were much nicer than Ditzy's apartment complex. No complaints here, though.

"Yo, Scootaloo," said Dash, rapping the door. "Scootaloo! You gotta hear what me and Daring Do just did. Scootaloo!"

"Scootaloo!" I shouted, finally bothered to get her name right. "Scootaloo! Scootaloo!"

Dash flew up and peeked through a window. "Scootaloo!"

The door creaked open below her.

Landing, Dash was all too ready to launch into a full recount; I, on the other hoof, was not.

The inside of the house was pitch-dark.

The doorknob was being held by a pony. The lines dragging down her eyes made her look older than I was.

Dash's giddiness evaporated; it struck me how foalishly we had behaved.

When the aged mare spoke, she spoke in a low croak.

"Scootaloo isn't home."

She fell against the doorframe for support and hugged herself. As she sucked in a breath despite her shudders, I remembered a voice like hers at the train station, calling for her 'baby girl'.

"She hasn't been home since yesterday evening."

Chapter 7: Alone

Toot.

Toot-toot-toot.

Along the wood the magic danced.

Toot, toot.

Toot-toot-toot.

And on the holes it stepped and pranced.

Piercing through the windy roars a note did blow and soar.

Toot, toot, toot-toot-toot —

"Let the joy of dreamland find you!" "Woo, Dinky!"

Stopping, a burly earth pony turned to stare; a lump of coal tumbled out the cart he was pushing. The second it crumbled against the ground, a sandy bag fell. Within it, a rip widened; grains spilt out, unbeknownst to the pony who had dropped it, who was also glaring at Dinky; shaking his head at her, he went on his way. A unicorn poked his ashen face out of one of the many cannons lining the ribs of the vessel, following the gaze of the earth pony who was holding the cannon steady; the scrubbing mace paused, still afloat, as the duo silently made their annoyance plain to Dinky.

Quailing under the intensity of their stares, Dinky felt her cheeks go red. "Sorry."

Shaking their heads, the crewponies returned to their work. Gruff murmurings resumed, filling the air with a miasma of discomfort.

"Sorry," she said again, just in case.

Not that anypony paid her further mind or ear. The trundling carried on; so did the scrubbing; it was getting time to start work on cannon calibration.

Amidst the busyness, Dinky felt lost, unsure. She was out of place, and in more senses of the phrase than one.

She was aboard the deck of an airship, sitting on one of the less visited corners of it. Harnessed above the deck was a balloon that was responsible for keeping the ship afloat. The sky was bright around her; sunlight could only shine at her at a slant. A canopy crinkled loudly beneath her shifting in-place. Dinky could feel the wind streaming through the vessel; it wasn't just the vessel traveling so fast that the air it pierced felt like the wind. It just was. Apparently, after his passing, Alula's gift had returned for all the world to share, a true testament to his former role as the Avatar of Generosity.

But such things were of minor consequence to Dinky, who levitated her flute up, the better for the afternoon to beam at it. Spit careened clumsily over the length, like shiny rivers. And then like not-so-shiny rivers; she looked up.

"We are nearly halfway over the Draconic Ocean now."

A shadow was looming overhead.

"You make such beautiful music, little foal."

The canopy was made of hard, thick-threaded fabric. Dinky liked caressing the heat out of it; it was like ironing one of her mom's uniforms, but in reverse.

"How very much like your Esteemed Father you are," said the Haissanian; his shadowed eyes got narrower. "Come. It is past time I keep you in the dark."

Bidding her flute slide into its case, which clamped magically shut, Dinky looked up. "Then move outta the way, mister," she whined. "You're blocking the sun."

He chortled unctuously.

"My, the wit you Equestrians possess," he said softly, stroking his chin. "I daresay it is rivaled only by your love of the sun, and its accursed steward."

Dinky got up.

The flap of the Haissanian's sleeve bounced around the hoof he pointed at her, and the swing of his foreleg would have caught Dinky on the cheek had she not leapt back in time.

"She has poisoned your mind, Dinky Doo!" he boomed.

Dinky's legs were spread wide, her horn lowered, too. "Stop calling Princess Celestia funny names! Stop saying bad stuff about her!"

The Haissanian tilted his head, amused. "Come. You know how this shall end. Unfocus your horn, little one. And then we shall talk."

"No!" Dinky roared, her anger spurting through her horn; the Haissanian's amusement turned to discontent. "You're going to tell me who you are, and you want with me!"

The Haissanian cocked his head. "Is that what not what I had proposed?" he said, regarding the leer of his captive with only mild interest; he closed his eyes. "Very well, then."

He held his long snout high at an angle, opening his eyes to the sunshine upon his face.

"I am the Regent of the Desert Garden of Haissan. I was one of five who loyally served His Royal Highness, Sultan Al-Qafzah al-Ula, that is, until… recent events," he said, turning rancorous. "As for your second question, little foal, perhaps you should have thought of that before you left that precious sanctuary of yours."

Heat rose to Dinky's cheeks. She hated the Haissanian. She hated the shadowed face that was looking down on her, eyeing her like somepony who was waiting to see what his cute little puppy was going to do next.

"Come. Into my quarters, Dinky Doo," he said, wrapping a wing about her, only for Dinky to duck it. "There, we can converse more, how you say, freely."

Rolling her eyes, Dinky followed him. She had to keep a brisk pace, since his leg-strides were so long. Crewponies had stopped what they were doing, frozen at their regent walking across the deck. They cascaded into bows on either side; the Regent passed them by without sparing them so much as a glance.

He pushed open a pair of heavy metal doors to let Dinky through, and caught up with her.

Seconds later, doors kissed with a squelch that muffled the sound of shipwork. No hiss of wind could seep through; no sunlight peeked into the dark metal corridor that Dinky found herself trotting through.

Drip.

Clank, clank, clank, went the metal beneath her hooves; it would have been amusing if it wasn't so cold in here. Dinky longed for the warmth that only a forest-green explorer's vest could provide. After the Crusaders had wiped out, Rarity had wrapped bandages over her various creams and sprays, which had long congealed on Dinky's body. Specks of heat lingered on those bandages, specks that Dinky salvaged by rubbing on them. She hadn't realized how much she had taken for granted.

Steel doors lined the halls, more forbidding than welcoming. Braids of lamp-bulbs arced from the ceiling, half-suggesting Hearthswarming had come early that year. But the only Hearthswarming-y thing about them was that they were the same hue of red, which Dinky thought she had seen elsewhere.

The halls flickered every ten paces or so; one lamp-bulb went out entirely, spurring Dinky onward.

The door that the Regent was holding this time was wooden and plain, one half of a pair.

Unlike the corridor Dinky was just in, the room she entered was not lit by lamp-bulbs. Wall-sconces hung on the walls of the square office, housing torchflames.

By their light, the heads of oily horned creatures stared unblinkingly ahead; the curves of their muzzles looked tortured, as if they had already known they were cursed to become little more than wall decoration. No life shone out of the hollows in their eyes, just an empty void whence nothing looked back. The groans in their last moments seemed to echo through their petrified mouths, which were still agape in horror. Dinky could almost hear the poor things…

The slam of wood awoke her. "Come. Have a seat."

The Regent was seated on one side of a perfectly ordinary desk, the kind Miss Cheerilee sat behind what felt like a century ago. To Dinky's satisfaction, his forelegs were still covered with bruises, his eye was still black, and there was a slight tremble to his foreleg, which he lay against the flat of the desk.

"You asked why you are here," the Regent said as Dinky adjusted herself on the seat.

She looked up. "Because you foalnapped me."

"You are here," he said, raising his voice, "because Our Esteemed Homeland of Haissan is on the brink of collapse. Our country is divided and confused. It has been so ever since Our Esteemed Sultan Al-Qafzah al-Ula, or 'Alula' as he is known too casually to your family, ah, passed."

The last syllable was spoken with an unexpected delicateness that pervaded the silence that followed.

He and Dinky were locking eyes.

Not until the Regent was stroking it did Dinky notice the stupid goatee under his chin.

"We of Haissan do not express it well," the Regent continued, "but we grieve for our fallen Sultan. Some of us pray in the hopes that He shall hear us from the Great Beyond, and return to answer our prayers. Some of us know for certain that He is gone for good from this realm.

"Now, as you very well should know, little foal, Sultan al-Ula represented, up until a millennium ago, the Element of Generosity."

"I don't," said Dinky, crossing her forelegs.

"And so upon His tragic end," continued the Regent, "He has left us a very generous inheritance: control over our beloved country of Haissan. But, ah," he said, pausing (Dinky was getting annoyed by his "Ah's"), "his children, us, we vie for it like wolves for a single sheep. I fear that His so-called Generosity has ruined us."

"Oh, like Diamond Tiara."

"Who?" the Regent said sharply.

"Nothing," Dinky muttered, pressing her lips shut.

The Regent's narrowing eyes told Dinky he did not buy her innocent-face.

"The country," he continued, still eyeing her warily, "does not know it yet. But we are on the brink of civil war. Unless He returns to us by some miracle, it is unavoidable. And this is where you come in."

He planted both hooves onto the table to get Dinky's attention; he stared intently at Dinky as though doing so would force the answer out of her lungs.

Dinky didn't answer at first. She liked making the Regent angry. She liked playing dumb. She liked making him think that he should have kidnapped one of Alula's children who was actually keen enough to catch onto his tired puppet sultan plot. Even within the confines of this small creepy office, Dinky could still sense the wind billowing beneath the undercarriage of the ship; they felt like sparse threads of an airborne train to grind along, rather than the fully-woven fabric of the ocean.

"You want me to come to Haissan to be Sultan like Alula?" she finally said, with as much foal-like cluelessness in her voice as she could muster.

"As I am sure you know by now," he continued, "there will be a funeral for the late Sultan. At that funeral, I anticipate that the other regents of the land shall commence the war. The power vacuum the late Sultan left, perhaps our true inheritance, is vast, Dinky Doo. Amidst our grief and greed, we shall remember our old differences. It will begin with a small skirmish; but like wildfire, that skirmish will spread, and the enmity dormant between us Haissanians for centuries shall resurface. Very soon, Haissan would be engulfed within the flames of a war that we cannot possibly survive. Not unless you are there to ease their grief, to light our way, as He once did."

Dinky cocked her head. "Why should I help you? For all you know, I can just ride the wind out of here."

"Ah-ha!" the Regent said quickly, pushing himself off the desk and pointing. "But you see, you cannot! Your imagination is wild, and your tales are taller. Not even the late Sultan could summon so much wind that He could fly all the way across Haissan let alone the Draconic Ocean.

"Have you noticed my wings, Dinky Doo?" he said suddenly, spreading them.

Like leaves from a wind-startled tree, his scaly feathers scattered.

"Yeah," Dinky answered, her forelegs still knotted together, "they're still broken from when my aunt Daring kicked your sorry behind."

The Regent's unbruised eye twitched; he straightened his face. "I resent that, little foal."

"Right back at ya. She beat you so bad you're molting. Literally."

"You are mistaken, foal," the Regent said with a shake of the head. "That is not why I molt. I molt because I once acted as His sharpening block, so that His magic would not rust. There is so very much for you to learn, Dinky Doo. I alone am acquainted with His control over the Wind. It is why I had such resilience to your attack in that sad simple town of yours."

"It's called 'Ponyville'," said Dinky, irritated, "and it's not sad or simple at all!"

For a while, the Regent said nothing.

Then he walked over to a small bookcase, which sat beneath a particularly large dragon's hollowed skull, and roved through it. "Aha!" he said, returning with a book in his wing.

The book was pressed beneath Dinky's nose and flipped open.

It wasn't long before Dinky snuck a peek; unknotting her limbs, she began roving her eyes over the text and illustrations. There were illustrations of horn movements, notes about leyline control, and much more about how to 'channel the Wind to [her] will', as the preface to which Dinky flipped promised.

"You see?" the Regent said, reseating himself. "About eight years ago, His Esteemed Brilliance transcribed His findings here. It is my belief that He had planned to kidnap you with the intent of raising you as His newly-christened daughter, His beloved Princess. In that role, you would be personally by Him about how to use your magic, your birthright."

"So why the books if he was just going to teach me himself?" Dinky said, clapping one such book shut.

"Because He also foresaw that you might not want to live with Him, that you did not desire the role of a Princess and the duties that come with it. He had dreaded the possibility, but considered your happiness, above all. Freedom, Dinky Doo," the Regent said, leaning close to her. "He wanted you to have your freedom, and the right to learn the secrets to His magic, so that you would not endanger anypony you came to care for. You see? His Generosity reaches out to you, from even beyond the grave, Dinky Doo."

Dinky stayed silent, staring at the hooves she was twiddling in her lap.

"I, of course," the Regent continued, a hoof upon his proud chest, "shall be more than willing to allow you to hone your skills, as I once did for him. I daresay a demonstration of my services is unnecessary. After all, you have already seen them in action, have you not? Not that I've any ill will for it… Oh? What's this?"

The book was sliding back to him; catching it, he slid it back.

"You mistake my meaning, little foal," he said with a shake of the head. "This book, and so many others that lie deep within the Royal Archives, are yours. He had meant for you to have His knowledge."

Planting her hoof on the cover, Dinky said without looking up, "What happens if I don't go?"

The Regent laughed.

Then his expression turned dire. "Silly foal. You act as though you have a choice. You are at my mercy. This meeting is merely a formality to ensure your cooperation. But I shall humor you anyway. If you do not go, things shall turn sour for us all: Haissan shall fall, and you shall remain a danger to those foolish Equestrians you deign to grace with your holy presence, however diluted it is."

It was no threat.

It was a statement of fact.

And they both knew it.

"Don't you want to control your powers," the Regent continued casually, "so that they do not control you?"

Broken glass and cracked ceilings were echoing inside of Dinky's head again. The fear in the violet pupils was hard to forget. The pupils blinked; now they were golden, dilating with betrayal that Dinky could not just blink away. Beyond the hurt, a hoof was offered to her.

Dinky looked up from it.

"May I remind you, little foal," the Regent droned, "that no harm has come to you yet? I do not mean it, after all. I ask only for your cooperation. You are something Haissan cannot live without. I see no reason why you should be so opposed to me. I have visited no harm upon your precious silly town, or those accursed ponies whom you are unfortunate enough to call your 'family'. And your little friends are still safe, I assure you."

Dinky blinked. "My… friends?" she asked, before something rocked her off her seat. She expected to land on the cold metal of the bumpy floor, only to find herself being hugged by a hot red aura; she was reminded of a cocoon. "What's going on?"

The Regent was rebalancing himself.

"We are being boarded," he said, a bitter rumble in his throat, "by one of hers. We shall resume our conversation another time, I promise you this, little foal. But for now, we must part ways."

He nodded to somepony, who hovered Dinky and the book out of the office.

The red aura of her prison seemed almost like it matched the red lighting of the corridors.

The unicorn stopped at a nondescript square alcove. Glowing on its side wall was something that looked like a round fire alarm.

A magic cloud encased it; in seconds, a distinct green light shone beneath the magic, which dispersed as the alarm seemed to ring, 'Bingo!'

Then a wall was parting.

The unicorn slipped through the second it was wide enough for her and her cargo.

Somewhere above deck, somepony was speaking using a skin-tingling unctuous tone. "Why, gentlemen. How may I be of serv…"

Thankfully, the voice of the Regent could no longer be heard, silenced by the wall clamping shut behind Dinky.

Now, it was pitch-black; it also sounded hollow. A gentle howling filled the space above her, not unlike the howling of a cavern that she and her mom once visited on vacation. Red rays of magic lit the way through what looked like a descending spiral of stairs.

Clank, clank, clank, clank.

Iciness seemed to waft up from the steel like steam from a geyser.

From this far down, the shouting from above-deck sounded like strange indistinct muffles. One set of muffles could easily be discerned as the Regent's.

The magical cocoon stopped bobbing; once more, the unicorn had stopped before another magically-responsive switch. 'Bingo!'

A door was groaning open again.

Either it was parting more slowly this time, or the unicorn was waiting until it was completely open before slipping inside.

It was the latter.

The door squelched metallically into place, activating what sounded like a series of motors. A series of rectangular lights came on, waking up one after the other in a cascade.

Hooves were galloping, echoing in this underground chamber.

Unshielding her eyes, Dinky found herself in a large metal garage; it was about as wide as the inside of the Ponyville postal warehouse, and twice as long. She thought Sweetie Belle had once called a place like this, a 'hanger'.

"Dinky!" came her voice suddenly, arousing a whole mess of confusing emotions.

The unicorn galloped to a trot, and then to a halt, before a large vessel that Dinky had seen on a previous adventure. Inside the vessel was a white unicorn filly, and she was knocking on the other side of the window.

The filly looked up; so did Dinky, for the lid of the vessel had whined open.

She was dropped inside, the book along with her. No longer was she trapped within the folds of red aura; no longer did it insulate her from the cold that was pervading her senses.

From above, the lid groaned ominously, before slamming shut with a rusty clang.

Four voices were startled.

Now, Dinky was surrounded by the darkness, and the dawning comfort and voices of her friends.

The air had become thicker.

The echoes of the lid were still making the portside window tremble, almost as though in fear. Dinky smushed her muzzle on it, steadying it.

Outside, the unicorn was pointing to her horn, then to Dinky's, then to some point near the front of the vessel.

Before Dinky could make out anything more, she felt something like magic humming all around her.

Red consumed her view.

Its radiance was dampened, less than a second later, by the sky below.

And then she and the Crusaders were diving into it.

Chapter 8: En Route to…

She was slammed against a metal ceiling.

Invisible manacles pinioned her limbs to the cold surface.

Screaming was shaking her eardrums.

"Dinky! Dinky!"

A white blur greeted her stinging eye, followed by a spurt of green spores; they lost their glow, shrunk, and then they were nothing.

She was forcing her limbs to move, to struggle against the force of the fall. Her left foreleg budged by an inch; that was all she needed to keep going. And so she swam and swam, despite the breath slowly being pistoned from her lungs. She swam across the surface of the escape pod, sort of like she was making a snow-alicorn with her mom on a lively Hearthswarming morning. The memory gave her strength, a determination to not let it end here.

Horns grazed, white over periwinkle; energies crossed, grass-green into grass-green, and over each other they folded and folded, until they became a hot ball of worsted spun from the threads that were the ever-frenetic leylines of filly and filly.

An explosion of green overwhelmed the senses and the cabin.

Sheer whiteness.

That was all Dinky could see for a while.

It was imprinted against the inside of her eyelids. She felt dizzy, so for the first time, she was glad that she hadn't had breakfast.

She tried to wiggle the ears that she could barely feel.

"Whoa," said the muffled voice of Scootaloo, "I didn't know you could do the magic bubble thing, Sweetie Belle."

"I can't," said Sweetie, just as muffled, "at least, not a real one, and not alone. Dinky and I have been doing extra Twilight Time."

Dinky imagined Applebloom huffing. "Lucky."

When Dinky tried to part them, her eyelids felt like they were glued together.

Ghostly sheets of energy were passing over her, each one buzzing weirdly as it passed through her face. In steady rhythm, they pulsated outwards, from the floating green ball of worsted hovering equidistant from her and the Crusaders.

Things were becoming clearer, more obvious: That her tummy was spread flat no longer against the ceiling, that the energy sheets were harmless, and that they served only to regenerate the warm, strange fabric against which her tummy now lay. Clear-green ripples, interspersed with the occasional white, roamed beneath her, as though to constitute and define the protective bubble inscribed within the cabin. Watching the ripples was like watching the crissing and crossing of tides upon the shore of a beach, except without the familiar swish and sway.

A solicitous hoof touched Dinky's shoulder. "Y'all doing okay there, Dinky?"

"Yeah," Dinky said, too comfortable to get up. "Are you okay, Applebloom? Scootaloo? Sweetie Belle?"

"Yep," Applebloom said.

"Uh-huh," Scootaloo droned, watching the cascade of magic like it was as mildly interesting as the stars in the night sky.

"I'm okay, Dinky," said Sweetie, before she could ask; she was lying down on her tummy, just like Dinky was.

A gossamer strand strung the shine of Sweetie's horn to the magical worsted, whence another strand protruded, ending at the shine of Dinky's own horn. Beads of energy were flowing down the strands in-sync with the energy sheets.

Plopping down beside Sweetie Belle, Applebloom groaned. "Now what do we do! We're fallin' billions of Celestia-knows-how-many miles in the air!"

"Psh, relax, Applebloom," Scootaloo said, waving a careless hoof at her before angling her head to face a window. "We have a whole ocean to land in. Once we splash in it, all we gotta do is drive it back to Equestria."

"Assumin' any of us even know how ta pilot this here submarine, let alone back to whichever direction Equestria's in!"

"West," Sweetie said, drawing the attention of Scootaloo and Applebloom, and Dinky. "It's west. We were heading east across the Draconic Ocean. Not that that makes any difference, since we're all still little schoolfillies who don't know the first thing about piloting a submarine."

Scootaloo shrugged. "I mean, didn't we sorta pilot a submarine when we went to look for the Cake twins?" she said to the groan of everypony. "Sheesh, fine. I get it. I was just trying to liven our mood."

She stared out the window again; it was a circular thing with a metal frame bolted around it, visible albeit misty behind the magical tides.

Beyond the window was a sight some ponies would never get to see. Beyond the window twinkled an endless blue, shameless in sunlight. After a while, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle joined Scootaloo and Dinky in fixating on where shining sea and vastness of sky met. Up the window it crawled, almost too slowly for anypony to really notice.

Rushes of displaced air were bombarding the undercarriage of the vessel; Dinky could hear their hums and their howls. The occasional screech was something that all four fillies winced at; the pause between each screech was getting shorter. It pervaded the already-dire ambience of the situation, reminding them of how just far they had fallen, of how close they were getting to the ocean.

And it could have been just Dinky imagining it, but air seemed to seep in through unseen cracks of the vessel. She shook off the thought every time it came, knowing what it could mean once the vessel finally breached the watery blue, which didn't seem very far off, judging by a glance from the window. She was starting to see the waves, the ripples; it was disorienting because she had thought she would never have reached this point. The swish, the sway of the tide was untamed but gentle.

The moment was fast approaching…

The inevitability of it swooped upon her; her stomach was doing backflips; her shoulders were tensed up.

And then it was time.

The airy screeches stopped harassing the submarine.

Replacing them was a cool steady rumble. The ocean was thick, soundless and smothering as they sunk into it. Then they were rising, a bit too fast.

Bubbles were birthed from below, popping as though to call after them.

Springing out of the watery depths, leaving the mute and thickness of it behind, the vessel leapt into an arc, not unlike a great metal fish.

"Whoa, nelly!" Applebloom cried, holding onto her bow.

The vessel was underwater again; the view outside once more submerged in blue, before it bounced back up.

And back down.

And back up again.

It went on like that for too long.

The bouncing of the submarine was ebbing into bobbing.

Dinky crumpled, her relieved sigh an echo of those of Sweetie Belle and Applebloom. She was tired. A stream of sweat peeked, then crawled into her ear.

Once she felt Sweetie Belle do so, Dinky stopped her own flow of energy into the heart of the barrier. Her horn was buzzing weirdly; she had never used it for this long. She sensed the barrier unraveling around her; she didn't need to open her eyes to know this. The hot green streams were thinning, and thus to nothing they swirled.

It was a while before anypony said anything more.

But somepony was playing around in some unseen corner of the submarine.

The floor kept swimming, and in more than the figurative sense.

Dinky didn't realize she was on steel flooring until it was cold against her underbelly. Stirred did the ghosts of the scorches on her skin from two days ago.

"I don't suppose anypony knows how to pilot a submarine?" Scootaloo said. "Anypony?"

Applebloom helped Sweetie Belle and Dinky up.

Now that the barrier was gone, Dinky could get ahold of her bearings. The cargo space, where she had been in for the entirety of the fall, was spacious and empty, save for the shriveled orange skin of something that could have been a liferaft.

The remaining space contained the cockpit, which was wide enough for at least four grown ponies to stand in. Visored over the width of it was a thick-looking window. Waves of water were swishing half-heartedly against it; behind the glass she felt safe.

Each of the cockpit's twin chairs was about a pony and a half wide.

The copilot's sole duty, as it transpired, was nothing but something that looked like a lot like a small fire alarm.

Sitting in a snug-looking pilot's chair was Scootaloo. She was hovering her hooves uncertainly over a panel of lights and controls and switches. All of them were beeping and blinking in an organized panic; Dinky could have sworn the valve to the kitchen sink was there, too. It also had a bunch of other doodads and doohickeys that Applebloom was pondering loudly about and which she asked Sweetie Belle about.

"Don't ask me!" Sweetie said, fur spiked in annoyance.

Dinky's fur, on the other hoof, was spiked up because of another feeling. "Did anypony hear that?" she said, looking up at the sky she couldn't see.

"Dinky, focus," Applebloom said, her attention still on the control panel, "ain't no way we're gonna get back to Equestria unless we figure all this out."

Something splashed in the distance, seconds later causing the submarine to undulate.

Scootaloo poked her muzzle in the air. "Hey, I hear it, too."

"Me, three," Sweetie said, going with her to the cargo space.

There, some large rusty thing groaned.

Dinky turned to find Scootaloo looking through a scope.

"Hey, I see the airships," she said, standing atop Sweetie Belle's trembling shoulders.

The air trembled again. The vessel rocked on water. Scootaloo fell off. "W-whoa — !" she said, wings aflutter, atop Applebloom, who had rushed to catch her on her back just in time. "You're a lifesaver."

Sliding off, Scootaloo walked over to stand behind where the scope would be once Sweetie Belle finished pulling it down with her magic.

"What happened? What do you see? What do you see?" said Sweetie, once Scootaloo looked in again.

"That creep's airship," Scootaloo said, "it's blown up."

Silence followed her announcement.

True, the ponies who had been aboard that airship had not been the kindest. But the subject of their fate permeated throughout the cabin all the same, all too palpable, and all too suffocating, like a cloud of poisonous gas. Dinky was in half a mind to ask what happened to them, until she realized that nopony was around to tell her a soothing lie about it.

Releasing the scope, Scootaloo walked towards the comfort of her fellow Crusaders; they embraced.

Only Dinky was brave enough to look into the scope.

Smoke was hanging thick high above, and from it rained droplets of flame, scraps of wood and metal, and dragon skulls that had been finally put out of their misery. The bow of an airship emerged through the dust, exquisitely curved, porcelain white, and unblemishable. Golden lines traced the outline, as majestic as the Princess after whom it had been modeled.

"The Equestrian airship is coming this way," Dinky said, as the Crusaders parted.

A yellow hoof stamped the metal. "Then we gotta send a flare up," Applebloom said, "now."

Dinky followed the Crusaders back to the cockpit.

The control panel was just as inscrutable as ever; the airship, meanwhile, was getting closer.

Sweetie Belle was in the pilot seat, trying to decipher the controls, with Applebloom and Scootaloo over her shoulder. Dinky meanwhile was reseated in the copilot's seat, with a familiar device sitting on the dashboard. She knew what it was, having seen a unicorn aboard the airship use it once before. Dinky closed her eyes. The unicorn had been pointing to her horn, then to Dinky's, then to…

'Bingo,' rung the device.

The submarine rocked, and then it slowly sunk.

"Wait, wait, wait," Applebloom said, "what did you do, Sweetie Belle?"

"Me!? I didn't do anything!"

The ocean seemed to be crawling back over the cockpit window, pushing the sky up to make room.

The rushed air of the airship seemed to be getting closer, louder, until it was muffled, for the submarine that it sought could no longer be seen bobbing on the surface.

It passed them.

"No, no, no!" Applebloom squealed, holding her cheeks. "Now we'll never get home! We're stranded in the middle of the ocean!"

Through the constant billow of seawater, Dinky saw the Equestrian airship race for the eastern shore. She didn't need to wait long for the airship to disappear from sight.

The submarine was rising; the familiar pressure in Dinky's ears was decompressing. Rotors were being willed to life; an engine shuddered and wheezed with the cadence of somepony clearing their throat. Low grumbles filled the cabin. The submarine lurched experimentally, then drifted forward.

"Wait," Scootaloo said, watching the sky descend into view, "the submarine's… moving?"

"It's Dinky," Sweetie Belle said.

"Dinky?" Applebloom said, looking like she had smelt overcooked muffins, "what's Dinky gotta to do with this?"

Then she and Scootaloo followed the pointing of a white hoof to the round fire-alarm thingy; within it, Dinky's magic blew and swirled like sprinkles in a constantly shaking snowglobe.

Of the widgets on the control panel, Applebloom had only been able to find the compass, at which she now pointed. "What the hay? Dinky! We're going in the wrong direction!"

"Dinky. Dinky. Dinky," Sweetie said, finally making her wince. "What are you doing? Equestria's the other way. Dinky? We are going the right way, right? Right?"

Dinky shook her head. Feeling the eyes of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, such wonderful ponies, upon her was too much. "I'm sorry, everypony. But I can't go home. Not like I am now."

Growling, Scootaloo stamped the floor. "Are you kidding me!?" she exploded. "After we came all this way to save you!?"

Sadly, Dinky turned away. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the window.

The ocean was parting violently before her. Seafoam was pitterpattering on the window, accumulating in bubbly white clusters. Puncturing those clusters were spits of ocean water, which was clearer than it had looked from way above; the Draconic Ocean was dotting the window like rain in a storm.

"Dinky," Sweetie whispered, "why?"

Hearing the hurt in her voice was worst of all. "I ran away from home."

"Why in the hay would you do that?" Applebloom said.

"Yeah," Scootaloo chipped in. "Don't you wanna see the cool aunt you never knew you had? Don't you wanna see the mommy you never thought was cool?" Applebloom shot Scootaloo a flat stare, while the horrible secret festered further within Dinky. "Anyway, I'm pretty sure they're all worried about you. I know my mom would be worried about me being gone for so long."

"I can't," Dinky said, shaking her head, "not like I am right now." She got tired of repeating herself. "None of Miss Twilight's books can teach me how to use my wind magic."

Applebloom raised a confused eyebrow. "But what does that have to do with running away from home?"

"I'll scare Miss Rarity again; I'll hurt Miss Applejack again. I'll just hurt everypony again, like I did to… her. Like I did to the bad pony. Aren't you scared of me?"

Dinky sure was, but she couldn't admit it, even to her friends.

"No way, dude," Scootaloo said, jumping and fluttering excitedly, "the way you handled that creep was awesome!"

"Not helping, Scootaloo," Applebloom said.

"Somepony in Haissan has to know how Alula used wind magic. If not him, then maybe somepony else can show me. Alula had a whole buncha books in his library. He told me about it."

"He?" Sweetie said, her voice rising to an appalled shriek. "You mean… that creep!? Why are you listening to him!? He's the one who foalnapped you! He's the one who foalnapped all of us! He tried to hurt Rarity! He tried to hurt you! Dinky, think of what your mommy would say if she saw you running off to Haissan all on your own like this!"

"I can't," Dinky said, feeling her face ready to burst. "I hurt Mom. I hurt Mom just like how Aunt Daring hurt Mom. And it's all because I can't control my wind magic. I don't know why I can't anymore. But I just can't! I can't! And nopony in Ponyville can teach me how! Not even the no-magic band can stop me anymore! If I don't go to Haissan, I'll just end up hurting more ponies!"

"But your friends!" Applebloom pleaded. "your family!" Her tone became softer, more hurt. "Our friends… Our families…"

Dinky tried to say something, only for it to come out as a mumble.

"What?" Sweetie said.

Tears cascaded down the periwinkle cheeks.

Then their forelegs were around her.

Seconds passed.

Minutes.

All the while a single thought hovered in Dinky's mind, like a fly she could not swat. No matter how they embraced her, they could never relieve her guilt she would be carrying along with her from that moment on. Nopony had asked to come on this trip. Silently swearing to one day find a way to bring her friends back to Equestria, Dinky withdrew.

Looking the Crusaders in the eyes, amber, violet, then green, was one of the hardest things she had had to do.

Looking away was even harder. "I'm sorry, everypony."

Lately, all she had done was hurt ponies and feel bad for it afterwards; it was getting easier and easier to do.

Outside, the skies were faltering. The light of mid-dusk shone upon the darkening scene.

Neither fanfare nor cheer came to christen the start of another crusade.

Chapter 9: Disquiet

One of the perks of living above a confectionery is that your room always smells like sugar. Is that why Pinky is always so hyper? She's a real enigma, even to her friends.

Wafer crisp crumbs percolated off the wall I was leaning on.

Night was approaching. It was starting to get dark enough to see my reflection in the window I was staring blankly at. I had gone up here with Dash to watch what could only be described as a descent into lunacy. In a twist of irony, Pinky was playing no part in that descent; in fact, it almost seemed like she was trying to prevent it.

I didn't realize I had missed lunch.

"C'mon, c'mon… curiouser… and curiouser…!"

Whatever Twilight Sparkle was doing, it looked painful. Even from my vantage point, which was a few feet away, I could see the sweat squeezing out her pores. I was watching with mild interest bordering on indifference. I saw the reflection of her face as she pushed, and it was red with strain. Her neck was rigid, taut with effort; looking at her, you'd think it was her turn to push Whinnyphus's boulder up that proverbial mountain.

It wasn't a boulder she was pushing, though; more like a looking-glass, to borrow from Mister Carol.

Pinky popped up behind the reflective oval. "I'm tellin' you, Twi. It's not gonna work this time."

"But why… ever… not!"

"I dunno," Pinky mumble-said, shrugging. "Something or somepony doesn't want us coming in, I think. I mean, you wouldn't want somepony coming in when you're using the bathroom, right?"

But Pinky remained in her peripheral vision, sadly ignored.

Twilight continued to push, red webbing her eyes, her grunts of effort devolving into groans of frustration.

When a soft whine came beside me, I noticed my hindleg being hugged. Stooping onto my knee, I looped my foreleg around the soft bouncy pink mane of Fluttershy and pulled her closer.

I flipped a bang off my face.

We watched Twilight collapse onto her haunches, defeated; the object of her frustration showed the bags in her eyes.

"Aww…" said Pinky, walking into view, her gait slow and bereft of that energy that I had taken for granted. Sitting beside poor tired Twilight, Pinky let her fall into her lap. Pinky began to brush the highlights in Twilight's hair with her hoof.

I would have chastised the rest of Twilight's friends for not joining in. But they really weren't doing much better.

Apples lacked that distinct scent of country as she paced past us; her mane was wild with stress and worry. If Fussy was doing any better, she would have made a motherly fuss about it. But she was also pacing, her brow furrowed, her nervous mutters sweeping our way before she followed Apples.

Dash was more distant; she was leaning on a windowsill, seeming to wait for the sun to set. I could only imagine the lifelessness in her unseeing fuchsia pupils. Light beams passed her, like dim searchlights that she was finding harder and harder to care about. It was getting steadily more orange, darker still as the anxious moments whiled away. The soft glow of dusk permeated the room; it would have been comforting, maybe even breathtaking.

Those twins I helped rescue a while back were crying downstairs. Their parents, the landlord and the landlady, were trying and failing to calm them. Were they not so pre-occupied, they probably would have come upstairs to ask Dash to stop tapping the floor. Or maybe they just pitied us too much to. Personally, I had gotten used to the knocking. And the wails of the not-so-missing foals.

Apples finally had it. "Dagnabbit," she shouted, red in the face. "What is that hot-dang Celestia thinkin', keepin' us all cooped up in here?"

A flash and a bang announced Twilight teleporting in front of her.

"Applejack," she said like a schoolteacher. "Stop. You mustn't speak ill of Princess Celestia like that."

She was pointing a hoof in Apples' face.

A thousand bits said the aforementioned hoof would soon be bitten off.

When instead Apples snorted, Twilight withdrew it, stumbling away, almost falling backwards.

Until I caught her backside in my wing.

Noticing me, she faced Apples and got back on her feet.

"Y'all think it's so easy, don't'cha?" Apples went on, stalking forward. "Your family is home, safe and sound. While my sweet lil' Applebloom's still out there, 'lone and scared! No, even worse; she's with that filthy long-snout varmint. Who knows what he's plottin' to do with her? By now I reckon he's draggin' her all the way to hot foreign desert country while she's a-kickin' and a-screamin' wantin' to go back home! And you! All y'all can worry about is disrespecting that high and mighty hero of yours, what by the way, ain't done nothin' to git the lil' ones back!"

She stamped to punctuate the end of her diatribe.

Twilight's move.

Aghast, Twilight was swiveling her head from side to side in disbelief. Something seemed to be stuck in her throat. "Excuse me!" she said, finally, throwing the words at Apples. "But I'll have you know Princess Celestia has already sent an airship to go and rescue them."

Dash sighed; without looking away from the window, she responded. "That was a day ago, Twi."

"Rainbow Dash!" Twilight scolded. Dash did not flinch at being addressed thus; nor did this seem relevant to Twilight. "In case you've forgotten, airships typically take a day to get from here to as far as Saddle Arabia. If you are expecting a prompt rescue, then I must remind you that even Her Royal Majesty has her limits."

An appalled snort came to answer her.

"Then why," Fussy began, "why hasn't she gone to rescue them personally? Surely, nothing more could be precious than the lives of four lost foals, foalnapped by a dangerous rogue!" She stamped her hoof in a dignified manner that only thinly concealed her anger. Her eyelids were lowered; below them she surveyed Twilight. "I, for one, would like to know why she insists upon proceeding with the Summer Sun Celebration, when such a crisis weighs so heavily upon us now!"

In quick succession she stomped twice more, a demand to Twilight for a swift response.

When it came, it was anything but swift; the seconds that had preceded were uncomfortable, to say the least. "It is an age-old celebration, Rarity!" Twilight said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Fussy raised a painted eyebrow ominously. "Oh, truly? Truly? Then perhaps you ought to explain why it's come up on such short notice, hm? Why, I haven't even gotten a chance to roll out my spring line yet!"

Apples raised her own eyebrow. "Spring line?"

"Why, yes," Fussy said, "I'm so very flattered you asked, Applejack, but as it so happens, we've much more pressing concerns than that at the moment."

I rolled my eyes while Twilight sighed.

"I admit," she said, "the Summer Sun Celebration coming so soon was unanticipated. And true, it is a bit peculiar, but — "

Cracks spread from where Apples's hoof kissed the wooden panels of the floor. "But nothin'! There's somethin' fishy goin' on 'round here. Y'all just don't wanna admit it!" she said, this time pointing her hoof in Twilight's face.

This time, Twilight really did fall backwards, this time into Fluttershy's winged grasp.

I had leapt in between Twilight and Apples, using my metal wing to push the latter back; she was growling at it. "Look," I said firmly to her. "Look at yourselves."

I swept my eyes over the room.

Apples was silently defiant.

Fussy caught my eye; she was not glaring.

For the first time in hours, Dash turned away from the window, and now she was shooting me an expressionless look.

Stupidly, I hadn't even realized that they were silently hinting at something of mine, something I had tried to keep hidden for so long. It was anger, which had gone unnoticed and unheeded, concealed behind that cool distant façade that I had worked for years to build up and maintain.

Until then.

Relaxing, Apples noticed and approached; she was about to lay a concerned hoof on my shoulder. "Y'all doin' alright there, pardner?"

Slapping the hoof away, I pointed mine at her. "I only just recently found out I had a niece," I hissed at her. She backed away. Good. "I just recently realized how much I love her. And she was the one that Haissanian was after. If anypony in the room should be scared and Celestia-knows-what-else right now, it's me."

Everypony cleared a wide berth for me. Again, good.

I was a lot of things at the moment.

Scared.

Confused.

Pissed.

I didn't realize I had been panting; the buzzing in my head had arrested my senses.

"Um, Miss Daring?" somepony said.

Who, you ask? Don't know, don't care.

Swatting away whoever it was, I let my bangs shadow my eyes. "I only just reunited with that klutz of a mailmare, Applejack. I only just realized how much I had taken her for granted! I had thought I could just waltz into Pony Town any time I like, and see her. But I was wrong; she didn't want me back. And just when I thought I did have her back for good, POOF! SHE'S GONE! JUST LIKE THAT!" I blew a cold bitter breath. "And I'm not even sure if she'll even be right when she wakes up — if she wakes up! Last time, it took an alicorn's love to put her right again. And last time I checked, there aren't any alicorns loving her enough to bother fixing her. The worst part is, I know exactly how Dinky feels. Scared. Alone. Guilty. Like I couldn't live with myself. Like all I did anymore was hurt everypony I cared about. It's my fault that little scamp went off. I should have talked to her more. I should have spoken to her about the important stuff. But I was too ashamed; I still couldn't shake off the guilt. I ruined my sister's life. She healed. But from that moment onwards, she was cursed, and by me, no less, her own sister! Everyday, she and I walk around in the same house, pretending it didn't happen. But I know she hates me. I know I sure do." A sigh chilled my throat. "I should have spoken to that kid about what I did eight years ago. Maybe then, she would have understood. Maybe then, she wouldn't have run off like the horrible excuse for a sister I am!"

I won't sugarcube what happened after I collapsed onto my knees.

I cried. I cried like a foal in diapers. Eight years of pretending I could live with myself, when really I couldn't. Not until I was given the courage to was I finally able to admit it.

I shuddered.

That's when Fluttershy looped her foreleg around my frazzled monochrome mane to pull me closer to her. And I breathed. My shoulder relaxed, now that the weight of Twilight's head was on it. Her locks were neat and orderly; they also sort of itched. The weight of a white hoof was on the shoulder opposite of her. "Darling, I mean, Daring," Rarity said close to my ear. I felt like a little filly again; I missed my dad.

The looks Dash and Applejack were casting me were solicitous and tearful. Even though they couldn't show it, I knew they meant to, and that meant all the world to me.

Somepony was hugging my stomach tight; my chin was really begging for a scratch, since the mane beneath it was so frizzy.

The sun was still setting after I was done.

I stood up to find all their eyes on me. My composure was returning; I felt myself returning to my tough self again. For a moment, I was ready to announce that I was going to return with the foals singlehoofedly, like in a previous life. But I already knew that was impossible. So did they; I wasn't too broken up about it.

I spoke to Twilight. "There isn't any chance," I said, clearing my throat to let the surface of coolness and mellow relayer itself over my voice, "there isn't any chance you could get that dragon butler of yours to send a missive to Princess Celestia, is there?"

It was a long shot, but maybe Princess Celestia could work miracles just as well as her dead sultan brother.

"I'm sorry, Daring. But Spike hasn't been able to get a reply from the Princess for the past couple of days."

"Still think somethin' ain't quite right, Twi?" asked Applejack, cocking her head. "Somethin's goin' on, and I sure don' like it."

"Well, duh, AJ," Dash said, rolling her eyes; she hovered close to Applejack's face. "Missing foals. Have you been paying attention?"

Pushing her away, Applejack said, "'Course I have. But I just can't shake the feelin'. First, the new batch of invitations, then the trains, and then the guards. I'm tellin' ya, Dash. Something ain't quite right!"

"There has to be some reason why we're not being allowed out of town," I said; I had the feeling that I was the only pony in the room brave enough to voice that fact.

"For our own protection obviously," said Twilight.

"Well, some job they did," Dash said. "They didn't even show until after the foals got napped."

Applejack and Rarity nodded their assent.

"It is strange," I said, rubbing my chin. "But that isn't the important part."

"Hm, I concur, Miss Do," Rarity said, stepping forward; giving an offended scoff, she pointed pleadingly out the window. "Why, not even my seductress act had any effect on those brutes! No. No. Apparently I wasn't resplendent enough for them." She gave a dignified flick of her mane, which was still bouncing when she continued. "All they seemed concerned about was my Cutie Mark." Twilight shot her an exasperated stare. So did Applejack. So did Dash. So did I. She was walking towards the window I had been staring out of. "What?" she whined, pulling it open. "It's getting a bit stuffy in here, do you disagree?"

I pounded one forehoof over the other. "She's right, though," I said, regaining their attention, "there are too many pegasi to rush past, even if I did feel like going solo again. Every corner of Pony Town is being watched."

Nopony bothered correcting me.

I was walking towards Rarity, or rather, towards the window she had pulled open.

I felt everypony's eyes on me as I peered outside.

A halo of fuzzy shadows was looming over town, like agents of some dark god. They were just guards from the castle, but they seemed to project that ominous air all the same. The air was spiked with anxiety; it was hardly the happy friendly town Ditzy had first welcomed me to. Right now, that town seemed like a half-forgotten dream.

After I poked my head back in, I laughed.

…What?

It's not like I found the situation funny; it was more ironic, if anything. The first day I had gone to Pony Town, I couldn't wait to leave. The first day I had moved in, I never wanted to leave. Now, on the one day I did want to leave, I wasn't able to.

Luckily, everypony in the room knew I wasn't being serious.

I yawned.

"Come now, darling," said Rarity, "now is hardly the time for such uncouth behavior, I should think."

I smacked my lips. "Sorry," I said, her pompous exasperation blurring in my vision. "I couldn't sleep last night. Nightmares."

"Well," said Applejack, "ya ain't the only one, Miss Adventurer."

"I couldn't sleep, like, at all," said Dash, "couldn't stop thinking about poor Scootaloo."

Rarity whimpered, said nothing, and hid her face.

Fluttering over, Fluttershy put a wing around her and walked her over elsewhere.

It was true, though, what I said.

The night before, I kept having the same dream of the day Dinky escaped. It kept repeating, over and over again, torturing me by reminding me how helpless I was. On each replay, I was in the exact same place: by the doorway, frozen. I wasn't able to look up in any of the loops; either my dream-neck was determined to not bend that way, or I was afraid of what I'd see. I did remember trying to stop Dinky from leaving the dream-library. I don't know; maybe I wanted to live a life where Dinky was still here, even if that life wasn't real. But no matter how much I tried, Dinky always seemed to phase right through my hopeful forelegs like I was a ghost. Not to sound entitled, but I wished somepony had been there to comfort me through it all.

I've had to fill Ditzy's horseshoes more and more lately. I wasn't doing a very good job at it.

I found myself leaning against that same wall again.

My dull fuchsia gaze rested on the slant of the same open window.

Tension pulled at everypony's nerves. The Elements of Harmony were in disharmony lately. Foals were missing, including my favorite niece. I didn't know if I'd ever get to see my favorite sister again. I had never thought I'd be alone so soon.

I never did bother to ask what Twilight and Pinky were doing with that mirror. Not like it mattered anyway.

My forelegs were recrossed.

I closed my eyes, hoping to not return to that same nightmare from the night before.

My bangs swayed.

And I blew a wistful sigh. "Please wake up, Sis."

Chapter 11: To Never Look Back

"Woo!"

Purple hair flickered across the side of her scalp; her cheeks were bouncing against the wind's steady rush. Magic was buzzing around her wings like a swarm of green fireflies, twin in hue and hum with those of the white nub of a unicorn horn. Fuchsia eyes squinted forward, orange wings at the ready.

Waiting half a mile ahead was a ring of glittering green smoke.

A second passed, then Scootaloo flapped. "Woo!"

Stardust exploded from her feathers.

The increase in speed caused the surroundings below to be lost in a gigantic mess of blurs, rather like the ruined masterpiece of a clumsy watercolor painter. The air was whistling to nearly a screech again. Sucking it in was a filly with puffed-up cheeks of shiny periwinkle, which didn't stop puffing up until after a few more seconds…

She spat forth a wad of mushy cloud, which was then seized by grassy-green magic to be stretched and shaped. And then it was another ring of smoke, though not as wide as its predecessor; not yet. The magic worked its magic. Like a rubbery tube raft, the ring inflated to a size big enough to fit wrap the trunk of the Golden Oak Library. Four especially bright auras gave finalizing tugs on equidistant points of the ring; then it was taut; it was being held wide open.

It was ready.

Fire burnt inside the fuchsia of Scootaloo's eyes; so was she.

She unfolded her magic-infused wings, and waited.

"Are y'all sure we should be this high?" Applebloom asked over the renewed whoops of a certain overexcited pegasus.

Now that the group were about half a mile above ground, they could feel more of the sun's temper, which was way more intense than it had been days ago.

The group was aboard a raft of clouds; leaning over the railing of the airborne flotation device was Scootaloo. On her left was Sweetie, and on her right were Dinky and Applebloom.

Coming out of her whooping, Scootaloo spoke. "Oh, relax, Applebloom. We're travelling, like, right over the River Pon. Haven't you seen how wide that thing is?"

"Yeah, but is it safe?"

But then Applebloom winced, the sounds of Scootaloo's whooping a bit too much for her ears.

"I saw a pony going canoeing over it before we left," Dinky informed her.

"Yeah!" Scootaloo said, probably not in affirmation of Dinky's statement, since she had momentarily let go of the raft to pump her hooves shamelessly into the air. She clutched on again. "Also, aren't you supposed to be steering this thing, or something? Woo!"

Applebloom blew a stray hair out of her face. "I guess. But I can't do much in the way of steerin' sandwiched in the middle of here, just sayin'."

"Just keep an eye out for where we're going," Dinky said. "We gotta make sure we're on the right track."

"Yeah," Sweetie added, "we just gotta follow the River Pon, and we'll be there."

Applebloom snorted. "Y'all get the fun jobs," she grumbled, looking like she was in half a mind to stubbornly cross her forelegs.

Dinky felt bad for Applebloom, assigning her a navigational role. But that was just how it was. And it was an important role, too, Dinky had assured her. "Yeah, I know," Applebloom had griped; she wasn't happy about it all the same.

"And it's not like you can help with propulsion," Sweetie had chimed in.

Sweetie was in charge of amplifying the innate magic in the wings of a pegasus so that they would conduct the energy of the acceleration rings that they passed through. This wouldn't have been a necessary measure for a normal pegasus, let alone an alicorn, for which the spell was originally designed.

Forests enclosed the river, wide and winding like the long-abandoned watery skin of some great serpent of myth. Woods upon woods stretched as far as the eye could see, extending to as far as the horizon and curving into it. From the horizon, outlines peeked out. As of then, they were vague, barely more than hot daydreams of the sun. Their hue blended in too well with the blue of the sky. Minutes passed, then their colors were becoming denser: purple and grey. Taller and taller they rose, until the snow-capped peaks finally faded into view.

Of those peaks, only one pair had water slipping in between them.

Applebloom pointed.

She, her Crusaders, and Dinky passed through.

Barely a second later, she lost sight of the river, which had taken a sharp bend. The group started to panic; Dinky called for everypony to stop. Scootaloo wrinkled her nose. "Why?" she said while Sweetie slapped her own face. Not long after, Applebloom managed to find her bearings; thereafter, Dinky sent an acceleration ring forth, one of many that would arc them gradually back on track.

As the river was nearer her side, Dinky leaned her weight to steer the raft; all the while, she continued to pump out magical boosts of speed. A chorus of "Whoa's" followed; the change in direction forced the group to hang onto the fringes more closely than ever. It was by far the scariest part of the trip. There was no river below to cushion anypony's fall; just woods and cottages interspersed throughout. Either slowing down or turning back would ensure a fatal loss in momentum.

The raft was still going.

It was still lopsiding; and then it wasn't.

Dinky breathed in-sync with the Crusaders. They finally made it back.

But it wasn't over; Dinky shot another acceleration ring, and Scootaloo unfolded her wings.

Applebloom and Sweetie Belle breathed their awe.

It was as though the gentle waters had been waiting to welcome them back. The sound of their flow returned to them before the shine and ripple of its surface. The more Dinky realigned her trajectory with it, the more it looked like some unfortunate pony had dropped a million diamonds in the water; the ghost of a rainbow was circling it rather possessively, continuing to do so as the scintillations travelled along the currents, seeming to chase the Crusaders and their former honorary member. Under them the glimmers loomed, teasingly like in a game of tag.

Now that the river was straightening, Dinky felt it safe to conjure an acceleration ring denser than the rest.

When Scootaloo flapped through it, she whooped even harder, completely oblivious to how flustered her fellow Crusaders were.

"My bow!"

"My curls!"

Now loosened from its binds, the red mane streamed fast behind. It flowed, it curved and careened, wild, fast and free. And then it scattered into countless strands; nopony would have thought that so much hair was hidden by the usual fastenings. Blowing one strand of hair out of her mouth was the yellow filly Dinky had trouble recognizing as Applebloom.

The screech of the air currents bounced the violet-fuchsia hairs to and fro, and over again. Try as they did, the hairs could only struggle to return to a semblance of their original curly form. Cowlicks were popping loose, giving her mane a frayed look. Unlike Applebloom, who was looking like she was one with nature, Sweetie Belle looked like she was just having a bad mane day.

A city might have passed below. It might have been Itaily. Nopony knew, and at the speeds they were going, nopony could afford to turn away from her respective role for even a second. Nopony could afford to notice if the air was getting thinner or drier. Nopony could afford to glean for any sign that they were nearing their destination…

The sun reached five after noon earlier than usual.

The group were passing a rather memorable part of the river.

Memories of it were returning to Dinky. They were old memories, memories of her aunt Daring crash-landing in her life, memories of forming the Taken Twin Trackers with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, memories of being led by a unicorn thief in more ways than one, memories of reuniting with her mom, her aunt, and Rainbow Dash in a foreign land, and memories of her final confrontation with Alula.

Her canoe trip down the river might have crashed just yesterday.

The feeling was disorienting to Dinky.

The wooded river disappeared from sight.

At that point in their trip, she no longer felt the need to accelerate the raft; the residual boosts in speed were already enough for the last leg of the journey. Their surroundings were by no means a mess of blurs. But they were still going relatively fast by pegasus standards.

"There, there!" Applebloom said, pointing. "I see it. I see it!"

Silencing her horn with a nod, Sweetie Belle looked; folding her wings, so did Scootaloo.

It was coming slowly into view.

It was a great grey round thing. It was bored in the middle. It was metal with circular depressions about its frame. It was a giant horseshoe-shaped gate to the now-ruined Palace of Haissan: The Wailing Gate. Before some moons ago, winds would usually howl out of it to bar all but the rightful heir to Haissan. But since then, it had remained dormant. Nopony seemed to be there; Dinky wondered if it was considered sacred ground, or if the Haissanians were just too afraid that it might go on without warning. Many things in the world were a mystery; the construct of an alicorn from another world was surely one of them.

Between blushes of green, the River Pon was leading the group straight to it. Dinky did not follow, and the Crusaders did not object.

It was getting less and less green around them.

Sand was overtaking the landscape.

Soon, everywhere around them was sand. Dunes of it were rolling, visible by the gold of their wink and the caramel of their shadows; one of them looked almost sad before a merciful swirl of wind assimilated it into a swirl of grains. Waves of heat were rippling throughout the air, making Dinky roll her tongue out. It was sweltering more than the last time. That she was once more entering the land united by Alula was unbelievable. The Stirropean coast suddenly seemed like a far-off dream; that she had gone from there all the way to a landlocked country in just a few hours was even more unbelievable. Most unbelievable of all was that her best friends in the world, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had stuck with her through it all, and just for her. She did not deserve them…

The Desert Garden of Haissan was approaching and fast. Curtains of sand were thinning in welcome. The palace, the city and the walls blended in with the heat distortions. The walls stood tall, the city taller still. The palace was no longer there to stand above it all; it had once been a majestic rose that testified to the power of the Alicorn of Wind. But now, it was as wilted as its diligent steward. The crenellations of the walls helped shelter everything within from enemies, natural and equine.

"What is it, Sweetie Belle?" Applebloom asked.

Sweetie shook her head as though to shoo a fly. "I thought I saw a pony spotting us from up there," she answered, pointing to a battlement.

If she had seen one, Dinky certainly couldn't see them now.

"Musta been the heat, I reckon," Applebloom said wisely, "playin' tricks on our eyes."

Green patches hugged the city like shrubs cordoning a garden. The fruit of those shrubs were the palm trees, which provided shelter and the most oblong coconuts Dinky had ever seen in her life. The trees also provided shade, beneath which ponds sat cozily, miraculously unparched. Islands of grass leaked out from those ponds; but those islands petered out and withered into the harshness of the sand.

The cloud-raft was slanting towards the ground, slowing down all the while.

And then it slid to a halt before the fortress city's entrance.

They had made it.

A parade of sand heralded the stamp of little hooves: yellow, orange, then white and periwinkle.

Sucking in between her teeth, Dinky lifted her hoof; the sting of sand beneath it was a bit much. So she followed the Crusaders onto pavement that transpired to be only slightly more tolerable.

Applebloom was trying to fasten her hair as best as she could without any fastenings. Sweetie Belle's hair refused to curl into place no matter how much her magic commanded it. Groaning, the two gave up and joined Dinky and Scootaloo nearer the entrance.

The entrance was a pair of silver doors so tall that Dinky couldn't see the top of it no matter how far up she craned her neck. But she could hear angry tumult coming from the other side: yelling, cannonfire, the rage of fire, pegasus-conjured gusts, horn-fire, and a mix of chaotic violent sounds that didn't mean anything to her yet.

"Y'all think we should have entered in through the Wailing Gate?" Applebloom asked the group at large.

"That leads straight into the palace, remember?" Sweetie reminded her. "Last time we were there, it got destroyed."

"Shouldn't we be sneaking in, though?" Scootaloo suggested, twirling her hoof, "y'know, in case there are any unfriendly ponies around? The last time we were here…"

"Last time we were here," said Dinky, "we found out that I'm the rightful heir to Haissan. All I have to do is cast my magic, and they'll lead us right to an airship that you can take back home."

The Crusaders paused to let the sound of fighting fill the air. "Are you sure?" Sweetie asked. "They aren't sounding like they're in the mood to talk."

"And," Scootaloo added, "it was sort of our fault that they're having this whole civil war to begin with."

"Mmhm."

"So you girls would like it better if we snuck around to scramble for an airship, risk getting caught and who knows what else?" Dinky asked.

Sweetie kicked the ground and looked off to the side. "You don't have to say it like that."

Dinky hadn't meant to; that's just how things were. They had to get back to Equestria somehow. Haissan had airships. The submarine she had piloted had been halfway out of fuel the moment it struck the coast. By then, her mind had already been made up about what she had to do.

Now she was standing here in front of Haissan, with no other safe way in but her horn, which she ignited.

She galloped to a frame of the door, pointed her horn up, and fired.

The wind orb was grazing along the height of the hall like a train on tracks.

Wall and wind parted; the latter exploded.

The ensuing flare was brilliant, and more importantly, loud. Sparks were splitting apart from the whole in clusters, which split further apart into a recursive chain of howls and windy pops. It was enough to enrapture the fortress city into silence.

It had worked.

Dinky collapsed, a smile wandering onto her face; she realized she had been doing that a lot lately.

"Dinky!"

The Crusaders loomed over her, their faces forming a copse over her weary form. Magic buzzed at her horn, but fizzed out; this wasn't her best moment.

"Ah, it seems you have made it to Haissan, young Sultan."

"You again!" Scootaloo growled at something overhead. "What in the hay do you want with our friend, creep!?"

"Peace, foal. I desire only peace for my homeland."

Applebloom stomped angrily. "Lies!"

"Hmph," the Regent said, touching down as lightly as a feather. "We are wasting time in the Sun Tyrant's all-seeing gaze. Come!"

A trio of pegasi landed. An order was given; a tripled echo of assent answered it.

"Hey, lemme go. I said lemme go, ya filthy — !"

Dinky heard Scootaloo and the other Crusaders get carried off.

Then she felt herself being hoisted onto the back of the Regent. One of his feathers molted; he too was off. Her forelegs were tied over his neck, not unlike when Ditzy was flying Dinky in their younger days.

The Regent was ascending up a sharp angle.

"Your friends are being taken to my manse," he said, his voice rumbling beneath her underbelly.

Moaning, Dinky slid slightly down; a position that the Regent corrected.

His back arched slightly; Dinky imagined herself being flown in a wide arc over the wall. Once the arc terminated, she heard a chorus of gasps and mutters below.

"I imagine the trip has sapped you of your strength, young one. Why, you do not even seem to have the strength to retort."

It was by way of a weak moan that Dinky retorted. Her ears were still aching; the awed gasps were overwhelming her senses. If she ever got to see her aunt Daring again, Dinky would have to ask how she never got tired of it. Suddenly, she regretted all the conversations they never had together.

"Do you hear them? They rejoice at your coming, young Sultan. You do not see it, but they have set their arms aside to bow to you. In time, you will see how truly important you are to them."

The Regent flew through a field of smoke pillars. Dinky could tell he didn't like it either, judging by the way he slithered fast around them in mid-air. The smell of ash and burning metal was harsh.

The Regent made it past that sector of the city and its acrid smells.

No matter where he flew, though, the smell of grief and desperation would follow.

The city had all but fallen silent by the time he arrived.

Arcing sharply up, he landed. "But, ah," he said while Dinky mentally told him to shut up, "let us dispense with the small talk; for now, we have arrived."

A pair of doors groaned open, sounding like they were barely smaller than the city gates.

Host and guest were welcomed in with a cool sigh.

That coolness stayed with Dinky as she was being carried inside. She was navigated through the manse, through what she imagined was a spiral staircase, and into a room, whose bed she was deposited in. An order was given, and to her surprise, it was in Ponish. "You. You shall come with me. You shall call for your medic unless you wish to see the young one's state deteriorate further."

Somepony, a stallion, was snarling. He asked what the Regent had done to Dinky.

"She merely collapsed in the heat, Equestrian. Surely, this much should be obvious? Now come. Let us fetch your medic; then we may negotiate the release of your soldiers, and more importantly, your repair crew, Admiral."

Growling, the stallion hung his head and let himself be led out like an obedient dog.

Their hoofsteps died in the muffle of the hallway.

It was quiet.

The bed was soft.

Not a lot of light was let in through the bedside window. But there was just enough that Dinky felt her hindhoof heat up in the sun; it squirmed.

Judging by the way the air felt, Dinky imagined a room about twice as big as her room back home. "Home…" she croaked.

A pair of ponies came by.

They weren't exactly the same pair as before.

One of them was the admiral stallion; the other grazed a horn upon hers, causing her to wince. According to the medic, Dinky had overexhausted her horn a bit; she would be unable to use it for about a day. Dinky was also subjected to a physical examination. When her bangs were lifted, her forehead was felt; after which it was concluded that the heat really had taken a toll on her. After that remark, she was treated for wounds and told to wait for the ointment to settle.

Dinky did as was asked of her.

Opening her eyes, she leapt off the bed, used her hoof to seize a white hooftowel, and wipe her face with it.

She tried to leave, only for the admiral and medic to stop her. According to them, the Regent had plans for her in the dining hall. So apprehensively, Dinky followed them downstairs. Along the way, she had been told that the three friends she had come here with had been tended to as well. That put her at ease; but her peace of mind wasn't going to last very long, to say the least.

"Ah, so good of you to make it, young Sultan. I must say: I am impressed that you have managed to make it this far on your magic alone. It should go without saying that Your Late Father would be most proud."

Dinky couldn't care less about what Alula would think of her.

All the windows were curtained. The dining hall was long and cast in a sharp red light, thanks to the lanterns that hung from the walls on either side. A chandelier hung above the dining table, which was set with a silky white cloth. The table was long enough to seat twenty ponies at once. At the moment, though, only four chairs were occupied: the one at the head of the table, and three on the Regent's immediate left.

Neither Dinky nor her escorts moved.

"In my manse, Admiral," the Regent said over the pyramid of his hooves, "you bow."

Then the admiral bowed; so did the medic. Dinky remained standing.

"Good, good," the Regent said softly. "Now, then. You will stay here for our negotiations. You may feel free to partake in the feast to come. You are by no means obligated, of course."

Rising from their bows, the captain and his medic seated themselves almost opposite the Crusaders.

Without being ordered to, Dinky pulled out a chair. She lugged it across the room, behind the backs of the Crusaders, and around Applebloom's hair. The Crusaders scooched to their left. Sliding the chair in, Dinky sat, crossed her forelegs, and waited. Wordlessly, she glanced an apology at the Crusaders.

Bowls were brought, laden with carrot stew mixed in with a dull brown plant that might have smelt sharp at one point. Dinky's mind wandered to Golden Harvest, and how her carrot-based dishes never looked as foul as the muck beneath her chin. Rightfully, nopony dug in. Dinky was wondering if the Regent himself would.

"So, young Sultan," he began softly. "You may be wondering what is going on here."

The danger in his voice was thinly concealed; Dinky wasn't afraid.

"Yes," she answered tonelessly.

The bowls of carrot stew continued to remain untouched. The diners' eyes were upon the master of the manse, who was still quietly studying Dinky.

It was quiet for too long.

Finally, the Regent unfolded his hooves to gesture to the captain and the medic.

"You have met, of course," he stated. "You may have also seen my ship explode. I did that, did you know? It was I who gave the order to destroy my ship." His tone was both bitter and proud. "The surprise overtook the Equestrians, too, long enough for me to steal theirs, Dinky Doo."

Dinky Doo felt sick. The way the Regent said her name always sent tingles up her spine, and this time was no different. The deepness, the foreign roll of the tongue uneased her.

Everypony turned to where the dining table was rattled.

"I'm sorry," Scootaloo said, her hooves still pressed on it. "But that's just crazy, mister. How in Celestia's name — " The Regent's gaze darkened. "You're telling us that you and that tiny pit crew of yours defeated an entire squadron of Equestrian soldiers? That's nuts!"

The Regent hummed at her, then faced Dinky. "Your friend," he said, "she is most audacious. It is for your benefit alone, young Sultan, that I shall reveal the other half of the secret to my success. It is true; the Equestrian airship soldiers outnumbered us by three. How, then, did I defeat them? You recall, Dinky Doo, that my own forces consisted, for the most part, of pegasi, yes? It is not a well-guarded secret that the late Sultan Al-Qafzah al-Ula once ruled us. Nor is it much of a secret that we Haissanian pegasi are therefore vastly more adept at wind manipulation than Equestrian pegasi. You Equestrians… you put so much stock in forgetting each other's differences, I fear, that you forget to recognize what makes you unique."

"I'm sorry, but no," Scootaloo said.

Applebloom was shaking her head. "That just ain't true."

"Your friends… young Sultan," he continued, ignoring them, "how boisterous they can be. But we must make the most of what little daylight the Sun Tyrant deigns to spare us…"

The hiss of his syllable was elongated for several seconds before it felt appropriate to speak again.

"Her name's Princess Celestia," Applebloom said, "and she ain't no tyrant!"

"But enough intrusions, young Sultan," he continued, absently stirring his soup. "Let us discuss the swift release of your friends."

That took Dinky by surprise.

"Come now," he snapped, suddenly impatient. "Do not think I have done all this for evil's sake."

"Mister," Scootaloo piped up, pointing, "you got a goatee for Celestia's sake. You're even stroking it now! How are you not evil!"

The Regent minded the soup for a little, a hoof beneath his chin. "I will issue no threats," he said casually, "for now. It is far too early in our meal for that, no?"

"Shut up."

The Crusaders' jaws dropped.

"Oh? You wish to speak now?"

Dinky seriously hated everything about the Regent. She hated him for foalnapping her and her friends to Haissan. She hated that he was such a necessary evil for her right now. She hated his stupid scaly face. Most of all, she seriously hated the way he spoke. It was too breathy, too foreign. She would talk just to get him to stop. So she stirred around in her memory for a bit before settling on something simple, yet baffling.

"What I want to know is: how did you teleport out of Ponyville the day you ambushed us? You're a pegasus, not a unicorn. It makes no sense."

"The magic carpet," he droned. "I was once a maintainer of His Majesty's royal artifact chamber. Surely, you have heard of it?"

"I have."

"Surely, you know what makes the magic carpet so magical?"

"It imbibes and immortalizes any spell cast on it," Sweetie Belle answered.

She cupped her mouth, apologetic at Dinky and surprised at herself.

Also surprised at her was the Regent, who shot her an offended glance before returning his attention to Dinky.

"After the royal palace was sadly left in ruin," he continued, calculated anger staining his voice, "I set out to recover it. To my dissatisfaction, all we could retrieve of His Royal Majesty's most prized possession were but strands and half-braids. Somepony had already ripped it out; somepony had already stolen it. Do you know which of the thieving Doo Sisters that may have been?"

"They're the 'Sisters Doo'," Dinky snapped, growling her own anger, "and they're not thieves."

The Regent was shaking his head in clear disagreement.

"In any case, young Sultan, I have spoken for much too long."

He abandoned the spoon.

"It is your turn to speak," he said, touching his hooves together. "What would you like me to do?"

"I want my friends to leave," Dinky said, matching his calm with a determined glare. "I want the Equestrian airship crew to take them home to Equestria. All of them are going home, Regent."

The Regent raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what will you give me in return?"

"Me, duh."

A chorus of gasps followed.

The scaly hooves were parting to reveal a steely smile. "Excellent. I see the time these foul Equestrians — " "Stop calling them that." " — have given you has allowed you to come to the only correct conclusion, Dinky Doo."

The Regent was holding out a hoof, which Dinky eyed as though it were the open mouth of a snake.

When she leered at him, he cocked an eyebrow.

After tapping his hoof, Dinky drew hers back quickly.

"Rest assured," the Regent said, business-like, "your time here shall not be for naught, unlike that backwater swamp that you once called home. In time, you shall become as great an aeromancer as He once was. I anticipate it will take us no more than two generations for you to attain the greatness we all once admired in Him. 'Tis a joyous day for us all, I think! We rejoice, for this is the dawn of eras upon eras of prosperity yet to come."

He clapped twice.

Behind the Regent was a chamber whence emerged a unicorn. The aura at the tip of her horn blended in with the lighting fixtures. It was the same aura that had encapsulated Dinky back aboard the Haissanian airship and carted her into the submarine. She couldn't exactly forget the teleportation flash that enabled the Regent's miraculous escape from Carousel Square, either. Orders were barked the unicorn's way; bowing low to him, she swept past the admiral and the medic to the doorway. There, she waited.

"You and your crew are free to go," the Regent droned in the general direction of the Equestrian airship crew. "You will rejoin your crew at my empty docking bay. If you attempt to rescue Dinky Doo, who has most generously surrendered herself in exchange for your safety, my forces shall not let you leave. Do be mindful, though, that I have no control over the forces my fellow regents command. As a courtesy, I shall command my forces to hold them at bay once you inform me that you are ready to leave." He paused, seeming to notice the captain and the medic sitting at the dinner table for the first time since they arrived. At them he curled his nostril. "Now get out. All of you," he said, sweeping his disgust over the Crusaders. "Get out of my sight. You Equestrians sicken me. As for you, young Sultan, I must remind you that we have a funeral to attend you at noon tomorrow. Stay here, for we must rehearse what must be done, yes?"

"No!" said Dinky, leaping onto the carpet and stamping it over again. "No, no, no! This is the last night I'm going to get to spend with my friends! Ever! I'm not going to waste it on a creep like you!"

She turned, her mullet slapping the side of her neck as she strutted out of the room, head held up high.

The Crusaders and the two members of the airship crew were waiting for her in the hallway.

As she walked through it, the strobe lights blinked on, white and bright; the impending night had necessitated it.

"That creep!" Sweetie shrieked once a few floors and more than a few halls separated the group from the dinner table. "I say we just take Dinky and get as far away from here the first chance we get."

"Mmhm," said Applebloom with a nod.

"Well, obviously," said Scootaloo. "Did you even see that creep putting his hooves in that evil pyramid thing when you came in? He's totally the villain!"

"No," said Dinky.

A ringing pause followed. It took a while for the Crusaders to register what had been said, and who had said it.

"Wait, 'No'?" Applebloom said, confused.

"Dinky," Sweetie said before Scootaloo could rant again, "what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I'm not coming back with you. I gotta stay here. It's the right thing to do."

'What you do matters.'

"Dinky, are you crazy!?" Scootaloo said; her trots were becoming stamps. "If you think we're going to leave you alone with that creep for one more second, let alone the rest of your life…!"

Dinky snarled back, stamping the floor for emphasis. "If you think I'm going to leave my best friends, not to mention the Equestrian airship crew here with him for the rest of all of your lives…!"

Dinky's snarl was angrier than Scootaloo's.

The admiral, to Scootaloo's dismay, agreed with Dinky. They were Equestrians stuck in enemy territory. They were surrounded by cannons; already, vandals had tried to assail the Equestrian airship. Dinky wasn't sure if the admiral had been brainwashed or ordered into saying it, but according to him, it was also the Regent's forces that had been keeping those Haissanians at bay. Takeoff was impossible; Haissan might have been divided, but it would eagerly unite to turn their firepower against Equestrians, whose Princess had ordered an assassination upon the late Sultan.

"What?" said Dinky, voice rising to a squeak. "That's crazy! It wasn't Princess Celestia. We weren't even trying to hurt anypony. We were just trying to rescue the Cake twins!"

Remembering her youthful glee of being part of the Taken Twin Trackers was like remembering a past life. She was way older than that now.

But there was no use arguing a rumor that provided Haissanians a scapegoat for their grief.

The group were being led out a curtained doorframe.

The unicorn bowed the way to the admiral, the medic, the Crusaders, and then Dinky as they went outside. Dinky wouldn't risk straying too far from the exit, though.

As soon as they went outside, the scent of smoke and strife made itself known again.

The docking bay was one giant terrace. Its floor was made of something as solid as a brick, but with grains of sand and other shiny things stuck inside. From where Dinky stood, the bay would have offered a view of the city, if a giant airship hadn't been parked in the way. A dry cool dusk shone sadly upon the white of its hull. Half the sky was a blend of blue and purple. Sunlight was seguing from red to magenta, making it hard to see the Regent's guard, which were posted at the wall. Each soldier was armed with a spear that was ready to point at anypony trying to attack — or escape. Lining the ledges was not railing, but manned cannons. The fur on Dinky's neck stood, feeling watchful eyes on her from atop the roof.

The admiral did not give an order, but a request for the fillies to be taken to the ship's infirmary.

"No!" the Crusaders said, stamping their hooves. "No, no, no!"

"At least let us say goodbye first," Sweetie said, looking up at the admiral, who relented.

Dinky was leaning against the backwall on her hindlegs, like she saw her aunt Daring do sometimes. She was trying her best to project an air of aloofness about her. But if she were being honest with herself, she was already feeling awkward and half-forgotten.

When her friends approached, she dropped the façade, planting all fours on the floor.

Sweetie Belle hugged her.

"I'm sorry," Dinky said into her ear, "for everything."

"I know why you're doing this," Sweetie whispered. "And I don't really like it. I'm not really sure that I'll be okay with it. But this is your life, Dinky Doo. I'm sorry that this is what you've chosen for it. I'm really going to miss you, honorary sister."

Dinky smirked sadly; it had been so long since she called her that.

They drew back.

"Right back at ya," Dinky said, "honorary sister."

Touching hooves with her, Sweetie stood back to let Applebloom say goodbye.

"This ain't goodbye," she said instead, "promise. Princess Celestia won't stand for this. Just y'all wait, ya hear me? She'll have a rescue ship out in a day, tops. This here's an act of way. He won't git away with what he done to us. He sure as hay's gonna be sorry he chose the wrong fillies to mess with."

No hoof was held out to shake; she was already walking away.

"See ya later, Dinks," Scootaloo said. "You're easily one of the coolest ponies I know."

She offered her hoof.

"You're way cooler a friend," Dinky said, bobbing it up, then down. "Also, that's the first time ever you called me 'Dinks', Scoots."

Scootaloo sniffed. "That's the first time ever you called me 'Scoots', Dinks," she countered.

Scoots and Dinks let their hooves drop.

For a moment, they merely stared at each other, smiling.

Then they hugged. "Ponyville sure is gonna be different without you around," Scootaloo said.

Dinky laughed hollowly. "Would that be so bad?"

"Yes!"

Dinky had no comment. Nor did she have the strength to make one. She just kept trying to feel as much of her friend's warmth as possible before it was finally time; that time came too soon.

"Well," Scootaloo said, parting, "see ya… honorary sister."

"Back at ya, honorary sister."

Turning away from Dinky, Scootaloo scampered off to join the Crusaders — the actual Crusaders — by the medic. It wasn't until they all stood side by side, waving goodbye, when Dinky realized how alone she had been this whole time. She hadn't even known it; or maybe, she just hadn't wanted to admit it, not until it was too late.

As she turned towards the exit, she waved back at her friends.

"Goodbye, everypony," she said loudly, as the medic ushered the trio up the stairs to the airship.

At the top of the stairs, the trio looked back on their friend.

Giving them one final wave, Dinky turned away and galloped back into the curtained doorframe.

"It's not fair!" Sweetie wailed.

"Come on, Sweetie Belle. We gotta hurry on up."

"B-but…!"

"Come on."

Their wails were getting fainter behind the lone Doo.

Voices were coming, and they were speaking in Ponish. Some of them were giving orders about repairs; the discussion of the task taking no more than a day was heralding a return to business as usual. The last of Dinky's sorrow was streaked over her face, but were drying into her fur under the heat of the lighting. Her scars were fresh; in no way would they ever be ready to heal.

As the night encroached, and Dinky walked on, it was getting harder to put one hoof in front of the other. After climbing about fifty stair steps, Dinky told herself, "It's for the best."

She was led back into the same bedroom as before.

She didn't want to get used to how quietly doors shut in this place.

She didn't want to be all alone.

Right now, she just wanted to be held. "For you, Mom," she told herself, her grimace brave.

When Dinky peeked out of it, she found that the window offered no view of the airship.

She sighed.

She felt so apart from the Crusaders now, from her family, and her homeland.

All was quiet.

All was still.

It was as though something were dying inside her. She hated being alone. Yet, the Regent was always watching; Dinky couldn't escape without putting her friends in danger.

For the lack of something better to do, she belly-flopped onto the bed. It seemed like forever ago when Scootaloo had done this with the cloud-raft. In just a day, the pegasus filly would be returning home without her. The thought made Dinky sad.

She wasn't sure if she had the strength to say goodbye again. No, she assured herself with a stiff upper lip, it wasn't goodbye. Or was it? Back home, Dinky would just hurt more ponies if she got mad again. She couldn't go home, not as she was; she had to be strong.

The bed was still bouncing beneath her.

She started thinking about her future. If she were back home, she would just hurt more ponies by accident. Here, she had room to practice, to grow, to learn and improve. All the while, she would miss the faces she would never see again: Applebloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, her aunt Daring, her mom… It was their faces, though, that reminded her it was for the best that she stay here, so that she could master her magic. The Royal Archives would help her; she had already learnt a bit from the book the Regent had 'returned' to her. The book in question lay on the bed, right where the medic had left it.

Tomorrow, she and everypony else would be leaving her behind.

If a rescue ship did come for her, she could only refuse. It was the right thing to do, she told herself.

As much as Dinky hated the Regent, she had to admit (and very bitterly) that he had shown resilience to her wind magic. One silver lining about this was that she got to magically beat his stupid face up as part of her 'training'. Lately, her spite had been weakening, though; her sorrow was too strong. Slowly she could feel herself resigning to a lifetime of servitude. It was less than what he expected, which was another silver lining. It wasn't her fault if the Regent thought she would live long enough to spoil Haissan for 'eras and eras of prosperity'. It wasn't her fault if he forgot to check that she had no wings.

Her flute case was angrily being fiddled with.

That's when it uncrumpled and fell out.

It was flat and uncreased: A golden envelope.

Gasping, Dinky tried to shear it open.

Faint sparks spurted from her horn; none of the familiar hum and whoosh that was inherent to her magic alone.

"Luna's teat," she grumbled, angrily tapping her horn.

Still nothing.

So shearing the envelope open the old-fashioned way, she tore her eyes across the letter. She remembered this; it was Princess Celestia's invitation to the Summer Sun Celebration. Why had her mom been so interested in it? Hadn't she already gotten one earlier that month?

Dinky found her eyes roaming over the letter. She frowned at a word she didn't know, but read on as the parchment drooped lazily over the stiff glowing words.

"'Sincerely yours'," she continued aloud. "…Wait, what?"

There was no signature.

There was only a large expanse of whitespace, which Dinky touched.

"Ack!"

Images were surging through her mind: A familiar alicorn at a familiar palace; then the Crusaders, her mom, and her aunt Daring too; the now-golden horseshoe gate. She was underwater, feeling the vibrations of its wails. A reflection appeared; towards it she swam. She froze before she could reach it. There was cackling. The rest… the rest was too much, too scary for her to handle let alone understand.

The white dreamlike void was fading, along with its strangely colored sprinkles. A carpet pattern was gradually replacing it, the silver swirl of it coming into focus. On it fell a dot of sweat, because she was still panting over it.

Her fur was drenched. It wasn't just because of the heat.

Or was it?

She blinked hard.

She blinked a few more times to see if her eyes were working. "Wait, what was I…?" she said, muffled, because her ears were ringing.

Nopony was around to hear her.

Nopony was thundering up the stairs to check on her.

It was as quiet as it had ever been; Dinky's ears drooped.

Spotting it on the floor, she slid the wayward letter towards her and scanned it through again.

One minute passed.

She was screwing her eyes up in concentration.

"Wait, what did Sweetie Belle say 'compulsory' meant, again?"

Chapter 12: The Longest Day

Darkness.

That was all there was.

It was not vast.

Nor was it intimidating.

It was simply there.

The promise of oblivion lurked just beyond the buzzing and the abyss.

Bliss.

Freedom.

The words kept calling out to her, each call harder to resist than the last. She was broken. Sorrow had consumed her, deserted her in this hollow realm. More than once she had faltered; other voices beckoned to her, muffled and indistinct, and so onto them she latched, though she knew them to be beyond her reach. How long she was going to live out this sentence, where she had no body with which to affirm her existence, she hadn't the foggiest. What was she there but a disembodied thought, an orphaned consciousness? The dark preyed upon whatever she had been reduced to. Day by day, month by month, century by century it encroached upon her. What else was she, but a lone beacon in a foreign realm, trying to resist the urge to dissolve into its surroundings?

Home was but a word now. The more she reminded herself of it, the less meaning it had to her. 'Family' aroused stronger feelings within her, reminding her that she still was.

Cogito ergo sum.

Her words were proof that she was capable of thought. In time, she knew, those words would devolve into mere sounds, the emotions they aroused lost to oblivion.

What else was she then, but a lone aberration struggling to maintain agency in a desolate void determined to erode all trace of what constituted a pony? Tides swept and swished about a dark glassy ocean, and like sharks ready to seize their prey, they were circling a spire of rock that had no business being there.

Fear was as basic as breathing now, not something that could be washed aside easily.

Something else loomed in that hollow place. She could feel it, even though she could not yet perceive it.

Mentally shaking herself, she detracted her focus from the unknowns; those were variables that were beyond her ability to conceive. Relating those variables to knowns were entities that were fewer. Solutions had been long ago assembled, expressed as sums of independent quantities and possibilities that could not be pared down into tangible conclusions. Frustration dominated perusal of such musings, which had too often led her astray. Of 'home', of 'family', and all whom she knew and loved she thought in order to anchor herself.

A bright happy foal, the periwinkle of her eye; she was looking expectantly up at her, tail swishing to and fro. A mare the color of goldenrod; she was sticking a tongue out at her out of a retribution whose context was only vaguely known. Faces were easier to cling to; they did not fade as easily as words did, as they did not exist in a mental index that was slowly deteriorating.

Once more their muffled voices came, this time with greater clarity than usual. There was also… squeaking? Of the metallic variety, she added as a footnote.

A maw opened, one of light, of warmth and of welcome.

The featureless void was retreating, shunned and outshone.

Now it was unseen, but a memory that was thankfully starting to feel distant.

Her faculties were dawning upon her. The murkiness of her thoughts was being washed away, and a blanket of stars was waving at her like a flag.

The expanse between the margins of dream and reality was inconceivable. This she knew, because an impetus was hurtling her through it, the seemingly infinite interstice that segregated the unconscious and the conscious minds. Time is but a fantasy that enables perception. But here, it had no meaning. The trip took an eternity, and at the same time, it barely took more than the groggy blink of an eye.

To say that she was disoriented would have been an understatement.

Millions of things swarmed inside her head; they could have been thoughts, venues that may have held her interest in the idleness of sleep. Whatever they were, they were being submerged once more into her unconscious mind.

Somehow, she was staring at a ceiling; she couldn't help but feel like it was familiar. She sniffed; the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Though the dusk — or was it dawn? — concealed them well, she could discern the tile patterns, which had been just as bland as they were over eight years ago.

Ditzy blinked.

The relations in her mind were feeling less consequential to her. Fuzzy surroundings absorbed themselves into the forefront of her mind, pushing her dream-born thoughts towards the back of her mind. She almost lamented the loss of them; but she knew she would meet them again in another dream, perhaps. It felt almost like the time she had woken up after the stress of her dissertation had overwhelmed her on the last day as an archaeology student.

It was lurking in her vision again.

Ditzy gasped.

As it transpired, the stars were still out. But at the moment, they seemed shy in the presence of something looming just beyond the horizon.

Squeak, squeak.

They were metallic squeaks, the very same that had woken her up.

A mare cursed the lack of available grease.

"Psst," Ditzy said, her voice feeling lighter after what felt like a century of not using it. "Psst. Daring."

Detail was returning. What little sunlight that was crawling in illuminated just enough to give her a rough idea of where she was.

She was lying in a bed, the only one in this ward. She was not alone. Sitting just beneath the windowsill was Daring Do. She was feeding some foul oil into her grey mechanical wing.

"Psst. Daring."

Daring flapped her metal wing tentatively; it still squeaked. She cursed. Flicking the tip of a metal syringe, she resumed her ministrations.

"Daring. Psst," Ditzy said, a little desperately. "Daring."

Still no answer.

"Daring Do."

Still nothing.

So Ditzy closed her eyes, one of which was still lame. She tried to think back, drawing upon her returning reserves of memory. She knew she had been itching to try something. It had been just a few weeks back — it might have as well have been a few months, or a few years, to paraphrase Miss Bestselling Author. Or herself, rather, since it was she who had broken her wing around that part of Sapphire Statue. The sisters had been out on their early morning flight. That moment shone, rejuvenating Ditzy like a beacon that cleared the clouds that had been dulling her mind.

"Is Rainbow Dash preening herself in public again?"

Wings straightened up; all four goldenrod hooves were now flat on the floor.

"Where!?" Daring said, scanning the ward hopefully.

Meanwhile, Ditzy had her forelegs crossed beneath her neck. A mischievous smile was cracking her otherwise tired face. She felt great; she was starting to feel like herself again. Watching Daring scan the ward was amusing, moreso when her scan ended on her sister, who waved.

Daring's wings drooped; her face was reddening. "Sis…! Wait. Sis? Sis!" she said, flying to her bedside; sister and sister embraced. "Oh, Sis, Sis, Sis. Thank Celestia you're okay!"

"Not so tight. My spine still feels like a whole temple fell on it."

Daring snorted. "That was a fun raid."

Ditzy snorted back. "Yeah."

The sisters felt each other's warmth. They had never thought they would see each other ever again. They were enjoying the moment too much to ever want to pull away.

Dawn was permeating the room, brightening it all the while.

It wasn't until it turned into precisely the right hue and saturation of purple that Ditzy remembered Dinky Doo.

Fear flickered in her golden eyes; she tried to blink it away, but couldn't. The memories were washing over her now.

Ditzy pushed herself out of the hug. "Daring," she said, her voice low with urgency, holding Daring steady as though to prevent her from escaping. "Where's Dinky?"

Sighing, Daring looked away; Ditzy let go completely.

"It's for the best, I guess," Ditzy said, falling back onto the bed with her forelegs crossed over her torso.

These words made Daring stare incredulously.

"What!? What are you talking about? But Ditzy, your kid — Dinky's in Haissan right now. How in the hay is that for the best!? …Hey, hey! Stop! The last time this happened, it took alicorn magic to put you right! You need time to rest your head!"

But protest as Daring did, stained gauze continued to fall into a tightly coiled pile like the shed skin of a snake. The light teal hospital gown was made to hug the floor.

Ditzy was already on her hooves, testing them on the tile. "Oh, believe you me, Sis. The last thing we have is time. We have to find Twilight and the others. We have to warn her."

"Warn her? Warn her about what?"

But Daring was just talking to an empty hospital ward at that point.

She caught up with Ditzy on wing.

Ditzy meanwhile did not look like in the mood to explain herself. So they flew on in silence.

The morning air made neither sister shiver. Streaming through it offered Ditzy no comfort. Tension bound the grey pegasus wings so tightly that it was a miracle she could flap them at all.

Though Ditzy had not asked for it, nor did she have any need for it, Daring led the way back to town. Ditzy remembered in another life, when Daring led the way home after Dinky's birthday party. A familiar weight had rested on Ditzy's back then. Divested of it, she felt bare, empty, like a part of her soul had been torn mercilessly away.

Ditzy wasn't really listening to Daring recap everything that had happened ever since Ditzy had fallen into a coma. She did ask, though, how many days remained until the Summer Sun Celebration.

After Daring answered, Ditzy used a particularly foul curse that would never reach Dinky's ears, ever. Even Daring was surprised; not even she wasn't daring enough to use it. But she shook it off and recovered. "Don't worry, this is our chance. As soon we tell Princess Celestia everything that happened, she'll fix everything, deus-ex-machina style. Bonus points, since she's an actual deity, if you know what I mean."

Daring waggled her eyebrows.

Canterlot was faraway. A pony had to squint to see the silhouettes of its spires. The mountain upon which it was built seemed to surveil the festivities that were soon to unfold. Ditzy couldn't help but feel small staring at it.

The town was growing taller in the distance. More and more buildings were poking their heads out of the horizon; some of them were still fuzzy.

This year's Summer Sun Celebration was to be held outdoors, in the main plaza. For the occasion, a stage had been erected, almost as wide as town hall some ways behind it. Thick red rope hung in loops around it; each segment began at one metal stake and ended at another. A short flight of stairs led to the platform, which was white with linings of familiarly pure gold. The giant sun-shaped hoop hung ominously above the platform, above the heads of the ponies who had congregated before it.

Whispers floated in the air. Some ponies were excited; maybe a bit oblivious. Others were still anxious about a dangerous pony lurking amidst them.

The jangling of armor made Ditzy's ankle throb.

Armored unicorns formed a wall of ponies at one entryway into the plaza. They had left a gap between them to allow the last of the Ponyvilleans to file in, the very last of which included the Cakes, who were ushered in by a pair of guards; Zecora wasn't far behind.

The halo of pegasi had shrunk small enough to fit inside the bounds of the plaza. Now, the squadron of armored pegasi were hovering by the rooftops, alert.

A violet veil was still cast across the skies. But it was disappearing, the cool shade it offered becoming ever brighter. Stars were lurking beyond, faint and distant; they seemed almost pitying as they faded away.

"Daring! Ditzy! Over here!" called a familiar voice.

Rainbow Dash flew up, ushering them over her way with an attention-grabbing hoof.

Ditzy and Daring followed it, flying over the heads of ponies as they did so.

Dash was with the usual crowd: Applejack right beside her, Fluttershy on her other side. Fluttershy was nearest Twilight, who stared up in awe, seeming to be lost in a daydream. Rarity was beside Applejack; both were rubbing one hoof over the other.

Ditzy landed beside Twilight.

Daring landed beside her and Fluttershy.

"Girls, girls, girls!"

The squeaky voice broke the tension, the murmurs and the whispers.

Ponies turned, the Mane almost-6 and the Sisters Doo included.

Bouncing towards them was Pinkie Pie, a path being cleared for her as she did so.

"Girls, girls, girls!" she said, bouncing onto a spot on Twilight's other side, and bouncing in-place still. "You won't believe what just happened. It was the weirdest thing! So there I was, changing diapers for the Cake twins, right? But no matter how many diapers I put on them, they just weren't clean enough for them — um, the diapers for the babies, I mean, hee hee, so anyway, Mr. and Mrs. Cake told me to the Summer Sun Celebration without them, while they took care of their foals. And then I pronked through that street with the shops and the windows that all the ponies like to shop through, right? So then I looked into one of those mirrors."

Expectant silence followed, but Pinkie said nothing more.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? And?"

"And," Pinkie continued, "I looked in one of those mirrors, and instead of another world with swirly hills or creepy chains, I turned around and saw another me. Another. Me. So I said, 'Hi, Other Me!', and then she said at the exact same time, 'Hi, Other Me!' while pronking around at the exact same time I was. I waved, and then she waved back. Isn't that amazingly awesome-weird and cool with strawberry-fudge sprinkles on top!?

"WELL!?" she screamed into the air.

It was silent for a moment; the seconds that whiled by could have been measured by Pinkie's bouncing.

"Just spectacular," said Rarity.

Applejack meanwhile clicked her tongue. "Y'all sure ya ain't just seen yer reflection, sugarcube?"

"Mm…" Pinkie went, pursing her lips thoughtfully for a full minute. "Nope! Absotively posilutely!"

Rolling her eyes, Applejack went to facing forward.

The rest of the crowd had fallen silent. They were staring ahead, enraptured seemingly by the sight of an empty stage. Breaths were held, doubtless, for the sun that was soon to shine, brilliant for their waiting eyes.

She seemed to emerge out of nowhere. Each step she took was punctuated with a muffled tink. That she was walking on the stage was plain; it was perfectly unremarkable in all meanings of the word, and therefore all the more surprising. There had been no teleportational pop, no majestic descent, no blow of trumpets to precede her. She was just walking.

All the same, ponies were sinking into grovels before her. "Princess…"

She took her rightful place, looking small but no meaner beneath the sun-shaped hoop. She knew her rightful place: a lowly servant self-sworn to call upon the Sun.

She looked down upon her people.

"Arise, my children."

Thus they did.

And as they did, they fixed their unworthy eyes upon her, lucky enough to see only the shadow of her face.

Her eyes were open, seeming to stare inexorably ahead, transfixed upon the darkness that she alone had the privilege and power to banish.

A breeze blew, heralding, as it transpired, the coming of something from the horizon. In they flew, cinders, red and golden, from flames long forgotten. And as they swept past her face, illuminating it for the first time that day, everypony gasped. A mane of ethereal rainbows flowed behind her, in a wind whose grace to which she alone could equate.

"Welcome, everypony, to the Summer Sun Celebration."

Her voice was soft, a loving whisper.

"I am honored to grace Ponyville with my radiance as I was once unable to, just some moons ago."

Ponies were hanging onto each gentle syllable that issued from her mouth.

All but one. "Freeze, Changeling. What have you done with the real Princess Celestia?"

Twilight gasped. "Big Brother…?" she muttered.

'Big Brother?' Ditzy and Daring mouthed at each other, before looking to the rest of the Mane 6 to find them expressing similar confusion.

Her laughter was muffled between her curved lips.

Her violet gaze was kind and motherly.

"Oh, Captain. I assure you: I am no Changeling. I do not hide amongst the shadows of my subjects. I am no impostor. In truth, I am more real than I once was…"

A thick white hoof was waved about in measured motions.

Lances were being drawn, held at the ready by the advancing pegasus guard. Unicorns were coming to flank the armored white unicorn stallion who had been addressed as 'Captain'. Horns were being charged, ready to strike at another wave of his hoof. The crowd moved back from the stage, their spots filled by Canterlot soldiers.

The stage was surrounded.

There was no place to flee, on foot or on wing.

She was unabashed.

She was as content to bask in the glares of her enemies as she was to bask in the admiration of her subjects.

She watched.

The Captain was ready to let his hoof fall, an order to arrest her.

She waited.

Solar winds continued to stream behind her. The particles of sunlight that were swept into the audience were dwindling, like every star in the night sky eventually did.

For a moment, all went still.

Now, her mien was solemn, composed; her eyes were closed as though to contemplate a dire affair.

"The time has come."

Gasps broke free of the crowd.

She was airborne before anypony realized it.

Her long majestic forelegs were spread high above her, their shadows cast over her audience. The colors of her mane were obscured behind a light yet to be, and the flow of it was waving high over everypony's faces.

The Captain still had his hoof out, watching cautiously. The soldiers whom he commanded held their arms at the ready.

She continued to float there, forelegs raised.

A minute light winked from beyond the horizon.

The guardsponies were lowering their arms, despite having received no order to do so.

The sky was abandoning its starry veil; it was assuming its eponymous hue of blue.

Even the Captain was lowering his hoof.

Calm was returning, palpable. Relief was sighed, cascading throughout the crowd.

The sun was rising to the level of the hoop.

For a fleeting moment, asking a favor to retrieve a couple of fillies from Haissan felt like an actual possibility. Maybe the runes Ditzy had seen on the invitation envelope had been nothing, after all.

Then it happened.

The rays struck her from behind. A brilliant white enveloped her; her divine form was imposed upon the eyes of all present. Her divine form was changing. The tips of her hooves were hissing with flames, which popped, as did those on the crook of her wings. The eyes opened, and they were pitch-black; the embers within were her pupils that found her little ponies.

Radiant orange hoofbracers kissed the stage. The last of the flames dissipated off the helmet that was now fixed upon her head. Throwing back her mane, a voluminous trail of fire, was a white mare who stood where she once stood. The latter's Cutie Mark was now emblazoned onto the chestplate of the white mare, as though to indicate that she was being held prisoner. Yet, the Cutie Mark that was now on her haunches…

Lightning struck, bringing out the hunger in her eyes.

A dark-red hue permeated the sky and all under it. Skeins of energy were arcing across the sky, jumping from one invisible pocket of the firmaments to the other. The sun was a thing of the past. In its place was a blood-red orb with tendrils that seemed to dance eerily in the sky, uncannily like her Cutie Mark.

Among it all, her divine form was most brilliant.

The Captain's eyes were glittering in disbelief. "What… Who…?"

A smirk crossed her lips.

An explosion threw everypony backwards.

Lances clattered to the cobblestone.

Everypony, the unicorn guard, the pegasus guard, the townsponies, the Sisters Doo, and the Mane 6 were on the ground. Groans now saturated the square.

Somepony was chortling.

But her laughter could no longer be contained between the curve of her lips.

She laughed throatily.

A paralyzed second passed.

Throwing her head back, she cackled; she cackled as loudly and shamelessly as though it were her dearest wish for all of Equestria to know her mad bliss.

Pulling his head up, the Captain held a hoof out to stop somepony. "Wait!"

But Twilight Sparkle did not. "Princess Celestia!" she cried, prising herself off the ground.

As she galloped towards the stage, Applejack called after her. "Twilight, come back!"

Snarling, she galloped after her. Flying aside her was Rainbow Dash, who said, with a shake of her head, "Nuh-uh. No way you're going there alone!"

"Me, neither," Fluttershy said, flying on Applejack's other side.

"Yeah!" screamed Pinkie, catching up to her on a gallop.

Not far behind was Rarity, who said with a flip of her mane, "Ugh! That I would desert my friends in their hour of need. The very thought! Hmph!"

Applejack looked at each of her friends in turn. "Aw, shucks, now yer makin' me blush. Twilight! Git outta there, quick! It ain't safe!"

"Princess Celestia! Princess Celestia! Princess Celestia! Please! You have to wake up! Princess Celestia!"

Twilight was feet away from the stage. Her eyes were wide. All they seemed to reflect was a fiery monster that too absorbed within her laughter to see her forsaken pupil's lament. Falling onto her haunches, Twilight bowed her head in defeat. Her breath was coming in terrified shudders. "Princess Celestia," she said to her own hooves, "how could I have let this happen to you…?"

She didn't seem to notice her friends budging her, trying to get her to flee.

They, in turn, didn't seem to notice when the white mare stopped laughing.

Watching the friends try to shake some sense into Twilight made the white mare curious enough to spare a tilt of the head. She strutted forward, one hoof after the other, as her pupils grew in anticipation. "Oh?" she crooned, her voice deathly quiet. "All the Avatars of Harmony in one place?" Fires spiraled along her long horn, flashing into a steady hum of an inferno. "Truly a serendipitous occurrence befitting the advent of a day that shan't ever end."

"Look out!" Daring and somepony else cried.

Flames consumed the Mane 6, roaring and humming, their heat beyond anything nature could conceive. Black swirled menacingly amidst the white and the orange that was falling over them. The fiery dome was too dense to let anything, not even the muffle of a scream escape, let alone any of the ponies whom it was converting to ash.

Laughter consumed the white mare again — only for it to be dispelled seconds later, alongside the heat dome, which exploded into a parade of ash and cinders. The fiery remains were subsiding, fading back into the aether.

"What!?" snarled the white mare, "but how can this be!?"

Two horns were interlocked, their glows twin in color. The violet of their magic resonated with the protective orb about the Mane 6 and the Captain. Side by side, the Captain and Twilight stood, glaring their defiance.

"Impossible!" the white mare spat, "you are but unicorns, mewlings in magic, compared to the wonder that is me!"

Neither Twilight nor the Captain answered.

Each of their horns ceased its workings; with a series of sounds that were not unlike slurps, the protective orb unraveled. The disintegration of its film cascaded to the bottom, over which a purple hoof stepped. "You will release my friend and teacher, you monster!"

Twilight stepped forward, standing between her friends and the white mare.

Silence reigned.

Breaths were held, eyes rapt with attention.

Winds swept, between unicorn and fallen alicorn.

Twilight stood, unrelenting and undaunted; her friends stood behind her.

The white mare cocked her head; her eyes flicked elsewhere in the crowd, then back to her dissidents. A fanged smile perked up her face. "Oh, my dear Captain," she crooned, spreading her angelic wings wide. She took flight, leaving the Captain and the Mane 6 a gust to deal with; the tip of her horn was ablaze. "This is why you so seldom triumph in our little chess games. If you choose to forsake your queen in order to come to the rescue of your pawn, I will be forced to punish you."

She launched a fireball at somewhere in the crowd.

Somepony shrieked.

"Cadance!" cried the Captain.

The white mare cackled at the expression on his face; but this too did not last.

"My love!"

A pegasus was flying at an invisible arc that was aimed straight for the Captain. Touching down, she shook the coat of ash off her body. After she shook her mane, a tandem of purple, pink, and cream, out of her face, Ditzy saw the horn. "Don't worry about me," said the alicorn, a mare, hugging the Captain. "I'm okay."

She smiled, a tilt to her head. "Not for long!"

Gasping, everypony looked to the blood-colored sky.

Once more, her limbs were spread out, as were her wings.

The sky flashed.

Insane laughter rung throughout the plaza, as close to each shivering pony as if it had come from right behind their ear.

"There! That's the way, my loyal subjects! Grovel before your master! AHAHAHA! My dearest sister cannot stay deaf to your pleas for much longer! AHAHAHA!!"

Another flash came.

Ditzy was trying to blink the red from her eyes as she got off the ground. She tried to breathe. The Ponyvilleans, the faces she had come to know and love for the past eight years, were lost in their panic. She could feel her heart pumping, on the verge of breaking. Gritting her teeth, she ignored what the pricks on her fur were telling her.

Pulses of energy were emanating from the smooth, once majestic white fur. A hot aura was waxing around her as though it were her personal corona.

The Captain was calling for calm; so were his pegasus guard.

"Everypony who can conjure a shield charm, gather here!" Twilight shouted into the air, her combed hair in stressed disarray.

It was hard to keep one's breath with the ground rattling so much. Earth ponies and unicorns stayed flattened to the ground; the pegasi were too scared to take to the air. The Canterlot guardsponies were trained for many things; unfortunately, the return of a fallen alicorn was not one of them. They did their best to help the townsponies without succumbing to the growing bedlam themselves.

The flashes were meanwhile growing redder, more frequent.

Sparks were bursting out of thin air. An unnatural heat seized the air, sapping it of all its moisture. Scarlet shadows washed over the town, a permanent dusk that portended a tragedy soon to come.

Shining high above the town was a parody of a beacon of hope: the white mare. She grinned, her horn humming all the while. The sound of screaming seemed to bring great delight to her ears. Cries for 'Princess Celestia' were of great amusement to her. The sight of ponies scurrying about like ants brought her immense satisfaction. She gasped and turned her attention elsewhere. "Oh? So that is where you have been hiding, Sister Dearest? Abandoning our subjects to come play with him in his little sandbox? Hmph, very well. In that case," she said, letting her eyes drink in the bedlam below for one last time, "it is to a land of ash and fire to which you shall return!"

"Everypony," the Captain shouted over the panic, the rumbling, and the flashing. "Now!"

The explosion of light was blinding; it consumed all in its path. Flames were rolling over the town like tides over the ocean, bent on converging onto the square. Houses were set aflame; the screaming was getting louder; the sobbing and wailing was too much to bear.

Fluttershy and Rarity were crying on the ground with each other for mutual comfort. Everywhere, the townsponies were huddling close, shoulders tensed as they braced themselves. Ditzy and Daring were holding each other tight.

Jagged beams of magic burst from the horns of Captain, Cadence, and Twilight Sparkle. Beads of sweat were sliding down each of their cheeks as they willed their magic to spill into the shape of a protective dome, like water would into the surface of an upturned bowl.

Fiery tides crashed. They rushed against the walls of the barrier, their insistent roars causing another chorus of screaming. It sounded like rolling thunder as the fiery sea crawled over the barrier to blot out the sky. Thumps came from above; the conflagration knocked and then it knocked, demanding to be let in. But the magical protection would not yield. An aurora of color permeated the square, dancing in Ditzy's mismatched eyes.

It had worked.

Every five seconds, violet shockwaves buzzed over the circumference of the protection, giving a distinct whir as it went. One such whir revealed a dark-blue silhouette of stars, lurking just beyond the barrier; it was almost as though the very night had returned to glimpse in every other pulse or so.

Taking off her signature plinth hat, Daring held it. "Luna's teat," she breathed in awe.

"Harrumph. We shall thank thee to not speak so liberally of our anatomy."

A few fillies pointed in the direction of Daring Do — and for the first time, she wasn't the one they were gushing over. "Princess Luna!"

"We're saved!"

"Wait, am I dreaming?"

"That has to be it! Something like this could only happen in a nightmare."

Lightning was shooting out of the long spiraled horn, cool and bright. Her long forelegs were bent ever so slightly. No bead of sweat blemished the pristine darkness that was her fur. Her eyes were fixed resolutely on the magic she was pumping skyward. There she was, in the fur and flesh:

The Princess of the Night, Luna.

"We fear this is no nightmare, citizens of Ponyville," said Princess Luna without so much as a glance their way.

"Princess Luna, Princess Luna!" Snips croaked, running up to her. "Something's wrong with Princess Celestia."

But then he started back at the sound of her tight hiss.

"We are quite aware, young Snips," said Princess Luna through teeth thus clenched. "As it so happens, she does not pose much a threat to anypony here, relatively speaking. Our magic will hold for a time, until we can purify her in the place in which she believes a source of alicorn magic to be."

"What?" Snips said. "But where'd she go?"

Nodding at the Captain, Princess Luna tugged on her surge of magic until it was ripped away. In her Canterlot voice, she spoke: "Twilight Sparkle."

Cutting off her connection to the barrier, Twilight galloped off to answer her summons.

"Young Snips," said Princess Luna without deigning to look upon him.

Snips stood up straight. "Yes, Princess!"

"We fear she has set her eyes eastward."

"East?" Snips said, tilting his head curiously. "East to where?"

"Eastward," said Ditzy and Daring, stepping forward, "to Haissan."

"Enough."

Princess Luna held her head up high, a lip pouted coolly. Her magisterial gaze fell upon the six ponies bowing before her.

"You must dispense with the usual formalities," she commanded.

Thus they arose.

"Heed our words, Chosen Six. A foul enchantment has taken our sister. It is the very same to which we succumbed not long ago. The Elements of Harmony — you must retrieve them from the Canterlot vault anon. They are our only hope of liberating our sister from the curse that now possesses her."

Twilight sunk into a curtsy before speaking. "But with all due respect, Your Highness, Princess Celestia has locked the Elements behind a spell that none but she can break."

At her, Princess Luna wrinkled a nostril. "Now is not the time for thee to be doubting thine abilities, Twilight Sparkle," said Princess Luna; she glanced at Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Daring, and Ditzy in turn. "Come. Before us!"

Without bowing, each pegasus walked awkwardly up and stood in a line.

Once bidden, Dash stepped forward.

Princess Luna activated the dark glow of her horn and lowered it to either side of the Avatar of Loyalty.

"Whoa," Dash said, unfolding her wings.

Beads of energy were drifting about each wing, encased alongside it in a cloud of nightly energy.

"Courage, Avatar of Kindness," Princess Luna whispered into Fluttershy's ear, after applying her enchantment.

Stiffening her face, Fluttershy gave a firm nod.

Next was Daring, who looked embarrassed; Princess Luna said nothing as she blessed her wings.

When Ditzy was bestowed her enchantment, she felt like like a family of excited fireflies were swarming at her sides.

"Our enchantments shall enable you to traverse the eastern waters in under an hour's time," Princess Luna said, pacing and observing the fliers. "That being said, our enchantment shall not persist for long, much like our protective spell." She pointed her indifferent snout up to indicate the barrier. "Time is thus short. We shall teleport you directly to Canterlot Castle. We trust you know the way to the vault." She then turned her attention to Daring and Ditzy. "And we trust you to know the way to the Garden of the Desert."

Ditzy shook her head. "Princess, I must refuse," she said, causing Twilight to gasp. "My daughter is in Haissan right now. I refuse to stand by and allow her to get hurt."

Princess Luna's eyelids were lowered, her expression unreadable.

"Very well," said Princess Luna, closing her eyes. "Thou shalt accompany us, then. However, we must warn thee that the threat that lies waiting for us has not loosed its fury for millennia. No mortal alive has ever been privy to witness its full power. Few of us immortals remain; fewer still have the courage to speak of it. If thou goest with us as thou art, without arms, we are not sure we can protect thee during the confrontation. If thou goest with us now, if the risks thus described are truly ones thou art willing to brook…"

Ditzy gave a firm nod.

"Very well, then," Princess Luna said; she opened her eyes. "We owe thee, after all, for providing our refuge these three nights past."

Then she faced Daring Do and the champions of Equestria.

"Now. Gather you seven. Now it is time."

"Go with Shining Armor, Spike," Twilight said, pushing him in his direction.

"Don't have to tell me twice," Spike said, already waddling towards the Captain.

He and Cadence were still holding the barrier aloft when Spike joined them. Flames still crashed against the barrier, like waves of lava against the inside a volcano. The bloodlust with which they were roaring was palpable. The townsponies, at this point, were too numb, too tired to scream, let alone move.

The Mane 6 lined up, chests puffed out: Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash. Next to Rainbow Dash was Daring Do, who was trying to hide her awkwardness at being included.

They all disappeared in a cool flash of light.

A second later, Princess Luna and Ditzy did the same.

"Come! We fly!"

Sunrise had long passed.

Repairs on the Equestrian warship still weren't done.

Smoke was billowing out of the back of the ship. Crewponies were working on that, including a duo of pegasi. Those pegasi were poking their heads into the pipes. Whatever they were doing, there was a lot of clanking involved. A puff of soot coughed into their bodies.

A wing of the ship required attention, and giving it was another duo of pegasi. One was working on the rotors, while the other was charged with holding up the wing.

A whistle came near one of the back fins of the ship. That was when a weaker-looking pegasus flew up, towel in hoof. An older pegasus gestured for the scrub started paying his dues there.

From her new vantage point, Dinky noticed the undercarriage, still blackened from when the Regent's airship had self-destructed. She assumed the soot would merely be shaken off during the flight, whereas any ash that fell off the fin could get sucked into and choke the exhaust pipes during takeoff.

Dinky figured most of the crew were pegasi, since their wings would let them orbit the ship more easily.

Imagining how airships worked was one of the more interesting segments of her morning. Suddenly, she was yearning for a life she could have had, a life of maybe attending an airship like the crewponies did.

Asking to be moved to a bedroom where she could watch them was a request Dinky had been working at since she woke up that morning. Her dues were less physically demanding than those of the scrubs; though, she personally felt hers to be way more painful.

The Regent had gone over their roles at the funeral ceremony at least six times. He really liked shouting, Dinky noticed. It was usually the really angry urgent kind of shouting that he liked doing.

But after it all, she was finally able to bargain for a new room. It was cozy and dark, just the way she preferred it.

For the seventh-or-more time that morning, the Regent's smelly cologne entered before he did.

"Yeah, yeah," Dinky droned without looking away from the window, "when it's your turn to speak, you're going to talk about some stuff about Alula. And then you're going to present me as his successor. Then you're going to say some stuff about acting as my regent and translator, at least until I'm old enough to rule properly and speak Saddle Arabian."

The Regent harrumphed, before excusing himself for 'other business' he needed to attend to. On any other day, Dinky would have stuck her tongue out at him. But that day, she just didn't have the spirit. She was missing the Cutie Mark Crusaders already. And it wasn't until then that she realized how much she had taken them and her family for granted.

Her airy sigh fogged up her window. Dinky assumed the Crusaders were holed up like she was; she hadn't seen them come out of the airship all that morning.

A thought occurred to her: Maybe if she scribbled on the watery canvas, the Crusaders might see and send a response back on their own window. And then she and the Crusaders could exchange messages that way, going on like that until the airship was ready to take off. That scene was a welcome respite from her lonely morning.

Even if the Regent hadn't forbidden it, she wouldn't pop outside for a spell. Dinky just wanted to be alone right now; she had never felt more isolated.

It didn't take long for the window to be see-through again; nor did it take long for Dinky to see the reflection of her captor again. "I must ask you, young Sultan. Is your magic still malfunctioning?"

Dinky rolled her eyes. "Let me check."

Lately, she found the loss of her magic to be a topic of only trivial importance. She was surprised that there were still ponies who cared about it.

She didn't really try to concentrate into her horn; not that she really needed to.

Tiny sparks buzzed and died down, before sprinkling down her indifferent face. "Nope."

The Regent got to stroking his goatee again, like a villain. Dinky learnt to hate when he scrutinized her. "Ah, well," he finally said. "Such a shame. We can only hope that it returns by noon. It shall be most difficult to proclaim you as His with your inheritance in such dire straits." He turned. "Nevertheless, everypony in the capital saw that magical flare you sent up yesterday. It was so very much like His, Dinky Doo. It was once used to call for action, did you know? For a moment, they thought He had returned. I daresay even if your magic does not return by noon, it shall not be a very demanding task to convince them that you are indeed His. They want it to be true, and therefore they will believe it so."

Dinky was listening to only half of that. "Whoop-dee-doo."

The Regent stiffened, serious; he turned to face Dinky's behind again. "I am informed by my fellow regents," he said in a biting tone, "that the whole capital shall be in attendance. Doubtless they are expecting more than just a ceremony to celebrate the fallen."

Dinky blew on the window without tone or enthusiasm. "Sounds fun."

"You do not seem excited, young Sultan. Is this not why you have come?"

"I came to learn how to control my magic," Dinky said, facing the Regent, "not to play Sultan."

"Ah," the Regent said breathily, "but it is a role you shall play well, young Sultan!"

Dinky grumbled, pursing her lips. She wished he would stop calling her that. But she also admitted that his alternatives were worse. So she settled on a petty retort. "Mister, I'm eight. I can't rule a city let alone an entire country. Have you been munching on funny grass or something?"

Watching the Regent's cheeks puff out and redden was satisfying.

Sadly, he was already straightening up and regaining composure. "It is a role you shall grow into. Obviously, you cannot learn to rule our country overnight."

"Well, duh."

"But with me at your side — "

"Yeah, I know," Dinky said, being interested in the window again, "you already told me what you're gonna say at the funeral, so unless it's a all a big lie, please leave me alone, Mister Regent, sir."

A pause followed.

The Regent was staring hard at the window, where Dinky's reflection blinked lethargically.

"Ah, it seems you've quite adopted the imperious tone that He once used. My Sultan," he said, bowing himself out of the room.

The door closed as silently as ever.

Dinky found herself sighing a lot at the window. Listless, she found herself thinking about how resigned she was to this life now. She kept ruminating on what the best thing was for everypony. Going back home wasn't an option anymore. Staying here in Haissan was tantamount to enslavement, albeit in fancier quarters and in unwanted praise. All she wanted now was a life of peace.

She didn't even notice the hoof-sized cyclone on her horn until it was playing with her bangs. The spectacle was only mildly interesting, and only because her magic was a different color than usual. "Huh."

Suddenly, her hoof was pressed to her bangs. She saw darkness. Her heart was beating fast again; some force was keeping her eyes glued shut. She heard that cackling again; this time, it was clearer than before.

"What just…?" she said, surprised to find herself panting.

The sun was still shining outside.

The crewponies were still at work on the ship. But for Dinky, so much had happened in such a short amount of time; so much that she was still trying to forget.

Her only distraction disappeared behind a pair of curtains, which had been clamped together by a red aura. "Oh, it's you. Is it time for me to get dressed?"

The lights came on.

As she gave one last tug on her garments, a mirror floated into place before her. Tight over her torso was a small white half-robe, the neck of which was lined with what Dinky suspected to be pure silver. The minute topaz-cuttings felt cool on her neck as she swayed back and forth between angles. Her newly fitted earrings jingled as she turned all the way around to get a good look at her Cutie Mark: a flute surrounded by three wisps of wind. If it hadn't been for the Cutie Mark Crusaders, she would have never gotten it. It was a reminder of her destiny, whatever it was. Personally, Dinky liked thinking that the three wisps of wind were her friends. But the closer she got to the funeral, the farther away she felt from them. So maybe they weren't related to her destiny after all.

Dinky stood still to let the unicorn finalize the ensemble.

A silver bracelet snapped tight onto her foreleg, then lost its red glow. Over her neck hung a silver pendant; a cursory rub over it told Dinky it was embossed with the late Sultan's Cutie Mark, which was basically the same as hers sans the flute.

She frowned at her reflection; she couldn't quite put her hoof on it, but she felt like she was missing something…

A groan of frustration interrupted her vague musings. "Okay, okay, I'm going."

Between watching an airship get repaired, and getting ready for a funeral, she had had better mornings.

The new garb started to cling to her fur the moment she stepped outside. "Come, young Sultan," the Regent said. "We mustn't dawdle."

Catching up with him, Dinky noticed that he had henchponies, and that both of them were pegasi. "Can't we just fly there?"

"No," said the Regent. "We Haissanians consider this a pilgrimage of sorts. Believers from all over Saddle Arabia are travelling on hoof to honor Him. And we shall be no different."

Meanwhile he and his help were flying over a ledge, which was about thrice her height. Rolling her eyes, Dinky puffed her cheeks out.

The invitation had stated that the funeral was going to take place at the Royal Palace — or what was left of it, anyway. She had had a hoof in destroying it some moons previous.

The streets on the ground-level had lots of hoof-traffic. The Regent did not deign to stoop to the level of commonponies; not that Dinky took issue.

In this city, the houses were stacked atop each other like building blocks. The fatter buildings went on the bottom, constituting the bases for smaller structures that would go on top. And so on, and so on. Between a pair of such structures, the Regent and his henchponies strode through what transpired to be an alley of light gravel. The more Dinky walked on, the more this city felt like a maze.

She was really high up, too. If prompted to guess, she would say she was on the fourth tier of buildings. Her dizzy spell did no favors for her. The pavement beneath her hooves was always hot. The less contact she had with it, the less it stung her with a hiss. Teeth clenched, she found herself hopping from one spot on the path to the next. That the roads were lightly albeit constantly layered with sand increased her anxiety.

Doors started to appear on the upper levels. Most led to dormitories that were vacated; one did not.

The Regent stopped before a nondescript door. No visible lock punctured it. On the wall beside it a hole was bored; so was Dinky, who had gotten sick of playing hop-scotch on invisible tiles. One of the Regent's henchponies pulled out a key, pushed it in, and tucked it back into his saddlebag; the other henchpony pushed the wall open, bowing the entourage inside.

A low dark ceiling loomed over Dinky as she traversed the indoor thoroughfare. The trip lasted a few minutes longer than it would have normally taken; she had stopped to give the scorched underside of her hooves a much-needed rest.

Waiting at the other end of the thoroughfare was a bridge, not unlike the ones her aunt Daring had described. But judging by how little it rocked when she pressed her hoof to it, this rope bridge was way less precarious.

Dinky made it across.

"Are we there, yet?" she grumbled as the Regent passed her by.

"Soon," he said tersely.

Thereafter, the two henchponies passed silently by.

Grumbling more loudly, Dinky followed.

The Royal Palace of Haissan. "Finally!" exclaimed Dinky. Situated in the Saddle Arabian Desert, Haissan has, until recently, enjoyed a seat of power and prosperity amongst its neighbors in the Middle East. This was owed to the Generosity of the Alicorn of Wind, who came to be known as Al-Qafzah al-Ula in these lands. He served the ponies. In turn, the ponies loved him and proclaimed him their Sultan. Each morning, he would walk onto his terrace and see only beauty in those harsh desert lands. He would begin the wind, his gift to Equestria. He treasured his subjects. He treasured his servants. He treasured his good wealth and fortune. Rumors of his treasures did not take long to propagate beyond his realm.

Two adventuresses braved the sands to procure an ancient relic of his. Tragedy struck. One adventuress fled, and the other was with child. To the lands west fled the latter. The winds ceased a day after. Over eight years passed before the adventuresses returned. Corrupted by bitterness and spite, the Sultan conspired against the Sun.

It was here, in the gardens of his Royal Palace, where he was stopped. It was here, in the gardens, where he met his end. It was here, in the gardens, where a tall gate demarcated a crowd of Haissanians from where it all happened.

The cyclones had been wild, issuing from his horn and hers. Her aunt had been stuck inside it, trying to flap with her broken stub of a wing. Her mom had been hurled into a tree. She could still see where it was broken and splintered. Spires lay motionless and broken. Trees were strewn about, sad and forgotten. Nopony had dared budge an inch of the scene. The scene of the crime had been frozen in time, not unlike a dream Dinky had been having recently. Standing there was surreal for her. Images were flashing into her head again. "Young Sultan. Young Sultan. It seems that your friends are ready to depart. We shall provide an escort for them once we are finished here."

Dinky blinked, struggling to regain cognizance of her surroundings. "Here?"

A messenger pigeon had just flown off.

"The funeral," the Regent droned.

On either side stood his henchponies. He was standing on a stage in front of the silver gates that led to… Dinky struggled to complete the thought. She still had nightmares about the place. She tried to hide her winces, her discomfort.

They were a thousand in number. The attending Haissanians stood in a rectangular array that was miles long. Dinky could feel their eyes on her, likely scrutinizing the length of her muzzle. They kept murmuring in a necessary mix of Haissanian and Ponish; the only words Dinky could discern were, 'al-Ula', 'Doo', 'Equestria', and 'Celestia'.

The Regent called for silence.

Minutes passed before he got it.

He didn't get everypony's attention, though. Some eyes lingered on Dinky, who was feeling more and more like an impostor playing dress-up. She crossed a foreleg over the other while trying to pass it off as scratching her hoof.

Haissanian was a rapid language, Dinky had come to learn in the past week. Nopony translated for her as the Regent addressed the crowd. Even so, it wasn't exactly hard to imagine what he was talking about as he gestured to the gates. The Haissanians, including the Regent, bowed to the gates to mourn in silence, to honor the fallen. There was no body to speak of let alone honor; Dinky was probably the only attendant there who knew Alula had become one with the wind.

The more Dinky observed the Regent, the more enlightened she became to his intentions. That his robes were less decorated than hers told her that he wanted to present her as a jewel more valuable than himself and everypony else in the city. Dinky shifted awkwardly. Being Sultan wasn't something she deserved. She did not, nor would she ever be ready for it, no matter what anypony said. The heat intensified the blush in her cheeks.

Rising from his bow, the Regent turned back to face the attendees, who were also rising.

A hoof was gestured to Dinky.

It was to her the Haissanians looked expectantly. Some were stroking their goatees, studying her. She felt like she was on display. The possibility that they were sizing her up, comparing her to Alula was not a very remote one. She felt like she could cry; she wanted her mommy. Some of these ponies looked unsure of whether or not she could one day be worthy enough to take the throne.

All the while, the Regent continued, in words she could not understand.

Dinky felt more alone than ever.

All she wanted to do was master her magic so that nopony she loved would get hurt. Being expected to head an entire kingdom was too much. And yet, nothing else lay in store for her in the moons yet to come. She wouldn't stop missing everypony. No matter how dangerous she had become, she wanted her mommy's hugs and muffins; she wanted her aunt Daring to teach her how to be cool like her; she wanted to spend afternoons with the Crusaders goofing around and doing normal foal stuff, not whatever stuff fate, destiny, Alula, the Regent, or even her Cutie Mark told her she ought to do.

Her decision was made.

She had to leave.

She had to escape.

No matter what, she would return home, to where everypony knew her name.

"Huh?"

Dinky wasn't the only one who had looked up.

The sky was flashing. It was flickering between blue and blood, light and dark, in as much uncertainty as a crooked lightbulb. Gasps billowed throughout the funeral site as the attendees stared at the heavens in such indecision. Ponies were pointing, their foreign mutters anxious. For his part, the Regent was watching in a mix of anger and disbelief.

Finally deciding on a dire scarlet, the sky flashed white two, then three times, with thunder booming with the third as though to establish its choice. Not a cloud was to be seen, but that didn't stop jagged bolts from shooting high over the heads of everypony. Forbidding patterns were stamped against Dinky's eyes.

Panic ensued; ponies were fleeing, scurrying; shrill cries and confused warfare were amok.

It was as though a truly dark dusk had come early.

At it, the Regent snarled. "Sun Tyrant…"

Taking advantage of his current position, he shouted at the crowd as though to shout them back into a state of order. He shouted again, the tendons on his neck taut with strain. Veins were popping out his forehead; never had his face been redder. He was shouting over the chaos; some Haissanians were taking notice, recognizing him as their guide, their shepherd. Other Haissanians continued to scramble to safety while avoiding the ominously bright searchlights scouring from the heavens above.

Once, Dinky had asked her mom to get a surfboard, one of many that a pair of barbershop duet unicorns were flaunting about in Ponyville. As Ditzy had not foreseen going on vacation anytime soon, or ever at all, she had politely refused the once-in-a-lifetime family discount being offered to her; she and Dinky had gone on their way.

Riding a magically cloudy version of that surfboard, Dinky set her sights forward.

Her destination: the manse.

That was where they were waiting.

That was where she needed to be.

That was her only ticket back to Equestria.

She veered sharply to the left, then sharply to the right. The rays of light beaming down from the heaven did not bode well, to say the least. On the way, she flew alongside a pegasus, who was unlucky enough to be spotted. The searchlight kept blinking as though the pegasus were a lucky winner; thereupon, the searchlight widened. And try as the pegasus did, they could not shake it off. It was too late. A strange bead of light had already locked on, its four spokes spinning as it came hurtling. Glancing her apology, Dinky flew on before she could see any more.

She didn't have friends to help with the propulsion of her craft, so she had to keep blowing at the unseen ground to keep herself moving. Not only did she have to navigate in near-darkness and keep herself afloat, but she also had to dodge the thousands of pegasi taking to the air; some were fleeing, while others were taking to arms.

An orb of daunting red hovered high above Haissan, almost as bright as the strange celestial orb stuck in the sky above. That was where the searchlights were coming from; that was where they were promising death. That was where Dinky was fleeing from. That was where the Haissanians began to strike.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The Regent had not lied about Haissanians having cannons, more of which went off just then.

Dinky was flinching.

Spells were being fired.

High whistles were rending the air, which was way less tolerable than usual.

Civil war was not breaking out at all; the Haissanians were united.

From all sectors of the city, arrows were shot, all of them spearing through the chaos to mark a common foe.

Pegasi were charging, their warcries more desperate than fierce.

Dinky couldn't concentrate; her heart was beating like mad.

Fumes pervaded the air fast, causing her eyes to water, her nostrils to wrinkle. So many cannons, so many colors, so much magic. It was hard to breathe. Dinky kept trying to see beyond her anxiety. She had to move fast. She had to detract her attention from the terror within her; yet, the terror around her was no better.

The arrows being shot were being imbued with nascent ice magic, which seemed ready to detonate upon contact.

Somepony's laughter came, weirdly echoed.

Shaking it from mind, Dinky took deep breaths. She was a rock amongst chaotic tides. She would not be deterred; she was determined. She soon would regain her center. But when she did, her bearings were still an indecipherable mess. She could barely see anything in the scarlet shadows. So she headed in a direction, hoping that the landmark she thought she had seen was real.

The white garb was blown off.

A thin strand of wind sliced off the chains of the pendant, of enslavement.

A shake of the hoof made the bracelet follow.

Shaking her hair into its natural mess was the final step.

Riding the wind, Dinky finally felt like herself again.

She didn't care for the balls of fire whistling past her. She didn't care for the domes of fire expanding behind her. Their heat and light beamed against her back, casting the resolve on her face into shadow. The shouts and cries grew louder the longer she traversed the airspace. Bedlam reigned. Sense, rationality, and order were all succumbing to the throes of pain and madness.

The Haissanians continued to wage war with the threat. Whatever they were throwing at their enemy, it sounded like the enemy was throwing it right back: cannonballs, magic blasts, and rebounded pegasus troops. Their wings were broken, twitching before the bodies to which they belonged went limp.

Dinky perked up her ears: She had never thought she would be glad to hear the Regent.

He was shouting orders from atop a spire; it was the tallest one built into the silhouette that was his estate.

It was there where Dinky shot for.

More cannons shook the air.

Boom.

Boom. Boom.

The vibrations disrupted her wind magic, rattling her head and sense of security.

Her cloud-board trembled; it wasn't long before it started to evaporate right beneath her hooves.

"No, no! AAGH!"

She was falling, screaming; air was streaming up her periwinkle fur; she was wriggling her legs helplessly.

"My Sultan!"

A body tackled hers.

A red searchlight found the Regent before Dinky collided with something else.

"Oof!"

Like a fish out of water, she flopped onto the metal of the surface, over and over again.

She rolled to a halt, wheezing. She was battered and beaten. Every part of her was sore. What little she could discern was merging and unmerging. The smoke had simply become too much at that point. She couldn't even breathe to feed her aching lungs. She had no magic left. But that's not what she needed: She needed help.

Somepony, Equestrian or Haissanian, took her, holding her against the metal of a chestplate.

Dinky was flown over; the pegasus landed and strode.

An order was given to get the engine running.

A pair of doors gave a mechanical slide, then kissed shut.

Inside, the cannonfire sounded more like poofs rather than booms.

The halls were passing too fast around her; she was nauseous enough already. The lighting here was brighter; it beamed some semblance of comfort against her eyelids. It made it easier to forget about the obstinate darkness waiting just outside the doors. Still, the tumult outside beckoned to her from beyond the muffled safety of the walls, which were probably metal, judging by the coolness they were exuding.

Boom.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Bombs were being detonated in steady cadence; she realized that she was too young to know that.

The pegasus holding her stopped.

Magic hummed; a ding-dong ensued, and after that, the slide of a door.

"Dinky!" rang a trio of voices.

Her limp tired body was set on a bed delicately.

The Crusaders were told to not leave the room; as if they needed a warning.

After droning their assent, the door squelched back into place, the ensuing beep signifying that it was secured.

The ship shook tentatively.

Then it whirred and it hummed.

The room jerked slightly; then the momentum of takeoff was negated, as though by magic.

Fires continued to rage outside, screeching as they pierced through the windy roars.

Dinky shifted in-place, eyes scrunched like she was having a nightmare.

Were she only that lucky.

The Crusaders were hugging her. She had not thought she would be loved again so soon. Her chest swelled, silencing the terror within her, even if for a little while.

But she had to talk.

She had to let them know.

Her breaths were coming out as choked spurts of ash, and she knew it, even if the Crusaders had not audibly winced.

"Dinky. Are you alright?"

"Swe-etie… B — "

Her head fell limp before she could finish.

"What happened?" Applebloom asked, suddenly panting.

It was too much, and all at the same time.

"Are you okay?" Sweetie asked.

The memories were still fresh in her mind: Her selfish decision to go home, the sky turning dark, fleeing the scene, hell raining from above, hell bursting from below. Dinky would give anything to not relive any of it.

She was going numb again. She felt like there were lines beneath her eyes. Why was her breathing so ragged anyway?

"Something's… wrong," Scootaloo said.

"Dinky…" came Sweetie Belle's voice; it felt so unreal.

Applebloom looped Dinky closer to herself. "Well, whatever happened, you're safe now. With us!"

"With… us…"

Her lips barely moved to form the words, and the sounds came out like a weak croak.

But then, more crashes, more explosions reached her from outside, making her groan again.

"S-stop… M-make it…"

Panting, Dinky fell silent.

"Is…" Scootaloo began in a whisper, "is she going to be alright, Sweetie Belle?"

Sweetie didn't answer; but Dinky did.

"Ce… Cele — "

"Dinky?" asked Applebloom. How could she be so casual at a time like this?

"Cele — Celes… tia…"

"Oh…" said Sweetie, a realization coming to her. "That's what's going on. Princess Celestia's here to save the day and distract the Haissanians so that we can get away!"

"We're saved!" Scootaloo said.

"So that's what's goin' on," said Applebloom. "Told ya that creep'd be sorry he ever chose the wrong fillies to mess with! What I'd tell ya, Dinky. It wasn't goodbye after all!"

"Mmhm!" said Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie.

They all sounded too happy.

"Ba — bad… Celestia — Fi-ire… Bombs…" Each word she managed roused more pain within her. She had to see it all, to make them see it too. She didn't want them to see it. But they had to understand. So why couldn't they? They had to know…

Everything shook again.

Dinky was on the floor again, this time on warm fur instead of the cold steel of an airship.

Everypony's groans were interrupted by a ding-dong.

Everypony sounded surprised to find themselves being magically seized, the same as her. She imagined them floating and squirming in a magical levitation field like giant amoeba.

Everypony was being hurried off by a unicorn who was galloping. Was she hyperventilating?

Something metal crashed in front of them, making the unicorn turn to gallop in another direction.

"Sweet Celestia," Applebloom said, "the whole thang's comin' apart!"

Dinky winced. The air was disturbed by exclamations, of being hit, of confusion, of disbelief — all of which confirmed that her fears were only going to come true. She could feel her fur pricking up in dark anticipation of what was only inevitable.

A ruckus was taking place just outside, on the deck of the airship.

Magical shots were fired.

Ponies were yelling and screaming.

Then silence.

Dinky squirmed again, restive.

She and the others were hurried down a short flight of stairs. The explosions were louder down here, the scent of fiery ruin more pronounced; it wandered around her like a looming predator. She was safe nowhere.

The unicorn spotted an escape pod and galloped for it. Deposited into it were Applebloom, then Sweetie Belle, and then Scootaloo; Dinky meanwhile could feel the winds below, calling to her. When the unicorn tried to move her next, something in her just broke.

The floor burst open.

The winds were wild; the fire they carried moreso. They had a mind of their own.

There was a flash and a pop; Dinky and the Crusaders were on their own.

They were sucked into the outside world.

None of them were safe here.

None of them were safe anywhere.

Be it by a crash or her horn nopony could survive.

Screaming.

That's what kept ringing in her ears.

Rushing wind.

Her ears were flapping against it.

"Dinky! Please! You have to wake up! Dinky! Dinky!"

A periwinkle hoof budged.

Too much screaming, too much.

When Dinky finally opened her eyes, despair enveloped her senses. The nightmare had refused to end. It was like one of those dreams a pony had where they woke up inside a nightmare, woke up inside another nightmare, until they found the key that would free them from that torturous cycle.

This was no such nightmare.

There was no such key.

There was only the escape pod, filled with her friends.

Then there was her. For some reason, she was trying to reach out to them. "My friends…" she murmured, barely aware of having done so.

The sound of the words sparked something within her.

She blinked.

She blinked again.

She fought and fought against her fatigue, even if it didn't look like she was doing anything. She concentrated, to make her body obey. She concentrated not into her horn, but into her eyes.

She blinked hard to will her vision to become one; and then it did.

She had to keep pressing her eyelids together, to burn her surroundings into them, to make them stay there.

The color was returning to the gold of Dinky's eyes. She was falling through the air, thousands of feet above a smoldering wasteland of ash and sand, which was being haunted by a daunting red hue. Below her was a metal ball with a translucent core. Through it peered their faces for her pupils to consume: Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle too.

A gasp arrested her, holding her throat in suspense before everything she was, and everything she felt awakened all at once.

"Dinky!"

The cries of the Crusaders were of relief now.

"Don't worry about us," Scootaloo shouted, muffled against the window. "We just found a parachute. We'll be okay! Just save yourself!"

Applebloom and Sweetie Belle pressed their faces beside her. "Please!"

Nodding, Dinky angled her body down like she was a squishy-nosed missile; she inhaled.

But before she could do anything else, something swooped fast upon her.

"Dinky!" cried the Crusaders. "Dinky, no!"

The world was spinning.

But Dinky had to focus; her horn sparked.

Far below, a green cloud burst out of nothing. Taking hoof of it, she flipped herself over, landed, and surfed it fast towards the ground.

Dinky found herself heading towards what used to be a grassier part of a plain. Except much of the grass had wilted to a lifeless black. Geysers of fire were shooting in random spots below her; she had to be careful of where she landed. She studied the plain, and the holes in it. She could only hope she chose a safe spot.

The escape pod had already half-sunk into the sand when she landed, and her cloud-board was more than half-evaporated by the time she galloped off to embrace with the Crusaders again.

She was panting what little air was cool enough to breathe.

The ground was stinging with each hoofstep she pounded into it; a shockwave hiccupped her mercifully off it.

She yelped, her limbs poised in a would-be offensive stance as she slid backwards.

Snarling, she wiped her face on her shoulder; it was stained now.

"Mmhmhmhmhm…"

It was that laughter again.

She looked around for it.

But was it coming from inside her head, or from somewhere else?

She stumbled, but regained her balance —

Somepony slammed onto the ground, throwing off her feet.

That somepony was tall, especially for an alicorn. Throwing her fiery head back, she cackled her joy; the furs on Dinky's coat were standing on-end, one by one. An otherworldly radiance radiated from the divine form; it was as though Dinky were squinting at the sun itself. Orange plates clad the mysterious mare… her wings and her chest, too. She glimpsed the Cutie Mark. It couldn't be… Could it?

A geyser of flame shot up with each step the white mare strode.

"Well, well, well," the white mare said in a voice as smooth as silk. "I am glad to see that my ambush was not enough to dig your grave, Brother."

"Brother?" Dinky said, nonplussed; she was scrambling backwards on her haunches.

With grace the other went forward. "Do you not remember me, al-Ula? I am different, this is true. But I am still me, under it all. You have not forgotten me, have you?"

Dinky was shaking her head, over and over, but not in answer to her question.

"No… No, no, no!" she said. "What have you done with her? What have you done with Princess Celestia?"

The white mare bit hard, her face now twisted into a snarl.

Somepony yelped from faraway.

Stars roamed in Dinky's suddenly black vision. All she could think about was how much her muzzle hurt. Why was she rolling along the ground?

"Do not dare," the blurry mare said, danger in every syllable, "mention that pathetic excuse for an alicorn in my glorious presence, whelp!"

Black and red were shifting apart again.

The white mare was approaching, stomping.

Her image kept blurring apart, into an afterimage of Princess Celestia and a shadowy outline of her, and together again, into the coherent whole that was the fiery white mare. What… was she?

The white mare deigned to stoop. She locked eyes with Dinky's cowering form, her irises of tar, her eyes of hungry embers.

"Oh, I think I shall enjoy squeezing every last drop of pain from you."

Fiery snakes slithered about the long white horn, which flashed. The fires had united at the summit, and hot currents were drooling from it.

Whimpering, Dinky could only watch.

"Dinky!" the Crusaders cried from faraway.

The escape pod's latch banged loose.

Ash was painting an unmarred strip of grass, only stopping when a foal the color of burnt periwinkle collided with a tree.

The impact sent her airborne for a second, and airborne she stayed, for Dinky was graced by an aura. It was not unlike the body of a roaring fire, with her at its core. Though it felt hot, it did not sting when she was stuck inside it; this was of little comfort.

"I wonder," the white mare pondered aloud somewhere behind her, "do you care for them, al-Ula?"

The levitation field exploded out of existence and reappeared in front of the white mare.

"Well!?" she shrieked, slamming her forehooves upon the spell with which she imprisoned Dinky.

Blood spurted out her mouth in reply.

The white mare flinched; her surprise evaporated as quickly as the splatter on her cheek.

The tar-stained eye widened.

Within the immaculate folds of her burning magic, the foal finally had the sense to thrash about, desperate for any hope of escape.

The long spiraled horn hummed, ready to burn to life again.

"Silence, impudent runt!" she snarled at her prey, which was now inches from her muzzle.

Yet, the details she could focus on were not much better.

Behind the mare, the sky was blood-red, cloudless; the once-verdant fields — now ash.

"No, don't hurt her!" cried a voice, which the white mare seemed to take no notice of, for she had eyes only for the crumpled heap in her telekinetic grasp.

With a forked tongue she traced her fangs; she smacked her lips appreciatively.

Then her eyes flashed.

"Dinky!" cried a voice that, again, the white mare took no notice of, since she was too busy relishing the sight of her prominences dancing around in her victim's shrunken pupils.

"Dinky, DINKY!" the white filly shrieked, her squeaky voice cracking.

Tears trailed across the blackened grass. She galloped and galloped, desperation in every dry pant and every hiss of a hoofstep. Her fuchsia hair dragged thinly and lamely behind her.

"Sweetie Belle, you dummy, no!"

An orange filly started into a gallop. In seconds, she caught up with her white-coated friend.

A yellow filly who lacked a bow wasn't far behind.

"It's too dangerous! C'mon! It's too late. We can't do nothin' here now. We gotta get outta here. Now!"

The white mare perked her ears up. "Oh?" she crooned, a slight glance over her shoulder.

Ash clumps were spraying past the white filly as she ground her forehooves to a halt. Mouth agape, she watched, paralyzed.

"Oof!"

The yellow filly stumbled, falling onto her.

The orange filly's hoof skipped a step, her wings fluttering feebly before her momentum parted her from the ground.

Dazed and sweating, there the little fillies lay.

They looked up.

Now a fully braided serpent of flame, the tail was ready to swoop upon the prey under its glow.

"Mhmhmhm," the white mare chortled to Dinky over the screamed terror. "Humorous, isn't it? That these foals could ever think they could stand up to me, the Bringer of Day Eternal!"

Paralyzed, Dinky could say nothing; she roved her eyes over her friends' faces for the last time.

The point of the fiery tail winked a deadly promise.

Finally, Dinky gasped herself awake. "Applebloom! Scootaloo! Sweetie Belle!"

But they could not hear her over her screaming.

"Ah," the white mare purred, eyes closed. "Music to my ears."

She couldn't look.

Who was she?

Where was she?

She was falling, falling…

How long did it take?

Why couldn't she care anymore?

An abyss swallowed her.

Darkness eclipsed her senses.

For a long while, that was all there was: darkness.

Then there was water.

The water was blue.

It was neither hot nor cold.

It did not push against her sides.

It was just letting her drift down.

Thus to depths unknown she sank.

Nothing shone behind those golden eyes anymore.

Who was she?

Why couldn't she care anymore?

Lower and lower she sank.

Sleepier and sleepier she got.

The more sleepy she got, the more her eyelids drooped.

Darkness again.

Images again:

A dark blue alicorn, standing proudly at an unruined palace, the silver strands of his mane billowing in the tranquil breeze. Tranquil they were no longer. Clouds churned above him, of storm and of lightning. Flash. Towers broke apart; they spun about, the same as the trees and bushes of the garden.

Then a bright blank background.

Faces were fading in, one by one.

A kind smile, with a head-tilt to match: Sweetie Belle.

She disappeared.

A wink, followed by a stuck-out tongue; orange feathers parted to form a peace sign: Scootaloo.

She disappeared.

Refastening her bow, she only then noticed; surprise turned to delight, and she stopped fiddling with her bow to wave: Applebloom.

"You want to see them again, don't you, Dinky?"

As well as she could, she nodded.

"Then swim."

How far had she sunken?

How long had she been sinking?

Bubbles swarmed out of her mouth.

She blinked, amazed that she was still there.

But where was she?

Was there somepony else there?

Shaking off her questions, her doubts and her fears, she swam.

No fish swam beside her; nothing did.

There was only the deep blue, empty and pure.

Every swing through the water was effortless, as though she was spreading her limbs through thin air to ascend.

A twinkle begged for her eyes; spurred on, she hastened her motions.

Years were passing.

The higher she swam, the darker got.

The darkness was eager around her.

Dinky didn't care.

The only thing that mattered to her was following the light.

She kept going.

And going.

And going and going.

No matter what it took.

The shadows were closing in on her, ready to hug her.

But she wouldn't let them.

Dinky reached her hoof out.

Ripples echoed on the surface, and something was shining just above it.

"Do you remember me, Dinky?" the voice said, as the periwinkle hoof breached the surface. "It's been a while."

The horrible laughter was returning…

But now, she was brave enough to face it.

Burnished hoofbracers were being ruined, dug into the ground as she slid. Waves of ash and dirt were throwing themselves up in her wake. Something was hissing, and it wasn't fire.

"Unforeseen," the white mare muttered; she was glowering at the fillies three, who were still holding tight onto each other, quavering.

She lashed her serpent tail back into its naturally wild state.

She lit her horn. "Let's try that again," she said, danger tinging each softly uttered syllable.

But then she gasped, her surprise disappearing behind an interlocked pair of wings.

A radiant orb of wind was pushing against her. And no matter how much her hooves protested to the ground, the white mare could not help but be shoved further and further back. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, went the orb, as it ground against the angelic wings.

Teeth were gnashed, more energy summoned into the fierce roars of magic.

There were hair-thin streams, and once they brightened into existence, they transpired to have been spinning into the wind orb like tides into a whirlpool. Long bands of dark-blue were unfolding out of the magical orb. They were glowing petals of a flower that twisted and spun; they kept spinning until they were the wings of a rotor whose torque was forcing her back. The haunting howls of the attack were enough to rumble the ground, the effusion of energy almost enough to glare out the ambience that had eclipsed the land.

A figure was stalking forward, growling and glowing.

"What the hay?"

"No way!"

"It can't be…!"

The sound of their voices was empowering. One hoof was placed in front of the other, to exert will indomitable upon the magic. To heart's desire it was drawn, and to that desire, the leylines were aligned. There was no sweat of effort, no anticipation of anything; just tenacity. No image of victory enticed her, just the here and the now.

Eyes were transfixed, breaths held in suspense.

The magical orb stopped pushing, as though it had reached a wall that it could not drill through.

The white mare seemed to hold her ground, and she would be shoved back no more!

Thus her wings exploded, wide and majestic, a black silhouette cast against a canvas of white, for all to bask in.

Too soon it was gone.

Threads of wind and lightning raced about. Dirt was carved, the scalpels of backfired magic revealing the bone-like dust just beneath. Trees were unlatched cleanly from their roots. Sand turned instantly to glass at the sting of an electrically charged tendril. A crater appeared in the ground, popping the ash loose; it hovered, airborne for less than a second before being swept away into the storm.

There was no cowboy hat to fly off this time.

Sheltering the Crusaders was a dark-blue forcefield.

The white mare had her head bowed; she was panting.

"How!" she snarled from the other side of the trench that she couldn't believe she had been used in order to plough. "How is this possible! Who are you, really!"

Ethereal wings unfolded, a periwinkle outline of wings that once were. The white of her mane was billowing in a breeze that would never stop blowing, not ever.

"My name," she said, opening her green eyes, which were ablaze with hope and fury, "is Dinky Doo. I am the daughter of Ditzy Doo, and the niece of Daring Do. And you will not," she snarled, her voice echoing mystically as she stamped the ground, rousing a parade of debris to be devoured by her aura, "hurt my friends!"

"Dinky — "

Unfolding one of her newfound wings to silence Sweetie Belle, Dinky glared across the dead-grey trench, and through the floating remnants of the golden cinders that were her magic.

The once-pristine face of the white mare was twisted by the growl of a wolf; absently she smeared her cheek.

She fell silent, frowning curiously; she was staring at the crook of her foreleg. Something about her was changing. Her frown was slowly turning up. "Mhmhmhmhm… Ahahahaha! AHAHAHAHA!" she shrieked into the air. "My, my, al-Ula! It has been quite a while since I've had this much fun!"

"You!" Dinky shouted, magically magnified. "Tell us what you've done with Princess Celestia! Give her back. Give her back right now!"

Stamping her hoof again sent a shockwave rippling through the ground. Dirt, sand, and all else were roused, and they were merging into a tide of debris that travelled the length of the trench until they swept past orange hoofbracers, which did not budge.

The white mare had closed her eyes, as solemnly as Princess Celestia would. "Oh, but Celestia is no more, child," she said in a loving whisper; and then she humored Dinky's tenacious leer with a teasing one. "Allow me to grace an unworthy alicorn such as yourself with my name — my true name!"

She strode forward.

Smoldering hoofprints were impressed upon the grey of the trench.

"I am the first Fallen Alicorn."

Geysers cheered on either side of her, punctuating each measured hoofstep. Liquid ash was drooling out of the geysers and leaking into the trench.

Teeth gnashed, Dinky unfolded her wings, a weak pretense at shielding the whimpering Crusaders.

The scarlet glow of the white mare was waxing, a corona advent.

About halfway between Dinky and the end of the blackening trench, the white mare paused.

There, she placed her hoof proudly upon the sun of her chestplate and pointed her snout up. When she opened her eyes, her gaze was empty, her whisper rapt with passion.

"I am the Terror of the Stars."

The words set the bottom of her hooves aflame.

Flames roared between her hooves and hoofbracers, eager to be free of their binds.

The fire of her mane was more restive than ever.

The white mare's eyes, raging more than ever, were trained on Dinky, glaring both intent and disdain.

"I am the Shadow of the Sun."

Fiery shadows hissed from within her, causing her mane to shoot up to heights impossible. She was the eye of a giant ember, from which searing winds were being issued, winds that were hissing as they picked up speed, a veritable storm of fire whose glowing strands were slicing clean across the surface of Dinky's barrier.

There, a crack popped into being, and yet more were webbing from it.

The mighty white wings were spread.

The inferno advent heaved a mighty shudder. "I am…"

Pillars of hellfire exploded behind her, above her, and all around her, and in that moment, only the hunger in her black gaze — tarred eyes and brightly slitted pupils — could be seen.

"Daybreaker, the Bringer of Day Eternal! And you — "

The white muzzle was suddenly inches from the barrier, both hooves pressed on it.

" — shall — "

Dinky's barrier froze in its cracking, suspenseful.

It was soundless for a second.

" — PERISH!"

She inhaled, her mouth full with flames as Dinky poised her wings; glancing her apology, she fanned, and the Crusaders were swept away, screaming beyond the boundaries of the dissipating barrier as she lunged.

"What!?"

A crackle, pop, and a flash, and then she was shooting a cyclone at the Fallen Alicorn Daybreaker thousands of miles above ground. Skeins of magical dark-blue were sprinkled with sparkles of gold, and they were spinning wildly into a force that was driving her foe back.

Thunder might have gone off then, but it was just the sound of the cyclone slamming Daybreaker into a mountain. The crater that appeared there could have been made by the base of Canterlot Castle crashing into it.

Keeping herself aloft with her glowing wings, Dinky wasn't sure what her goal was. She needed to warn somepony, anypony. But she also needed to keep her friends safe. All she could hope to do was stall until help came.

She strengthened the force of her magic.

The crater in the mountain expanded further.

The mountain glowed red-hot, along with the cracks that slithered over its sides, like chains wrapped over a safebox. The explosion that followed was subtle, but Dinky could feel it even from a distance. The mountain took the cue from its newly formed cracks; it slid apart along those contours. The end of the cyclone, meanwhile, was unraveling, its magical seams coming undone at the force of a meteor piercing straight through it.

Eyes widening, Dinky ceased her magical flow and flew well out of the way.

But before she could get far, a pop of fire sent her hurtling back.

Dinky, in turn, maneuvered her wings in a way that would send her spiraling upwards. For her, flying was somehow as natural to her as her magic. At the apex of her flight, she twisted and went back around. She had her horn charged, her hooves straight in front of her.

"My, my," said Daybreaker, amused. "It appears that your attempts to restrain me have failed, al-Ula. It is truly a disappointment, Brother. You are not half as entertaining as Luna was a millennium ago." She tapped her chin condescendingly. "Perhaps you require, ah… the right motivation."

The crashes of the mutilated mountain boomed in the distance.

From Dinky's horn came a flash, and Dinky became a periwinkle lightning bolt that smacked Daybreaker right across her jaw. Before she had time to recover, the lightning bolt struck her again; it zoomed side to side, and each time it blipped over her, her fur and chestplate were decorated with a new patch of scorch marks.

Periwinkle blurs unleashed a final flurry of kicks that sent her into a mid-air zigzagged stagger. A kick to the chest slammed her some distance away; her head was about to droop down.

The lightning bolt took the cue; it zoomed over to her, arcing in a concave-up path to deliver the uppercut kick.

"What the — ?"

Dinky was being hoisted up by the ankle. As much she tried to squirm free of fiery magic's grasp, breaking free simply wasn't an option. All she could do was look at Daybreaker's upside down smirk — well, maybe that was a lie.

"Ow, my eye! You'll pay for that, runt!"

Flying away from Daybreaker, her horn still sizzling, Dinky locked eyes with her.

Popping out of space, Dinky delivered a piledriver kick on top of Daybreaker's back.

Snarling, Daybreaker looked up to find Dinky blowing a raspberry at her. She fired, but missed, the resulting fire blast racing and fading into the sky. Meanwhile, a bolt of periwinkle lightning was zooming in zigzags in her general area; it wasn't attacking her, but trying to confuse her. Daybreaker was following it wearily with her eyes.

Groaning, she closed her eyes to focus.

She inhaled and exhaled.

"Ah, there you are."

When she opened her eyes again, Dinky was caught within the fiery folds of her magic. Try as she did, she could not squirm, let alone gain any momentum to escape. Her attempts to do so were rewarded with her prison shrinking closer upon her.

"Do you think yourself so special, al-Ula?" she asked in a whisper, muzzle to muzzle. "Do you think your blows thus far have been real? No. No… You should know this better than anypony else: they are Generosity. Surely, it must have occurred to you that thus far I have been exhibiting but a fraction of my true power."

"Surely not!"

A black beam shot Daybreaker, whose grip loosened; ethereal wings spread to break free. Before Daybreaker realized it, her captive had disappeared in a flash and pop.

In a flash and pop, Dinky reappeared beside Princess Luna.

"Princess Luna, Princess Luna!" she said, pointing. "Something's wrong with Princess Celestia! We have to help her get back to normal!"

Princess Luna and Dinky were hovering in the air, about half a mile from Daybreaker.

"Normal?" Daybreaker said, throwing the word at the conspiring duo. "This is normal! Do you not see? This is what I was always meant to be, Sister! This is what I've been held back from for so many millennia. I've always had to consider others. But what about me? And now you wish for me to restrain such power, to forsake my true colors and to dim myself to just the way you and those envy-ridden cockroaches prefer it!?"

She teleported, and was up in the air, with her forelegs raised high above her; her teeth were shamelessly bared.

"But now that you're here, Sister Dearest, the true fun can begin."

High above were red twinkles growing in the sky, casting Daybreaker's shadowed leer and gaze into sharp relief.

"We shall negate her meteor attack," Princess Luna told Dinky. "Thou shalt keep her occupied."

Pop. "Oh, way ahead of you."

Princess Luna gasped. "No! Dinky!" she said, a spark in the air stinging her outstretched hoof; hissing, she turned her horn skyward.

A fiery mane was coiled around Dinky's neck, and it was taking her to the ground. Dinky couldn't even scream; the lack of breath, not to mention the scorch of her flesh were too much. The smell of herself burning was forced into her nostrils; she was seeing stars. It was too dry for tears to ooze out of her eyes. As if that weren't enough, she learnt the hard way that Daybreaker's mane was fuzzy with pricks of what felt like very hot needles. She was going numb again…

A slam awoke her, and too soon.

Daybreaker was leaning over her face, pressing her hard against the sand-glass. Her horn was ready, and her eyes looked eager.

All the air Dinky could draw into her lungs was smoke. She coughed, causing Daybreaker to wince. So Dinky threw sand into her eyes. Hissing in satisfaction, she slid under her. She jumped up and down as a lightning bolt, alternating between sand-glass and alicorn mail while picking up speed.

Daybreaker didn't notice until she was being rocketed into the air.

Lightning dust was fading off Dinky as she pushed Daybreaker towards Princess Luna's spell: a black vortex that raged from her horn. Poised to face up, it siphoned light and flame off the rocks until they lost enough heart to fall lamely to the ground. Daybreaker realized, eyes widening, that she was next; so was Dinky, who felt a strand or two of her own magic get sucked into the spell.

Smirking, Daybreaker disappeared.

The black tornado was still active, and Dinky was heading right for it; so she disappeared, too.

When Dinky popped back in, another giant raging ball was homing in on her. Flapping to flee barely slowed it down; in fact, it just seemed to fan the magic that it was made of. The more it followed her, the larger it became, not unlike a ball of snow rolling down a mountain. Dinky tried to swerve at a sharp upward curve to lose it; but a glance over her shoulder told her that it had traced her path. What's more, it seemed to teleport whenever Dinky did. Gritting her teeth, she felt its heat at her hindhooves; she dared not look back. The more she flew, the more the light needles of the fireball were distorting the space of her vision. She silently prayed to Princess Luna for help.

Except Princess Luna was already embroiled within a direct confrontation with Daybreaker herself.

Daybreaker charged her horn, raised it high, and brought it down again, the resulting energy disc racing for Princess Luna.

Princess Luna teleported out of harm's way and teleported back into exactly the same spot as before, except with her neck craned back as though to check her shoulder. The lunar crescent she flung at Daybreaker only collided with another energy disc; another followed, and it would not have missed had Princess Luna not teleported out of the way again.

Taking Dinky, she teleported back whence she had come.

"We must hurry, little one," she said to Dinky, who was still catching her breath. "We must not tarry. The longer this goes on for, the more permanent she becomes."

The fireball that had been chasing Dinky, meanwhile, crashed into a mountain, which turned into a silhouette that flashed for a moment before unraveling from the whole, like the torn pieces of a leaf being scattered by the wind. The shadow of Daybreaker's smirk could be seen in the light of the explosion.

"Oh, but is that such a bad thing?" Daybreaker taunted in a baby-voice, her forelegs held carelessly out.

Princess Luna scowled. "We both know what thou art capable of," she said. "And we both know that thy continued existence benefitsp none but thyself."

"Oh, but spare me the morality lecture, Sister," Daybreaker said with a dismissive hoof. "So tell me, where on Equestria have you been hiding these few days? Surely, not behind a silly mirror; I have seen to that, after all."

"That is of little concern to thee," Princess Luna said with a tight lip. The metal on her hoofbracer glinted as she pointed. "As we speak, the Avatars of Harmony are on their way. And it is they who shall put an end to this madness, once and for all!"

There was silence.

Then there was laughter, there were shrieks; and then there were shrieks that devolved into insane laughter, with Daybreaker pointing childishly at Princess Luna all the while. Dinky thought to shut Daybreaker up by hurling a bolt of magic at her, but Princess Luna held her foreleg out to forbid it. And it was at that precise moment when Daybreaker stopped laughing.

"Surely," Daybreaker said, her demeanor suddenly dire, "you must know that their precious instruments are hidden behind a spell that can be broken by nopony else but my devolved lesser, whom despite her clear weakness and unnecessary restraint you still find the heart to care for?"

Princess Luna was shaking her head.

She fixed her determined eyes on Daybreaker, pursing her lips tighter. "I have faith in Twilight Sparkle," she said, a hoof to her chest, "as you once did." She closed her eyes, her horn alight. "Forgive me, Sister."

A black hole stretched open above Daybreaker. Two more appeared on her sides, followed by another below and another behind. Another widened to block her entire body from view. Before she had a chance to teleport, comets shot out of the holes.

The hissing of ice against fire was filling the air.

Amongst the mist, something shone; Princess Luna already had her dark-blue barrier up.

The explosion that followed enveloped Princess Luna and Dinky in hot white.

It lasted for a few seconds; Princess Luna still did not drop her barrier.

The wormholes were no more, and the same could be said of the ice attack.

Daybreaker was hovering on her hindlegs, a hoof to her chestplate. She was giving a look of mock-endearment. "Oh, Sister. Why, we are moste touched. For thee, the moste versed of ancient tongues, to cease ye Old Ponish for the benefit of us? 'Tis truly an honor to be so familiar with an alicorn as inferior as thyself."

Princess Luna growled.

A boom cut across her, and through the air, which visibly rippled and rumbled around the wind orb.

A beam of hot energy drowned it out before it could attain critical mass.

Now, that beam of energy scanned the skies for Dinky, who had flown up; she was about to be spotted.

Erecting a barrier, Dinky twisted her body, with her hooves pointed forward. She spun into a forward dive, to drive her barrier forward to pierce through the beam of conflagrative energy. The front of her barrier was contorting into a sharpened point, like a diagram that Twilight had once shown her of a Sonic Rainboom. Despite the danger, Dinky couldn't help but enjoy a fantasy about pulling one off in her ascended state — a fantasy she shut away, because she needed to concentrate. She spun herself and her wings harder, even calling upon her breath to propel herself forward. But no matter how hard she drilled, she could push no farther; in fact, it almost felt like she was being pushed back. Her shield was evaporating —

The flames dispersed, but only because their caster was being assailed by a series of lunar-white crescent blades.

Each blade clawed at the orange regalia and raked at the white fur.

Daybreaker was snarling, too angry to notice the thousand or so crescents spinning into being, surrounding her from all corners of the sky.

Dinky noted the presence of an anti-teleportation field; it was way more powerful than Twilight's.

With the wave of a hoof, Princess Luna let the sharpened edges of her magic sail.

Meanwhile, fireballs were growing out of nowhere, surrounding Dinky, who spread her wings. Each clap of them sent a blade of wind that eviscerated through each fireball, cutting it in halves — halves that sparked, eager to regenerate. But the funnel-like stream of air that Dinky was blowing at all of them prevented that possibility from coming to fruition.

Gasping, she teleported out, and right back where she had left. She had no time to so much as glance at the deflected lunar crescent that she had dodged, because she had to dodge three more headed her way.

Daybreaker jerked above a pair of such crescents to let them smash together in a white explosion, before using her tail to swat another two Dinky's way; with her wing, she commanded two to return to Princess Luna. Dinky slammed her forehooves together, sending a supersonic shockwave to slow down the blades of magical energy enough for her to fly out of the way.

Princess Luna merely had to flick her horn to banish her rebounded magic.

For her part, Daybreaker was breathing hot torrents to overwhelm the remaining crescent blades to make them wane and wane, until they were new once more.

But she didn't have much time to recover. "Oh, but what's this? Another cage made of magic? How original."

Arcs of electricity were zooming fast around and over her, and after enough orbits, she was enclosed within something that was like a fishing net made of electricity. It was a net that, moreover, was getting closer and tighter still.

Daybreaker was unperturbed; her hooves were crossed in an X over herself, and her eyes were closed as though in a meditative state. Her wings exploded open alongside her inner fire, and electricity assimilated into fire upon touch, fire that realigned itself into a long barbed whip that, soaring and with the wave of a hoof, she lashed at Princess Luna while she was charging her next spell.

Horn dimmed, she cried out and fell from the skies.

"Princess Luna!" cried Dinky; she snarled, her horn buzzing angrily before she teleported again.

"Oh, come," Daybreaker said, directing her whip at her foe above, "surely this must get old for you at some point."

She was a conductor whose baton was her hoof, her orchestra the whip some ways above her.

The whip clipped Dinky on the shoulder, but she ignored the pain.

Another lash was coming.

She disappeared so quickly that she could have teleported.

Electricity crackling at her horn, Dinky aimed at Daybreaker. "It doesn't."

Skeins of electrical fury shot out; they intertwined and interwove into a thread that was eager to sting.

And sting it did.

The magical lightning exploded upon impact, buzzing particles lingering in its wake.

Soot coated her plates and her twitching fur.

Limbs trembling, she seized Dinky by the hindleg, pinned her against her chest, and did three mid-air somersaults before swatting her away with her tail.

Hissing, a scorched scar across her face, Dinky teleported again.

Popping back into space again, she aimed her hindhoof for Daybreaker's underbelly — only for that to disappear, too. "Behind you, runt! GAH! Luna!" Daybreaker snarled, somersaulting as a barrage of crescent blades merged into one asynchronous bundle of magical cutlery that spun and ground at her shuddering hoofbracers.

Deflecting the chaotic edges, she paused to regain a second's breath as she slid backwards in midair.

"Look out!" Dinky yelled, punting Princess Luna out of the way of one of her crescent blades.

"Together!"

Dinky nodded, and so, linking forelegs with Princess Luna, she encapsulated them both into a bolt of lightning. It went about in circles that became rapider and more solid with energy. At the tangent of one, she launched the duo forward, guiding the impetus of the twin tackle. Zaps and crackles were petering off them as Dinky let go; and now, shooting forth, side by side, they charged their horns in unison.

But a flame consumed Daybreaker before either spell found its mark.

"It is time I put an end to this little game of ours once and for all!" her voice announced, for all the lands to hear.

Gasping, Dinky and Princess Luna looked up.

Electricity was arcing, black yet bright across the dark-scarlet skies, allowing lesser eyes to glimpse upon an unholy silhouette.

With her limbs spread far and wide, she was ascending in an uncannily familiar way. Once she was at the apex of the sky, rays of light issued forth from her white form. For a mad moment, it was like she was an angel descendent — an impression that was dispelled the moment her white form flashed redder than the heavens around her.

Maniacal laughter rent the air.

The black streaks of lightning were soaring more and more chaotically across the dark dome of sky.

"NOW! Now you shall know true brilliance! Now, ALL of Equestria shall know radiance in its TRUEST form! Now, ALL shall be purified, bathed in my holy flames! Now, ALL SHALL BE LOST FOREVERMORE TO THE PURGING BLISS OF OBLIVION! ALL IS AS IT SHOULD BE! AHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAAAHA-! AhaHAhAAhaHAa!!"

Shockwaves were billowing from her cackles, causing Princess Luna and Dinky to flinch.

Try as they did, neither could approach.

The red flashes were becoming more frequent. The facsimile of a sun was returning to its eerie red hue; and it seemed to be shaking.

But that wasn't the only thing that was shaking: The sands that were left unmarred were now being jostled; the fallen trees were withering away, branch and leaves and all, until they were nondescript dust being swept into the eye of the storm; new cracks were budding up the mountains, and they were shuddering so much that they simply could not stay whole anymore.

Dinky's vision was malfunctioning: The image of her periwinkle hoof kept shaking into multiple, less opaque versions of itself, each one bearing a surreal hue, and every single one refusing to merge back into a solid form.

But it wasn't over.

Daybreaker was still high above them all, as she righteously believed she should be. So absorbed in the fury that was to be unleashed that she took no notice of a wind tunnel swallowing her whole like a serpent.

The sparkles on the serpent's dark-blue scales gleamed golden as the serpent raced back around, drawn to the part of its body where its prey still hovered, unflinching. Once that part of itself was intersected again, the windy howls entrapping Daybreaker grew, with her none the wiser. The wind serpent looped back, its destination much the same; the radius of its loops was shortening. Shorter still the wind serpent became, and with one finalizing squeeze of the knot, it was an orb of gyrations that kept Daybreaker prisoner.

She stopped flashing.

On either side of the orb were Princess Luna and Dinky.

Sweat was leaking down Dinky's brow. She kept her teeth gnashed in anger and concentration; she had to keep her films of magic taut and bound. Ever so slowly, ethereal feathers were falling loose from her flank.

"Young Dinky, do not give in!" Princess Luna shouted from across the prison of wind. "Thou must hold strong! The Avatars of Harmony shall be here soon! They are our only hope!"

Daybreaker stood up on her hindlegs. Leaning her elbow casually on the wall of the wind orb, a cheek resting on her hoof, she addressed Princess Luna. "Come now, Sister," she said, absently flicking her star-spangled horn, "let us have no more pretense about that. Do you truly believe they shall? Tsk, tsk." She gave a condescending shake of the head. "A true joke, I should think, that we should wait for their arrival! Why, I daresay the little one's reserves shall run dry before then, would you not agree?"

"Shut… up!" said Dinky.

Daybreaker smirked. "Little one. Do you truly believe this dinky little orb of yours shall hold my brilliance at bay forever? Or," she said, facing Princess Luna, "for a thousand years, perhaps?"

"It doesn't need to."

For above the three shined the six hues: purple, orange, white, pink, cyan, and yellow, woven into a radiant orb that was parting the darkness that had overtaken the world.

The blood-red was being ushered away by clear blue.

The sun flickered on and off between red and white, on the verge of succumbing to what was only inevitable.

Within the radiant orb, six ponies were holding hooves, their eyes at peace, their hearts as one.

Daybreaker gasped. "The Elements of Harmony!"

Snarling, she tried to ignite her horn, only for it to fizzle out, unresponsive. For the first time, there was fear in her tar-black eyes; the embers of her pupils were dwindling.

"Whoever you are," said Twilight Sparkle, opening her eyes — and there was no mercy in her gaze, "you will let my teacher, my Princess, and friend go.

"Now!" cried Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash.

When Twilight Sparkle blinked, her eyes were shining pupil-less orbs.

The orb of rainbows trembled with power for a moment, then stopped — a false reprieve.

A strange whir resounded, heralding the eruption of a blinding something shooting out of the Colors of Harmony. What else could it have been, but a helix of rainbows that dispelled the rest of the cursed day and looped back down, setting its aim on the white mare.

It was reflected in her tar-stained eyes, and it was growing in size and brightness until it was all she could see. "No. No. No!!!"

Light exploded in an overwhelming frenzy of purification. In it, no evil could survive, and no other radiance, not even that of the Bringer of Day Eternal, could compare truly.

Did it have other powers, too? Dinky did not know. But she did know it was comforting; she couldn't help but lose herself in it. This past week almost started to feel like one long nightmare now. She was starting to feel at peace now.

And that's when her wings started to wither; she felt them unfolding, the last of them unraveling into the aether.

A breeze came softly, the breath of an apology.

"You were with me all along, weren't you?" Dinky said, a sad smile over her shoulder.

Then closing her eyes, she touched the magical feathers as the last of them evaporated out of her grasp. "Thanks… Dauntless."

Chapter 13: Denouement

Twinkles trailed across the renewed sky.

She was so faraway, and yet so close.

The air of the desert was no longer as dry or sapping, but a swarm of sand grains infested it just as it always had; the grey wings fanned to shoo it away. The heat was no longer so harsh, but still as discomforting as ever; a line of sweat bobbed from the chin, sweat that was soon shaken off. Now returned, the desert sun was as overbearing and as watchful as ever; blinking it away, the golden pupil focussed its gaze past it. Not even an effusion of energy from the Elements, as it swept high over her, deterred her ever-lopsided sight. All that her eye reflected was a periwinkle light, the star of her life.

Photonic spores were drifting off, and they were dimming into oblivion to cast a hoof into focus. The hoof and its others were half-heartedly reached out, as though to a last hope of rescue that was no longer there. The mane was losing its length and ethereal flow; soon, it was shining as golden as hers in the desert sun. Light unraveled along her neck, her flank, and then her haunches; her Cutie Mark was still glowing hot. An angel descendent, her eyelids were shut, her mouth open in a small-O as she fell, unknowing, into grey forelimbs.

The pegasus swerved into a sharp loop; she was gliding back.

A dot of smudge broke the ashen layer upon Dinky's face, which paused to wince; then it relaxed and resumed its soft snores. She was sleeping. Muzzles pressed together, sniffling grey against tired periwinkle.

The desert subsided from the senses, yielding to a quiet hospital ward. In her forelimbs a small foal was being held; she was so little then, so innocent and pure. A tiny hoof poked, and though hers was too big for it, she matched it anyway. The tiny giggle, the expectancy in the golden eyes as they opened, a curious reflection of hers, caused her heart to melt. And so they stared, foal and mother. Together their muzzles touched, periwinkle and grey. Together they shared the moment, and that was when she knew.

Opening her tired eye, Ditzy Doo flew on. She was older now. So was Dinky Doo. More than happiness hid beneath the simple mailmare's smile.

By then, all traces of rainbow energy had finished echoing throughout the land. The restorative powers of Harmony would do much to undo what damage had been caused. But there were some wounds that not even the Elements could mend. There would be need for time to lament, this much was certain. There would be work to be done, this much Ditzy felt. The advent of a new start — she felt her fur prickling with it. The white broadside of an airship — she felt her eye widening at the sight of it.

The more things changed…

Something shoved her mid-flight, bending her trajectory. A pegasus mare the color of twinkling goldenrod was flying aside her; winking, she gave a salute of the hoof.

…the more they stayed the same.

Ash was flicked off their wings, which were poised like parachutes as the Sisters Doo ground their hooves along the cool of the desert grass.

"Dinky!" the Cutie Mark Crusaders squeaked, galloping; but it wasn't long before they too were sliding to a halt. "Princess Luna!"

They lowered their heads, muzzles beneath the white daisies.

Ditzy put Dinky atop herself and tied her forelegs around her neck.

Chimes rung, thousands of them, each one viscerally synonymous with a star in the night sky. Cool black wings were spread. Forehooves were spread forward as she glided the last few yards of her descent.

She touched down noiselessly, equidistant from the bowing Crusaders, and Daring and Ditzy.

In Princess Luna's wake were two levitation clouds, one of which subsided into sunlight.

Six quadruplets of hooves landed.

The other levitation cloud did not yield, for within it slumbered an unconscious pony. The color of her coat was white, untinged by orange or any hue of fire. Her wings blended in so well with her flank that at first glance, she looked like jarringly like an ordinary unicorn. A pink mane was strewn across the floor of the levitation cloud in wavy but motionless patterns. Had Ditzy not been there for Princess Luna's first public appearance hours after the curse of Nightmare Moon was lifted off her, she might have deduced that it was a relative of Fleur de lis whom Princess Luna held within the telekinetic grasp of her ever-shifting stars.

Princess Celestia grunted, rather un-ladylike, in her sleep. She nuzzled her muzzle closer within the folds of her forelegs, undisturbed by Princess Luna speaking to the airship admiral and his soldiers. "Parchment," she simply said, to the militia bowing before her raised knee.

Parchment was produced and hovered into Princess Luna's magic. When Princess Luna nodded her head, the parchment flashed and was sent on its way as a tendril of smoke being chased avidly by brush-strokes of blue flame. After seeing it off, she addressed her bowing subjects. "Rise," she said lazily. "Another warship shall be along shortly. In the meanwhile, we must make our due recompense, for such is our duty, our will also."

The fur of her chest rippled as she set her sights on the Desert Garden.

There, smoke pillars continued to mar the repatriated blue of the day.

The question of what became of the city and its citizens hung thick in the air. Staring at it only increased the anxiety of what would be found there.

"Now," said Princess Luna. "We beseech you fillies three. What on Equestria possessed you to go as far as these harsh desert climes? Surely, this was no leisure trip?"

The Crusaders stepped forward.

"We were just trying to help our friend, Dinky," said Applebloom.

"She has crazy wind magic," Scootaloo explained. "And it's really powerful, but really dangerous, too. It really scares her whenever she uses it. That's why she ran away from home."

Above Sweetie Belle floated an open book, whose contents Princess Luna was frowning at. "Dinky got this book from a stranger a few days ago. She said that stranger had more like it. That's why she decided to go to Haissan. We all agreed to come with her."

"We're sorry," the Crusaders chorussed, hanging their heads.

"Arise."

And so they did; Applebloom's new bow and Sweetie Belle's redone curls bounced.

Princess Luna was telekinetically flipping through the pages of the book Sweetie had deferred to her. Pursing her lips, she clapped the book shut.

The dust that poofed out of it was assimilated into the winds.

"Hmph. It seems that we have more than one reason to visit that city, after all. Gather everypony, here! We brook no disagreement."

The admiral and his soldiers wore their straight faces as masks.

The Sisters Doo steeled themselves, silent and ready to assume vigilance.

The Crusaders crowded close to their respective sisters.

Princess Luna was surveying them all. "Now, is everypony ready?"

"Yep, yessirree, see!" Pinkie said, bouncing into the air with her legs spread wide.

"Crusaders, at the ready, our Princess!" the Crusaders said, visoring their hooves over their eyes in a salute.

"Not all on yer lonesome ya ain't. Applebloom, y'all better git on my back and don't peep none. I'll know if ya do!"

"Same for you, Sweetie Belle," Rarity sung impatiently.

Dash arched her back as well. "Hey, I'll make your mom double your grounding time if you don't get on here pronto, Scootaloo!"

"Yes," the Crusaders droned, each one climbing atop her respective sister's back. Eyes were covered.

"All is settled, then? Very well."

Without preamble, a flash ensnared the senses; it shrunk to reveal a great silver pair of doors, which whined forward. An arrow glanced off the barrier; a glance by Princess Luna was enough to send the archer cowering to an area of the battlement that was out of sight. Sweeping her distant gaze over her charges, she marched on.

The sting and stench was stronger within the walls of the city. The ambience of war lingered, palpable to all but those who were not yet acquainted with its horrors.

Stone pyramids loomed on either side of the group, ever watchful. Long-snouted ponies were fleeing at the sight of her. Doors were being shut, and curtains were being drawn; eyes peeked behind them. Princess Luna continued to lead her people through that ravine of stone and clay.

That she, a born diplomat, was practiced in more tongues than her native Ponish was a fair assumption to make. It was an accurate one as well. Haissanian was a rapidly spoken language, and it was no less so when uttered in the traditional Canterlot voice.

"We have called for their master," Princess Luna expounded after her echoes had died down, "the one who lured Dinky Doo to this land."

"Oh, 'lured' is such a Generous term. Many ponies, and I count myself among them, would say, 'foalnap'."

An arched bridge hung overhead, connecting the two pyramidal complexes.

He stepped out from under its shadow.

"You," Daring snarled; she was already in an offensive stance, which Princess Luna obscured with the length of her foreleg and banished with a look.

"Greetings, Princess," the Haissanian said with an unctuous bow. Despite the scars, the ash, and his new injuries, he was no less smug than when he had ambushed Applejack, Rarity, Dinky, and the Crusaders at Carousel Square. "We shall conduct our discussions in Ponish, of course, for the benefit of your guests. As you can see, there is much to be accounted for."

A scaly-green hoof gestured around to the scorched stone, the chipped-off buildings, the bent cannons, the broken steel, and all other signs of chaos having run rampant in the pitiful streets.

"The Powers of Harmony have restored the destruction wrought more recently, we assure you this. That being said, we shall be eager to negotiate our affairs, given thy walls remain solid enough to shield our words from curious ears."

"Indeed they do, Princess," the Haissanian said. "Come."

He took flight.

Princess Luna flicked her horn in his direction.

"Are we really going to trust that creep?" Dash said, jabbing her hoof in that same direction. "After the ambush? After the foalnappings!?"

"Peace, Loyalty," Princess Luna said, a hoof raised for calm. "May we remind thee that he has, after all, left the fillies, and the airship admiral and his soldiers, unharmed during their captivity? Therefore, of his people, he seems the most amenable to negotiation. We believe he acts only out of pragmatism. That aside, we must make amends for the losses so recently incurred here straightaway. We must still the fires that are his grief and fury before they can be stoked into vengeful sentiments that suffice to ignite an intercontintental war. Finally, we must see the little one's quest through to her end on her behalf." She pointed her muzzle at Ditzy, atop whom Dinky was snoring in pig-like rumbles. "Oh? And so it transpires that he has been seated."

The long-spiraled horn of Princess Luna spat; then it was crackling in earnest, on the verge of another spell.

Meanwhile, Dash was pursing her lips. "Ya lost me at 'amenable'."

Groaning, Princess Luna rolled her eyes.

Pop, flash, bang.

The flash and cinders of the teleportation spell dissipated. Two midnight-blue hooves stepped over the bounds of the barrier as it faded and shrunk into the carpet below. Upon that carpet trodded hooves, those of an admiral, then those of Mane 6, a sisterly pair afterwards, followed by those of common airship soldiers.

A red glow permeated a dining hall. It could be distinguished as such because a long dining table stood between Princess Luna and the Haissanian, who, as the former had stated, had been seated. The Haissanian had his hooves slanted against one another in a pyramid that barely concealed his chin. He narrowed his ever-scrutinizing eyes. "Welcome, guests of the young Sultan."

"'Young Sultan'?" Dash said, nonplussed. "Okay, do not tell me he wanted a puppet king. That's like, book-four levels of predictability right there!"

"Yeah," said Daring, shrugging, "I sort of lost steam around then. Even if I did want to write about this adventure, I would have written the motive a bit differently."

"Yeah?" Dash asked, hopefulness leaking into her voice. "How so?"

"Well, for starters — "

"Come on, Miss Writing-Workshopper," Ditzy said, lowering her eyelids, "a bunch of important plot revelations are going to happen, and I'm pretty sure they can't happen with us still talking."

Rolling their eyes, which both looked pink in the lighting, Dash and Daring fell silent. The latter took to leering at the Haissanian.

Fastening Dinky closer around her neck, Ditzy did the same.

The Haissanian's hoof made a gesture. "So, let us discuss the surrender of the little one upon the grey one's back — "

"Let us not. Let us begin with introductions. Our name, as thou shalt very surely know, is Luna, the Princess of the Night."

"You may call me, 'the Regent'," the other said curtly.

Princess Luna hummed. "Thou speakest that title as though thou art soon to be the only regent in these lands who matters."

With his wing-feathers, the Regent was holding up his wine glass; he jostled the purple liquids within. "A claim I hope shall come to fruition soon, Princess."

Setting the glass down, he steepled his hooves once more; he had an air of seeing how his opponent would counter a move he made in chess.

"But thou shalt most certainly not do it by using one of our subjects as a jewel with which thou shalt profess legitimacy to a throne far from well-earned. There will be no question about it. 'Tis selfishness that thou wouldst designate a foal to use as a pawn in thy petty games and pageants. Generosity has ruined thee, Regent," Princess Luna said, pointing. "Surely, thou knowest this?"

Without budging his hooves, the Regent shrugged. "I wish only for peace in Haissan, Princess."

"Thou seekest power. And if thou wishest for liberation from this madness, thou shalt relinquish any delusion of securing one of our subjects for thy schemes. In return, we shall provide aid to thy torn country in order to compensate for the onslaught that recently thy people have endured."

Ditzy, Daring, Rarity, Dash, and Applejack gasped.

The Regent was growling over them. "How insulting, Princess. For you to stand there and promise things that shall hardly make up for the loss of life and of… limb."

His wing flared up. Though it was clean of ash and burns, it was completely bare of any feathers.

"No," he continued, "I think the foal shall compensate for any losses and sate our desire to engage in… hostilities."

Ditzy and Daring growled, but fell silent at the imperious arc of a midnight-blue hoof.

"We assure thee that neither thou nor any of thy people are in any condition to engage in hostilities. May we remind thee that thou must recover thy strength? May we remind thee that our forces," Princess Luna said, gesturing to her admiral, his soldiers, and the Mane 6, "are more than capable of overpowering the forces that lay in secret in thy manse?"

The scaly green hooves parted. "Oh? But this you do not wish to do, my dear Princess. There are many other secrets in my manse that you do not wish to destroy. For you see, the routes to the Royal Archives are known to very few. I consider myself lucky to count myself among them. You will enjoy no success in finding the desired volumes for that abomination of god and flesh should you be rid of me should harm befall any under my command. The others… shall be less cooperative than I am, I assure you. I assure you also, that they shall surely feign ignorance in light of recent… ah, events. Finding them shall be like finding needles among stacks of hay. They shall be less willing to help than I am."

"But thou art willing to aid young Dinky Doo in her quest, art thou not? If thou truly lovest thy late Sultan," Princess Luna said, causing the Regent's face to twist in silent rage, "then surely, a few books for His heir would not be much to spare? In return, our airships shall provide aid to restore thy crumpled strength. This is our Generosity to thee, Regent."

The Regent stayed obstinately angry, a sentiment that was not reflected in the aloof Princess a table's length away.

"We withdraw for the time being, Regent," said Princess Luna, giving a short bow of the head, for it was his hospitality she was trespassing upon, "and in the time thus given, we do hope that thou shalt be more amenable to our gesture. Neither aid nor apology shall compensate, naturally, for the fallen; we know this to be true. We deeply regret the damage that Equestria has wrought upon thy city. We hope equally as deeply that sense shall be seen, and what few reparations can be made will in time be accepted. We wish for no ill will between our nations. We shall send for a response within three days."

With that, Princess Luna and her group disappeared from the dining hall.

Now, she was galloping through the air, the graceful strides of her legs not unlike those of a swimming pony. She, her airship soldiers, the Sisters Doo, and the Mane 6 were enclosed within a giant bubble that was travelling fast over the desert. Though it was transparent enough, nopony pressed their eyes through it to watch the scenery past them by. A flat plane inscribed the barrier's interior, and it was there where most of the party was standing.

"So that's it?" Scootaloo said, her haunches on the virtual floor; she crossed her forelegs beneath her head. "That dude kidnapped us, and we're just going to let him get away? Where's the swift regal justice? Where's the closure? Where are all the beatings? The flashy explosions? We're at the end of the journey, and it ends without a big epic fight to bookend everything? What is this?"

Applebloom stared flatly. "Where in tarnation have y'all been for the past four hours?"

In another corner of the barrier, Twilight Sparkle was sitting, her nose in a book. "Fascinating, fascinating," she murmured to herself; she turned to Ditzy, whose thoughts were too preoccupied with other matters to care. "These markings… they are just like the ones in — "

"That book in thy possession is written in a script that is meant for alicorn eyes alone, Twilight Sparkle," Princess Luna droned. "Not even the most learnt mortal may read let alone write it."

Twilight's shoulders drooped. "If only I were an alicorn," she said, immersing herself in the book she couldn't read, while Sweetie Belle watched her.

Princess Luna was looking sidelong at one of the pair. "Hm."

Then she turned away.

"What I don't understand is," Ditzy said to nopony in particular, "is how you six managed to get the Elements of Harmony. I thought it was hidden behind a spell nopony but Princess Celestia could break."

Daring strode forward.

"I'll front that. You see, it's a long story…" she said, unnecessarily readjusting her plinth hat — only for something long and pink to stretch out of it. "What the — "

Then Daring's shoulders were scrunched against another pair by the force of an unusually strong foreleg.

"It wasn't that long," said Pinkie Pie; pausing, she spread her hoof in a dramatic arc above her, as though to show Daring Do the stars in Princess Luna's magic. "So there we were, running to the castle vault. Nothing unusual so far, Miss Daring Do. So anyways, you were there, and everything was all normal and stuff. There were those funny picture glasses on the windows. So far, so normal. The floors were red with the history they told, yadda yadda, all that fun author fluff, you know. Anyway, so there Twilight was, going up to the yellow barrier wall thingy that Princess Celestia made; we saw it from the last time the vault had to be opened. Hm… I think it was when Discord returned? Oh! So anyways, so there I was, thinking about the time I went outside for a second helping of cotton-candy-flavored chocolate rain. My mouth was watering, remember? Wait, no. My mouth was watering when I was thinking about the the last time we were there, not the actual last time we were there before then, anyway, everything went all scary. It was all on FIRE! There were eyeless animals made of fire, squirrels, manticores, basilisks, you name it! There were even these creepy ghoul ponies! The weird thing was, they were moaning a lot; they sounded a lot like zombies. We were getting backed into a corner; well, not the corner really, just the vault barrier thingy, which started begging all fire-like now that it had a face. It was too much for Twilight, so Applejack and Rainbow Dash took charge. And I mean, literally. They charged against the magic barrier, probably because they were hoping to break through. But their shoulders caught fire instead. 'Ouch,' I said, wincing, sucking in a breath in-sync with the fire. But then something really, really amazing happened, Daring! There were these outlines that appeared around Applejack's and Dash's necks. Then a light flashed to wipe away the fire! You were even pointing it out. In fact, more outlines shined around our necks — well, except yours, sorry, Daring! And they became more and more solid until they were the Elements of Harmony, shining our way through the flames and the scary fire-ghost-thingies. The rainbow rays exploded from me, from Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and even from ol' Mister Crankee Doodle Donkey! … … … (…Wait, no, scratch that last part.) Anyway, the windows stopped glowing red, all omen-like. When we turned, we all gasped at a rainbow bridge that was pulling us along for the ride. We all let it. And we didn't know how we knew it then, but we knew that wherever it ended, it was where we wanted to go. So we leaned our weight forward, me and the girls minus Mister Crankee Doodle Donkey obviously. Before long, we were going really, really, really fast. I went, 'Wee!' at the top of my voice, and then I was skating all the way across it. It was a really long rainbow that we rode. Then I felt bad that you were left out, because there wasn't a stripe for you; but you didn't seem to mind. You cried and screamed, but not because you were sad. I thought you were overjoyed that you were flying so fast with super-duper awesome-alicorn magic dabbed on your wings. Actually, I think Rainbow Dash was jealous." "Hey!" "We were flying all the way across the continent. We were passing patchquilts of dirt and farm and city and other stuff. All along the way, I waved at Spike, Shining Armor, Miss Cheerilee, Crankee Doodle Donkey, Mr. Cake, Mrs. Cake, my mom, my dad, my sister Limestone, my other sister who's-a-minute younger-than-me Marble, my older sister Maud, Flash Sentry, Coco Pommel, Party Favor, Flim and Flam, Moondancer, Bon-Bon, Minuette, Coco Pommel again, Mr. Neighsay, all the wavy waves of the ocean, Mr. Dolphin jumping out of the ocean with Mrs. Dolphin, Gilda, Gallus, then a couple of bowing ponies, then the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and then Ditzy Doo, then Dinky Doo, and then Princess Luna. And that's when Twilight interrupted me, which I totally get, because something really important was happening. That long bridge of rainbows I was just talking about was winding over us six like we were a giant ball of worsted; you know, the flashy color-y kind. Even though it was like a really, really long rainbow, stretching all the way across the ocean, it didn't take long for us to be ready to light it up, right, ladies? And just in time, too! That mean and scary version of Princess Celestia was caught by Princess Luna and Super Scion Dinky! And so Twilight said, 'It doesn't need to.' And that's when the super-evil version of Princess Celestia gasped, 'The Elements of Harmony!' She struggled to push against the alicornucopia of wind; she tried to charge her horn, only for that to go out like a birthday candle, only like way sadder. And that's when Dinky started to lose her magic; Princess Luna shouted words of encouragement to her. Twilight didn't give an epic speech this time; boy, was she mad! I mean, so was I, but you know. Anyway, a swirly rainbow thingy shot out of us for the third time since we got elected into office by the Elements of Harmony. The scary version of Princess Celestia was all upset, because the pony she voted for didn't win the election. Princesses and their monarchies, am I right? And then we came down, thanks to Princess Luna. We met up with Daring Do, that's you, Ditzy Doo, and Dinky Doo. Princess Luna sent a letter to Shining Armor to read, and like she said earlier, an airship was going to pick us up and I think we're going to meet up with it halfway now. Oh, but before that, Princess Luna said we should all go to the capital city of Haissan to tell the snake dude that we were going to help him with the mess we sorta caused; oh, and to ask about that book Sweetie Belle picked up. So she teleported us all in — Princess Luna, I mean, not Sweetie Belle, because she has to be a little more grown-up before she can do that, and probably because of a magic flower or something. The archers got scared of her (Princess Luna) — but they looked more scared than mad, if I had to guess. Anyway, we walked in. Princess Luna told the scary Haissanian, 'Thou shalt come out, one who has summoned Dinky Doo thither!' Or something like that, I say, shrugging right now. Except nopony answered — not my shrugging just now, but Princess Luna's calling for him back then. They hid, everypony except one. So Princess Luna put a tracker on him, I think, and then we got all pop-flashy-bangy-banged back to his castle. Then Princess Luna gave him an offer to let him think about. We got all pop-flashy-bang-banged back out of his castle. And that's when Ditzy Doo asked Twilight Sparkle how she got the Elements of Harmony. That's when you cut in, strutting in all hero-like. And that's when I cut in, popping out of your hat all cute and bunny-like, and then I said, 'It wasn't that long…' And that's when I stopped myself before I started recursing and told you, 'See? It wasn't that long.' See? It wasn't that long. And you thought you needed to write another whole story about it, Miss Author, you!"

Daring endured the playful pokes to the vest, suppressing her laughter.

And now that she had her hat back to herself, she wasted no time in adjusting it cockily.

Across from Applejack and Rarity, who were rolling their eyes playfully, Pinkie squeed.

Princess Luna raised an eyebrow. "Hm?"

The folds of magic within which Princess Celestia rested shifted from midnight blue to purple. "You've only done so much for us until now, Princess Luna," said Twilight Sparkle; behind her, Sweetie Belle was taking her turn with the book. "Please, it's our turn to help you."

Behind Twilight, her friends nodded. "Mmhm!"

"Hmph." Something tugged at the end of Princess Luna's lip. "How the burden of our heart is lightened. Thy gesture is most kind, thy words kinder still. Thank you, Twilight Sparkle and friends. Thank you, all of you. We are so sorry to have led you into the maw of danger." She smiled her gratitude at the group behind her.

"But there is something I don't quite get," said Twilight. "Why did this have to happen to Princess Celestia? Why now?"

"Hm." Princess Luna turned away, and her one eye that Twilight could see was distant. "We think it was due to grief."

Cycling her legs, Princess Luna lost herself in her thoughts.

"I understand," Twilight said, "I won't press you for any further details."

As it transpired, Princess Luna's momentum nullification spell was strong enough for Pinkie Pie to bounce around in it, going 'Wee!' while she lost herself within her foalish delight. Rarity took to measuring Applejack for the dress the latter was going to be wearing sometime soon. When pressed for details, neither sister told either Sweetie Belle or Applebloom about what the dress was for. Sweetie Belle and Applebloom moaned. Rainbow Dash whispered into Scootaloo's ear, and Scootaloo's eyes lit up; Scootaloo thereafter refused to tell her fellow Crusaders about it, to even louder moans. Though Twilight had fallen asleep with a book over her eyes, her horn was still humming with magic that kept a certain slumbering Princess afloat; beside Twilight's shoulder slept Fluttershy.

"Psst. Dinky still asleep?"

"Like a little foal," Ditzy replied, craning her neck around.

She was unable to help but be touched at the sight of her, softly snoring on her drool-drenched shoulder. It was like shaking herself out of a wonderful stress-free dream, when Ditzy forced herself to finally confront what lay before her. It was not a physical or a magical force she had to contend with; it was so much more than any magic in the known world. And it had been heavy upon her shoulders ever since that morning, when she woke up…

It took strength for Ditzy to divest her shoulders of Dinky's weight.

Daring took it and nodded, 'Good luck' for Ditzy as the latter flew up.

"Princess…" Ditzy said, hovering somewhere behind Princess Luna, who had not turned. "About Dinky…"

Ditzy flew closer, close enough to hear Princess Luna's whisper. "We fear she is too dangerous to leave in Ponyville," she said, confirming Ditzy's fears. "We ask to keep an eye upon her in Canterlot. We fear that no trinket or spell shall suffice to curb the little one's power fluctuations anymore."

"Fledgeling's Forbearance!"

Startled, Princess Luna and Ditzy looked down to see a hoof raised in answer.

Still aloft, the hoof belonged to none other than a Twilight Sparkle, who had snorted awake. As she groggily whipped her head about, the book slid off her disheveled bangs; she seemed confused. She was scanning her surroundings for any signs of an ongoing lecture that had prompted what she hoped was a correct answer. Everypony had paused their conversations: Applejack and Rarity tilted their heads at her; Dash and Scootaloo drew their heads back, noses wrinkled; Pinkie Pie was bouncing in-place. "Heehee! Silly Twilight. Princess Luna is using Accelero to get us back home, not whatever spell you just said!"

"Huh?" Twilight said with a cursory glance around her. "Oh, yeah. Of course, of course…"

Her body loosened.

Catching her, Fluttershy gave Twilight lulling shushes while running her hoof through her disheveled bangs.

"Hm," said Princess Luna, turning her attention away from Twilight's renewed and rather ungraceful snores, "it seems that young Twilight Sparkle has overexerted herself during the recent investigation and is now compensating for it at the present. However, her ejaculation is not without relevance; Fledgeling's Forbearance would indeed be an efficacious solution, were the foal in question in less conscious control of her magic, and either of her parents the one to cast the spell upon her. However, as neither seems to be the case…"

Ditzy hung her head. "I understand."

"Do not misunderstand, young Ditzy Doo," Princess Luna said, tilting Ditzy's head up. It had never occurred to Ditzy how green Princess Luna's eyes were. And now, they were locking with hers as though Ditzy were an equal. "'Twould be a grave injustice that we should part mother and daughter. Our decision required little, if any, deliberation on our part. We do not command that thou surrenderest this unique foal into our custody. We merely request it."

Ditzy felt her eye trembling, her heart pumping her uncertainty.

"There is much knowledge hidden within the stores of that Regent character, this we concede," Princess Luna continued, "and should we receive his cooperation, his stores of knowledge would be of great help to master the wind powers with which thy kin has struggled so hard to hone. We would be honored to oversee her studies, Ditzy Doo."

Ditzy was stunned, moreso than when she usually flew right into buildings.

When finally she spoke, her voice was shaky. "'We' as in…?"

"I," affirmed Luna, "the Princess of the Night would be honored to take Dinky Doo under my wing, Ditzy Doo."

Many parents in Canterlot would have cheered were they to be told that their unicorn filly was exceptional enough to be educated personally by one of the Princesses of Equestria. Maybe in a different time, Ditzy could have counted herself as one of those parents. But now, she could feel nothing at all. Emotions paralyzed her — emotions that were well outside her ability to discern and express.

The lines beneath Dinky's eyes were telling a story that Ditzy already knew was too much. Ditzy had gone all this way to get her little muffin back. And now…

Suddenly, none of her surroundings felt real to her:

The ocean sliding beneath her, the magical barrier ferrying her and everypony else safely across it, and Daring Do conversing with Rainbow Dash and what appeared to be newfound friends. Ditzy couldn't even open her mouth to discuss a matter that tugged at a distant corner of her mind. The glyphs on a certain invitation envelope were glowing goadingly on the surface of her mind.

"Thou wouldst be most wise not to seekest that place again," Princess Luna said quietly enough for Ditzy to hear and for the others below to not take notice. "Thou and young Twilight Sparkle, as well. To academically inclined minds, mysteries are stimulants and playthings. But we warn thee this, Ditzy Doo: there are some things in this world that are better left in obscurity."

Was she saying what Ditzy thought she was saying…?

Derailing her train of thought was a pig-like snort; it paused, tentative. A big yawn followed, and then somepony was smacking her lips. She craned her neck out of her sleepy pile of limbs.

"Princess Celestia!" chorussed everypony below — everypony except for her prized pupil, who was still snoring. Ditzy felt so distant from them all now.

Princess Celestia had never looked never more majestic. But in that moment, she had also never seemed more clueless. Everypony was looking to her, and the enlargement of her eyes suggested that she was wondering why. Never before had she been at a loss for words. She blinked twice.

Finally, her mien assumed one of the familiar regality. "Good afternoon, everypony. Did I forget to raise the sun again?"

Laughter exploded.

It was liberating.

It was uplifting.

It was infectious, even to Daring Do, whom Ditzy felt was a world away now.

Ditzy was happy for her. But she also felt like she was alone again.

After much cheering, much rejoicing, and much shared joy at the reunion, which was not unlike the joy one would feel after those suspenseful moments spent waiting for dawn to come, Princess Celestia decided it was time.

Spreading her wings, she flapped free, phasing through the thick folds of the violet levitation cloud. One may have thought she was going to take flight to greet Princess Luna. But she spared a moment, hovering, to smile her endearment at her prized pupil, who was too preoccupied with the bliss of slumber to realize her spell was now redundant; silently, she proceeded to the altitude of Princess Luna, who raised an interrogative eyebrow. "Oh? Sister? Thou hast slept well without my intervention, I presume?"

Ditzy was observing Princess Celestia only vaguely. It was weird to see her with pink, non-ethereally flowing hair; it was almost as weird as Ditzy herself without her bad eye, she conceded sadly. It was like she wasn't even there, hovering somewhere near the Two Sisters.

"Slept well, indeed, Sister," replied the other. "Oh?" She held a surprised hoof over her mouth. "Luna…" Her eyes were then drawn to parts of her body:

The frayed wings, the blackened scorches on her fur, and the gashes in her skin, still wet. A slight pant remained with her breath; now, it was probably renewed with the effort of keeping a barrier of this size not only airborne, but in motion for so long.

"You are unwell. I am so, so sorry for what I have done…"

"Peace, Sister, for I have erred similarly, a fact that I am surprised has been forgotten so soon. That aside, these…" she said, gesturing to the spots of worry, "these are but paltry wounds. They shall heal, as all do. All I am concerned with is that thou art safe and well at the present."

But Princess Celestia seemed more concerned with, not necessarily the health of, but the fate of another.

"And the foal, Luna? What of her?"

Epilogue

The mirror rippled like a pond and shimmered like a parade of water in sunlight.

Twilight had just left.

Ditzy had not.

A periwinkle foal, newly born, was locked in an embrace with a tired, but happy grey mare. This time, that foal took no notice of a tired face hidden beyond the glass of a bedside window.

On the other side, the tired mare sighed. She was sitting in a land of swirly hills and a Sundial, which had returned to its original form: a giant sundial carved of stone. What had motivated its initial transformation into the wondrous tree-like structure from the last time she was here, she was unlikely to find out. She had tried once more, to decipher the alicorn script upon the face of the Sundial, but to little avail. There had been a moment when she thought she was on the verge of gleaning a modicum of meaning from it, at last, after moons of exerting herself. But she shook her head; her eyes were just playing tricks on her again.

As Princess Luna had said, some things in this world were probably better left unknown.

Ditzy's dad was long gone.

Ditzy herself felt like she was soon to follow in his footsteps.

"Still here, are you, Miss Doo?"

"Starswirl," Ditzy droned without any enthusiasm whatsoever; she was tracing the ground again.

"Please. You may spare me the formalities."

"Ha. Ha. …"

Starswirl hummed. "I am concerned."

"Oh, spare me your swirly and bearded pity, Great One."

Lately, Ditzy found herself emulating Dinky's snark.

"The portal is closing, Miss Doo," Starswirl said.

"Really?" Ditzy said half-sarcastically before dropping the tone entirely. "Why would it be closing?"

The lines beneath Starswirl's eyes folded upon each other.

"It seems that an effusion of energy from your world has left this entryway unstable," he said, gesturing to the mirror; on its surface was a world of tall buildings, creatures that walked exclusively on their hindlegs, and a few familiar faces. But the image twisted and stretched, with neither hoof nor magic having been exerted upon it. "Now, there is no telling how long this nexus will stay intact for. I fear for what should become of you if you do not hurry back, Miss Doo."

Ditzy smirked. "Is it wrong to say that I don't?"

Starswirl did not share her humor. He raised his head again, to let his eyes scrutinize the tired adventuress; it was as though he could see right past the smirk, a mask for her confused blend of feelings.

"The choice is yours, Miss Doo," he finally said. "I stay here for my own longevity. You may do so if you wish, consumed by your obsession with the curse that took your father's life. Or perhaps you wish to flee from the graces of love and life? Time is so oft overlooked and taken for granted. Here, one may squander it away; there…" He activated his horn; the colors on the mirror shifted to the shape and color of a certain party mare's bedroom. "There," he continued, "one is fortunate to have no such luxury. Eternity is but a word here; I can almost remember when it still held meaning." He paused, lost in his recollections; they were probably distant, faded, and meaningless by now.

He shook them off like they were gnats that begged his attention.

"You remember," he continued, "what I told you about the mirror and the curse it holds?"

"Vaguely, yeah," Ditzy said, scratching the side of her head.

"The Sundial is hardly better, Miss Doo. Some things in this world are better left to the imagination. Of greater importance is the world that lies waiting for you. Personally, I envy you. A life that can be counted is more preferable to an eternity spent in madness and aimless contemplation, I should think."

Starswirl strode past her, then paused. "Forces are at work in this realm, Miss Doo, strange forces. They exist for your protection. Curiosity has called you to this place, this much cannot be denied. But surely, you have heard of what happened to the cat once curiosity got the better of it?"

Ditzy laughed. "Where I come from, they say it more succinctly."

"Then perhaps you ought to not follow in the pawprints of the proverbial cat, Miss Doo. One day, you may find yourself indulged so deep within your rabbit hole that you may never wake up."

Ditzy was staring at his serious eyes.

On that ominous note, Starswirl strode on for perhaps the last time. "Fare thee well."

Watching him disappear into the dark of the woods again, Ditzy sighed.

It was just her and the mirror again.

Beyond it, no party was going on.

There was only utter silence, save for the whistling trees around her. Something was on the verge of pouncing upon her; her fur was prickling with that feeling of urgency, the urgency to leave. But for some reason, she could not help but remain rooted to the strange cream-colored grass.

Dinky's words from that fateful day hadn't stopped echoing inside her head ever since she stepped hoof in the Wabe.

'What kind of sister and mom are you… Ditzy Doo!'

After the defeat of Daybreaker, the seasons were restored to their natural order.

As it transpired, it had technically been winter during the second Summer Sun Celebration of the year.

Now, it was snowing.

A lot.

The Cloudsdale weather factory had built up a surplus of winter things, which were now being used in earnest. Grey frigid clouds blocked out the sky; minute specks of sleet were being blown constantly.

Only when over a month's supply of snow had been layered thickly enough to prevent anypony exiting their cottage did the residents of Ponyville roar in protest.

The snow was thinned, and the sleet was in the process of being toned down.

The drastic change in weather was of great surprise to all in Ponyville.

It had been a very hot summer for the past month or so.

Hearthswarming was coming up.

Dinky Doo was a unicorn filly who was soon to depart a small town called Ponyville. She was a much older foal now. Each of her ears stood straight up and alert, all the better to listen to anything that would disrupt the silence of the train station.

Her aunt Daring was playing guardian for her again.

Putting a consoling hoof on Dinky's shoulder, Daring scanned around. The coat of the mare she was waiting for would blend in a bit too well with the pale color of the cloud-crowded skies; it was more out of wishful thinking, really, that her efforts were exerted.

Still no sign of her.

Daring huffed a breath that turned into crystalline mist that sparkled in the dimmed sun. She hugged herself, shivering; she had insisted to her niece that she always be dressed in her adventuress's gear. Her niece, on the other hoof, had had the mind to dress for the weather.

Earmuffs muffled Dinky's drooped ears. A woolly grey sweater was layered tight over her chest; the flanks of the sweater had curious grass-green patterns, a detail that Rarity had been sure to incorporate into the design after Sweetie Belle told her about it.

Standing on the platform were aunt and niece, and they were facing the snow-sprinkled tracks.

Nor were they the only ones.

The Crusaders were seeing Dinky off. The sisters of the Crusaders were acting as their chaperones. After the Haissan incident, the older sisters seemed more protective of their charges, a thought that Dinky did not want to dwell on too much.

On Daring's left were Rarity and Sweetie Belle; the latter tried to peer around her sister's legs to meet Dinky's eyes. Applebloom and Scootaloo were doing the same, more or less. But Dinky wasn't in much of a mood to so much as look them in the eye, not after all she had put them through.

Applejack kept a close eye on Applebloom; she also kept a tight foreleg around her neck. Scootaloo and Rarity followed in her example. Dash and Scootaloo didn't need to visor their eyes to watch the horizon for signs of a horn, a toot, or a puff of smoke.

Prodding a small mound of snow, Dinky resumed listening for any signs of her.

None came.

According to the clock on the window of the ticket vendor, it was only ten 'til. She wished time would slow down.

Dinky sighed, and climbed down the ticket table. "Aunt Daring, where is she?" she said, walking back.

Once she was back at Daring's side, Daring knelt to pull Dinky closer to herself — partly out of a desire for warmth. "She'll be along, kid," she said.

She almost kissed the side of her head, but stopped herself; that was something only Ditzy and Dinky did.

And Daring sure wasn't Ditzy.

The more Dinky wanted time to slow down, the more it seemed to speed up. Dinky was tapping the station platform anxiously, moaning all the while.

Glancing at Dinky, Applejack scoffed before shaking her head; Daring threw a glare her way.

Every second was precious, so why was she not here to savor any of them?

Too soon it came: the familiar twin toot. In different weather, it would have been muffled only by distance, and not by the veils of sleet.

A shadow blemished the white murky canvas that overlooked the horizon.

"I see it, I see it!" Dash and Scootaloo said, pointing; the former was carrying the latter on her shoulders.

Snow parted in arcs along the tracks as the Friendship Express rode into view. The train's normally vibrant colors were subdued in the current weather. Its windshield wipers were on. Heaving a mechanical exhale, a giant puff of smoke from its rooftop exhaust pipe, it screeched to a halt. The train emanated heat and warmth, and therefore succor in the cold.

It was time.

Daring and Dinky sighed: She had not shown up.

The Crusaders and their sisters moaned their sympathy.

The doors unfolded open. Nopony was inside except for the conductor, who cried tactlessly for all the station to hear — even though only one pony would be boarding — "All aboard! All aboard the Friendship Express!"

Dinky glanced at her friends, then turned away; she didn't feel like saying goodbye again. Her bags floated upward, sucked into grass-green levitation clouds. She had packed light and scarce, to make her stay the least comfortable as possible. They bobbed behind her as she scurried towards the train's back entrance. She was acting as though nopony would notice her; it was really the sentiment of the gesture. She lifted a hoof to step upon the warmed steel of the train cabin, the first step in the beginning of a whole new chapter in her life.

But she did not make that step.

She had appeared, seemingly out of thin air.

She was standing near the conductor's cabin. She had made no effort to strip off the explorer's vest. Her golden hair was in more disarray than usual. Paralyzing Dinky, rooting her to that same spot, were a pair of eyes, exactly the same shade and hue of gold as hers.

Time stopped.

A frigid wind was blowing behind Dinky Doo; her bangs were hovering on the side of her face, while the sideburns on Ditzy Doo were trailing weightlessly behind her.

Dinky was staring curiously at Ditzy and her trembling lips, a silent plead in her eye.

The Crusaders, their sisters, and Daring Do were looking between the two, anxious.

The winds ceased their blow.

So much had happened lately.

Mother and daughter had grown so far apart now.

Both were at a loss for words.

Shaking off a tear, Dinky galloped.

They embraced. Love radiated throughout their bodies. Dinky had her forelegs wrapped around Ditzy's neck, and Ditzy had hers wrapped over Dinky's flank to press her body closer. Nothing else but Dinky and Ditzy seemed to exist. Memories surged throughout Dinky, of being taken on disastrous piggy-back rides, of being caught naked in the shower, and of all the other little things that she never seemed to appreciate until then. Dinky hugged her tighter; she would miss all of it more than ever. Most of all, she would miss her mommy, Ditzy Doo.

Somehow, after an eternity, they parted.

"You've grown so much, my little muffin," Ditzy said, playing with one of Dinky's bangs.

Pulling a bang out of her eye, Dinky gave a toothy chuckle; one of her teeth was missing.

"Sorry I haven't been the best mommy lately, Dinky," Ditzy said, stroking Dinky's cheek.

Prising her hoof off, Dinky snorted a smile. "Don't talk stupid! You're the best mommy in the world!"

Dinky found her eyes wandering.

Right beside the duo was a train car that looked a little like a giant brown cupcake with strawberry frosting on top. Windows were bored into the side of the cupcake car. The cupcake top also had a window, and it looked almost big enough for Dinky to squeeze through; she had always wondered what was up there.

"Can I?"

Ditzy looked at where she was pointing, then did a double-take before looking back into her little muffin's eyes. How could she resist that look on her face? Ditzy's expression softened. "Only if you promise to be careful."

Dinky nodded, then climbed onto Ditzy's arched back.

This would be a last time for a while, at least, that she would be able to ride on her mom's back like this. Dinky cherished the ride, no matter how short or boringly vertical it was.

Dinky looked to Ditzy for permission, which was given by a nod. Planting a kiss on Ditzy's cheek, Dinky hopped onto the windowsill; her hooves found purchase onto it on the first try. Her hindlegs wriggled as she squirmed her head in, then her arms, her flank, and then the rest of her body.

It was much warmer in here than Dinky had thought. Soft comfy pieces of hay lay strewn about. The floor was made of plain wooden planks; it was warm beneath her haunches. The compartment was simple and cozy, like the attic of a small cottage that she saw no difficulty renting out one day.

"Any reason why you wanted to sit here?" Ditzy asked, once Dinky finally poked her head back out.

"I wanna see the things that Mommy sees whenever she's on there!" Dinky said, smiling.

Ditzy's lazy eye drooped. "Wishful thinking, Dinky."

"'Wistful thinking'?" said Dinky, wrinkling her snout. "What's that?"

Daring rolled her eyes.

"It's close enough, Dinky," Ditzy said, messing up Dinky's bangs more.

Messing them back into the right shape again, Dinky noticed her own hoof.

Something in her clicked then. Somehow, she felt like it was the thing to do.

Slowly, Dinky raised it.

Ditzy mirrored her.

They were staring curiously at each other, gazes of gold and gold interlocked.

Hooves matched, periwinkle and grey. The former felt like it was bigger the last time Dinky had done this — had she done this? In any case, together, they shared the moment. And that was when they knew.

Hooves parted.

"Goodbye, my little muffin."

"Goodbye… Mom."

Ditzy hovered backwards and started waving.

The train wheezed and whined. With a tentative pause, the cranks gyrated; they were picking up momentum.

Leaning her hoof against the side of the window, Dinky waved.

"Go on, kid," Daring shouted between her hooves. "It's your time to shine, now!"

She christened her words with one of her copyrighted winks.

"We're really gonna miss you," Applebloom said, wiping her face, "and it ain't even fair! We didn't even get a proper goodbye the last time we did this!"

"Aw, come on, Applebloom," Scootaloo chided, "it's not like we're never going to see her again. She's only going to Canterlot; she'll be like a train ride away!"

"But…! B-but…!" Applebloom said, cueing Applejack to pull her tighter.

Meanwhile, Applejack was shaking her head at Dash, who held her hooves out as though confused about what she had done wrong.

"Write to you, soon!" Sweetie Belle said.

Dinky could not find the words for any of them.

Unfortunately, she was relieved of that burden.

She lost sight of her mom.

Curtains of snow and wind were closing, one by one, upon the old chapter of her life. Now, it was out of sight, and the wave of her hoof could no longer be seen by any of them.

So, withdrawing into the warm confines of the attic-like compartment, Dinky dug into her bag.

She had her flute and its case, which her aunt Daring had likely shoved in while she was looking the other way.

She had her sweaters, which were knitted together as a thank-you from Rarity.

She had a bag of apples, courtesy of a family of Ponyville farmers who didn't exactly need to be mentioned by name.

Finally, she had a signed copy of the newest Daring Do book, which was adorned by the signature of not only a world-class adventurer, but an aspiring Wonderbolt and two-time savior of Equestria, just an ordinary mailmare, Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo, who had added as a giant footnote, 'THIS IS FROM ME!'. Dinky smiled.

The brand new volume fell open before her. The smell of a new book wandered into Dinky's nostrils as she lay flat on her belly; she wagged her hindlegs in the air and watched the snowy countryside pass her by. Her eyes explored the layout of the floor, the barely visible dents, the slight cracks, and the slightly smelly stains. Dinky was wondering if her mom had ridden here before she was born. She was already longing for her to tell her all about it.

It wouldn't be until she got to the castle before Dinky finally got started on Daring Do and the Revenge of the Wind.

Golden Harvest looked to her left, then to her right.

She had just taken her cart out of a repair shop in Canterlot.

Wherever Golden Harvest looked — and she didn't have to visor her eyes from the midmorning sun to do so — the streets were mostly empty, to her relief. "GANGWAYCOMINGTHROUGHSORRYMISS!!!"

And just like that, her cart was on the verge of falling apart.

Again.

She didn't miss it this time: a blur of orange whom she had learnt to curse in her sleep.

Another whoosh came, unsettling the spoke on her newly repaired forewheel. "Awful sorry 'bout her!"

Golden Harvest snorted like a bull at the youngest of the Apples.

Next, two unicorn fillies dashed around the cart. "Sorry about the cart!" they said over their shoulders. "Again!"

A series of crashes followed this apology; Golden Harvest had winced, afraid to open her eyes again. But just as the sun must set each evening, so too must her eyes open to feast upon what had to be some sick joke or hallucination.

Or at least, that's what she kept telling herself.

To her knees she dropped, over the mess her shaking hooves were hovered yet again. In just a few seconds, her precious cart had been mutilated.

Not that it was of any comfort to her, but the alleyway the fillies had scampered off to was one that the locals never took.

"Gee," Applebloom droned, shaking off the muck of her hoof, "I wonder why."

"Aw, it won't come off!" moaned Scootaloo. "Can't believe I forgot my scooter again!"

"Did you forget which way we're going?"

"Obviously not, Sweetie Belle," Scootaloo said with a roll of her eyes.

She went right.

Applebloom followed.

Nodding at each other, so did Sweetie and Dinky.

Scootaloo swore. "Cart, cart!" she said to Applebloom, looking to her for direction.

Without hesitation, Applebloom gave it.

"Super Special Cutie Maneuver Alpha Double Sigma Delta Beta: Mark Ⅱ. GO!"

Water crashed from behind. Tides of sea and salt sloped up the sidewalls as though to climb it before giving up. The waters clapped together in a crest before Sweetie, before setting their sights for the sliding hooves of Applebloom, who turned around to buck on Scootaloo's hindhooves.

The hooves connected, yellow against orange.

"WOO! I'M FLYING, I'M FLYING! WOO!"

Meanwhile, Applebloom was sliding, sliding and turning, and ducking on the slide of seawater. Then, seeing the bottom of the cart too low for her to slip under, she collapsed herself close to the ground. All her limbs were spread apart from her body, and each of her hooves was spraying foam and salt into the humid air; her belly was coasting along the water. Applebloom aimed her head at the gap beneath the cart.

The closer she got to her target, the smaller it looked; Dinky was holding her breath in suspense.

The big pink bow slicked back before disappearing beyond the cart.

This lit Sweetie's courage; after a nod from Dinky, Sweetie slid on.

She disappeared through the gap seconds before Dinky, who was on the other side.

She took the cue to shoot herself airborne with a huff of breath.

Now that she was airborne, she linked Scootaloo's foreleg within hers, taking her into a spiraling flight that only increased Scootaloo's whooping and awakened Dinky's. They were soaring, filly and filly, the cool breeze against their flanks; they both could see the slope of the mountainside castle-town. They drank in the sight for as long as they could. But nothing lasts forever. Being in a two-filly flight was no exception. Gravity began to push back on Dinky and Scootaloo.

The momentum of the fall was creeping up on them too fast.

They could see the faces of Sweetie Belle and Applebloom, ready to catch Dinky and Scootaloo.

But then midnight blue eclipsed Dinky's vision; a curious breeze followed.

She looked over her shoulder, at the headboard of her bed.

It was silent — too silent for her heart to be beating so fast.

She was too restive to go back to sleep.

Her tower in Canterlot Castle afforded a generous view of the night sky. Moonlight shone into the room, and it fixed its gaze upon the midnight-blue carpet and its crescent patterns. The stars hung high above, steady and unmoving, as sentinel as their steward.

Not all of the castle-town below was sleeping. Some houses still had their lights on; some of those houses housed animately moving shadows. The culinary district was pitch-black; there, nothing stirred. Only a few spires protruded from the opposite wing of Canterlot Castle; one spire towered above them all. It was still hard for Dinky to believe that she was sleeping in the same castle as Princess Celestia.

All the same, she still longed for a simpler chapter in her life.

It started in a quiet farming village called Ponyville. Ditzy Doo had been with children. Of those children, Dinky alone had remained. In Ponyville, Dinky had been raised as an unremarkable schoolfilly. But everything had changed when a self-proclaimed creative nonfiction writer crash-landed into her life.

Dinky sighed, forelegs against the windowsill.

It only felt like just yesterday when she and Daring Do were admiring Princess Luna's night.

A star streaked across it, drawing Dinky's eyes. All the while, she hoped that somewhere in the farming settlement in the distance, they had seen it too.

A few houses there were still awake, but she couldn't get a closer look. She wouldn't open the window; winter had barely just thawed.

She hid back under her covers.

Only the ember of a bedside lantern served as company now. Pleasant orange was flashing against the starry blankets.

Before it could go out completely, Dinky levitated a photograph of four very special fillies.

And she touched it.

"See you soon, guys."

Then she retreated back into her covers.

Miles away, on a certain apple farm, a yellow filly had just touched her copy of that photo.

That same portrait stood on another nightstand, in a room of Carousel Boutique, whose light went out just then.

Removing her hoof from the photo, Scootaloo also went back to bed. "See you soon, Dinky."

"Soldier! Name and origin of your Cutie Mark!"

On the other side of this order and a violet barrier stood a soldier. They were the last of the scouts who had been sent out to retrieve three ponies. The scouts had had to stand in a queue before the train entrance for hours. Each scout had had to give their name and the origin of their Cutie Mark, by order of Captain Shining Armor, of the Royal Guard.

After giving their name and Cutie Mark origin story, the Captain, Shining Armor, stepped aside. "You may proceed."

The soldier passed his captain by, bowing low to Princess Cadence as they crossed paths.

Princess Cadence took no heed; she broke no step, but proceeded to Captain Shining Armor.

"My beloved, is all this really necessary? Don't you think you're being just a teeny bit paranoid?"

Shining turned. "My duties as the Captain of the Royal Guard come first, before anything else," he said, eliciting the rise of an eyebrow.

"What's next? Are you going to interrogate me about my Cutie Mark?"

Shining laughed. "Don't worry," he said, waving a careless hoof. "Nopony could ever replace you, Cadance."

Cadence smiled. "True. Nopony indeed. All the same," she said, angling her head skyward, "I want the sun to shine on us the exact moment we say, 'I do'. And that cannot happen unless you remove your barrier."

Shining shook his head, his demeanor turning serious. "You know just as well as I do that I can't do that, Cadance," he said, "not with the threat of a Changeling so close to us now."

"Of course, of course. I was just testing you. You are a great defender, my beloved."

She leaned her head close against his shoulder; he pushed her away.

"What's with this 'my beloved' business?" he chuckled. "You've never been this affectionate with me before, not even in bed."

A pink hoof stifled a girlish giggle. "Oh, just excited about our perfect day," she said, fluttering her eyelashes teasingly.

"Okay, okay, let's save it for the honeymoon," he said. "But right now, I have to concentrate; this spell is a tricky one to pull off."

An orb-like barrier large enough to enclose Canterlot hung above Shining, not unlike the one that his sister had helped reinforce over Ponyville some moons previous.

Magic hummed at his horn, which he was aiming skyward.

A bead of sweat slithered down the side of his face.

He was crouching close to the ground.

Licking his lips, Shining rose, firing a long jet of sparkles.

After it splatted onto the surface of the barrier, a bright shockwave spread far from the point of impact; the shockwave whooshed over the heads of everypony in the city, a chorus of gasps having confirmed their awe. The barrier blinked, and now, its magical nodes were winking with more heart now, like the stars in the night that had faded hours prior.

Meanwhile, his teeth were gleaming handsomely; he always liked showing off whenever Twilight wasn't around.

"Pretty rad, eh?" he said, about to turn around.

But the loss in magic induced a headache, which he found himself staunching with his hoof.

He collapsed.

Cadence frowned. "Oh, Shining Armor," she said, helping him up. "You don't look so well. Perhaps you should take a break from casting that barrier spell? It's taking a whole lot out of you; I don't know how much longer you can keep this up for."

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said, his suddenly heavy breathing saying otherwise; shaking it off, he spotted a trio of mares, whom his soldiers had rescued, approaching. "Look, you go with your bridesmaids and take care of the wedding. I'll handle the security. My sister Twilight and her friends are scheduled to arrive in just a few hours. Why don't you get things prepared for their visit until they arrive?"

Cadence was already walking away. "Already on it, my beloved."

Striding ahead of the bridesmaids, she bowed her head slightly. She would get things prepared for the visit of Shining's sister and her friends. The bridesmaids stared blankly ahead as they trailed behind her, like the farthest hems of the wedding dress that she would soon be wearing.

They walked through the streets, ponies sinking into bows before her as she made her way to the castle.

"Leave me," she commanded.

"Yes, Your Highness," the bridesmaids droned.

They headed towards the main entrance of the castle.

Meanwhile, Cadence swept out of sight.

The path she took was not as oft trodded as many others.

Bored into a nondescript mountainface was a secret that lay outside both the foundations and memory of Canterlot Castle. It had taken much espionage to locate it; and now, she bade it open.

Darkness swallowed her face as she stepped in.

It was a wet, dark passage. Stalactites hung above, their shadows turning cautiously as Cadence walked past. Her footsteps were out of sync with the constant drip of water from somewhere unseen. Yet they were softer; they echoed more softly, for each hoofstep was more delicate, more becoming of royalty. Even in private, she would deign to stoop to nothing less.

The entrance stopped groaning; it had shut.

Once upon a time, there lived a group of unicorns in Canterlot. For years, they hoarded the city's entire supply of gemstones. But neither the sparkle nor the shine of their wealth could go unnoticed for long. Before long, hundreds of dragons, including Dragon Lord Torch himself, came to claim the gems as his own. The unicorns would not relinquish their treasures so easily, which angered the dragons. The dragons were of a mind to set Canterlot ablaze, which did not abash the unicorns in the slightest. The other ponies of Canterlot, meanwhile, were terrified. So Princess Celestia took charge. Setting claim to the treasure of the unicorns, she surrendered it to Dragon Lord Torch. The Dragon Lord and his subjects went on their way, Equestrian gems in tow. The unicorns were in an outrage; it would not be soon before they would start a revolt. That's when Princess Celestia decided to expound about the catacombs within Canterlot Mountain, where precious gemstones were rumored to lie, more plentiful than the stock that Princess Celestia had surrendered on their behalf. Without ado, the greedy unicorns rushed into the catacombs. None of them saw daylight again. It was a tale that rarely made it into the pages of Equestrian history.

Cadence was crossing through a part of the cave that was more crystal than rock.

Centuries later, the existence of the catacombs was lost to legend. But Cadence knew they were more than just stories. Were she as foolish as the others, she could have sworn that the ghosts of the unicorns still echoed throughout the catacombs to this day. But it was just the echoes of a pitiful pony.

The hoofsteps stopped.

She had paused before a spot. The light of her horn illuminated a scarred pile of flesh, and her gaze suggested that she saw it as nothing more.

"Do not mistake my actions," she said; her voice was quiet but imperious. "This is hardly mercy. Were you so lucky, you would not be here, cowering like the vermin that you are."

Be it due to fear or the cold the flesh pile shivered, it was impossible to tell. Pressing her hoof over the flank, Cadence rolled it back like it was a carpet whose patterns she wished to appraise.

"I have kept you alive, this is true," she continued, "but only to feast upon your grief. For you see, normal love is but an appetizer for one such as myself. But the main feast lies within what remains when a love for another dies. Surely, this much is obvious?"

"W-who… are you…?"

The pink-furred head drooped to the cave floor, battered.

"Oh," Cadence said, lifting the chin of the pony to look her in the eyes, "but I believe our dearly betrothed has already spoken of me, once or twice? Perhaps this is what you deserve, whelp, for paying so little attention to his discussions about work, about security and foreign threats."

The eyelashes of the beaten pony were flickering, the eyes beneath struggling to see her captor.

Then they just gave up.

Cadence dropped her, then nudged her with the tip of her hoof.

"Hmph," she said, smirking, "do not fret, my dear, for it shan't be long before he joins you here. You shall see what becomes of the stallion you once loved. You shall see him for the shell that I will have rightfully reduced him to. He will be no more than a puppet, his mind long gone, his love for you right where it belongs. You will grieve for him; you will beg me to put him out of his misery. That, my dear, shall be my mercy. And once I have obliged, you shall follow. The rest… Perhaps it is mercy also that you shall not see what becomes of Equestria next."

Cadence threw her head back to shriek high. Her laughter echoed in the dank cavern, a cacophony of madness and glee. It was like the catacomb walls were made of mirrors of sound, and bouncing off them was her laughter, again and again and without end. But no matter what, nopony else but the crumpled half-carcass before her could hear her.

Her chest was heaving triumphantly. Her mouth was drooling; her head was hung. The tri-color bangs did well to obscure her face, her eyes as well.

The last of her echoes were dying.

Soon, they were just a memory better left forgotten.

When she whipped her head back up, an especially long strand of hair careened between the middle of her eyes, which had never been more iridescent. She brought Cadance's face up to hers again.

"Have you any objections, whelp?"

Cadance's head drooped down in response, enticing Cadence's teeth into a would-be pointy-fanged smile.

"Oh, I have a feeling that this day is going to be just perfect."