The Unicorn of the Boiling Isles

Today was not a good day. That wasn’t to say the rest of the month had been any better. It was just that, compared to the other days, today was particularly bad. Because of that, Sunset was already done with the day, and it had barely even begun.

It all started after the Fall Formal, when she’d been purified by the Rainbow of Light following several years of poor life choices. Everybody had already been distrustful of her, but after being defeated by the Equestrian princess whose crown she’d stolen, nobody was afraid of her now, either. In one night, several years of power games and social manipulation had been torn down, and she’d not just been rendered powerless; she was persona non grata with the entire school.

Sure, she had Princess Twilight’s friends doing their best to try and ‘rehabilitate’ her, and teach her how to make friends or be a better person. Those moments in life were actually some of the highlights of her day. The problem became that she was under in-school suspension and after-school detention for two weeks, so she could hardly rely on her friends to protect her from much retaliation during school days.

It started out small—just whispers in the hallway. It quickly progressed to shoving and tripping in the hallway and graffiti on her locker. She quickly learned that the students of the school weren’t very inventive with their insults; most of them either possessed some form of demon-related epithet, or any combination of profanity and falsehoods regarding her sexual history. Still, she was the one that ended up having to clean it all off, day after day, and even if she felt she deserved it, that didn’t change the fact that it was hurtful.

Next came the notes being slipped through the vent in her locker around the time she was released from ISS. Most of them were just repeats of the same sorts of things being written on her locker, but some of them were worse—much worse. There were threats of bodily harm, remarks urging her to go back where she’d come from—a physical impossibility for another 30 moons—and then there were the ones telling her she should end herself.

“They’ll all work it out of their systems eventually, darling,” was what Rarity told her one day after school. “Eventually they’ll see that you’re trying to change and let up.”

Sunset Shimmer just grinned and bore it all. After all, she was reaping what she had sown over the last few years. Between what I did here, and how bad I was back in Equestria, maybe I deserve this. Such thoughts were particularly common as her self-esteem further eroded.

Her friends tried their best to cheer her up, but even then, they were working through their own problems. Some of them were people she’d hurt the most the most. Fluttershy had been tormented by her for years. She’d caused Rarity to experience a wardrobe malfunction in front of the entire school at the Spring Fling. Because of a rumour she spread, Rainbow Dash had to undergo rigorous testing to show that she wasn’t using performance enhancing drugs. Pinkie Pie’s school event planning side-hustle almost went under because Sunset had created an email similar to the one she used for it and through clever trickery got every volunteer to contact that one instead. Maybe worse of all, she’d made an absolute liar of Applejack, who’d prided herself on her honesty.

All of them had reasons to hate her, and yet they were giving her a chance. Even if it took Princess Twilight Sparkle requesting that they look after her, they were trying to make a difference. Mall visits, hang-outs at Sugar Cube Corner—the café Pinkie worked part-time at—and even a sleepover, all of those were just a few of the things they’d done. Sure, there was the regular reference to her past, which hurt immensely since she was trying to do better, but they were trying too... right?

Looping back to today, however, things had been particularly bad. First thing this morning at her locker, she’d been shoved to the floor and kicked hard in the abdomen. Since it’d been a liver blow, she’d been stunned for several minutes, and ended up late to class. Since it was a first period gym class, she’d ended up being forced to run laps of the gymnasium for the entire period.

Then, when she’d been showering at the end of the class, someone had gotten into her locker and taken everything. Sunset’s walk of shame to the principal’s office in nothing but a towel; even if she’d been a pony before coming to this world, and didn’t have the same nudity taboos, she’d been there long enough that it was humiliating. What was worse, her bag had been taken to the office, someone claiming to have found it in one of the bathrooms of all places. While Principal Celestia had assured her she’d look into it, because it was a blatant case of bullying and an attempt at humiliation, it did little to raise her mood.

At lunch, after somebody tripped her and spilled her tray everywhere—a regular occurrence that deprived her of her lunch and wasted the lunch money—she’d been warned by Pinkie Pie that she might want to take anything remotely important to her out of her locker. Some students in Pinkie’s art class were apparently talking about pouring paint through the vents in Sunset’s locker to ruin everything.

It was a threat she took seriously. Even if she’d left her old communication journal from Equestria tucked away in the bottom of the locker because of stubborn pride and guilt, she didn’t want to see it ruined. It, and several other personal belongings and textbooks, went into her backpack before lunch period ended. Even if it was heavy, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Listening to Pinkie’s warning turned out to be a good choice; at the end of the day, as she was walking to her locker, Sunset noticed dark red paint—the same colour as blood—seeping out from beneath the locker door. By that point in the day, she was too mentally exhausted to even care, so she just walked past it with a tired sigh. Anyone could see where it had clumsily been poured in through the vents, so it wasn’t like Vice Principal Luna would blame her for it.

Exiting through the front door of the school, Sunset immediately knew that something was up. There was a whole crowd of students around the statue plinth that held the mirror portal linking Earth to Equestria, and students stood to either side of the walkway leading up to it, glaring at her. A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and when she looked, she found a tall girl with tanned skin and white hair: Gilda, leader of one of the school’s minor gangs.

As she was forced down the path by the tall gang leader, she attempted to escape. That pitiful attempt just earned her a punch in the jaw. No further attempts were made after. Instead she just walked down the path as she was treated to a cacophony of students yelling out various hurtful things. As they went, the students they passed formed a mob behind Gilda.

“Go home!”

“We don’t want you here!”

“Kill yourself, Shimmer!”

“Nobody likes you!”

“Nobody cares about you!”

The crowd around the statue plinth parted to reveal a girl from the soccer team—Lightning Dust, she thought the name was—standing beside the mirror. Clutched in her hands was a sledge hammer, and plastered on her face was a look of grim determination. “Hey there, Shimmer!” she greeted her in a terrifyingly calm voice. “We all got to talking, and most of us agree that you don’t belong here.”

Sunset’s eyes widened when she realised what the sledge was for. She doesn’t seriously think she can force the portal to open up by breaking the mirror, does she? It was a terrifying prospect, as she’d read some of the portal’s extensive documentation before getting caught all those years ago, and how it was made created a very big problem. Breaking it without disenchanting it could cause any number of devastating problems, like tearing open an all-consuming hole in reality, making an opening to the void, causing massive magical backlash, or worse violently exploding with all the energy of the bridge spanning the In Between—a realm outside time and space filled with nothing and everything all at once.

Lightning tilted her head toward the mirror seated in the plinth, short blonde locks falling in front of her eyes as she did so. “So here’s what we’re gonna do,” she continued, gently tapping the sledge against the base of the plinth. “We’re gonna give this a good whack and see if we can’t force the door to your home-world open and send you through. If not, well... We’ll just make sure you’ll never want to come back here ever again.”

Oh sweet Celestia, she does think she can force it open!

Multiple pairs of strong arms ensnared Sunset as she tried to storm Lightning Dust, preventing her from moving. Struggling didn’t help. If anything, it only made whoever was helping Gilda force her down on her knees in front of the mirror. “Please, Lightning, you can’t do this!” she pleaded. “You can’t just smash a magical artefact like that! It could kill us all!”

The crowd around the plinth seemed to consider that, as a murmur of doubt began to rise. It didn’t seem to bother Lightning at all, however. If anything, it only made her grin. “I think you’re bluffing,” she crowed, speaking loud enough for all to hear. “I bet you just don’t wanna go back to where you came from ‘cause you’ll go straight to jail for stealing a magic crown!”

A ruckus could be heard at the back of the crowd, the voices of her princess-assigned friends and the Principal arguing with the crowd. They were demanding to be let through, and Principal Celestia was most assuredly threatening expulsion. That only seemed to make up Lightning’s mind.

With a fierce cry, she raised up the sledge like it was a baseball bat, and swung straight for the centre of the mirror. The heavy metal head hit the mirror panel dead on, causing a ripple across the surface, and a loud crack reverberated across the schoolyard. Then, it went silent.

From the point of impact, a spiderweb of cracks rapidly spread across the mirror. As the damage reached the very edges of the reflective surface, something strange began to happen. Rather than simply shattering and falling to the ground, the shards of glass were pulled into the plinth, revealing what appeared to be a vast space full of iridescent abstract shapes and floating black cubes with little universes inside.

That... That’s the In Between Realm! It’s exactly as was described in Star Swirl’s portal experiment notes from before he figured out how to create a terminus point!

“No... You can’t send me through there!” Sunset cried, noting how the opening into the in between was slowly beginning to close. “That’s not Equestria! That’s not where I’m from! Please, don’t do this!”

From behind her, she heard Gilda snort. “Even if it’s not, it gets you out of our hair,” she remarked, patting Sunset on the shoulder. “Don’t worry though. It looks like a great prison for a demon bitch like you. Well, get a move on, boys! Throw her in!”

Sunset began to struggle and scream as she was dragged closer and closer to the portal. This couldn’t be happening! It just couldn’t! The In Between Realm wasn’t a place meant for mortals! It was the sort of place that would drive anyone insane after only a short time!

As she reached the edge of the portal, she could hear her friends calling out her name, and Principal Celestia as well. Out of the corner of her eye, she could just see Applejack and Rainbow Dash breaking through the crowd. It was too late, however. Whatever goons Gilda had restraining her lifted Sunset up and tossed her through the portal headfirst.

Tumbling through the void, she got one last glimpse of the tear in reality she’d been tossed through. Even as the hole began to rapidly close up, she saw her friends and principal looking on in horror. Each and every one of them—Applejack, Principal Celestia, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity—had looks of horror and sorrow on their faces. It looked like they might still have been calling out her name. No sound could reach her, though.

All hope vanished as the broken portal closed completely. A numbness spread through her being as she went into psychological shock. Any sense of passing time left her, and the only illumination she had was the paradoxical glow the black cubes gave off. For the first time in her life, Sunset Shimmer had no plans or schemes of how to save herself from this situation. Barring any horrors beyond mortal comprehension, which Star Swirls notes speculated might exist in this realm, she was well and truly alone.

“How long am I going to fall through the in between?” Sunset grumbled to herself, crossing her arms as she weightlessly hurtled through the void. At some point, her fall through the In Between picked up speed. “Is this what it’s like to be trapped in a bottomless pit? This is just ridiculous!”

Had it been minutes, hours, days, or even weeks since she’d been banished to this place? She couldn’t be sure, and it was driving her up the wall. The state of emotional shock had worn off some time ago, and now she was just angry at her inability to save herself and her current situation. That was fine though; anger was an emotion that could be put to good use.

If only I had some sort of means to tell the time. That’d clear things up really quickly. The memory of her cell phone struck her, and soon after her palm met her face. Reaching into the inside pocket of her leather jacket, she retrieved the smartphone she had purchased just weeks before the formal. Upon waking the device from its inactive state, she saw the lock screen and its wallpaper—picture of her friends gathered around their usual table at Sugar Cube Corner. Against her wishes, the corners of her eyes became damp with tears.

She’d only really known the five girls for a short time, but it hurt knowing that she was never going to see them again. Even if she ever somehow got out of here, there was no returning to Earth. There was no portal terminus there any longer, and she doubted the mirror portal back in Equestria would ever open again, regardless of how much time passed.

There wasn’t any guarantee that any world she emerged in, if that was even possible, would be hers. The very existence of Star Swirl’s mirror proved the multiverse theory, as his notes commented on several other worlds he’d visited in his past—even parallel Equestrias. She might emerge in an Equestria where Nightmare Moon was never defeated, or an Earth where the Germans conquered the world. Hell, she might even end up in a universe occupied by talking amphibians.

This is why I never bothered making friends before, she thought as she gazed at the lock screen. With a sigh, she unlocked the device and navigated through the settings, returning the wallpapers to default. You never know when something absolutely bucking stupid will take them away from you. That’s why it hurts so much, though; I was actually starting to like the idea of having other people I could rely on...

As it turned out, she’d been falling for about three hours. She couldn’t even correct the perpetual somersault she was trapped in. The laws of physics didn’t seem to operate in the expected way; was there even any air friction here? Or air for that matter? It wasn’t like she was getting hungry or thirsty either. Does the human body even need any of that in this realm?

Eventually, she saw a cube floating right in the middle of her path, off in the distance. It was particularly large, and as she drew closer, it became apparent that it dwarfed her. She quickly put the phone back in her inside pocket and zipped it up. Finally, she braced herself for the pain that was sure to follow. As she struck the side of it however, she didn’t wind up turning into fine paste, or even taking any sort of damage.

Instead, she found herself erupting out through a pane of glass in a somewhat medieval looking street. Before she could even react, she slammed hard into a vendor cart of some sort, and several leafy greens tumbled down on top of her. It was a somewhat humiliating experience as piece after piece of produce seemed to bounce off her head. At least my backpack full of books broke my fall... and not my back.

“My cabbages!” came a deep and guttural voice moments before she felt herself hauled up by the front of her shirt. Before she could come to her senses, she found herself floating limply in front of what looked to be some sort of short, piggy-faced humanoid with large tusk-like teeth poking out from his bottom lip. “You’ve ruined my cabbages, witchling!”

Two things became readily apparent to Sunset as the late afternoon sun beat down on her. The first was that the orc man or whatever he was had a circle of green light floating above the end of his finger—light that seemed to match a field of energy gripping her shirt. The second was that she could feel her magic. It may have felt somewhat different than normal, but unlike in the human world it was responsive and eager to get out. She even had a good idea of how to do it, like it was instinct.

“Look, Mister, I’m sorry about your produce,” she said, trying to keep her temper down. All around them, there were creatures of all sorts staring. Some were standard human-like beings with pointed ears, whilst others were more varied and fantastical—some kind of bird person here, a lizard man there. “I’ve had a really shitty day. I’ve been getting harassed nonstop for weeks. Today, my only way home was destroyed and I was thrown into the void, and now I’m here, wherever that is.”

She drew a circle in her air in front of her with her index finger. As a circle of bright red light formed in front of her, she bared her teeth and stared into his beady eyes. “I’ve been trying to be a better person, so I’ll ask you nicely to please put me down.”

“Or what, kid?” he demanded. “It takes a lot of work to grow this human realm crop, and it isn’t cheap! If you don’t have the snails to pay for it, I’m gonna have to hand you over to the Emperor’s Coven!”

A lot of the gathered crowd started muttering. One person remarked that the glass that Sunset had burst out of belonged to a boarded up storefront. Another commented that it was just a kid. Then there was a bunch pointing out that it was just an accident in the first place.

That was when Sunset slammed her palm through the ring of light she drew. A pillar of rock shot up underneath the pig man, launching him into the air. When he came back down, he landed flat on his butt behind his stand. “That is ‘or what’,” she stated in a flat voice.

Looking around at the damaged produce, and remembering how much Applejack cared about her family’s own apples, she sighed and drew a pair of circles in the air. Even if he was being a jerk, she didn’t want him to lose money on his investment. As she triggered each spell, the spilled cabbages all lifted themselves into the air, knitting themselves back together before passing through a sterilisation field and landing atop the cart. Even if she hadn’t used such spells in a long time, they came easily to her. “There, one mass mending and a sterile field to clean it all up. Are we square?”

A whisper broke out among the crowd as the man shakily nodded, seemingly afraid now. Maybe he’s some kind of orc, she mused as she pushed her way through the gathered onlookers. The best thing she could do at this point was to try and figure out where the hell she was, and what to do next.

Between her odd clothes and the way she handled the angry vendor, she was getting plenty of strange looks as she went. Although there were a lot of the pointy-eared humans—Didn’t that man call me a ‘witchling’?—milling about, there were just as many of the strange and fantastical people all around her. There were people with too many eyes, or not enough eyes, and short folk with hair that looked startlingly like clawed hands gripping the tops of their heads. She might even have spotted a sasquatch out of the corner of her eye.

“Honestly, this place reminds me of Flash’s O&O sourcebooks,” she murmured aloud as she passed in front of a place that called itself the Kitty Café. Reflected in the glass window, she caught sight of herself, which gave her pause. Unlike in the human world, where she had round ears, hers were now long and pointed like the other people around here. Not only that, but it was only now that she noticed a somewhat familiar horn protruding from her forehead, although it looked to be shorter and made of an amber crystalline structure, rather than keratin and alicorn. Additionally, a luxurious tail of red and gold jutted out of the back of her skirt. It wasn’t much, but she definitely felt a bit more like the young mare that fled through Star Swirl’s mirror.

Choosing to walk in a random direction, Sunset wrestled with what was happening. This was all completely insane. One minute, she’s leaving school after the worst day of her life, and the next she’d been banished from an entire universe in the most convoluted way possible. Now she was walking around a weird fantasy world that had teenagers using little scroll-like devices like cell phones.

But what she really couldn’t wrap her head around was why she’d been transformed like this. The portal’s transformation enchantment shouldn’t have been active, or able to affect her, since she technically never entered an active Star Swirl-Clover bridge. Yet here she was, mostly blending in with all these other demihumans. Was it actually the plinth and the mirror frames that cast the spell on whatever was passing through, triggering whenever it exited the In Between?

She’d been so caught up in her own internal musing that she didn’t even notice that she was being followed. As her aimless wandering led her into a dead-end street, a voice called out behind her. “Stop right there, criminal scum! Nobody breaks the law on my watch!” If Sunset had been drinking, she would have done a spit-take. That was something straight out of a video game! “You’ve been accused of being a wild witch by several witnesses. Come quietly with us to the Bonesborough Precinct, or you will be taken there by force.”

Only at that threat did she finally turn around to face the speaker. It was a man in a white cloak, dark leathers, and a vaguely avian mask. His cloak was held closed with a golden triangular pin bearing a winged sword. There was a spear in his hand, and he was not alone. There were six similarly equipped figures standing behind him.

“Unbelievable,” Sunset muttered, shrugging off her backpack and pushing it behind her with a foot. “I’m not even in this world a day, and I’m already being accused of crimes I didn’t even commit! That is on top of the really shitty day I’ve been having.”

The masked man stepped closer, though his spear was not yet pointed at her. “You can plead your case to a Scout Captain,” the man said in a conciliatory tone. “Please, don’t resist. None of us like the idea of roughing up a kid. It makes us look like the bad guys.” That was followed by various mutters of assent from his companions. “Maybe there was a mistake, and you didn’t use plant magic, construction magic, and healing magic. That’s not for us to decide, though.”

Maybe it was just the day she was having, or all the stress of being the school’s punching bag for the last month. Maybe it was that she was being accosted twice now after having been in this world for such a short period of time. Maybe she was just tired of being nice, and ready to take out her frustrations on a readily available target. Regardless, something inside of her snapped.

Sunset shrugged off her jacket next, and tossed it onto her backpack behind her. Rolling her neck and cracking her knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere with a bunch of strangers who dress like ren faire plague doctors,” she said with a smirk, subtly tracing a circle into the ground with her boot. “I bet you’re not even real cops.”

When the guy sighed, she almost felt bad for him. Almost. Then she stomped on the circle on the ground, transmuting the cobblestone road into a pit of quicksand beneath the man. She quickly followed up by tracing another spell circle and punching through it, hitting him with a concussive force that pushed him neck deep into the pit.

Her heart pounded with the thrill of adrenaline as the other six white-cloaks either brandished their spears or started casting spells of their own. This form of spellcasting was so much more intuitive than it was when she was a unicorn, and yet all of her Equestrian magic theory worked amazingly well in concert with it. The magic practically thundered in her veins as she drew another circle, and then spread her arms wide.

As vines surged at her, a golem of purple slime rose out of the ground to bum-rush her with two of the spear-wielding attackers. Similarly, a spirit flew out of a gem embedded on another’s glove as the last caster sent a fireball Sunset’s way. Aww, an adorable little fireball! Let me show you some real fire.

The circle expanded and then broke into several smaller circles as she focused on several different spells. Back in Equestria, she never would have attempted such a thing; her horn would never have had the throughput, and even with her prodigal spellcasting ability, the backlash for even attempting it would have just blown her horn off. Here, though, the system bypassed her horn entirely.

A gout of sunfire—a specially formulated light-imbued fire spell that she made during her tutelage under Princess Celeastia—surged forward from the central spell circle. It flew over the head of the ground-entombed white-cloak. Both the vines and the purple slime golem were caught up in the solar flames and were atomised.

Dodging the flame, the two masked individuals thrust their spears toward her, only for the second spell circle to activate, creating a barrier of hard light in front of her. The spears both snapped at the neck as their ally’s own fireball splashed harmlessly against the barrier. Interestingly enough, the conjured spirit didn’t appear to be a form of attack; rather, it flew off in some random direction.

Probably a call for reinforcements, she thought as she triggered the third spell circle, converting the hard-light barrier into a wall of force that caused both would-be spearmen to rocket out of the alley and into a wall behind the other four casters. Her next spell sent a shard of ice at the one that conjured the plants. Rather than piercing the armour, however, it transferred its momentum into the target, and then spread ice across their body, pinning them to the wall.

Her fifth spell yanked the commander of the slime abomination toward her. Meanwhile her sixth empowered the muscles in her right arm, which she swung forward in a haymaker punch. It caught the airborne individual straight in the chest and catapulted him backwards. It was satisfying seeing them all crash into a pile against the far wall, although she felt a twinge of guilt at hurting them. Just a bit, though.

Not a moment later, six more white-cloaks entered the alley. Sunset was unable to stop herself from beginning to laugh as her eyes glowed the same red of her magic circles. “Who’s next? I’ve got an entire month of repressed anger to work through, and I’ll take on as many of you assholes as it takes until you leave me alone!”

Lilith Clawthorne, Head Witch of the Emperor’s Coven, followed the oracle spirit through the Bonesborough streets to the scene of the disturbance. The pitiful bound entity wouldn’t give her a clear answer of what was going on; all she could get out of it was a smattering of words. Wild witch. Dangerous. Reinforcements and healers needed. Only one wild witch stood out to her as requiring that sort of response.

It was for that reason that she marched with a contingent of not just members of the Healing Coven, but the Beast Keeping Coven as well. If this was a case involving her sister, as she suspected it was, her curse might be acting up, in which case the beast keepers would be better equipped to subdue the Owl Beast, or at least drive her off. If it wasn’t Edalyn, she was sure she could handle whatever witch or demon it was on her own.

Her confidence waned as she turned a corner to find a street littered with the bodies of the Coven Scouts assigned to Bonesborough. It was hard to just how many there were, especially with the way so many were stacked against the wall, plastered to it with ice, or straight up hanging limply as their lower halves stuck out from it. By her estimate, it had to be at least thirty unconscious or dead men and women of the Emperor’s Coven cast aside like broken toys.

Red light flashed out of the alley, and a moment later a Coven Scout rushed into view, her cloak burning around the bottom. The unfortunate scout tripped over one of her fallen comrades. Lilith could only look on in shock as a lash of flame wrapped around the fallen woman’s ankle. As the scout was dragged back into the alley, she let out a terrified scream. A moment later, after going silent, she was ejected from the alley, joining the great pile.

“Healers, prepare a barrier,” Lilith commanded as she brandished her white raven palisman. As soon as a barrier formed in front of her and her accompanying healers, she marched to the alley junction to take in the chaos. She paled at the sight of it. “This is a bit much, even for Edalyn.”

The alley was, lacking a better descriptor, a mess. Portions of the walls and ground were little more than molten slag, save for the spots where her scouts had fallen, which were miraculously untouched. Straight in the middle of the alley there was a scout submerged in the ground up to his neck, and though he looked mostly unharmed, she could hear the man sobbing from here. Here or there, she could see golden flames burning away on patches of stone.

At the far end of the alley stood a witch dressed in strange garb. Honestly, it reminded Lilith a lot of the sort of human garbage her sister was regularly seen hawking in the Day Market. Still, the witch was striking in her sleeveless purple top with a bicoloured sun mark, knee-high boots, and her orange skirt decorated with a yellow and magenta stripe. The fiery red and gold locks—which were probably gorgeous on a good day—framing her face were matted with sweat, but did nothing to hide the crystalline horn jutting from the girl’s forehead. Notably, she did not have a coven sigil on her wrist.

Most importantly, there was a red glow to the girl’s eyes, indicating that she was in the midst of a bile overload. It was somewhat unusual that a witch or demon her age could get that caught up in heavy emotion that their body began producing too much spell phlegm, but not unheard of. Even though the glow made it impossible to see the girl’s pupils, it was clear that she was staring at Lilith now. That said, despite the grin, it was clear that the girl was also crying, like her emotions were completely out of control.

“What, you want to fight now too?” the girl yelled down the alley between pants. She drew a massive spell circle in front of her, and then took aim at the Head Witch. A massive beam of energy slammed into the healers’ barrier, cracking as the onslaught ceased. “You creeps just keep coming, and I didn’t even do anything wrong to begin with!” The light behind the girl’s eyes began to gently flicker, even as she’d begun to draw another circle. “Just leave me alone! I’ve already had everything else taken from me, so there’s no way in Tartarus I’ll let you take my freedom!”

Lilith might have been moderately impressed with the girl if not for the fact that she was fighting against the Emperor’s Coven. That being said running off a bile overload long enough to subdue at least—by her revised count—forty Coven Scouts was both surprising and concerning. For a covenless witchling in her mid to late teens to pull that off spoke of either her skill or power—if not both—but prolonged overloads like that were detrimental to the body, and the girl was at risk of harming herself.

Turning to some of the healers, she whispered, “When I trap her in a barrier, I need you all to hit her with the Binding Bandages spell.” She glanced at the girl, and between the flickers of magical energy in her eyes, she could just make out the dilated pupils of a terrified and confused individual. “If we can restrain and drain her enough to knock her out of the overload, she should just about crash.”

The plan turned out to be unnecessary. Even before they had the opportunity, the young witch’s spell circle destabilised and broke apart. At the same time, the telltale glow of a stress induced overload dissipated. Not even a moment after that, the girl began to sway before finally falling onto her back.

Rather than approach right away, she glanced at the raven carved into the end of her staff. “Go check on her, and make sure she’s really out.” Even as the wooden carving became animated and flew over to the fallen wild witch, Lilith turned back to the healers with her. “Begin triaging the wounded. Prioritise stabilising anyone critically wounded,” she instructed before turning to the beast keepers. “Although your skills turned out to be unnecessary, I ask that you aid the healers, and take the more severely wounded to the Bonesborough hospital.”

A caw from her feathered companion caught her attention, and she saw him perched atop the horn jutting from the young woman’s forehead. He was bobbing his head, indicating that the girl was incapacitated—probably unconscious, as that looked rather uncomfortable. As Lilith picked her way through the ruined alley, passing the sobbing scout trapped in the ground, Lilith removed her own mask and hung it from a pocket on the inside of her cloak.

With how the youth’s backpack and clothing didn’t match any of the Boiling Isles’ styles, Lilith worried she might be dealing with someone sympathetic to Edalyn. The variety of magic that had destroyed this alleyway gave some credence to the idea that the girl was a wild witch, and a powerful one at that. She just hoped that, whoever she was, Edalyn didn’t have her hooks in too deep if they did know one another. Problems with authority aside, she definitely had the potential to be a great addition to the Emperor’s Coven.

Pain was something that Sunset Shimmer was intimately acquainted with. There were so many different flavours she’d been exposed to over the years, and although she may have been in another world, pain was just one of the things that remained a constant. In the present case, the pain she was experiencing was a cross between a full-body ache, a migraine headache from magic overexpenditure that normally would have radiated from the base of her horn, and a hangover.

Going over an internal checklist, she didn’t yet deign to open her eyes. It seems like I’m sleeping at some sort of desk, but there’s something binding my forearms together, too. My entire body feels like I’ve been running for hours, and my head aches with what feels like a combination of mana burn and that time a waiter gave me alcoholic wine at the first Grand Galloping Gala I ever attended, when I was just a foal. Suffice to say, she did not fancy opening her eyes.

With a groan, she peeked out through a slightly cracked eyelid. She was indeed at a table in some brightly lit, brick-walled room, though the light made her wince in pain. On the wall opposite of her, just behind the table, was a mirror panel that most assuredly had someone watching from the other side of. “Ugh, what happened?” she groaned. She sat up and attempted to clutch her head, but the manacles binding her wrists and actively sapping her magic were threaded through a loop on the table. “... and where in Tartarus am I?”

Not a minute later, a tall, pale woman with long black hair, a white hooded cloak like those goons who were attacking her, and black dress strode in. Her stern green eyes locked with Sunset’s own cyan, and the former unicorn immediately could tell that she was definitely not liked by the witch. “You are in Police Precinct 128, in the city of Bonesborough,” she said in an unamused tone, taking a seat across from Sunset. “I am Lilith Clawthorne, Head Witch of the Emperor’s Coven. What happened was that you resisted arrest for wild magic and in the process injured thirty-eight Coven Scouts and traumatised three more into a state of catatonia.”

As the memories of what happened rushed back to her, Sunset had the decency to feel a bit guilty. Regardless of how upset she’d been, hurting people like that was something even her old self would only have done in extreme cases. Maybe she’d just been a bit drunk on the discovery that she could once more yield her magic, but deep down she knew that her friends and Princess Twilight would be disappointed in her. Well, Rainbow Dash might call beating up forty wizard cops badass, but that’s beside the point.

Seeing the regret on her face, the witch’s expression softened. “Thankfully, there were no major injuries or fatalities, and the healers say that you shouldn’t have any lasting damage from your bile overload,” she added, drawing a slightly relieved sigh from the pony-turned-human-turned-witch. “As such, things aren’t as bad as they could have been. Had you killed any of my men, I would have pushed for immediate petrification.”

Yikes, Sunset thought with a wince. “I’m sorry,” she conceded, making an effort to comport herself in a contrite manner. “I haven’t even been in this world a day, but a bunch of faceless goons followed me and cornered me in an alley claiming I was under arrest.” A sigh slipped through her lips as she held her hands out, palms up. “Look at it from my perspective, though; a group of strangers claiming to be cops stalk and corner a teenage girl... I only had their word that they were law enforcement, and the thing about traffickers is that they don’t exactly advertise themselves as such.”

As she spoke, she studied Lilith. It appeared as though she was attempting to affect the same sort of calm stoicism that Princess Celestia and her human counterpart, Principal Celestia, had down to a science. This woman wasn’t anywhere near as experienced as the millenia old alicorn, but she nonetheless did a good job of masking her reactions. Still, there was a reaction when she stated she hadn’t been in this world very long—one that she couldn’t quite hide from Sunset.

After a moment, however, the self-titled Head Witch opposite to her drew a blue spell circle in the air, conjuring up Sunset’s backpack. It hung there in the air, and several of her school textbooks levitated out to form a stack on the table. Shortly after, her wallet, motorcycle learner’s permit, and her old communication journal flew out and joined the stack.

“Normally, when I encounter witches in possession of numerous artefacts of the Human Realm, I would believe them to be a customer or associate of a certain criminal known for disseminating such things here in the Demon Realm,” Lilith noted, picking up Sunset’s license and holding it up to compare. “That being said, Ms. Shimmer, given eyewitness reports at the scene of the incident involving magic mixing and this identification, I am inclined to believe that you have not been here very long.”

The Demon Realm? Sunset’s mind raced as she heard those words. When she’d been just a filly, studying under the Alicorn Princess of the Sun, the mare told her tales of such a place. It was a land of decay and monsters, where the oceans boiled and creatures built their homes atop the corpses of deceased gods. For the longest time, she’d been convinced they were stories of Tartarus, told in such a way to scare her away from being bad, despite never making the stories overly scary.

Now that she knew about Star Swirl’s portal experiments and the friendship the princess had with the old wizard, Sunset believed that Celestia was speaking of real experiences. That might have meant that her mentor had been using adventures in another world as a parable about not judging based on names or appearances. There might even still be a portal somewhere on this side.

The witch returned the card to Sunset’s wallet and then put it aside, next holding up the communication journal. “That being said, I am rather curious how you came across this book in your travels,” she continued. “The writing system is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered, and I can tell there’s a powerful enchantment on the book itself. It’s well known here in the isles that humans have no magic, after all.”

Unable to hide a smirk, Sunset leaned forward. “I’d be surprised if you had encountered writing like that,” she said with a hint of pride in her voice. “My journal is enchanted with an encryption spell so that only I can read it—” It wasn’t a lie; she’d been encouraged by the princess to do so with her copy as a test, and she’d never removed the enchantment after, enjoying the additional layer of privacy it added. “—and there’s also a spatial compression on it, allowing it to have far more pages than is reasonable for a book that size.”

That being said, Sunset wasn’t about to reveal to this stranger that the book was magically entangled with a separate copy in another dimension. Even if the entanglement did reach across the In Between to Equestria from here, it didn’t seem wise to reveal that fact. In fact, she was disinclined to mention Equestria at all. Until she was sure who she could trust, it would be better to let this woman believe that she was a witch like her, albeit not one raised in this world. Nor would she reveal the mark and recall enchantments.

For the first time, there was a glint of begrudging respect in Lilith’s eyes. That look quickly became almost covetous in nature, as the barest hint of a smile graced her pale face. It immediately put Sunset on edge, and she began to watch for the telltale signs of manipulation. “Well then, Ms. Shimmer, let me be the first to properly welcome you to the Boiling Isles Titan,” she offered. “I am willing to pardon today’s incidents as a massive misunderstanding, but that still leaves us with a problem.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow, curious to see where she was going with this. “Let me explain. Covenless witches, especially those who use magic from more than one field, are known as wild witches. When witches are schooled, they are put into one of nine tracks: abomination magic, bardic magic, beast keeping magic, construction magic, healing magic, illusion magic, oracle magic, and plant magic. Normally, they end up joining one of the nine main covens reflecting those tracks, or one of various offshoots, and having all other unaffiliated magics blocked off.” She then rolled up the sleeve of her dress to reveal her right wrist, upon which there was some sort of tattoo that radiated magic, depicting the same emblem as the clasps on the cloaks worn by those scouts. “Then there is the Emperor’s Coven—the elite few sanctioned by Emperor Belos, Voice of the Titan, to use all forms of magic as they keep the peace and enact the will of the Titan.”

That doesn’t sound right. Magic as I understand it is practically a living force within us all. It’s not meant to be broken up into neat little categories and restricting who can use what kind, unless it’s an especially dangerous form of magic like necromancy, biomancy, or chronomancy. Her eyes narrowed as she thought she saw where this was going. Making sure someone’s elites were the only ones legally or physically capable of using all types of magic was a form of control the likes of which not even the worst dictators in Equestrian History would have attempted.

“I think I see where you are going with this, Ms. Lilith,” Sunset carefully spoke. “You saw what I was capable of, and rather than locking away my talents, you want to encourage me to join the Emperor’s Coven?”

A sly smile grew on Lilith’s face. “You would likely rise through the ranks rather quickly with your prodigious skill. When you come of age, of course,” she countered. “Of course, you would need some form of formal education in order to qualify... either as a student of one of the Isles’ magic schools, or as an apprentice. What do you say, Ms. Shimmer?”

Pretending to consider the offer, Sunset looked up to the ceiling. Once upon a time, she would have leapt at the chance for power and advancement. She was likely trapped here for some time, and being able to afford room and board would be a must. Plus, if she was understanding everything correctly, this Emperor’s Coven was effectively the law enforcement and judicial arm of the government here, of which Lilith was the head, answerable only to this Emperor. The way she mentioned apprenticeship implied she would be interested in taking me under her wing.

The desire for power and status was, however, the exact sort of thing that ended up with her fleeing Equestria to the human world. Sunset had attempted to step far beyond the bounds of her station, believing that she deserved to ascend to what could be equated to godhood in human terms, to serve by her mentor’s side forever more. The fact that such a thought appealed to the lingering remnants of her old conniving self counted as a vote against the idea.

Then there was the coven system itself. She had nowhere near enough data to pull from, but it gave her a bad feeling. Sealing away portions of someone’s magic was akin to telling them their place in life and stealing their self-determination. It was straight up evil when you thought about it that way.

With a sigh, she lowered her gaze to meet Lilith’s. “I thank you for the offer, but I must respectfully decline,” she said, trying to keep a bit of edge out of her voice. “I was raised to believe magic is an integral part of our very lives, and intrinsically linked to our very essence as a person. To tell people how they can or can’t use it, and then sealing it away, or punishing those who dissent isn’t just monstrous; it’s evil. I want no part in such a thing, and I have no intention of remaining in this world for very long anyway.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Lilith shut her eyes. “I see,” she responded, followed by a drawn-out sigh. “That’s a shame. Until you come to see reason, or the Emperor decides what to do with you, I am remanding you to custody at the Conformatorium.”