Starstruck

by Vest

Chapters

Chapter 2: Glass Ceiling
Chapter 3: Fugitives
Chapter 4: Receding
Chapter 5: Confined
Chapter 6: Clarity
Chapter 7: Reflection
Chapter 8: Imprint
Chapter 9: Ethereal Dance
Chapter 10: Moonlight
Chapter 11: Sunrise
Chapter 12: Platinum Haze
Chapter 13: Harmony Sincerest
Chapter 14: Cobalt
Chapter 15: Moonflower
Chapter 16: Beginning
Epilogue
Chapter 1: Her Escape

Chapter 2: Glass Ceiling

Illustration by Bunnimation and Vest
Pre-Reading Assistance by Dracon Pyrothayan

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Overwhelming spells, ferocious and loose;

Possessed, lucky, or just magic abuse?

And what of that mare, the falling caboose?

Glass ceiling shatters, and more to deduce.

_____

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Chapter 2

Glass Ceiling

A whisper of cold winter air twirled lazily through the alleys and side streets of Canterlot, whipping through the countless corners and eddies like water flowing around a bank of pebbles. The breeze cut past the few market stalls that were open and buffeted against the ornate winter cloaks of the few ponies that were out in the cold. As the needle of wind rushed from the market plaza, it sliced through a thick shag of navy blue mane, pushing the various strands and collections of hair in a wild display before ghosting away, leaving behind a kiss and a shivering frame as invisible as the rest of the wind.

“Guh..." the owner of the mane huffed. Pausing to shiver, the unicorn, charcoal in pelt and blue in mane, took a sharp breath like the breeze were a slap to the face. Pausing to adjust a pair of small glasses knocked askew atop his nose by the small whirl of wind, the unicorn quivered again in reflex to the cold. The winter had never fully agreed with him, but at least the stuffy job he now headed towards swaddled him in heat - stiflingly unpleasant heat that he was always glad to be gone from at the end of the day, but a heat that was missed immediately after he returned again to the biting cold streets.

The unicorn hurried to flee from the chilling zephyrs nipping at his tail. His destination would, to almost all other citizens of Canterlot, be something of an exciting destination, the depths of the Canterlot Archives! However, to him, its scholarly majesty and historical value were something of common currency, repeated exposure having scrubbed the awestruck appreciation from him long ago. Now, whenever he gazed upon the venerable structure, rivaled in age and majesty only by the Canterlot palace itself, he had to mentally squint to remember the value that drew him to it in the first place as an doe eyed novice scholar. Long-forgotten aspirations were dashed hard upon the bureaucratic monstrosity of Canterlot’s political, scholarly and historical institutions.

Nearly two years ago, he had stepped into his first day, imagining adventures in the stacks of literature and lore that would fulfill his voracious mental appetite for themes and meanings. To be a part of this wonder that left him spellbound and captivated since he first moved to Canterlot in his budding youth. To reach out and deliver unto others the same swaths of literary joy for others to devour as hungrily as he did. To a long-running descent into a grim realization of the true nature of slaving within the confines of the structure he’d grown to love in his more naive years, he had yet to even reach the appetizer of mental nourishment. Instead he had only been served meager scraps of mundanity and tedium.

The Canterlot sampler platter. A proverbial buffet line of rice balls whose flavors would only differ in the color of toothpick stuck through it. All the same form of monotony intricately and delicately displayed beneath a different banner, either to fool those stacked within the endless echelons of drones or give the mental delusion of belonging within a system where they’d otherwise feel redundant.

And grandiose glomping griffons, even his mind could only describe his job with mundane run-on sentences as frivolous as the very labor itself.

Attached to a leading Canterlot secretary of state department, the unicorn archivist fell neck deep into the suffocating grind of low-level paperwork. Even his job title asphyxiated those unfortunate enough to have it read to them. Undersecretary to undersecratary to lieutenant director of the secretary of development of state.

Oh, bureaucracy.

Days were spent shuffling through scrolls and texts, not for new information, not even to confirm suspected information, but because the system required such information be checked and such scrolls be foisted onto somepony to read over and mark up. The first weeks into it, he worked with enthusiasm, hoping to prove his value to his boss. Yet as weeks accumulated into months, a dreary apathy set into his heart; the only spark of genuine emotions coming in the form of fear when his draconian manager had let into him for a form that, while its meaning was clear and flawless, its method was incorrect.

A lesson he would never forget. Zoning requests for development were to be forwarded to the associate undersecretary of the lieutenant secretary of development of state. They were not to be sent directly to the undersecretary of the lieutenant secretary of development of state. What a crippling blow to the system. What nefarious sabotage to the intricate workings of Canterlot’s guts! Or so his supervisor made special note of while chewing him out once again for this, oh what did she call it... infantile blunder.

The dark-coated unicorn snapped out of his thoughts, picking up his pace again as another dagger of cold air plunged into his haunches. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling of his earlier aspirations materializing into the immutable realization of being simply a whimsical fantasy. For in Canterlot, the bright exteriors of the city’s structures were just that. Bright exteriors. Meaning held no value over rigor and process.

Crossing the courtyard, the unicorn ran through a mental checklist, preparing himself in small ways for the workday. Mane straight, glasses cleaned, the usual meek tone for having the audacity to show up to work fifteen minutes early were all lined up, happiness checked at the door, can’t be showing anything more than the usual bland exhaustion...

... Inhale deep...

... Ready.

His ears picked up on an errant wisp of stray chatter roaming across the Archive plaza. A wavering mention of a missing draconequus statue from the Royal Canterlot Garden slipped away from the astonished guffaw of an armored pegasus guard, his metallic shoulders glimmering in the mid-morning sunlight as he waved a hoof while attempting to retell the same story told to him. No doubt, a story passed down through many iterations of different narrators, and as each iteration passed down, they just got more ornate and action-packed.

The kinds of stories Devon loved to read. Alas, the kinds of stories he’d never pen. Life in the archives prevented him from expressing the same chimerical freedom that came with such gossip. The Archives were about keeping the record straight, for keeping contracts in order; not about adventures and changing history. Not about appreciating it, but recording it.

Or so his boss would remind him constantly. How she even got the position instead of him baffled him for months. Not that he felt he deserved it, but what would drive her. What would drive one so opposed to others attempting to ascend that great bureaucratic ladder... to reach for that next rung for themselves. Her only claim to fame was being related to Wholegrain Boxtop, AKA the philanthropist Breakfast Billionaire, not a comic without his mug plastered somewhere within during the unicorn’s upbringing. Perhaps it was with her lineage that came the necessity to keep others satisfied with the predictable mechanics of the Archives, like eating the same breakfast every morning while walking through those double doors.

Funny how that worked out...

Another volley of charismatic laughter rattled with the shimmering armor of the pegasus guards standing out front. At least they had stories to tell. Part of him hoped all the rumors of Discord being back turned out to be true, as civil panic, or just the hint of it, usually meant his boss was away, trying to scrape together more importance and political weight to pay him much heed. It was hardly beyond the scope for his boss to attempt that during a crisis. Political gains drove his manager at in the same way food drove other ponies at life. It was sustenance, the true purpose of the task and not the historical value of what they did.

The pegasi guards laughed again, and Devon’s eyes followed their gaze to a trotting mass of muted blue, topped with a puffy orange mane. Trailing behind the stout streak, suspended in a bouncing bubble of yellow telekinesis, a multicolored scarf fluttered like some banner loudly proclaiming the folly of combining bright green, yellow and brown in a garish blasphemy that dared proclaim itself plaid.

“DEV’N! DEV’N!” The blur’s voice carried a volume that starkly contrasted the short build of the unicorn that came out of the blur. Suppressing a groan, Devon turned to face it. “M’word Devon, what in Celestia’s mane are y’doin’ outdoors with nothin’ t’bundle up in?! I swear you’ll catch’er death out here someday!”

“Oh... hi mom,” he said, barely hiding the mild embarrassment that washed over him every time she spoke to him like that, a daily occurrence it seemed.

“I keeps’uh teller’in y’uhs!” She bounded up to him, extending the scarf before his neck, motioning with a wave of her head for him to step forward into it. His eyes darted to the side, scanning the periphery for any curious glances witnessing this embarrassing display. “It’s uh-how’s yer’s a’gonna catch hyper’mo-na-thingy-”

“-Mom,”

“Hypno-thrash’ma’tash-”

“Mom,”

“Hyperactivia’slexia-”

“Mom!” Gyuh. “Hypothermia.” Of course, his periphery scanning successfully located a dozen wayward glances attempting to sneak a quizzical eye to the horrifying palette of colors adorning his neck.

“Th’s wh’uh I saids.”

“I told you, I’m fine. It’s not that long of a walk to the Archive, and by the time I get inside, I’ll be so hot that I’ll just..." he hesitated. Part of him longed to finish the sentence. I’ll just want to toss that thing into Tartarus where it belongs. But he withheld the thought. “I’ll just take it off and leave it in my desk and somepony will take off with i-erk!”

“Oh ponyfeathers!” his mother scolded as she wrapped the scarf tight around Devon’s neck, snugging it tightly and fussing over it with her forelegs. “I worked my hooves to th’bone t’knit that fer ya!” Before he could speak or argue, Devon found himself buried underneath a well-worn rant from his mother. While it was all ground they had trod before, it was made worse by the poorly-hidden chuckles from the two pegasus guards who now held front-row seats.

“This your boy, Sara?” One of the guards perked up with a laugh, smiling wryly at Devon.

“Sure’as milkshake’n is, boys!”

“Well don’t you worry one bit, ma’am,” the other guard piped up while the other hunched away politely to croak out the giggles through clenched teeth. “We’ll make sure to keep him nice and toasty indoors for you.”

There were two things that blue-coated orange-maned mare was known for. Firstly, Sara Bookmark, the respected community organizer and one of Canterlot’s many city planners. Esteemed, well-known, and always made it a point to be on a first-name basis with every one of the hundreds of faces that graced her presence.

“I’s might ‘ppreciative uh’that, Stratus!”

Even the guards.

And how could they not know her? Not only was she the community head of several must-attend soirees hosted within the city, but she was also known simply as Devon’s mother, the accidental arbiter of many jokes at his expense. It was a known fact that if one could hear the jingling of custom-knit boots, or spotted a series of swathed colors that had no business sharing the same spectrum of light together, Devon obviously lost some argument back at home.

Oh right. The at home thing, too.

Devon huffed dejectedly, feeling the prickly tendrils of the scarf fabric dig into his dark coat. He just knew it. Those threads were going to come loose, tangle, and weave through his coat, glittering it in a smattering of unflattering hues overlapping one another that would take days to hoof-pick out. But the other shuddering sensation crept in too, the hefty reminder that once every five minutes would-oh there it is, as expected.

Despite the gripes he had with his job and how it sucked the soul out of his humble frame, despite the hopes and dreams ardently dashed upon a cursory glance upon his own life’s accomplishments... yep spoiler alert, not a lot... none of it paled to a realization of feeling trapped by some intricately woven conspiracy of the fates; a fate that ensnared him and itched like the ticks of a hundred mules.

Or the scarf...

“Now when y’get home, I’ve ‘noth’uh party, and I want Miss Carrot Tawp t’hear all ‘bout yer job in the Archive!” Fate had him permanently sealed with a dead-end job and no means to afford living outside the confines of mother’s roof. “Make’r jealous y’hear!”

Her final order stung the worst. Devon knew that he couldn’t simply say the truth and say that his job was a ceaseless slog through the worst of bureaucracy. He had to spend the evening weaving stories as he had done for years, serving up entertainment and accolades for his mother. Being an adult and still bound to be a conversation piece for his mother chafed Devon greatly, but he knew the stark realities of his situation. Scholarly careers more or less needed to be in Canterlot, and the cost of living in Canterlot made living with her a simple economic decision. Even simpler given the complete lack of rank and responsibility he held.

“Alright, mother..." Devon sighed at last, realizing submission would end this scene faster. Sara graced him with an overly affectionate hug and mane tossle before charging away. She left Devon to slink by the two guards who respectfully tried to hold back snickers, but without much success. Devon rolled his eyes dismissively to them, striding past them to the entryway of Canterlot’s vast Archive.

Pausing at the door, the unicorn took a final breath of refreshingly chilled winter air before he pressed through the great wooden doors into the Canterlot Archive. In the back of his mind, a countdown began.

Four...

The usual three-point countdown, the mental conditioning his body adopted to properly prepare for the opening volley of crazy nonsense his superiors had cooked up for him this time.

Three...

Past the guest check in, quick nod to the mare behind the desk. Known each other for as long as he worked here. Always the same good morning greetings. Would be nice to get to know her better. Wonder what her name is, though. Without a word, he untangled the itchy offending garment from around his neck, extending it her way.

“So, uhh..." She looked up from a blank desk, pretending to look busy by twirling a hoof against an imaginary document. “Stash this with, uhh..."

“The rest of ‘em, yes please.”

She reached over, opening the bottom drawer of a metal cabinet, extending it a comically depressing length outward as the steely whine of the augmenting drawer resonated for five seconds. A cavalcade of color and patterns burst forth from within the drawer, nearly overflowing and spilling haphazardly around the flor.

“Oh, well lookie here,” she groused sarcastically. “Looks like Hearth’s Warming miracles do happen, you somehow still have space in your file for that... that..." she looked slightly askew to the green, yellow, and brown like witnessing an orchestra of belches. “... thing.”

“Thanks, Meg... Kel..." Devon faltered, his mind so conditioned to putting a name at the end of his sincerest appreciation-

“-Melanie.”

“Melanie!”

“Nope, kidding,” she groaned in a deadpan expression, waving a hoof to cast him away. So much for those usual warm morning greetings. Certainly, it was going to be one of those days. Hey wait, something about a countdown?

Two...

Ah, there it is!

Employees Only door, no longer in the display rooms, this is where the real work of archival happened. Musty tomes that carry no public significance, but by virtue of age and immense density, may contain nuggets of historical wisdom. Or political value.

One...

A depressing jumble of desks and ponies buried in papers. All of them, senior and junior to the unicorn swam through the same mess of bureaucracy. All of them feared the same, reptilian shriek of-

“DEVON BOOKMARK! MY OFFICE! NOW!”

Ah, Ms. Boxtop. Right on schedule for the nine o'clock verbal lashing.

* * * * *

The churning eddy of bubbling water receded. Encased in darkness, she tumbled over and under her hooves, the rattling black silhouettes of trunks and luggage scattering into an ebbing vortex. Gina thrust herself up again through the murky torrent of rising water, pushing away a layer of scattered hats from the water’s surface to breach her snout through again. Sound returned in a wet pop, the metallic rolling of the baggage car careening against the protruding rocks banging against the crinkling exterior filled the air pocket with ear-splitting noise. She gasped, deafened by the chorus of raucous demolition canceling out all other sensations.

The baggage car bobbed and dodged weightlessly through the weaving rapids outside, dizzying knives of sunlight protruding through several dozen holes punched through the metal ceiling... or was it the floor? Was the car sideways? Was she even facing upward-oh wait hold on! A violent bang outside summoned yet another spinning ride inside the vicious compartment as the water and luggage lifted from beneath her like a single pirouetting organism that danced around her in a deathly spiral before collapsing onto itself, plunging her once more into the murky and nauseating miasma of rushing water.

She clamored to the direction she perceived to be upwards, blindly flailing her hooves instinctually towards the nurturing air pocket. The evasive bubble of life-giving air eluded her, hiding and weaving somewhere in the labyrinth of clothes and travel accessories whirling around and into her. The telltale rippling of the air pocket’s surface faded into view in front of her, but with another muffled screech of metal on rock, the air pocket leapt away as the baggage car lifted, lurched, and reversed the direction of its spin.

No longer able to decipher up from down, Gina scanned rapidly in all directions, seeking any semblance of direct sunlight or oxygen within. She swung her hooves wildly, feeling a fetlock hook into the tight sleeve of a pair of khaki pants that was snagged firmly onto the baggage car’s door handle. She twisted and struggled with voracious energy to free her hoof, but only felt the embracing fibers tighten their grip the harder she fought to break away.

A disorienting bolt of blunt energy coursed through her as a deafening bang tossed the car skywards in a sickening angle, pressing her chest-first against the door. She felt the weight of the entire compartment’s cargo collapse and press down against her backside, before another twisting and metallic burst of cacophonous drumming crashed through the opposite side of the compartment. The pinning mountain of luggage suddenly lifted, and in a spinning stagger, the whole room shifted in the opposite direction. Gravity reversed, flinging the luggage and its contents against the opposite wall, peeling away to let in an errant streak of stray sunlight through the battered holes behind her.

Still snagged on the khaki sleeve, Gina dangled precariously over the falling detritus and knick knacks, the suffocating cushion of spinning water dropped like a single brick in a uniform shape that smacked and surged with reverberating force into a thick opalescent foam in the intruding morning sunlight now pouring in from the windows.

In a subtly diminishing note, the violent shaking of the baggage car softened. A gentle hush occupied the previously stampeding volley of heaving noise. And resting into place on the top of the settling clutter of piled luggage, the stone visage of an uncharacteristically panic-stricken draconequus looked back up at her.

Seems they’d just made landfall.

* * * * *

Beneath the inky deep blackness of the midnight moon, the two lovers strolled happily onto a bridge over a babbling brook. A gentle trickle of babbling water trickled beneath them, swooning them with a babbling song that won her heart.

“Oh, my love,” she swooned atop her hooves, resting her fetlocks weightlessly against the bridge’s banister in an entranced sway, “I hath none idea thou has such magic!”

He leaned up beside her, nestling his neck against the back of her soft inviting shoulders. “When I think of you, m’lady,” he said softly into her ear, “I can do any kind of such magic.”

She gasped in disbelief, her heart beaming with enigmatic heat watching the well-postured stallion step back with a stoic expression of particular solidarity only exclusive to his great mysterious facade. He waved his hoof before him, twirling it through the air until a trail of dark blue sparkles trailed in the air before him.

“How can you do that!?” She laughed, her eyes lighting up, the faint ripples of tears glistening dazzlingly against her teal irises. She choked on her own billowing emotions, but choked them down with a royal strength only a Princess of her might can conjure. “I hath none idea thou were so powerful!”

“Like I said,” the stallion chortled with pride, focusing his focus on the shimmering cascade of beautiful energy cascading down his hoof. “With you, Luna, I have never in my life felt so alive. Your beauty alone has awoken a new life in me. I am now truly complete because of you, Luna. And it is because of you that I have discovered this power. For I am now the first and only earth pony who can now for the first time use magic.”

“Wow!” She galloped up to him, wrapping her forelegs around his neck tightly in a girlish embrace. “I hath no idea thou understood mine love for you so much!” She broke down on the spot, releasing a deluge of unstoppable tears into his black coat. “I hath no idea thou could turn mine unrelenting love for you into pony magic!” She tilted her head up to meet her muzzle up to his, puckering her lips with trembling ecstasy.

“Not right now,” he said deeply and poetically. He looked up to the inky deep blackness above them. “There is something I must show you. There is a reason I told you to not raise the stars tonight.”

“I hath no idea why thou request me not to though, my love.”

“Because,” He gently pushed her away, and turned the opposite way to silhouette his rough psychique against the heavenly moonlight that hung low just above the low rippling waters of the river the bridge stood tall over under the moon. “Watch this.” He waved his hoof across the inky blackness, and the trail of crystal magic light glimmered magically in a glimmering trail across the inky blackness. Popping into place, a cascade of stars cascaded into place on the inky blackness behind his waving hoof of crystal magic light.

“Oh, my handsome illustrious bringer of beauty and light!” Luna slowly wrapped her hooves over his back, resting her neck against the back of his. “It’s so beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as..." The stallion turned to face her, placing his grizzlied chiseled chin up to her ear that swooned in airy infatuation towards the awesome magical earth pony. “... You.”

With another wave of his hoof, he drew more magical stars with his magic. The letters appeared in a twirling magical thread as the brightest most beautiful constellation in the inky black night sky appeared brightly and beautifully above them in a constellation. The constellation read: I love you Luna.

“Oh, I’m so happy!” She pressed her cheek into his forehead, and with tightly pressed hooves wrapped tightly around his neck, she aligned her lips up with his. “Don’t stop me.”

“I won’t.”

“Because nothing,” her heart drifted with her weightless diction carrying forth, “can stop this moment from happening, I hath no idea thou could make such perfection for me.”

“And to you as well, m’lady Princess Luna.”

She closed her teal eyes, and he closed his, feeling the warmth of her breath grace against the tips of his lips as they pulled ever so slowly closer together, anticipating, savoring every moment about to surge through them. One final soft utterance from the Princess was heard through the inky blackness of his closed eyes. “I love you so much,” she sighed, “With all mine heart I love you so much Captain Sto-”

*Kri-SKLAM!*

“-Captain Stormblade!”

“-GYAGH!” Jangle, jangle.

“Captain Stormblade I..." A cyan pegasus stood in the doorway, suddenly silent beneath the descending veil of dust drooping to the base of the rapidly opened door. “... I, umm, I was, sir, I was..." He shifted his eyes away from the mortified Captain, trying to purge any percolating giggles at seeing the burly captain fiddling with the two dolls in his hooves. The shuffling rustle of spinning papers cut through the silence as they twirled and fell from the top of the Captain’s desk.

“What!?” The Captain boomed, quickly shoving the dolls into a drawer with a single lightning-quick motion. “Jetlag don’t you know to knock before y’... !?” He cut himself off, rearranging the words in his mind to not sound so incriminating. “Don’t you know to... protocol or something!?” Probably needed some more rearranging.

“Just informing you, sir, umm,” Private Jetstream slowly stepped towards the Captain, scratching a hoof behind his neck, “That we’ve got ten minutes until the council wants the updated report on Discord.”

Stormblade sighed deeply. It was not something he was looking forward to. It was going to be his chance to persuade the Canterlot council of elders to grant even more resources to The Royal Pegasus Guard of Captain Stormblade. Obviously, it was the kind of thing he was looking forward to, something he had been yearning to accomplish for years! Or, at least for the three days he had been tasked with assuming the role in place of the sudden and tragic void left behind by the preceding Captain Armor... when he took a week-long Hearth’s Warming vacation with some girl or something. But no, a week is all it would take, a week is as long as he’d need to become known as the great iron hoof of justice that transformed and perfected Equestria into an unstoppable Utopia that celebrated the Stormblade name.

Yet, he would have to stand beside... gah... them. Those six.

While he toiled and trained haunch over hoof for decades to earn his name, they just had to show up and take the spotlight away from him. He had dozens of the best-trained soldiers he hoof-raised from their scraggly cadet years... well, by proxy of Captain Armor. But he had them! And they now answered to him. He was their face, their creed, their gospel, their reason to wake up every morning. Yet six goofy harmony crystal things spontaneously choose these six mares just because they got along so gosh darned nicely, so they always get called first to deal with the Princess’ troubles before him.

How could he prove himself to Luna when every opportunity was snatched up by...

Those six.

“Captain.”

He finally had the opportunity to address the Canterlot council of elders, to get the resources he needs to make The Royal Pegasus Guard of Captain Stormblade into the perfectly chiseled regiment it needed to be, and yet first in line before him yet again was going to be...

Those six.

“Captain?”

Always getting the preferential treatment and attention from the Princesses. Always the go-to crew for Celestia. Always one step closer to Luna, standing in between them, in between their destiny. His destiny with her. The destiny he was only able to see lived out on the parchment of his desk, the legacy only to be carried by the errant strokes of ink he penned when bogged down under his own stresses and frustrations. It’s how it was supposed to be. Win her heart with his accomplishments, swoon her with his strength, and surprise her with the magic he knew deep down he had but obviously couldn’t unlock without her love powering him.

“Captain, is this your report to... oooh..."

The Captain looked down to scoop up the prophetic fiction from his desktop, only to see the wood grains glancing back up to him. He heard the quick rustling of paper from over his shoulder. He leapt onto his hooves in a fast twirl.

“Private Jetlag! Wait, that’s-!” His larynx clinched into a tight, inaudible squeak as his pupils met the quizzical wide-eyed expression of the cyan pegasus glaring in minor terror at the Captain. His breath seized, feeling a brash wave of awkwardness stew through his ribs.

“Uhh... Captain,” Jetstream slowly lowered the fiction back onto the desk, ensuring to not break directest of direct eye contact with Stormblade. “That’s... not the report at all, is it..."

The black-coated earth pony subtly dipped his head, narrowing his eyes into a venomous scowl.

“And..." The cyan pegasus took a very slow, quivering step backwards to the doorway. “... I’m assuming..." Step. “Yet another thing..." Step. “We’ll never ever ever speak of again..." Step. “Just like the eyeliner incident-”

“-Get! Out!”

With a powerful flap of his wings, the pegasus twirled and darted with torpedo force out the door frame. He just barely cleared the corner of the hinges before a whizzing blur of a streaking orange desk drawer crashed and exploded against the opposite wall in the hallway. The drawer spun wildly into the air before dropping with a clattering slam on the hallway floor, flinging two dolls into a flailing arc back into the Captain’s office.

* * * * *

Some distance from Canterlot, a battered door swung open from a severely dented and abused baggage car. Panting, Gina threw herself from the hulk of the vehicle, tumbling and landing with a wet muddy thump at the base of the car’s gnarled axles. The telekinetic pillow had exhausted her and the cold wasn’t doing her any favors either. “J-j-j-j-j-jeez..." she protested through chattering teeth. “T-th-th-tha-that was... intense!”

Even her deranged laughter was frosty and even more erratic with shivers and shaking teeth as her body struggled to rewarm itself and regain control over reflex. She righted herself on four trembling, dizzy hooves, sauntering sideways against the baggage car. With weight pressed against the chipped paint and splintered rims, she flicked her fetlocks outward, summoning a spray of muddy strokes against the river’s shoreline.

Her eyes adjusted to the sunlight beaming through a crack in the mountains, its low angle casting the silhouette of Canterlot into the hazy distance. Shaking the last drops of water from her mane, Gina squared up to the train car and floated a scrap of parchment before her face.

“So... let’s see here..." she murmured, coursing a hoof across the various drawings on the parchment. “Discord statue... check. Element thingy... check.” She read it from the paper as if it were a detailed list. But as she reached the end of what was on the paper, Gina showed no sign of stopping.

“Train car..." she inquired, looking over the battered vehicle before her. The parchment had no hint about a train anywhere scrawled onto it. “Huh.” She folded the paper, putting it aside. “That’s new.”

Her own voice betrayed the confusion as her own plan grew more complex within her mind. She suddenly propped her ears up at full attention. “Wait, say that again.” Even as she spoke, her horn lit and the paper speared itself neatly on the draconequus statue’s petrified antler. “But... I liked that list..." she protested out loud as the door to the train car shut, locking both the list and Discord back into the devastated baggage car interior. “But... I can’t... no way! It’s too far!”

Her protesting conversation continued as her head turned to her left, far in the distance stood the proud spires of Canterlot. Even though the train had been travelling for a good time, the jaunts and contours of the mountains had only allowed it to get nearly a mile from the castle itself. “You’re crazy!” Gina yelped again, but even as she spoke, her body started moving, turning towards the train car again and, just as involuntarily, she started laughing again.

“Oh jeez... this is crazy,” she murmured. “You’re crazy.” Her horn ignited in an erratic display of magic. The power was unmistakable, but wild and unrestrained. Her mind simply did not use magic as an understood process - it was a gift of power, and such gifts were meant to run wild and without inhibition. A circling band of magic wound snugly around the draconequus’ statue and started to heave it upward. Mired in sand and wet mud, the statue strained mightily before it finally lifted free.

A second aura exploded around the unicorn’s horn as another telekinetic field enveloped the battered train car. The unicorn herself stepped back, almost flummoxed at just how much energy she was already spending, and how much more she needed for this final task.

Use it, she remembered the astute captain addressing those six peons at the station. Inspiring words to extract from, especially now as a third aura of yellow and orange wrapped around her horn. The draconequus slid gracefully back into the luggage car.

Use it! Use it! Use it!

Sweat ran in heavy lines down Gina’s cheek as she swung once, whipping the train towards Canterlot, but not releasing the magic. Two swings. Within her mind, angles and wind calculated without her notice, all she experienced was an instinct of where to throw, but driven by a consciousness that was well beyond her shattered mind. On the third swing, the magic burst outward and severed from the train car, releasing it on a predestined arc towards Canterlot, her aim unerring...

... Even if she did not know it.

* * * * *

“You lost the Element of Magic?” Celestia’s voice carried down to the purple unicorn, flanked by all of her friends in the center of one of the high chambers of Canterlot palace. They stood in a row before the Princess of the Sun and twelve robed ponies. The elder council. Yet another facet of so-called leadership that did no favors to deflating the tumorous expansion of even more branches extending from the overburdened trunk of the city’s inner workings.

“Not lost. It was stolen,” the purple unicorn repeated. While Celestia’s thoughtful look did not change, the ministers and advisors of Canterlot flew into a tizzy. “Outside the palace, somepony... no... the orange unicorn that Captain Stormblade described, pulled it from my bag and tried to escape on the first train out. My friend,” Twilight gestured to the blue pegasus, “almost had her stopped but it was like she had planned for that even. It was the same story on the train, every single thing seemed to go exactly how she wanted it to.”

“And what does that mean?” barked a round, grizzlied pony minister with a haughty air. “Are you trying to tell Princess Celestia that Discord somehow,” he wheezed a sarcastic laugh, “saw the future and planned this whole thing out so that you’d lose the Element?!”

That accusation ignited a firestorm of new accusations and claims against the unicorn. The council chambers erupted into a new volley of vociferous tirades that echoed through the marbled walls. In the center, cast beneath the accusing glare of dim orange sunlight beaming through the large glass dome overhead, six mares stood before an assembly of a dozen elders looming over them in dark robes. Wincing underneath the verbal onslaught, Twilight was about to shrink away entirely before another voice broke the tumult with the delicacy of a sledgehammer breaking a vase.

“Granteth her due voice!” A wisp of cobalt emanated between the parting steps of a line of royal guards, the gentle ringing of ornate silver footwear chiming against the marble floor. “Pray telleth, Twilight Sparkle,” a voice, heavy with accent and tones from a bygone era bellowed as if to bully all the other voices down. “Thou hast more to say, we can seeth that. Speak!” Her deep cobalt glow wafted before her, the pinpoint lights of a starry miasma carried through the fibers of mane and tail rippled with weightless abandon with every step she made towards the center of the council chamber. Even in the late afternoon’s orange and yellow atmosphere, her navy blue coat still shone and carried its own vibrancy that exhibited with complete ambivalence to the warm tones surrounding her. As she passed before the semicircle of the dozen robed elders, her two teal irises softened as they glanced upon the purple unicorn before her.

“Oh... Princess Luna!” Twilight gasped, “th-thank, thank you,” swallowing hard as she found her courage again. “Well, to be honest, something about this whole... incident has been bothering me ever since I heard the Discord statue went missing.”

Luna angled her head down, keeping an intent look upon the unicorn. The two irises contracted in... well, Twilight was uncertain whether it was doubt, or simply curiosity. She took a deep breath, knowing the gravity and weight of what she was about to say.

She shut her eyes, fearing the volley of soul-gnashing glares she was going to get. “I don’t believe Discord is behind this.” The room snapped into a silence, followed immediately by a rustle of hushed grumbling whispers from the elders. “In fact..." She breathed in again, “I am certain that he isn’t!”

Twilight was right to brace herself, as the explosive panic through the political ponies shot through them with cannonball force. A perpetual gust of shrill protests echoed through them as both elders and gathered public buffeted the six mares from all sides with a barrage of charged syllables.

“Hold thyselves!” It took another bellow from Princess Luna to buy Twilight the silence she needed to continue. “Thine inquiries hath proven trustworthy in the past, Miss Sparkle. Mine sister’s unyielding trust in thee doth win our trust as well.” The Princess of the Night leaned towards the six mares, resting a forehoof against the chamber’s central table. “Praytell, explaineth further this... hypothesis thou harbors.”

The purple unicorn looked up, smiling graciously at the navy blue alicorn before her. “Discord is a weaver, a lord or something of chaos, right? All of this, his tricks, the statue going missing, singling out one Element of Harmony... that isn’t chaos.” She tapped a hoof firmly on the table. “There is a plan at work. Discord may have plotted against us, but this is way beyond him, it’s too linear for chaos. Something else is at work here.”

“Do you believe we are in danger?” Celestia spoke at last, her tone soft but her voice unmistakably clear.

“I... I don’t know. Something after the Element of Magic... and holding onto it cannot be anything good.” Twilight narrowed her expression, tightening her vision onto her long time teacher. “Celestia, This unicorn is dangerous.”

Luna took a jolting step back. “Dangerous?”

Twilight nodded. “She’s unstable without a doubt.” She opted not to speak further, lest she also reveal the orange unicorn’s disjointed conversations with herself, too. It was a detail that the tense and tittering bureaucrats could do without.

“Thank you Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia spoke, breathing deep. She turned to the council around her with imploring eyes. “While we can spend an eternity seeking blame, all I seek is resolution.” The Princess ascended, the late evening light catching off her opalescent wings in a glimmering rim of illumination that cast out like streamers. The chambers fell to a reverent hush as the Princess of the Sun raised her voice to issue her decree. “I have full trust in my student’s observations and insights. I’d like to ask for your help in tracking down this unicorn, and the lost Element, before she causes any serious harm to Canterlot or Equestria.”

Twilight turned to the other mares behind her, exchanging glances between them. Every expression settled upon unanimous agreement. She turned, and taking a step back away from the central council table, bowed respectfully towards the middle.

Celestia ascended higher, nearly touching the glass dome and glowing with the deep orange light that cast the rear of the chamber into a cold cyan shadow. “And you all,” her voice broadened to the host of politicos and advisors, “we must prepare as if this were a genuine threat. Not some frivolous screw-up of those you’ve prematurely deemed incapable without proper evidence! We mustn’t demand our true and chosen bearers of the Elements to become better.” Her eyes narrowed to the same low intensity of her voice. “We must assume our enemies have gotten worse.”

Another elder mare stood up, “Princess Celestia, we-”

“-Need to act now!” The Princess waved a hoof towards the gathered council members, softening her voice. “Please bring me all of your plans and emergency policies. I do not wish to cause a panic, so don’t let anything get out of hoof.” She huffed. “But let’s be prepared, too.”

“I must interject, your highness!” A succession of heavy hoofsteaps beat through the marbled walls, echoing with the reverberating chorus of heavy boots and jangling medals. Two armored pegasi guards stepped aside in a clumsy stumble as a large black earth pony pushed them aside with a sweep of a foreleg. “Of course, with all due respect to the Princesses,” Stormblade began, resuming a slow paced march into the council chamber. “We must also at once employ the services of our own The Royal Pegasus Guard of Captain Stormblade.”

The purple unicorn flopped her head to the table. “Great,” Twilight groaned into her folded hooves. “Even remembers to include ‘The’ to the guard’s title, too.”

“Are these mares capable?” Stormblade leered to the council, pointing a hoof at them with enough velocity to crack the air. “Absolutely!” He smiled proudly to them, but his grin depleted to a concerned frown of faux empathy as he swiveled back to face the robed elders. “But, alas, they are nothing without all of their Elements accounted for!”

The pink earth pony jumped onto the table. “Now just wait a minute here!”

“Excellent idea!” Agreed Stormblade. “Let us all wait a minute, and hear Captain Stormblade out here.”

“Ah dun’ think that’s what she mean-”

“-A legitimate crisis is on our hooves, Canterlot!” The haughty stallion righted himself next to Luna, leaning wryly against her with a jangling of medals. “And it is our duty..." his voice lowered with a smile towards her, “our privilege..." he stepped back with a twirl, addressing the council, “to answer the call when times like these arise!”

Luna scowled, taking a long stride away from the Captain. “We doth proclaim, Second Captain, thine gall be..." she hesitated, leering at the council before her, realizing that her diction needed to be in professional royalty mode. “... commendable.” Not agitated murderous disgusted mode.

“M’lady Luna.” Jangle jangle. “I am only concerned for your well-being! Hear me out!”

The Princess immediately saw through the Captain’s facade. “Thou insisteth on speaking now, whilst in crisis?” Well, if any time was a good time to try and win... bonus points or whatever, Canterlotian crisis mode was the perfect choice. “Captain, thine brash and-..." She stopped, shooting a glance back at the council from the corner of her eye, seeing them all focusing with abject attention upon her and Stormblade. Luna heaved in exasperation. “Be brief, Second Captain.”

“This is bigger than me, or Canterlot! I see you staring out over the city every night all alone. I worry for you, Princess. Does some deep pain drive you to stare like that?”

Figures. Be brief would still be optional if it was etched onto a white-hot brand and plunged into his face.

“Nay..." Luna responded, her eyes widening slightly in agitated confusion.

“But surely you desire someone to join you in your eternal vigil?”

“Er..."

“My heart goes out to you, all alone on those nights without a single pony to stand with you through the darkness.”

Luna could feel a gag coming on. “Nay... thou art mistaken,” she replied softly, too preoccupied by keeping her lunch in its place to be properly outraged.

“But then why else would you go out and sit every night by yourself?” Stormblade’s retort begged for Luna to open up to him, expose true feelings that hid beneath a tough exterior. But the Princess regarded him with a level expression.

“Tis our JOB, Second Captain!” Luna barked, her voice scattering a double load of papers with its hurricane force as her frustration broke. “We are the guardian of the night! Tis what we hath done for years! Must we pester thee about thy tormented soul whilst thou patrolleth a garden?!”

“You worry about me in the garden, Luna?” The surge of misplaced hope in his voice was capable of inducing physical pain. “You should join me sometime then!” Stormblade swept forward in a tidal wave of jangling medals. “I have so much I’d like to share with you at the garden, it would be just like I’ve wrote... er... dreamed! Why, you could raise the moon to just the right angle, and I know a small bridge in the garden that would be just perfect for us to..."

Luna feigned her attention getting pulled from a non-existent pony standing behind the Captain. She stood atop the tips of her forehooves, and waved at nothing in particular, pretending to be hailed from the furthest possible corner of the council chamber. “Ah... excuseth us,” she struggled to break into the Captain’s lengthy soliloquy with a faux polite smile. “We must be... tending to the... crisis at hoof!” Luna attempted escape, but could not free herself from his voice and that maddening jangle. “Mayhaps another time!” Mayhaps after another thousand years, thou overwrought, most burdensome showpony.

“I’ll leave my patrol schedule at your door,” the Captain’s voice trailed her through the ensnaring throng of shifting ponies. “No need to ask!” Jangle jangle.

“Thou hast given me three copies of thy schedules before..." Luna murmured, diving headlong into the crowd of worrying politicians, relieved to move from one overbearing pest to an entirely new breed of multiple pests.

Ah, the Council chambers, the Princess of the Night lamented in her head, looking over the superficial visages of dozens of ornately suited ponies attempting to wave down her attention as she dodged and weaved through the crowd. How she loathed politics.

Politics, she used to joke with her sister. Derived from classical Equestrian dialect; ‘Poly’ meaning ‘several,’ and ‘tics’ meaning ‘blood sucking parasites.’

As soon as she stepped into the mass, Luna was smothered in the press for attention, the need for royal mandates, the absolute dire necessity that the Princess of the Night endorse or discourage some minister or another all to keep the maddening machinations of Canterlot politics moving. No sooner than she had gratefully escaped Stormblade, Luna found herself swimming away from bickering politicians and their incessant press for her blessing with no regard for her true thoughts. Just another signature or nod from the higher ups to lend credence to their political games.

At the edge of the chamber’s center, just beyond the radius of projected orange light beaming through the skylight above, the Princess of the Sun was already shuffling between her own assembly of ponies. She found herself sealed within her own bubble of disorder, and was hardly even aware of Stormblade’s diatribe rattling in the same room. Around Celestia, Canterlot’s highest royal officers scrambled, hauling in rolls of parchments and scrolls, each one loaded with the tangled and impenetrable emergency plans and policies for Canterlot should it be placed in danger. Even though she had stressed to her advisors that this was not to be a situation of panic, one errant rumor had turned it into a storm. What’s more, the storm had turned into the realm of Canterlot politics, all of her advisors using this crisis as an excuse to forward their ideas, secure power or simply gain leverage against their political rivals. Confusion bred confusion, infighting bred infighting. None of it bred anything approaching useful progress or help to the citizens.

In the center of the chamber, the black-coated earth pony proudly sauntered back to the chamber’s main table, leaning a shoulder against it alongside the purple unicorn. The unicorn turned to him with minor irritation, but promptly resumed her conversation with the elders.

“I know we’ll find a way,” the unicorn reassured the leering council before her. “What we need now is more information on the exact causes of-”

“-What you need!” The Captain interrupted her with a stomp of a hoof on the wooden table. “Is action!”

The unicorn seethed, inhaling loudly. “Excus-”

“-And naturally!” Stormblade continued addressing the council, “It must be The Royal Pegasus Guard of Captain Stormblade that is best equipped to handle a new threat, yes?”

Above the dismaying caterwaul of politics, Princesses Celestia and Luna struggled to maintain some kind of order, to put all of this energy towards some productive end. Celestia’s calm calls for compromise and focus and liberal application of the Royal Canterlot Voice could only do so much to those so mired in the politics of Canterlot.

Stormblade rested his forehooves against the table, propping himself up over the six mares behind it. “The threat of Discord is real once more!” He pointed a hoof at them. “Without their Elements by their side, we are now the ones who will resume this mission and bring Discord to justice.”

“But,” Twilight attempted, pressing her own forehooves on the table, “This isn’t even Discord we’re seeking!”

Stormblade guffawed, reeling back. “An astute observation,” cue the smug quip, “esteemed student of Celestia!” He dropped back into her gaze, matching her eyes to his own with a overbearing grin that teetered on the edge of a disdainful scowl. “And yet, you are falling into the very web of deception Discord weaves, for it’s what Discord wants you to believe.”

“What!?”

“Oh, Twilight, you are twice as smart as the average pony,” He crooned lightly, and with a shake of his dark mane, turned his head sideways to her. “Good thing I’m thrice as smart, though. For you see, perhaps you’re two steps ahead of Discord,” He grinned, beaming a shot of pointed light off glimmering teeth. “But I’m three.”

Twilight coughed, feeling the tense impulse of contracting muscles rivet down to a rear hoof. “What are you... how could you even..." She really wanted to buck him square in the jaw, the twitching in her spine was crying out for the privilege to do so!

“It is with a Captain’s intuition and tactics that I can truly see,” a jangle rang out as he pressed a congratulatory hoof against his own chest, “Saying that Discord is a diversion... is a diversion for Discord.”

“Huh!?” Calm down, legs, violence isn’t the answer...

“It’s what Discord has been planning all along!”

... Well it isn’t the answer... yet.

"Twilight," a concerned voice caught her ear. The pink pony waved toward her for attention. "Twili-ight... Look..." She stood up, swiveling sideways with a hoof motioning at her rear. "Twitchy tail. Twitchy tail..."

Celestia broke free from the tightening entourage of scribes and assistants rushing to her for further instructions. She briskly paced against the council chamber’s wall, hoping to reassert some sort of order over the anarchistic scene playing out before her. Instead, she rounded a clump of reaching hooves too quickly, bumping sternum first into a cobalt tail.

The Princess of the Night twirled briskly with a clenched grimace, but softened immediately to see it was her sister who collided with her. “Fie on these whelps!” Luna moaned, slumping back against the wall after another attempt to dissuade the Minister of Balloon Adornments that his department does not have priority if the city was to be evacuated. “Thine bloated government wasteth time betwixt petty squabbles in the face of danger!” In a rush of irritation, Luna scattered a quill and inkpot form the table before her, scattering a long trail of dark blotches across the chamber floor.

She groaned, looking for another small object to cast aside, yet found nothing harmless. A deep blue glow encased the entire table instead, the small piece of furniture listing suddenly in the telekinetic grip of the frustrated Princess. A soft tap of an opalescent hoof rested on her shoulder, causing her to exhale dejectedly. Luna lowered the table as her sister joined her in contemplating the unsightly mess around them.

“Luna,” Celestia’s attention turned from the unappealing mess to her family. “It’s just how they always react to a crisis. Remember when our trains were an hour late because of the goat on the tracks and they thought Equestria was ending? It’s the same.”

In the distance, a snarling warcry and impassioned jangling echoed over the raucous crowd. “I will prove to you that I am right, and that this is Discord’s doing!” A loud bang carried over the chambers of a hoof smashing against wood. “You’ll learn soon enough, student! Let Captain Stormblade be your teacher this time!”

“Nay. This be not the same!” Luna huffed, turning back to Celestia. She was always fiery and hotheaded when it came to dealing with the Canterlot bureaucracy, but the Princess of the Night seemed unusually agitated. “As royal sisters, we shouldeth sweep aside such bickering and reclaimeth the statue and Element and quell hither issue before it... it..."

Luna's attention faltered as a pink blur jumped in the center of the chamber. "Twitchy tail!" The pink pony declared over the chaos. "Twitchy tail!"

"What!?" Celestia snapped Luna's attention back to her. “Before it what?” She demanded, an inquisitive brow raising as her sister's glance trailed off again. “Luna, you’re not usually this tense. Tell me right now, is there something you know that I don’t? Do you know more about what’s going-”

*Skr-Klaaassh!*

Before the question could fly from Celestia’s lips, a magnanimous blast of shattering commotion caused the Princesses to flinch in sharp gasps. The wide skylight overlooking the chamber suddenly exploded into a thousand shards of colored glass!

Stormblade jumped back from the table with his eyes peering straight up. His mouth dropped, but only a surrendering whine squeaked out of his distraught lungs.

Where the window used to preside now plummeted the distinct shade of a train car as it plunged through the fragile structure like a stone from a mischievous foal.

Time grinded to a near standstill as the thunderous commotion from above fell away into a muffled dull drone, only the melodic chimes of splintering windows coursed through Twilight’s ears. She found herself caught underneath the dark shadow of the vehicular behemoth cascading down upon her through the dissipating sheet of scattering glass. She attempted to propel away, but neural impulses failed to fire in her haunches as panic swept down her spine, locking her in place. The muffled cries of her surrounding friends sang out to her as she swiveled in slow motion to see four of them backing away in a panicked gallop.

Four of them. The fifth. Where did she-

-A cyan foreleg crashed hard into Twilight’s ribs, forcing a choked breath out of her. The world lurched away in a blur as her vision rocked from her friends, the falling train car above, and a sweeping prismatic mane dragging a spectrum of faded rainbow light behind it. With a surge of blunt force racking across her shoulders, her mind snapped back into real time as Twilight watched Stormblade and the central table of the chamber pull away from her in a dizzying twist.

The Captain’s face was paralyzed in a sudden uppercut of perplexed fear, eyes locked straight up in disbelief, every muscle simply giving up and seeming to accept the nasty demise he stared down. The central table gave way without slowing down the huge dark blur in the least, the wooden frame exploding into a cloud of splinters and dust as a familiar baggage car plunged with cataclysmic force right on top of the table and the dumbfounded Captain.

A plume of dark tumbling smoke ruptured forth, charging like a dark gray bull of soot and spiraling detritus. The shockwave’s force kicked into Twilight’s chest, blowing her mane back straight before the cerulean pegasus also tumbled forward in the riotous blast. Knocked into a somersaulting dive towards the chamber’s public seats, the purple unicorn and cerulean pegasus flopped and cascaded through the first couple rows of chairs before smacking sideways into the other four mares. They crashed in a twisted pile of dangling hooves, swirling eyes, and exasperated groans.

Coughing and sporadic yelps of panic from the political ponies mixed with alarmed barks and shouts from the royal guards. The two Princesses immediately waded into the fray, royal disapproval of the bureaucracy transforming into a deep care for their subjects as they picked and weaved through the shattered floors. With a hack, Twilight crept towards the bent and buckled train car.

With a groaning lurch, the metal baggage car timidly leaned to the side, a high pitched whine reverberating off the marbled walls. Then, giving way with a succession of rapid clangs and wrenching metal, the car tipped to the side, the door on its underside peeling away from the ground, the tilting door frame revealing the Captain standing with a confounded look of disbelief on his face. With a muffled bang and rusty wine, the corner of the train car rested precariously against the side of a column.

As the door frame angled over him, just clearing his ears by a half-haunch, a rocky clatter descended from the bottom side of the tipping train car. The statue of the draconequus deposited neatly, standing tall beside Stormblade. The narrow pupils in his wide eyes shot a dread-filled look at Discord resting neatly and harmlessly beside him, then retreated back to looking forward towards the pile of six mares recovering from off the dusty floor.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight attempted a sarcastic quip, but only choked on the dust cascading around them. “You were saying, ah-hrerym, something about showing me and, h-kyahck, and teaching me something, Captain?”

The column supporting the precariously tipping vehicle finally gave way; the car quickly tipped over with a thundering metallic crash, kicking up another thick cloud of dust. Stormblade quickly followed in the baggage car’s lead.

“Well... I guess that’s one mystery solved,” Twilight said as she looked across the chamber at the draconequus. Above all of the stirring rubble and the fainted Captain sat the statue of Discord, untouched save for a piece of paper haphazardly speared on one of his horns. “Princess Celestia! Princess Luna!” Twilight called out into the chamber. Turning from the dazed and stunned attendants, the two Princesses approached.

“Huh.” Celestia gasped, hastening to the statue. “This changes many... many things.”

As Celestia and Twilight fell into deep conversation, Princess Luna’s eyes stayed locked on the statue, but more on the paper that fluttered off of the bizarre horn. Some symbol or scratch caught her eye. At first, it was little more than a passing interest, but something drew her gaze back. Some long-abandoned memory twitched to life, and it filled her with dread. But why? It was nothing more than a scrap of paper, right?

Right?

A gust of wind from the hole above twisted the paper, and the symbol fell more fully into Luna’s sight. A circled gemstone. Stepping closer, she pulled the paper free of the horn and examined it in full. It needed no words, no explanation and the information it laid out before her eyes was unmistakable. While obscure and buried in the deepest recesses of memory, the image and its meaning resonated with peculiar clarity to her. The color and life drained from Luna’s cheeks, and she had but moments to make a decision.

“E-excuseth me sister, Twilight Sparkle,” Luna huffed, dropping the paper and briskly stepping from the room. “We... er... needth a little time to cleareth our head.”

“Luna?” Celestia asked, but before she could catch up with the Princess of the Night, the calamity around her pulled her focus back. Mere steps behind her was a jangling clatter as the Second Captain stumbled to his feet, his eyes unable to stay in place as they spun dizzily.

“Not to... worry..." Stormblade abandoned any effort to support his words with heroism, his eyes more intent upon remaining focused to pursue the cobalt Princess out the door. “I’ll... go see what... she just... be right back, your Highness.”

Chapter 3: Fugitives

Illustration by Arctic-Sekai and Vest
Pre-Reading Assistance by Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Two souls collide at the end of the day,

Beneath the Archives, a secret betrayed,

Determined reprieve, they’re driven away,

Fugitives of life through an opened way.

_____

___

Chapter 3

Fugitives

A forcibly slammed door followed the wave of gasps and plops of reverent knees dropping to the floor. With her entrance into the lowly regarded wing of the Canterlot archive, the passive inertia of usual clatter made way for a held silence that choked the air into stillness. She advanced through the rows of books that lined the labyrinthian web of the archive, her eyes focused forward, knowing exactly where she needed to be.

Reflexively, Princess Luna would peer down an aisle while passing it, simply out of a meandering weariness as she searched out that usual familiar spot she yearned for. Upon the occasional spontaneous exchange of glances with another curious onlooker within the aisle, she would be immediately greeted by a shrill yelp. Before the Princess could utter a single word requesting their ignorance, they too dropped into a rushed genuflect.

To her... the usual greeting.

Yet the only greeting she desired, the reverence she only wanted at that point, only came from the looming bookshelves standing ambivalent and tall around her. Enveloping her, harboring her, maintaining their usual regimented watch within the voluminous Canterlot archives with the same tacit poise she'd grown cozy to. They didn't drop to the ground upon seeing her, they didn't show any semblance of fear towards her, nor did their ornate craftsmanship conceal within a vestigial conditioning demanding an astute display of magnanimous affection when a simple curtsey would suffice.

It was within the bookshelves nested the lone perch at the base of a massive window. It was a place nopony could find her. A hideaway tucked away just above eye level where she could recede into the wall like a ghost.

Beyond that window, she remembered many stressful days of peering out into the Canterlot skyline, the shadow of the towering palace creeping and consuming across rows of cottages as the sun descended in a dance of diminishing fiery light that cued her nightly shift into her nightly overwatch.

A last stop. A final reprieve from the afternoon’s bedlam to shake it all off before immersing into the night’s song she cast upon weaving the astral skyscape above.

And today, did she ever need it.

More sacred to her was that spot than the entirety of her royal reputation and character, for without it, the latter would crumble catastrophically around her. All too often, she needed someplace where she couldn’t be bothered, not even by the overt courtesies of ponies who would intrude upon her personal space with misplaced respects by inquiring ‘Anything I can do to help?’

Yes.

Go back in time ten seconds, and trip over the banister on your way up the stairs!

She breathed out in a heavy huff, the alcove laid a seemingly impossible distance away, an expanse beyond her own psyche’s capability to push her panic-wracked sentience before exploding into a shrill tantrum of thundering words at every speck of dust that tickled her nostrils in the musty air. Be calm, Luna. Easy. Just keep moving, and try to keep your patience intact.

Good luck.

She took a quick two-step trot backward as a light green blur spun into view before her. A unicorn quickly rounded into periphery, just barely gracing a fetlock against the bookcase's corner. Upon seeing the Princess, the unicorn got so caught up in her shock that an involuntary burst of cyan magic launched a tall pile of papers upward into a whirling blizzard of fluttering parchment. Her stunned silence was punctuated by the descending melody of papers speckling against the tile floor around them, framing the narrowed scowl of the cobalt Princess with a rippling halo of text.

And down she went. Typical.

“My Princess, dearest!” Like the whole city held a meeting, inviting everypony except her. “Sincerest apologies!” To rehearse the same three lines when accidentally getting in her way. Here comes the begging for forgiveness. “I beg of your forgiveness!”

Be calm, Luna. Easy.

The Princess stood with feigned patience before her, waiting for the green unicorn to finish with the usual pedantic groveling or pleading for mercy or what have they. Seeing the shuddering green unicorn not moving, her path blocked by the pile of fluttering papers still descending atop of her, Luna cleared her throat impatiently.

Another whiny peep crept through the rippling ambience of settling parchment. "Princess, I, I... I'm" The mare's voice cracked, attempting to drop to a lower, more dignified octave. "Sincerest of apologies m'lady, I did not intend to get in your way." She looked up with wide panicked eyes, the shrunken quivering pupils seeming to plead for her graces. "If you could... could forgive me, m'lady, for... for blocking you like that I, I-"

"-Then moveth!"

A jolt of sporadic motion flung another hooffull of papers skyward as she flopped back under her own fetlocks, floored by the Princess' sudden and vociferous command. The following descent of muffled silence only augmented the cautious withdrawal of a dozen ponies silently attempting to creep away in slow creaking steps. Each decibel carried with unfettered ease through the musty air as the Princess' words returned to her own ears in a crisp echo.

‘Then moveth!’ exclaimed the archive walls.

Her eyes grew wide upon the arrival of those prodigal syllables, her own ears detecting with the surgical precision of royal intuition just how much on edge she was.

A sudden chime of summoned magic sounded before her, and a cyan aura of glittering radiance embraced around the dropped papers. The green unicorn spun back onto her hooves, and with a sweeping arc of her neck, her horn sprang into a cyan glow. She frantically darted her head from one side to the other, attempting to hurriedly collect the papers before her, now more focussed upon getting out of the Princess' way than actually succumbing to an arbitrary obligation to reverent candor.

If only.

If only all the other ponies would just be on their way, treat her as an equal, not inundate her life with unexpected jumps, drops, squeals, and long drawn-out apologies for not having some methodically choreographed song number rehearsed for her every arrival. If only they could speak to her while skipping the unnecessary m'lady's and sincerest of something or another’s. Now was not the time to bolster her onto some pedestal, and she was certainly in no mood for peccant exhibitions of terror following every corner of every aisle she passed. Yeah. If only.

With her royal discipline yielding a precious second for the Princess to exhale out a knot of frustration, a sudden twinge of revelation sputtered to life within her thoughts. "Telleth me, dearest scribe," Luna looked down onto the green unicorn. Her scornful impatience washed away, softening to a sincere glance of interest. "What dost thou... ?" Luna tapped her hoof a couple times against her chin. It had been over a year since returning from a thousand-year banishment to the moon's imprisonment, yet if there was one thing the seemingly omnipotent Princess of the Night had difficulty with"What dost thou praytell... laboreth upon here?"… It was small talk.

"Oh!" The green unicorn jumped onto her hooves. “Labor? Like... job?”

Finally some progress! The Princess beamed with royal Canterlot emphasis. “Yes!”

Whoops, too much emphasis. "H-yeep!" Startled out of her focus, another jolt of cyan telekinesis shot the messily bundled papers back into a fluttering barrier of descending parchment. "Oh yes, I... I, uh, I, here I"

If only.

Luna sighed heavily, unknowing that her temporarily harbored impatience had reasserted itself in her eyes. Picking up on her countenance, the green unicorn leapt into action recollecting the dropping papers with such fast jolts of her neck, her stammering devolved into jumbled incoherent yelps of panic. Some revelation that was. In attempting to offset the obvious discomfort of others around her, Luna had just made it worse.

"Hyee-eee, I, oh no, oh, I" She coughed, and upon looking up at the tall cobalt Princess looming above her with gradually narrowing eyelids buckling under their own fatigue, she noticed a single paper impaled with wavering dejection off the tip of Luna's horn. "A-yee-hee-eee!" She flung her neck up in a sudden terrified jolt, directing an immediate grasp of cyan magic around the impaled paper. "Absolute apologies, m'lady!" Lifting the stabbed sheet into the air, she nestled it back into the jumbled pile of floating papers. "Ah, yes, um since you asked about, my job yes?"

Maybe another day. Certainly not this one. This was no time for making attempts to helping her own feared image within the zealous reverence of the archive's ranks.

"Resumeth thine post."

"My name is Lily Boxtop, undersecretary to the secretary of development of-" The green unicorn's panicked rambling suddenly stopped. "-Wait, sincerest apologies, what was that?"

There it was again. "We accepteth thy apology." Yet another unnecessary apology from the usual fits of regimented groveling following her every step. If only. "Thou may proceed back to thy post." If only they could just act more like the bookshelves.

The green unicorn shot a look quickly back to the musty corner of her own deskspace, peering down at the several drones sorting through the long stacks of papers similar to that which she held with her own horn. Another echoing clang of a door in the distance brought her attention back forward. "Thank you m'lady, I most sincerly appreciate your-"

Yet the Princess was gone.

A cobalt blur quickly disappeared down an adjacent aisle of books leaving no trace behind, the only remaining sound piercing through the thick late afternoon air was the heavy thudding of approaching hooves. Thick, reverberating hooves. And... and something... something else...

Jangle. Jangle.

* * * * *

He could've sworn. Worked for three hours and the pile was only getting bigger. The dark unicorn kept shooting curious glances over to the stack of papers that signaled as some omniscient monolith the deliverance of yet another mundane evening running late into the night. He could've sworn. It was going to be an hour getting each one properly notarized, signed, and addressed to the next individual slated to sign it. For him, he was just another monotonous step in the unending dressage of bloated bureaucracy that inundated the inner-workings of the Archives.

A snooty red mare coughed loudly, forcibly tapping him on the shoulder. “Devon!” A hollow pop clicked in his ear, his cogniscience announcing its return from outer space. "I said, excuse me!" She called out to him, dropping a quill from her jaws. "Are you zoning out again?"

The dark unicorn tugged his head up. Being in a hung posture over the constantly cycling assortment of documents caused his neck to freeze limp in place. His shoulders strained to hoist his attention upward. How long has his attention been simmering away into the sea of paperwork? How long had he remained transcended into the consuming vortex of his menial job? He certainly didn't recognize the sudden intrusion of the orange afternoon sun, nor the realization of the muffled background noise of voices being turned onto him.

"Excuse me!" The red mare scowled with irritation. "Bookmark!" She twisted herself around the table, planting herself at the opposite side to face him directly. "Are you going to get the UC-77 forms sent or what?!"

His neck finally obeying his mental impulses, the dark unicorn shifted upward, flicking his head aside to wave aside the curled tendrils of dark blue mane from his face. "The, uhh, let's see umm, UC... UC seven... seventy-seven for, uhh"

"Gyugh!" The red mare groused. "UC-77 form! You know? For the authorization to commence the permission granting process for project commencement authorization... ?"

Oh bureaucracy.

"Oh" Devon winced heavily after a lengthy pause to run the very concept of such a form through his head. After all this time, the only thing his eyes ever picked up was sign here, initial here, and unlucky recipient's address here. Spending so many years in the dredges of a paper-pusher's lifestyle gave him the blessing to just guess what went where without having to navigate the abstract post-modern painting his mind interpreted from the rest of the superficial jargon swamping the pages. "Of course," he lied, "the, umm... process for commencement of project authorization."

"No!" She stomped a hoof. "Not the process for commencement! The granting process for project commencement-" she dropped her head, and sighed. "Listen, Devon, I really need to get going, I'm meeting quite the dapper stallion tonight, assuredly something that you don't fully understand but" she paused, seeing the wave of sporadic offense rippling through his facial features. "Buuut" The mare continued, ignoring the necessity to offer an apology for such a remark, "Look, you have time, I don't. So I'll just put this stack right here." With a wave of a forehoof, yet another mound of papers nudged against the existing pile. "And when you get the UC-77 ready, just put these alongside it okays?"

Devon raised a hoof in protest-

"-Okays." But he only got halfway up before she answered for him. "Thanks Devon for your understanding see you tomorrow." She quickly swiveled in place, whipping up a puff of air that unsettled the top sheets around a swooshing tail.

Devon got up, chasing her around the table down the aisle. "But-"

"-Have fun!" She waved a hoof over her shoulder, walking away between the falling gaps of more documents landing before Devon's hooves. He made a few quick bounds in an attempt to catch up to her, but after rounding the aisle's corner, saw a trademark cyan aura of telekinetic light descending down the Archive's main walk. The red mare was nowhere to be seen, having already eluded him through the cavernous labyrinth before his eyes.

Quickly shooting an agitated glance back at his own work station, he peered with a caustic depression upon the last few airborne documents swaying and settling dejectedly at the foot of the table. He could've sworn. The pile was only getting bigger.

“Bookmark! What in Celestia’s right front hoof are you doing?!” a new voice barked, shattering the chatter of the offices. It was a shrill cavalcade of decibels that could only belong to one overbearing Lily Boxtop. “That stack is way too big!”

“Well,” he began, a moment of confused relief washing into his voice as the possibility that his boss realized that he was helplessly swamped and might help aid the burden or even, like a hushed whisper, give him a raise. “Most of this isn’t mine. I had a U... C... seventy-something foisted on me and I have plenty else to d-”

“No no no!” Lily squealed, shaking her head furiously at her employee’s incompetent naivete. “This desk is way too cluttered! We have a VIP here!”

Woah, hold your haunches. “What? A VIP?”

“A Very Important Pony!”

Of course she missed the ‘who’ context of the question, and just assumed the ‘what’ to further condescend to him with a projected sense of his incompetence. Eh might as well try to correct her, all knowing she’d just interrupt him three words in. “I know what-”

“-There’s no way my career could stand her seeing my office like this!” As she rattled on, Lily rushed past Devon and into the depths of the offices.

“So...” Devon started, “does that mean the whole staff is going to come together in a big show of teamwork to get this task done and we’ll all appear amazing to the royalty?” Stupid question, but he had to fling it on out there anyway.

“Not quite. You’ll be doing the teamwork, Bookmark,” Lily replied with a delightfully pleased beam as she wheeled out a cart used to haul large amounts of books from one end of the archive to another. “Same deadline, just a new setting.” Pushing the cart to Devon’s desk, Lily strode past him and with a single movement that left Devon gawking with a slack jaw, sweeping his papers, scrolls, books, and forms from one unsightly pile on his desk into a terrifying heap on the cart.

“Gah... buh... but...” Devon sputtered in powerless rebellion.

“There! Now you can find some corner of the Archive where the Princess won’t go, do your work and I will have a pristine office to show off should she visit us!” Turning to see Devon gawping at the cart, Lily snorted. “Deadlines, Devon! Tick tick tick! Get going! And don’t think this gets you any progress or favors!”

Devon choked down an intruding snort. Funny she should imply anything wins any progress or favors with her.

Turning back to her office door, Lily lobbed a final salvo over her shoulders. “This is part of the job! Oh, and since you are out there...” Not even turning around, a cyan aura sprung in front of her, summoning a bundle of scrolls at Devon’s hooves. “... sort these in the spells archive, pronto!”

Another aura loomed ominously over Devon as a monstrous beast of swirling parchments ascended in a menacing countenance that dwarfed him. With a twirling dive, the paper monster flung itself aggressively into the cart, leaving no space for any of his desk supplies remaining. One particular scroll snagged on an errant wisp of air, and fluttered open in a dejected flop against his hooves. A dark floor-colored eye in the middle of the parchment glared back up to him, the carpet showing through a tattered impalement through the words.

Devon motioned a forehoof at the document. “This one’s got a hole in it, Miss Boxt-”

“-Stop wasting time!” Lily snorted angrily, adjusting another stack of paperwork along a shelf. “Just because you’re absolute pants with magic doesn’t mean I, too, have to mommy you every step of the way!” Yeesh, low blow. “Pick it up with your little hoof-sies and figure it out! It’s not like Luna’s horn impaled every single letter on it!”

Devon impulsively leaped backward from the paper, slamming his tail against the cart. A smattering of flopping scrolls cascaded in a thunderous symphony of noise that permeated across the musty air. The chaotic percussion grated the deepest recesses of Lily’s obliterated patience. Yet Devon’s glance remained firmly planted on the lone paper in front of him, the edges of its frilled wound seemed to glow with imagined magic just knowing that it was touched by...

“... Luna?” Devon asked.

“Where!?” Lily’s legs seized beneath her, propelling her upward in a subtle hop before landing rigidly on all hooves. She slunk forward over her forelegs, and promptly flopped to her side in an involuntarily faint. “Oh,” she murmured from the floor. “Yes, Devon, her. Now don’t go embarrassing yourself, and me, before her.”

A quick succession of hoofsteps trotted up around the corner, stumbling across a slowly meandering flock of scrolls migrating down the aisle. A red mare quickly trot back next to Devon. “Forgot my keys,” she quickly exhaled, “oh hey Devon, you see that your cutesy coltcrush just walked in?”

Oh Celestia, no.

“I don’t have a coltcrush on Luna!” Oh, he could just feel his pupils laughing tenaciously as they stabbed him in the back, their excited quivering clearly giving him away and conspiring with whatever malevolent trickery also caused his cheeks to tingle into a blush.

Lily’s eyes shot open. “Colt... cru-” She immediately cut herself off with a nicker. “I mean it Bookmark,” she shook her mane, expelling the thought from her mind. “Just lay low and don’t make a mockery of us before the Princess of the Night, okay?”

The red mare twirled back down the aisle, kicking a few lazily rolling scrolls mindlessly out of the way. “Again, thanks, have fun!” She darted out of view before Devon could conjure the appropriate tongue lashing. Deep down, in his sincerest thoughts and memories, the slanderous teasing warranted less of a rebuttal, and more of a guarded stance over a wayward heat culminating over his face. Her spontaneous bout of unfounded ridicule, albeit a blindfolded shot across the infinite miasma of improbable darkness, managed to transcend a galactic distance of insurmountable odds to land smack dab on a bullseye.

Lily glared down at him with accusing brows.

“I don’t have a...”

Busted.

“... I mean, she doesn’t...”

Keep trying.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

* * * * *

Free from the rabble of the archival offices, Devon listlessly wheeled the teetering cart. Loaded well beyond capacity, the towering scrolls and papers barely wove through the tight corridors and hallways of the archives. Having survived another tongue lashing for inadequate reverence towards his superiors, he was tasked with the newfound tedium of wheeling each individual scroll back to where it belonged. He stumbled over his own hooves, his horn providing absolutely zero help with meticulously re-tying the strings holding the scrolls in a tidy tube and re-shelving them. It was a mind-numbing task, but at least it got him further away from Sergeant Boxtop.

He’d take any shred of optimism at this point.

“Look out.” Devon would wearily call while rounding into another aisle. The cart was so laden with scrolls and paper that his vision was limited to two slices of clear space to either side of the swaying monolith; nothing directly in front but the latest scribblings of magic or history bouncing carelessly atop the cart. He didn’t even really need to issue the warning, for the wailing squeak of poorly-oiled wheels served as a screeching siren that carried well past his voice. He issued warnings anyway, too meek to submit to apathy and plow through whoever wandered in the way. “Plus,” he mused with a small inward groan, “if I crashed, I’d be stuck picking it all up anyway.”

And talking to himself.

Hefting his head into the side of the cart, he barely managed the corner into a far-flung hallway. He had a destination in mind to finish his work. He had no hope of plowing through the shelving, his work, and the other work foisted on him, but at least he knew a spot that had a good couch.. If I’m going to suffer, at least I can have a decent place to sit while I do it.

It was his retreat, his place to get away, his sacred hole to disappear for small bouts of time to recollect his sanity and thoughts... but mostly sanity. It was quiet, hardly regarded, and completely secluded from the outside world save for a small window tucked away in a deeply recessed alcove well above eye level.

And boy, did he need it.

* * * * *

A couple aisles away, a flowing cobalt mane twisted and dodged through the labyrinthian ensemble of shelves and pillars. Before every turn, it stopped, peering a curious head each direction before propping itself high into the air, navy blue ears twitching to absorb every decibel that reverberated through the proximity.

Luna paid no further heed to the startled bows and salutes of the archive staff. She was the most energetic thing in the whole building by far as she stormed through the hallways. Each step was rapid and powerful; no patience for waiting and no desire for the smallest delay. She walked faster, trying to shake the unsettling images from her mind.

With every blink, the musty insides of the Archives faded away, the visage of the Canterlot council chamber projecting onto her eyelids from her memory, a crushed train car tumbling to the side, a stone draconequus crashing onto the marbled floor...

... An errant twirling note hanging off the draconequus’ horn. A drawing. Five jewels, and an arrow pointing at a sixth in the middle...

Blink.

Try as she might, the note stuck in her head and its veiled threat to her and Canterlot was painfully clear. Inevitability. A prayer made in a jealous fury transformed into an eternity of exile, but that was not the end of it. Her fellow conspirators... the powers she brokered with... the forces she pawned away her free will to-

“Look out.” A voice, calling out in abject boredom...”Look ou--WOAH!” ... came up short when Luna barreled headlong into a squeaky cart. Still laden with scrolls and parchments, It exploded in a blast of drifting pages and twirling strings. Set to the melody of screeching metal, the percussion of meaty thumps carried through the entire building. Papers and scrolls pirouetted giddily in the air as they gracefully showered to the floor, draping across the prone charcoal black form that groaned on the ground.

“Ugh...” he murmured, eyes rolling as he lifted his head to observe the damage. “Jeez, what a mess.” Slowly, he rose to all four hooves, wobbling a bit in a self-absorbed bubble created by a sudden impact and shock. As his eyes refocused, he caught sight of a long navy blue leg sticking out beneath a pile of fallen scrolls and, as if were a supremely insightful deduction, figured that its owner was the cause of the crash. “Ack, aw jeez,” he stammered, bending down to clear the papers from the blue leg. Part of him wished he could summon the rage of his boss at being so inconvenienced, but he simply let out an inward sigh as righteous anger fizzled and died. No point in it over a simple accident. Just wasn’t right.

As he cleared another load of scrolls from the fallen figure, it shifted and rose, shedding the paper with a single regal flick of the head. As the form revealed itself, Devon’s eyes widened and jaw fell. It was unmistakable who owned that shape and who just clobbered his cart. Doom filled his mind as Princess Luna rose from the piles of paper, the last scrolls rolling off of her muzzle as it twisted into a mask of confusion.

“Ah... I...” Devon blurted, eyes growing into large saucers as the Princess of the Night turned to face him squarely, her eyes evenly narrowed.

“Pray tell, be this thy cart?”

“Er... yes ma’-er Princess,” Devon replied with a voice that was so dry that he could practically feel dust in his throat. He watched as her expression wavered, flickering from a royal indignation to something more weary and timeworn. From her perspective, Luna saw the look of abject terror pasted across the unicorn’s expression. He was so stunned and frightened that he didn’t even notice his glasses were askew.

So... not going to forcibly genuflect to the floor? Not going to deliver the same rehearsed three lines extending apology and begging for forgiveness?”

“Ow-w...”

Wait. Really? Seems she wasn’t the only pony who missed the ‘How to react when irritating Luna’ city meeting.

“We... er...” Luna hesitated, alien to the unorthodox approach this charcoal-coated unicorn was taking in her presence. She chewed on her breath, picking her words carefully and slowly. “We noticed not thy... um..” She surveyed the overturned cart, the avalanche of Canterlot bureaucracy rampaging forth from it. “Trash wagon?”

Ha.

Maybe it was the crippling jolt of sudden infatuation talking, but Devon had never before in his whole entire existence agreed so hard with anything ever before ever. It was like she was the Equestrian champion of frighteningly accurate metaphors.

“Thou... appearest as a...” It was a clear struggle, both in finding the words and trying not to scare the cutie mark off of the shuddering unicorn. “Artisan of janitorial discipline?”

World champion.

“Huh?” Devon blinked, shaking his head in a bit of bewilderment as she spoke to him. The Princess speaking to him! “Well, it actually isn’t trash, Princess,” he replied, stepping towards the capsized cart. “It’s my... work. I got ran out of my office when...” he hesitated, deciding not to burden her with any details that might agitate her or cost him his frail position. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Basically, I was looking for a place to work here that was kind of out of the way.”

“But thou hast a veritable... cartload of parchment! Do not the archive laborers rest?” Luna blurted, the enormity of the paper stack becoming evident as Devon hefted another load into the righted cart.

“Well, sometimes,” he responded, risking a bit of sarcasm in a laugh. “Tonight I’ll be burning the midnight oil though.”

“How proud thy comrades must be of thee, then!” Luna proclaimed, her broadening smile faltering a bit as she beheld a weary set of eyes. “Er... do they not celebrate thy efforts and flood thee in appreciation and merits?”

Devon sighed, “Not exactly,” mispronouncing the word never. As she spoke, Luna extended a hoof and hooked it against his lopsided glasses, brushing them back up to square on his face. For a moment, her hoof trailed across his cheek.

Did she...

Was her hoof just...

“Thine spectacles, allow me.”

Oh halcyon embrace, please vice this moment into eternity.

To the unicorn, it was like his mind simply broke right there. A culmination of all of Canterlot’s greatest poets and songwriters assembled to document the brief contact of hoof and blush-stricken cheek with a lengthy musical number. So what was left to do, then? Idiotic stammering?

“Well I... um... should... before... my... b-b-buh...”

Idiotic stammering.

Unable to hear his words through boisterous music cascading through his mind. His mental capacities were too occupied to send the proper neural impulses to keep standing. “I should get back to it... before...”

“By the cursed weight of a hundred plows!” A telltale reptilian shriek speared him.

“... My boss...”

“What are you doing?!” Lily Boxtop was on a rampage, her eyes blazed furiously at Devon as she beheld the unutterable crime of non-work on top of a mess on top of his hobnobbing with the Princess! “I told you to be out of the VIP’s way, not all up in it like some...” her mind ricocheted a few descriptors around, “... obtrusive, blubbering... you.”

Apparently, you was the most bitter insult she had at her disposal. He wasn’t sure if he got off easy, or hit with the grandaddy of depreciating slander.

“Oh,” Luna chuckled softly, dismissive of Lily’s diatribe, “thou musn’t worry, t’was our own fau-”

“A complete disaster, and look who is right in the middle of it. This putz!” Lily’s anger was not lightly deflected. “Do you not have any consideration for others?! Do you realize what this is going to do to my career?!” A manic grin appeared across Lily’s face as a momentary mishap allowed her to vent withheld anger onto a pony unable to defend himself. The path of empathy? “What do you have to say for yourself, Bookmark? Nothing?”

Pfft, overrated. The path of opportunity glimmers in gold once again; enjoy your march to the sea, Boxtop.

Luna blinked and swiveled her head to Devon. He peered away in dejection under the green unicorn’s scorn, and without any further words, lowered his head and started reloading the bulky cart with mouthfuls of texts and paper. She expected protest, or at least an indignant flush, but instead he just tried to load the cart.

The Princess observed curiously. Why doth he not speaketh back?!

“That’s right, you have nothing to say,” Lily huffed triumphantly.

“Prithee, thou musn’t make such a fuss...” Luna stammered, even her powerful voice resounded weakly against the tirade launched against the unicorn still scooping up loads of scattered parchment and scrolls with a foreleg towards his mouth.

“Don’t feel guilty for this... this associate assistant of assistants’ featherbrained mistakes!” Lily sneered, as if she were doing the Princess a favor by dismissing him. Immediately, her focus shifted the ire and venom back onto Devon. “Well...former associate assistant of assistants, I should say. Did you not even look where you were going with that cart? I knew I couldn’t trust you with even this simple job!”

“We accepted responsibility, Lady Boxtop,” Luna interjected, “t’was we... er... I who doth not watch our step.”

“And to run into a Princess! Princess...Luna! How foalishly inconsiderate, clouds for brains! You’re lucky I am in such a good mood today. Thank me for that! And apologize to the Princess while you are at it. And to me, too, since you are wasting my time, Canterlot’s time, everypony’s time!” Lily raised her chin, swiveling to face her. “She’s to be treated with utmost courtesy and reverence!” Her shoulders dipped, signaling the onset of another curtsey.

We prithee, don’t.

“Now we must protest!” Luna suddenly lurched into the green unicorn, a sickening sense of mortification twisting around in her gut as the manager forced the unicorn to further humiliate himself. “We understandeth thy frustrations, but tis we who are to blame!” With her forehead closing against Lily’s, Luna lit her horn to start lifting scrolls up and loading them on the cart, her focus not in the least breaking from the quivering pupils shying away on the green unicorn’s suddenly breached expression.

“Please, your Highness!” the manager cooed. With a subtle wave her her horn, a cyan flash smacked into the side of the recently stacked scrolls on the cart, buffeting the side of the charcoal unicorn’s head. “I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to help our department, but this is his responsibility to fix.” She took a quick stride back to create a gap, lifting a forehoof to brush a stray tendril of her mane out of her face. “You know, Canterlot bureaucracy and all.”

The words stung deep into Luna’s mind. How often she heard it, but now was certainly not a time for often to be rearing its ugly monstrous head.

Seeing the pained reaction drill into the Princess’ candor, Lily scuttled to the side, nudging the charcoal unicorn forward to face her. “Now don’t you have an apology to be making, undersecretary to the undersecretary?”

The unicorn paused in his cleaning, mumbling incoherently to the floor.

“I didn’t catch that, speak up so the Princess can hear your apology.” Poison dripped from every syllable from the malevolent leering manager.

The charcoal unicorn murmured again. “Princess Dearest.”

Line one.

“My sincerest of apologies.”

Line two.

“And...?” the manager sneered, nodding towards the Princess.

Another defeated sigh. “And please forgive my clumsy, lax attention to detail for running into you, your Majesty.”

And down he went. Typical.

A heavy drape of defeat ensnared over the charcoal unicorn, his legs giving way under the weight of the rehearsed number pressed upon him by the decree of Canterlot, and the overbearing manager seeing to its enforcement. The glisten of improvised interaction from just a few moments previous peeled away into burning embers, the stallion once more in line, in tune, in accordance to the rest of the mindless peons that surrounded her.

If only.

Be calm, Luna. Easy.

The weight of orange sunlight pressed down upon her back, only the company of the looming bookshelves returned to her list of necessities.

Easy.

Devon lowered his head to pick up another scroll, painstakingly reloading it into the cart. His eyes were closed as he attempted to simply get out of the situation, but he couldn’t squirm. Learned helplessness caused him to simply endure and take the verbal blows as they fell, struggling would make it worse.

“But,” Luna raised a hoof towards the unicorn, his confidence in even establishing eye contact with her faded. “We insist that t’was we who-”

“That was hardly an apology fit for royalty!”

Easy, Luna thought to herself.

“We insisteth that thou relent ‘pon this unicorn, he hath done no wrong!”

“And you didn’t even bow! What kind of Canterlot citizen are you?!”

Be calm.

“We implore thee to-”

“And now I look bad in front of the Princess, don’t you know what this will do to my career? Do you think I enjoy shepherding around peons like you?”

Just take a moment to-

“-We order thee! Be silent!” With a stomp that sent a shuddering pulse of force through the whole archive and a crack of thunder, the Royal Canterlot Voice emerged

Lily and Devon only managed to turn their heads halfway towards before they received a complete verbal broadside, all guns blazing.

“By celestial decrees proclaimed by a thousand quasars!” A shrill blast of wind careened down the aisle, every book pressed back into the deepest corners of its shelf with a resounding clap. “Thou! Art! A most ungrateful wretch!”

Easy.

No.

Be calm, Lu-

No!

“Thine words infest and devour mine words like a shrill swarm of flaming locusts! We’d prefereth a pox of ticks from a herd of camels than witness one more word of thine incessant petulance!”

She tried. “Dearest Princess.” Much to Devon’s humor, did she try. “I sincerely apologi-”

“-One! Word!” Luna slammed a hoof into the bookshelf, a ripple of raw energy cascaded down where it cracked against the aisle’s end like a whip, summoning an explosion of books erupting into the air behind her. “Hast thou gone deaf, or dost thou simply indulge thy idiocy for the sake of thine amusement?!” Luna’s rage boiled over, and every bit of it directed at the manager. “Thou dost continue to rabble on about nothing and for what gain?! Dost thou truly believeth that by abusing thy employee, thou earnest our favor?”

Peeking towards Luna’s face for a moment, Devon beheld a mask of unyielding rage.

“For wasting our time listening betwixt thine lashing and thine haughty touting of Canterlot’s redundancy like we careth about such rubbish!? Dost thou requireth glasses, dost we appear as some savage who might delight in such vulgarity?”

Beautiful.

“For all our time in this hovel of thy leadership, tis this unicorn who might even be consideredth as accomplishing any work! Thy leadership appeareth to be little more than trembling like a leaf before me and then roareth like a beast at those who thou controleth!”

Angelic.

“Where is thy bluster now that thou faceth us!? Where did such a fierce unicorn cower off to and who be this blubbering trifle before us?”

Sublime.

“P-P-P-P-P-Princess...” Lily stammered, her voice a dry crack. “I-I... Apologize sincerel-”

Rage.

“-We careth not! Save thy sniveling for one who might harken it!” Luna snorted, stomping down and sending a reverberating shockwave through the archive, a sister to the one caused by the Royal Canterlot Voice alone. “Perhaps thy tears would find better use polishing our chariot! Thou seemest to have those in abundance with thy vitriol, perchance thine true calling be in benefiting others in thine misery!”

Devon clutched a full armload of scrolls and papers to his chest as Luna stomped past him. She looked like she had immediately forgotten him, and focused solely on venting rage on his manager. As Lily withered like a plant in an oven upon being bombarded by the royal diatribe, Devon felt his own spirit soaring as Luna took to his defense. Perhaps it was inadvertent, but it was so striking, so unique and so beautiful in a natural disaster observed from a safe distance. Devon swore his heart skipped a beat, and not because of the fear of the royal rage burning mere inches from him.

“Now get thy haunches out of our sight, and unless thou wisheth to do something useful for us, thou whilst stay out of our sight! Get thee gone yon baby-boobie-blooey boots!” Luna roared, sending Lily skittering away.

As she slunk away, Lily looked over her shoulder, throwing an incendiary glare directly at Devon. He knew that look. He was going to pay for this.

A strangling silence settled over him, the musty archive air only disturbed by the settling and dropping of a book plopping off the kicked bookshelf. Devon turned, but like it had all been a dream, only saw an empty aisle staring back at him, not even a hint of cobalt anywhere to be seen. He advanced down the archives with whatever tattered remnants of his supplies could be piled back atop the cart, aiming for the corner refuge just a few rows down. Nice couch, almost zero visibility from the main foyer, and hardly regarded considering the hideaway’s contents were ancient cookbooks of pre-Equestria earth ponies. Sure, everypony liked pudding, but not that much; not enough to adventure into the obscure recipes of old times.

Considering history’s greatness, there’s no denying that not all aspects of history truly deserved archiving, right?

Right?

Devon’s thoughts bubbled to the surface in spontaneous percolating wafts of recollections of history, and just how much seemingly unnecessary recounts of history surrounded him. He couldn’t complain in all consciousness, though. Sometimes the best role history will give somepony is a chapter in a book everypony avoids, and when you get enough of those unsung heroes of the mundane, you end up with...

... An unexpected refuge.

Devon rounded the corner to find himself alone, surrounded by a thick fortification of cookbooks penned long ago by eccentric earth ponies with frighteningly specific culinary tastes. He tucked away into the corner sofa, feeling the long day evaporate from his nerves. The quiet felt strangely unfamiliar to him; no doubt the rest of the archive staff overheard Luna’s vociferous outburst, and cowered in terror comparable to Lily’s.

After all. It was what they rehearsed.

Yet their stringent, regimented silence didn’t last long; a rhythmic sound of medals and chains drifted through the stacks in determined footsteps.

* * * * *

Jangle.

There it was again.

Jangle, jangle.

Definitely coming from three aisles down.

Jangle.

Pacing.

Jangle.

Hunting.

Jangle... jangle, jangle.

On the prowl.

The telltale sound of the Second Captain's rows of medals followed her every maneuver. She'd quickly turn down an aisle to bump into a startled citizen cowering before her, but would quickly wave desperately in fleeting motions pleading for them to remain silent. A rushed gasp from a petrified citizen would usher an uncomfortable break in the musty air that she could feel rippling outward; a ripple she knew the second captain was picking up on. She swiveled her ear after subduing the errant groveling of yet another patron of the Archives, and could hear the approaching steps shifting, turning, and quickening to her location.

Jangle, jangle.

Words failed. Royal decrees failed. Countless instances of flinging water, smoothies, pastries, and cider into his face failed. The Second Captain just couldn't pick up on the hint, couldn't realize how much she'd rather be left alone, how much stress he inadvertently summoned upon her, and how much stress she was already under without his burdening presence breathing down the back of her neck.

Her mind reeled at the very image of Stormblade chancing upon her. It's like she could already feel those burdensome puffs of predatory breath beating against the back of...

No wait.

Who was that breathing against the back of her neck?

* * * * *

“Ow...” Devon groaned as Chancellor Puddinghead’s Delightful Desserts Volume XIV Third Edition slid from his muzzle and clattered to the floor, still tinged with residual colbalt telekinesis. “Excuse me.”

“Ack! Sirrah, be you again! We... we thought thee somepony else!” Luna squeaked in mild shock as she made the simultaneous discoveries that her aim was unerring, and her target was not who she had envisioned when she seized the heaviest book she could spot and whipped it blindly towards the pony behind her. “Thou shant be needing another tome ‘pon thy head, methinks!”

“Well that’s good to know, I think,” the charcoal unicorn muttered as he stooped his head and seized the book in his teeth. With a heft, he hoisted it up to the shelves and slid it back into place, tapping it with his foreleg to slide it securely into place. Devon focused on his task of reshelving the misplaced book in a vain attempt not to stare at the Princess who had so recently defended him. He still felt the lingering moment of contact from her hoof when she adjusted his glasses earlier.

Huh, and there’s that music playing again in the echoing confines of his imagination...

After a good twenty seconds of nudging the lone books an awkward millimeter from side to side, he figured enough uncomfortable silence had passed to be worth bearing. Stepping back, he noticed the Princess glaring quizzically at him. “What is it?”

“Pardon us, but why won’t thou use thy magic to lift yonder tome?” Devon suddenly found uncomfortable silence preferable. “T’would be easier and faster, mayhap easier on thy jaw as well.”

He sighed deeply. “Would if I could, m’lady,” Devon responded wistfully, smiling weakly and adjusting his glasses again. This conversation again. “I wasn’t exactly gifted with magic.” A mysterious force suddenly wrapped around his neck, seizing his words in place. “Wait, I mean, I was... I could..” Now centered in the Princess’ glance, it seemed his pride decided to make a cameo. “... You know, I... with magic, I could...”

Saw right through it. “Have not the ability, sir?”

“I... well...”

“I see.”

He faced back to the bookshelf, nudging a few slightly askew manuscripts with his hoof. For another discomforting span of existence, he pressed against them, only watching gravity pull them back to their original angle. “I went through school,” he huffed. “I just never really had much of the spark for it. That’s what all my teachers told me, anyway. And the tutors my mom made me see." Part of him withered at the blase explanation and struggled to cover. Jumbling his thoughts in the hopes to end his short sob story on an uplifting smidge of optimism he spoke out...

In a voice of, but not from himself.

“Maybe it’s just all being held back for something really big.” He smiled, finally able to face her head on. “And that’ll make it big for... me...”

Devon stopped speaking when he turned his head and found the Princess not even acting like she was listening. Instead, she leaned against a small reading couch, one that in this remote corner of the archive was never used. She stared out a window, cobalt mane flowing in languid waves. Polite urges and common sense drove Devon a few steps back towards the hallway, yet he dug in and spoke.

“Is... something the matter, Princess?” Startled, the Princess of the Night turned to the charcoal unicorn, regarding him like he had just entered the room from another galaxy. Battling down the urge to shout him out of the small room, she took a breath. Yonder commoner is not the irksome Second Captain. Nor does he maketh a scene. Mayhap we can speaketh with this one.

Luna screwed up her face and let out a little sigh as she turned to face the lowborn unicorn. She saw a face of casual concern, too busy and preoccupied to fawn over the Princesses’ worries, but willing to listen anyway. She decided to give him the abridged version, shortened and with a few convenient mistruths. "Oh, we're just... by our hooves done strainedeth, royal duty be a real pain upon thine posterior."

"Ah.” Devon smiled, thinking he understood immediately. “You too, huh?"

"Wait, thou art-?"

"No, I’m not another long-forgotten prince, but I know what you mean,” he quickly added, fighting the quiver in his voice as he elaborated, also abridged. “It’s more like I have issues with my duty, with my mom."

"Enduring quarrels with thy mother?" Luna’s brow slowly slide up her forehead.

"Yeah, she's a real shank in the flank," Devon relaxed ever so slightly, his reservations slipping, “I’m supposed to meet her at home tonight and she’ll have me out at a party and I just want to get to get caught up on my Daring Do.”

"Thou still liveth with thy mother?"

Wait.

“Ey-eh-heh, I...” Devon’s ego took a sputtering nosedive. Flush red danced across his cheeks as he mentally flailed for a brace. "Err-no, no, well, I... I take care of her."

"She's ill?" Luna’s face tightened from dismissal to concern.

"Oh, yes,” he exhaled in relief, seeing an opportunity to salvage himself. “Definitely, very sick, needs me all the time." Devon spoke quickly, hoping to change the subject before she could press on. The blush simply was not leaving his face.

"Thou hast abandoned thy poor ill mother?”

Hold up!

“Err, I-yuh...”

Hayseed.

“Hitherto thine objection, sir,” Luna beganwith a slight narrowing of her eyes. “Thou soundest like one awful sort of kin."

"Oh! No no no no, she's fine! Really!" His cheeks burned like a forest fire now.

"Prithee sir! Whilst thou deciedth if thy mother is well or not?” Luna barked, stomping her hoof and extinguishing his stammering with a gust of wind from her voice. Heated blush quickly morphed into a cold sweat on Devon’s face. The charcoal unicorn squirmed and shifted uncomfortably from one hoof to another as any semblance of confidence withered.

Time to bail out. "So what is all this?” Devon started, swirling to the bookcase that Luna was standing near before the growing disaster that their conversation began. “Earth Pony Cookbooks, huh!? Why I... ahem, I do doth decree, eh heh, heh, heh."

"..."

"Tis some, uhh, fond awesometh reading, uhh, hither yonder forth yay!"

"Dost thou ridiculeth mine dialect, sir?"

"Oh! No no! I'm just, ya know, trying to... with the voice, and the words.” Devon stammered and stumbled over his words. He knew precisely nothing of the Old Canterlot dialect. Before his eyes, his attempt at imitating the Princess imploded spectacularly. “It's... it's very, umm, let's see... it's quite... enchanting m'lady." Devon fell silent. He tried to bluff her about lifestyle to no avail, his attempt to join hers failed and now her piercing eyes saw through him as if he were frayed paper.

"Enchanting?"

No point in hiding it any longer.

"I'm an idiot."

"Ah, at long last overdue, thou finally speaketh some truth to us!” The corners of Luna’s mouth pulled up in a small grin. “Now if thou hast finished with thy attempts to impress us, we shall proceedeth from there, mister... ah, uh"

It took a moment for Devon’s brain to react, and another moment to put together an answer. "Er-um, uh, ah! Bookmark!"

"Mister Erumuhah Bookmark?” Luna’s eyebrow rose. “Is that Scandaneighvian!" Luna couldn’t hide her devious smile now as, predictably, the unicorn’s face twisted in reaction to the intentional jump in logic.

"Oh! Sorry, no no, Devon.” The unicorn flailed verbally. “The name's Devon."

"Erumuhah Devon! Definitely Scandaneighvian!"

"I-"

"-Perchance thy sickly ill mother of Trotholm?"

"No, she's not."

"Ah, well, thou hast no blonde mane upon thee, dost thine fath-"

"None of my... they-!... Gyagh” He shook his neck, reasserting his frame back into the phsyical plane. “Sorry m'lady, I misspoke.” The charcoal unicorn cleared the slate, restarting his introduction. “My real name is Devon Book-"

Jangle.

Luna’s blood instantly turned to ice water and the conversation immediately ended. Lowering her voice to a husky, urgent tone, she grabbed at Devon’s shoulder. “Quickly! Thou must performeth a task forthwith!”

“Huh? Task?” Devon blinked as the urgent hoof began shaking him. His brain was about twenty seconds behind, still caught in the embarrassment of explaining that he wasn’t Scandaneighvian. But before he could even speak again, Luna spun away and scrambled at the floor, tunneling like some filly underneath a large, ornate carpet.

“We must not be seen by yonder jangling cacaphony. We implore thee! Tip thy cart onto the carpet, distracteth him, anything!” Her voice was a mere muffle now as the jangling march drew nearer to the small chamber where Devon and Luna were, until moments ago, speaking.

A final surrender deflated out of Devon’s short-term aspirations. These cursed scrolls were never going to see themselves sorted.

Acting on reflex and driven by her voice, Devon threw his shoulder into his cart, upending it onto the mound in the rug.

“Sorry!” he squeaked as he lay the cart on top of Luna, concealing her buried form and bending down to start collecting papers. The jangling march came to a halt and a huffing, equine snort drew his attention.

“You!” barked Stormblade at a rude volume. “Where’s Princess Luna? Speak up!”

“Huh?” Devon feigned ignorance. “The Princess?”

“Yes, you know, the Prin-cess,” Stormblade spoke slowly, not bothering to hide the condescending contempt in his tone. “The one you knocked over, if I recall correctly. I was told she was up here.”

Told? Why would anypony tell-Oh Lily, come on!

“Now where is she?” His tone seethed, accusatory and bitter.

“I...” Devon hesitated. It was a Royal Guard, a Lieutenant or at least close enough. He had enough trouble lying to his mother in saying that his work days were fine and he was enjoying his job. But as he turned his head to the upended cart, he swallowed hard and spoke. “I saw her, sir,” he mewled meekly, “she came through here a few minutes ago, blew over my cart and flew out the window.” He could clearly hear the telltale quivering of his lie, but in the presence of this burdensome jangling officer, he probably couldn’t call the sky blue without squeaking incoherently between every syllable.

Every photon bouncing from the Captain screamed unimpressed. “The window.”

“I think I saw her heading back to the palace. If you want to help me clean up, I’d really apprec-”

“Don’t even think of wasting my time! You got what you deserved for getting in her way, and...” Stormblade hooked a hoof into one of the shelves, and with a shove, scattered another dozen books down onto the floor with a tumultuous thud. “And there’s a little something for not stopping her!” Placing his foreleg across his face, Stormblade groaned in exasperation, turning to stomp out of the chamber. Devon heard as he strode out of the door and jangled all the way down the hall.

He was still until the jangling finally faded.

“Alright, he’s gone, Princess. You can come out from under that, now.” Devon nudged the cart aside and seized a corner of the rug with his teeth. He drew the carpet back further and further until the stone floor was bare underneath it. Time and neglect had left small clouds of dust hanging in the air, but despite its age, it was clearly no ordinary floor. Carved through the stone was an engraved mural, rife with symbols of stars, flowers, birds, and ponies of old.

“Wow...” Devon breathed. He recognized the style and methods used, it was something that resided comfortably in history books or museums. Old twitches of his school and education flared to life. Long lessons spent pouring through the histories of Canterlot and her architecture squealed, delighted to find use at last. “This must be at least a thousand years old,” he added in a hushed tone, as if any louder words would somehow destroy the art laid before him. Cast on the floor stood images of unicorns gazing at the stars. Etched centrally, and with obvious significance, was a stylized hummingbird set in front of crossed quills. Maker’s mark, perhaps? Every symbol was rife in the mysteries only a millennium could produce.

To Luna, however, the symbols were as fresh as if they were carved yesterday. Standing up, she whipped a forehoof outward, alternating between each leg to kick the dust off her shoulders. The hummingbird, the stars, the unicorns engaged with the stars bore significance that served as a reminder to just what a gap of time she had missed. She was silent, drinking in the same sight as the unicorn, but her focus scanned the symbols.

Dropping the hefty carpet, Devon stepped towards the floor mural. Murky memories from history instruction kicked out of a long dormancy. These tiles must have been laid when this place was first built! His eye danced over the inscriptions and carvings. Hummingbirds must have been the symbol of whoever built this, but why haven’t I ever seen these symbols before?

With trepidation, Devon extended his hoof and brushed it across the central hummingbird, the most prominent feature on the entire floor. The moment his hoof grazed across the stone, a flicker of gray magic snapped at his leg, the unexpected light forcing him into a wince to the side.

He opened his eyes to face it, and without a nuance of effort, another vestigial trigger fired in his brain. The world blinked into a pinched singularity before him as a panging sensation racked up his face, and a searing punch of raw energy spiraled up a long forgotten adornment.

The engraving shifted, depressing into the floor with a small grind of stone. Luna’s attention was on the corners, and the charcoal unicon could only watch with growing horror as whatever he set in motion continued on.

Oh no. Ooooooh no. Celestia, what the heck did I just do? Stop. Stoooop!

Stone slid and clicked in place, moving another stone, and another in a perfectly choreographed display of ancient triggers and pressure plates. Spurred on by that tiny magical spark, the floor shifted unsettlingly, and Luna’s eyes widened as she jumped backwards, away from the moving stone.

“WHAT hast thou done, Mister Bookkeeper?!”

“I don’t know! I just touched the hummingbird thing and this star-”

“Dare not trifle with us, whelp! Thou shalt regret thy recklessness!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Devon protested again, but before the argument could continue, the entire floor panel sunk and tilted. Previously invisible notches and cuts in the floor twisted in granite origami, folding into a set of stairs that descended underneath the floor. The steps disappeared into a darkening helix, obscured from prying eyes for Celestia knows how long.

With a shuddering thud, the movement came to a halt. With how rarely visited this part of the Archive was, it’s doubtful any of the employees working there to that day knew of it.

For a long, quivering second, the two could only stare down into the opening. They should tell somepony! They should assemble the archaeologists and historians and-

Jangle.

They should run.

The charcoal unicorn never truly understood what Luna was running from, or why she seemed so panicked at the approaching rhythm of Captain... medal pants or whatever. Yet he quickly found himself yearning for her advantageous head start when a second sound crept through the corners of narrow bookshelves.

“Dev’n? You’s up’ere?” Mother. “I heards fr’m yer boss that yer on night shift? I wanted t’bring ya a dinner t’go.”

Jangle jangle.

Luna bolted down the stairs, evidence of her presence only shown by the echoing clatter of hooves against stone and the subtle cobalt light emanating from her mane.

"M'lady, wait up!" Devon called, seconds behind her.

"Mister Erumuhah, why?"

"So I can get ahead of you!"

"Wait, so thou canst-what? Hold! Art thou so thoughtless!?"

"Yeppers!"

"No, wait, this path is fraught with peril thou must turn-"

Before Luna could finish, the stones shifted again. With a startled yelp, Devon threw himself away from the sudden upward swell of carved stone as the staircase transmogrified back into a floor and rose into place again. Each rising step stole the light from above until the final cornerstone fell into place, and Devon and Luna were swaddled by enveloping darkness. Only a lone cobalt glow pierced the surrounding black mire.

* * * * *

Chapter 4: Receding

Illustration by Vest
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Running, missing, not wanting found?

The Captain cannot locate the crowned.

Through darkened caverns, two ponies bound

In truth below, receding underground.

_____

___

Chapter 4

Receding

The warmth.

The light.

The very stillness of the centuries-undisturbed air.

It all followed her.

With every step.

Every breath forward.

The very elements of the room converged upon her, shifting into a reverent singularity that marched in cadence to her lead. Left behind in the diminishing vacuum, he tentatively crept with tiny steps from the base of the stone spiral staircase.

Dust-coated tranquility retreated down the narrow corridor as the spiraling stairs lifted in synchronized rhythm into the ceiling. Dancing zephyrs of grit peeled away between the rotted stone walls, leaving Devon behind in a darkening nest of permeating silence. With the final hollow thump of masonry locking into place above him, a cold wind prickled and buffeted against his tail.

A sharp pain jabbed at the side of his face. “Hee-yck.” His ear popped, signaling the fleeting departure of air rushing away. Realizing there was no way back from where he stood, the charcoal unicorn quickly shifted his gaze across the wall, scanning each feature and crevice for any hint of a mechanism to lower the stairs once more.

He tilted his glance back down the corridor. “Listen, if we do have to go back, maybe we should...” The words echoed with unregarded abandon off the walls, dissipating into asphyxiated gasps of their former tones. “M’lady?”

Rounding the corner down the corridor, he watched as the Princess of the Night paced away from him in determined step. With her absence, the cobalt shadows and flickers of stray luminance faded with a soft sigh of vacating breeze, coaxing him to follow. As he set his hooves into motion, each step’s sharp impact resonating a dozen times off the confining walls, not a single fiber of cobalt light remained. Not a single photon from Princess Luna’s glowing mane and tail dared venture back through the corridor.

Everything followed the Princess; pushing forward. The air. The light. Warmth. Even the walls seemed to disappear, following along with her.

The walls.

Light didn’t even stick to the walls. Devon had never been in this kind of darkness before. Even hiding in closets as a colt, or the dark winter nights out in his foalhood home in the country, there was at least a glimmer; the frame of a door or a gentle ember of a nightlight. But enclosed in this hallway, there was no single mote of light, nothing to draw a point of reference to. Devon stumbled backwards, his balance crumbling. Disoriented, dragging a hoof along the ground to keep some futile sense of direction, he could feel the intricate etchings carved into the masonry beneath him as he attempted to keep pace with the Princess.

In the absence of sound, the absence of vision, the charcoal unicorn felt a rustle against his shoulder like a stray sheet of draping fabric brushed against him. Unable to see the floor, his hooves resonated with a strange softness, like plodding methodically across aged wooden floorboards, his fetlocks resting gingerly to make no sound. His muscles’ reflexes weighed him down, as to not disrupt whomever could be just below them.

Through the darkness, his ears twitched. A voice... but so muffled and distant he didn’t know if the words were coming from beyond the stone walls or from within his own imagination. Or his memory.

A blunt thud dug deep as he clipped his shoulder into a rotted wooden support, knocking him into a spin. Reaching out again, he felt for the wall to regain his balance, only to feel an uncomfortable vacancy of existence where he swore the corridor’s stone encasement once was. Reflex and momentum flung him forward, casting all four hooves into a desperate skitter across the slick floor, every limb trying to fasten into place to readjust his weight upward.

Not even knowing where upward was anymore.

Leaning now against his right hooves, he started backing up. His legs again clamored across the floor, hoping for his flank to nudge into something, but only got a spin of disoriented confusion as no cold kiss of stone greeted his backside.

Like the walls themselves had disappeared. Like they followed the exodus of luminance, air, and the determined Moon Princess.

Moments before he resigned to pitching over completely, the unicorn twisted around into a panicked dash, hoping the floor wouldn’t go next. He collided cheek-first into something soft, but unyielding.

“Oof!” a sharp royal voice nickered with a scolding tone. “Wouldst thou give heed to where thy hooves tread?” Steadying himself, Devon leveled into a functioning canter just before a flare of cobalt light burst forth, illuminating the passage in a dim but usable light. With a few blinks, Devon’s orange eyes adjusted, the black veil before him transforming first into a reassuring semicircle of dancing blue.

A narrow-eyed glare loomed backwards at him. With an inward groan, Devon withered, seeking the guiding aura of the Princess’ mane and tail to keep him from falling flat on his face. “Erf...sorry, m’lady, I lost my balance and...” before he could carry out his apology, the cobalt illumination drifted away, deeper into the hallway.

“H-hey wait up!” Devon stammered, hastening to keep pace with the light. With a burst of speed, he trot alongside her. Cast in the dim blue light, Luna wore an expression of intent resolve. Somehow the bleak and fleeting light highlighted her features far more than the bright torches and Equestria sun ever could. Devon shook his head, banishing the unworthy thoughts from his head as his attention drew back to the wider situation.

“Um...Princess Luna, do you know...” The unicorn slowed, scoping the twisting corners of the cobalt-lit corridor, “quite where we are?”

“Aye,” came a curt, blunt reply.

“Oh...ehm...” Devon mumbled, “well...where is that, if I might ask...”

“A chamber,” Came another brisk reply. “Far older and grander than the archive that thou doth attend.” Luna’s eyes didn’t even flinch towards the unicorn. “Were it not for thy dunderheadedness, we would have entered quietly and not have bestirred such calamaty.”

“Me? But I didn’t-”

“Enough! ‘Tis thine own fault! We know better than to wantonly jab at cobblestone and rune!”

“But...but...” Devon murmured, his argument losing steam even before it left his mouth. Didn’t matter anyway. “Well, we’re in the same mess.” Well, mess being subjective to his own perspective, the subtle flinch of an eyelid suggested the Princess felt contrary. Devon rearranged his words, hoping for a more...mutual form of communication. “So...” Don’t say something stupid, don’t say something stupid, don’t say something stupid. “How we get out?” Terrible, Devon.

“Hyurrghfff...” Despite a long exasperated sigh, no tangible reply formulated with the full exhalation of the Princess’ lungs. “Fff...” A waving halo of cobalt drifted further down the corridor, and simply kept disappearing down another flight of stairs.

Stumbling to maintain pace, Devon’s voice took on a small tinge of worry and genuine concern. “Er...you do know how to get out of here, right?”

“Thou doth truly wish to...” The Princess began, “Urghfff!” but promptly resumed her previous angle of dissertation. The light moved on, bending around a corner to temporarily wrap him in black again.

“Hee-yack.” His ears popped with the sudden absence of musty air, and he immediately darted forward; not even feeling for the walls.

“Tis but one escape known to Us.” The voice was just as lost as the light that Devon ran to keep up with. As he rounded the final bend of staircase, the unicorn came up short as the Princess’ tail loomed large again, before a grand set of dusty double doors.

“Not quite the easy exit...” Devon murmured, scanning the surroundings with a long swivel of his neck.

Dust and shadow clung to every surface in the room as the Princess’ lit horn cast angular and disjointed shadows into abstract projections on the walls. The flickering and swaying light shone along the telltale edges of engraved markings, designs, and drawings, but never sticking long enough to be decipherable with Luna’s quick pace. Each step and movement caused a small whirl of fine particles to whip into the air and swirl wildly, brought to motion for the first time in countless years.

Slowly, their eyes adjusted and murky shadows transformed into distinct shapes. The chamber before them was simple and sturdy, free of extravagant embellishments. Despite the darkness, both could tell the room was long, echoes of hoofbeats coming from deep in the murk. As they crept deeper and deeper into the chamber, the pair only encountered the occasional table or chair, laid out perfectly straight, as if it were cleaned up for the night and simply left unattended for centuries.

At the far end of the chamber lay an elaborate stone archway, clearly framing for a door, but where one might expect great planks of wood lay only solid stone, covered in elaborate sigils and lines of text. Central to the motif was a deep recess in the slab surrounded by an assortment of swirling lines and old text. The designs weaved and nestled in a comforting nest around the alcove in the slab, pointing towards the shining beacon housed within it. Shimmering with a ravenous hunger for luminance, a hunger dissident to the frigid dark stone around it, an amber jewel glowed in multicolored caustics of cyan and orange from Luna’s aura.

An apple.

Despite the centuries of neglect and the thick down of dust cloaked over it, even meager light from Luna’s horn caused it to sparkle in a radiant display. Striding ahead of Devon, Luna stood boldly in front of the slab, an expectant and irritated scrunch across her face.

“We bid thee OPEN!” Luna barked at the stone slab, blowing the layer of dust off in a single explosive pulse of verbal might. She spoke to it as if it were needlessly delaying her, or that she had no time to trifle. “We have come seeking thy deepest chamber, so thou shalt open forthwith!”

The stone responded with a nonplussed solidity, as stones are wont to behave.

“We are Luna, Princess of Canterlot, and Lady of the Moon Herself! Thy impertanance grates upon Our nerves! We have not the time to indulge thy japes. Again, we beseech thee: OPEN!”

“Is that actually going to work?” Devon cautiously inquired, his voice a whisper compared to the verbal ballistics of the Princess. Sheepishly, he took a step back.

“Nay,” Luna huffed, her head and wings folding downward. “We had hoped that it might, though t’would seem we are befouled by yon slab.” She slammed a hoof down, staring down the glimmering apple defiantly existing before her. “Dumb slab!”

“M’lady,” Devon took half a step forward, “Maybe we should-”

“-By the itch of one-thousand nettles press’d into a camel’s spine!” Devon took half a step back at the sudden exclamation, and barely heard her mutter: “It hath been far, far too long since last I came here.” Luna shook her head, peering along the edges of the slab in an agitated desperation. “We recall that one thing of import must be used to unbar this portal, but We fail to recall the specificity of the key.”

“Well,” the charcoal unicorn cleared his throat from the newly agitated dust storm, putting on as brave a tone as he could, “there’s gotta be some kind of way through this, right? Maybe something was left behind that might help?” As if on queue, his hoof depressed into one of the engraved pieces of masonry adorning the floor. With his weight pressing it down, it descended with a shallow pane of shadow cresting from the cobalt glow cast across its sibling panels.

Click.

A finger of dust poked down from the ceiling above the slab, the amber apple flickered its reflecting light signifying the slightest shift. Luna ducked reflexively as another sound of straining mechanical contraptions spun and whirred behind the dark corridor walls.

He let a few seconds of stillness pass, the creaking echoes of ancient machinery dissipating back into the deaf tone of the silent room. “Of course,” Devon proclaimed proudly, running his hoof along all the other pressure plates along the floor’s edge. “This whole room, it’s just one gigantic combination lock.” Curiously, Devon found a couple similarly gilded stones jutting above the tile. With just the slightest pressure, they hid away into the shallow recesses of shadow. “If we just press all these a lot,” Devon nudged a few more panels down, the hidden mechanisms around the slab unsettling it even more, “we’ll figure out a way to-”

“-Hold thy stance, Bookkeeper!” Luna implored through a grit whisper. “These chambers before us are fragile and much weathered, disturb them no-”

Click.

Another rumbling of gears and grinding ropes interrupted her.

“Do not touch the plates!”

“Aw, heh, sorry,” Devon apologized, taking a step back away from the weight panels. “Didn’t mean to-” Another flurry of gears and the sound of dropping wooden panels thud in muffled tones through the walls as Devon’s hind legs sunk simultaneously into two different panels.

Click.

“Oh, whoops, they’re just...sorry let me just...” He readjusted, his front hooves dropping again through the floor, summoning even more low grumbles and groans to unsettle the dust from the walls.

Click.

Luna hoisted her shoulders back, rolling her eyes in an irritated groan. “Would you cease this-” Her words cut off again from a smattering of clanking and shifting mechanisms thumping through the walls.

“Sorry, m’lady, let me just walk back over-”

Luna immediately turned. “Halt!” A semi-circle of dust surged towards Devon along the ground, lapping against his legs. The shrill ring of absent sound stood ground between them, disrupted subtly by the residual pop of turning machinery or the Princess’ heavy exhales. “Thou...shalt...not...move!”

“Yes m’lady.”

“Anywhere!”

“Yes m’lady!” Devon locked his hooves squarely in position, his body shuddering from the continuous impulses his mind told his body to remain in place.

The Princess turned, focussing back to the door. “I must say,” she nudged a fetlock against her chin, “upon mine unagèd dock, the syntax of these markings betwixt old and ancient doth lie. I have never-”

Click.

“-Oh by graces of the rhinos’ crash, sir!”

“Not moving!”

“Thou didst move!” the Princess turned an impatient visage of sincerest hostility in his direction. “Distinctly have We heard another of thy floor plates acquiesce to thine inevitable bumbling!”

“See this!” Devon motioned at his feet with a swing of his neck. “This is me,” wobbling his knees, keeping his hooves in place, “Not...bumbling...anywhere!”

“Thou hadst best be flailing in thine attempts to deceive us, Bookkeeper!” Luna tilted her neck to full extent, holding her head up as high as possible while pacing slowly towards the floor-locked unicorn. “Pray tell, confess thou art a deceiver!” Her voice elevated, kicking airy sheets of musty grime into the air with each syllable. “Art thou a deceiver?! Please!” Her hooves stopped, holding firmly in close proximity to his own. “For I’d rather believeth thee simply a liar, a deceiver, than a...a...”

Devon suppressed the impulse to step back, the previous decree overriding his own instinct to retreat from the advancing Princess. “Th-than a w-what?”

Luna’s eyes narrowed. “Than a bloviating...” Her shoulders tensed. “...Im-becilic...” Neck descended. “Mentally insignificant bastion of cantankerous obliquity!” While Devon remained locked in place. “For at least then thou wouldst be upon the precipice of salvation! Granted thou ought be rendered capable of-”

Click.

“-...” Luna’s voice snapped into a high creak as her throat forced itself into a silencing pinch.

It took every neuron, fiber, tissue, and cell within Devon’s motionless frame to choke down the surging exclamation of told you so, and find a way to maintain his unwavering composure while kicking the offending impulse into submission.

“Just...” The Princess’ voice immediately calmed. “I’m s-so...sor-”

“Apology accepted.” Told you so. “Err, I...” No wait! “I mean...” Shoot.

She grumbled lightly under her breath, pacing away from him. “Just, hrrgh, I implore thee...” She breathed in deep, her eyes slightly pulsing with her inner struggle to regain her composure. Exhaling quickly, she poured out the much rehearsed request she’d used many times before with the Canterlot Palace’s own caretakers. “I must inquire humbly for thine assistance.” She exhaled, extending a hoof out to him. Her eyes softened, the agitated countenance fading into a familiar featureless grace. “We... we require... a little help remembering is all.”

Click.

Devon glanced out, his eyes trying to interpret the sporadic body language of the Princess. Her voice now gentle, calming, and inviting. Her hoof, just a couple seconds gripping the front lines of her verbal assault, now reaching out in a gesture of openness. “So...” Really? A gesture of openness? “Can I-?”

“-Yes.” Luna tilted her head aside, diverting her focus away from him. “Yes, approach.”

“Okay,” Devon breathed in, tentatively taking a step forward, approaching the Princess.

“Many thanks upon thee.” Luna said, extending her other foreleg outwards toward the shimmering apple in the wall as she started to say “... Our memories, they hath not quite-” only to feel a charcoal shoulder nestle firmly into her foreleg and slide into her collar. “Uhh, bookkeeper, thou art doing what, pray tell?”

“Err, I...you...” Devon choked on his breath, stopping his fetlock halfway into returning the perceived gesture for a hug. “You said approach.”

“The wall.”

Click.

“Ah.” He slid back, solidly planting each hoof with cautioned steps. “Yes, so...what about this wall? What are we, you know,” He coughed, and in his return to usual composure, rotated his head back towards the runes and engravings surrounding the alcove housing the amber colored apple. “What are we looking for?” Trying to shake off the misguided symbol of spontaneous affection like it never happened. “Looking for exactly...that is?”

Even though it totally, totally did.

Click.

Another heavy breath escaped the Princess, her royal demure crumbling beneath the weight of the charcoal unicorn’s presence. “We fear that things be as unfortunate as we initially feared,” Luna mused.

“These designs?” How would she know anything about these old engravings? Might she have been present when they were carved? “What’s so unfortunate?”

Click.

A cobalt hoof motioned towards him. “Thou. Surely, I fear thou artno deceiver,” she sighed. “That we know for certain. ‘Twas the latter.”

Click.

Click...Click.

* * * * *

Another pile of glassy debris lifted from the floor, shimmering like a bulbous snowflake catching the fleeting edges of intruding orange light from the afternoon sun. A wisping twirl of ashen dust and razored musk shred across her face in a callous slap, but she coughed it aside with demure poise. With another dismissive wave of her mane, she cast off the errant flecks of shimmering detritus, setting the magically encased burden upon the growing mound behind her in an opalescent aura of telekinesis.

Scrunch.

“‘Scuses, me m’ladys, Pr’ncess Celest’ya,” a brown-coated earth pony slowly approached her with his head bowed below his bulky shoulders. “It’s mighty grates’ful’s n’ all th’t y’wants to help, but we’s told’s ya’s, we gots this.”

The pearl-coated alicorn smiled, and in a subtly royal heave, lifted her head once more to elevate another aura of splintered glass. “And I too am grateful to have such...” Not even the slightest grunt as she regally pulled all her force into her horn. “...Such hard workers as you.” Her voice softened, the aura disposing its contents in a shattering cascade.

Scrunch.

The Princess giggled, keeping her tone elevated and stoic. “But like I said, it’s not everyday a train just comes smashing through the roof in the middle of a council meeting, so...” Hardly breaking her flow of words, her horn illuminated again, “...I’ll just assume royal duty mandates my services to the cleanup effort, just to be safe.”

“Well, okays umm...” The earth pony shuffled his feet, and cleared his throat. “Ah, well’n that side o’th’coin, y’see...”

Scrunch.

“Side of the coin?” The Princess of the Sun immediately picked up on the trepidation in his tone. “About what side of the coin do you mean?”

“Ah. Abou’s tha’ train, sees...” His eyes drifted aside, scanning the empty chambers before him. “Well’s, I’ve checked ‘n checked wid’da boys ‘n...y’see m’lady Celest’ya, thatta whole luggage car,” he scratched a hoof behind his ear, looking away with clenched teeth. “Likes...all’uv it...” He pulled his lips together glancing up to the Princess. “It’s...it’s kinda...th’whole train car, it’s gone sort of...”

“Missing?!” A black stomping hoof pierced through the distant expanse of the council chamber. “She’s missing?!” Jangle, jangle. “How?!” A deep throaty voice echoed from the opposite end of the dust-filled hall. “How on Equestria does a five-haunch tall glowing blue alicorn Princess just suddenly go missing?!”

Celestia’s eyes widened, and quickly peered away from the construction stallion before her. From the sudden ruckus rippling on the other end of the hallowed chamber, she immediately recognized an unfavorable prognosis on the whereabouts of her panicked sister. She briskly took to the air, sending a flurry of tiny glass particles into a dancing halo beneath her, and landed firmly behind Stormblade. The officer nickered in agitation, not even noticing the Princess behind him, pacing angrily in and out of the intruding late afternoon light sneaking in through the broken ceiling.

“We searched every building on the palace grounds,” a cyan pegasus attempted to plead with him. “Told every shop owner, as per Second Captain Stormblade’s orders, to look out for-”

“Incompetence!” the black-coated earth pony rattled and stomped on the floor, “She’s five haunches tall and glows in the dark!”

“Yessir, bu-”

“-Private Jetlag, do I need to hoof-knit a wool sweater for every earth-shatteringly simple task I give to you?!” He knocked a hoof against his chest. “Crochet a message on it? A little ‘Hello I’m looking for the Princess, don’t give me sweets’ emblem on the front?” Stormblade started fiddling his hooves together, pretending to knit an imaginary token of further humiliation at Jetstream’s behalf. “Maybe a matching pair of socks to go with that stupid, stupid rainbow hair of your’s?!”

Celestia’s eyes furrowed, and she slowed her quiet advance towards the raving officer.

Jetstream snuck a glance out the windows at the front of the chamber. “Sir, we insisted the citizens to keep an eye out for her, and to look out, Second Captain Stormblade, sir.”

“I decree that they not just look out,” Stormblade dropped his front hoof into the other, a sharp clap reverberated across the scattered glass in a shrill chime. “But tell them that by my martial demand they actively seek out the Princess as per the orders of sec-” his face suddenly wrenched inward before his brows arched in a menacing grimace. “And it’s Captain Stormblade, Jetlag!”

Another armored pegasus dropped down beside the dark earth pony. “The perimeter is set and ready to deploy for patrols, Second Capt-”

“-Captain!” Another stomp on the chamber floor cast a wave of clattering glass into the air. “I am Captain Stormblade! Captain Stormblade of Captain Stormblade’s The Royal Pegasus Guard of CAPTAIN Stormblade!”

Sensing that tensions were reaching a critical point, Celestia nudged her head in beside the royal officer, hoping to offer some of her own soothing insight to defuse the situation. “My esteemed pupil, dearest Stormblade, I think that-”

He flinched, swinging his neck to face the intrusive heckler. “That’s esteemed Captain-!” His muzzle smooshed right into her’s with a deflated high-pitched honk. “Fweeep!” With all hooves spinning wildly in schizophrenic orbits around one another, he tipped, lurched, and jangled onto the marble floor. “My apologies, your royalest highness! I hadn’t...I didn’t...”

A warm smile came forth from her candor. “It’s quite alright...” How that grin shimmered. “...Captain Stormblade,” her eyes peered to the officer pulling himself off the debris laden floor. “You said something about my sister Luna going missing?”

“Oh, yes Your Highness, I...” He hesitated on his wording, “...I...err, my, uhh, not I but...the Royal Pegasus Guard of...of...” He stuttered again, attempting to play it off by brushing grains of shattered glass off his shoulders. “They lost track of Luna in the Canterlot Archive.”

Celestia giggled, seeing right through him. “Not you?” Over a thousand years of royal alicorn rule, and doesn’t even get mad when a high ranking officer attempts to pass of their own failures upon others. “It was they?” She wasn’t born yesterday. “...Not you?” Nor last century.

Stormblade paused, contemplating just where the pearl-coated ruler was coming from. Eh, only one of two options here. Door number one. “Yes, they lost her, Your Highness.”

Oooh. “Well.” Too bad. “In that case...” she tilted her head back in a pleased smile, “please do pass on this royal decree to your men, Captain Stormblade.” Should’ve gone door number selfless. “An emergency decree straight from Princess Celestia herself.” Over a rule of a thousand plus years, of course she’d have a few tricks for handling those so eager to throw his own entourage under the carriage. “A stern message regarding...their inability to locate Luna.” The next part, she knew, was going to lighten her afternoon substantially.

“Ha ha, yes m’lady,” Stormblade righted himself with a prideful chuckle, ready to forward the baleful diatribe she had ready to lambaste those peons’ collective failures. “How do you wish for me to...discipline them better?”

She loved this part. “You tell them that Celestia appreciates all of their hard work, for giving all their extra time for my sister,” she paused to suppress the delighted chuckles bubbling within her royal pearlescent frame. "And to take the rest of the day off!"

“By-hi-kkfkt!” There’s the face! How much she loved doing that. "But, m'lady Princess Celestia, they...!" Seeing his jaw sink like that, almost unhinged, it’s the kind of satisfaction that comes so naturally when reminding those in a position of taking responsibility...to actually take responsibility.

"Oh, and since you have the rest of the afternoon and probably this evening without having to tend to the boring, tumultuous work of having to watch over such diligent ponies, you now have all of the rest of your shift to help us all clean up this mess!"

"Ah, ahh...oh...”

“And since you were so eager to declare, what was it, something...something...” Celestia looked at the floor, kicking a small rock back and forth with her right foreleg, “...Ah. By ‘Martial Demand of Captain Stormblade of Captain Stormblade’s The Royal Pegasus Guard of Captain Stormblade’...” She paused, letting it sink in. “That it seems you’ll be pulling an extended shift, seeing as you went ahead and decreed martial law without my consent, but hey, it’s your first week, I’ll grant it anyway.”

“Fyeee...” Stormblade’s breath jumped ship, pouring into a defeated whimper. “Yes, yes, of course,” he managed with the last of his fleeing exhale. He sighed in pained resignation, feigning a reverent smile towards the pearl-coated ruler. "Of course, your highness, Princess Celestia."

"Thank you for your kindness, and double thanks for taking such initiative Captain!" the Princess laughed again, turning and pacing back to her own debris pile.

She lowered her head with a mischievous grin beside the brown construction stallion, his own mouth agape at seeing the Princess so fluidly commit a top ranking officer of the Royal Canterlot Guard to an extended shift at custodial duty. "And that," she murmured in a low hum to him, "is why I insist on sticking around.” Her horn lit up, wrapping a telekinetic envelope around another scoop of shimmering glass. “ Because if I'm doing it, everyone does it, and nopony weasels out of what Canterlot demands from them."

Scrunch.

"Hyeh-heh's rights Princess, but I's, umm...I dunno's y'highness." The stallion turned to walk alongside the Princess, his body facing away from Stormblade. "He's kind'uv'a...how's t'puts it nicely...sorta kinda probably's not helpful’s guy, likes, if he wants t'help, he's can go finds the missing train car thats was ‘ere’s earli’uhr."

"Oh, I insist," Celestia eloquently decreed, turning back to glance at him over her shoulder. "It's not to get him to help you." She put a hoof around the stallion's shoulder, guiding him away to lengthen the gap between Stormblade any everypony else in the council chamber. "It's to get him to help himself. I think we need to give him a moment to cool down and think before acting the way he does."

Scrunch.

"Your highness!" Stormblade's yell carried in a defeated echo across the dusty air. "What about Luna, m'lady Princess Celestia!"

"Oh she'll turn up eventually!" Celestia raised a hoof beside her mouth to yell back at him. "You know her, she tends to just disappear without explanation for long periods of time, it's how she always was!"

“But, m’lady, your highness!”

“And always with the labels, Captain Stormblade!” Celestia smiled wide, glancing back towards the ornately decorated officer. “You can just call me Princess, or Celestia. Everything else is just labels.” She narrowed her eyes, and lowered her voice into a solemn tone. “It’s not about the labels we carry, Captain Stormblade,” Celestia extended her wings in a relaxed stretch, catching the mango rays of piercing afternoon right against them into a shimmering gold halo. “It’s what we do to fulfill that label.”

The Princess of the Sun slowly refolded her wings with a graceful turn back to her own mound of collecting glass and shattered timbers. She hoped he got the idea, and that maybe something made its way into his head. Maybe the Second Captain would realize that it’s not about the flash or the flair of having a title, but it’s about what kind of leverage one gets to help others with when they achieve that title.

She hoped.

As the caretaker, giver, and sole recipient of responsibility for summoning sunlight to Equestria, Celestia’s own responsibilities with her title were numerous, and doubtlessly important. But the importance of such responsibility are not organized by the hierarchy of its recipients, absolutely not. For even the Princess of the Sun knew that some of the most important, the most urgent responsibilities we are obliged to are obliged by all.

And right now, besides lowering the sun for the evening, the council chambers were just a complete wreck. She didn’t need to leave it to construction workers, janitors, or groundskeepers, no. It’s a task important enough for her to help out with, as should all. Right?

Of course.

Or so her idealistic mind went.

Another aura of pearled magic hovered a dripping heap of glass above her.

Scoop.

If it’s good enough for her to pitch in, then who would say no to that? Who would dare say no when Celestia herself is willing to pitch in, right?

Scrunch.

Even the most stalwartly opposed to menial peasant labor, like the extravagantly uniformed officer on the other end of the chamber floor, couldn’t find the gall to refuse a chore too important for the Princess of the Sun to pass up.

Scoop.

She looked onto the construction stallion, seeing him lift up a shovel with his teeth to scrape aside a path through more of the fallen ceiling’s cataclysmic aftermath. He couldn’t step away from this, even if he wanted to. No day off for him, no ‘mess too large’ for him to handle. He would know more about feeling the weight of a situation far more than...

Scrunch.

Jangle, jangle. “So, guys! Guys?! Do I just...with my hooves...” Stormblade’s echoes felt further distant as he yelled towards the expanse of no ears tuned in on him. “Do I at least get a broom?!”

Scoop.

Yeah. That’s why she was there. It’s what all princesses knew. All princesses would face a calamity head on; all princesses would know to stand beside their subjects in dire times to remind them of what they’re all obliged to do. All princesses would stay, and unless something far greater was afoot, they wouldn’t run off into...

Into...

Scrunch.

“Well, we ‘preciate ya for the help, Princess,” the construction pony called.

A flash of sudden realization shot across her face, her nose scrunching like it had been backhanded by an invisible diamond dog. "Wait...” She quickly lurched towards the brown construction stallion. “What did you say happened to the train car?"

* * * * *

“Here? But why?”

An erratic orange telekinesis scraped the battered and beaten luggage car down a winding snow-frosted alpine path. She stumbled across the narrow walk, keeping her weight shifted to her left side to ensure she fall towards the wall of solid rock instead of a wall of solid five hundred haunch fall. Tired, breathing heavily, and not knowing why she was lugging around the gigantic vehicle with her now wavering magic, she stopped a second for the feeling to return to her legs. They still prickled and tensed in the vestigial memory of an immeasurable expanse of time encased in stone, the nerves still not fully aware of their own freedom just yet.

Or maybe it was just the cold. The sun was descending uncomfortably close to the horizon, the nearby snow-capped mountains alreading casting a biting shadow of frigid air over her.

With a ground-thumping crash, she rested the luggage car against the cliff, gently letting it slide with a metallic screech to rest. Comfortable that it was nestled firmly, she sunk her head with a relieved punch of exhaled breath. It was ridiculous. So far away from the city, and given no reason in particular to follow the instinctive drive tugging her along. She glanced behind her, seeing the precariously narrow trails winding behind.

The voices urged her to chase the very train she threw away. To use the confusion and chaos to steal it right back, leaving Discord behind, leaving the message behind fluttering around the draconequus’ horn. At the time, Gina didn’t mind. She was growing attached to the near-obliterated luggage car. She even tried to name it Jerry, but the voices told her not to act so crazy.

The hoofpaths around the cliffs of Canterlot were carved by the very first citizens of Equestria. Centuries of climbing disorientedly angular paths did not leave many open spaces for many ponies, let alone train cars. Every bend and corner drew Gina’s attention away from her magic and back to the icy path that wound ever downard.

“Nope. Don’t get it.” She argued under her breath, stomping a hoof on the ground. “It’s just...” She grimaced, and righting herself on her hooves again, she illuminated her horn once again. “You’re yet to drive me wrong, though.” A pained lurching of metal shook a quilt of snow from the path before her, the train car dislodging free from its resting spot in the rocks with a hollow pop of echoing iron.

Gina shimmied on a narrow lip of rock no wider than a hoof, stray snow and ice threatening to cascade her down into a cacophony of jagged rocks and spires. This route would be fraught with enough peril to a unicorn focusing solely on it, but with every step, Gina had to adjust her head and re-focus her magic in a controlled strain. She had never had to use her magic at such a stretch, and to do it flush against a cliff no less. Giggling as unstable as her footing slithered out of Gina’s lungs as she made the final steps past the lip of rock and to the mouth of a long-forgotten cave.

“It’s just that, why this cave?” she asked to the air in front of her. “Why do you want to be here, Jerry?” she added, turning her head to the train car, wreathed in her magic. “I mean, don’cha wanna be with your old train friends or someth-” Her question was interrupted by a sudden shake of her head, her argument cut with a sporadic jolt of inner perception dogging within. “Okay! I’m doing it, see?!” With a heave that shore chimneys and bunting from the roof of the car, Gina pressed the car into the cavern mouth. As gravity and ice took over, Gina gawped as the sounds of scraping metal disappeared suddenly. Where normally a crash would be heard, she heard the gut-wrenching sound of collapsing stone and twisting metal, disappearing suddenly downard.

“And I...go there and what?” She half-grimaced, half-contorted in disbelieving laughter. “Wait inside the car, and then, well, what happens afterwards...?”

Gina cocked an ear upwards to the sky, then turned her gaze back to the mouth of the cave. A small giggle rippled out of her throat as her brain struggled to comprehend unseen orders. Part of her mind wailed and scrambled to dissaude her from it, but compared to the chorus of voices that fought for primacy in her mind, that whimper of reason was barely a whisper.

“She is down there?!”

Gina snickered. Then laughed. Peals of her wild adulations echoed off of the Canterlot cliffs followed by the faint rickety slam of a metal train door. Shrouded in pitch black, Gina settled on a makeshift chair of old clothes.

You’re yet to drive me wrong, though.

As instructed, she waited.

* * * * *

Click, click, click.

Luna twirled, quickly swiveling her head to scan all the pressure plates along the cavern floor. “Thou pressed...how many?!”

Click, click, click.

“I don’t know!” Devon complained, wildly flailing a hoof before him at the assortment of mechanisms he had trampled over. “I can’t even see them and you want me to count?!!”

Click, click, click, click.

“We hereby proclaim, by the festering masses of hoof fungus, yon clockwork is growing faster.” Luna stepped back, her vision sweeping frantically along the ceiling, trying to determine what was happening behind the masonry, tracking the winding trails of dust kicking up all over the room. She briskly trot towards the charcoal unicorn, standing squarely in front of him.“Bookkeeper, guess!”

“Guess?!”

“How many hast thou pressed?!” Luna looked down, directing the cobalt light from her horn towards the floor. Surrounding both herself and the charcoal unicorn, a large red painted circle orbited perfectly around them. With another red circle. And a big white X centered perfectly between their front hooves.

A circle of red paint.

A white X.

A target.

They were standing right on top of a bullseye.

Devon’s eyes darted to all corners of the chamber. “Well, if I had to guess...!”

Click-click-click-cli-CSHHNKTKT!...

...

“...All of them?”

...Fpt-ft-ft-ft!

“Down!” Luna’s warning sent Devon’s muzzle down to the dusty stone only a blink before a solid barrage of needle sharp darts burst from a slit in the masonry, shattering against the wall with dusty explosions of splintered wood.

“Luna!”

“Impudent foal!” Luna hooked a foreleg around Devon, forcing his head, neck, shoulders, and hips into a forward tumble to the floor. She pressed him against a rock column. “These plates are not the lock!”

A giant swinging axe dislodged from the ceiling, cleaving menacingly through the swirling embers with a clean slice. Devon tumbled sideways as the silver blade swung through the rock he was taking shelter behind.

“...They are traps!”

Another volley of metallic needles shimmered and rang in a murderous song as a second hail storm of darts rained towards them, impacting in a fast approaching wave of stabbing encroachment. Devon braced, curling along the ground...

Fw-w-w-we-ee-eeng...!

As a swarm of buzzing shurikens took flight from the opposite wall, each one diverting and blocking the incoming darts with astronomically improbable precision and fortune.

“Lun-AAAA!” Devon squealed as the tile beneath him ramped violently upward, catapulting him in an flailing pirouette towards the ceiling as the same ceiling dropped towards him, dozens of protruding oak spikes eager to become acquainted with the wide-eyed unicorn.

“We do not care!” Luna bellowed back as her wings swept outward, catching herself and spiralling down away from the falling ceiling only to pull sharply upwards as vents burst from the ground tiles to disgorge a gout of fire that came within a breath of washing over the Princess. Tucking hard to the side, Luna threw herself towards the only patch of ground that was not bursting with fire and landed with a heavy head-over-flank tumble. Luna had a moment to survey the mechanical chaos at work as deathtraps fired from all sides of the room, but her observation was cut short when a heavy object landed on her back.

“Ghoof!” the object grunted as it rolled off of her into an upside down splat next to the Princess. Narrowing her eyes, Luna was not terribly surprised to find a pair of orange eyes and askew glasses with an expression that was equal parts bewilderment and apology. All around them, guillotines sliced the air with whistling rings of metal. A high pitched whine fumed beneath her nose, the telltale stench of embers and brimstone jetted against her face.

With a quick extension of her wings, she flung Devon away in a succession of airborne somersaults. “Take heed! The floor-” But before she could finish her warning, a plume of glowing orange erupted in her peripheral vision, prompting her to make a rapid dive to the side. Feeling the singeing bite of fire against her fetlocks, she spun away with a single drop of her wings, propelling toward the flailing unicorn beside her.

More jets of fire spat out all around her, the whine of heated passages and nooks filling the air. The Princess arched her back, and with a quick retraction of her wings, torpedoed forward, narrowly skimming against a radial blade protruding from the wall. In a clumsy thud, the charcoal unicorn landed precariously on a stack of pipes still smoldering from their recent outbursts of blazing vitriol.

Landing beside him, Luna looked as he murmured an incomprehensible slur before his legs promptly gave up any attempt to hold him up steady. She tried getting underneath him, but could only sneak a single hoof under his ribs before he stumbled aside, bringing her down into a pin.

“Hyrrruck!” She protested, trying to pry it free. “Hyk! Eyyk! Grrrnn-nn-ck-k!” The charcoal body shifted, once again attempting to pull himself up, but only managing to scuff the floor with spinning hooves. “Get off!” She jabbed a hoof into his spine, slamming it deep into his pelt. “Get off!”

Around her, pendulums and levers wielded all sorts of blades, saws, spikes, and weapons of wonton shock and awe. Were it any other situation, it would be an amazing, enthralling display of mechanical wizardry, especially given the age of the room. But it was all icy panic to the two ponies flailing on the floor.

The pipes beneath them shook, clamoring together in a rapidly ascending succession of clanging metal and whistling steam.

“Get OFF!”

The distant glow of rushing fire glowed from the floor, promising a very quick and turbulent demise. However, a surging torrent of spinning white spray blindsided across her.

F-bwoooooo-nnnnnsssh....

A cold sweep of sudden pressure smashed against the Princess’ back, sending gravity sideways. She and Devon flopped forward into each other, tumbling along the ground before slowing into a suspended hang, gravity now seeming to combat itself in determining up from down. She attempted to breathe in, only to feel the encompassing embrace of water all around her.

Opening her eyes, a dirty cyan hue surrounded her, choking the room in a murky haze. Orange bursts popped along the floor beneath her, fleets of bubbles reaching desperately towards the surface of the flooding interior.

Clamoring to swim, Luna swung her hooves and wings instinctively, but her feathers only worked to drag her down. She spun, kicked, and waved all her limbs hoping for some sort of tangible result. After holding her hoof skybound for a few seconds between kicks, she felt the definitive grip of another fetlock wrapping around her’s.

A sudden rush of hot air lapped against her face as she burst through the turbulent water’s surface, her starry mane drifting lazily behind her. She glanced up, only to see a sideways pair of orange eyes peering back. “Come on,” Devon insisted, laying flat on the edge of the flooding pit. “I got you, I’ll pull you out.”

The Princess pulled her head back, letting the words settle. “Thou hast...” Oh, no no no, she’d gotten through far worse on her own. “We appreciate thy fond gesture, Bookkeeper, but...” A thousand years on the moon? What’s a little water other than a refreshing reprieve, right? “...But, I shall endure. I...we could have...” Of course. “We may have extracted ourselves, but thou hast still our favor.”

“I...” You’re welcome? “Glad to...” Forget it. “I think we’re safe here,” Devon groaned as he rolled around and righted his head.

A relieved smile began sprouting on his lips, but before Luna could clamp her hooves over his mouth or simply smite him with a blast of her voice, the lower walls of the chamber rumbled. Hidden panels twisted open at ground level and for a breathless moment, an ominous silence fell upon them. As the dust from the shifting floor settled, Luna spotted movement creeping through the descending plume.

“By Celestia’s mane...” Luna managed to utter moments before a skittering carpet of spiders, snakes, stone lobsters and scarab beetles rushed out of the opening panel. “Crawl! Crawl!”

“What?!” Devon bleated, head turned the wrong way as the Princess rolled away and started scooting and scrabbling across the floor in a very un-princessly fashion. “Crawl into the...Why are we...ACK! SPIDERS!” he screamed, tail flailing behind him as he worked into a full speed scoot alongside Luna, flicking a nibbling lobster away. “Getitoff! Getitoff!” the unicorn bleated, hooves dragging him past a gout of flame that drove the swarm back momentarily. “What the heck do we do now?!”

“Foremost,” Luna wailed as Devon tried to scramble over the same fallen rubble as she was, “Get thy blundersome hooves off of us! We standeth moments from incineration, pulverization, and verminization, all of which fall to thy fault, methinks, and thou presume to join us?! Methinks we shall fare better as two separate targets!” Just as Luna motioned her hooves to gesture Devon back into the swarm of flames and teeth, the room shifted again, setting off another cascade of rolling gears and groaning ropes as new machinery kicked to life.

Devon reeled in disbelief. “Oh come ON!”

The tile beneath Devon and Luna shunted up and to the side, tossing the pair in an undignified heap sideways just as the spikes on the ceiling descended at a new speed. In concert, the churning eddies of water behind them surged in intensity, threatening to overtake them.

Mrwrr-rl-rl-RL-RL!

A boulder rolled behind him, kicking up a lengthy tail of gushing debris that blinded him. He shut his eyes, coughing to get the intruding flecks and pebbles out of his nose, when suddenly, a cobalt blur dove from the plumes of thick brown smoke. Feeling his whole body dragging across the rough masonry beneath him, he grit his teeth, experiencing every protruding rock, shard, splinter, and nook that smacked ferociously against his backside.

Mrwr-RL-RL!

When another boulder rolled in from the opposite side, pulverizing the the adjacent tiles before him into multicolored sprinkles of their former selves. Marching feverishly across them, a line of large gnarled spiders advanced towards them. Devon felt the impulse to run, but upon turning, saw an equally daunting mess of blades, saws, and nails promising all sorts of misfortune upon those dumb enough to gamble any sort of proximity. He hunkered down, keeping his shoulders firm against a grounded column.

Leading a spiraling tail of sparkling embers, a multicolored blaze came swinging down. Seeing the intensely blazing object coming at him, he twirled, flopping flat on his back. The fiery trap graced against the tip of his nose, a tote on a rope of all things, and within it the warm sugary smell of...pastries?

Tracking the burning tote on a rope, he watched as it arced high into the roof, then reaching its peak, beginning its descent back to the floor. The tote opened, and a succession of flaming cupcakes rained out like delicious comets of immolating punishment. Upon contact, they erupted, casting a thick line of white, blue, yellow, and pink flames dancing intensely into a menacing wall between them and the marching platoon of hoof-sized spiders.

A thundering crack and boom exploded above them. Large fissures formed divided across the ceiling, breaking apart the masonry and rotted wooden supports into abstract sculptures of twisted chaos. Sheets and curtains of thick dirt and dust poured onto the floor, casting the whole cavern into a soupy fire-hued miasma. The center of the ceiling dipped, sinking like a slowly descending droplet of water, the massive rocks and supports drooping in a liquid surrender.

“Luna,” Devon hiccuped, scooting along his flank beside the Princess. “If we don’t get through this, I just want you to know...” He breathed in deep, “I always kinda had a-”

A cobalt hoof pressed against his lips.

Devon smiled, a tear forming at his eye.

Luna recoiled, tilting her head and angling her eyes into an irritated scowl. “I would have thee silent!”

“Wait, huh?”

“Now?!” Luna slammed a hoof into his shoulder. “Thou wouldst act as a paragon of vexation now?!”

Krak-kBWOOOM!

In a single slab of mutually assured destruction, the ceiling flung itself with homicidal determination towards the two ponies. A tremendous cushion of compressed air knocked Devon to the ground before a deafening explosion of cataclysmic magnitude overwhelmed his senses. In a jolt of blurred vision, the world blinked into an echoing blackness.

A tumbling coda of crackling and breaking rocks permeated through the darkness. Silence started creeping in deathly patience, the physical bonds of the world seeming to slip through the unicorn’s hooftips in a gentle sliding caress of cold-

KREENCH-K-KT!

A sharp blast of grinding metallic weight burst above him, a tumbling solo of screeching steel grinded with a high-pitched scream that rang through Devon’s ears in what had the be the most ostentatious assurance he was not dead. The tinny whine of sliding metal reverberated through the giant rock slab resting precariously just a half-haunch over his muzzle, before finally coming to a slow rest.

Aside from a few thumps and distant metallic bangs from the other end of the collapsed ceiling, a haunting silence once more descended to them.

In the darkness, the air peeled away in retreat. “Hee-yck.” The charcoal unicorn winced as his ears popped.

“Bookkeeper?” A soft voice ascended, hardly audible from its initial gentility. “Bookkeeper?!” A clamoring of hooves rustled from a few haunches away. A ribbon of cobalt light suddenly peeked across the ground, casting strangely angled shadows across the hazardously low and crumbling ceiling, and the circle of red paint at the charcoal unicorn’s hooves. He glanced up, seeing the Princess lying low beside a painted white X on the floor, peering the opposite direction. “Bookkeeper?! Art thou with us?!”

A circle of red paint.

A white X.

A target.

They were right on top of the target!

But how were they even alive? The whole ceiling, and whatever many metric tonnes of solid rock above it came straight down upon them! Devon observed the surroundings of the destroyed room. The ceiling wrapped like a dome, dropping flat onto the periphery of the floor but angled upward in a bubble shape. Holding up the center of the bubble, two boulders maintained a solid grasp, the trap projectile’s now a saving makeshift column keeping inevitable tragedy a dependable but discomforting few haunches above.

“Art thou well?!” Her voice quivered, the horn darting quickly with the full range of her swinging neck. “Bookkeeper?!”

“Yes, m’lady.”

The Princess clenched her teeth, dropping her head back slowly. “Confound it.”

“Glad to see you’re okay, too.” Devon scooted himself forward, facing Luna as she peered over her shoulder. “So,” he huffed, throwing a philosophical gaze around the scene of ruination, “what the heck was that all about?!”

“‘Tis,” Luna began. “‘Tis a fairly persuasive testament that thou shalt ignore us at thy own peril!”

Amongst the diminishing chaos of the room, a small flop of movement caught Devon’s eye. Notably, at least to the unicorn at that time, it was not part of a lingering trap or some explosion that had yet to go off, but an unfamiliar leather saddlebag. The brass buckles danced in the wavering cobalt light, its dull metallic flecks of chipped chrome capturing faint licks of the surrounding illumination as if begging for attention.

On the front of the saddlebag, a lone jewel adorned the front flap.

“Doth thou now comprehend? Doth thou now understand that thou must heed my command in the future?”

An amber engraving of an apple.

Stepping carefully, he negotiated the slipshod piles of rubble and fallen stonework, weaving around columns until he stopped short of the bag flopping subtly along the shaking floor. Fighting off a hacking, dust-induced cough, Devon bit into the saddlebag and hefted it back towards one of the intact tables.

“And perhaps, Bookkeeper, thou shalt refrain from poking around the- Fie, what now are you doing...”

The unicorn lowered his gaze to drink in the contents of the saddlebag and let out a sigh that did nothing to hide his disappointment. “I don’t even think it is that important,” he finally added. He had seen scrolls like this before, all too many times. Unicorns of the past, it seemed, were very proud of every advance in magic they made, and their scrolls were their self-styled legacy to history. Usually, they contained about one line of magical insight, and another fifty of elaborate self-congratulation all capped off with expensive wax seals. History was full of them, and the archive was their home. Some things never change.

With only the dispiriting light from Luna’s distant horn to guide him, Devon sifted through the unusual box, each revelation giving him more questions instead of an answer. Exasperated, he tossed yet another scroll loaded with words of magic aside, his frustration showing in the abrupt tumble of the scroll hitting the floor. There was no getting through that door, and no way back, all of this wealth of history was meaningless without a way to escape.

“For this satchel to have such a guard, surely it must bear value, Bookkeeper!” Luna’s voice followed the fall of the scroll moments after it crinkled to the ground. “If thou doth abandon thy purpose now...”

“I’m doing my best, Princess,” Devon sighed, “I’m not quitting just yet, I’m just...gyagh.” But Luna was right, the saddlebag could not have been a coincidence, it was hidden too well. Delving in again, he reached the folds at the bottom of the bag and found a single stack of papers and something... metallic?

“Quick, bring that light over here,” Devon said, his own efforts to catch the feeble, distant rays of Luna’s horn not helping him. “I think I found something.” As Luna’s glow returned to the box, Devon beheld a book, ragged and worn with a silver chain draped across its cover. Unlike the tomes and scrolls piled in the top of the bag, this was clearly used regularly, bereft of the formal trappings and seals of the self-conscious unicorn wizard.

Emblazoned across the cover was the image of a hummingbird, the stitching and dye still brilliant and striking even after so many years of neglect.

Carefully, the charcoal unicorn pulled open the cover. A steel band pressed the covers shut. Devon navigated a hooftip along the narrow chromatic chain, the ornate craftsmanship looping around the cover leading to a dangling ornament hanging off the side. The adornment shone with a peculiar clarity, like it had been completely unscathed by an immeasurable passing of time.

A pendant.

Lone and dazzling.

Cut with a surgical attention to detail to resemble a quill, each fiber of the single silver feather meticulously notched into place.

Unlatching the quill pendant from the edges of the book, the chain straightened and dropped to the stone floor with a glittery rattle. His eyes followed the sparkle for a moment before drawing back to the text. Squinting, Devon read slowly.

“Journal of GB, Royal Canterlot Scribe of-”

Devon stopped.

Royal Canterlot Scribe?

The charcoal unicorn was familiar with the practice of scribes and archivists existing in Canterlot, and playing a very pivotal role in the happenings and construction of the very city. But never before had he heard about a cavern deep beneath the streets of Canterlot designed expressly to pulverize whomever happened to wander into it.

“Really, Royal Canterlot Scribe?!” He read it again. “What the hay, that’s...no way...” Devon’s eyes read the name over and over again. Everything that happened in Canterlot was documented, documented again and documented a third time. It was notarized, which itself was notarized, which itself was sent to committee and subjected to three approval processes before they could notarize the notarizing of the nota-

“-All that for the record of a mere scribe?!” Luna groused, pulling her shoulder in a disinterested sway from the tome. “Come.”

“No no, wait,” Devon opened the pages. Excitedly, he ran up to the Princess with the pages extended, holding it out to her face. He swiveled around, setting his shoulder beside hers, holding out the faded pages in front of her face.

“Sir, my pardons, what dost thou showest me?”

“Oh, nothing,” Devon quickly laughed, “just need your horn for the light.”

“Wha-” The Princess dropped her head in an agitated dismissal of royal Canterlot patience. “But truly thou hath one upon thine own head...”

“Shh, important stuff here” Devon lowered his nose into the book and read the first entry.

“Sir, do not shush at us! We have not time for thine extensive tomes of...” Luna took a cursory glance at the scrawled page before her, picking randomly whatever words jumped out at her. Another exasperated exhalation of frustration erupted forth. “Architectural, engineering, documentation...”

“Fine, fine,” Devon pulled the book closer to himself, rifling to the first page with a hooftip.

“Wait,” Luna peered down at him with sudden curiosity. “Thou turnest pages with...thy-”

“Ah, look, here we go! Some history!” Devon lifted the book back into the light from the Princess’ cobalt luminance.

“And...canst thou even...” She breathed in deep, a single narrowed eyelid clenching the side of her eye as it snuck a quizzical glance at the charcoal unicorn’s horn. “Surely, thou hath the ability to illuminate thine own...thy...?”

He extended the pages flat before him, using a hoof to flatten the edges down. “Oh don’t you worry, I can read this pretty quick. I’ll just sum up all the important parts when I’m done.”

Day 1

We have begun excavating the Archive. It is a small wonder that I have been selected by order from the Princesses of Day and Night! It is a fair step up, but still unusual. Before, my future the same fortune-telling wagon that father and his father rode. Were it not a laughable concept, I would go so far as to say fate was involved in this assignment for this new city of Canterlot.

I should not waste words. As the scribe, it is my duty to record it. I shall detail and catalog everything to prepare this site for the royal family. If this nation is to become great, it needs a place for its secrets.

“This must be nearly...” Devon spoke slowly, his mind struggling to fill that gap of time. In all his experience, this site was nothing more than the Canterlot Archive, as old as Canterlot itself, or near enough. To imagine a time when it was just an idea on paper, to see the notes of her creator thrilled him. History got no more tangible than this. He delved deeper into the journal and picked another entry.

Year 2, Day 1

Happy anniversary, architects.

To me, every day has been an eternity, but today is when the toil bears fruit. Princesses Celestia and Luna have just concluded their visit and, with their blessings no less, allowed the true work to begin. Stone and earth are simple, even the unicorn magic of Canterlot’s newfound nobility is nothing compared to what has been brought to our site.

Princesses Celestia and Luna brought the greatest artifacts, the Elements of Harmony, to serve as reminders as to what our archive will be guarding and what true magic will be at work when it is prepared. I was fortunate, blessed indeed, to be allowed to handle one of them when Princess Luna presented it to us. My hooves are still shaking as I write this, not only for the chance to feel its magic firsthand, but at the blessing of the Princess! But I can’t let myself get distracted, the consulate is calling for the unicorns to meet and figure out how best to incorporate the ideals and magic of the Elements into our designs. If only they could actually agree upon its implementation.

Oh, bureaucracy.

“Oh, bureaucracy” Devon replied in a sigh, turning his gaze to look up and around the room. All of this was the doing of the very first citizens and builders of Canterlot. Despite the terror of the previous traps still throwing his hooves into a tremble, he couldn’t hold back an upswell of respect for those who built such a device. Not only did they build it for their own time, but built it to last for centuries and still work perfectly.

Year 2, Month 2, Day 4

We have been struggling on the riddle of how to imbue this lock with the Element of Honesty, to find a means that could flawlessly read the mind and thoughts of any who would approach. As per the element’s requirement, we must demand those who pass through be true of heart and mind, as we mustn’t permit any who lack the qualities that define our kingdom traverse.

Our solution came in the form of a side project I had been devising, a sort of memory recollection spell that I use for... well, personal uses mostly so I wouldn’t forget everything the missus said.

However, this little project got a little too good for my individual use, and I have opted to donate it to the project. Now my little pet of memories... my pet “glyph” is now comfortably situated, no longer a private adornment of home but the illustrious gatekeeper of the whole honesty wing!

A simple test, but one that speaks volumes. Seeing the truth of one’s dreams and ambitions, without rationalization or disguise, is a challenge that most ponies never experience.

It’s taken considerable time, but I believe this speck of magical light has a life of its own, and it is doing more than just communicating with others through their own thoughts and memories. It reflects them back back to whoever looks directly at it. I’ve tested this on some of my companions and they all report consistent results with their own memories, yet none of mine unfortunately.

Or... Fortunately.

Maybe here, this little guy will bring more happiness to them than he did to me.

I’ll put this aside for later, Princess Luna approaches. She requires my pen for the latest declarations.

“Lucky guy...” Devon exhalted. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself a tiny daydream, how glorious a moment it must have been when Princess Luna, still untouched by her now infamous past, presented Equestria’s greatest treasures to his ancestors. Almost by reflex, Devon slipped himself into the scribe’s, one of respect, awe and supreme gratitude as the Princess extended the hoof towards him.

“Mister Bookmark! Thy work is in thy tome, not ‘pon the ceiling! And our horn’s light loses its patience!”

Erk.

Year 2, Month 4, Day 12

Progress on this first chamber has been remarkable. To siphon the Element’s power creates a magical defense unless the proper means of passage is known. It saturates the room with power, and we only needed a spark! Considering the wealth and nature of what this place will be used for, it is only fitting that the chambers reflect their Elements.

We’ve also put in something of a puzzle lock. The Princesses were loath to use traps but the value of such a vault is too great to be given anything but the hardest and most aggressive defence. This first test is a most conventional puzzle.

Quite simply, press all the buttons.

All of them.

Then stand on the target, and watch as they all cancel each other out.

“Ha!” Devon laughed out loud as he finished the page. “Survive the traps by setting them all off at once!” He tapped a hoof against the page. "See right here in this illustration!” He leapt forward, pumping a hoof towards the destroyed room. “All the traps!"

"Hmm, mayhaps there is...a peculiar similarity..."

"Look! The blades, the nails,” a scent of pastries wafted into his nostrils. “Even the flaming tote of cupcakes on a rope!"

"Aye, aye, the illustration doth also depict the jets of canned dragon breath, but I trust not such a tome's accuracy."

"Princess!” Devon galloped forward, motioning with wide arcs to the various devices that just minutes ago exploded with murderous voracity. “Flaming! Tote! Of cupcakes!"

Luna brushed aside a large rock, a shimmering tendril of orange light from the other side of the dropped ceiling peeking through. "’Tis so old, antiquated..."

"On a rope!"

Luna pulled aside another stone, calling an even thicker window of orange into view. "Yea, look thee upon the very center here," she motioned out the dug-out gap, directing a hoof to the creaking metal hulk crunched in a lopsided twist atop the heap of rubble. "What of this?!"

Devon scanned the dusty tome, searching across the dozens of spontaneous wrathful drawings scattered around the room's blueprint. "Okay," he conceded, looking at the giant steel wreck draped over the pile of heavy debris. "The train car is new."

* * * * *

Luna said nothing as she navigated between the collapsed rocks, but in the dim light it was all too familiar. In fact, it was far more than a coincidence. A clutching knot of worry burrowed up in Luna’s gut and her next breath came as a sharp gasp when Devon spoke, breaking her from staring. She leered tentatively against the opposite barrier from the luggage car, a wafting sensation of instinctual familiarity emanating from the creaking steel.

“Is that train a problem?” Devon asked, looking over it in the blissful state that ignorance brings. “I guess it was in some cave above wherever we were and fell in with the collapse. Unless they were around back then?” he offered a smile. “Seriously,” he followed moments after he realized the smile did nothing, “what is it?”

“Tis...” Luna wavered on the brink of confession. Turning, she looked down at the honest earnestness in the unicorn’s eyes and forced back a twinge of guilt. Musn’t involve him. “Tis nothing.” There’s no reason to draw him more into this than he is. “We simply could not recall whether we had train cars so long ago!” Her laugh was nervous, it was a terrible lie and she knew it. “Ahem...hast thou made anything new of the journal?”

Devon flipped the page, but the journal was empty beyond that. As he set the book back down, the quiver of his excitement gave way to questions and trepidation, a terrible nagging uncertainty in the back of Devon’s mind. A deep unsteady nibble in the periphery of his mind pressed as he scooped the journals into the dusty old saddlebag that lay across the table. It belonged to more than just Luna’s sudden shift in confidence.

He peered down, a ball of shimmering daggers emanated from a silver adornment between the stone’s cracks. The quill pendant reflected the Princess’ cobalt luminance, and deflected it to him with even greater intensity than her own glow.

“If this was so important...” Devon said, bending down to scoop the pendant from where it fell. “Why has nopony in Canterlot ever heard about it before? Why was it forgotten?” The question hung perilously in the air as his attention travelled back to the pendant. Canterlot, for all the power of its bureaucratic quagmire, did not forget such things. Ever. Somepony would be clamouring to take credit for it or to hang their coat of arms over every doorframe.

Hooking his foreleg around the silver glint, he lifted the chain up until the charm lay at eye level. At the bottom of the chain dangled the simple feather quill, glittering with the same aura as the chain.

The pinpoint of reflection danced and twisted in the air from its sudden movement, but for all appearances, it was normal. Lifting it slightly closer to his face, Devon’s eyes followed the individually carved barbs, reminiscent of the quill emblazoning his cutie mark. New questions bloomed in Devon’s mind, each one clamoring for attention. But before a single one could find voice, movement on the quill caught his eye.

Like a tiny bead of quicksilver, a ball of animate liquid coalesced at the top of the pendant, beading and rolling down the contours of carved silver. As it flowed, the bubble grew and swelled, pulling unseen substance and form from the feather ornament. Liquid oozed down the notch and collected at the quill’s tip like a bubble of ink, swelling with liquid weight until it finally fell free of its home. Just as it broke free from the silver, the bead froze in the air and simply hung, unsupported, in front of Devon.

“Prithee, what dost that b-” Luna’s question only survived to that syllable before the droplet burst forth again, expanding outward until it was the size of a pony’s head. The liquid ball hovered before Devon, the silvery sheen reflecting the charcoal unicorn’s bewildered face as it approached closer and closer. Before he could step back, the ball rolled over the very tip of his horn and instantly its character changed again. Invigorated by just the merest contact with any sign of life, the ball writhed and flowed anew until the liquid started to evaporate. In its place was a myriad paisley swirl, constantly shifting and writhing.

With a jubilant whistle of noise, the bubbles of light swirled towards the great sealed door, untouched by the traps and flames. Dancing up and down the panels, it eventually settled on the gemstone apple and chirped. His focus staunch on the whirl of light, Devon looped the pendant around his neck and let his eyes and ears follow.

Nyrrp!

With a striking surge of glittery light, the glyph chirped with a gleeful tone. Spinning euphorically from some mysterious source of excessive joy, it bulged playfully with an ecstatic chime. The swirling overlapping markings danced in a circular orbit around a transmogrifying splotch of what appeared to be lucent ink, glowing between schizophrenic hues of cyan, green, and yellow.

The glyph's whimsical lightshow of turbulent cavorting sparks, lines, and glows was speeding up to an intense blur of illegible flickering. The cacophonous flurry started to whine at augmenting volume, elevating to a shrieking gale of piercing sound. Its colors changed so fast, it all blended together into a brightening quasar of blinding mint, photon clubs assaulting and forcing away any direct glances! Devon thought he was blinded, he thought he was going to go deaf-

Ping!

-When a shock of jolting silence flooded the chamber.

On the wall, the glyph remained perfectly still. Was this it? The ancient journal said that the light was the gatekeeper, that the glyph would automatically transform into an unmistakable snapshot of your mind's eye. How could the key be lost when it was simply ones’ goals and desires in their mind?

Devon adjusted his focus on the motionless tendrils resting in placid comfort against the wall. Well, that's strange. He knew that it spoke in memories somehow, but all he saw was a succession of dots arcing in a spiral, each dot with a ring of cascading paisley weaves being pulled into the center, and a helix of sporadic veins jetting around the outer edges of the-

"A hummingbird," Luna declared. “We see a hummingbird.”

The glyph leaped up the wall with jovial chirps and sputtering songs trumpeting the solved puzzle. Behind it rose a jarring rumble as the stone door began to part. It opened a crack and stopped. A hummingbird? But how did she even see...it didn't even look one bit like a...what made that crazy hodgepodge of nonsense a hummingbird?!

With an excited arc, the glyph drifted back to Devon's eye level like a descending leaf, seeming to fall to rest with enthusiastic expectations for his own interpretation. It bubbled and rolled side to side with impish eagerness, seeming to beg with enchanted squeaks and giggles for Devon to give it a try. He breathed in deep, but before he could goad the frolicking glyph to bring it on, a sharp warm sensation stung at the back of his mind.

His eyes could not detect the ethereal claws clamping around his head, but he knew they were there; he could definitely feel the pure essence of strong ancient magic gripping with vivacious energy. The tingling electric warmth ebbed and pulsed with the same increasing rhythm of the luminescent markings twirling sprightly before him.

No longer were there chirping verses of puckish delight, but now a booming roar of low melancholy chanting, its throbbing song reverberating every molecule of the chasm. A great ominous vigor shook through Devon, seemingly dislodging every muscle from every bone in his body. He immediately closed his eyes, trying to focus upon an image in his mind, hoping that he'd know exactly what he'd see, hoping to prepare for the test by keeping his head clear and fixated on just one thing, hoping to trick this insane arcane etching into-

-His mind exploded. With a sudden tug from the warm magical facets emanating further into Devon's cranium, his head jerked back, and before his eyes a never-ending rapid-fire squall of memory and sound overwhelmed every corner of the chasm. Every decorative pattern, shifting into the cutie marks of friends, loved ones, acquaintances and random passer-by's in the Canterlot streets. Faces warped through the stone masonry, peering at him, expressing and howling every imaginable emotion in a simultaneous chorus of chaotic decibels. He looked away, forcing himself to look at the floor, now a detailed map of every school, house, clubhouse, and gala he ever attended. He stepped back, hearing a crunch beneath his hoof, twirling around to see the smashed remains of a haunting blue ranch home bathed in lonely moonlight.

It had him. The glyph genuflected towards him, and once more, an unintelligible blast of various memories bombarded him from all sides in a metaphysical onslaught of thought, as if the glyph cast aside all the clutter haphazardly, digging for the predominant image basking at the forefront of Devon's consciousness, pushing inexorably towards a single goal. It summoned another shrieking whine, a tremendous gust of sparkling air spewed forth, and Devon again hunkered down as his senses started peeling away from his apprehension, his ears ringing painfully, his pupils burning from the caustic barrage of pure-

Ping!

-Silence...

The chasm once more rocked and swayed peacefully, the room's foundations adjusting to the cleave of tranquility slicing through. Devon slowly lifted his head, taking a timid step back, and saw that where there once was a perpetually spastic explosion of light was now a fully formed image covering the bottom half of the Honesty wing's gate. Where the glyph once shone, vibrating in chaotic streaks of multicolored clutter, there shone an image that Devon's mind would recognize just about anywhere from his memory and from lucid dreams.

Granted his vision wasn't so blurry from the recent trauma. The chasm still spun sickeningly around him, the warm claws of the glyph's brain-jacking uncomfortably relinquished their grip slowly.

"A pox upon thy glyph, Devon!" Luna sulked, kicking her hooves against the ground. "Thou hast rent our path forward asunder!" She reached out to the wall with a foreleg. "Why, we don't see an image upon here! Yonder illumination projects utter balderdash!"

With a wave of her hoof, she swished through the image on the wall. It dissipated, the image rippled away into a waving pattern of floral curves and dots. Wait, so...Luna couldn't see it? She just saw the glyph? She didn't know what was up there? If Luna couldn't see the picture, but he could, maybe the...perhaps the glyph...could it?

Could it project images simply by forming itself into shapes that reflexively trigger memories? Could it trick the mind like that? Could he not see Luna's glyph showing a hummingbird, because his memories didn't click with the design like her's could?

And why was she even thinking of a hummingbird? Why was she seeking one here?

"Luna wait, I think you-"

"Dost thou desire Our continuance?" Luna sauntered behind him, but Devon maintained looking forward. He blinked a few times, stretched his jaw with a yawn, and with a shake of his mane the room came back into comfortable focus. "Fie! Fie on your wobble-headedness and think thee harder, Mister Bookmark! Think! Harder!" The glyph's gnarled designs and curvature realigned, and suddenly, the room lurched in a sickening twist as the assortment of shapes coalesced, a staggering wash of déjà vu fading into a crystal clear image forming on the wall. Devon smiled, ready to pass this silly glyph's easy challenge, and inhaled a proud breath to proclaim that he saw-...

Oh no.

No, no no no no.

"Mister Bookmark?! Thou art wasting our time."

That horrible. Awful. Terrible. Despicable glyph! A simple test, but one that speaks volumes, said the old stupid book. Seeing the truth of one’s dreams and ambitions, without rationalization or disguise, is a challenge that most ponies never experience, chided the old stupid sadist that enchanted the gateway with this ghastly safety mechanism.

"Mister Bookm-...Uh, art thou well?" Luna turned back to him, noticing the wide-eyed glance baked onto his face. "Devon, thy eyes...mayhaps they..." Her lips parted, and her voice softened. "Thou seest something, aye?"

Something he wouldn't dare say out loud.

Devon shook his head, grunting slightly. "Oh, no, sorry I got...sidetracked...by...stuff. That wall...for instance-"

NYRRRRM!

The glyph protested, obviously agitated by Devon's lack of honesty, and surged aggressively.

Luna took a step back with a jittery gulp, "What dost thou perceive?”

"I..." he stammered, trepidation creeping from mind to body to voice.

"Mister Bookmark, We..." Luna narrowed her eyes, "...I..." and approached him closely. She cast a wing reassuringly over his shoulder, and softened her voice to the gentlest tone she could muster. "...’Tis something traumatic, is it not? Something that causeth thine heart to ache?" Devon didn't budge. "Something devastating?" He still didn't budge. "Something embarrassing?" Budge. "Ah. Something embarrassing."

"I'm not-"

"Prithee, tell Us what thou dost see?"

"You won't-"

"Speak, Bookkeeper!"

"Maybe we should just go find another way-"

"Speak!"

Devon slunk his head to his forehooves, nearly smacking his forehead against the stone tile floor. The opalescent squares peered back up to him, reflecting softly the broken visage of a colt too timid to even tell a fellow schoolfilly his honest heartfelt desires, let alone the highest ranking echelon of Canterlot royalty! How he tried in the past, but the tiles only responded with the story of dozens of blown opportunities and bad timing, his quivering lips, his sinking posture, that obliterated poise destitute of any semblance of anticipated success with such open amorous proclamations...He couldn't do this. Look at that face, those apprehensive eyes.

Maybe...

...Maybe the glyph would accept half honesty? Worth a try.

Devon looked back to the picture shimmering brightly in the glyph. "I see myself," he attempted.

With a flash of red, the picture swelled into waving flakes of sliding curves. Nrrr-uhrr, the serpentine icons chastised whimsically before reforming again in an enlightening chant of satisfied euphoria. With a vision-pinching pop, the glyph reformed, projecting Devon’s imagination back onto the gate.

Rather than give way, it only focused the images in his id, maybe half a dozen that shifted and danced in his mind’s eye. Oh how that dastardly entity was enjoying torturing him like this.

Devon closed his eyes, waving his head to the side away from Luna. He lowered his voice to a quiet whisper, diverting his voice away from the regal cobalt alicorn pacing along the other side of the corridor. "With her," he murmured.

Nrrr?

He peered forward, noticing the glyph seeming to lean in closer to him off the wall.

Nrrr?

"I said. With her!"

"Of whom dost thou speak, Mister Bookmark?" Luna's ears fully perked in his direction.

Nyuhrr-hrrrr! the glyph agreed. Oh come on, this stupid thing even picks sides? Nyurrm muur-n nurr nrrr-nerh eh, Merr-herr Herr-merrnh?

"With her! With Lu-..." Devon stopped, and exhaled deep. No, this mischievous parcel of irreverent magic wasn't going to win his attention. He turned his flank to it, facing Luna. "With you." He smiled, looking her in the eye. Maybe another half-truth would work, it was worth a shot. "I see myself...alongside you, Luna."

Nyrrrn? cooed the glyph.

"Very well," Luna motioned towards the glyph in agreement, "Aaand?..."

* * * * *

"...And ne’er again,” Luna continued bellowing, pacing heavily down the corridor, “shall such insulting vulgarity be uttered by thy lips. Dost thou comprehend Our demands, Mister Bookend?!"

“It’s Bookma-” He stopped himself, the death-dealing glance of the agitated Princess ensuring certain destruction if he dared joke about correcting her. “I just said a starlit stroll through the royal statue garden!” Devon trotted forward towards Luna as they progressed past the wide-open gateway into the next hallway. "I meant to not imply anything more, my lady-"

"We are not thy lady!" She shot a baleful glare that knocked him to his flank, her wings shot out maniacally as another salvo of Royal Canterlot Voice erupted forth. "Twenty haunches!" She bellowed, unsettling dust from every page, binding, and buttress caught in the raucous turbulence. "Thou art obliged henceforth to retain at minimal twenty haunches from us, dost thou heareth our decree?!"

"Yes'm."

Alongside him like the punchline of a cruel joke, the swirling paisley glyph floated, chirping with Devon could swear was a smug self-satisfaction. Once the door had swung open, the colors had swept back to Devon’s side like a loyal pet and bombarded him with replayed memories snatched from the unicorn’s subconscious. Images of loyalty, service, like when he signed the paperwork for his new job at the Archive; he wasn’t going anywhere with that job, and apparently neither was this glyph.

"Eighteen haunches," Luna growled.

"Huh?"

"Thou art only eighteen hanches behind me, Bookkeeper."

Seeing those vengeful sapphire irises threatening to drop the moon on him from the sky, he scuttled backward in a rapid panic. "Again, I'm so very sorry, my Lady-" Devon's soul jumped ship when she clenched her teeth at his reflexive diction. "-I, uhh, err Princess..."

Luna sighed, and meandered forward.

"I mean, I, I'm just not good with, you know, and, please understand that I am truly sorry."

She braced her eyes, lifting her head, gently emitting an irritated snort. "Don't be."

"I cannot even begin to think how embarrassing this-wait what?"

"Don't...be..." Luna's legs wobbled beneath her, and she stumbled against a bookshelf. The contents tipped and rocked, one of the paper manuscripts fluttered down, impaling itself on her horn in a suicidal dive that left Devon momentarily envious. "I just...I thought you..." A precursor to a scream was bubbling up inside her, her lips quivered uncontrollably to force her eyes shut. She exhaled deeply, resting her head against the wall, the manuscript still dangling limply off the tip of her horn.

Feeling the rifling pages lapping against her brow with the same pulsating convulsions of a stifled tantrum, Luna opened her eyes to see the swaying parchment still stuck on her horn. With a quick wave of her horn, the pages dislodged from against her forehead...only to clear halfway up her horn before subtly batting against her face again.

"Gyagh," she groaned, huffing crossly. "By the ticks of a thousand camels, won't you get off?" She gave another shake, "Get...off." Another greater swing of the neck, she threw her head to the furthest reaches her shoulders allowed, violently swaying to lose the offending literature, to get the images off the forefront of her mind.

"Get off!" She yelled, kicking against the adjacent shelving. "Get off!" The lines of books and decorative nicknacks scattered and careened towards the floor. "Get off!" A tsunami of shattering porcelain and glass echoed through Devon's mane. "Get off!" He looked towards Luna, his jaw clenching with a sudden unexpected alarm..."Get off!"...something was happening. "Get off, get off, get off of me!" She kicked again into the opposite shelf, bucking up a horizontal cone of convulsing splinters, "Get! Off! Of! ME!" Screaming with a final spinning dive onto the cobblestone floor, the papers tore down the middle, splitting evenly away from her horn.

Luna stumbled back onto her hooves, gasping for air, heaving, coughing up dust and vaporized wood. Devon stepped forward,

Twenty haunches

And immediately stepped back. A smarter pony within him was grazing his senses, simply insisting he step back. Whatever was happening to her, he wasn't quite in the right position to be much comfort. She was still swaying on her hooves. From a distance, Devon could see that her head could barely keep straight with her neck, and her eyes darted in various directions around her.

In a twisting crash, she fell to the floor again. From twenty haunches away, Devon could still hear her soft voice.

"Get off of me," the voice cracked. "Please, get off of me." It sputtered, snorted, and whimpered. "Get off of me." Sobbing. "Please." Pleading. "Get off of me."

Curses to royal decrees! Devon lowered his head, kept his eyesight firmly fixated upon the ground, not even dare send any more fleeting glances towards the broken Princess.

Twenty haunches.

He grit his teeth, half-expecting the next moment to be a blazing supernova of fury and anger that would banish him into the heart of the furthest star in the night sky.

Step.

Nineteen haunches.

His shoulders tensed, his spine braced for a full-on alicorn assault, but instead...

"P-P...Plea-e-ease..."

She continued gasping for air between tearful breaths.

Eighteen haunches.

Luna curled away from him, covering herself with her twinkling mane and tail to keep hidden.

Sixteen haunches.

She was visibly twitching from the involuntary waves of distress ricocheting up her lungs and quivering out curled lips.

“I...” She emitted a slow exhale. “I have more time than this...”

Fifteen haunches.

Devon didn't know what to do when he got there. This seemed more complex to be fixed than with a mere there, there. Something had triggered something in the princess to now feel exceptionally vulnerable, overwhelmed by something else.

Thirteen haunches.

In his view, a torn manuscript lay in two even pieces at his hooves. The cover suddenly jumped out to him, seemingly a swirling paisley nonsensical series of spiraling lines and shapes culminating before him. At first, they didn't make any cohesion to him, but as Devon looked more closely, he felt a warm electric tingling embracing with the force of ethereal claws wrapping around his mind.

He approached the manuscript, and hovered straight above the book’s torn carcass.

Ten haunches.

He saw it. With a shuffling of forelegs, his hooves nudged the serrated fibers together, pushing the book's leathery shell back together. Embossed in the manuscript's cover, ripped between the divorced halves... Devon recognized the symbols as the same as on the journal that rested in the dusty saddlebag slung around his shoulder and the floor from the archive.

A hummingbird. And...a moonflower.

Thirty haunches.

* * * * *

Chapter 5: Confined

Illustration by Vest.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Two quickly seeking two others to find.

Two seeking their past, two close behind.

One pulls on the chain, one suffers blind.

All secrets can hide, but none stay confined.

_____

___

Chapter 5

Confined

She couldn't believe it.

The orange unicorn flopped a hooffull of waterlogged hats and luggage boxes off of her. Even though the tumble down the collapsing cave walls sent her for another spin, she had grown rather accustomed to the battery associated with each trip inside Jerry...err, the luggage car. Gah, she was doing it again. She really had to get over naming every inanimate object she carted along with her, no matter how many times it saved her life. While the sensation of being, well, lucky to be alive had since become a commonplace sensation, Gina couldn’t recall the last time she felt lucky to see...

...Her.

She was right there! Right! There! The cobalt glow was just in her reach. She could swear, just wisping outside the gnarled frame of the train car's window, that swirling blue apparition of a mane was close to ambush distance. Just a quick dash up to the window, a sudden clearing of scattered luggage to clear a path, and she knew she'd be just right there! Right there! Everything was ready to go! Element of magic, ready to fire in hoof, energy at full, blood rushing wildly; she was, she was, she was...p-p-pumped! And what did they decree!? What did they dare say!?

Wait.

Wait!? Why!? Every fiber, every hair, every nerve prickled and burned across her figure as she could swear to the heavens that she was just right there! She could see her! By Starswirl's OCD, she swore she could even smell her!

Well, assuming so much. After such a lengthy tenure encased in stone, her nose hadn't quite reestablished its previous capacities, seeing as everything seemed to be smelling eerily of cactus. Or, she hoped that was just her nose acting up. How awkward it would be if her nose was fine, and she just ended up smelling increasingly pungent of cactus for some reason...

She was quickly knocked out of her meandering thoughts, her head righting upward.

No time was wasted in voicing her protests. "But I was...right there, all I had to...I even got the element of Magic charged and ready to...oh come on!" She narrowed her eyes, not believing how her succession of orders were coming down upon her. "It could have been so simple! I was right there! Whatever happened to simplicity!?"

She blinked hard, shaking her head and drooping her neck. She grunted in frustration, kicking the steel train's floor...or roof. Or wall. It was so banged up and twisted, she didn't even know Jerry's top from his-...she didn’t know the train’s top from its bottom anymore. Flinging the train door open, she peered out into the collapsed cavern, seeing the final lick of cobalt light wrap around the squeezing maw of giant wooden gates. Stepping out, she waved her head high, casting the dust-choked cavern into an encompassing marigold hue.

Oh the chaos.

Whatever had happened in there, no feasible way anypony would have the dexterity, dumb luck, or super equine foresight to have survived such a magnanimous collapse. Blades still spun in their dormant inertia. A churning jetty of white rushing water sloshed into and around itself beneath a volley of smoking and smoldering pipes. A line of multicolored embers meandered nebulously through the air, carrying with them a particular scent of burning...

...Pastries?

Only a single surviving feature stood out before her. A lone floor tile lay undisturbed, still shimmering in pristine condition save for a painted circle and x atop it.

"Well, thank you," she suddenly beamed, nodding at nopony in particular. "And you are right, simplicity is easy, and I too can do 'convoluted' quite well." She hushed with perked ears, dragging herself out of the wrecked train car. "Hah," she smiled. “I’m glad you feel the same.”

Weaving between the strewn wreckage and boulders of the collapsed ceiling, Gina hopped across the scattered blocks and columns draped across the grit-coated debris quilting the chamber floor. After a final leap over a mound of gently smoldering cupcakes, she stopped suddenly on a lone tile.

Definitely a target.

"Very well," she conceded in agreement. "Can't argue. It WOULD be easier to get her when she's weaker. Without her strength or willpower, this definitely would go a lot...simpler.” Contemplating for a brief period, she started putting the new approach into place. “We have to do it all complicated like at first...” Each piece falling into place. “So that it becomes all simple like where it really matters.”

A plan that she...well darn, one she honestly wish she’d tried doing the first time before running headfirst into...

The vast echoing expanse of the gray aether...

That again.

Back then, wasn’t she also just right there?

Right! There!?

“But how do you plan to weaken the Princess...?" She waited, tilting her head upwards to the ceiling, waiting for some sort of answer. "Hellooo?"

Well, that's odd.

As much as she appreciated the constant company, a blessing that she found herself hopelessly deprived of for years...centuries before, even she was starting to grow wary of her new 'internal' company. While a part of her was glad to have finally found the mystical code word to make them pipe down, another part wailed in disappointment that it was the question she wished they'd expound upon further.

Her eyes drifted suddenly to each side before drifting into a long blinking sigh. "Fine, make it a surprise then," she mused in disappointment. "I guess I'll just follow her. Keep low. Stay just outside her periphery or whatever. But what you have planned..."

She jumped off the target, proceeding towards a huge pair of wooden gates.

"...It better be fun. Because if you make it boring,” she called out, hoping to rouse their attention once more, “I’ll just make my own entertainment with them."

* * * * *

Hummingbird...

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

The symbol itself, Devon remembered, hardly had any presence anywhere throughout Canterlot. It was an unusual icon, not particularly representative of actions of Canterlot, Equestria, or the various offshoots traversing horizons. In a society obsessed over symbols around dragons, apples, and stars...

…The hummingbird was hardly anywhere to be found.

Yet the symbol sang out to Devon, not because of its uniqueness, but for a reason that stemmed from an opposite phenomenon exclusive to the charcoal unicorn. Familiarity. Here it was again. That reminder, haunting him. That little nagging voice that chimed in, vocalizing his own aspirations.

Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?

Scattered, unorganized, and broken, the essence of the shredded tome at his hooves, the same hummingbird stitched into the cover, pestered and jabbed within. Why it scared Luna so much was beyond his own comprehension. Why the Princess dropped to the floor in such a fervent stupor was probably just as unsettling to him as to what Luna was experiencing. The scene played over and over again in his head, but even that image, the sounds of her kicks and nickers still seeming to ripple between the stoic chasm around him, couldn’t dominate over...

Wuh, Dev’s, I tell’s ya, it’ll comes in one’a’these days.

That.

He had his problems.

And she...

Devon looked up. At the end of the hallway, the cobalt glow diminished to a narrow speck. Over the darkened silhouette of a navy blue shoulder, a single wide eye peered at him, the pupils pinched to a narrow dot quivering in retreating panic. Without any shift, all the Princess’s noise clenched sealed within, her pupil quickly dodged downward and back up to him... motioning, gesturing...

...Demanding.

Demanding with shakey jolts confined within the tightened irises to move back, to give her space, to let her think.

With a dragging lick of a hoof against the ground, he angled the split tome on its back. The cover’s etching of the moonflower and hummingbird dipped away as it flopped to a close. He scooped it up, counting his hoofsteps as he cautiously backed down the hallway.

It’ll come tuh’ yah. One’a’these days, Dev’s.

The disjointed ticks of surfacing thought kept chiming in. He couldn’t keep his contemplations at an audible volume without it all jamming up, overlapping, and becoming a scattered tone of verbal static.

A green razorblade of light sliced across the wall to Devon’s side. He peered at the narrow sliver of green arcing and bouncing in rhythm with his steps, seeing that the light source was cracking through the flaps of the architect’s satchel. As a swell of cobalt luminance crept back down the hallway, Devon peered up to see the Princess’ horn glowing intensely again, her single panicked eye no longer beaming with piercing anxiety upon him.

Twenty haunches.

It’s all she asked for, but more than he could bring himself to give as he finally stepped beyond the mandated boundary down the stone corridor. She dipped low against the ground. A long, weighted sigh winded by his ears, summoning a conflicting sting between his bleeding heart and better judgments.

She clearly needed comfort, she clearly needed space.

She clearly needed sompeony to talk to, she clearly needed time to think.

She clearly needed company, she clearly needed solitude.

“Why am I so...” Devon began, not realizing that even subtlest whispers to himself boomed explosively through the quiet halls. Seeing the Princess flinch in response to the sound of his voice immediately hushed his thinking.

Why am I so bad at this?

Another green flash caught his peripheral vision, the underside of the satchel’s flap pinged with greater vigor. Curiously, the charcoal unicorn unslung the straps, carefully dropping it on the floor beside the ripped tome. After a few coaxing nudges with his hooves, the architect’s journal flopped out, a single glowing appendage hanging out of the top between the pages. A single feather. Identical to the pendant around his neck.

How? How did it even get...?

Devon tilted his head, leveling it to the journal. Slicing between the pages with an extended hoof, the book of old engineering opened on the page divided by the glowing feather. Dancing left and right across the page’s top margin, the chirping teal feather rolled excitedly. With a burst of sporadic twirls and curves, the feather swerved back into the center of the page, retaining the previous assortment of paisley curls and dots of the honesty chamber’s gatekeeper. The glyph spun happily on the two-dimensional confines of the page, pirouetting giddily over the journal’s hoof-written words with fleeting abandon, euphoric at all the attention it had been getting.

Devon laughed “So I guess...” Seeing Luna flinch again to his voice reminded him of his lack of proper social graces.

Naw, Dev’s, you...you ain’ts bad at dis’, you’s just needs a bit ‘uh nudgin’ ‘ere ‘n’ there. Yuh’ jus’ needs to... you know... you just needs t’get movin’!

The thoughts couldn’t be shaken.

Hummingbird...

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

The glyph on the page spun erratically in excitement, chirping and whirling, seeming to leap out towards him. “So I guess,” Devon started again, in as low a whisper placid air would allow, “You’re coming with us, then.” He peered down at the hopping cluster of symbols, seeing it gesture in an outreaching manner with jovial pulses and twittering. With a sweeping step, the glyph swung towards the edge of the page, pressing against it, motioning a strangely sentient desire towards making a jump to the ripped tome beside it.

Obliging, Devon pressed the journal closer to the ripped cover. He watched as the swirling glyph cautiously approached the edge like a kitten tapping a paw to cold water. Then, in a narrow fiber of contracted light, the magical energy traversed from the open journal to the torn cover. The flow receded with the transfer’s completion, the journal now returning to it’s original stained yellow page, the contents of the page now shining through. A previously read journal entry looked back at him, the familiar passage regarding the glyph.

Our solution came in the form of a side project I had been devising, a sort of memory recollection spell that I use for... well, personal uses mostly so I wouldn’t forget everything the missus said.

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

You just needs t’get movin’!

Inhaling deeply, Devon peered onto the tome, pressing the ripped halves of the cover together. Sensing direct eye contact, the paisley magical swirls reacted with passionate vigor, seeming to peer back with mutual intensity. “Memory recollection spell, huh?” Devon nudged his head lower, feeling the warm tendrils of the enchanted cover ascend and with invisible zephyrs wrap around his thoughts. “Let’s see if this works.” He exhaled, focusing his attention into the coalescing patterns and designs triggering various nuances of déjà vu.

Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?

“Do your thing, Glyph.”

Ping!

O - O - O - O - O

“Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?” She swiveled around the bedroom, navigating between the scattered clothes, bags, and books on the creaky wooden floor.

Stretching out a blue foreleg, she gently rested it on the small charcoal colt’s shoulder. He flinched, sinking his head beneath fast ascending shoulders while sliding downward on the bed into a defeated slouch. The young unicorn exhaled in agitation, silencing his mother’s outreach.

“Aww, c’mon, mother always knows that face on ya’s!” She joked while pacing back across the room, anticipating another story of her son getting picked last, getting pranked at lunch with sneezing powder, or getting called stub-shorts McTeeny rump. “I know’s them yearlin’s all ‘rounds ya’s, they can be might’uh bit cruel but I’s can hear ya’s out!” She turned back to face the distraught charcoal colt. “Y’uh goin’ t’speak or are ya’-” Her voice suddenly squeaked shut as she found a piercing expression facing back at her.

This wasn’t some foalhood petulance or trivial squabble. Yet her motherly obligations demanded at least some sort of action. Sure, it wasn’t what he wanted, but for sure, if there was at least one thing she was determined to get right... just one thing...

That.

She had her problems.

And he...

Over the darkened silhouette of a charcoal shoulder, a single wide eye peered at her, the pupils pinched to a narrow dot quivering in retreating panic. Without any shift, all the colt’s noise clenched sealed within, his pupil quickly dodged downward and back up to his mother... motioning, gesturing...

...Demanding.

Demanding with shakey jolts confined within the tightened irises to move back, to give him space, to let him think.

Something new was starting to bother the colt, something she was not quite fully ready to take head on. The glance was one she had received many times before, but not from her own son. It was a look of a particular dread exclusive to those struggling with the concept of growing up.

“Nuh-uh, no,” she nickered, snorting sharply as she slid up next to him on the bed. “None ‘uh this silent treatments, okay? Not matt’uh what, if y’uh needs me to be a good mom, then ya goin’ to have’ta say, well...” She nudged him in the elbow, hoping he’d plop hopelessly against her shoulder like he always would. “Well...you’s have’ta say somethin’s!”

She nudged him again, the young charcoal unicorn remained fixated, cold, and distant.

“Aw, now’s don’t you too start acting like...” She began, but choked down the primed sentence in exchange for another. “I thinks that... you’s an’ I... we shoulds...” Unable to figure a proper deterrent forward, she relapsed back to her original approach.

“Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?”

Try it again.

The charcoal unicorn rustled on the sheets, adjusting himself slightly. Without looking up, he muttered softly through broken breaths. “Stargazer.”

“Stah’gaz’uh!?” She raised an eyebrow quizzically. “That cute as ‘uh kitten frolickin’ in fields ‘uh hamsters, Stah’gaz’uh!?” She smiled, aligning beside him. Finally, making some progress! She dipped her voice low, brushing strands of her orange mane aside, playfully coaxing her son to dish. “What a’bouts her!?”

So exciting! So wondrous!

“She said no.”

So...

...Oh.

She tried to slip some encouragement somewhere in there. “Aww, Dev’s, now listen to me, you...” But in her own reflection, she never knew how ever handle getting turned down like this. “I mean, at least I wouldn’t know, but I bet’chya somepony I...” She’d never known the feeling; nopony ever rejected her. Never. “...Well, we...I could...”

Who was she to pretend she knew what it was like?

The charcoal unicorn cracked, a pitched wail suppressed between clenched teeth. “She said,” shot out with an equal balance of sound and shudders, “She actually said she was embarrassed!”

“Aww, no no,” his mother immediately wrapped a hoof over his shoulder, tugging him in. “That’s...” The shoulders briefly tugged to the side, but eventually rested, slouching forward ambivalently to the comforting foreleg draped over them. “Why would’s anypony be so...so...?”

Judgmental? Shallow?

Embarrassed getting a compliment by her kin?

“She said she couldn’t believe she’d be asked to a dance by a blank flank!” The unicorn surrendered his silent stand, unable to stop from facing the afternoon’s events. “And her friends were laughing at her!” Devon finally made eye contact with his mother. “Because I asked!” But his mother...

...She didn’t look back.

How do you deal with rejection? How do you deal with being turned down? How do you handle facing your own shortcoming when somepony else throws them right back at you, and leaves you behind without...without...

“Well, lets me tells you about...” She paused. Faults? Losses? Having better to have loved and lost? “...My cutie mark.” Accomplishments. There we go. Back in line and ready to dispense of proper motherly advice, she smiled, tilting her focus back to him.

He slunk, his face drifting back to the floor.

“Well, I’s was abouts your age...well...” drifting her eyes up to the ceiling in contemplation, “...Young’uh.” She recalled, tapping a hoof only once against her chin. “Yep, young’uh for sure, definitely. Prob’ly couple’a years young’uh!”

His not helping expression unfortunately didn’t bounce off the floorboards into her vision. Then again, wouldn’t have mattered if he was looking straight at her, as she was now lost in her own inspiring story of non-rejection.

“Well’s, I kinda knews what it would be, though. Since I was a teeny eensy weensy filly, y’see.” She curled, motioning her thigh towards him. “We alls has the sames cuties marks in our family. All the same cutie mark.”

The charcoal unicorn tilted away from her, resting on a foreleg on the edge of the bed. He couldn’t count how many times he heard the story of all the Bookmarks somehow get the same cutie mark. Always the same recollection of events, only the pony in her company changed.

“Y’uh great step-uncle an’ I...”

Great step-uncle this time. Devon nodded to the rhythm of the story’s wind-up. Get on with the ‘all so busy’ part, the ‘going round’ part, the ‘Boop! Same cutie mark as the rest!’ part.

“We’re alls so busy, goin’ ‘round, keepin’ everythin’ all runnin’, all’uh us. So it’s in us, ya’know.” She pointed a hoof down, waving it around the sanctimonious adornment. “An’ one day, I’s was with ya’ great step-uncle, settin’ up this banquet for some prince, an it all went so un-hitchin’-like that sometime in’uh middle of the chicken dance...it happened...” She prodded against her mark, hoping to get some giggle out of him. “Boop! Hummingbird!”

He sighed.

It was worse than she could imagine. For as long as she could remember, her little charcoal colt would laugh and roll brightly when she’d start making funny noises. Did he miss it?

“I said...Boop! Hummingbird!”

He descended his forehooves off the edge of the bed, bending his spine towards his rear legs.

Definitely worse than she could imagine. She had to try extra hard this time. Come on, think. Think. You can do this, just think.

“Wuh, Dev’s, I tell’s ya, it’ll comes in one’a’these days.” She rested a hoof against his elbow. Reflexively, he tucked it into his gut, yanking it away from her reach. An impulse emerged within her to combat her resisting son’s reflexes, to hold him closer than she ever held him before... To show what love truly is, and that what her own love to him could mean in comparison to the encompassing machinery of life.

She conceded, swallowing down her impulse. “It’ll come tuh’ yah. One’a’these days, Dev’s.”

He clearly needed comfort, he clearly needed space.

He clearly needed sompeony to talk to, he clearly needed time to think.

He clearly needed company, he clearly needed solitude.

But above all.

He clearly needed...to not be alone.

“Listens, uh...” His mother scooted to the mattress’ opposite corner. “I’m sorry...that yuh’ special somefilly wasn’t...so special enough to see who you truly are.”

Closing his eyes and angling his head up to the ceiling, he called out. The somber voice, muffled through the coercion to hold back any foalhood tears, permeated upwards.

He called out.

Not to her.

Not to anypony in particular.

But in a quiet rippling prayer send skyward, in a voice of...but not from himself.

“... Why am I so bad at this?”

She immediately lurched forward to him, shaking a foreleg to the air. “Naw, Dev’s, you...you ain’ts bad at dis’, you’s just needs a bit ‘uh nudgin’ ‘ere ‘n’ there. Yuh’ jus’ needs to... you know... you just needs t’get movin’!”

She motioned towards her hummingbird cutie mark, making the motion of being speedy and flying as she started to depart his room. “Just like a Bookmark, we all get hummingbird cutie marks eventually! Just get movin is all! Just keep movin’! Worry less about... this... and just get-”

O - O - O - O - O

“...Moving.”

Devon shook his head, the bordering green and cyan edges pinching in around the residual imagery of his bedroom collapsing into his vision. A cobalt aura flickered and intruded upon the cover of the tome as the leather texture overpowered and seeped back into view..

“Huh?”

The image finally broke, rippling into the searing edges of intruding paisley swirls and dots that pulled it back into the form of the glyph. It chirped happily, pleased to have finally been put to use after so many years alone underground.

“We said,” Luna turned away, heading back down the corridor. “We implore thee, keep on moving.”

Albeit delayed, the unicorn’s orange eyes lit up seeing the Princess approach him, and stand so close. He knew she’d get over her own 20-haunch mandate, and allow him to be of some use within her proximity. “So I see you’re feeling better.”

“Be not confounded, Bookkeeper,” Luna shot back, increasing her pace into the darkness. “We sincerely apologize, this place has magics that...as thou hast witnessed, play heavy upon my sentiments.” She stopped suddenly, curving her head around with a gentle expression. “I believe I hast acted unfairly to thee, thou need’st not remain twenty haunches from me anymore.”

“Oh, thank you Princess! I think-”

“I decree now,” She cut him off with a wave of a hoof. “Ten paces.”

Devon seized his celebration short, but still managed a wry smile. Eh. Small victories. It’s certainly a step forward!

“At this rate,” Devon laughed optimistically, “won’t be long until it’s zero haunches!”

* * * * *

It certainly was a step back.

Twenty-five haunches back was a long stretch in a winding hallway.

Devon found himself scrambling to get back to seeing the light from Luna’s horn as she rounded each corner, bend, and dip in the labyrinth. Every time he smartened his pace, it immediately slowed when Luna’s head lashed around, fixing him with a severe, dangerous glare reserved for those who would encroach within her bubble.

“Hast thou gone deaf?!” her voice would blare out violently without even looking over her shoulder to check. “We can hear thy muddlesome hoofbeats, and they stumble far closer than thou art permitted!”

“I know, Princess,” Devon replied, summoning up all of the obsequiousness he could muster. “But I still need something to see the tunnel by. And I haven’t seen any torches around here.”

“We are still bedazzled that a unicorn such as thee can manage not even a spark to see by,” Luna sighed, exasperated, but quickened her steps to maintain the distance. “Do not unicorn colts acquire any training and instruction?! Or didest thou simply flunk out of magic kindergarten?”

Devon let out a ruffled huff at the question and his cheeks burned in the shadow. “As a matter of fact, if you really want to know...” he began, but by the time he had got the sentence out, the light had already vanished around the next corner, creating a new sprint around unyielding and magnificently hard stone walls before she drew into his sight again. “If you must know, I did go to magic kindergarten and I aced all the written tests...and flunked every practical exam.” Devon snorted as an upswell of dust hit his nose, followed by a slight derisive laugh from up ahead.

“Truly?” Luna’s voice disappeared around another corner.

“Yes. Truly!” Devon barked, his face red hot despite the cool, musky air all around him. “And I sure don’t know how to explain it! If I could, do you think I’d be running into walls?”

“Thou art serious,” Luna didn’t even bother to turn her head, “thou cannot truly summon a spark from thy horn to light thy path?” With a whip of cobalt mane and tail, she was gone again. Embarrassment and frustration drove Devon to sprint forward, catching up with the light in a flurry of clattering hoofbeats.

“It’s complicated, okay?! I don’t know how it works! Sometimes when I’m mad or upset, it’ll just kick on! I wish I could actually do something with it but,” Devon’s words poured out as he built up a head of verbal steam. “I’ve heard every explanation to understand it, but none of it is getting me any closer to USING it!”

“Twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three what?”

Luna glared.

“Oh.”

Devon’s hooves dragged to a stop and he watched the cobalt aura fade around the corner. His diatribe blunted, the charcoal unicorn fell silent for a few seconds before he dared speak again. “Look, I can’t explain it, but no, I can’t even spark my own light. Been like that ever since I was a little colt and I’ve done everything I could to learn it.” Part of Devon was quite happy that Luna was so adamantly storming forward and that the hallways were so dark, both worked to hide his shamed blush and dejected expression. “I studied all the fundamental stuff, but whatever it is, I just can’t make it happen. They say magic is emotion, right? Well, my emotion doesn’t want to go anywhere.” Devon groaned, growing absorbed in his thoughts as he spoke.

The rhythmic tapping of Luna’s paced trot diminished, slowing to a cautious walk. She slowly turned, peering back down the dark corridor.

“Tried about four different tutors, and even once my mom tried to do it herself,” he muttered, rounding another corner and nearly stumbling backwards when he stepped into Luna’s light. It was not distant, but perfectly still. The Princess of the Night looked back at him with a look that was equal parts sympathy and mane-tearing frustration.

“Very well, thou may walk with us,” Luna said simply, turning to head down the hallway again. “Unless thou prefer to stand there blinking. Forthwith, Mister Booksmarts!” Raising his speed, Devon trotted to close the gap until he walked alongside Luna, grateful to be able to see where he was going for the first time since they got into this place.

“That was...” Devon briefly mulled it over in contemplative silence. “...kind of abrupt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful but-”

“We doth not wish to partake in thy life story if it pains thee.” Luna diverted her attention away from him, and focused on scanning the ornate markings lining the gnarled corridor. “Tis’ a long journey and before us lay many dark paths, Booksmarts,” Luna explained. “If we are to travel yonder road together, we would prefer thee alongside us, should some pitfall separate us.”

“Well I’m gratefu-”

“But!” Luna’s voice rose to a fiery boom that shook the dust from the walls. “Doth not think thou’rt forgiven or that we hath forgotten thy wild and fanciful dreams! Thou art to keep thy hooves and eyes to thyself, dost we make ourselves clear?!”

“Yes’m,” Devon murmured.

“Do we?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he proclaimed. “Crystal.”

“Then we’re settled for now.” She picked up her pace again. “Time is time!”

As they wound around, the corridor suddenly expanded into the first thing they found other than dark stone and black shadow. A great door loomed up from the deep black, featureless until Luna’s light played closer to it. Beneath caked-on layers of dust and debris were symbols and sigils from a lost era. Carved relief artwork of clouds bursting with striped lightning dominated the door’s central motif. Along the edges, smaller carvings of scrollwork and occasional flowers added contrast around the dancing visages of hummingbirds.

Devon took a step back, the symbols speaking out to him again.

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

He immediately diverted his attention from the relief to the Princess. There was the symbol again, was she...did she start to....

...No?

Huh. No response at all.

Stepping ahead of Luna, Devon did his best to put on an integrating smile.

“Let me get that for you,” he started in the tones of practiced candor and polite culture that all Canterlot citizens picked up. Hustling to open the door for the lady, Devon laid his shoulder into it as she smiled on...

“Hrrrrrhhgnnh!”

The smile strained slightly as the door barely budged.

“Ah...heh...” Devon laughed. Oh come on, at least get THIS right! “GrrrraaaaAAAAHHHHGH!” Throwing all of his weight into pushing on the door, the unicorn got the same result, a fraction of an inch of movement before resolutely holding its ground.

“Er...Bookkeeper, if we may...” Luna said, fighting back a laugh as she delicately wove past him and, with a featherlike effort, pulled the the door open and held it for him.

A welcome apparition burst from beneath the lid, pouring voluminously into the room.

“Oh thank Celestia, LIGHT,” Devon exclaimed as the door swung ajar. To his momentary relief, it gave him some more light than Luna’s horn. Powerful illumination surged up deeper in the chamber, bathing it in a flickering, almost liquid red swath. Adjusting from the insufficient glow of Luna’s light took a moment, but with every passing second, more of the chamber pulled into full view.

So much for the welcoming light. Of course it was going to be something predictably perilous, foreboding, and something the archive’s architects would take full lethal advantage of. Oh, why couldn’t it just be a fleet of giddy fireflies euphorically frolicking through a daisy speckled meadow? Why not a cavern lined with festive cakes, the candles tripwired to ignite and spew festive confetti when a passer by had happy thoughts? Oh, oh, or why not just a single puppy that glowed in the dark. Just a glow in the dark puppy, nothing obvious, predictable, and cliche as that right-?

No.

Lava.

Obvious, predictable, what in the graces of Celestia’s opalescent dander else.

His perspective now heavily biased from its previous standing, he took a moment to reflect. Maybe he was too harsh to the Honesty chamber’s little chirping guardian. Shaking his head, he sighed, readying to unlatch his saddlebag to let out...

...the Glyph that was already peeking around the lid, seeming to glare at him expectantly from a dangling parchment. Ah right, Devon recalled. Mind reader, or something.

*Snap*

Naw. Later.

Stretching before Devon and Luna, a pair of hallways ran perfectly parallel to one another for nearly a hundred yards before terminating in the murk at an ornate door. While the halls were shaped and directed identically, the contents vastly diverged from the first step. On the left was a simple, stone walkway forming a perfectly normal hall. Its only distinguishing features were a nondescript line of shelves on one wall, and raised section that looked through a gap in the wall to the other hallway.

That second hallway, by contrast, was at once much simpler yet far more of a challenge. It had no walls, no ceiling, not even a floor. Instead, it simply opened into a chasm below which was the source of the room’s fluid light, a boiling, steaming river of magma deep beneath the mountains around Canterlot. Noxious vapors occasionally belched from the crevasse in a steamy upswell. The only objects that marked it as more than a caved-in section of the structure were its clear path and a single metal rail that ran through it. High above the rail, attached by pulleys, chains and a morass of gears and cogs hung machinery, silent and seemingly inert.The rail itself held above the steaming heat of the lava flow from one end of the chamber to the other, terminating at a block on the far side and a bank of metal boxes on the side where Devon and Luna stood.

Barely large enough to hold a single pony, the boxes were simple affairs of blackened metal, hanging off of the railing by a simple, but durable hook. Each was equipped solely with an open door on one end and a single lever inside.

“Well,” Devon said, pointing his body towards the stable hallway, but not moving yet. “I don’t want to make anything happen again, but do you think we should go that way, Princess?”

“Aye, we agree. But let us both bear caution with our steps, aye Devon?” Luna responded, turning her gaze down and placing every hoof carefully. Following closely behind, Devon tried his best to put his hooves exactly where the Princess set hers before a realization hit.

Hold it.

Aye Devon?

Vociferous outburst, ho! “Woah!”

“Hyeep!” Luna squeaked, leaping over rapidly flailing limbs in uncontrollable surprise, “what diabolical trap vexes us now-”

“No, it’s not that!” Devon laughed slightly, coming up short before colliding with Luna’s tail. “It’s just that this is the first time you got my name right.”

Wait, first time? First time? She’d been getting it wrong this whole time, and he didn’t have the courtesy to correct her? Turning her head with a wild flare of incredulity, Luna found it fading as she beheld the immensely pleased smile on the charcoal unicorn’s face.

Just when she thought the overt genuflections of Canterlot were behind her. Pfft.

If only.

“Well, we suppose that we hath,” Luna offered a small nod of acknowledgement. “For thou hasn’t set off anything in minutes. Thou hast earned it!” Her tone at the end rose, and the expectant grin that followed begged Devon to recognize the joke in her words.

Minutes passed as they worked step by tortuous step through the hallway, ignoring the bank of shelves like they were as deadly as the lava and not even daring to look at the raised area of the hall until they reached the door. Neither even dared breathe heavily until they stopped before the great portal, caked in the same dust as the previous one. Gingerly, Luna exhaled over the door, revealing a new sigil, bands of colored stone sharply angled from pearl inlaid cloud formed a bold lightning strike of rainbow colors. Another breath revealed a small button no larger than a hoof.

“This...methinks that this be the only switch here,” Luna spoke, disturbing the tense silence between the pair. “We hath not seen a single switch nor tripwire nor tumbling combusting pastry. We beleive that we can relax somewhat.”

“So I can start breathing normally again?” Devon asked, stepping around Luna to approach the door. His eyes slid towards the door, inevitably towards the button. “Do you think we should...”

“Aye, thou may breathe more safely. As for yonder button...”

“Yeah...”

“A plan ascends, Booksmarts.”

Devon raised a hoof. “That’s Bookma-” He stopped, seeing her eyes suddenly narrow in confusion at his unexpected approach. “I mean....” He cleared his throat, starting again.. “That’s, brilliant, eh-hehm, yes.”

Eh. Small victories.

“Thank you, now listen henceforth.”

It’s certainly a step forward.

* * * * *

Embedded within an ornate ring of cryptic designs and symbols, an amber apple-shaped jewel reflected back at her. Within, the mirrored countenance of her frustration warped and bubbled across the oddly curved surfaces, only to further exaggerate the quantity of rancor wrenching her face.

"I said!" She said. "Unlock this stupid door!"

In the amber reflection, Gina's brows dipped to a menacing scowl, her forehead expanding to a caricature's depiction of a Goddess of unbridled hate.

"Open!"

Make that, Goddess of unbridled hatred of inanimate objects.

"Open sesame!"

The giant double doors responded in the general manner inanimate objects react to speech.

She huffed, leveling atop two swiveling forehooves with her back legs tighlty clenched upwards. Bolting, the hooves cracked into the wooden facade, the thundering blast of reverberating noise echoed through the chamber.

Emerging from the diminishing sound, another series of rhythmic mechanical groans and creaks emerged from behind the stone walls. Behind her, a draping rope pulled towards the ceiling, snagging taught and lifting a giant swinging axe blade into the ceiling. Another series of rickety clangs and shrill grating carried forth.

Beside her, a tile shook. As the melody of churning machinery came to an abrupt stop, the tile popped up. Curiously, she tapped a forehoof against it, but even the most ginger touch caused it to react suddenly as it jolted back in the ground. In her peripheral vision, the amber apple flickered, seeming to reflect a bright shimmer falling rapidly towards the-

*Brk-KLANG!*

She jumped, spinning around twice! Her back firmly planted against the wooden door, Gina breathed out heavily from the unexpected startling blast of falling metal. With a surrendering whack, the giant swinging axe blade fell flat on the ground. The rope gripping its base ascended along with the song of activated mechanics resetting the device behind muffling walls.

The room slowly crawled across the ground, various instruments of messy destruction slowly plodding towards the wall. Gears, wires, springs, and extending metal work slithered through the various alcoves and recesses of the walls, retreating back into the dark compartments that housed them. As each trap reset, Gina found herself stepping before the door as panel after panel jumped up in a manner ready to be pressed.

Accidentally planting a rear leg atop a stray panel, her body dipped downward as her weight pushed it down with immense force. A volley of whirring air rushed towards her from all directions as a torrent of narrow flickering white specks of light grew in their speedy approach to her. Her ears were suddenly overwhelmed with a stinging bombardment of whooshing bullets, pattering menacingly against the stone wall behind her! Sharp clanging complimented each passing projectile as she aptly weaved between the oncoming perilous blurs. Her vision flickered white as a metal flash ushered a lone white streak barreling straight for her eyes. She dropped her jaw in a sharp gasp for air-

*Kling!*

-Before catching the shiruken between tightly clenched teeth.

"Hyuh!" She laughed through pressed molars and ringing metal. "Nuffin' to it!" She whirred her neck back, and with a spin, flung the shiruken towards the oncoming volley. It pinged deftly off a flickering white blur, and in a blink, ricocheted between several others that ricocheted into many more. The shiruken spun back around, slicing the air just past her ear before spiraling towards the giant wooden doors.

The amber reflection of the orange unicorn split into several as the projectile impaled firmly through the jeweled apple.

Looking down at the arrangement of ascended tiles around her Gina suddenly laughed at the revelation that befell her. "These aren't traps!" She smiled, scanning the various alcoves lining the walls. "It's a combination lock!"

She immediately planted her hooves onto the panels, pressing them in a determined order.

"Bring it."

At the first hint an approaching whine, she leapt into the air with a wild spin, careening haphazardly through a hurricane of darts. She kicked off the wall, flipping forwards to an upside down dash along the top of the cavern, dragging her hooves across the ceiling's stone. As a ceiling slab before her rustled and plummeted, she kicked off of it with another roll with her forelegs outstretched.

Screaming with a metallic war cry, a giant swinging blade rushed to intercept her. Swiftly, she tucked in her legs, feeling the cold kiss of steel gracing the air just behind her fetlocks. She wrapped a foreleg around the wire, planting firmly atop the wire, riding it back across the cavern in a swooping arc. She dropped down, gripping the top of the blade while hanging off its side as she felt the rapid clanging of lances buffeting the opposite side.

As the blade reached the top of its returning arc, Gina pressed off the blade's side with reaching legs, grabbing tightly on the handles of two lances firmly embedded in the wall. A prickling crawl sauntered down her hoof, and as she looked up, she saw a multicolored regiment of spiders descending down the wall. She shook the hoof-sized arachnid off with a grunt, and descended down towards other lances, halberds, spears, and knives also sticking out of the wall.

A sudden torrent of gushing water, blasted against the base of the wall, knocking the makeshift ladder of impaled weapons out from underneath her. She grit her teeth, seeing the approaching army of frighteningly large spiders narrowing in on her, before a thudding rumble of rock augmented in volume around her.

Seeing the large rolling boulder passing undisturbed through the gushing flood water, she jumped towards it. Her hooves immediately rebounded and were swept from beneath her, and after a quick tumble across her back, she regained some footing on the massive whirling rock. Like some maniacal circus act, she shuffled rapidly atop it, keeping her inverse momentum in tune with the boulder as she rode it across the chamber.

The massive swinging blade cut precariously close to her again, just missing the boulder on its return. Yet when seeing it whiz past her into another hanging arc, Gina narrowed her eyes, focusing all her attention on the knot connecting the huge blade to the fragile looking wire.

Her horn illuminated, sparkled, and immediately blasted a narrow dagger of marigold light that sliced cleanly through the wire. In just a couple seconds, the wire lit up, glowed, and popped as its intertwined fibers snapped. The blade swung free in a schizophrenic spin, clanging off the ground and landing sideways just in front of the boulder.

The giant rolling projectile diverted off the blade violently, casting Gina into the air. Careening sideways, she reached for the glowing edge of the wire, but was immediately snagged by an unexpected rope wrapping around her shoulder. She reflexively wrapped around the errant rope, but immediately curled up her haunches at the caustic bite of extreme heat piercing up her rear legs. She recoiled, and looked down to see the sparkling glow of burning cupcakes emanating through a tote.

She quickly peered ahead to see the boulder rolling right on track, making a quick line straight for the large double doors.

Perfect.

With her horn, she wrapped a thick miasma of telekinetic energy around the tote below her. In a strained tug of her neck, she snapped the fiery tote free, levitating it in the air beside her. Swinging back across the cavern, she lined up the tote, aiming it for the door. In a pulse of rapid magic, the tote torpedoed forward into the giant wooden door, immediately sending a clamoring plume of multicolored fire biting up to the wall. The door began to warp and curl into itself, weakening and cracking off its hinges.

At the pinnacle of the return swing, she dismounted, whirling and flipping back to the ground. Beneath her, the boulder contacted its mark, smashing vehemently into the door's blazing wood. A sparkling blast of debris shot upwards, hundreds of smoky trails flying past the careening unicorn as she plummeted in a standing spin to the ground.

Through the churning maelstrom of smoke, embers, and raining detritus, an orange blur dropped into a boulder-size hole, landing gracefully in a three-point stance with a lightly blazing forehoof lifted above her head. The unicorn gave the hoof a quick shake, extinguishing the flame, as a final piece of dropping debris ushered an end to the explosive symphony.

A flaming cupcake landed with pristine grace into her raised forehoof.

She sauntered forward through the forcibly opened...or, forcibly exploded with fire and boulders door. Not looking back at the slowly drooping doorframe behind her, she took a slow step forward...

*Kra-kwooom!*

...Taking a single bite out of the flaming cupcake, not giving a single glance to her large wooden adversary as it collapsed and promptly exploded into a swirling ball of erupting fire in her wake.

* * * * *

Through a dim hallway, the two stallions strode in a quickened cadence. The metallic rustle of armor rippled behind them, the clattering noise of the rapidly passing figures unsettled several months of grit, detritus and other coats of neglect.

Trailing behind, struggling to keep up, Private Jetstream found himself careening over slipping appendages as they failed to grip upon the wadded rugs lining the seldom regarded wing of the Canterlot castle. Regaining his balance, he continued his rapid sprint, pushing strenuously to regain the lost distance between himself and the excited succession of jangling descending into the muddy atmosphere.

The Captain was certainly excited. As far as Jetstream could recall, he'd not heard such euphoric melodies of jangling since Captain Shining Armor pranked the mess hall with fake posters for Luna's kissing booth.

He just hoped this occasion wouldn't end the same way; a wasted night being shouted at, cried on, and solemnly promising under punishment of death not to tell anypony about all the crying.

Breaking around another corner in the dust-laden hallway, Jetstream screeched to a stop, nearly planting his nose into the prickly buckles lining the Captain's red jacket. "Here it is," Stormblade seethed through gasping breaths. "Finally convinced Celestia to lend me a break."

"Convinced Celestia?" Jetstream tapped against his chin for a second, the gears whirring in his head. "But...sir, Captain Stormblade, weren’t you assigned to clean-up? I don't think you even had a meeting with her, sir."

Cracking open a pair of creaking double doors, a thin sheet of lemon-tinted light cast down the Captain's face. "Well, I didn't meet her directly so to speak but..." He sloshed around an explanation, hoping for something good and believable to stick. "But she'd understand the resources I need."

Eh, believable was optional.

In a rapid swing of his shoulder, bursting rays cascaded over Jetstream, the new blast of radiance forced him to stagger backward. Brushing aside stray licks of rainbow mane draped over his forehead, he shielded his eyes, waiting for his pupils to adjust to the brightly lit foundry before him.

Well, for a bit. As the glare faded away and his focus pinched details together, the perceived extensive foundry he expected started to coalesce into...

"I present, Forward Operations HQ!"

...A bucket closet.

Well. "Sir." Good time as any for a quip. "I believe Celestia would understand just how much you'll need for...umm..."

Stormblade nudged against Jetstream's shoulder, gesturing with a drawn out wave across the walls covered in crudely hoof-drawn maps and mugshots. "Behold, Jetlag," Stormblade dashed to the middle of the closet in an outstretched flailing of limbs, "We now have a full-blown command center for our royal pursuit!"

"Sir, we..." Jestream trailed off, quizzically dragging across the tacked documentation draping up the room. "But, can we even...? I'm unsure, Captain Stormblade, sir-"

"Private Jetlag!" The Captain stomped on the ground, a steel bucket clanged off a shelf into a rolling bustle of metallic disappointment. "Again with the disregard to properly addressing authority!"

"Sir, but I said Captain Sto-"

"Head quartermaster!"

Jetstream paused. Any elaboration? A hint as to where he was coming from? Who was the Captain suddenly designating as head quartermaster of-...oh for the love of....

"Right." Sigh. "Sir." Gyeck. "Head quartermaster, Stormblade." Blyech! "I feel we're-"

"No, no, no," Stormblade cracked a limb in a sporadic wave for silence. "Captain Head Quartermaster Stormblade!"

Blyeeech!

"Yessir, Captain Head Quar-"

"Actually," The Captain Head Quartermaster spun in place, facing the opposite wall. "Rescind that order, it sounds terrible." Oh? "Doesn't work." Oh! Something intelligent! Finally, Jetstream exhaled in a long relieved puff, a warm unfamiliar tingling ascending from his stiff smile muscles. "I prefer...Commodore!" And, tingling gone.

Whatever, roll with it. "Yessir, well chosen." If years under Stormblade's service didn't render his emotions to be indecipherable between praise and sarcasm... "Agreed." ...even if he couldn't remember a single instance of praise to contrast with... "Well, as I was saying Captain Commodore Stormbl-"

"Private, don't be so stupid!" Maniacal wide eyes locked onto the private with tightly contracted pupils. They immediately recessed into a gradually rising chuckle. "I mean, haw hawr, seriously." THAT kind of chuckle. The condescending one. "You nitwit, hyeh heh, how could I be both a Commodore...and a Captain!?"

Jetstream took a second to ponder where his life went wrong.

"Hyaw haww, that's...that's just crazy talk!"

The private came up blank. There really was no determinable landmark where all his life's regrets converged.

"Come along, private, we need to interrogate the citizens on the Princess' whereabouts." The Capt-...the Commodore quickly paced to a stack of papers, each a listing of names and faces. "Gotta do it all legitimate like."

Yep. No landmark whatsoever.

"Good cop, bad cop. And I need you to be the ultimate most atrocious bad cop you can be to my undeniably charming good cop routine."

No landmarks. Just fate in general.

* * * * *

Clunk.

“Confound it!”

Clunk.

“Oh come on, that hit it square!”

Clunk.

“Fie upon yonder button!” Luna heaved another ancient, priceless tome from the relative safety of a tipped-over bookshelf, a pulse of magic scattering it against the door in a useless tumble of words. Huddled behind the makeshift barricade, Devon could only watch in horror as history itself was turned into ammunition in a vain effort to strike a small button.

“Luna, you aren’t going to hit...”

“Be silent! We almost got it! Thou art ruining our concentration!”

Clunk.

Snorting, Luna hefted another book in her telekinesis, but as it floated by his face, Devon spotted a familiar insignia. Before the Princess could launch it, Devon snatched it in his teeth and immediately wished he hadn’t as the force of the magical throw flung him over the barricade and into a head-over-hoof tumble across the room, still clutching the book tightly in his teeth. A whipping smack resonated with a subtle echo as Luna buried her face into a hoof.

The frustrated Princess seethed. “What. Art. Thou. DOING?!”

Staggering to his hooves, Devon stumbled and spun back towards Luna, spitting the book out in front of her before speaking.

“Look at...the...whew...” He shook his head, waiting for the stars and chimes to filter out. “Look at the cover!” he pleaded, pressing a foreleg’s hoof down onto it to emphasize the emblem. “It’s that same flower and hummingbird thing that was on the journal that’s in my bag!” Nonplussed, Luna seized it in her magic and started to line up another throw.

“And?” she asked, raising a brow as the unicorn seized it in his mouth again.

“Anmphhphmp!” he argued before remembering to spit it out. “Pitoo. And if it is like the last one, it might actually tell us how to proceed!” Conveying a look to Luna to make sure she wasn’t planning to launch it anyway, Devon cracked the cover and began to scan the entries. It was another journal, in mostly the same hoofwriting as the previous.

“Pray tell,” Luna rolled her head away, continuing to scan around the room. “You insist upon further reading this?”

“Can’t really think of anything else.”

“Fine,” she sauntered to another corner, her eyes drifting to each brick along the wall. “Be quick and summarize the important information for me, if you’d be so kind, Devon.”

Year 2 Month 5 Day 12

The locking mechanism is complete. Very simple compared to what we just accomplished, but this chamber’s defences are not from the door itself. It is as simple as two ponies pressing each button on either side of the door together. Naturally, getting to those buttons happens to be the chamber’s defence. It is far ‘safer’ than the Chamber of Honesty, to be certain, the only dangerous aspect is in the hooves of one of those going through the chamber. And should they simply stay their course, no harm can come to them.

Considering the Princesses’ aversion to the previous traps, their suggestion for such a machine strikes me as unusual. While it is certainly not as direct as a simple trap, the amount of stress this can put on somepony seeking the inner sanctum is distressing to say the very least. One cannot argue that it is not an effective test of one’s loyalty to their cause, but crafting those boxes knowing their purpose has driven a quiet fear into this entire mechanism.

I will be happy when we move past this room forever.

“Okay, so...” Devon began. “Locking mechanism.”

“I said important information,” the Princess groaned, tapping a hoof on any brick that seemed in the least misshapen. “We need not information we’ve been chewing over for the last several minutes.”

“And...and...okay, apparently...” Devon combed over the words picking them out. “We just need to push two buttons at the same time.” He skimmed ahead. “All we have to do is...hmm...that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“The whole challenge is...” Devon reread the passage again, ensuring he got it right. “Staying the course and just remaining loyal to, well...” Too easy. Had to be a catch. “Staying the course, uhh, let me read ahead real quick.”

“More reading? Fie, I might just hurl yonder brick at one button while leaning against the other.” The Princess quickly paced away. “Do catch up for cider and beignets when you’re done.”

Year 2 Month 6 Day 3

Three workers in one day have been removed from the rail. We had assumed that pegasi would have little trouble erecting the machinery, but we gravely underestimated the danger posed by the fumes. Were it not for the quick thinking of our unicorns, they would have been overcome and lost to the lava.

The planners have held a meeting to ensure that the rail is able to work as the plans dictated. An open car is now unfeasible given the fumes.

Evening Addendum:

Walls have been added to the car and size reduced. It is believed to be effective at blocking enough of the fumes to allow safe passage, but now they resemble coffins more than part of the test. I suppose that the protection is necessary, otherwise the chambers beyond would be inaccessible, morbid as they may be.

I have volunteered to test these new boxes tomorrow. So long as I stay true to the course of the plan, no harm should come to me. The emergency release is not to be touched in transit.

“So...Luna.” Devon scratched a hoof behind his mane, his eyes peering at the black pony-sized boxes seemingly engineered by a demigod of claustrophobia. “Those dark black metal things...they’re not containers.”

“I hath determined as much, they’re much too small.” She lifted a foreleg, nestling it along a crate’s top edge. With a strained metal squeak, it lurched forward with the slight altering of weight. “Too flimsy, too loose, perchance a holder for a flugelhorn.”

“Eh...” Devon peered again at the crates, unable to disagree with the Princess’ observation. “Yeah.” Though he couldn’t help but disagree with the journal’s engineering credentials at thinking a pony would fit in one. “It’s actually a transport mechanism.”

“For what?” The Princess nickered, nearly tipping over a row of the small crates. “A wombat?”

Again. Couldn’t disagree.

Year 2 Month 6 Day 4

I am fully convinced of the effectiveness of this trial.

While I recover, somepony else will take over recording. Given the sudden nature of this, I had to ask my fiance for her help, it took some convincing but I think she will be quite helpful. I am extremely grateful for her support when I came out of that dreadful box, if it were not for her intervention I would have fled into the abyss in my panic.

Her task is simple. All she has to do is illustrate the proper operation of the machinery to move the box from one end of the chasm to the other. The illustrations are prepared. I fully trust my dearest to handle documenting the next test result while I explain from across the chamber.

“Yeah,” Devon groaned. “A wombat. Or a wallabee. Or a platypus. Or...”

Luna chimed in. “Somepony who’s spent his entire life,” she smiled, gazing in revelation upon the charcoal unicorn, “dealing with height issues.”

“Implying...!?”

Year: Whatever, Month: Don’t Care, Day: Hearth’s Warming in July

Ha! I’m totally writing in his journal That little cutie is totally trusting me to do this! Ah, he’s a klutz, but sweet. Oops, starting to ramble. Fine I’ll dictate for him.

Reporting in as assistant scribe to royal scribes, durp da dwippity doo, test was a success and blah blah blah motor mouth snickerdoodle patootie wendigo breath uh-oh! I better go, he’s wrestling me for the pen, I won’t go without a fight my lov

“Buh? Um...”

“Whatforth be thy troubles?” Luna asked with a wryly raised eyebrow. “Thou hast struck upon too hard of a word? We didn’t believe that such a thing could happen!” As Devon turned to address the remark, he found a jovial smile, none of the irritation or anger in it from mere minutes ago. Did she...just make a joke?

Progress!

“Har har,” Devon groused, turning the book around and pushing it towards Luna. “Maybe you know what that word is, but I sure haven’t seen it.” Laid out on the paper, consuming page after page before Luna was a series of what at first glance appeared to be charcoal drawings. However, there was no marks from any tool, the lines were perfectly clean, burned into the paper without causing any damage or blackening. Beneath the burned lines, tantalizingly out of reach forever, lay diagrams of all of the machinery.

“What befell the pages?!” Luna croaked, heart falling. “Howforth will we cross now?!” Barging her head past Devon’s, Luna lit her horn and flipped through more pages. Each one marred by the same burned images. As page after page flipped away, Devon started recognizing the images. It was slow, at first, for even Devon’s recognition of them came from the muddy corners of his mind.

The view of a classroom from the perspective of a student.

The back of a filly’s head.

Straining his eyes, Devon recognized the filly, and soon the situation. Chiming Hearts School. Stargazer, pegasus. How did this get here? This book is a thousand years old! Devon flipped another page, and the image changed again. The filly had turned to face the drawing, her eyes fixing on Devon’s like he was actually there.

Another flip. The filly’s face had twisted into a look that was equal parts scorn and embarrassment. While nothing could be said on the page, Devon immediately knew what was happening. The memory was a constant sting on the back of his mind. His first fumbling attempt to ask for a filly to be his special somepony in a childish fit of awkward colt affection.

“Devon, no way! I can’t go to the dance with a blank-flank like you!”

He could swear he could hear the voice in the drawing, the recreation of his memory was so vivid. It was as if it was Stargazer just shouted him down in the last chamber after admitting his affections.

“We are not thy lady!”

Devon furiously whipped through page after page of the same memory repeated. Each exposure to it drew more details of it back from the dusty recesses of his memories, each detail reflected in the picture that followed. Where before, it was merely a charicature of his memory, now the pages resembled the memory itself in perfect detail, down to the math problems on the chalkboard that were up when a young colt made his decision to show his feelings and affections for the lavender pegasus. This isn’t possible! How are these...

Devon’s mind raced until he reached the end of the drawings and schematics. As the page flipped over, a force slapped across his mind, disorienting yet familiar. Just as his mind recovered from the rush, he heard a telltale chirp of pride.Glyph squealed in delight, burning the images from Devon’s memories and moods into the pages.

“Ugh...sorry, I...” he exhaled deeply, trying to mask the impression the surge of repressed memories exuded. “You!” He flinched hard, regaining his composure by lunging an accusing hoof at the paisley whirling ball of opalescent happiness. “You, Glyph, drew over every single drawing!”

The Glyph retreated, the tone of chirps and purrs descended to a minor scale of whimpers and apologetic whines. Devon grit his teeth, dropping his quivering forehead to the page, only to emerge a second later with a determined smile.

“Well!” He slammed the book shut, hoping the force smacked the Glyph hard enough to awaken its Hoofrian ancestors. “This got a lot harder...” Devon sighed, turning his attention back to the bewildering mass of levers, toggles and gauges. “Do you remember anything about this, Princess? Anything at all?”

“Nay...” Luna shook her head with a look of embarrassed apology.

“But you were here, weren’t you? I mean...back then?”

“We most certainly were, Mister Bookmark, but...” Luna trailed off, letting out a small giggle. “Back then, we were not so interested in such gizmonic devices of frick and frack. We were trying to bring about a nation!” Luna’s cheeks flushed as momentum built in her diatribe. “We were trying to bring ponies of all creeds together AND keep the night sky! We-”

“Okay!” Devon interrupted with a yelp. “You were busy, I understand. Just thought it might help us in this situation.” Turning his gaze to the wider chamber, he let out a small groan. “Since you can’t just fly over and make this easy...one of us is going to have to...” Devon hesitated, part of him knowing exactly how the following conversation was going to play out. “One of us will need to ride in one of those boxes. What do you think, Princess? Shoul-”

“Very well, if thou volunteerth for the ride, we shall guide thee from these controls!” Luna beamed happily. “We must say, we were worried that thou were going to bid us into that befouled box! Truly thou art a paragon of loyalty to volunteer for such a task!”

“Well, actually I...” Devon sputtered, even as Luna swept alongside him, guiding him towards the beginning of the chamber, where the boxes lay. “I was going to ask your opinion because...”

“We do not forget such bravery, Mister Bookmark! Thou shalt earn some of our respect yet!” Luna added with a chuckle and grin that Devon struggled to identify. Was she truly thanking him, or just chiding him. “And we thank thee for thy trust in operating the machinery! While we would hath believed thou hath a nack for such things, we shall not let thee down!” Placing a hoof on his shoulder, Luna addressed Devon with heavy sincerity.

We do not forget such bravery, Mister Bookmark!

Hold up.

Mister Bookmark!

His...name.

“Hah, Princess! Finally, you’re-!”

“Getting a plan together, yes!” Eh.

“No, what I-”

“We shall stick to thy plan til the end!” Small victories. “Should the journals speak truth, we must not groweth distracted or diverted.” By the time her praise and solidarity had completed, the pair stood in front of one of the boxes.

This seemed like a worse and worse idea.

While the journals emphasized the simplicity of the task, he couldn’t help but feel there was some silver lining, as no architect as wild-minded as one to even etch a swinging tote of flaming cupcakes on a rope with a straight face...no, couldn’t be this simple.

Placing one hoof on the floor of the casket, Devon felt every fibre of his being clench down. The casket seemed tinier than before. The gap over the lava seemed longer. The fumes seemed deadlier. Halfway into the iron box, the unicorn hesitated and turned, looking over his shoulder at Luna. Part of him begged the rest to get out of that box as fast as possible, find some other way around this problem. But when he saw Luna’s look of reassuring determination, he remembered the agreement.

Staying the course.

"Fear not, Mister Bookmark!” The name again. His heart fluttered subtly within, knowing she was finally getting it right. “For we shall extract thee from yonder iron box forthwith! Thou hast nothing to fear, we shall retain due watch over thee." Her words carried over the squeal of the ancient hinges as the box closed around him.

“I’m going to hold you to that, Princess,” Devon said with a final deep breath before darkness swallowed him. Please hurry.

*Kuh-Slam*

Please hurry.

Closing his eyes, Devon tried to turn his focus to the sounds that leaked in from the tiny cracks in the door. But even Luna’s near hoofsteps sounded despairingly distant and soft as she walked around to the elaborate machinery to operate the rail and its new cargo. Muttering a small curse at the small swirl of magic that obscured the directions in the journal, Luna pressed down one of the levers experimentally, having nothing more than guesses to go off of.

From her perch, Luna watched as long-neglected machinery jerked to life that it had not had for a millennium. A hook from the railing rolled out and snagged the casket, filling the chamber with the hideous clamour of metal scraping stone until the casket finally lifted from the floor with an alarming wobble.

* * * * *

“Gyeah! Woah!”

Inside, Devon’s world was nothing but sound and movement and neither of those senses were telling him things he liked. He could not decide what was worse, the scraping as his self-imposed prison ground towards the lip of the chasm, or the unsettling silence when it was undoubtedly beyond that precipice. What he for sure didn’t like, however, was the swinging that pitched his body back and forth against the black iron walls. With a squeak, Devon lost his balance again, and had to dodge the emergency escape lever as he slipped down the wall in a tumble.

“Easyeasyeasyeasyeasy!” he wailed despondently as momentum carried one swing into another, scattering the unicorn’s balance again. A forward lurch hurled Devon’s head against the wall, sending his glasses scattering towards his hooves in a black oblivion. Blind, Devon lowered his head to grope for the fallen spectacles, but came up short when his teeth found a stiff metal lever. Immediately, Devon decided his glasses weren’t worth it, for one bump on that lever would rip the doors open and send him tumbling out into a very unhappy end.

As tumbles and discomforts began to accumulate, a deeper gnawing uneasiness crept into Devon’s mind. Part of him wished he had not been so smitten by the Princess to agree without complaint to enter this casket. Devon hated the dark. And he hated closed spaces more.

Please hurry.

Not so much what the darkness contained. Not so much what closed walls harbored. No. It was what they brought out.

Hurry.

What they brought out...within...

...Him.

* * * * *

Luna pursed her lips, carefully balancing the heavy dark casket along the track. Before her, the iron container swung a few haunches from the edge, but the machinery had ground to a halt. Beside her, the Glyph chirped, happily devouring into another one of the journal’s blank pages to swirl and dance burning patterns into the old parchment.

“We are truly glad thou are enjoying thyself, Glyph...” Luna groaned, reaching out to try another lever. However, she could not repeat the success at lifting the casket, and the machinery groaned as confusing commands caused it to shudder and jerk violently, pushing the casket a few haunches down the line in a sporadic and disquieting jerk. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember when she saw this last, but such a distance was simply a haze of notions and fleeting visions, all focused elsewhere, certainly not on the machinery.

In a frenzy, Luna threw three more levers and adjusted a dial. She did not wait to see what the results were. “Blighted machinery for simple foals!” she barked in undisguised disgust as her magic lit a toggle and spun it. Across the chamber, the chains and pulleys kicked into unsteady life. However, while it moved, every motion of the chains was jerky and spastic, infuriating Luna further. She could see how it should work, but without understanding the controls before her, every motion threatened to cancel the last.

Minutes passed and frustration gave way to an angry apathy. Every time she had seemed to move the box forward significantly, the Princess would hit some lever or trigger some mechanism that sent it skidding backwards to start the procedure over again. While she worked at it, Luna’s eyes wandered, powerlessness over the whole affair draining her perseverance. Resting her chin on a forehoof, Luna idly kicked one of the books she was previously using as ammunition, sending it tumbling end over end until it landed face-up.

“Atlas of Astrological Beauty - Artist’s Edition...” Luna read aloud, blinking a few times as the title washed over her mind. It was one of her favorite books, even from before her banishment. What was it doing out here? Wistful memories of her youth hit her strongly, the younger Princess spending hours laying out a canvas and plan for how her night sky would awe and amaze.

Or it would...should anypony notice it...

Shaking her head of the unworthy thoughts, Luna turned her eyes back to the machinery and tried a new combination of levers. Her reward was a shower of sparks and the box flipping end over end on its chain in a mane-raising front flip. However, as the same puzzle fell before her, with barely any progress made, Luna’s eyes roamed again. To her side, another book lay against the steps leading up to the console.

Great Galaxies of Starswirl.

It was another fillyhood desire, one she remembered fondly wanting year after year for birthdays and Hearth’s Warming, but was never available, even for royalty. Not so much a book as simply a collection of charts, drawn back in a day when ponies would appreciate the night sky and dedicate elaborate tapestries to it.

So rare, yet so sought after for its invaluable information, what was it doing just rattling around in the open instead of being guarded by a regiment of her armored best in the deepest wing of the Starswirl archive?

Biting her lip, Luna swallowed down the urge to take just a moment to flip it open to a chart. Her duty was on that box which swung precariously over the lava. Halfway there now! Throwing her focus back into the levers, the Princess of the Night finally thought she was getting the hang of it. As the casket moved along the chain, Luna had to step to the side to keep her view locked on it and as she stepped, she nearly tripped. Over a book.

“I’m just as good!” - a Little Sister’s Guide to Recognition.

Luna hadn’t even noticed that book at her hooves. She should have noticed it, she was nearly standing on it! “By my troth... what is befalling this chamber?” Luna whispered, though her eyes now danced between Devon’s casket, the controls and the books, all seemingly angled that she could see their titles or elaborate covers. A solitary bead of sweat ran across Luna’s cheek as title after title ran past her eyes.

Princesses’ Guide to Night Skies.

Celestial Lullabies and Arias.

Ruling Alone.

“Begone, foul temptors!” Luna snarled at the air, slashing a deadly semicircle with her mane and tail. “Thou shalt not divert me!” Behind her, Luna heard another book fall and furiously swung her head around.

“Be...GONE!” the Royal Canterlot Voice boomed, sending every book scattering and tumbling into the wall behind her, obscuring covers and blasting them into dark crannies. “Ha!” Luna crowed triumphantly. “We are not so easily diverted from our goals. Such a simplistic test shalt not trap US!” With a final, satisfied snort of air, Luna turned regally back towards the control console.

Laying across it was a book.

Second Chances: A Guide to the Long Lost Art of Breaking Past Obligations

The title stared up at Luna accusingly. In even grander letters along the bottom, the author’s signature leaped with unwavering pride off the page.

G. B.

Faltering backwards, Luna could feel her resolve cracking and straining. “Thou...” she breathed, “shalt...NOT...divert us!” With a wild forward kick, Luna slammed her foreleg into the book, sending it spiraling into the oblivion of magma.

* * * * *

Devon did everything he could to focus on anything but his surroundings. Anything but to think on the tight confines and the constricting darkness that all but had weight on his shoulders. Closing his eyes, he tried to focus on the subtle movements lapping the exterior of his confines; the tiny mechanical sway as each gear clicked or chain pulled to drag him inch by tortuous inch across the chasm. Pressing his cheek against the iron door of the casket, Devon tried to feel the furnace-like heat of the lava below him, but the only warmth on the metal came from his own breath. Were it not for knowing that he was mere inches above the flow of magma, the unicorn could believe he was anywhere.

"Just a little bit more..." Devon said, repeating it over and over in a small private whisper. "Just a little bit more..." Despite his protests to enter the casket in the first place, Luna had assured him that she wasn't going to leave him until they were both through this ordeal. Focusing on her words, Devon fought to keep his breathing paced and calm, and to wrestle his out of control heartbeat down to a reasonable pace.

"Fear not, Mister Bookmark.”

A hollow clang reverberated around him as he slammed the back of his head against the metal wall.

“Thou hast nothing to fear, we shall retain due watch over thee."

The echoing metallic bang receded, leaving him alone with just the sound of his heavy breath.

She meant every word. Luna wouldn't leave me.

Just the sound of his heavy breath. Not even the gears and cantankerous mechanisms around the container resumed.

A soft smile cracked Devon's lips. Her words, her eyes with that glitter of protective determination. How could he not loyally trust those words? Devon stepped into this horrible box without a doubt in his mind that the Princess would free him, either by pulling him back or at the other end and that thought sustained his courage. Sustained, that is, until the devil of imagination introduced one element to his consciousness. One element that had no standing in a place as this.

Doubt.

But what if she didn't mean it?

A question raised in the back corner of his mind only needed a moment to infect and spread throughout Devon's emboldening routine now undermined every effort to keep his courage and wits. Every effort to dismiss the intruding vision of Luna simply opening the next door and moving on only caused it to appear elsewhere in his mind. One doubt birthed a second, and each doubt’s offspring yielded another and another until his head swam with hallucinogenic echoes straining from worry and wrought tension. Calm breaths gave way - they gave way to erratic panting and, drumming, Devon could feel a wild drum solo going on where his heartbeat should have been.

She didn't mean it.

"Luna? Princess?" Devon called against the unmoving iron door, forcing every bit of calm into his voice that he could muster. "Are you out there?" Lifting a darkness-shrouded hoof, he reached through the abyssal mire, clanging a hoof on the door, knowing full well that there was no way she could hear him if he was still traversing the pit. Even though the logical side of his mind stoically knew this, it still fed the growing wellspring of panic that rocked through his heart. Devon called again, louder. "Luna!" His hoof rattled the door with harder, stronger and more desperate knocks. Maybe she will hear those, or they will make the casket rock back and forth and tell her that something is wrong.

For a fleeting moment, his eyes moved towards where he knew the escape latch lay. All it would take was one pull and he’d be gone. But then the plan would collapse.

She's long gone.

"LUNA!" Devon howled at the top of his lungs. All of the calm was gone, replaced by icy terror. Abandoned by those his heart sung for. But worse still, abandoned in a tiny...dark...claustrophobic..
.
"Gah!" Devon gasped as magic surged through his body, reflexive and instinctual. When emotion took over his reserved and focused mind, magic that normally stayed out of his grasp burst forth. He was like a colt still, only able to show his basic magic as a burst of pure emotion. And this burst was just light, a sparkling surge of blue-gray light that brought a moment's illumination to his iron prison. All around him pressed walls of cold metal, so blackened by time that they seemed to drink up the light of Devon's horn. It was completely nondescript, and served to halt his out of control breathing for a few seconds as he finally got something to look at.

Before it began fading again.

"N-! No! No! Wait!" Devon squeaked as darkness swallowed him again and the panic swelled up. As if on cue, his magic surged instinctively. The grey light flowed out of his horn and filled the chamber with a fading luminescence. Again, Devon saw the same four plain walls of iron. But as the light burst forth, Devon swore his position at changed. When he entered the casket, he was upright, and he had no room to shift or move in the tight enclosure, but now it seemed like he crouched in the corner, propped against the wall near the door. A moment of confusion gave way to a creeping, dank familiarity as the light died out again.

"Stop!"

Devon yelled before he even could think to speak, and moments after darkness engulfed him, the panicked instinctive magic rushed out of his horn again, light climbing back up the walls.

The walls were no longer iron, but appeared as nothing but simple wood found in any home in Equestria. Panting breath filled the chamber as Devon tried to squirm upright again, but his hooves found no purchase, his back found no direction to move against the intense walls.

The interior twisted, faded, and played tricks on his mind. His grasp upon the intangible reality shuddered, then immediately regained a new focus in a completely different rendition of total darkness.

A flicker of light traversing through imagined cracks danced along draping objects above him; a line of old clothes hanging above him, their texture and fabric coasting in and out of existence as his mind wobbled between the casket and...

And...

As he saw the walls changed into a distantly familiar wood, a new fear clung at Devon's gut. It was not new to him, but one long forgotten and, until now, happily left behind forever.

She said she couldn’t believe she’d be asked to a dance by a blank flank!

That thought snapped into his mind again as each horror fought for primacy. Predictably, darkness started swallowing the chamber again as the surge of light lost its spark and, despite his efforts to control himself, Devon knew he would be lighting the room again. His magic was completely beyond his control now, the unicorn merely a passenger to the nightmare playing out in front of him. As the light returned, the walls did not change, but below his hooves and flank, Devon felt an odd, sickeningly familiar feeling. Reaching down with a foreleg, Devon blindly sought the velvety sensation that ground underneath him. Squirming, the unicorn rolled once before the sensation moved underneath him. It could only be one thing, a memory. A foalhood symbol of comfort and protection, but its warmth was hampered by a sheen of moisture.

Just as he drew it to eye level, the darkness took hold again, leaving the unicorn with the lingering feeling, the hollow comfort of a blanket that was his comfort in this place before. In Devon's mind, the casket was completely gone, replaced by the cloying terror and sickening sense of loss and abandonment within the warped walls augmenting in ascending height.. Whatever was in his hoof, despite never being seen, was perfectly known, known as well as anything he had grown up with. But in this space, in this clutching darkness, all of the comfort of a foalhood blanket provided normally only fueled his terror.

Why was it taking him here?

"Get me, get me...” He silently choked on stifled breath, trying to find enough bearing to render the words. A flash of memory shot through him, a familiar exclamation that held diligently within the gnarled wooden closet. “...OUT OF HERE!" Devon yelled at the top of his lungs.

Of all places...

The hope that Luna could somehow hear him and pull that off was a single dying ember of hope, but part of Devon hoped that the yelling would at least give his mind something new to attach to as the darkness swallowed him again and magic nervously sparked through his horn.

Why here?

The sensation of cloth on his foreleg melted away as the light came up again, revealing the same wooden walls. There was nothing new, and despite his trembling, Devon finally felt his tension ease fractionally. It was as he was instructed, after all. If the casket’s designer just wanted him to sit through whatever mental trial he somehow schemed, whatever erratic memory it was supposed to trigger within him to trip him up and really put him to the test, so be it. All he had to do was not pull that lever.

Fine.

“Fine!” The sudden intrusion of an agitated murmur beyond the walls forced Devon’s eyes wide. "Gets outta f’ere." That voice...distant and muddy and painfully familiar. "Gi’t outt’a f’ere righ’ now!"

The words were charged with rage and anguish, the seams of something precious tearing apart with every syllable. All the unicorn could do was what he had done before; the same reflex coming naturally to him in some vestigial trance. Holding back the quivering warmth encroaching from the corner of his eyes, he pressed himself tighter against the small corner, covering his ears with his forelegs to bury his face, hoping that the voices would die down.

"You aren't needed here! Y'never were!"

That the voices would just give up.

"Get out of here and just GO!"

That the voices would move beyond his range of hearing.

"We alls goin’ be better off wid’out you!"

That the voices...would go back to...go back to the way they used to...

“Nev’uh! No! I’s nev’uh’d ev’uh thoughts that way abou’tya ev’uh!”

Hoping the voices would go back to....

“But we’s has a son now, and if y’wanna know why I stays, b’cuz a’least he’s one w-who’da accept my’s, m-my, my’s...”

To the way they used to...

“...My love.”

Hoping.

“Unlikes y-you!”

Hoping the unfortunate truths he’d resigned himself to acclimate to were just a pessimistic byproduct of foalhood whimsy.

“Get out! Get out! Please, just get out. Get out.”

Why here?

“Get out.”

As the flare of light from his horn sputtered away again, Devon didn't notice, his eyes were pinched tightly shut and his head curled inward against his chest. Every muscle seized completely, locking him tightly in a fruitless struggle against an unconquered fear.

Hoping.

To the charcoal unicorn, it was an eternity before his senses even flickered back to life when he cautiously moved one foreleg off of his ear, and then the other. His eyes were still closed, but a tiny bit of his mind was starting to emerge again.

Is...is it over? It's quiet again.

Quiet, but the mare’s words still echoed forth. “Get out,” it rang in his stored cogniscience. “Get out.” They throbbed and pounded against his mind. “Get out.”

As they did for years before.

Meekly, Devon tried to shift his body and lift his head away from the fetal curl he had locked himself into.

“Get out.”

Finally, with a surge of strength, he opened his eyes just as his horn let out a final involuntary sputter of panicked luminance.

“Get out.”

Devon let out a choked gasp before a new scream burst forth from his lungs. Somehow, the interior was now scratched in overlapping words!

GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT

Scrawled in panicked fervor, the casket’s walls reflected back a phalanx of hastily etched words! Dozens of messages, hundreds, all of them seemingly carved in by the same unsteady author, jagged and disconcerting. Every single one carried the same terse pair of words.

No!

GET OUT

Stop!

GET OUT

I must...I must...

GET OUT

I must get out!

Breath flooded out of Devon’s lungs. The interior of the casket pulsed again in a black swath of sporadic magic. The closet interior returned, and he clamored over foalhood hooves back into the draping clothes hanging dizzyingly above. The tension in his heart mounted, his breaths carried tremendous rhythm that racked his ribs, yet through momentary breaks of his body screaming for an escape, he heard it.

Hoofsteps.

Heavy hoofsteps.

Hoofsteps descending upon the closet door from the outside, the mare’s panicked screaming from before trailing distantly behind them.

Get out.

Get out!

Devon grit his teeth, readying his body to run with all his strength. Brushing the draping fabric away and kicking aside a pile of books and toys, he reached feverishly for the closet door handle. But in the handle’s place...

An emergency lever.

“Don’t yous all leave!” Sobbed the mare in the distance, her crackling voice barely piercing through the old closet walls. “Please, I begs ya’, don’t!”

The heavy hoofsteps sounded again, this time receding away before disappearing behind a slamming door.

“Not now, not...never!” Her own voice followed along, disappearing into the inaudible distance. “Don’t leave!”

Don’t leave.

His head swam.

Don’t leave.

Bubbles appeared in his vision.

Don’t leave.

His body retreated, flopping back against cold steel. He clenched his teeth, feeling the distant familiarity of warmth creeping up his nose, a tense quivering pulling at the inner corners of his eyelids. He found himself in a new quiet, an unsettling quiet, not even the sound of his own spastic breathing registered. He held a hoof to his chest to make sure he was even still breathing. Nothing much else to do. He could finally adhere to the demands of the challenge. He could stick to it. After all, riding through the darkness, unknowing what’s ahead, pretty much defines loyalty, does it not?

He rode contentedly, silently, but quivering and broken through the confined darkness. His emotions flared uncontrollably, yet through the resonating pangs of memory, he sought any comfort in the darkness.

Without choice, finding comfort was easy.

And without much else to detract, the comfort came in abundance.

The comfort came in the black.

His voice cracked gently, his nose sniffed heavily. He tried to wipe away the gathering moisture starting to flutter into his eyes, but hardly touched a hoof to tear before the casket door swung open, dropping him to the cold stone floor mere inches from the edge of the crevasse.

* * * * *

The casket’s door banged open and in a tumult of limbs, the charcoal unicorn fell out. Luna smiled broadly at the movement.

“Huzzah! We hath succeeded against this vile trap! We shan’t tell thee of our travails but t’was...Mister Bookmark?”

Fully expecting the unicorn to triumphantly step from the temporary prison, Luna held back a small gasp as Devon trembled at the edge of the box. Like it were more dangerous than the lava, the unicorn threw himself out of the metal chamber, splaying out on the floor before tightening into a fetal ball. As soon as the ball tightened, Devon grew still, the only signs of life from the unicorn being the occasional kick of a leg by reflex, and steady, pained breath.

“Mister Bookmark!” Luna called, shocked. “Mister Bookmark, thou must hold!” Pressing against the pitted gate, Luna could only watch as another bout of trembling slid Devon closer to the edge. “Mister Bookmark! Answer me!” Luna called again, only receiving a pained gasp from the charcoal unicorn in reply as a shot of air hit his lungs.

“Nhg...” Devon risked opening his eyes. Moisture clouded his vision, throwing the chamber into little more than a series of blobs and undefined shapes. Gingerly, he lifted his head and turned towards the shouting cobalt blob.

“Mister Bookmark!” shouted the blob. “The door!” Squinting, Devon cleared his vision and beheld the blob morph into the concerned face of Princess Luna, still trapped on the other side of the gate. As his eyes cleared, Devon’s body strained to action. Ignoring the wild visions still running rampant through his mind, he swung his head in the direction Luna pointed and found the twin to her button.

“Okay...coming...” he murmured, feeling more like he was being called down to breakfast as a colt once again. Slowness permeated his frame and each step felt like it was an eternity. Every instinct or reflex, his history with the ache that seeped out of his heart, begged Devon to simply collapse and let it pass, but he pressed on, fixed on fulfilling the plan. Luna did her part, and now it was his turn.

“Thou art nearly there!” Luna called encouragingly. With a final heave, Devon threw his hooves at the pressure plate, letting momentum press it down and into the slab. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened, a passing spectre of dread that caused both of the ponies to flinch before their ears were assaulted by the sound of scraping stone and creeping wood. Before Devon, the chamber door swung open, the lingering light from the magma behind him casting a feeble flicker into inky shadow. Behind him, the separating gate between him and Luna opened with a loud clank. Duty done, plan completed, Devon finally caved to his heart’s pain. Slouching to his flank, Devon sunk his head down, staring into the cracked stone floor.

“Devon...” Luna lowered her voice as she stooped down to the slouched unicorn. “What foul fate did thou face within that wicked box?”

He didn’t answer. Devon simply stared down into the cracked floor, lit by the erratic glow of lava.

“Devon?” Luna took another pair of cautious steps nearer. “By my sister, what foul magic hath been cast ‘pon thee in that box?” Genuine sympathy washed over his back and shoulders, but he remained fixed on the point ahead of him. Part of the unicorn ached to cave in to the stresses and strains clinging onto his spirit, but another part was louder.

Don’t say anything.

“Devon! Speak to us!”

I don’t need to tell her a word.

“I...” Devon’s voice silenced Luna. Pausing to swallow a thick mouthful of shame, he turned his head around to face her. “I’m fine.” It was a terrible lie, horrible, and Devon did nothing to hide it. To Luna, he looked like he was expecting punishment, or simply resigned to a guilty confession for nothing.

“Art thou positive?” Luna pressed. “What befell thee? We are embarked ‘pon this quest together, Mister Bookmark.”

“I’m serious!” Devon barked, his tone mixing with a flare of heat like the lava behind him. “It was just..”

He clearly needed comfort, he clearly needed space.

He clearly needed sompeony to talk to, he clearly needed time to think.

He clearly needed company, he clearly needed solitude.

But above all...

Pray tell, confess thou art a deceiver!

...He clearly needed...

For I’d rather believeth thee simply a liar, a deceiver, than a...a...

...To not be alone.

For at least then thou would’st be upon the grasp of salvation!

“Just some spell or something...it’s fine.” Devon forced the explanation, hoping that weariness would mask his tone. “It made me see something that wasn’t there and I freaked out a little, that’s all, really.” Devon sniffed sharply, banishing the latest torrent of tears that threatened to cascade down his face. “Don’t worry, I can handle it.” His voice cracked slightly.

No pony cries this much.

“Devon...” Luna began. He could tell that she didn’t buy it, nopony with a pair of ears would buy a lie so transparent, especially when all the signs of his face and body proclaimed the agony that he just endured. “If thou art certain,” she spoke as Devon’s eyes met Luna’s. Where before Devon would see an accusatory or frustrated fire, he saw only an ember, she caught his lie but sympathy was overtaking her urge to yell the truth out of him, “then we shall make sure that we are more careful later on. We can’t risk thee too much, t’would seem that thou art as needed here as we.”

Devon looked down over his hooves. In the featureless stone, he saw every bit of the lie and a withering shiver down his spine told him that Luna knew the lie as well. But rather than call him on it, Luna simply accepted it. She shouldn’t have.

Why didn’t she say so?

“Come!” Luna called, her tone already back to its determined focus. “We hath a long road ahead of us. And we cannot complete it with thee staring at stones, Mister Bookmark! Fear not, such a fear spell fades quickly!”

There was no spell.

"We must keep moving," Luna urged him into movement with an encouraging nudge of her wing. Reluctantly, Devon rose from his haunches and started a slow canter towards the yawning chamber door. Expecting Luna to stride past him and lead the way, the unicorn kept his head down until the same nudge hit him again. Right beside him, the Princess intentionally kept in step with him.

"We shan't leave thee after such a battle with such foul traps in the box." Her smile was genuine and, at last, Devon felt a stir of courage. Better to just leave it like this. No need to talk about it. If she's happy, I'll manage.

"Sure," Devon finally replied. "Thanks." And, now as a pair, they proceeded further into the unknown in companionable silence.

"Gft...nyeah heh hee!" The laugh was a whisper, drowned out by the lingering rattle of machinery and chains. "Oh you gotta be kidding...those two?! No way." Hefting herself down the book-strewn safe path, an orange unicorn stepped quickly, but stealthily forward, maintaining a whispered conversation.

"Wait...hang on, you want me to what?"

"And how do I do that?"

"Ooooh...."

Chapter 6: Clarity

Illustration by Arctic-Sekai.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Astray and jaded by a past they drink,

Focus pulled faded, moods falter and sink.

Yet when lost in blues, just laugh and blink,

Clarity imbues in a blast of pink.

_____

___

Chapter 6

Clarity

It wasn't much to ask for.

Such a simple inquiry would usually summon a quick answer; generally heavy gasps between rapid words describing what was bothering him so much. In the long span of the Princess of the Night's tenure, amid lengthy dealings and interactions between all sects of Equestria's denizens, it would be assumed a decree for a testimony would be earmarked in her repertoire with a phoenix feather.

So why was it, then, that she couldn't push herself any further? She slowly approached the slouching unicorn, his forehoof twisting small circles in the floor. The walls faded into muddy irrelevance; the lava-soaked ambiance snuffed out by his uncharacteristic silence.

She inhaled sharply. It wasn't so much to ask for.

“Forsooth, Devon!” Luna exhaled. “We try to keep thee company and in good cheer, but thy focus on the floor is unbreakable.” She pressed her shoulder against his in an encouraging nudge. “We art trying to help thee, but if you insists on keeping to the ground, we cannot.”

His body didn't move, those orange eyes not easing their grip from the circular imprint his hoof dragged through the soot coated bricks.

“Yeah...” Devon pressed through grit teeth, finally pulling his eyes off from the floor. “I’m sorry, it’s just that... I’d rather...” He paused, trying to piece together some coherent justification that wouldn’t devolve into some elaborate excuse... or petty guise for sympathy... or even a shred of...

“An explanation,” Luna chimed in softly, “would at least be a start.”

The visions from the box followed him closely, accompanied by the lingering question of Luna’s forgiveness of the egregious lie. When he looked up to meet her gaze, the near-sincerity that met him gnawed at his conscience. He yearned to let out the images, but he feared the repercussions of his honesty from before.

So far, honesty hardly been a friend of his.

The Princess let out a small snort. "If thou desires to remain distant..."

Deception, on the other hoof, was faring even a poorer friend.

“We won’t press thee on it, but,” Luna tried a new angle. “but if there was something we could do to help thee focus and get back to thy stride?” The Princess nudged the unicorn again, trying on an encouraging tone. “We need thee to be more collected to endure the trials ahead.”

“There’s more?” Devon huffed. “I’m sorry, Princess, but I don’t know how many more of these I can take! That box was just...” He let out a visible shiver. “This was a whole lot more than I bargained for when I said I’d help you out in the archive, Princess.”

“Is that what’s troubling thee?”

No. Well...

“A little.”

Yeah, but...

“I just think,” Devon lifted his head and slowed to a stop. “If we were just trying to hide from that black-coated guard guy, we could have just hid out by the entry stairs til he was gone.” As he spoke, logical gears spun to life in Devon’s mind. “Yet instead of taking a second to find a way back up, you proceeded without hesitation.” He chose his words carefully, tip-hoofing the line between sounding despondent and convicting. “But we kept going in anyway, and things...” Careful. Careful... “Things... kept getting to you.” He may not have the best handle of traps, but the puzzles, the gaps that she wasn’t telling him began to fall in front of him. “You’re not just hiding from Canterlot.”

Luna sighed and nodded. “Aye. We’re pursuing something we believed we hath put behind us. But fate, t’would seem, still has a grasp on us.” Luna shook her mane, her tone growing simple, humble, even. “I seek to undo a great mistake of my past, and Devon...” her tone wavered, as if the words caused considerable discomfort. “I... need... you... your help.” As she pushed the sentence from her throat, Luna shook her head sharply, as if shooing an invisible insect.

“Wait, what do you need my help for?” Devon asked with a raised brow. “Not to get down on myself, but I haven’t exactly been a lot of help, have I?” Letting out a small scoff at his own expense, Devon grinned. “You coulda put anypony in that box and probably not have them completely... well... you saw how I went.”

“But tis fate that put thee here. Unless we succeed, I face a terrifying fate, Devon.” Luna extended a hoof and pressed it on the unicorn’s shoulder. Her emphasis on fate send an uncomfortable shiver down his spine. “And to succeed, I need thee to face what comes to us and not wither.” The Princess looked down at him, seeing his nose sifting through the saddlebag again.

She still had difficulty grasping the sight of a unicorn using muzzle and hoof to sort through his books without the assistance of magic. She felt the impulse to lend a bit of magic of her own to help, but by the time she got a good glimpse over his shoulder, saw that he already had a ruffling journal hanging limp by the spine between his teeth.

If there were two qualities he’d grown adept at without telekinesis, it was finding the hard way to delve into a book and to hide away even for just a little bit; both of which seemed to go hoof in hoof. He flipped stacks of pages aside, until his eyes caught something rather distinct.

The methodically aligned words and notations of the journal suddenly stopped. The hoofwriting had gone from a tight, carefully crafted stream into a frantic explosion of quick notes and hastily etched drawings. Numbers, diagrams, symbols and cryptic etchings bordered various blocks of quick incomprehensible notes.

Whatever the architect had stumbled upon at this moment was surely substantial. No longer had the journal felt like a guide for any passerby as it became more a fervent squall of personal notations and arrangements of advanced magical formulas intended only to be read by the author himself.

He turned to the next page carefully. Each proceeding page became more dense, packed diligently with compressed lettering, almost drawn black with crosshatched overlapping of words and designs. A quick flip of a hoof drew back an almost blotched out page strewn edge to edge in delirious sketches, revealing a spread of two completely blank pages suddenly staring back at him.

The etchings... Did it just suddenly... stop?

The unicorn paused, scanning the suddenly blank spread. His eyes wandered curiously, wondering if the architect had determined to make the indecipherable puzzle of sporadic scribbling his final word.

“Devon?” Luna called out to him, but took a quick step back as he responded only with a lean closer to the journal.

He flipped another page. Blank. Spending less time than on the last, he flipped again, with the same result. Page after page of blank parchment stared back at him until, after a quick mindless flick of a hoof, a jarring burst of large page-devouring letters jumped out.

THEY EXIST.

The imprints of the author’s ink-stained hoofprints around the page’s edges showed that whomever wrote it was in such a hurry they used their hooves instead of a quill.

“What exists?” Luna asked over his shoulder. “Oh,” she pulled her head back seeing Devon twist his head around from the journal. “Sorry. We could read such large text from afar.”

Devon slowly turned the page, the journal returning back to its normal structure. Though blotches of black ink bled through, dotting the pages beneath, the text within still retained legibility, even bending around some blotches as the architect’s notes realized the mistake of his rushed folly.

Apparently, he used the entire ink jar, too. Out of black, he must have switched to light brown.

Year 2 Month 7 Day 20

The voices are real!

I finally pieced together that it was my family’s pendant that brought the voices to me. When I wore it to the gala, I figured it was nothing more than cider and sleep deprivation twisting my senses into hearing things. But I worked late again, and the missus insisted that I wear the pendant.

When I was walking home, the voices began again, this time they were clear. They did not just speak to me, but I spoke in return!

I spoke with the stars!

I could scarcely believe it myself, but I believe there is no other explanation. It explains my family’s fixation with fortune telling. They always had an ear to fate and those who weave it, if this pendant is any indication. Tonight, after my finance is asleep, I will leave the house and speak to them further. Last I need is another thing for her to call me crazy over, she just doesn’t understand it at all.

“I’m... not sure,” Devon admitted, quickly flipping to the next page. “Something about a family pendant, voices, and...” He turned back the page, skimming the last snippet. “He could tell others’ fortunes using the stars or something.”

The Princess remained silent.

Not looking up, Devon reiterated his finding. “Like, the stars... talked to him?” He turned to the next page. “Sounds weird.”

Year 2 Month 7 Day 21

Another night spent conversing with them. It is strange how they speak, where the words don’t come from outside but from within. In my own voice!

They told me things, many things, about destiny and how powerful it is. They are beings of clear laws and order. Everything is direct and concise. I envy it to the politicking and backstabbing of Canterlot and the petty nobility that grows like a wild weed.

But what can a scribe do to bring this ideal to the nobility?

The fiance caught me asleep at the window this morning. I don’t remember when I fell asleep, or even that I had. When I asked if there was a way to bring the order of the stars’ fate to Equestria, I must have blacked out. But when I woke...

I woke with a vision. A goal. I can do more than simply point ponies towards their fate, or guide their path. I can CRAFT the path. With the stars’ assistance, fate is mine to bend and shape. To think of the good I can do with this! With the foresight of the stars, I can ensure that the world is better off, and that mistakes are avoided.

Missus thinks I’m needing more sleep, among other things. She’s worried about me, I know it. I may bring her in to this knowledge. Her intellect would be valuable. But her doubts in this project, and its strain upon both of us, it seems she can hardly stand to look at me anymore after all we put into this. No doubt, she’d find some trivial reason to slow me down further, she always does.

If I kept that memory recollection ward on me, I’d just feel worse knowing how enthusiastic she would be about this. I wish I could get the passion and support she used to have.

“Yeah, just as I thought.” Devon muttered, closing the journal. “Apparently whomever built this place dabbled a bit with fortune telling and star reading. Except,” he put the journal in his saddlebag, hoisting it into position over his back, “He said he isn’t just reading fate. He thought he... could change...” The charcoal unicorn’s voice trailed off as he turned around.

Luna’s silence would be deemed a deceitful observation from previous. Absence would’ve been more fitting. He scanned the magma-lit chambers around him, seeing a narrow point of cobalt light radiating from around the corridor forward. Before a narrow, branching hallway lay a long bench and desk. The desk was cluttered with detritus and dust from a millennium of neglect.

Approaching the Princess, he picked up his speed towards her. The sudden clattering of his trot grabbed her attention, but upon making eye contact with him, she drooped back down, huffing with a descending neck.

The unicorn couldn't help but feel he missed something, like she didn't choose to leave him to his reading.

It was like she didn't want to see his face... when he put two and two and two together.

* * * * *

Narrow lines of red light cut across his dark face as he slowly paced in front of the closed blinds before the window. He held his head as low as his scowl, pondering the questions over and over through his head between each jangling step, his eyes needing nothing more than the dim glow of the setting sun outside to dramatically traverse the room in heavy hoofsteps.

“Sir, you sure we need all the lights off?”

“Easy, constable Jetlag,” Stormblade uttered in a low dramatic grimace of contemplation. “You’re hampering my low dramatic grimace of contemplation, what all with that loose cannon attitude.”

He turned, pacing back in front of the window. Another succession of red slicing light traversed across his face, each like a weathered scar, not unlike the lines of cases that scarred his psyche.

“Sir, perhaps we’re taking this whole good cop, bad cop thing...” Jetstream hesitated, leaning forward from off the wall to devise a proper approach. “I think your dedication to your plan of interrogation is-”

“You know not the sights these tired eyes of mine have seen,” Stormblade interjected. “It’s easy for you to brush it off, you’re callous and unfeeling while I...” He tilted his head up, and planted a hoof against the window blinds. They pinched together in a shrill wisp, dropping the room into darkness. He breathed in deep between clenched teeth. “I... have seen all walks of Equestria, I at least have something to live for.”

That...

“I’m not sure I, umm...”

... Didn’t make any sense.

“I said go easy!” Stormblade smashed a hoof on the ground, firing a wildly assertive glance towards the private. “Think of the things this poor girl here would tell if she got the full force of your,” he swung a hoof to his forehead, pleading to nopony in particular, “unbridled maverick interrogation methods, no!” He suddenly jumped forward, planting his forehooves atop Jetstreams shoulders. “I would not let you do to her what you did to Loose-Lipped Lenny!”

“Loose-Lipped... ?” The cyan pegasus uttered stepping back, shaking a strand of rainbow mane from his eyes. “Ah.” Again with the whole cop fantasy thing.

The entire evening was proceeding very similarly throughout. It was after their fifth attempt at executing some sort of police-style interrogation... well, interrogation being Stormblade’s term for ten seconds of questioning amid twenty minutes of reminiscing of a cold case that existed only in the Captain’s fantasy-laden mind... had they been given a lead. Coincidentally, the lead was the easiest to acquire, since it was one of hundreds of flyers posted around the train station.

Stormblade raised a flyer up to his shoulder, and with his other forehoof dropped the window’s pullcord. The blinds shot up, dousing the room in radiant tangerine light. Between heavy shadows, a single pink earth pony sat at a small table, looking toward the Captain.

“Dearest,” the Captain began, “I understand you’re a bit nervous.”

“Hah, nervous?” The pink mare laughed, rolling her eyes to the side. “Not at all! I’m so glad you actually came by, Twilight is the one who is so nervous, I think she’s about to flip her lid, but come on I mean ‘flip her lid’ what does that even mean? Ponies don’t have lids, except eyelids, but they-” She hushed herself with a snort, seeing the flyer in the Captain’s hand. “My flyer! Have you come to answer it!? Do you know where Twilight’s big crown thingie went!? Do you, do you, do you!?”

“Jetlag,” the Captain called while walking towards the shadows to the waiting pegasus. “She’s not answering our questions.”

“Silly!” The mare laughed. “You haven’t asked anyth-”

“This is your chance,” Stormblade waved the cyan pegasus over. “But so help me if you lay a hoof on her like you did to Fatty Fitzfeather, I’ll see to it you get no more help from the commissioner in staying off desk duty!” As they brushed shoulders, Stormblade jabbed a hoof into his chest, leaning in close with a low whisper. “Remember, she’s supposed to like me, okay? You weren’t very bad cop to that yellow pegasus, I was the one who ended up making her cry, not you.”

Yep, been like this all evening.

Calmly, Jetstream slowly walked up to the table. He nodded quietly to the pink pony, ensuring to give a reassuring grin. With a soft plant of his hoof, he presented the flyer before him.

“We’re so sorry to interrupt and enter into your palace suite, ma’am.” Jetstream breathed out heavily. Over the pink earth pony’s shoulder, he saw a rustling in the shadows, the Captain standing tall while mouthing bad cop, bad cop. Fine, he might as well. “So, umm,” his mind suddenly pulled out spontaneous idea, and from out of nowhere, began the best bad cop routine he could muster.

Like he would jokingly do in unsupervised company outside of Stormblade’s watch, Jetstream delved right into his best and long-practiced impersonation of the Captain.

“Nyaw, haw haw,” Jetstream sneered, attempting his best Stormblade-style guffaw. “See, you’re going to give me what I want to hear, because I’m the one who is in charge.” The words. Oh how naturally and easily they came to him. “For I’m Capt... -” Whoops, too naturally. “For I’m, err-umm,” Save it, save it! “I’m constable Jetlag!” Surprisingly he even nailed the demeaning mispronunciation of his name to the decibel.

“Oh by my honor!” Stormblade cried from the corner of the room in a raised octave. “Now see to it immediately that you cease, J. Lag!” Huh, the Captain was even making up buddy-cop nicknames, too? “We don’t need a repeat of how you floored, Jimmy Cherry Chonga!” He really was that far gone? “She’s just a girl, J.!”

Yep. Apparently so. The Captain whirled into the room, slamming a firm hoof on the table. The flyer kicked into the air, drifting into a quick grab from the cyan pegasus. “I’ve seen enough to know you’re just a lowdown crooked copper,” the Captain winded up for another lengthy diatribe, probably already has some internal fiction penned ready to lament over for the next ten minutes. And fiction was certainly a much-dabbled hobby of the Captain, as Jetstream very well knew.

Yeesh.

As Jetstream very well knew too much. The pegasus clenched his eyes shut, shuddering at the pedantic filth he had chanced upon earlier, the stray imagery of the Captain weaving constellations and night magic with his hoof before Princess Lu-ooh by Celestia’s graces why couldn’t he scrub the image from his mind!?

“Are you okay?” The pink pony leaned across the table with a quizzical glance, completely ignoring the Captain.

Jetstream looked up, the Captain was now back out the window, tapping on the glass whilst blustering incoherently of metaphors about his love to serve on the force being like the setting sun.

“Fine, actually,” the pegasus righted himself on the chair, glad to see that his success at bad cop came from the sincerest of inspirations. He turned back to the pink pony. “So you’re Pinkie Pie I take it.”

“Last I checked,” she smiled, pulling the flyer back to her. “And I take it you’re supposed to be the bad cop in this act?”

Jetstream turned again to the Captain, the black-coated pony leaning to the floor with hooves outstretched, seemingly comforting an imaginary fallen soldier while issuing teary last rites. “Saw right through it, huh?” Gee, that obvious?

“Naw, I had a hunch a minute before you got here.” She stood up, and with a quick giggle, lifted a drooping forehoof beside her face. “Ol’ Pinkie Sense kicked in, flipping fetlock,” she turned sideways, “shifty shoulder,” faced backward, “rollin’ rump,” making all the corresponding motions. “It usually means a big ol’ circus was coming to town. But the way it acted when you guys showed up, it was like I was being visited by the biggest circus in the universe!”

Jetstream’s focus shattered as a piercing “WHYYY!?” echoed through the room.

“Well,” the pegasus sighed, watching Stormblade drop to his knees with arms outstretched. “Can’t say your Pinkie Sense was wrong.” He could almost see the imagined raindrops bouncing off the Captain’s face the way his eyelids fluttered. “So, listen this shouldn’t take long at all, we just need to know where your friend Twilight is at the current moment.”

“Oh,” Pinkie giggled with a slight tilt of her head, “You guards, I mean,” she narrowed her brow with a playful growl, “You roughneck coppers want answers!? Well I ain’t gonna be one to talk so easily now, you hear! Not after what you guys did to Tommy Two-Bits! He was my brother, you hear, he was...” She sat down, easing her tensed face, “You’re not in this at all, are you.”

“It’s...” Jetstream flinched as the Captain cried out, gripping his side dramatically as he fell to the floor. “... Pretty much a one-pony show.”

“That’s strange,” Pinkie commented, two words the pegasus felt could apply to just about anything happening in the room. “I would assume the royal pegasus guard would know Twilight’s location at all times.”

“Yeah, that’s the first thing we assumed, except... well...”

“If I don’t survive this,” the Captain flopped onto the couch, his hoof outstretched to grip at an imaginary paramedic’s collar. “Donate my millions to a foal hospital!”

The pegasus continued. “His method acting sort of caused us...” Sigh. “Him to pronounce the guard’s record keeper a liar and evidence tamperer, and our...” Groan. “... Rough and tumble no nonsense crime solving chemistry demands we not dignify him with our attention any further.”

“And refurbish my luxury yacht into a kitten orphanage!”

“I, uhh...” The pink pony slowly turned her head back to the pegasus. “I suppose I find that very highly plausible, actually.” She lifted her head, gazing out the window. Along the prickly silhouette of Canterlot rooftops, her outstretched hoof pointed towards a large structure just a few blocks away. “Twilight last said she was going to do further research on-”

“Fate! She had me in her grasp!” A rustle of jangles emerged from the shadows into the low sunlight with an outstretched hoof. “But I pulled through, J., darnit I pulled through! I had to, for the sick filly waiting on me, I survived using sheer force of will, undying as my... undying love for the city.” The captain sauntered beside the cyan pegasus. “And THAT!” Stormblade smacked a foreleg into Jetstream’s shoulder, and in a single swipe of a black hoof hurled him out of the chair. “That is why I’m the one who asks all the ques-”

“Twilight’s at the Canterlot Archive!” The pink pony quickly smiled, waving a hoof forward. “She said she’d be there all night!”

“Aha!” Stormblade crossed his forelegs, leaning back in the chair. “See constable Jetlag, I told you, you attract more flies with honey than vinegar.”

It had been like this all evening.

* * * * *

A mistake. A huge mistake.

I have just made an unforgivable mistake. The stars, the fates, the power, all of it. You can’t just go rushing into it. The stars, they... they are too specific. They know not of emotions, restraint, or context. From so up high, the very concept of subtlety is lost to them, they wouldn’t know the difference between a pint of cider and a tsunami of raw apples!

My dearest, sweetest love. My love!

It was such a simple request, so easy. I just wanted her to be more supportive. To not chastise me so much. To be happy of my accomplishments, and that I’m pulling my family bloodline out of the undignified dredges of hoof-reading and gypsy mind games. The stars said they could try and convince her, like they convinced me! It was so foalproof! But...

Writing.

They wanted it all in writing! And so I obliged, giving them the opportunity to intervene! Convince her, I penned. Have her eager to help me!

And now! Oh, she is supportive. She’s loving, she’s tender, she’s warm. All! The! Time! How empty she looks at me, how forced the words, how devoid of, of...

Sincerity!

The long-lost coos I yearned for have returned, but lost is the sincerity behind them! Where’s the mare unafraid to call me out, and make me better by pointing out my flaws! The mare who dared to steer me right! The mare who, if I just told beforehand, in pure sincerity like I should have...

The mare who would’ve stopped me...

“Ah ha!” A royal Canterlot blast of decibels reverberated off the low walls, interrupting Devon’s reading.

Devon’s shoulders jumped up his neck. “Hyuh!?” He impulsively shut the journal closed.

“Echothyst!” Luna called. “How fortunate, for we hath wondered if such a treasure would last here.” Striding purposefully towards the desk, Luna lit her horn and scooped a pair of intricately carved gems from the corner.

“Whatothyst?” Devon asked, craning his neck to peer over Luna’s shoulder at the two twin baubles. Each were a brilliant sky blue, carved and framed with identical gold frames. “Never heard of it. What is it?” Rather than simply answer, Luna floated one towards Devon’s ear. “Uh, Princess? What are you do-hey!” Despite his protests, Devon found the gem hooked around his ear until it hung snugly against the side of his cheek. Just as he was about to pull it off, the unicorn saw Luna lay its twin against her ear with a dainty flick of magic. Silently, she turned and strode down the hall, leaving the confused unicorn standing still with a cocked head and puzzled expression.

At the end of the hall, Luna paused.

“Hello! Devon!” a voice boomed in his ear, carried by the echothyst in perfect clarity.

“Gya-YEAHGH!” Devon flailed at the sudden voice right at his side. As the wince died down, an ethereal giggle whispered through his ear.

“Our apologies, but tis been so long since we used these.” The Princess rolled out another giggle. “We worried that such things mayhap hath been lost. As thou can see... er... hear... echothyst is a gem that carries thy voice to its twin. There always be two gems of identical echothyst, and these are priceless, as no twin gems hath ever been found so close.”

“So...” Devon spoke slowly, still a bit amazed at speaking to a pony he could barely see over such a distance without shouting. “You can hear me right now?”

“As if thou were right at our side. These gems only occur naturally, they could never been forged, either by hoof or magic.” She flicked the shimmering orb with a tip of her hoof, nestling it comfortably against her mane.

“These would have really been useful a room ago,” Devon grinned. He exhaled heavily,. “not going to complain about it now.” Reaching up with a foreleg, Devon slid his hoof along the adornment’s surface. “How far can this work? Just across the room?”

“As far as we could test such things,” Luna said, her voice mixing oddly as close in his ear and closing as she returned from the hallway, “the echothyst’s voice can stretch forever. It should prove more than valuable for the maze ahead.”

“A maze?” Devon blinked.

“Please do not tell us that thou hast some horrible tragic past with a maze as well, Devon. We’re likely going to travel its depths for some time... we hath no idea what the correct course is.”

“Funny,” the unicorn retorted. “But this time, I think I’m in good shape for once.” Devon beamed brightly as he snatched two pieces of broken stone from a corner. “Take one of these.” Seeing Luna’s look of frank puzzlement, Devon hefted the chunk of stone in his hoof and dragged it across one of the labyrinth walls, leaving a jagged line of worn stone and scratch behind. “We each take one and go different ways. Drag that along the wall and we’ll always have a path back to one another.”

Luna blinked, the idea slowly taking shape.

“And since you know so much about the echothyst,” Devon added, flicking his ear to jingle the small gemstone resting in it. “If either one of us finds something, we just need to call it out, and we have a line right back to the other.”

“Devon that’s,” Luna huffed, then smiled, “brilliant! Howforth did thou gain this skill?”

“A horrible, tragic past,” he said with a wry grin. “I worked in the Archive for a few years. And I’ve never met a maze tougher than the stacks there. So I always carried a quill with me so I could mark my way. Same idea, really. Worked pretty well til Boxtops got wise to me sneaking off for long lunches.”

* * * * *

Jangle, jangle. “Long lunches, you say?” The Captain loomed over the green unicorn. “I should’ve figured she’d be coerced into hiding by the undisciplined riff-raff of Archive peons.”

Lily Boxtop squeaked in a sudden outburst of uncontrolled resentment, but quickly snared her murderous forehoof back to the ground. “Y-yes, well,” she breathed heavily, attempting to look up to Stormblade’s smarmy countenance. “This was where I last saw him. I warned him not to bother the Princess but-” she immediately pulled her face away as the Captain smiled. Couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t make eye contact with him.

“An accomplice!” the Captain smacked fetlock to hoof. “I should’ve known. These...” He scanned across the Archive foyer, observing the lines of ponies traversing the aisles. “... These... underlings would be so ignorant of protocol!”

The green unicorn looking up with pleading eyes to the cyan pegasus standing at the end of the aisle. He returned her glance, only to shrug his shoulders and roll his eyes. She snuck a yearning look to the overflowing cart of scrolls she had been left with, left behind by that ingrateful post-ditching magically-inept unicorn, a peasant task gnawed at her sanity. But at this point, a far greater alternative than conversing with...

“Captain Stormblade,” Jetstream interjected, advancing from the end of the aisle. “Sir, I-”

“Hmm?” the black-coated stallion swiveled a condescending grin at him. “Were you addressing me?”

Right, still with the good cop, dunce cop routine. The cyan pegasus breathed in deep. Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts. “Detective Stor-”

“Nyeh-eh-eh, nope.”

Puppies. Ice cream. Puppies playing in ice cream. “Detective CAPTAIN Stormblade?”

The Captain shifted, quickly swiveling to the pegasus stallion with... “Yes?” ... Oh that horrible, horrible proud grin of his.

Jetstream swerved between the unicorn and the Captain. “Sorry to interrupt-”

“Oh!” The Captain interrupted, turning to the green mare. “Looks like we’re doing this the hard way.” He took two long strides backward. “Remember, J.! One more incident like with Miss Pinks and the commissioner will have BOTH our badges!”

He paused, keeping his eyes fixated on the Captain as he slowly backed against the shelves. Seeing Stormblade’s focus not deviating in the least from the green unicorn mare, he sighed, slowly facing the Archive supervisor.

“Sorry... to... interrupt.” Yeah, he was pretty far over the insipid fantasy. “We just need to find Miss Sparkle.”

A plan immediately hatched in Lily’s mind. She eyed the Captain as he brutishly nuzzled through the shelves of books, seemingly convinced that he was hot on some lead involving the dust wedged between the aisles. An opportunity to rid the pesky officer breached. “Why yes, Miss Sparkle, I heard that Twilight went to the top floor,” she pointed a hoof to the highest reach of the foyer. “Find the, uhh...” Make up something, make sure it doesn’t exist, “... Daring Doo fanfiction aisle.” Oh come now, make sure it isn’t completely stupid either. “Then!” She quickly exclaimed over Jetstream’s emerging inquiry, shooting a foreleg toward the distance. “Back row, right, right, left, right, across the ceiling, you can’t miss it, bam, there’s Twilight!”

“I’m where?” A purple mare suddenly appeared from around the aisle.

“Hyah-ah!” Lily spun, her tail whacking Jetstream in the nose. “Oh, you’re...” the supervisor chuckled, masking her defeated plan. “Ah-huh, h-yes, you’re... just right here now. This here is, umm,” she extended a foreleg, motioning it to the cyan pegasus. “Constable J. And his commanding officer-”

Jangle. “Detective Captain Stormblade!” A black hoof reached out with salutations.

Twilight narrowed her eyes, an acidic groan gurgling through. “Stormblade.”

The black officer pony smiled, retracting his hoof across his chest. “Detective Captain Stormblade, at your serv-”

“Stormblade.” She cut him off, rolling her head to the side. “Yes. What?”

“Detec-”

“What!?”

Jetstream sauntered back, lowering his head. He attempted to retain a visual on the Captain’s reaction to a Ponyville filly so blatantly refusing to address him by title. The black stallion’s scowl turned onto the cyan guard, and he quickly assumed a most innocently nebulous posture. No ideas here, Captain. Inspiration meter’s needle still stapled at zero! Satisfying as it was to witness, the pegasus knew not to get his hopes up. Unlike him, the purple unicorn didn’t have to remain a part of his regiment for extended periods of time. Even with his best efforts, the pegasus would still get a hoof to the back of the head for the slightest mistake in the Captain’s interpretation of protocol. To so blatantly disregard it, though, Jetstream could hardly imagine Stormblade’s reaction.

“Ha ha! H-Hah!” The Captain laughed.

Well, true to initial feeling, Jetstream could hardly imagine that reaction. Inspiration made way for confusion and curiosity.

“As I should’ve known,” Stormblade’s smile widened with an outstretched hoof to wrap around her shoulder. “Esteemed student of Celestia, still so much to learn, so much to-wu-woah!”

The Captain tipped flat against the floor as Twilight popped out of sight under the Captain’s reaching foreleg, leaving him with just musty air to support his overbearing weight. A twinkling pulse on the opposite side of the Captain summoned the purple unicorn’s return in a blink of teleportation.

Twilight raspberried, twirling to make a brisk exit away from the Captain. Passing by Jetstream, she slowed, taking a lengthy glance at him. Suddenly, she grinned, and with a twist of her neck, motioned him to follow her.

Rounding into the main Archive foyer, Twilight’s horn illuminated, and in a swath of telekinetic energy, she lifted the helmet off of Jetstream’s head.

“I knew I recognized you.” The unicorn dropped the helmet into her hooves, the rainbow ball of hair beneath it poofed out in an eruption of wild colors. “I see what’s happened with your mane. My friend Rarity, well she...” Her horn shone again, a twirling vortex of sparks ascended to the tip in an augmenting ball of spiked light. “She showed me a mane-fixing spell you might want for that.”

Really!? Even after the way the jangling jerk agitated her so much, she still found it in her heart to fix his mane!? He gasped! “Really!?” He used to wonder what friendship could be! “I would be eternally grateful!”

Twilight chuckled at his enthusiasm. “Must’ve be difficult to live with, huh?” You have no idea. A halo of pink and blue specks spun and descended into the rainbow mane. “Here goes!” The specks grew, and joined together with narrow barbs of energy that wrapped around his mane like a shimmering net. A white plume coalesced and wafted away into the air, leaving behind a more voluminous, shinier, perfectly rounded sphere of neatly arranged rainbow.

Jetstream gawked at the monstrosity.

“There you go!” Twilight smiled warmly, quickly plopping the armor back on the guard’s head. “That’ll clear up that helmet-hair for weeks!”

“Miss Sparkle, I...” Jetstream’s jaw hung open, speechless. “I don’t know what to...”

“Oh, tish tosh,” the unicorn chuckled, nudging a fetlock into his chestplate. “I haven’t forgotten how you helped us against that killer muffin swarm on the train earlier! I still owe you.”

“Us!” A familiar jangle cut in. “And I’m fine, nopony help me up or anything. Constable J. Lag, I see you’ve been interrogating the suspect.”

“Suspect!?” Twilight’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Yessir, I...” Jetstream lowered his head, turning it over his shoulder to the purple unicorn. “Just go with it,” he whispered lowly. “He’s being especially Stormblade this afternoon since Luna disappeared.” He immediately regret making such elaboration when Twilight’s posture fired into a rigid stance.

The unicorn’s voice ascended higher. “Princess Luna! She... she’s gone-”

“Missing, yes,” Stormblade nodded. “Last saw her right down that corridor there. A few hours ago.” He pointed a hoof to the aisle. Lily peeked her head up, and seeing the black hoof directed at her, immediately flopped for cover behind the cart of scrolls.

The cyan pegasus attempted to reason with Twilight. “It would please the Captain if-”

“Detective Captain.”

Gyugh. “It would please the...” Nincompoop. “... Detective Captain if you had any leads so we could please hopefully get this pursuit resolved quickly.”

The unicorn turned to Jetstream, a subtle twinge of pity in her eye. Sure she was a master of all sorts of magics, a quick learner and dynamic in a range of unicorn capabilities. But she also knew that magic was to be used smartly, not as a crutch but as an accessory to existing skills and knowledge. A wild idea came to her.

“Maybe,” she thought out loud, turning to the pegasus guard. “Perhaps I could create a charm of some sort...” The plan rolled together, but the more it panned out, the more complicated it felt in execution. “I’d need a tangible vessel, an effigy of some sort, and maybe...” She laughed. No, this idea was terrible, far too complex. “Hah, and maybe something directly off the Princess like a lock of mane.”

Okay, that wild-eyed look the Captain suddenly popped into kinda creeped her out.

Eh, worth a try. “And, you have all those things immediately on hoof don’t you.”

The Captain motioned her back into the aisle, but shook a dismissive fetlock at Jetstream when he attempted to follow. He sauntered low, quietly motioning the unicorn close to him, ensuring nopony else could see past their eight-legged huddle. He quickly shushed her, and digging a hoof into his red jacket, presented two dolls.

“Oh!” Twilight reeled, but immediately pulled back in towards the Captain. For Jetstream, she knew to just soldier through whatever weirdness was at hoof. “That’s... that’s you?”

“Shh,” the Captain nodded. Fiddling with the small dolls, he presented a cobalt one, its cyan eyes covered by a long blue mane.

“I understand,” Twilight lied. She’d seen many things in her days, but a grown stallion collecting pony figures? “This is a perfectly suitable effigy, but now we just need to lace it with a lock of the Princess’ hair so it can track the source, leading you to her. But I don’t know where we can actually get access to...”

She looked closely at the doll, seeing a subtle blush in the Captain’s retreating face. “Really?” Excessive abuse of power, anypony? “You actually stole Luna’s hair to make... you know what, sir... ?” Twilight took a long stride back. “No more questions from me, no more questions from you. Deal?”

The Captain nodded tentatively.

“Excellent. Now, I don’t know if this works, so hoof over the other doll of yourself real quick for a test.” She levitated the Stormblade figure between them, pinching a cone of magic alongside its telekinetically outstretched mane. “Let’s see how well this works.”

A second aura of radiance surrounded Twilight’s horn, and she clenched her teeth in concentration. Glowing, the Stormblade doll shimmered in narrow lines of transcending energy, each ripple converging rhythmically into the figure’s waving mane. The tips of the mane wrapped around their ends, squeezing tightly into the same shape of the cone of magic alongside it.

The cone flickered, jumped with a narrow jet of sparks, then wrapped like melting wax into the Stormblade figure’s mane.

“There,” Twilight exhaled deeply, satisfied with her magic hoofiwork. “Now the lock of your mane you used for your doll,” she tilted it straight up, clenching it against her fetlock, “should now always be pointing... at...”

Something was wrong, very strange. Twilight’s eyes popped wide in shocked disbelief, immediately detecting the flaw in her test spell. Instead of the doll’s mane forming a directional cone towards Stormblade...

“You didn’t even use your own mane for your own doll!?”

... It pointed at Jetstream.

* * * * *

It’s worse than I thought.

She’s been radiant all day today, everything I say just makes her burst out into uncontrollable laughter and unending swooning over me. What’s the value of reward if there’s no way to fail pleasing her? Even when I commented being tired from so much work and so little sleep, she immediately locked her hooves around me and tucked me in, singing me a lullabye. Despite protests that I didn’t even have dinner yet, that the sun was still setting, she seemed to think ahead and served me a bowl of my favorite soup in bed. But I couldn’t do this, I had work to do still!

It took an extra twenty minutes to get her to stop apologizing and accept that I just needed some space. She said she understood, but those eyes, how empty they looked seeing her turn away. The way she blinked... how devoid of purpose they sank... as if she just...

She forgot she had eyes.

Despite the difficulty to do so, I’ve taken some time to focus on our next step. For the chamber gate at the Archive, we needed material to test with. Jokes, specifically. We needed lots of jokes to ensure our ward for the laughter chamber would hold, and so that it could be implemented within our guardian. Oh, he has matured very well, much more gracefully than we expected.

My head’s in a fog, though. Only punchline I could devise is an absolute dud:

Hear the joke about wrapping paper?
Never mind. It’s tearable.

I tested it out, reading it aloud a few times much to my own displeasure. Unsurprisingly, my love found it irresistible. The way she howled and pounded her hooves on the floor, it was like she’d seen a mime trampled by a minotaur. It pains me knowing that only under the influence of the stars would she not slap me across the muzzle for such awful humor, yet the ten minutes she spent rolling on the rug in tortured fits of laughter, I knew their influence was worse than I thought.

I think it would help my dearest to bring her along with me tomorrow. Perhaps her involuntary happiness would do well to ensure the best possible enchantment for our little lava guardian. Lemons, lemonade, I suppose.

Luna and Devon's breaths hushed as an unsettling stillness enveloped the frigid, damp room. Greeting them upon their entry, a warped wooden ornament hanging out of the wall sputtered and fired awake, a magical plume of fire dancing to life as they passed near its proximity. Devon reached out to the torch, gripping it tightly and clenching it close to him.

Finally. He could provide some light of his own.

Deafened by the rhythmic percussion of their own hoofsteps reverberated between echoing shale walls, Luna stopped suddenly to gaze around the cavernous expanse, the veins and cracks in the walls dancing like electric strands from the sibling blue and orange lights of Luna's horn and Devon's torch.

Noticing the telltale absence of the graceful royal beats complementing his canter, Devon's ears perked behind him, ultimately guiding his eyes back to where she stood alone, a piercing silhouette unwavering in her own cobalt glow.

He raised a hoof, "do you... Is there-" just barely commencing the forward arc towards her-

"-Stop!"

When her voice pierced the echothyst, the joints in his fetlocks seized, every fiber of every muscle bit down unanimously against bone, not even his eyes daring to blink as the fetid air's droplets gently kissed his brow.

"What is it now?" Devon’s eyes narrowed onto her gaze, trying to make sense of the darting movements of her unfocused irises.

She closed her eyes, tilting her head back, a soft exhale breaching through flaring nostrils. She took another step forward, and with Devon’s focus intent upon her, he saw what she had just run in to. The floor panel she was on was conspicuously depressed, and a lingering whisper of pink gas still hung around her. A wide smile drifted across her face.

He jolted forward, but only saw more ominous panels at his hooves. Thinking safely, he hesitated and observed the Princess. What had just befallen her this time!?

Luna's stoic exterior faded away as insurgent bolts of movement seized her. Like a pond, movement and shivers rippled across her body. He was amazed. Speechless. How her mane ebbed with the riveting pulses, her body arched into a graceful vessel reaching to clench onto otherworldly vibes. Why was he so taken by those cute... adorable... flaring nostrils... ?

She laughed wildly. "See!?"

Nope, nope, he wasn't staring at her, not at all. Really! Devon shook his head, adjusting his focus back to the shale walls around him. Pulling his jaw askew, he again scanned for any sort of hint of what Luna was about to reveal to him.

"It's not very far."

Strange. Her voice had changed to be more... chipper. Chipper? Yes, certainly more upbeat. Seemed she was channeling some emotion beyond her own control. What even fired from the floor panel? Laughing gas? Some vision-inducing powder?

"Just move your little rump!"

Was it... singing? Luna? Singing? Oh, how lucky Devon felt, after all those long-winded diatribes about how we Royal Canterlot Elite doth not dare disgraceth thine tongue betwixt foalish peasant lyrical vanities he could totally hold this over her head for his amusement. Luna. Singing. Priceless.

"We can make it if we try,"

Priceless. His grin stretched maniacally across his face as he clapped his hooves together trying to suppress the laughter, fearing his erupting chortle would knock her out of the trance and end his fun. He could only imagine her horrifying embarrassment. This had to be the worst of the deathtraps they'd stumbled across. Not the most dangerous, but by far the most memorable.

"With a hop,"

Suddenly, Luna's eyes shot open as an explosion of pink light flooded in from the floor. Devon flinched from the abrupt flash of color bursting forth in an orb of a million dagger-sharp pins of light. A searing glow illuminated every inch of shale, washing it in a fiery shade of deranged pink. Hold on, pink. Pink. Pink... With a hop... Where had he heard this song before?

"Skip,"

Oh horseapples.

Devon bounded forward in a flailing explosion of panicked limbs screaming. "AND JUMP!!!"

A magnanimous crash resounded through every atom of the cavern, the shale floor and walls disintegrated to cascading powder as a pink spike of magma rocketed upwards where Devon was standing, wisps of the fuchsia slag sticking to and singing the tip of his tail. As his hooves sunk into the crackling floor, veins of prismatic rose shades percolated between the grated scars expanding wildly beneath him!

Luna froze, still locked in her hypnotic giggle fit, her eyes still dancing with pink hues as her body fought the gas. Her head slunk back limp, and jerked upwards as her rear hooves buckled helplessly through the floor.

Luna was falling through!

With more strength than he knew he had, Devon grit his teeth and drastically leapt forward, closing the gap. Time slowed, the deafening cavalcade of the pink lava droned into a dull hum. He could feel the burning air lapping against the ducts of his eyes, the shale embers stinging the back of his nose, and the swirling maelstrom of lava reaching to ensnare her into its deathly maw.

Her.

Still unknowing of what was happening, still frozen by the lungful of gas hijacking her body, still laughing. Still... oh mercy, how amazing she looked when those nostrils flared like that...

Focus, Devon!

With a disorienting jolt, his shoulder embedded deeply underneath her foreleg, the momentum slinging her across his back. He felt the biting, corrosive lick of magma leap up his flank, a blast of steam pushing him forward, and amid a volley of dust, stones, and unfathomably hot air, Devon held tightly onto as much cobalt hide he could as he careened, somersaulting through the cataclysmic hail storm of fire. The pink spike that burst through the floor withdrew, leaving an outward-spreading crevasse.

His stomach floundered as he felt himself falling. Falling. Falling through pelting rocks and nipping ash, holding himself between the furious belching salvo of pink annihilation and the murmuring Princess. Falling together as one spinning projectile as he clamored to hold onto her ribs, shoulder, and-

With a meaty thump, the world spun and a snare of pain jolted up Devon's spine, dislodging the mare from his grip.

Ground.

Solid, unshaking, unexploding ground!

He twirled his neck around to look where Luna had landed. He found himself peering down the long gnarled hallway they arrived from, unable to seen more than a few dozen haunches through the enveloping darkness. Devon tried to call out, but could only sputter out errant coughs as vaporized rock coated the back of his tongue. With a second convulsion of greater vigor, he coiled his head upwards to attempt clearing the detritus from inside his mouth a third time, the hallway clouded up in his vision.

He almost didn't hear the rustle, and almost didn't see the tendril of astral blue in his peripheral vision. Forcing his clenched eyes open, Devon arched back to see Luna pulling herself from behind a large stone, shaking herself off.

"By yonder, what hast thou done to us!" She stomped angrily across the hall. "Devon! Our head! It, we..." She was furious. "Art thou daft!?" Raging. "Hast thou gone mad!?" Gloriously, beautifully, safely raging, oh thank Celestia!

Devon spun onto his hooves, and gently smiled. "My lady," he tried not to burst into relieved laughter, heaving breaths interrupting his words. "You were... I think... gas..."

"Gas... !?" She reeled, nickering. "I mean... why yes, Devon, seems we were struck with such a trap of laughing gas."

"Actually, it was-"

"-And what did'st we telleth thee!?" Luna shook her head, approaching the archway leading into the spewing pink lava pit. "I hath yelled stop! Dost thou remembreth!?"

"Yes! Then I-"

Looking up to her, fumbling with a regiment of jumbled diction fighting all at once to propel forth from his larynx, she returned to him with a small snort. “Tis of no matter, Devon. We are both safe now, aye?”

Nostrils flaring.

"Of course, m'lady."

Forgiven. He choked down his bubbling outburst of protest, along with his pride and a tablespoon of shale soot. Devon shuddered a moment as the taste of both mixed and settled.

* * * * *

She’s still there.

Somewhere underneath. She’s still there.

The last few days... what days... what day is it!? How many has it been? Existence has blurred into a single wisp of time, sunrises and dusk, all inconsequential. I have pleaded with them, but they... they have it in writing! I tried to reword it, tried to debate the phrasing of the request, but who am I to argue with the stars!? I might as well just be a futile lunatic waving his hooves at the night sky, screaming irreverently to nopony.

But I know now. I know she’s still underneath that insincere personality, she’s trapped within her own false candor! It was marvelous, so terribly, awesomely marvelous! Only something that she... the sincere SHE would do!

I was feeling so terrible about the last few days... weeks... I don’t know. Time. I was feeling so terrible about the last span of time, I brought her along with me to the finishing touches of the Laughter Chamber’s gates. We had a guardian in place, an elemental lava dragon hatched and raised within from Tartarus, but with no guiding enchantment to give it a purpose. The wards were set, we had the riddle all set. It was so simple! Tell it a joke, share a good laugh! Giggle at the ghostly!

I now know how furious she is with me. Furious enough to sabotage the project, and do everything in her power to destroy it from the ground up! How... I have to admit, how relieved I was to see, that maybe... just maybe... there was hope.

There was no greater relief in my life than when my dearest love, from within the entrapment of a fake copy of herself, helped me to complete the guiding enchantment to complete the dragon’s conditioning...

... And tried to murder me with it.

I was thinking it would be the kind, easily entertained mare I brought down with me. I was hoping for a gossamer lava dragon to be imposing but just wanting a laugh. I never expected the enchantment to go THAT deep, and find the sincere raging pony lost below. It had to be her. It had to be. Because that dragon was definitely in no mood for laughter.

Laughter seems to be its point of contention!

I can still feel the sting of its claws lashing across my face, the force of its tail knocking me against the wall, and the searing heat of its claw pinning me. If my crews hadn’t thought to knock out the lower supports and collapse the floor it stood on, I would’ve certainly gotten what I’m owed.

The gate’s riddle may need tweaking, we’ll see. But restructuring the architecture is nothing in comparison to the rebuilding she’ll need tonight. Masonry has rules and structure.

She does not.

How I remember. She clung to me, cried against me... well, part of her did. If getting mauled wasn’t an option today, I could at least afford her the second best thing. It was hard to fight through her exterior protests, her insistence, and her tears, but I think I finally did something right.

I had to push her away.

“Lava dragon.”

“Aye, correct,” Luna nodded.

“Just making sure,” The charcoal unicorn rolled Luna’s brief explanation in his head, hoping for it to stick anywhere in the realm of coherency. “You just said...”

Luna’s eyes lit up, again delivering an affirmative nod. “Lava dragon.”

“Those...” The charcoal unicorn slowed, scratching a hoof to his shoulder. “Those are two words that should never be in the same sentence. In fact...” He stopped, squinting heavily at the floor, vigilant for more of those plates. “Doesn’t help they’re also the only words in the sentence.”

“We needed a creature near immortal as guard.” She tilted her focus forward, increasing her pace down the stable path left by the dragon’s eruption. “Aye, we aided in taming the lava dragon and placing it within these walls. T’was merely a hatchling we we caged it and placed it here, but if the same beast dwelleth here...” Luna trailed off. “We imagine it would be far more dangerous to both of us.”

Devon sucked in a deep, contemplative breath. Everypony knew dragons were bad news, but one that lived in lava? Extra bad news. Blowing out slowly, the charcoal unicorn mused aloud. “Well, was the rest of the journal correct? Does it really despise laughter?”

“Well... .” Luna hesitated, rolling her eyes and mashing her lips in an exquisite duckface that did little to inspire confidence. “They did for truly weave the spell thy books speak of, but...”

“But... ?” Devon echoed.

“We never put it to a proper test. We only believeth that the spell worked and the dragon hunts laughter. The only way we doth discover if it worked would be if we ventured through the maze.” Luna gave the charcoal unicorn a small, sheepish look. “T’was nothing we ever expected to test fully. Or at least test of ourselves.”

“Simple enough,” Devon said with a small smile. “Just walk through and not laugh and we shouldn’t wake it up, right?” By the time he had finished speaking, the pair had crossed the unstable floor and stood before the first split in the maze.

“Aye, at least we believeth it.” Luna chirped. “Let us move carefully through yonder maze and so long as our attitude and outlook remaineth somber and controlled, we shall find little trouble before us. With our echothyst and thy markings, this labyrinth should quail before our combined might!” Devon turned and found Luna’s determined smirk and, for the first time since he entered this dungeon, felt the same surge of confidence.

“See you on the other side!” he called, turning left into the maze as Luna turned right.

“And likewise to thee!” Luna tapped a hoof to the pearled echothyst in her mane. “Hesitate not to call upon us if thou need aid or insight!”

Devon couldn’t believe it himself. He hadn’t felt this in control of a situation in years. He never expected to bring any practical knowledge from his job to the rest of his life, and certainly not anything as simple as a way to avoid getting lost in a vast set of shelves and stacks. At least not anything pertaining to something more draconian than Boxtops. Scraping his rock along the wall as he walked, Devon focused on the glowing crystals lining the floor and ceiling that lit his path.

Rounding a corner, Devon felt his stone guide rattle over something other than wall. “Huh?” he paused. “What’s that?”

“What is what?” Luna’s voice chimed in his ear.

“There’s something here, hang on.” Stepping back, Devon used his free foreleg to brush over the imperfection set into the wall. With each stroke of his hoof, more was revealed.

“It’s an inscription! It’s words!” he called out.

“Do tell, Devon. We remembereth the maze, but the inscription? What is the message of the wall?”

“Let’s see here...” Squinting, Devon read the old hoof-carved words slowly.

“How many Unicorn settlers does it take to change a torch?”

“Excuseth me?” Luna balked.

“Fifteen. One to move the torch and fourteen to petition for knighthood.” Devon blinked. “Huh? I don’t get it.” Across the maze, Luna got the thousand year old joke.

“Pft... snrk...” she gasped, a joke that hit home and hit hard. “Oh that’s... that be... pfft! Ahaha!” Luna’s laughter echoed across the walls and rippled into the echothyst hanging from the unicorn’s ear.

Then they heard the thick, liquid rumbling.

From behind, Luna felt a growing heat like the heat from an open oven build behind her. “Erf...” she swallowed, turning and beholding the beast. What the journal and history did not say was that the captured dragon was more like a dragon hatchling. As large as the tunnel now, it was no hatchling. The Princess could not even tell what color its scales were, for it wore a thick coating of lava, burning pink with the magic imbued into the chamber and dragon. It looked little more than a giant, animate scoop of magma colored like frosting, the only discernable feature being a leering, grinning maw lined with lava-dripping teeth.

“Luna?” Devon’s voice rang through the echothyst charm. “What was that sound?”

“We hath found the dragon...”

* * * * *

“Luna! LUNA!” Devon called again. “I hear it right behind you, how close is it?!” Instead of a spoken answer, Devon heard the liquid crush of magma mere haunches behind the Princess. Icy terror rushed through his mind, the Princess was being ran down by something unspeakable, and he was getting the live commentary on the event. He rushed to another inscription and his eyes danced over it.

“What did the rake-using serf tell the spade-using serf?”

“Didest thou forget thy tongs!”

Were it not for Luna’s panic going on in his ear, Devon could have stared at the joke for hours before realizing it was a joke in the first place. Duty and another yelp from Luna following a crash of stone and lava stirred him to action.

The beast tracks by laughter. I just need to laugh!

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Devon mimicked the sounds of laughter, but by no means was it a genuine laugh. “Ha! Hey! Dragon! Laughing over here! Ha! Ha! HA!”

“Tis no good!” Luna’s voice leaked through the echothyst. “This beast be a cunning hunter! It is smarter than to fall to thy fake laughs. If thou art to laugh, thou must be sincere!”

“How can I do that now?!”

“Thou hast better findeth a way!” Following the command was another hoof rattling crush of stone and magma. “And quicker rather than slower, if thou please!”

So lost in his frenetic struggle to summon humor in the face of such calamity, Devon didn’t feel his saddlebag shifting and a the small tickle of green and cyan magic climbing up his shoulder to the other side of his face.

How can I think of anything funny now?!

He wasn’t aware of the magic swirls forming in the corner of his sight until it burst forth with a sudden onslaught of memories. “Hey, what is-”

“Bookmark!” Lily Boxtops snarled. “For the thousandth time, where are my mane clips?”

“Aren't those them... on your tail?”

The Glyph chirped giddily, seeking approval for the excavated memory. It rolled another paisley image together, triggering a succession of déjà vu that smashed another image together.

“Puh-LEEZE Mister Bookmark! Find them by the time my public hearing is over or I’ll have your cutie mark!”

“Pffft...” Devon had nearly forgotten that day of work. The vision did not contain the shriek from his boss when Princess Celestia plucked all the mane clips in the middle of Boxtop’s speech, but the image was there. “Gheheh...” the unicorn felt a chuckle bubbling out of him. The memory from Glyph was so vivid that the emotion itself was real. Even in the middle of the chase, he could not help but first snicker, then laugh. “Ahahaa!” He had to pause and lean against the wall, doubled over in a laugh as the whole show played out in front of him.

“Yes! Devon whatever thou did, it worketh!” Luna’s voice was a bigger joy to Devon than the laugh he managed to summon up. “The dragon turneth back towards thee!”

How wonderful! Finally did something right and saved the Princes-wait.

“Towards me?!”

“Well, clearly! For thou hast its attention now. Best hurry on before it reaches thee!”

“And when it does find me?” Devon huffed, throwing his laughter out and body back into the chase. “How are you going to laugh?”

“The jokes ‘pon the wall, I shall read one, or you readeth one to us and we’ll draw it off of thee!”

“This is crazy, Luna.”

“Aye it is, but t’would seem that we hath no choices.” Devon couldn’t argue that point, and picked up the pace of his running. For a few moments, he was swallowed in the blissful rhthym of his hoofbeats as the maze fell into quiet again. Part of him flickered a small flame of hope.

Maybe it went away?

Maybe it lost interest?

Devon heard a sound like a boiler the size of Canterlot palace.

Figures.

“Um, Luna?” Devon murmured into the echothyst charm. “I think it’s coming this way.” The gurgle grew louder, and soon was joined by pounding footsteps of weight and strength that shook the very floor the charcoal unicorn charged over. “Definitely coming this way!” All he recieved for a painful few seconds was dead air from the echothyst. “Luna?!”

“Aye, we’re here but,” her voice paused. “We cannot findeth a single blighted joke ‘pon the wall! Art there any near thee?”

“Uh... uh...” Devon stammered, frantically brushing down the wall to reveal another inscription. From the near corner, he could hear the gushing approach of the lava dragon. “What did the earth pony squire say to the pegasus knight?” The dragon’s brilliant pink light appeared at the end of the corridor, chasing Devon’s last laugh.

“We giveth up!”

“Four hooves on the ground and put on thy wing harness!” Despite the fact a lava dragon was just rounding the hallway and spotting its new prey, Devon still couldn’t fathom what on Equestria Luna was getting out of these jokes. But the laugh piercing through the echothyst told the charcoal unicorn more than enough. The dragon halted instantly, pink lava sizzling across the stone as it homed in on a new source of laughter and hauled off through the maze towards Luna.

“He’s coming your way, Luna!! Devon called. “How much longer do you think we have to go?”

“We sincerely hope that ‘tis soon! Lift thy hooves and we’ll warn thee when to summon thy laughter again!”

Devon wasted no time. He had never run this far or fast in his life, but adrenaline makes one forget the ache in their limbs, and a lava dragon is a wonderful source of motivation for one to keep going. Puffing and panting, Devon blindly rounded corners, turning back from dead ends and almost instinctively avoiding loops back to where he started. In his mind’s eye, the stone walls and crystals were simply a tall set of Archive shelves, and the lava dragon Lily Boxtops. Part of Devon, in a deep recess, wondered what would be worse chasing him, the dragon or the boss, but filed it away for further discussion when a voice barked in his ear.

“Devon! The beast closes on us! Listen!" The Princess cleared her throat, her tone delivering a methodical read. "Upon when dost thou knowest a tenor be at thy door!?"

A... tenor? “Oh! Shoot!” Music humor? "Glyph?" Devon grunted and turned his head to shout at his saddlebag. "Glyph!?"

"Ha, ha," the Princess chuckled, "when he hath no key and makes early his entrance!"

The charcoal unicorn winced. “Glyph!" Yeah, not gonna happen. He prodded the weaving enchantment. "Help! Something funny on the double!” With a chirp, the swirl of light burst out of his bag and climbed up Devon’s shoulder as he rushed through the tunnel. He only skidded to a halt when he saw the glittering paisley at his peripheral vision. “Come on, come on, tick tick tick!”

Twisting and morphing before Devon’s eyes, Glyph felt its master’s urgency and extended its power deep into his mind. Piercing the cloying tension of diverting the dragon’s appetite for laughter made finding buried humor difficult. Finally, Glyph seized on a fragment of memory and with a delighted surge of magic, sent the image out in front of Devon.

“Dev’s ya little sneak! What're ya's doin’ up there with momma’s puzzles?!”

“Sollllvin’ em!”

The vision coalesced into the unicorn colt cheerfully obliterating jigsaw puzzles intended for teams of adults with vastly more free time than most would have. Devon grinned at the triumphant smile looking back at him, then broke into a small laugh. Right at his hooves was the pot of glue that the colt used to ensure that he alone was the master of the puzzle, and that he wanted more art for his wall.

Wistful, nostalgic laughter echoed through the chambers and corridors and into Luna’s echothyst earpiece. “Well done, Devon!” she called, turning to see the bubbling mass of lava, just barely concealing the gaunt and shambling dragon pause and wheel back towards the side of the maze where Devon presumably was.

Immediately, Luna pressed on, faster than before. No time to waste now! Rounding a corner, the Princess saw a new bewildering array of cross-tunnels and paths. Grinding her teeth, Luna poured on speed, pushing her body towards limits she had not used in centuries. The stone scraped so furiously alongside that its path was not simply a mar on the stone, but a sparking gouge ground into the slab-like walls. From her earpiece, Luna could hear Devon’s frantic breathing and panting and the constant clatter of his hoofbeats. As she rounded another bend, she heard a new sound in the echothyst; a thick, chuckling burble.

“Devon! We can hear the beast from here! Dost thou need us laughing?! There be no carvings here! Thou must supply a new joke!”

“Doing my best here!” Devon squeaked as he ducked and slid under a fallen pillar. “Little hard to read it off when there’s a lava dragon chasing me!”

From his position, Devon could not pause long enough to even notice any detail smaller than the wall itself. Pink, flickering light illuminated the walls to his sides and front and the roar of the beast sounded like a thousand barrels of tar bubbling over. Rounding a bend, Devon finally saw a relatively clear inscription. “Okay! Okay!” Devon heaved, feeling the heat of the pursuing lava beast.

“What’s the difference between a third dynasty banner and a fourth dynasty banner?”

“I think I hath heard this before...”

“Fifteen round knots!”

Vowing to stop trying to understand such things, Devon could only gasp in relief as her laughter filled the echothyst earpiece and the dragon immediately about-faced and stormed back through the maze for another volley.

"Never hath I hesitate to borrow money from a pessimist," Luna began. "They never expect due return henceforth in time!"

Glyph immediately jumped in to the rescue, beaming another embarrassing memory from the charcoal unicorn's foalhood. Quickly, his mother's excited face looked to him with great joy.

"Guess who just got you accepted into buffalo ballet class!?"

He heard the humiliated whimpers crawling from his former self bubbling to the surface. It was a memory that certainly didn't bring a strong sense of happiness; if anything it summoned a bit of a traumatic reminder of her obscure parenting methods. But as the feelings subsided and the Glyph's image receded back into twirling designs, his present mindset suddenly burst with a distinct sensation of euphoria. How long had it been since he'd seen her...

... That happy?

He blinked, inhaling heavily, riding the warm wave of actually seeing her in... a different...

"Time!" Luna cried out. "Get it!? Come on, any chortle be right about now!"

He closed his eyes, and cracked a soft chuckle that seemed harbored within for decades. The unfamiliar sensation carried with it a fresh volley of sincere laughter to the surface.

The single mindedness of the dragon proved both a blessing in how easily it was diverted, but a curse in that it never lost interest. In mid-sprint, the charcoal unicorn could only ponder on those insights for brief periods as he struggled to find a legible inscription on the wall.

“No no no no no!” Devon croaked. How can this thing find us faster and faster every time?! Whirling around another corner, he spotted a carving on the wall, but could only recognize it as such before the rumbling, gurgling roar of lava behind him rose to an unearthly fury.

“Devon!” Luna shouted, still sprinting. “We are nearing the exit, methinks! Findeth another humorism forthwith! We can hear the beast right behind thee!”

“Okay here goes...” Devon started reading another wall, dodging the furnace-like belch of heat yards behind him. “Why did the Princess cross the cart path?” Speed of the moment got that joke out in a hurry.

“This hath better be good, Devon...”

“To get-ACK!”

“We... do not comprehend... get-ack?” Luna mused.

“Not the punchline! This thing is right on top of me!” Devon shouted as a bubblegum-shaded lava-coated claw slapped across the next wall, firing out a surge of heat and embers that singed his mane and tail. More pressingly, the second claw drove the unicorn back to running, away from the joke. From her position, Luna could only listen on at Devon’s panicked yelps and stammers as he took off running again.

“Bookkeeper!” Luna’s voice boomed in his ear. “Dost thou know not a single joke?!”

“Not...” He winced heavily, “... off... the top of my head!” Devon responded as another claw smashed into the wall mere steps behind him, showering him with debris and sparks. To the unicorn, his only hope lay in outrunning this beast, and it was a race he was losing by the second. “It’s kinda hard when it is so clos-” A sparkle of light on the corner of his vision interrupted. Crawling in, Glyph flared a single image in front of Devon’s eye. “Now, Glyph?” A succession of quickly twirling paisley and chirps pulsed before him, a sharp warmth latching onto the back of his head. “Not really the time fo-oh no... rerf! Way!”

The image before him was recent, very recent. An ancient book opened in his hooves and a single line burning in his memory.

The unicorn sneered in disgust, shooting the shootiest glance of shooty disapproval that eyes could shoot. “There’s no way that’ll work!”

“Thou must try! We’ll do our best to laugh!” Luna urged, worry heavy in her voice.

Guess it’s the last choice I got.

Clearing his throat, Devon ducked around another trio of corners before he read from the magically-induced memory in his peripheral vision.

“I have a joke about wrapping paper...” Oh he was going to find some way to hurt that Glyph for this.

“Yes... ?” Luna asked.

“Never mind.” He paused uncomfortably. “It’s tearable.”

Devon heard Luna’s hoof impacting her forehead as the joke drove in so deep and horrible that it stopped her in her tracks. A low, pained groan travelled through the echothyst.

Yet the words traveled through the corridor, weaving and permeating through the masonry overhead... and fell upon twitching orange ears laying in wait.

Above him in the hidden pathways, Gina froze at the joke. “Nrgk...” her mind blanked. That joke was wretched, awful and deserved nothing less than withering scorn. Yet, even as her mind knew it and raged against such a travesty to humor, a laugh started emerging out of her throat. Her mind pinged in a scalding jolt of vestigial reflex, a powerful instinct reaching high and bucking squarely against her lungs, cannoning a violently wild laugh.

“Gyah... ahaha. Ha! HA! AHAHAAH!” Flopping onto her back, Gina’s whole body was lost to full-body laughter.

Laughter from... but not of herself.

Instantly, the dragon stopped and lifted its head, inclining it towards the ceiling. With a surge of power, it shot up against the overhead masonry, aggressively and persistently shattering stone tiles. Uncaring as to why or what diverted the dragon, Devon hurried past the beast while it raged and slammed against the room. He only knew that he had a window of opportunity, and whatever it was, it must be better than the fate he was facing seconds ago.

Rounding another corner, Luna’s heart soared as she saw the large gate into the laughter chamber. “Devon! We hath found a way! Hurry!” The Princess jammed a shoulder against the hulking door, only to hear the telltale clattering of chains and iron bolts.

Devon bound down a narrow length of the maze, and upon clearing a sudden curve, nearly smacked into her ribs as he skid to a halt. “Really? Locked!?”

“No!” Luna stammered, feeling her hooves against the edges of the door, pressing against it. “It... it doesn’t even have an unlock mechanism!”

“What!?”

“They...” She turned around, pressing tight against the unmoving barrier. “They must have never finished it!”

Devon slowly turned around, expecting to see a blazing reptilian scowl lunging in to devour them. Instead, he saw the glowing pink wings ascending in a rapid glide upwards, converging murderously upon a single orange speck dangling from the ceiling.

A dozen fingers of billowing smoke exploded from above, the drooping tendrils sinking downward with zephyrs of fire spiraling around them. A thundering crack echoed through the cavern, launching a thick sheet of dust off the floor and walls as several bolts of glowing pink cracks careened in an expanding radius around the dragon’s impact. Multiple slabs peeled from the masonry above, dislodging and falling before a single large hulk tore and dove from the ceiling. The thick chunk dropped quickly, pushing aside the dust into a perfect ring, the lava dragon and the orange speck latched firmly on its underside.

Just before shattering into the floor, the orange speck shot into a blur at the dragon, the impact sending both the glowing pink creature and the plummeting debris spinning in opposite trajectories. The dragon smacked solidly into the column, cracking it down the middle, causing the wall to slowly droop inward.

An orange torpedo of spinning hooves flipped backwards, landing with a heavy clap on the floor. Gina stared down the dragon, pacing sideways around the chamber’s circumference, her eyes locked like a vice on the rampaging lava dragon.

Pink wings unfolded and pressed against the wall, the ascending creature’s shift causing the wall to give way and tumble with the dragon’s flight. The room shifted and turned, and in the rippling quakes that ravaged across the floor, the stone walls collapsed inward upon one another like dominoes. The thick volley of tumbling smoke concealed the dragon, only a blurry silhouette shown through a pink aurora pulsing in the middle of the choking detritus.

“Nice to see you again,” the orange unicorn growled through a smile. “You may not recognize me, guardian, but...” She stopped, dragging a low forehoof in front of her, “I can’t forget you.”

A blast of hot air pummeled the edges of the chamber as the smoke was blasted away by a quick swing of pink wings. The dragon narrowed its white glowing eyes, and pounced to the middle of the chamber. Through opening cracks in the floor, dozens of lava jets shot upward, creating a speckling haze of caustic pink sparks to dance around the dragon. It reared itself for another dashing lunge, but suddenly hesitated. The dragon’s claws punched into the floor, its head curiously leaning forward.

“I know who you are.” Gina breathed in deep, lowering her head. “I created you.”

Devon took a quick step forward, but found himself immediately pulled back by a cobalt hoof. Was this? Was she? Impossible! It was impossible! The guardian would’ve been made over a thousand years ago, when the Archive was created! Devon tried piecing it together, but found his focus shattered by a sharp roar and thundering of claws pelting the ground as the dragon lowered itself into an aggressive stance.

“Yes, yes...” Gina seethed, plodding in heavy methodical steps towards the creature, a contorting band of magic congregating around her horn. “I know all your tricks. I know your anger, ha hah, oh yes, I know.” She hopped, landing with her shoulders low, ready to charge. “Believe me, dearest,” she sneered. “I know.”

The dragon slammed its tail down, sending another volley of pink embers skywards through the floor’s cracks.

“And if you’re anything like me,” Gina continued unintimidated. “You can’t be reasoned with. We both know the only way...” The glow around her horn grew. “... Is putting...” Flared. “... You...” Sputtered. “... Down!” Exploded.

A blinding column of marigold pierced through the air, slicing a clean hole in the wall behind the dodging dragon. A voluminous blast of smoke and rock erupted behind the pink guardian, casting it temporarily in a veil of dust before peeling it away with a diving lunge.

Gina’s horn flickered wildly as two bands of cutting magic gashed the air in front of it, prompting the dragon to tuck and spin sideways. She launched into the air just as the creature’s crashing maw gnashed towards her, a foreleg kicking powerfully off the dragon’s nose as she leapt into a forward spin over the bouncing guardian.

The creature clamored to its claws, spinning to regain its footing, turning only to see the speedy battery of orange hooves blindside its jaw. The rapidly striking unicorn skipped backwards quickly in retreat, threading narrowly between the slashing nails of the guardian’s grip. Her horn immediately pulsed to life, pinging another solid blow above its eyes.

The dragon arched back with a room-shaking groan, swinging its tail towards her. She spun sideways, tumbling across the floor. As the pink lava tail contacted, the floor gave way beneath it, causing hot jets of air to jettison through newly opened cracks.

The orange unicorn stood tall, shooting an icy glare at the pink guardian. “Your moves, your anger, your aggression!” She chortled, shaking the dirt from her mane. “I know all of your’s! But mine...” She tilted her head up, summoning another wave of magic up her horn. “... No way you could know, because...” Exhaling heavily, a churning ball of fire permeated into existence before her. “... I forgot all of mine!”

The fireball heaved menacingly towards the creature. Swiftly throwing its wings down, it shot into the air before a wisping trail of pink magma, the fireball slicing through the trail unimpeded. It exploded against the wall, casting an overwhelming incandescence over the room.

Disoriented by the sudden blast of heat, Devon turned, finding himself immediately covered by a comforting cobalt wing sheltering him. A royal forehoof hooked around his shoulder, and immediately tucked him to the ground, his peripheral vision catching a menacing wall of searing embers barreling upon them. Impulsively he tucked into a ball, but immediately recovered. Pulling the Princess’ wing aside from his face, he saw her head kneeled low, a twinkling shield of bright blue telekinesis diverting the remnant embers of the fiery blast.

Yet instead of turning to check on the charcoal stallion, Luna’s face remained fixated on the orange unicorn, her scowl unwavering.

A spurt of lava surged from the pink guardian’s maw, the streaks of fiery slag strewn around her. Gina hopped to the side in a roll, her horn taking a firm hold of the floor between glowing cracks and lifting a solid slab of rock in front of her. Another lava spurt slashed against it, slowly melting a burning hole through it. The dragon readied itself for another volley, only to see through the dripping slab’s breach the orange unicorn sprinting madly towards it and hop upwards. All four hooves landed squarely on the slab, pressing it to the ground in perfect balance, and in the recoiling momentum, flung herself back into the air.

The dragon slithered and twisted, pressing itself low on the ground. Rotating onto its back, it shot its neck outward with its jaws wide open, ready to bite down on the orange unicorn sailing upside down above it.

Gina smiled. “Just what I knew I’d do!” She immediately wrapped a band of telekinesis around the perforated slab, flinging it above her head. She pulled her hooves inwards, and with a strong twist of her haunches righted herself, her rear leg carrying the airbore slab along with it, leveling it between her and the dragon’s wide open jaw.

The slab wedged firmly between the roof of its mouth and lashing tongue. The creature howled and twisted, but the slab’s weight pressed its head firmly against the floor, neither its claws or flopping wings could reach the unicorn mare standing atop the slab. Gina’s horn sputtered to life as she stared down through the melted edges of the slab’s hole, the rippling pink depths of the dragon’s throat in clear view.

Just one shot.

All she needed was one shot clear down the back of its throat, and it would be no more. Commence the execution.

“I’m sorry,” Gina’s voice suddenly softened empathetically. “Shh, shh...” A long-dormant impulse kicked to life in her, a strangely meandering remnant of muscle memory still kicking around her larynx.

A final prayer.

“My stars above reigning the night.”

She clenched her teeth shut, seething. The energy atop her horn coalesced, burned, and boiled through the air.

“Our darkened eyes yearn for your light.”

The dragon suddenly stopped, its wide eyes fixated firmly upon the orange unicorn.

“Hold virtues true to give me might...”

And it stopped struggling.

“The wrongs I do...”

It stopped.

“... To do what's right.”

This wasn’t...

“The wrongs I do!” She reiterated in a battle cry.

This wasn’t right.

“To do, what’s...” She exhaled deeply. “What’s...”

Right?

Like looking at her own reflection. Scared in the face of defeat. Unknowing how to stare down her own demise. Unwilling to destroy what she had worked to create, no matter how much deep down she wanted to undo it, how much she yearned for it to be gone. Just knowing it was a part of her, that it was her. Her magic. Her personality.

Her hatred.

A whipping of wings turned the dragon back over, casting Gina off of the protective slab. The pink guardian extended forward, straining to lift its head with the weight wedged in its mouth. A deafening screech reverberated through the walls, and a powerful detonation of lava spewed from its mouth. The slab cracked, fizzled, and shattered into a hailstorm of blazing pebbles.

Gina slowly paced backward, feeling the augmenting heat as the plodding creature patiently closed the gap between them. She strafed to the side in a rapid gallop, guiding the guardian to the very center of the room. It lowered itself, raising its tail menacingly above, gripping the floor for an attack.

At the end of its waving tail, she saw it. A sparkling brass adornment, a single jewel in the middle wrapped in marigold magic.

“There you are, dearest.” Gina grinned and immediately began charging up her horn. “Plan B,” she closed her eyes, concentrating all her focus on the magic clinging around her horn. Her body relaxed, her rear legs drooping under their own weight as every muscle within her sacrificed all available strength for the massive surge of raw magic looping and re-looping before her.

The dragon resumed its advance slowly, but seeing the quickly augmenting sphere of magical energies culminating menacingly before it, wasted no time to go into a full sprint. It bounded, lunged, and with a fevered heave of its wings dove into the air. It screamed like a dart through the floating embers, and dove with near supersonic speed upon the unicorn.

At the last millisecond, she jumped backward with her eyes pulling open, falling sideways with each rear leg pressing atop the dragon’s front teeth. Letting the dragon’s inertia push her away, she spun her head upward, and with time slowing to an adrenaline-fueled stasis, focused her accumulated magic straight upward to the center of the ceiling.

A pearl beam of light and shrill sound cleaved through the hole in the ceiling. The air warped inward, tugging the simmering edges of the damaged ceiling inward to a blinding singularity before recoiling outward in a rippling nova of careening fire. A column thick of flame jet downwards into the cavern, bringing with it a thick salvo of heavy debris.

Gina kicked a rear leg against the dragon’s jaw, stunning it just long enough to skitter back onto her hooves and make a mad dash back for the center of the cavern. Feeling the rancorous lava breath of the pink dragon behind her, she bounded with all her strength forward towards the falling column of fire.

A large rafter landed sideways in front of her, bouncing upwards. She flopped onto a rear leg, sliding underneath the rebounding support while the dragon leapt over it. A series of raining spears, halberds, and javelins assaulted from the falling ceiling debris, forcing her to zig zag wildly under and between the falling projectiles.

The shrill metallic whine of slicing iron caught her ear. She bound low, and with hooves outstretched, leapt sideways into a tucked spin as she felt the frigid caress of a gigantic axe blade clanging firmly through the floor just behind her spine.

Flinging forward with her momentum, she leveled on four galloping hooves again, now feeling a caustic bite burning up her tail. The dragon roared, its prize just one quick claw swipe from its possession! Gina closed her eyes, lowered her head, and charged through the errant tendrils of fire rippling from the bottom of the falling column of debris. Passing just beneath it, she could feel the heavy cushion of weight snagged beneath the hulking rubble, she could hear the whining screech of dropping metal, she could see the twisted steel wreck emerging from the flames in its glorious return.

“Jerry!”

*KR-LANKH!*

The dragon’s shoulder’s dropped beneath the luggage car, the overpowering weight pressing it to the ground. Bellowing in shock and surprise, the pink guardian flailed its limbs and wings wildly, but was unable to get its claws beneath the vehicle. The dragon slid to a stop across the ground, coming to a flabbergasted rest at Gina’s hooves.

She looked down at the dragon with reassuring eyes. “I know girl, you don’t have to tell me, I hate losing too.” Gina snorted into a giggle and skipped in triumphant steps around its wings. “Of course,” she continued in an optimistic tone. “Technically, since you came from me, you also kinda won!” She halted, scrunching her nose up. “Ooh, which means I also kinda lost, too.” The orange unicorn tilted another sympathetic look towards the flailing dragon. “Eep, tough break for both of us, huh?”

The dragon bellowed, attempting to lash a pinned claw at her.

“I know!” Gina beamed. “And you fought brilliantly as well!” She stepped up to the stirring tail, spotting the brass jewel around it. “Now hold still, this will just take a second.”

The orange unicorn narrowed her eyes and scrunched her brow, watching intently at the tail ornament, her eyes matching its motions in perfect cadence. A very soft glow of telekinesis wrapped around it, but wavered and dissipated with each sudden jolt of the flipping tail. “Easy, girl!” Gina attempted to soothe it. Finally, an opportunity arose as the tail hit the top of its arc, and the orange unicorn’s magical grip locked onto its target. “Easy girl,” she reiterated, uncertain if saying it to the dragon or to herself.

The metal clasps on the side unhinged, and after a grinding shrill of rusty pops, the adornment broke free. A marigold throb emanated around its central jewel, the hoof-width brass artifact pulled away and fell to rest in Gina’s outstretched hooves.

“There,” she looked down at the jewel, seeing the last embers of sputtering marigold dissipate into the air. Her eyes suddenly clenched shut, and she snorted through suddenly twinging nostrils. She wiped at her eyes. “At least one of us...”

The dragon suddenly stopped clawing at the air. Its limbs and wings drooped limp, emotionless, almost uncertain what to do with the enchantment no longer dictating its actions.

“One of us.” She sniffled again, “Gets to be...”

It stopped.

Gina turned.

My stars above reigning the night,

Tired and blurry in vision... .

Our darkened eyes yearn for your light.

... She hoisted the last drops of her energy to her horn...

Hold virtues true to give me might,

... Wrapping an orange field over the train car.

The wrongs I do,

She slid her hoof into the adornment, clenching it around her like a gauntlet. The jewel, resting just above her fetlock, sprung to life in a deep hue of orange.

To do what’s right.

She aimed the gauntlet to the hole in the ceiling, motioning upward while hoisting the train car off the pinned dragon.

What’s right.

“Get lost!” she shouted in defeat.

* * * * *

Outside the city, the last wisps of the day’s warmth peeled from the sides of the mountainous terrain. The sky was descending from its early evening pink to a receding shade of teal, the first specks of starlight making known their presence upon the landscape. With the bustling outskirts of the city turning in, retreating to the warmth of the packed market square and royal palace, the typical ward of tranquility stooped to keep watch over the intertwined mountain trails...

“Pony feathers!”

... Was surreptitiously interrupted.

The orange glow of lantern light preceded the slow steps of an armored pegasus and black-coated stallion. They weaved cautiously through the darkening landscape, quickly covering as much ground as possible in the hope to utilize as much of the dwindling sunlight as possible.

“Sherpa St-t-ormblade,” Jetstream stammered through chilled breaths. “Anyth-th-thing the m-matter?”

The jangling earth pony stomped a hoof down in frustration. “That Sparkle filly, this hunting charm is of no use!” He unfurled his jacket collar, tucked low against his gut, and checked the Luna doll in his pocket. “It’s wrong!” He shook it, running a hooftip against the base of its mane. The hair realigned, forming back into the telltale cone that was driving them along the lowly alpine path.

“Do you th-think,” Jetstream began, “maybe if I t-took a look at it you’ll-”

“No!” Stormblade impulsively hid the Luna doll back into his coat. “I mean...” He cleared his throat, tugging the jacket collar close to his neck. “Miss Sparkle instructed the charm be top secret!” He combed a hoof through his mane, turning his gaze to the ascending stars. “It’s top secret unicorn magic, only to be seen by high ranking officials and licensed sherpas!”

“But you’re not a license-”

“Change of plan!” The Captain announced, pounding a hoof against his jangling chest. “We exchange this with Twilight for a functioning charm that will actually give us a sense of where to-”

*FWOO-OOM-SH!*

The Captain’s words immediately shushed as the rim of the mountain trail bend illuminated in brilliant pink light. His eyes narrowed as he held a hoof to his brow, only barely able to make out the silhouette of a blazing pink dragon gliding freely out of an indistinguishable alcove ahead.

He blinked, sneaking yet another curious look at the Luna doll, her mane pointing directly at the alcove.

“Change of plan!” The Captain announced.

* * * * *

The Princess of the Night fell heavily to the floor, heaving and panting out the exhaustion of forced laughter. Beside her, Devon quickly wheeled forward, unsure of of what kind of protection he could offer the Princess, but every instinct warned him of the mare’s obvious display of power and unhinged fearlessness.

“What?” the orange mare snickered at his defensive posture. “I just saved the both of ya from a lava dragon and not even a thank you?” For a few seconds, the orange unicorn was seized with unstable giggling. “C’mawn. How about ‘thanks’?” Another giggle and she strode purposefully towards them. “Then how ‘bout a name? I know the Princess. But I wasn’t told a thing ‘bout her little partner.”

“Devon Bookmark,” the charcoal unicorn spoke evenly.

“The name’s Gina. Orangina if ya feelin’ formal about it, Dev’s.” The orange unicorn’s grin was an unusual blend. It was equal parts dangerous, forced and ingratiating. By no means was it genuine, she didn’t even try to make it genuine. “And you and I and the guys upstairs got business.”

“Uh huh,” Devon said, circling around Luna to keep himself between the strange unicorn and the Princess. “And just what exactly are you doing down here anyway? And how did you get down here in the first place?”

“Gyeah!” Gina cackled, the grin appearing only more menacing. “Well, your second question’s kinda irrelevant Dev’s, cuz I’m here right now, ain’t I?” The fiery unicorn pressed forward, lowering her head until she locked eyes with Devon from a mere horn’s length away. “Guess you could say I'm a search party of sorts. To answer the real question y’asked, I’m here on behalf of the folks upstairs. They got a whole lotta plans and it looks like it’s me who’s gotta make sure they go off.” Gina fell into a spastic giggle. “What? Too crazy to believe? Well-”

“Upstairs?” Devon interrupted. “What are you going on about?”

Gina smiled broadly. Whispers leaked into her ears that only she could hear. Pieces falling into place. “Just call me the pony lookin’ out fer fate. I’m here t’make sure that things happen the way they’re meant t’happen.”

She furled her brow, narrowing her eyes at him in a manner determined for him to detect.

... Bookmark...

Chapter 7: Reflection

Illustration by Arctic-Sekai.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Swallowed in treasure, they hold their place

Challenged by humbleness and showing grace.

False images within the mirror’s face

Find reflection with the gifts of space.

_____

___

Chapter 7

Reflection

As far as they were concerned, it should’ve just been another dragon.

So far, the spoils provided by the lower Archive sanctum had provided to be nothing but a veritable bouquet of danger, obstruction, and dragging the worst of their minds to the forefront. It was all so ornately crafted, so delicately engineered, as to keep one persistently tip-hoofing the tightrope between acting impulsively and clenching restraint.

“So you’re not going to give us anything more than that story?” Devon pressed.

Adding a talking, breathing, calculating soul to the interwoven structure of traps and guardians would only complicate things further. For now the two receding travelers were caught in the now familiar bewilderment of whether they should restrain trust or embrace the dragon slayer openly.

“Nyyope.”

At least a dragon had the courtesy of immediately showing hostility. This one... she was different.

“So,” the charcoal unicorn tilted his head, peering with a narrowed eye towards her. “You going to explain what brought you here?”

“Heh,” she sneered. “Fine way to say ‘you’re welcome.’ I could’a just let you and your bad jokes get all smooshed up.”

She had a point...

“So why didn’t you?”

... And so did he.

Gina grinned as they rounded another hallway, sinking rapidly back into horn-lit gloom and dancing shadows. “I told ya all yer gonna get outta me, so ya can stop askin’.” While he could not see far, the charcoal unicorn saw the winning grin with perfect clarity. Devon’s frustrated groan echoed all the way through the vast hallways.

“Methinks thou art trying to squeeze water from a stone,” Luna gently chided him. “What matters now is from whence hailed this... Gina, it was?”

“Yeah!” Gina was quick to chime into anything that sounded like a defense. “You just gotta trus-”

The Princess turned her head away with a stamp on the ground. “We shan’t trust her as far as we can kick her.”

Some defense.

“Aw come on, Princess Lulu! Not you too!” Gina whimpered for a moment, then broke into another manic laugh. “Jeez, when did everypony get all reasonable!?” Chuckling merrily, the orange mare let things fall into silence as the hallway end and a large chamber appeared in the murky distance. She twisted her saunter to the side, flipping her blonde mane dismissively at them.

Devon could recall the jokes and stereotypes that usually preceded the alien and unknown realm he called fillies. His own close upbringing in constant contact around his mother had opened him up to the crazy world of gossip, deceit, and petty bickering that flapped between groups of so-called friends. How they’d spend a long evening laughing and demurely sipping fine cider, only to immediately turn each other in suppressed giggled when one briefly dismisses herself, as to deride and speak ill of their dress, their mane cut, or their overdue hooficure.

Yet, those insignificant feuds seemed more in the spirit of entertaining one another at the silent expense of another.

The electric tension that hung over the Princess and their suddenly introduced companion was more sincere. The orange unicorn held low posture and signs of subtle retreat around the Princess, while Luna’s own weary eyes hardly broke attention.

“Excuse me a sec,” Gina trot forward to the looming unfinished door before them. She gripped the adornment previously on the lava dragon’s tail with a foreleg, tightening it along the other. She craned her neck up, arching her back, and a marigold light crept from the jeweled gauntlet up her neck. “Aaand... ”

In a glittering pulse of gold luminance, glowing bands popped into view atop the featureless door. Spirals, circles, and floral designs coalesced and radiated on the center of the door, spinning into place. Within each circle, a radius of different shapes lined around the circumference, and as they spun, they suddenly matched with their sibling geometric designs, locking into place.

“... Open!”

The golden symbol suddenly flickered away, the overwhelming luminance clicking into a disappointing swath of black.

“I must say,” Luna sighed after a short lapse in the dark, “most dejecting.”

She was immediately interrupted by a chorus of mechanical contraptions firing into action behind the door, a muffled succession of rotating machinery echoed across the chamber.

“Just allow me,” Gina chuckled. “I know what I’m doing here.”

A thudding bang shook the floor, kicking up a ring of swirling dust around the massive door’s frame. It creaked, strained, and groaned in its struggling groan to crack free, the churning miasma of noise gradually augmenting in volume until-

*Kloonk*

A small panel dropped open on the bottom half of the door, no taller than a stout pony.

Luna jabbed the charcoal unicorn in the shoulder. “Guess that’s the Devon-door.”

Thanks.

A soft aura of deep blue descended from the opening, casting a faint path of luminance before them. As they approached, Gina retained a high-stepping walk of pride, beaming in her usefulness. It was an unfortunate realization, not so much for him, but as he could imagine for the Princess. The air was certainly scented in bitter distrust between the two, but even though he couldn’t quite pinpoint a hoof onto why, he did retain certainty over the simple fact they needed her.

She knew something.

She knew some things that would inevitably come to light later one, but something they’d have to wait for and be ready.

Drawing closer to the dim light, the opening expanded into a wider space. This was no hallway, it was a room. But as the horn lights danced off the crystals jutting from the ceiling and wall, the room expanded into something truly astonishing.

Long gone were the blasted and shocked rocks of the caverns before; in their place were great swathes of crystal. Ephemeral lights twinkled within the gems, casting the vast chamber in crystalline blue and white light. The oppressive heat and air from the lava-filled chambers became a distant memory as a line of charcoal, cobalt, and orange hooves strode forward.

The crystal cavern was cut and carved into an elaborate plaza, a long, winding staircase leading down into a vast open space. The grandeur of the natural crystal formations combined with the patient skill in carving the room would make even Canterlot palace at its finest look tawdry in comparison. Each hoofstep down the staircase echoed and carried through the vast silence.

“We must be truly deep now,” Luna mused. “Such crystals only exist at the deepest heart of Canterlot’s mountains.” Her cobalt aura blended with the light emanating from the crystals. “We are near to our goal now.” Devon could hear the excitement in her tone, she was impatiently trying to get through this, a mysterious force seemingly pushing her on.

Gina piped up as the party reached the bottom of the crystal staircase. “Of course..." Before them loomed the chamber’s main door. “Still gotta get past that.” It was the height of a two story home in Canterlot, and nearly as wide, all cut from reflective crystal.

“Incredible,” Devon murmured, expressing a thought that he thought he’d have worn out by this much time spent in this hidden labyrinth. Before the three was the great door to the chamber, many times higher than any pony, carved from a single piece of marvelously reflective crystal. Facing them were their reflections, identical and so perfectly reflected that they appeared to be there. Curiously, Devon extended his hoof and pressed it against the mirrored finish of the crystal door. Expectedly, his reflection matched his movement until their hooves touched, forming a perfect connection between two symmetrical halves. Lifting his head, Devon met the eyes of his reflection, holding it with the other ‘him’ in a long stare.

Then he blinked.

“Um..." Devon cocked his head. “Did you just... see that?”

“Nay, we did not, Devon,” Luna’s attention was to the wider chamber. Gina simply shook her head with the same unsettling smile as before. “But dost thou see a means to open it? Clearly tis some other vile trap, but how whilst we open such a slab?”

“I dunno,” Devon mused sarcastically. “Maybe we can just knock?” He saw a twinkling smile and repressed giggle slip from Luna. “Or..." Odd, wasn’t supposed to be a quip, but whatever lifts the Princess’ spirits...

“Well, but of course, what an easy approach. But thinketh! If thou were the vile mind behind this puzzle, thy doorknocker would be pulled by cockatrices and cloaked in jalapeno fondant.” Luna rolled her eyes and nudged the unicorn with her wing before drawing her eyes around the rest of the door. “Be there anything in the journal about yonder passage?”

One step ahead.

He already had the book out, and in answer to the Princess’ inquiry...

... Plenty.

Work is a comfort compared to what waits for me when I return home. And even more to what awaits when the sun falls. I’ve done all I can to keep the contracts from my mind, but they are there. It is like some itch that never leaves and remains always on the periphery. I caught myself doodling at the morning assembly today... and when I looked down, I had sketched out contracts and quills.

The project is nearly over, hopefully by the time it finishes, the Princesses can devote their energy to aiding my crisis before it is too damaging.

I made an unexpected bout of progress with my beloved over the last few nights. The stars remained quiet, allowing the previously lost inspiration to flow through me more freely. It began when I was working on a Saturday, and had to cancel our garden walk. I hinted that I liked the royal garden, and she’s been taking me there... a little too much now, but how much she tries.

I got her a nice set of earrings made from the depleted echothyst from before. Certainly one of a kind. But when she put them on and looked at herself in the mirror, how much she beamed and smiled, but for a second I swore from the corner of my eye I saw her reflection grimace in disgust.

It was only for a second, but I could swear, I saw the real... or at least what my memory declared real... I swear it was her.

I crafted some wards to try and turn the mirror into a reflection of the inner soul, and focused its traits on the personality we saw in the lava dragon. It was a wild shot, but in separating the reflected light from reflected identity, our humble bedroom mirror became a sort of looking glass that was triggered by the most prominent event; in our case, an act of generosity.

I tried it out again, this time purchasing a beautiful scarf for my beloved, and stood her in front to see if it would work.

It did.

She wasn’t in the mood to look at me, or talk to me. All of the reflection’s attention focused on my beloved, and only seemed intent upon pulling her in. Terrifying doesn’t even begin. Thinking fast, I jumped into the struggle between Gina and her reflection, and swapped out the scarf around her neck with the only treasure in my saddlebag, the trinket I borrowed earlier under tight scrutiny.

The Element of Magic.

The reflection suddenly changed personality, and fell back into the mirror, now adopting the same distraught look of my beloved clamoring on the floor. But as she got up, her face suddenly changed, and both she and her reflection shared the same wide smile of appreciation.

We’re pressed for time on the guardian of the next chamber. I can no longer risk having this abomination in my house. Seems two problems are going to cancel each other out into a morbid, albeit clever solution. These mirrors are unsettling at the best of times, but what befalls anypony who doesn’t succeed makes me shudder. The previous guardians and traps were dangerous to be sure, but they were direct and honest and... swift. Who can say what happens to the poor soul who suffers the reflections.

“Well, nothing but bad news..." Devon mused, blowing out hard. “Whatever this chamber does, it even has this GB scribe scared out of his horseshoes.” Dragging his hoof over the pages, Devon scanned it for anything more concrete. “Ah, here’s something... ”

I sincerely hope that any thieves who have made it this far will simply empty the treasure vault and move on, lest they risk the perils of the mirror. When one pony offers a gift to another, the mirror reflects the true nature of the gift to the recipient. If the gift is truly heartfelt, and matches the honest desires of those receiving it, then the mirror will do them no harm.

But so rarely is a gift such a thing. Most are vanities by the giver, a suggestion or assumption with a mind to improve their own status. Gifts can be such selfish things. The truest gift is one that hurts ever so slightly. Nopony expects one to agonize over a gift, but to give away one’s own desires for the sake of another. A gift should hurt, just a bit.

“C’mon, Dev’s! Luna!” Gina called from opposite the main chamber door. “There’s another door over here, and it’s open!”

“I swear that I saw that reflection blink..." Devon murmured, turning away and following Gina as she explored the rest of the chamber. Behind him, out of view, the reflection turned its head, a small grin of its own crawling up its face as it joined the reflections of Luna and Gina in the unknown depths of the mirror. The door Gina discovered was not of crystal, but thick wooden planks.

“Erf! I think it’s open anyway,” she puffed as the mare threw her shoulder into it again. The door wobbled a few inches, but remained shut. “Gimme a hoof here!”

With a combined shove, the three slid the heavy oaken door open. Creaking, ancient hinges begrudgingly gave way. Small whirlwinds of dust danced across the floor as the movement and light poured inside. Ambient light from the crystals in the main chamber sparkled off of others set into the new room, igniting them with sparks of ingrained magic. And as the light spread, more crystals illuminated in a cascading chain reaction of twinkling light. Amplifying the light further was the contents of the room.

In the mirrored hall before them, there was nothing but sets of long shelves, stretching to the ceiling and to the back of the room. Every shelf was bowed down with the weight of their contents; hundreds, thousands of obviously valuable treasure. Golden statuettes, gem-encrusted charms, tomes of forgotten magic and countless others filled the chamber. Shining crystals reflected the light onto the treasures and it danced in a dazzling display of refraction with the mirrored walls.

A moment of silence dawned over the three ponies as their minds labored with the fact that they stared at a bounty that dwarfed Canterlot’s treasury. Even a the contents of a single shelf could fund entire wings of the palace. A single tome could advance knowledge of magic and history generations. Such was the display of the wealth and potential that this fact stood obvious; this was no hidden wealth, no potential, it was patently ready for release. Even Luna in her station of power and supreme comfort of life, felt her jaw lowering slightly.

“That’s..." Devon observed through a small squeak. “That’s a lot. Anypony want to put five bits on it trying to kill us if we touch it?”

“Ha!” Luna snorted. “We’d be throwing our money away then, Devon. This is far too straightforward.” She stepped carefully, ever wary of more floor tiles that might unleash Celestia-knows-what onto them until she reached the first shelf. The Princesses’ eyes danced up and down the stocks of priceless artifacts.

“I’ll take ya up on that, just to make it interesting,” Gina smirked. “Just sayin’.”

“Don’t make a bet you can’t pay off, Gina,” Devon grinned as the three fanned out across the vault, weaving and roaming between the shelves. Despite the majesty of the room, all three ponies were nearly silent, absorbed in the treasures on display, or in Devon’s case, returning his attention to the journal. “So, if I’m reading this right,” the charcoal unicorn’s voice carried well against the mirrored walls, “we just need to find the perfect gift for somepony.”

“So, reckon one of us needs to be the one gettin’ a gift?” Gina mused thoughtfully. “Well, none of this stuff really matters t’me. Doubt I’d be a good taker. I mean... I know what I want and it ain’t any of the things here.”

“Hm..." Devon rubbed a hoof over his chin. “Well, I’m not sure about whatever the journal said about those mirrors. I’m not looking forward to any more of the freakshow magic going on down here.”

“Then it seems we hath no other choice. We volunteer!” Luna’s voice boomed in like an unexpected guest. “Tis but fair for us to face one of the horrors of this place. For thou hast faced thy own trial, Devon.” Luna beamed with an unusual energy and happiness. “We would be happy to balance such an inequality for thee.”

“Uh, Luna are you sure?” Devon asked, snapping the book closed and rounding. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot or anything. We can probably just..” His words trailed off into nothingness as he saw Luna’s giggling frame turn and leave the vault.

“Do not keepth us waiting!” her laughing voice sang from the door. “We look forward to what thou choose for us!”

“Huh..." Devon turned away as Luna exited. “Did that seem kind of strange to you, Gina?” At the far end of the hallway, he spied Gina quietly chastizing a diamond and star sapphire encrusted music box for being off-key. “Y’know what? Nevermind.” Alone in the chamber with Gina, the charcoal unicorn rounded around. Just gotta find the perfect gift for... Princess Luna, shouldn’t be too hard. Just thousands of relics that would make headlines to choose from. No problem at all...

Strolling down one of the aisles, a shape caught his eye and Devon hefted a pink diamond tiara in his teeth. He wondered how such a shade could appeal to anypony, let alone one with vast wealth to have such a piece made. The only pony he knew that would was his mother, who knitted his first baby blanket for him before he was even born. Good sentiment, but her desire for a daughter led to a scathingly pink baby blanket for a colt.

A wild crash of rattling bells snapped Devon from the momentary reverie. Peeking down the neighboring row of treasures, he spotted Gina sprawled out on her stomach, nose buried under a hat so heavily weighted with bells and jingling charms that she could not wear it off the ground. Devon withheld a tiny laugh before seizing the hat and hauling it just enough off the ground to allow Gina to free herself.

“Grufhph..." she muttered. “Dunno how Starswirl pulled that outfit off. Didja find anything yet, Dev’s?”

Devon remembered similar bells on a regretted gift of his past. For his first day of school, his mother hoof-stiched him a set of booties, complete with bells, frills, ruffles, bands, streamers and another layer of bells. Sara ached for him to be as popular and attention-grabbing as she was in her youth. Even though she meant well, Devon still fought waves of lingering shame whenever he even heard normal bells.

“Not really. Just a lot of weird memories so far.”

“Hyeh... like what?” Gina asked before stopping. “Wait, wait, first can ya be a sweets and float that... bracelet thingy off of the high shelf there?” Gina blinked in momentary confusion at Devon’’s blank look. “What?”

“No magic.”

“Pardon?” Gina inclined her head. “I coulda swore ya said-”

“No magic. Yes, yes, laugh it up.”

“Don’t mind if I do!” Gina snickered, then burst into a full-bellied laugh that put her back on the floor. “Gaah! A unicorn without magic?! How d’ya even EAT?! How d’ya even keep yerself clean?!”

“Somehow, I found a way,” Devon replied with a glum puff. “Everypony without a horn made it work, so did I.”

“I mean..." Gina paused, trying to cobble together the concept in her unstable mind. To her, unicorns just had magic. The fortunate of her time apprenticed under masters of the art and the notion of magic schools were just coming to life. “I mean, you had a master, right? Or somepony to teach you?”

“Ugh... don’t even ask,” Devon groaned. “Yeah, I had a magic tutor. It was awful. It was this way too enthusiastic unicorn who followed me everywhere I went, even in school.” Devon shot a look to Gina, who struggled to hold back a snicker. “Everything to him was, I think he called them experiences. And he wouldn’t leave me alone until I was a laughingstock. He called it a chance to build my ponysona.”

“Pfft. I’m a thousand years outta date and even I can tell that’s horseapples, Dev’s.”

“My mom thought it’d be good for me. Heart was in the right place, but... yeah.”

* * * * *

“Where did you get a rope?”

“Where did you get an attitude!?” Stormblade sneered, turning away from the cyan pegasus. With the fibers clenched in his teeth, he pressed the tailing rope against the ground, weaving it over itself. “Going to tie this down nice and secure here around this sturdy thick root.” He laced it between two narrow twigs sticking out of the ground, one of them fluttered loose from the rock from the force of Stormblade exhaling in its proximity. “Nice and steady.”

“Sir, with all respect I think that-”

“And to reinforce it!” The Captain proclaimed, waving an instructive hoof to his rope work, “we shall tie it into itself to make a double-looped figure gaite knot!” Stormblade twisted and wrenched his jaw, tearing the other root from the ground, but quickly pressing it back into to the floor with a stealthy press of a forehoof. “There, perfect!” A jumbled mass of loose rope hung defeated over the thin root. “Textbook haunch hitch!”

“You said it was a figure-gaite-”

“All right, now to rappel downward!” Stormblade leaned over the steep lip of rock. The cavern dipped violently downward, a harrowing cone of jagged stones lined the angled walls into a ring of darkness. In the middle of the encompassing depths, a dim orange light glowed softly through a hole where the contracting well suddenly expanded into a massive cavern. Certain death greeted anypony who tried climbing down, unless they fulfilled all necessary measures of preparation to venture forward. “I’ve fulfilled all necessary measures of preparation to venture forward!”

Certain death also awaited all featherbrains regardless.

The Captain looped the rope around his waist twice, then gripped the taught end under his fetlock. He backed up to the edge of the rock well. Jetstream immediately lunged up to the cave wall, and propped himself behind a small boulder.

“Sir, wait!”

“Duhn, dun-uh, duuuhn!!” Stormblade chanted a swelling orchestral number that sounded much better in his head. He propped down low, and flung himself off the edge.

Jestream rapidly flapped his wings, exerting as much force as he could. He heard the wrenching sliding of rope sliding free, and the subtle snap of a teeny tiny root succumbing to obvious inevitability. “Hy-yagh!” The small boulder gave, quickly dropping on the careening tail of loose rope. Under the crushing weight, the rope snagged securely in place, holding so firm that its burden jangled with sudden force from beyond the well’s lip.

Sharp, pleased laughter echoed from below. “Aha! Adventure awaits!” A faded sliding of rope resonated through the echoing cave as the Captain made another repelling bound downward. “Duhn du-nuh, nuuuh! Duhn, nu-nuuuh!”

Great. Theme music.

To the private’s dismay, the Captain was now giving himself a heroic overture.

Jetstream galloped to the well, seeing the Captain only two haunches below. “Yep,” the Captain assured him. “Adventure!” He eased his grip on the taught end of the rope, dropping a half haunch before gripping it again and swinging back to the steep wall. “Duh-nu-nuh, nuuuh!”

Floating casually behind him, the cyan pegasus hovered patiently behind the Captain. “So... sir, do you want some help on your way down, Captain?”

“That’s Doctor Captain..." Stormblade paused. “Err, Captain Doctor, yes, Captain Doctor Storming Do!”

Oh, mule dander. When he earlier mentioned how the journey into the caves would be like the Daring Do series, he didn’t think he was actually going to take it seriously.

“Yessir, Captain Doctor Storming Do, sir.”

Stormblade waved a hoof at him. “Eh, eh!” He chided the pegasus sharply. “What did we rehearse, Short Mount?”

Short Mount. Wonderful. Even nicknamed him after the stout colt in Daring Do and the Temple of Glue. While he expected the Captain to assume some delusion of fantasy as a means of adapting to the unknown depths of the cave, Jetstream merely discarded his foalish diatribes of excitement as more of his trivial banter.

Jetstream huffed, then contracted his neck and shoulders together. “Okie dokie lokie, Doctor Do!”

He also didn’t think the Captain was going to press him so much as to... actually, scratch that. Jetstream winced, his inner psyche scolding him with caustic resentment that he should’ve expected this all along.

This was his story after all, and he was just treating his pawn like, well, a pawn. A nibbling thought remained fixated on his mind for the last several hours. The sudden resolve for progress regardless of proper procedure. The insistence he alone venture into finding Luna without notifying anypony else. And speaking of, he regretfully humored the prospect of wondering... just how many chapters of that fan fiction he was going to write? How long had he been doing it? And how far had he developed his own fictitious story of he and Luna, and if he’d fallen so deep into his own narrative, was the line between reality and fantasy blurred?

Slide.

Or had the line eroded to a gradient?

“Duh-nuh, nuuh, nuuh, NUUUH!”

Stomp. Jangle.

* * * * *

Outside, Luna paced in front of the large mirror. Her mind raced with the strange, giddy excitement of an impending gift, yet even she questioned that excitement. She had been showered with gifts despite her repeated insistence of no need. Courtiers, politicians, visiting dignitaries and countless others paraded before her throne with gifts all thought to be ‘just what she’d like’ when they were merely vanity.

Not her own vanity. But the vanity of the giver. Each one of them had the ideal image to present to her, a reaction they were trying to draw from her. The politicians all wanted favor, her weight and the influence of her crown directed to their own ends. Dignitaries wished to impress her, a symbol meant to astound. And others simply thought a single gift, thoughtfully chosen, would gain them any kind of affection. Of course, if only a tenth of the thought that went into crafting that image went into considering the recipient.

“T’would seem,” Luna mused to her reflection as another rattling crash from the treasure room shook the chamber, “that we shall wait for some time.”

I need help... and the stars were happy to offer. Too happy.

The secret in unmaking one of these contracts is straightforward, though still is nearly impossible. If I wish to return my Gina to her state, all ‘pieces’ of her must be returned, along with the contract. All of those are easy enough.

But it also requires a spark of unimaginable magic. The stars were not clear in their words, but the message was undeniable.

I need the Element of Magic for myself.

But how? If anypony were to discover this act, at the very best this magic would grow in demand. Ponies would come from all corners, with their own wishes to present to the stars, all of them twisted by the stars and I would become the broker of such accursed details. I refuse to play the middlepony to anypony wishing to ruin their lives.

I will steal the Element of Magic. Celestia forgive me.

I knew it would not be that simple. The stars’ plans for me were never that straightforward, but I foalishly followed them to the letter. Stealing the Element of Magic from where it was housed for the final chamber was simple. So simple that I knew I had ‘help’ from above. It was as if I was meant to steal it. Even if I had intentionally tried to be caught, I would be ignored.

But once everything was assembled... and the ritual completed, all the stars gave me was my own mocking laughter. ‘Everything is nearly assembled. But you are missing a piece’ I heard my own voice chiding me like I rebuking a simple error. But I had everything! Gina was there! The contract was present! All of the gifts and benefits given to me because of her influence were destroyed! She was weeping at my cruelty, but it was not freeing her.

A mote of Gina’s essence.

A speck of dust was out of place.

The speck she placed in the enchantment we placed on the lava guardian. That gauntlet we put on its tail to bind the spell held enough of her essence to block the entire contract. I destroyed Gina’s love in front of her eyes, false as it was, and destroyed her to free her. And it was for NOTHING.

I need help. Certainly not from the stars, no. But from one who has dealt with them before, and would better understand the way they work.

I arranged a meeting with Princess Luna this evening, moments after the raising of the night sky. I used to relish the display, but when it reveals the stars, it heralds another night of their invasive whispers and taunts.

But, unfortunately, it seems I am not the only pony in Canterlot facing crisis. Princess Luna was astonished that I would visit her, I could feel the bitterness in her words as she railed against her sister and the citizens of Canterlot for well over an hour before I could speak. Even when I did speak, I could not find the heart to burden the Princess more. I made up an explanation for my visit on the spot, but in the middle of our talk, the stars began to whisper again.

They whispered the unthinkable.

They wish me to bind the Princess to one of their contracts!

But this was no whispered idea... this was an order! A command! There is nothing they can do to make me betray and ensnare our Princess!

I underestimated their influence.

By Celestia I underestimated their power.

I woke in the morning and I was writing! Not just one, but many! By the sun and moon, what was I doing? I was asleep this whole time! But I am holding dozens of these contracts in my hooves. Luna’s is at the top, but I know the names on these other ones. They are workers, politicians, guards... why are their names here? Why are their wishes laid out before me?

I asked Gina if I was moving last night. She didn’t answer. She just smiled. The same smile.

I destroyed the contracts, burned every last one last night. This morning, the stack was returned. My hoofwriting is unmistakable.

What am I going to do?

If this is the stars’ plan for my fate... I cannot fight it.

The stars demand Luna. They demand my loyalty and I can no longer fight their compulsion openly. They do not understand context, and everything is said straightforward and plain. Perhaps... perhaps these contracts can be modified. I may not be able to save these unfortunates from whatever predatory urge the stars have in store, but I can shield them from the worst of it.

I can adjust the contracts to bind them first to my family. In that way, they are preserved and so long as responsible ponies of foresight lead my clan, these contracts will hold.

This is a desperate plan, but I have no others.

My stars above reigning the night.
Our darkened eyes yearn for your light.”
Hold virtues true to give me might,
The wrongs I do to do what's right.

Who would have imagined such a vow would carry so many twisted meanings? Stars or not, I will not fall prey to their schemes. If I cannot deflect the stars’ intentions, I will subvert them. I will save Princess Luna, though my own conscience and salvation are the price.

So be it.

Gina and Devon fell into silent perusal again. For long minutes, the two wove between piles of treasure and poked at boxes of unimaginable wealth. For the first time, Devon realized just how hard choosing a gift was. Each potential selection appealed on a single aspect. It might appeal to Luna’s nobility, or intelligence, yet at the same time it neglected other aspects of her. A history tome might appeal to her intellectual side, yet it was tawdry and quaint, hardly befitting royal stature.

He certainly had no experience to draw from. All of the gifts of his life were well-intentioned, but woefully inaccurate. Each one accepted with a weak smile and inward groan, too afraid to admit the truth and besides, accepting it with a fake smile meant things went so smoothly for everypony.

“But..." Gina stammered to nothing. At this point, Devon was almost used to it and didn’t turn his head. “What do you mean... ?" She argued to herself. "Him?!” Her pacing trot ground to a halt in the mirrored hallway. “No! No way! I won’t do it!” Turning, Devon saw the orange mare in a frenzied argument with the mirrored crystal in front of her. The charcoal unicorn had had his share of conversations in the mirror, though he had never felt the need to pause to listen for answers, nor to glare at his own reflection with such undisguised resentment. Gina quivered with frustration.

“I... will... NOT!” Gina stamped her hoof down into the glassy surface. “And there’s nothing, NOTHING you can tell me or say to me to make me!” With a snarl, the orange mare lit her horn and sent a pulse of magic into the crystal mirror, obliterating it with a reckless burst of magic. All around her, shards of broken polished crystal danced, each reflecting a tiny piece of the larger image back to her. As each shard shattered on the ground in delicate tinkles, Gina froze again.

“Uh... Gina?” Devon finally spoke after a moment of hushed silence.

“Ack..n-no! Please!” Her pleas were genuine, sincere. “It’s... GAH! It has... !” But even as she spoke and railed against the invisible voice, Gina’s body moved, Gina’s horn ignited again. The clasps and straps of the gauntlet around Gina’s hoof were wrapped in magic and slowly opened and loosened until she stepped out of it. “Please Devs..." she huffed, each word and movement a struggle. “Please take... c-c-c-care of this.” Wrapping her telekinesis around the gauntlet, Gina floated it towards Devon, her face contorting into a smile that somehow combined agony and pleasure into a single unsettling mask. “This is... the..." she huffed, words coming from her more steadily. “The generosity room, right? So... I... we’ll be generous too. N-no sense in letting you have all th’fun of giving, right?”

“Um..." Devon blurted eloquently. “Are you sure about this, Gina? I don’t think this is... ”

“Take it!” she hissed, shoving the brass sleeve and glove into his chest with a surge of force. “It’ll mean a lot for me if you... take care of it.” Even as she tried to violently discard the gauntlet, Gina started longingly at it. “Please take re-real good care of it.”

“Wait, I don’t know about this.”

“TAKE IT!” Gina screamed,a burst of poorly-withheld magic shattering one of the nearby shelves and scattering its contents to the floor. “Please... ” she huffed, “just... take it.” Gina angled the gauntlet until it stood upright in her magic, the sleeve open before Devon’s forelegs.

Gingerly, Devon extended his hoof towards the gauntlet. As his hoof drew closer, the unicorn could felt an indescribable something. Time slowed around him as he pushed his hoof into the leather-lined sleeve, a weight that grew more intense as he pushed in all the way. Tickling sensations sparked through his body and mind, hints of experiences and emotions that he had never held. He recognized the emotions; they were not unknown. Expressions of love, fear, happiness, sorrow and anger trickled in and out of his perception like the ghosts of long-gone ponies. While he recognized every emotion, and could feel them, Devon was keenly aware that the emotions were not his own.

“What... what is this?” he croaked, unable to summon the strength to move his legs and pull away from the brass clamping around his leg. The phantasmal emotions grew stronger, their talons dug deeper. Like invisible hands, he felt all of them flowing up his leg, converging on a thousand disparate routes to a single destination.

His horn.

“Magic.” A voice said with unsettling calm given its source. Gina glared at Devon as he winced as another spike of unknown emotion trickled up his leg and gathered at his horn. “Magic is emotion given force, channeled through horn.” The orange unicorn spoke evenly Gina quoted the oldest precepts of magic. Devon knew them, it was the first lesson taught in any unicorn school or by any magic tutor. Emotions channeled through the unicorn’s horn took shape as spells and force. “You’ve... ” Gina hesitated, as if waiting for the next line. “You have the understanding of how it works, Dev’s, but your heart is all mixed up, isn’t it?”

Devon tried to respond, but he could only muster a quivering, hacking gasp as dozens of unusual emotions rushed across his face and piled at his horn. He felt the joy and warmth of an unknown unicorn’s healing spell, the ironclad resolve of a guardian’s barrier, the momentary fear and displacement of teleportation or the fiery madness of destructive shockwaves. But every emotion was a skin not fitting to his own, it was natural, but didn’t fit.

“Your emotions don’t allow your magic to flow. What’re you bottling up, Dev’s?” Gina asked evenly. It was a sympathetic question, with an insight that sliced unerringly to the core of the issue, but spoken without a hint of empathy. If anything, all Devon could get from it was a barely-withheld despise. “You’re no good to anypony like this. So this tool will make you useful.” Another surge of marigold shocked through Devon and the emotions started to blend, merging into an incomprehensible mess in his mind. It was all utterly alien, but now so incoherent that his mind could no longer distinguish Devon from the miasma of others’ emotions.

“Dev’n, ya’s a unicorn, but what’s keepin’ yer magic gone? What’ve ya got bottled up?”

“Gah..." Devon croaked again. His head swam in airy bubbles and he felt all four legs threatening to collapse at any time as the rising tide of emotion and confusion reached a crescendo. Moments before he felt like his identity would be forever swallowed by the amalgam, something broke.

Everything was clear. Devon was himself again, but his head throbbed. He felt the other emotions creeping through his senses, but they were mere whispers compared to their previous roar.

“I’m sorry, Miss Bookmark. All of our medical tests show there’s nothing wrong with his horn. We’ve brought in magic therapists, but unless his mind can allow the magic, it’ll stay stuck.”

“Think fast!” A sharpened crystal shrieked through the air, the last traces of orange magic pulling away from it as physics took over. With no time to dodge or move, the charcoal unicorn braced himself for the slicing impact of the crystal with his face.

And waited...

“There’s nothing that I can teach him, Miss Bookmark. His understanding and focus are wonderful, but until he can move the emotions he has, it will do him no good.”

And waited...

Slowly, Devon opened one eye, then another. How did that not hit me? I should have a huge lump or worse on my head. Instead, all I feel is this weird pulsing...

Devon caught his reflection in the mirrors. His horn was lit with a steady gray aura. Beside him, the thrown stone rested dutifully in a pocket of telekinesis, also gray. At his hoof, the brass gauntlets’ whirling attachments spun and twisted of their own accord, leaking a third matching gray aura. As he noticed the movement, Devon could feel its effects, boosting through him and using that alien mass of emotions to bypass whatever blocks and barriers existed in his own to allow his magic to...

“Did I... ?” Devon finally spoke. “Am I... ?” He felt a quivering thrill. “I am!” His heart soared. “I’m actually doing MAGIC!”

“Yes,” Gina said steadily, her eyes fixed solely on the gauntlet and not on Devon. “You are.”

“Ha! Ha! This is... awesome!” Devon gasped, a hidden laugh escaping from his throat. “I’m. Doing. MAGIC!” A childlike wonder rushed through him as he floated the stone around his face in small patterns. All of his learning and understanding of magic sprung from dormancy, now armed with the raw capacity for magic. Fundamental theories gained instant application, spells he had studied relentlessly as a colt flooded back into full use like flowers erupting in bloom.

“Momma, I just want to be like any other unicorn.”

In a gleeful rush, Devon turned his horn towards the shelves lined with treasures and trinkets. Like a new limb, finally freed, his telekinesis snaked outward, snagging item after item and hauling them forward. They moved at erratic speeds as he found his strength, but the liberated laughter told far more. The charcoal unicorn was so lost in his revels that he did not feel a new tickle in his mind. Assuming it was just another one of those alien emotions, Devon dismissed the sensation as a new emotion joined the mass in his mind; an emotion born from a terrified charcoal unicorn colt. It was ignored as it joined the other emotions, mingling around them like water.

Reality melded together with a tangible grasp onto his emotions, the raw energy from within culminating so fluidly around the very objects he focused on they floated weightlessly beneath a cushion of his simple will. It was like he had just gotten a hold of a new limb of unlimited potential, like a blind old buck opening his eyes for the first time in his life, like his whole existence had formed together as a sensical entity like he at last... finally... he... he got to...

Wake up.

Impulsively, he shifted his eyes back to the line of ornate jewelry on the crystalline shelves. Without any time wasted browsing through the shimmering nicknacks, his vision pinched into a tight fold, immediately culminating a gray telekinetic aura around the largest, most ornately detailed tiara of the collection. In a swift tug of ashen light, the adornment situated assuredly before him, every facet and pinpoint of reflected light glittering in dazzling temptation.

His new raw magic even came with the trusty ol’ unicorn intuition, even! No longer did he have to think things through or rack his brain for guidance. His heart must have known all along that only the brightest and best would fit for somepony as distinguished as the Princess of the Night.

How the jewels radiated and flickered like her eyes. The craftsmareship of the platinum decor was the only thing that dared come close to the same flowing beauty of Luna’s mane. Of course his magic knew all along that just like Luna herself, the gift would have to reflect her ability to make everypony’s head turn. Even the engraved flowers around the rim seemed to twinkle like the night sky.

“So,” Devon smiled, shaking the gauntlet approvingly before him. “You said something about magic being from your emotions, and from your heart?”

Gina chuckled. “Pfft-haw, that’s the one you-” She stopped herself, and lowered her head with a smile. “I mean, yes, that’s what I said.”

The charcoal unicorn lowered the ornate tiara and shot a narrow glance at Gina. “Okay,” he groused, “what are you trying to pull here?”

“Me? Oh, nothing, nothing, I just,” she nudged up beside him, sliding an inquisitive hoof against the tiarra. “Yes that’s certainly a, uh, gift.”

“Well,” Devon rolled his eyes, “that’s encouraging.” He raised a forehoof, sliding the levitating adornment closer to his gaze. He softened his sarcasm, looking at both the gauntlet and the tiara as each rippling aura ebbed rhythmically together. “But it’s what my magic immediately went for, so it’s what my heart knows is right.”

“Not exactly your magic that-”

“And so!” Devon continued, “I’ve made up my mind, I’m certain. The gift that best represents Luna is... ”

* * * * *

“... This yonder pile of oyster spit?” The confused glance of the Princess immediately caught Devon off guard, an invisible hoof bucking him in the chest. “Forsooth I certainly feel thy heart be sincere, but..." She trailed off into an exhale as she lifted the excessively decorated headwear.

“I think it would look wonderful on you.” Devon attempted. “It really brings out your royalty, and I bet you’d get all the mares scolding in jealousy upon seeing you in it.” His magic chose it! It had to be right! He’d never been so certain of anything, and as she brought the adornment closer, he could feel his own sense of pride welling up at seeing just how beautifully it melded into her features.

Like a foggy veil ascending above her, Luna’s face radiated and beamed the moment the tiara rested atop her head, the brilliant white and blue jewelry cast out an enchanting radius of light that pulled his eyes to hers.

Devon clapped his hooves together in jovial success. “You look absolutely stunning, m’lady! Look,” he pointed her toward the mirror. “Come take a look.”

The charcoal unicorn looked up to her, and saw Luna’s eyes wince in uncertainty. She started walking closer to the mirror, with each step taking a closer look at herself in the reflection. Over the reflection of Luna’s shoulder, he saw Gina jump up behind her, waving her arms in a manner to get his attention in a foalish manner. He couldn’t understand why this strange new companion could act so desperately for attention, and he turned around to see what she was trying to convey.

“What?” Devon turned around quickly, only to see the orange unicorn resting slyly against the wall. “Never mind,” he turned back, only to see her jumping around behind Luna again waving her arms. “Yeah, I see you, very funny.” Did she always play jokes and make fun of them behind their backs like this?

They continued walking towards the mirror. He was certain of his choice, unwavering in it for sure, but Devon didn’t realize he was smiling as much as he was until he saw the reflection. He let out a couple loose giggles just seeing how intense his tight grin was, almost amazed at just how much it crept up his cheeks. Sweet Celestia, even the way Luna approached with a regal cantor, the way the tiara complimented her royal demure, he could see her own face warming up.

Her lips parted, letting out a silent giggle as he eyes lit up. Her head swayed approvingly, scoping out the finer details of the adornment in multiple angles as they got closer to the mirror. He knew she’d like it. Even if his mind knew that the tiara was a bit hefty and eccentric, his heart certainly knew that she’d eventually grow into a sincere liking of it.

Close to the reflection, she laughed. “It’s beautiful!” Unimpeded by Gina’s sophomoric antics behind her, Luna could only pour out her appreciation while Devon shifted his attention between her beaming face and his own expanding smile. “Wonderful!” He didn’t even know he could smile that crazily, but the mirror’s reflection suggested the contrary. “Gorgeous!” Through the mirror, he saw Gina leap up in a fast dive towards him, threatening to tackle them both.

Devon spun around. “Gina I swear I-” He hesitated. The orange unicorn remained nonchalantly positioned on the opposite wall.

“What?” She protested... “What are you-” ... Then seized, her mouth falling agape.

“D-Devon, s-s-sirrah?” Luna slowly stammered.

Hearing her troubled voice, Devon immediately turned back to the mirror. Luna smiled maniacally in return. “I love it!” The reflection continued. “It’s beautiful!”

Immediately noticing the discrepancy, he looked up beside him to see Luna’s face locked in a deep panic, her narrow eyes trying to divert from her reflection. His own smile quickly fell into a disoriented grimace, though a cursory glance forward showed a cartoonishly shimmering toothy grin on him.

But his heart! His magic! Everything pointed to this being the right gift! How could it be wrong!?

His flow of thought evaporated as he saw a blur of cobal hooves lunge toward him, sinking onto Luna! She jumped back, attempting to dodge the hurling legs, but slid sideways in her attempted bound to retreat, hooves unable to find purchase on the glassy floor. She tried pulling herself forward, but found herself incapable of any proper footing as her rear legs were firmly held by two navy blue hooves.

Devon pulled back, just barely escaping the glancing assault of charcoal forelegs reaching for his neck. He ducked down, kicking a floor tile loose. Impulsively, the tile floated up in front of him in a gray aura in his path.

Strange, he didn’t remember summoning any telekinesis to-

*Crack*

The tile slapped across his face, disorienting him and causing him to trip over Luna’s flailing attempts to break free from her own reflection. Another tile shuddered before him, peeling and breaking free from the floor in another fit of sporadic telekinesis. Devon rolled to the side, feeling the cold edge of the tile cut dangerously close to his neck.

“Oh fine!” Devon yelled, clamping a hoof down flat on the tile, feeling it shake attempting to break free. “You wanna do this the hard way!?” He rolled to his hooves, pivoting on top of the pinned tile. “We’ll do this the har-”

*Cr-crack!*

“Dyagh!” He shouted as two more tiles smashed into dust before his eyes. Blinded by the errant dust, he jumped back wielding his forehoof before him, shaking the gauntlet. He could hear the aura around it shimmer to life as the newfound warmth crept up his horn again. Show time.

He tried opening his eyes, “Ergff,” but stumbled as a volley of stinging dust bit into his sight. Through the dry blurriness, his horn made an immediate search for any nearby object, and felt the telekinetic grip quickly grasp onto something. A faded white blob aligned before him, and facing back to the mirror, flung it at the gray blur before him. The piercing crack of splitting glass filled his ear, and a bright burst of spontaneous light exploded outwards from the mirror. Shaking his head, his vision cleared, the focus pulling back together to show the ornate tiara jammed through the middle of the mirror. A jagged split bolted across the glass, intersecting through Devon’s reflection, splitting his ghostly projection into two separate halves that clamored and pulled in flailing attempts to retreat back into the mirror.

Luna spun around, bucking and kicking at her own reflection but unable to land a solid blow to knock it away. She caught a glimpse at Devon’s apparition falling back, converging together behind the wedging crack back into a single pony. As the charcoal blur fell away in a stumble, she eyed the tiara.

With a frantic tug, the cobalt reflection wrapped a pair of hooves around both of the Princess' legs, pulling them together. Luna swiveled sideways, feeling the chilling embrace of the mirror’s glass wrapping around her as her legs sunk through.

“It’s so beautiful!” Her reflection beamed triumphantly as it dragged the Princess deeper into the mirror. “I love it!”

Luna swung upward, gripping her hooves onto the impaled tiara. “Ooooh,” she smiled. “You’re going to like this tiara!” She pulled, unhooking it from the glass crack. “And you’re going to like it more than anything!”

The reflection hesitated, seeing the tiara waving in Luna’s hoof. Luna curled up her legs, and taking advantage of her pause, kicked the reflection off of her. She clamored spinning across the floor to pull her legs out of the mirror. It felt like icy quicksilver all around her skin as Luna pulled free of the mirror. The reflection dove forward, but gasped as a cobalt glow torpedoed through it.

“I want it!” The reflection looked downward, seeing the dissipating embers of magic steaming from the tiara sticking out of the mirror. “I... neeed... iiit... .” Another series of cracks crept across the mirror, slicing the single reflection into many Lunas like a hydra. The half-dozen all twisted their glances inward, and slowly piled onto the adornment as they slowly slid back into the mirror pulling the tiara with them.

As the last wisp of the reflection’s mane descended into the cracked glass, a white flash cascaded out of the multiple cracks, pulling the mirror back together. Melting flat, the previously split and broken surface pieced into one.

Devon stood up, slowly sauntering back to the mirror in a cautious pace. Holding his head out to the side, he saw his own reflection looking back at him from the side. He grinned. He scowled. He crossed his eyes, stuck out his tongue, dropped his ears, and pulled back his lips to flash his gums.

Luna groaned, fluffing the dust from her wing. “Hath they departed?”

The charcoal unicorn stood before the mirror, blinking each eye ensuring the reflection followed in accordance. “Not sure.” He danced, kicking his hooves in alternating steps while waving his two arms in front of him with his tongue sticking out. “Maybe.” He lay down low, shaking his tail side to side. The twisting tail descended, revealing Gina casually leaning against the crystal wall in nonchalant poise. “Yeah, definitely.”

* * * * *

Inevitability beget inevitability.

Or so the flow of words coursed through the cyan pegasus’ mind. In what was obviously a poorly thought out plan devised from impulse and the errant belief that the Captain could magically improvise a brilliant plan regardless of the overwhelming weight of failure burdening his execution, inevitability only seemed fitting when stated as a redundancy. Jetstream’s consciousness murmured the word so frequently within his own mind, the very meaning of the word diminished. Sure, his recollection of basic language dictated inevitability as the immutable destination of a particular action, perhaps the blaring target that all signs pointed to.

Yet the word rang so frequently, the very syllables washed into one another like a malleable soup of lyrics. The word blended into a song, inevitability backed by the percussion of shuffling hoof on stone and the melody of rhythmic jangles.

Like a chorus winding down from a repetitive coda... “End of the rope.” ... Stormblade brought the ballad of his plan’s inevitable conclusion full circle.

Beneath him, the maw of the expanding cavern was about a dozen haunches above him. There was certainly enough rope to make the final descent, but getting that extra rope was a mental exercise of its own.

“Not to worry!” Stormblade proclaimed, smiling to Jetstream. “Short Mount!” Oh right, smiling to, gyugh... Short Mount. “How far to the bottom of the cavern?”

From this height, the pegasus had no idea. Fifty? Seventy haunches? Looking below, he saw the floor of the cavern littered in debris, and not all of it rock. It seemed like a garbage disposal site, with all the metal bits, gleaming blades, and pipes strewn about the floor. Even a second hole opened up in the middle of the cavern, dropping into an even deeper chasm with a slight hint of pink luminance emanating from its unseen depths. At the rate the Captain was descending, they could take all night just getting to the bottom.

“About a rope-length I’d guess, Captain Stor-” Eh! Eh! “Err, Captain Doctor Storming Do.”

Ya know, he could just as easily fly him down with the grace of a snowflake.

“Excellent, I’ll be making my entrance in a jiff!”

But yeah, epic solo story or whatever.

The Captain pressed against the rock, testing his hoofing along a narrow rock ledge. He nudged his body side to side, ensuring his weight held. “Now look close, Short Mount!” Stormblade yanked at the rope, tugging it tight in rapid succession. “Since I... ergh... used a haunch hitch knot it should... hyick... give with just the right tug at... hurgh... the right angle and..." He pulled with extra strength on the rope. “What the... it’s like there’s... hyrrgh!... a boulder or something on the... Gyer-HYAAH!”

The Captain flopped sideways off the ledge, and amid rapid panicked gasps for air, clamored his hooves for a firm grip. He drifted away from the rock face, dangling in a slow spin from his frantic inertia.

Within the second, the cyan pegasus dove downwards and leveled beside the Captain. Jetstream pressed a hoof against the Captains shoulder, and quickly beating his wings, started pushing him back to the wall of the rock well.

A black hoof smacked the pegasus’ away. “I’m fine,” Stormblade gruffed, swinging back out into the open. “I can do this all on my own, so if you’ll exc-uuuse me, I’ll just swing..." He reached for the rock face. “... My way..." His outward motions reacted in the same manner of basic physics. “... Over.” In the same manner of basic inevitability.

Yeah, this was going to take too long.

“Sir, perhaps-”

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Short Mount,” the Captain stopped his struggle, and opted instead to stare in silent contempt at the pegasus. “I’m fine.” The Captain’s growl suggested that to him, a solitary accomplishment was paramount to any other, like he wanted to pen a story where he could write out any supporting character and not suffer from any plot holes upon its recollection. Again, Jetstream pondered, knowing the impending regret in doing so, just how far gone the Captain was in his own interpretation of the hero’s journey, and if his sentience was somehow already living in the future with no consideration for how to get there in the present.

Ah, and there’s that impending regret. Seriously. Creating starfields with a magical swoosh of his hooves, earth ponies with powerful magic, those horrible exclamations of cheesy adulation, yee-he-he-heesh...

The pegasus’ focus snapped back into the real world, the Captain’s frustrated grunting permeating through his ears. “Be patient!” He swung a hoof behind him, sending the rope into a long creaking swing. “The last thing I’m going to ask is for you to save me-”

*Snap*

“Save me! Save me! Save me!”

Jetstream’s eyes widened, seeing the black coated officer plummeting at a murderous pace to the jagged cavern floor below. He tucked his wings inward, beating them rapidly against his flanks. A deafening gust of musty air buffeted against his mane, the rainbow strands licking then brushing aside from his face. He thrust his wings again, feeling an intense cushion of hot air lapping against his shoulders while the cavern expanded outward.

In a familiar diving position, he could more naturally determine the distance to the floor.

Fifty haunches.

He reached his forelegs out, positioning them to keep the falling Captain fixated between them.

Forty haunches.

Jetstream narrowed his eyes, and kicked his rear hooves straight behind him.

Thirty haunches.

He tucked in his wings with a final push, and sunk his head between his forelegs.

Twenty haunches.

Jangling fabric lashed and nipped at his fetlock.

Ten haunches.

With a frantic tug, the Captain flopped against his shoulder. Jetstream expanded his wings, all knowing he couldn’t stop in time, all he could do was pull up and aim for the gaping hole in the middle of the chamber.

A jarring shock ricocheted through his ribs as he felt the side of his flank clip against the hole’s rim. His body careened forward, dropping with the weight of the Captain propelling him into a forward flip. Jetstream flailed upside down, his eyes seeing the rapidly cascading wall before him just spitting distance from grinding off his muzzle.

He pressed his wings towards it to make more distance, but felt it smack flat against another errant rock ledge sending him into a tumble. The Captain flopped from his shoulder.

With the jangling burden temporarily off of him, Jetstream quickly reoriented himself, finding his bearings already halfway down into the second larger chamber. Cracks of glowing pink magma loomed in ravenous anticipation beneath them, the flickering miasma of molten misfortune seeming to open up to swallow the plummeting Captain.

Jetstream narrowed himself again, and reached out for the quick grab. He pulled his wings out again, but felt a sudden pain with the muscles straining from the injury of hitting the wall.

“Hyeerrgh-gh!” Jetstream grit his teeth, fighting against the rapid fire pangs of lightning shooting up his shoulder. “Come on!” The wing strained and fought back, trying to succumb to the reflex to curl up to avoid further injury.

Leering and increasing speed to the magma-crusted floor, the imbalance pulled the two into a slow spin, disorienting Jetstream further. A hot jolt of pain cracked through his ribs, “K-kyack!” when his wing finally propped open to full extent.

Jetstream arched his back, swooping himself gradually into a horizontal position. This was going to be close.

Twenty haunches.

The ground angled away, the scattered rocky remains of several collapsed stone blocks loomed before them.

Fifteen haunches.

He could feel the searing heat of magma pricking against his underside.

Ten haunches.

Jetstream pulled back with all his strength, seeing that he had finally got himself level, but the downward momentum still plunged them towards the magma.

Five haunches.

The stone blocks were so close now! Just a little more, just a little more!

Two haunches.

The biting mist of pink magma prickled against his fetlocks. He extended his forehooves, and braced for crash position.

Stormblade gasped. “Short Mount!”

“Hold on to your potatoes!”

The world suddenly flipped into a horrifying spin. Jetstream’s vision pinched and darkened by the force as he felt himself careening sideways in a flailing burst of waving limbs. The Captain flopped away from him in a terrified cry across the collapsed stone blocks, while Jetstream clenched his eyes shut anticipating the next inevitable pummeling.

And inevitability... beget inevitability.

* * * * *

“I don’t get it!” Devon moaned as he returned again to the hall of mirrors and treasures. Confusion held court in his mind as he browsed the gifts with renewed focus. Something wasn’t working. Every tiara he brought out got the same result, a new giggling face of Luna in the mirror and another groping, reaching hoof threatening to drag her in. Too many more of these and their combined weak pulls would eventually overpower Luna entirely.

“You were here when this was being built,” Devon spoke to Gina suddenly. “What’s the trick?”

“Trick?” Gina quirked an eyebrow, then snickered. “There ain’t a trick to it, Dev’s. Y’just need the right gift.”

“Horseapples,” Devon countered. He turned to a shelf he had surveyed ten times before, scanning it again in the vain hope that some inspiration would come to mind. “All of these treasures are worthy of a princess, at least I think so!” He waves his un-gauntleted hoof around the display. “What the hay do I give Princess Luna that’s even close to what she’s actually worth?” His cheeks ran red as he lifted a statuette of two dancing pegasi in his newfound telekinesis. A logical corner of his mind knew that this was part of the puzzle and necessary, but his heart told him otherwise.

“Devon! Gina!” Luna’s voice flew into the treasure room. “I... I’m starting to slip!” Her precarious grip and hoofholds were losing their strength. “Gryah! Get thy hooves off me!” That last yell melted into more frantic struggles as Luna writhed to hold her ground.

* * * * *

Hold on to your potatoes.

The residual emotions of frustration prompted Jetstream to ping back into consciousness could have been easily attributed to the stiff soreness in his shoulders, the twinging aches running the length of his wings, or that killer spinning headache that disoriented him. He didn’t even know if he’d come to rest upside down, sideways, or headlong into the afterlife.

But what pained the downed pegasus more than the physical beating he took on his crash landing... was that in the heat of the moment, he’d reflexively gotten into character and recited a one-liner from Daring Do and the Temple of Glue.

“Hey, Short Mount!” A rugged voice coughed in the distance.

Oh, this better not be the afterlife. If he had to spend eternity placating forevermore in that overbearing featherbrain’s delusional fantasy...

“I... I don’t get what this stone says!”

Naw, couldn’t be. No way would his paradise even contain the voice of the Captain, and no way would eternal punishment allow him the capability to discern how messed up it was...

Hold on to your potatoes.

Oh, Celestia, how messed up it was that the Captain’s influence was actually taking root. Oh, no no no, not allowed. He opened his eyes, the worn cavern walls flickered in pink veins cast from the floor in a dizzying orbit.

“It says, ‘What did the rake-using serf tell the spade-using serf’?”

He held and rotated his forehooves before him, ensuring nothing was broken. He rolled, feeling a sheet of dust slide off him.

“Didest thou forget thy tongs?”

His legs held as he took a tentative step forward. He sauntered slowly forward, shaking off the aches and cramps with each leg extension. The spinning receded, and as his vision pulled the features of the room into coherent focus, he couldn’t help but recognize his good fortune and counted his blessings.

“Is... is this... a joke?”

He counted his blessings... minus one.

* * * * *

“Ta-daaa!” Gina beamed, hopping from behind a shelf of jewels. She shimmered from head to toe, covered in the dozens upon dozens of tiaras, bracelets, necklaces, horn rings, chains, capes, and draperies Devon rejected and threw aside. “Whaddya think?”

He thought this was no time for her to be joking around.

Of all the ornaments and trinkets that surrounded him, he couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed at the prospect of choosing just one. Just one! One that reflects Luna’s wants. One that reflects her likes. One that reflects... hopefully not another malevolent reflection.

Yeesh, he still couldn’t get that unnatural laugh of her reflection out of his mind.

I want it. I need it!

“I really like her mane,” Gina commented, looking out the door. “Perhaps something that matches it?”

Devon shuffled along another row of jewels, and saw an odd saddlebag resting at an awkward position in the bottom row. Strange, he scoured and browsed this aisle before, but didn’t remember seeing that there. He nuzzled into it, propping the bag open, and lit up upon seeing a golden encrusted jewel within it. He smiled, pulling it out, the violet star-shaped jewel in the middle acting as a perfect complement for the Princess of the Night!

“Like, maybe these earrings, they just-” Gina gasped, and sprinted to Devon. In a galloping dive, she lashed out, tightly clenching the Element of Magic against her chest. “Nothing, nothing!” She panted, backing up slowly, her eyes darting back and forth. “Absolutely nothing at all, don’t you worry, hyeh-heh, no, just it’s... ”

“Gina?”

“Yes, umm..." She breathed out, but the panic in her voice continued to stab her in the back. “You may, eh-heheh, yes, be wondering why... I’m... totally freaking out and it’s because, ha, hah!”

“Gina?”

“Because it’s a, gift, yes, a gift of my own, from a very special somepony who... ”

The only treasure in my saddlebag, the trinket I borrowed earlier under tight scrutiny.

“The Element of Magic.” Devon shot a caustic scowl at the orange unicorn.

“Hy’oh, no no no no no,” She quivered through grit giggles, timidly backing towards the door, “This ol’ thing, pfft, n’yaww, you’re mistaken. Mistaken! This is all just one, huge..." Her rump nudged into a tall barrier of navy blue.

The ducked and spun around, the Princess looming profoundly above her. In her shock, she clamored and bobbled the element in her grasp, firing desperate looks in every direction except towards the scowling teal irises pressing upon her. She looked over at the gauntlet around Devon’s foreleg, realizing how much she needed it. Looking upward, she pleaded internally for some input from above, but sank in the continuous quiet they relegated to her.

“Aha!” The orange unicorn jumped out proudly, and with a suddenly boastful grin sauntered up to the Princess. “Look at who I found, umm, stealing this priceless treasure!” She pointed an accusing hoof over to Devon. “We have found our magic thief! Seize him-hey!”

Yanked out of her hooves in a cobalt aura, the element of magic hung before the Princess. She frowned, lowering her eyes to the orange unicorn. “Thou hast been much occupied,” she growled. “But I hath reigned long enough to no longer be rendered surprised by the errant convictions of cowards!” Exhaling deeply, she lowered the Element to Devon. “My bond unto this is past,” Luna continued. “Carry this with utmost care, whilst I ponder a proper approach for our..." She rounded the doorway, disappearing out of view. “... Conspirator.”

“Princess, wait!” Both Devon and Gina reached toward her.

“I need the company of none, now! All everypony needs is Princess this, Princess that, for now at least resume thy perusing whilst I determine... ”

Devon hung his head out into the corridor, seeing the Princess staring into the mirror. Sitting alone, her reflection stared back to her in a sincerely identical disappointment.

“... Everything.”

Like she always did. Looking upon her, Devon could see the circulating weights of Canterlot in general hovering over her, pressing her shoulders forward. It was a posture the charcoal unicorn was more than familiar with, and could recognize immediately. Many nights after long shifts in the archives, even dating back as far as his school years, how he’d retreat and just hang low in his solitary refuge with books while his mother would pressure him to join her at group soirees, festivals, tailgates, and parties.

A flutter of chirps and teal light caught his attention. Devon turned to his saddlebag, seeing the combative squeals of alarm from the Glyph waving and sputtering angrily at the interloping orange mouth stealthily gnawing at the flaps.

“Hey!” Devon swung the bag aside, hearing the reassuring clang of the Element of Magic settling inside of it.

“But we need it!”

“We!?” He faltered away from her, pressing against the wall. “No, nuh-uh, sorry.” He looked back at the Princess, seeing her peering back at them. “Royal orders.”

That look. All he ever wanted then was his own opportunity to hunker down, to think, to just process the day and not have to worry about the perpetual nibbling of others trying to drag him to some elite gathering of hoity-toity individuals. All he ever wanted then was a bit of amnesty.

Then it hit him.

He slowly approached her, but stopped himself twenty haunches short.

“You have to trust me, Luna.” Devon pressed his hooves against Luna to help her back up and pull her back from the mirror. “I know what you want.”

“What I want, Devon,” Luna huffed as the ghostly reflections withdrew, eagerly awaiting another failed gift to strengthen their pull on Luna. “Is to be rid of these shades!” She staggered slightly, leering away from the mirror. “I fear I cannot withstand another of their pulls, Devon. What didest thou find?”

“I found the perfect gift, Luna,” Devon smiled, stepping back from the mirror and leaving Luna standing. Before she could express her confusion with more than her expression, he continued. “I know none of these things mean that much to you. They’re valuable, sure but... well they don’t mean more than that.” Devon sighed before speaking. All of his personal wants whimpered at the notion of this gift. It hurt. “So what I’m going to give you is something I think you need more. Space.”

Devon stepped further back and motioned Gina to follow him. “It’s space from me, from this chase, from whatever you want. For as long as you want. I can offer it for sure here, but once we get out of here, I’ll help give you any space you might need.” He smiled weakly. This gift hurt to give. He wanted to be with her at all times, to be in that space with her, but he finally realized that a gift is not about him. It’s about the recipient. Stepping further away, Devon led Gina up the stairs and back towards the corridors. “You have all the space you need, until you need us, Luna.”

Devon’s voice faded until only his hoofsteps remained and then those too faded.

“Space..." Luna whispered, turning her gaze back to the mirrored door. Where before stood twisted mockeries of herself delighting in the inaccurate and vain gifts, she saw only herself. Alone. Surrounded by the blissful stillness that she never could appreciate at her position. Celebrities and other leaders always had time on their side, their stars would eventually flicker and fade, gifting their twilight with reflective space. But for a being like Luna, there was no such welcoming respite. She stood as Princess of the Night for as long as she could remember, and would stand for as far as she could perceive.

Every one of the worldly treasures that lay scattered around her hooves were meaningless to a Princess beyond time’s grasp. What were they more than baubles? Valuable to be sure, but their luster would fade, their value would falter and they would be placed in yet another forgotten vault to be reborn as priceless to some other age. But space, her own space free of the pressures of rule and maintaining the night was a treasure beyond measure. The stallion who had clearly longed for nothing more than to be with her offered it up without expectation of reward. It hurt him to give it, it strained him to offer away what he desired from her, but he did. It was all she could hope for. It was the perfect gift.

Luna’s reflection was herself. Everything was right and it matched her smile even as it morphed into a frown of concern.

The door requires a partner.

Luna swung her head back towards where Devon had hidden himself and Gina away. They left to give her the space she craved. But now she needed to return the gift. Every treasure he brought out to her she knew would fail and doom the charcoal unicorn to the same unhappy fate battling the wraiths in the mirror. He would appreciate them, but it would not be what he ached for.

“Devon.”

Luna’s voice now seemed small in comparison to the echoing, roaring cacophony of whispers and calls from moments ago. It carried out until it melted into silence until a set of hoofsteps answered them.

Emerging from the shadowy middle distance, Devon spoke. “Everything okay? Did it... ”

“Aye, Devon, it worked. Please, approach.” The Princess smiled slightly as the unicorn swallowed hard and stepped towards the mirror. “Remember, this door requireth a gift, Devon. I have to find one for thee as well.”

“Oh... well,” Devon laughed a bit. “I can help, right? I didn’t see much in that treasure vault that really appealed, but maybe in one of the old books I co-”

“Shh.” Luna laughed slightly. “I know that none of those trifles are truly thy ideal gift. Thy heart is not so different than my own.” She waited until Devon stood at her shoulder. The door offered Luna’s pristine reflection, but Devon’s was clouded, uncertain, wanting for completion and the gift that it demanded. “So what I have to offer thee is no little symbol, or fleeting moment, Devon.” Luna extended one of her forelegs to the side and wrapped down around Devon’s foreleg.

It was a gift that hurt a little bit to give. It strained her to offer this when it was so much her desire to not. Her hoof slid smoothly down until it pressed into Devon’s. Before the pair, they watched Devon’s reflection clear and the smoke melt away to show the two ponies, holding hooves.

“I offer to share my space with thee. Thou art welcome with me. Whenver thou should need it.”

It was the perfect gift.

Before them, the mirror surface shimmered slightly, like a tiny ripple through an otherwise still pond. The clouds parted and beyond their reflections, they spotted what lay beyond the door. Through the mirror, a new background emerged of a descending corridor. Hoof-in-hoof, Devon and Luna walked forward, their grip on each other tightening as they made the first step past the shimmering membrane of the mirror.

Behind them in the fading reflection, an orange mare suddenly appeared between them, her muzzle pressed against the opposite side of the magical barrier. Gina’s reflection stood between them, and looked quizzically at Devon.

He turned to the Princess. “What of her?”

“She’s but a thief and manipulator,” Luna wove a dismissive hoof at the reflected unicorn mare. “But... I know not what her intent is.”

“And,” Devon smiled up to her, resting a shoulder against her’s. “She really did save our pelts from the lava dragon.”

“Lava dragon?” The reflection spoke up in a bright cheery voice. It was much softer, but distinctly familiar to Gina’s. “She... she is finally slain?”

Devon chuckled, waving the gauntlet above him. Her eyes lit up seeing the jeweled adornment on his foreleg. “Not at all,” the charcoal unicorn assured her. “In fact, we got this beauty off its tail, and let it fly off.”

How she beamed upon hearing that. “She’s free!?” The orange reflection bounced and squealed, shaking a victorious hoof over her head. “This is, I’m just, wow! You freed the dragon!”

“T’was not us,” Luna explained, stepping aside, showing a sulking Gina digging at the floor behind her. “T’was you.”

The reflection hopped back in surprise, and shook her head. “It’s... !” As her blonde mane rested atop her face, she reverted back to her smiling face. “It’s, wow, sure been a while since I’ve last seen that.” She hopped back up to the mirror, tapping a hoof against the foggy transparent surface. “Aww, none of you guys got me a gift?”

Devon leered a curious glance up to Luna, only to find an equally perplexed look back to him. Do they tell her? Do they let the reflection know of the malicious act of her other half trying to undermine them and steal the Element of Magic? This was their opportunity to leave the thief behind for good, and complete the task Luna had brought him down to accomplish.

He still couldn’t put a hoof on why she was so untrusting of the orange-coated traveler earlier.

But her other half, so jovial and bouncing giddily beyond her control right before them... was she to be the recipient of the bad news that her other half messed up? Something didn’t seem fair, something was clearly amiss. He knew the Princess of the Night would be none pleased to hear his reasoning, he at least opted to float it past Luna to see if she-

“Aye,” Luna nodded to the reflection with a smile, then turned to Devon. “Findeth a gift worth giving unto her.”

Okay... or just let Luna come to the same conclusion on her own, no long drawn out bout of silly explanation necessary, no delving into long-winded diatribes of fairness, karma, and feelings.

“She hath spared us once from the dragon, our debt is now even.”

Pfft, and just let Luna come up with a more straightforward reason, too. Why was he even making an attempt at thinking, when the Princess was doing that just fine as well. Several millennia of rule only refined her logic, after all.

“Look!” Gina’s reflection jumped upward, pointing behind them.

Turning to the back of the room, Devon saw a very peculiar sight. Where Gina once stood in a quiet sulk, a shimmering line of white descended down her frame, draping her in a rocky gray coat.

“Bookmark!” Luna cried out, running towards her. “Hurry, she’s turning to stone!”

“Bookmark?” Gina’s reflection winced, casting a sharp glance onto the charcoal unicorn. “Bookmark!? That’s so strange; your name is Bookmark!?”

“Yes?” Devon inquired. “What’s happening to her?”

“Hah! Bookmark! Bookmark!” She spun around, but quickly regained her fortitude. “Well, I can’t say for sure..." the reflection choked in panic, then stopped. “Bookmark, you said?” She smacked her hooves together. “Of course! Her contract must have completed somehow! So she’s reverting back to... what she..." the orange mare in the mirror suddenly coughed, a wisp of gray twirling out her nostril. She looked down at her hoof, seeing a creeping sheet of stone encroaching up her arm. “Listen... Bookmark was it?”

“What’s the plan!?”

“Come in here, but listen real close,” the reflection frantically motioned him forward, and lowered her head. “I can’t say this too loud.”

He leaned in close, but she said nothing. Her eyes shifted back and forth, then caught a glimpse at Luna stopping suddenly in the center between the mirror and the stoning unicorn.

“Mister Bookmark!” the reflection suddenly guffawed in overt shock. “Why, that’s Princess Luna’s sister you’re talking about!”

Perplexed, Devon’s eyes shot wide, his head twirling to meet an equally surprised scowl on Luna.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The reflection continued. “Unlike you, I find Celestia to be rather fit and wears her figure gorgeously!”

“Bookkeeper!” Luna shouted, stomping a hoof down. “My sister be the greatest mare in my life, and my anchor ‘pon stormy Canterlot politics, and thou chooseth now!?” She spread her wings, fanning them in promises to obliterate him into dust. “Now, to vent thine petulant frustrations!?” Seething. “Now, to insult my very blood, my truest family!?” Raging. “I could speaketh of thee, Bookmark! Thy... thy..." She kicked at the ground uncontrollably, snarling with a flick of her mane.

Devon backed up, his shoulders planting firmly upon the mirror’s surface. It was going so well! She was so happy just a minute ago! Everything was holding together, until this errant reflection started spewing lies at the stallion’s expense and humiliation.

He knew it wouldn’t work. “I didn’t say any of-”

“None of thy sauce!” Yep, wouldn’t work. “I could dare speak volumes, epics of thine foalish tendencies behind thy back!” The room shook in her exclamation, kicking a spiral of dust along the floor around the Princess. “Or how thy dare call thyself unicorn whence thy magic be lesser of a goat’s!”

Suddenly a hollow crack filled the room, a sheet of thing crackling rock shot out and buffeted against the Princess in a graveled swipe. Gina flopped to the floor, shambling and coughing, spinning her hooves wildly beneath her in an attempt to regain their stance.

“Ha, knew it!” Gina’s reflection beamed euphorically. “Bookmark, listen. Later on, you will need that pony’s help, whether you want it or not. She’s the key you need, and must make it alongside Luna. It’s hard to explain, but you must trust me. For instance, the gift she really needs to traverse forward..." She paused, motioning to Devon’s foreleg, “... is that enchanted item on you.”

“But,” Devon narrowed his eyes, twisting the gauntlet before him. “She gave this... to me.”

“Oh!” The reflection reeled back, then cleared her throat. “What I mean is, oh, of course. It’s obviously a gift meant to... be shared.”

Made sense. The gift Luna and he exchanged was based around a single shared notion, and it got them to the face of the mirror without any repercussions. The same could just as easily be applied to the gauntlet with Gina. She did seem rather bummed to have to pass it off, too. The wisdom and quick thinking of Gina’s reflection was a most welcome breath of fresh air. Everything in the archives so far had seemed bent on scorching, dicing, and squooshing them in comically overblown methods. At last, something useful and convenient to help speed them along!

Devon turned to Gina, and extended a hoof to her, pulling her up from the floor. Her eyes spun, but finally settled with a heavy blink as she looked up to him.

“I know you didn’t want to give this up,” he mused, sliding the gauntlet off his foreleg. He hoofed it over to her, waving it until she gripped it in her magic. “I think it’s only fair that we share it, you and I.”

How long had it been since somepony offered any extension of nuanced friendship to her? She stepped back, and pondered on this offer of friendship, this offer she hadn’t been granted since she had given any sort of proverbial olive branch. The feelings within welled up and burst forth.

“Of course!” She cried out happily, hooking a foreleg around Devon. “Yes! Thank you!” An offering of friendship, regardless of the physical quality, was one she had always yearned for, and jumped at the chance for.

“Great,” Devon laughed, not understanding why she was so jovial to just be given back something her magic didn’t really need. Why was she jumping so giddily over the offer to share it? Eh, weird unicorns are weird. The reflection seemed to know that well enough.

Looking back to the mirror, they approached it slowly, ensuring the gift was playing out. Luna aligned herself beside them, each reflection now properly in sync with them. It was working. Finally, an end to the browsing and sifting through useless over-complicated trinkets and jewels, as the three of them finally stood nose to nose with the rippling mirror.

The meandering corridor on the other end of the foggy glass... wait.

Where did it-?

“Hyah-hah!” The orange reflection leapt out at Gina, gripping its forelegs around her neck.

Gina nickered and kicked back, but the wrapping tendrils from the mirror snared around her legs, wasting no time dragging her in. Luna hopped back, attempting to find something to grip on to herself as she wrapped a telekinetic miasma around her. Devon gripped around her as well, pulling at her shoulders.

Her rear hooves slipped into the mirror. “Hyaaagh!” She cried out, and clenched her teeth together in an attempt to wriggle free. Her horn suddenly lit up, a succession of pelting lights ricocheted in all directions in her panic forcing Devon to lunge his head aside. His hoofing slid and gave out from under him, sending him in the air.

A cobalt sheath of magic immediately wrapped around him, gripping him firmly. “Hnrrgh!” Luna groaned, attempting to pull back with a strained tug of her head.

Snagged in the middle, Devon looked forward, seeing a whole new countenance of Gina in the mirror. The reflection was warped, gnarled, and seemingly wrapping its lips into its own face with a malevolent smile. “Thank you so much!” She chided him. “It’s what I always wanted!”

Featherbrain.

He couldn’t believe he actually listened to the reflection, and let its uncharacteristic kindness sway him. He should’ve known! He’d read about her in GB’s journals! She was never so friendly, never so outgoing and chipper, and never... wait... why was she suddenly so interested in his name before?

Seeing the pleading red eyes of the unicorn mare led him to the obvious realization. She was tough, moody, impulsive, and downright rude at times. But if malevolence was to choose a mask, it would be a veil of uplifting encouragement.

She wasn’t in the mood to look at me, or talk to me.

Devon sunk into the mirror further, feeling his own hooves sliding into the chilling reflective fluid.

All of the reflection’s attention focused on my beloved, and only seemed intent upon pulling her in.

A vacuum of absolute emptiness gripped around his hooves, a numbing sensation slowly crept up his forelegs into his shoulder.

Terrifying doesn’t even begin.

He let go with one foreleg, swinging it back behind him. Shaking it off, the drooping remnants of the shimmering mirror dropped to the floor, freeing his forehoof. His other, with less to hang on to, sunk in even further.

Thinking fast, I jumped into the struggle between Gina and her reflection...

Luna’s aura pulsed and pulled harder, struggling to keep a grip on them. As the edge of the telekinetic field touched the mirror, it dissipated and weakened, peeling away with a gradual slip.

... And swapped out the scarf around her neck with the only treasure in my saddlebag..

Devon reached back, fumbling through his belongings for a replacement. Of course. She didn’t want to share. She didn’t want anything from those decorative shelves.

With hardly any telekinetic grip remaining, Luna quickly jumped forward, clinging tightly to Devon’s collar.

... The trinket I borrowed earlier under tight scrutiny.

The kiss of metallic artistry greeted his hooftip, and he quickly snagged a hold of it. Lunging forward, he exerted all his strength with a final heaving tug backwards, using every drop of energy to keep the front half of Gina’s head over the surface.

The Element of Magic.

With his last bout of endurance, he planted the jeweled big crown thingy firmly onto Gina’s forehead. Her eyes opened wide in surprise, as did Luna’s, but upon receiving the stolen artifact, a white pulse surrounded the mirror. A final grasp of strong gravity hurled all three of them forwards. Before his eyes splashed into the churning reflective barrier, a final flicker of detail ebbed into view through the foggy glass.

The next corridor popped into view.

* * * * *

Devon freaked out. He paused to pick his jaw off the floor. “So that’s all you want!?” He brushed the dust from his haunches. “Just the element?!” Hanging in Gina’s orange telekinesis, the ornate crown sparkled of its own accord, beyond that of the light from the horns and crystals. “What are you doing with... doesn’t even belong to you... how did... ?”

“Look, I can’t really talk... ”

“I beseech the, speak!” Luna’s voice burst forth, cutting Gina off. “T’was thou who stole it from Twilight Sparkle and crashed the train into the palace!” Where Devon expected an enraged tirade and verbal explosion, he saw a genuine concern in Luna’s eyes. “I know now thy task, I know thy purpose. I should have known that they would be sending somepony.” Luna paced evenly towards Gina and the Element, narrowing her eyes critically.

Devon popped his head up. “Wait, I missed something.” He leaned towards the Princess with perked ears. “Who sent somepony? What is her task-”

Luna glared heavily upon the orange unicorn. “What is thy true name?!”

Gina faltered and hesitated. A small laugh broke the unsteady pause first. “The Assistant to your Royal Scribe, of course,” she snickered. “Orangina. Fiancee of Ghasen.”

Luna’s eyes widened, a hushed breath sneaking out, enough to give Gina an answer.

“Ah, you remember Ghasen, don’t you.” Gina pressed forward, her attitude shifting rapidly from nervous hesitation to a tinge of knowing aggression. “And since you figured out why I’m here..." she snickered. “You know what I’m gonna do with this?” With the question, Gina nodded at the Element of Magic, still hanging in her field of flicking orange. “Making sure.” Gina grinned.

“That everything.”

The grin twisted with small, involuntary laughs.

“Goes.”

Gina’s eyes danced between Devon and Luna, her voice from her.

“As it.”

But not of her.

“Should.”

A cold silence crept down the corridor, looping and weaving between the Princess and the orange mare. Devon scratched his head, not sure if he had blacked out and missed several days of communication. In the advantage of the electrified tension between the two mares, he quickly pulled out the journal, seeking any mention of a Gina, or this... Ghasen. A ritual? An artifact? Some sort of monster confined within the deepest pits of the archive?

And again... why was Gina’s reflection suddenly so interested in him upon hearing his name? The way she bounded and lit up like that, so suddenly, he’d never seen the utterance of Bookmark turn a head in such a way.

“I’m sorry, I’m totally lost,” Devon’s awkward voice cracked through the quiet, shattering the stillness with a rippling echo. “Ghasen? It’s not in the journal anywhere.”

Gina groaned, and draped an impatient hoof over the book’s upper rim. “It’s not in the pages.” She pulled her hoof down, flopping the parchment flat on the floor. An orange aura snaked around it, shutting it firmly closed. “It’s on the cover.”

Devon narrowed his brow, licking his upper lip. Ghasen. Ghasen... Just an ornate detailing of moonflowers, a hummingbird, and the architect’s initials.

A wallowing pit suddenly formed in his chest.

G.B.

Ghasen.

That’s so strange; your name is Bookmark!?

Ghasen Bookmark.

Chapter 8: Imprint

Illustration by Scorpdk.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

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Where wind can't weather, the stone birds sleep.

Head under feather, slumbering heap.

Cobalt awakens, greets him in peeps.

Imprint unshaken, she's fallen too deep.

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Chapter 8

Imprint

So much for attempting to make this journal a recollection of how we built this place.

It was supposed to be a simple diary of the construction process, the engineering that went into carving the tunnels and setting up this extension of the Archive deep beneath Canterlot. I guess I got so carried away with a desire to protect the very information within its sanctum, I neglected to care for the information within this tome.

My own tome.

I can protect the absolute sanctity of a bunch of texts I had no hoof in penning, and yet here I can’t even protect my own forsaken tome from my own mental vandalism.

Well, since it’s become less about this magnanimous expansion of grandiose public-funded architecture and devolved to a selfish mishmash of sporadic self-reflection, I’m just going to write about... Me. How horribly narcissistic, granted, but as my quill’s concerned, it can’t perceive the world; it can only perceive my thoughts. Anything that comes to mind. And now?

Now it wants to write about ducks.

* * * * *

The feeling had always lingered.

He couldn’t quite put a solid hoof upon it, but it was there. Not prominent enough to be regarded any more than the very tingling of the air’s chilled droplets lapping against his coat, nor as strongly as the dusty vapor that wrapped and danced before his every breath through the decrepit masonry draped around them. His own mind found it so easy to disregard; just another byproduct from entering a mysterious place engineered wall to wall with peril and puzzle to challenge the very capacities of all who sauntered through it.

So lost the feeling had been, so coolly tucked away like another trite detail of his racing mind’s purple prose in its struggle to retain comprehension on the ancient Archive, it hardly came to the forefront. His instinct’s primordial screams for attention couldn’t carry the distance between him and the list of all that stood before him: walls leaking insects between every brick. Troupes of blades, darts, and boulders flinging him to a panicked waltz tip-hoofing the line with immolation, pulverization, perforation, and annihilation.

Dragons.

Celestia-lovin’ Dragons.

Even something as straightforward as a simple gut feeling would flutter adrift in the empty hum of breeze stirring through the gnarled corridors before them.

Yet as the mystery of the Archive cleared, the fog of the unknown depths lifted, and the augmenting dangers only strengthened the resolve of the bookkeeper and the Princess, his mind could see through the background noise within itself. The dizzying spectacle of Canterlot’s sanctified history diminished to silent acclimation. The looming prospect of impending traps faded irrelevant with the realization that they were meant to test, not destroy those who attempt them.

Though, as the pink-singed tips of his tail reminded him in dry fluttering licks against his sooted hooves, the tests were well within the realm of destroying regardless.

With the comprehension of the architect’s journal, seeing the very struggle he underwent, seeing his project’s evolution from an endeavor of passion to a fool’s gambit to right a misdeed whose consequences he wouldn’t dare face...

The wrongs I do to do what’s right.

...There was always a method, always a way, always an answer. With this realization bringing a soothing methodology to the Archive’s lethal intricacies, the initial rush of sensory overload peeled away, coalesced into just a part of the scenery, diminishing to humble expectation, leaving just...

Just...

The feeling.

The feeling had always lingered.

“This...this has just got to be a coincidence, right?” The only sound that followed was of the paper-bound thump of a journal falling heavily to the stone floor. “Right?!” Devon pressed, but only found two evasive faces looking back at him. The weight of revelation made the momentary pause stretch into a tortured eternity.

Realizing her anticipation for him to answer his own question was in vain, “Well,” the orange unicorn cleared her throat. “I don’t think so, Dev’s...” Gina waved a hoof at his face, her snicker injecting a sharp sour aftertaste into the conversation. “Ya got the same eyes.”

“Ugh,” he groaned. Devon looked to Luna, hoping for a better prognosis. But even she drug her hoof over the stone floor absently. Her uncharacteristic silence bit deeper than Gina’s impulsive remark.

“Dearest.” The Princess coughed lightly. “I... cannot say for sure,” she nitpicked through her words in timid murmurs. “I hath been away for so long that the names... the families of Canterlot are very... different. But,” Luna bit her lip, inhaling gently through her nostrils before continuing, “there is something about thee that feels...familiar.” She nitpicked her words. “Like I knew thy face.” With utmost regal care. “I know thine face... from elsewhere, Devon.”

The charcoal unicorn’s head hurt. The rush of alien emotions from the gauntlet to the seeming awakening of his magic was enough of a wild ride, but to be related so intimately to this whole affair sent a sickening shiver through his stomach. If it was true, his ancestor was the source of this entire thousand year old crisis, and where did that put him? It had to be a coincidence! After all, if he was related to Ghasen, it would be in more than just his eyes!

“Yeeeeup...” Gina broke into the conversation again, attempting an encouraging grin. “One major thing that’s different about ya is the cutie mark!” She jabbed at his flank. “Unlike you, Ghasen had this weird hummingbird thing, real fancy.”

“We alls has the sames cuties marks in our family. All the same cutie mark.”

“Yeeeeah...” Devon murmured. That sick twisting in his stomach wasn’t getting any better.

Boop! Hummingbird!

* * * * *

“And this one!” The Captain groused, his muzzle scrunching up to his face. “I protested whilst heeding witness my maiden donning eye shadow yonder excessive heights. She appeared surprised!” Stormblade hoisted the heavy slab to the side, haphazardly letting it slide down the debris pile between them and the only open door leading out of the massive lava room. “I’m starting to think these are really badly written jokes.”

Jetstream darted to the side of the slipping rock, taking a quick flight before plopping back to his hooves. He tucked his sore wing close to him, leaning with a grimace against the offending joint. He’d shake it off eventually, he always did.

“But what would all these hunks of rock be doing with jokes on them?”

No matter what kind of pain it was.

“Sir, they seem to be of an old dialect,” Jetstream trot up beside him, his hoof slipping on another slab the Captain slung blindly down the pile. I only accept allowance of a pessimist, a return not be of expectation. “Probably written, it seems, a hundred, two hundred years ago?”

Though Jetstream certainly was no scholar of ancient tomes and tongues, he was more than trained at reading the prehistoric nuances of body language. Even from a distance, the suddenly rigid gesture of the Captain standing atop the pile whipped a breath of panic into the cyan pegasus.

Something was wrong. He could see it in the Captain’s curled face. Jetstream wasted no time, ignoring the ricocheting pain in his shoulders as he flailed and hovered up to the black-coated earth pony. He looked out into the strewn wreckage beyond the joke-laden slabs they stood atop.

"All my life," Stormblade pondered, flicking stray grainules of dust from his shoulder with rhythmic jangles. "My fame. My duties. My benevolence. I've always felt I'd be haunted by something."

Jetstream sauntered to his side, examining the assortment of detritus scattered before them. Spears. Darts. Various blades, axes, tomahawks, and skittering bugs. A giant curved fang of shimmering steel.

With a shake of his neck, Jetstream twirled a strand of rainbow hair over his brow. "Sir, did you say...HAUNTED sir?"

"Yes." The Captain shook a lazy tendril of mane from his brow, and looked profoundly forward, ensuring his face was backlit by the ambient torchlight at his flank. "Hounded. Weighed upon. Followed."

"Ah," the cyan Pegasus nodded, his brow resting in a bored gaze. "So not ghosts." All knowing, to his dismay...

"They follow me like...vespered tendrils of disembodied aberrations in the inky blackness of life..."

...To his dismay, the Second Captain was in a poetically metaphorical mood.

"I see, sir, so-"

"-But THIS!" Stormblade cracked a black hoof outward, snapping it to a cracking singularity into the dim, musty atmosphere. "I never expected to be haunted..." A ring of dust permeated from his obsidian hoof, framing the warped metallic wreckage adorning the center of the dispersed weapons littering the floor.

Jetstream twisted his lip to the side, leering forward with narrowed eyes. "By...a train, sir?"

The Second Captain's hoof dropped dejectedly. "Jetlag, what did I tell you about interrupting my battle hymns!?"

Jetstream righted himself, propping his neck up straight, realizing he just broke the Captain's astute concentration upon mundane verbal inanity. "Oh! I-" He coughed, clearing his throat as his mind snapped back to focus with a steaming platter of piping hot remembrance ready to serve. "Sir! Something, something, protocol, something, sir!"

"EXACTLY!" The Captain clicked a fetlock against the private's forehead. "And what did you just do?"

Ding! Another serving of the Captain's vociferous rants, fresh from the night's annual chewing out! "Sir! Something, something, NOT protocol, something, sir!" His shoulder bit against him again, the base of his wing crying out for attention. He twisted a foreleg to the side, trying to pull the tension out from the throbbing injury.

He’d shake it off eventually.

He always did.

"Very good, Private Jetlag!" Stormblade seethed, emanating a lengthy exhale as his neck sunk. His eyes maintained an aggressive quiver, retaining focus on the smoldering train car as he slowly motioned to a purple-lit doorway to the side.

The cyan pegasus narrowed his eyes, wondering why the Captain was letting the wrecked train car get under his withers so. Though as he leaned into a slow sidestep to follow Stormblade, a peculiar scent of familiarity started to emanate from the train car.

The train car.

…

The train car!

“Sir!” Jetstream called to the Captain in excitement. “This is the lost train everypony is-!”

“Protocol, private!”

The pegasus immediately halted, slowing his pace to catch up with Stormblade.

The Captain chuckled softly seeing the rainbow-maned pegasus suddenly snap back to a regimented stance. He lowered his voice, and resumed. "I don't know if I should be grateful to have a private who remembers my commands so well..." Stormblade stopped, his nostrils scrunching as his eyes rolled up in agitation. "Or if your extensive knowledge comes from your dismal inability to get it right the first ten times..."

Without even shuddering a wing. "Sir." Not even one rustled feather. "Thank you." Not even the slightest assertive drop of an eyebrow. "Captain Stormblade, sir." Not one extropian hint of the supernova of unadulterated vitriol tearing the seams of his mind.

Like the collapsed chassis of the train dropped off a cliff, a waterfall, a council chamber, a cave floor, and two levels of a subterranean labyrinth, he held his poise. The cyan pegasus maintained a polite show of reverence with the same astonishing miracle the train maintained any resemblance to... well, a train. He would just twist and buckle with each volley of, oh what did he like to call it... constructive criticism.

“Finally you’re starting to learn at least something, Jetlag.”

No, no. Constructive wisdom.

“There, see? Being humble isn’t that hard!”

He’d shake it off eventually.

“Though, heh, I do make it look easy.”

He always did.

* * * * *

Yep. Ducks.

It wasn’t always me that had an affinity for them, my beloved Gina, she... well she used to have a soft spot for them. Nowadays, a gaggle could land in the front yard adorned in balloons and streamers, and she’d just keep looking at me longingly with that empty glance of whatever it is she becomes in my presence.

But she had a story from long ago, when she tried to care for one as a filly. A baby duck seemed lost and alone on the road, and when Gina saw it on the way to school, it sprinted towards her. Without thinking, on impulse and instinct, this baby adopted her as its mother right then and there. Seems an odd and spontaneous gesture, as motherhood is quite a huge... well I’m rambling here; thing is, the duckling is obliged in such a way.

It’s something out of its control, something inherited, but they “imprint” upon others. Imprinting, simply, is the process in which a baby will immediately determine a paternal figure regardless of species. They’d imprint upon all four heads of a hydra if such was the first living creature they saw.

Gina’s story was unfortunately tragic, as without a proper caretaker of its own kind, the duckling didn’t live very long. Imprinting allows one side to immediately love another unconditionally regardless of circumstances. But it still depends on the other to love them back as one of their own kind could.

So nowadays, when she looks at me with that twinge of hopelessness sealed behind a false visage of... I can’t even describe her look anymore. But when I see that, I know how it felt for her when she first attempted to care for that duckling.

I’ve been imprinted on.

* * * * *

“Woah,” Gina gawked at as a succeeding parade of torches blazed to life before them, casting an orange glow through the gradually expanding chasm. “That’s so M. Seed Escher!”

The room was a tangled mess of paths and routes strewn like tangled ribbons. Yet it didn’t diverge and lead to multiple branching paths and dead ends like a maze, as the open and wide room clearly showed every path converging to the same point on the other side. The paths were not equal; some were mere simple walks from one end of the chamber to the other while others went up, looped, and knotted around others. Other paths still wound through hollowed passages of jagged rock and crystal. Yet they all met at the next door, another broad, sealed portal that stood imposingly in the way. Simply looking at it in its entire mixed-up tangled entirety made Devon’s eyes hurt.

“Okay, this seems kind of...” Devon began before both mares simultaneously clamped their hooves over his mouth, preventing any thoughts of ease to be heard, as if the chamber itself would turn inside out, or fire snakes or something in response to such impertinence.

Once assured of his cooperative silence, they released him. “Alright, alright,” the charcoal unicorn sputtered before setting off down one of the paths towards the door. Devon avoided the most obvious easy path and swerved around a narrow, perilous but not taxing route. If the mad diatribes of the architect had taught him anything, it’s that he frowned upon those who took the path of least resistance.

Each hoofstep echoed and reverberated off the twisting paths woven beside him. He lowered his head to avoid a helix of supporting masonry, expecting a sawblade, spike pit, or zombie manticore to pin him down. Yet he kept his wits about him, straining on each slow step up the sharp ascents and taking timid paces while sloping downward, always keeping a ready forehoof ready for an immediate grab should the ground suddenly choose to swell, collapse, or explode gregariously.

He exhaled deeply, coming to a stop.

Despite all of his careful steps and bracing for impact, he arrived at the door across the chamber without incident.

“Well done, dear!” Luna called from the distance, following steps behind Devon and rubbing across his side as she reached safety. “Thou art getting an eye for the safest and wisest routes.” She beamed proudly at him. “Thank goodness I let thee lead, for I truly would have chosen a more dangerous or trap-laden path.”

“Hey, easy now,” Devon chuckled. “You’re gonna make me blush, Princess. Besides, we’re not through this yet.” Turning his focus to the door, Devon tried to understand it. Unlike the others, there was no obvious mechanism, no clue built into the structure itself. Indeed, the half dozen simple oversized keyholes were, despite the scale, perfectly normal. Normal, that is, save for its size, which would easily accommodate a hoof into its workings.

“Well?” Gina grinned, not missing a beat. “Who wants to stick their hoof in the dark mystery holes and have it eaten?”

“Very funny, Gina,” Devon rolled his eyes as he approached the set of holes. “But you kinda have a point, there’s no way they would stick these in this obvious of a place unless they meant for us to notice it.” The charcoal unicorn ran his brass gauntlet up and down the face of one of the keyholes, hoping that the miracle it performed for his magic would do the same thing for the door.

“Dear,” Luna’s voice chimed in near to his ear. “What dost thou think?”

Dear?

“Huh?” Devon blinked. “What do I think?” Every other door, Luna was more than happy to take the lead, but as he turned to answer the question, he saw an expression of intense trust, making his heart flutter with the newfound trust and reliance on him.

Finally a sparkle of appreciation! Everything, all the discomfort was paying off! She wasn’t even being sarcastic or chiding him for enjoying the moment. In fact, Luna seemed distracted by something at the ground...

* * * * *

Peep!

Slowly, the three ponies' heads inclined down towards the sound. Before them was a most peculiar sight.

A gosling, entirely made from stone.

It moved as smoothly and easily as if it were flesh and blood, yet was undeniably a piece of carved stone. It waddled and toddled in small circles, peeping constantly in worried tones. Or at least the ponies surmised it was worried. Twisting its head around, the gosling spotted the trio with a gemstone eye and immediately changed its wandering course to tightly follow and approach them, focused on Devon.

Peep! Peep!

"Erm..." Devon murmured as the gosling strode purposefully up to him and stopped, looking up at him with a posture that suggested it was waiting for his guidance. "Hello?" The charcoal unicorn extended his un-gauntleted hoof towards the gosling, which immediately chirped and nuzzled against it, pulling away only long enough to give Devon the same look of waiting for his lead.

"Thou seem to be..." Luna searched for words, but even as she sought to twist them into flattery for Devon, the Princess could not restrain a giggle as the gosling hopped and played around his foreleg. Reacting to her words, the gosling immediately retreated a few steps away from her, quivering at the mare’s voice.

"Aw Dev's, it thinks you're momma!" Gina chimed in, all too eager to fill in the momentary silence. "I didn't think ya had it in ya." This, too, caused another retreat back into Devon’s leg.

With a groan, Devon tried to shoo the bird away, but it came back instantly whenever his hoof would try to gently brush it aside. "I don't even like birds all that much," he muttered. As it chirped and nuzzled lovingly against his fetlock with all the snuggly warmth a slab of rock can provide, Devon tried to ignore the equally grating and irritating snicker from Gina, digging into the journal for any kinds of clues regarding the chamber before them.

After some quick rifling, a chunk of scribbles and quickly sketched drawings triggered his short-term memory, a cursory doodle of the warped pathways around him brought his hoof clenching down upon the page. Beside the doodle, even more rapidly drawn characters of ancient old emblems, like those from his communications with the stars from previous, warped and weaved against the page margins.

This archive is nearly complete. I should be celebrating with the others, but there is no room left in my heart and mind to find joy in this monument. All of my thoughts are consumed with the contracts and the stars.

The page snagged and protested with the tugging of a small stone beak nipping at the corner. Devon pulled the book away, but the gosling only pulled back harder in response. The edge began to tear with each hoist of the small rock bird’s neck. With a sharp gasp, Devon lifted the book over his head, bringing with it a small swinging bird dangling off the side, its little nubby wings waving gleefully for attention.

“Aww,” Gina couldn’t help but remark at the fluttering gosling chirping excitedly at him.

Devon sighed, holding the book open, tilting it almost sideways with shuffling forelegs to an angle where the gosling’s weight wouldn’t rip the page out.

I have bound the list given to me by the stars to their contracts. Every one of them was far more accepting of the idea than I expected. Even though I urged them to consider the costs, the repercussions of toying with destiny, the shortcut to their dreams blinded them, just as I was.

The architects penmanship loosened, the ink thinner and more faint indicating a rapid succession of strokes trying to keep up with his augmenting mental pace.

Just one more contract.

One more.

One more, and they have insisted that the will and power of Equestria shall be mine to correct these wrongs I’ve done against my beloved Gina. My wrongs. My wrongs! They promised to have even the will and powers of the Princess herself, granted, I be the one to see it fit when she too has such a desire.

When she too wishes upon a star.

A narrow thread of cobalt illuminated the edge of the page, the blue light threading along the fibrous edge before dissipating away in a slow rhythm of quieting hoofsteps.

Everypony believes that they are the one who will somehow beat fate, that the consequences will not apply.

I hope for once...this one is right.

She’s been right about so much, it’s what makes her so beloved. After the countless sleepless nights where she stood alone in obliged insomnia, performing her annual nocturne to a sleeping audience, she’s at least owed this. She’s owed her due appreciation, a night we’ll all remember, one to be ingrained in our memories, to be spoken of through eternity.

Princess Luna, I feel your frustrations, I question not your wisdom... but simple as the desire is, you know not how easily simplicity falls to burdensome complexity. I wish you would reconsider by tonight, but should you choose to roll the dice, I am prepared to oblige you.

For her.

Such a humble wish I have negotiated with them. I would like for just one night, one night only, a night most beautiful and inspiring. One night Equestria will see and tell of for generations.

A night to last forever.

A strip of parchment tore free, trailing behind a flailing gray blob of chirping blur before bouncing in a twisting ribbon behind the tumbling gosling. Where it once clung hanging to the journal’s edge, the soft glance of the Princess stared back at Devon.

She always knew it was just a matter of time until it all started coming together. While her own shameful foray into embracing darkness and attempting to summon eternal night would always be recognized as something of the past, even Devon’s courteous negligence of her history would only be temporary.

He was still needed. And while at first his own contemplations as to why she let him trail along were set aside behind the irresistible aspect of following somepony as regal and awe-inspiring as Luna, the growing familiarity with the labyrinth’s engineered madness allowed more coherent thoughts to coalesce.

His thoughts spent the last couple hours juggling why Luna was so adamant about coming to this place. Yet his natural intuition seemed to lean back, forehooves crossed smugly, nodding with satisfied glances at him. Could it have been any other thing that drove her to this place?

The feeling had always lingered.

“And now you know why,” Luna sighed.

* * * * *

He’d heard rumors...

“Wahahah!”

...But he never actually heard the Captain squeal like a school filly.

“Jetlag, this is incredible! I knew my instinct would pay off, but I had no idea it would pay off, like like, like THIS!” The Second Captain was delirious with pleasure as he ran up and down the shelves of treasure. Even Jetstream, guarded and cautious, could not restrain the widening his eyes as he took in the wealth of the room. Apart from a few disturbed tiaras, this seeming treasure vault had been untouched for centuries. “Don’t you realize what I can do with this?!”

Jetstream sighed. Stormblade’s smile begged for an answer, and the pegasus knew that no matter what he thought could possibly be the right answer, the actual answer would be oh so much worse.

“Donate it to...”

Stormblade’s expression fell.

“Invest it in...”

And fell.

“Give your subordinates a raise?”

Snort.

Sigh. “Fund an overly luxurious vacation for yourself?”

“Getting warmer, Jetlag.”

Siiigh. “And some lucky mare?”

“Precisely!”

His head reeling from how easily diverted his superior officer grew, Jetstream stepped back and walked a circuit around the chamber, trying to piece together just exactly what it was. It was obviously ancient, but any details beyond that lay beyond his knowledge. However, he knew that somepony had been there before they were, small discrepancies in the arrangement of the treasure told the guard’s instincts that not all was as it seemed.

But questions lingered on who was there and where they got to. Worry gnawed at his gut with the recent wild events around the city; a missing Princess, trains falling through the palace, a stolen Element of Harmony, a dangerous unicorn on the loose... all this had to be connected, but how? Jetstream would be hard pressed to piece this puzzle together under the best of circumstances.

“Wheehee! I’m the richest pony in Equestria!”

And this was anything but the best of circumstances.

* * * * *

By the time anypony would get so far into this vault, there are few tests that can be summoned that would actually provide challenge and meaning for them. Any thieves, Princesses or pilgrims this far on the path are tested as much as they need to be. However, this chamber should not be neglected either. But it is difficult to test one's kindness in any meaningful way.

To that end, the unicorn Crystal Shine (bound to my contracts three days ago) created a spell to animate statues. He imbued life into a set of stone geese that were carved for decoration. Instead, they are the guardians of this place. The goslings are the keys to the next door, all one needs to do is lead them to the door and it will open. However, these small statute goslings will only follow and obey the kind of spirit. Cruelty will only cause them to flee for the safety of their parents. These goslings, while friendly, are keenly aware of any loss of temper or patience from their wardens and even the slightest showing of anger could be enough for the entire process to be reset.

Kindness is something small and simple, but easy to ruin. Even kind intentions can cause cruelty.

Turning his gaze back to the wider cavern, and back down to the little stone gosling at his hooves, Devon pursed his lips and stooped down to the gosling. With his face so close, the golem-like bird quickly reacted, running up to his muzzle and applying its literally abrasive brand of affection. “Yeek...ow, okay!” Devon tried to laugh, scooping it up in his un-gauntleted hoof. “So we gotta find all your...er...brothers and sisters? Do they even count as that?”

Peep!

The gosling beamed up at him with shining eyes.

“Do you know where they are?”

Peep! Beam.

“C’mon, Dev’s! Use your motherly instinct to find em!” Gina called. Devon turned his focus back to the gosling and tried again, feeling a flush of embarrassment creeping up his cheeks as he tried to communicate not only with a baby goose, but a STONE baby goose.

“Er...peep? How many more of you are there? Can you help me find them?”

Peep peep!

“Ugh...come on, give me a little break here, huh?” Devon could not believe he was having this conversation. And all the while, the gosling turned blissful circles around in his hoof, cuddling tightly against any part that it could reach and leaving small abrasions with every single show of affection. “Owowowow...little pootin’ tootin’...” Devon hissed, a small show of frustration bubbling out. Immediately, the gosling tensed and scurried towards the edge of his hoof, hesitating only as it had no place to jump down immediately. Panicked peeps filled the air with a rapid fire staccato of alarm. “Hey! Hey!” Devon pulled it close. “I’m sorry okay? Just didn’t think you’d be so...rough?” he tried.

Peeep?

The gosling gave him a long, distrusting look.

“Promise, no more of that! Just been a long day of it is all, but we’re almost there.” Devon forced out double the amount of patience and forgiveness than he thought the situation warranted. “But I gotta get your help, okay?” All the while, Gina chortled and laughed, either at Devon or at some private joke going on in her head, inspired by Devon’s conversation with a statue.

The charcoal unicorn rounded about and carefully conveyed the gosling past Gina towards the set of holes. Gingerly, Devon tried lifting it up to each keyhole until the living statue sprung from his hoof and nestled into one of them with a delighted squeaking sound.

“That’s the right one?” Devon’s question was answered by a heavy grinding sound as locks inside the door pulled and opened. “Alright! One down!” Smiling brightly, Devon spoke. “And five to go, this should be foal’s play!”

The stars came to me the night following this entry. It seems Crystal Shine's spell interests them. In a flash of starlight, I was shared the magic by them, almost instantly, and now I too can breathe life into stone. But why? What could they intend for me with this power?

Even though Crystal Shine is bound to his own contract, I refuse to speak to him of this. It was part of his contract that the magic he creates still be used from now for thousands of years to come. Considering how fast magic evolves, I do not see this happening, but the contract is in place. I've learned enough to know that somehow, it will happen.

The evening has been disorienting with the stars’ new gift. How quickly they are now to assist me, it’s easy to get their attention now. But... too easy. Now they seem to be approaching me without provocation. I contemplated any ulterior motives ahoof, but pieced none yet. Though it was hard to concentrate on the long walk home tonight, every wavering of concentration, and my untrained new magic would start making pebbles dance in festive parades before me.

I swear, I even got the statue atop the plaza fountain to wink at me. Whatever the stars gave me, I must learn to harness it. And fast.

* * * * *

“Grrffff...c’mon!” Devon groaned. He was back in the maddening tunnels of jagged crystal, propped on his stomach against a slightly less jagged shard and driving his hoof into a small gap. As his hoof banged and scraped along the walls, jabbing into hidden protrusions and piercing spikes of stone, a wild peeping sound followed it. “Pleeeease?” Devon added, trying to swallow his frustration and present an appearance of complete welcoming warmth. “C’mon little guy, just come out here, I promise it’s fine.”

Devon could not see what the next gosling was doing and could only hear it shuffling and scraping along the stone. He had no way of preparing for when the gosling, in spiteful curiosity, bit down on the flesh of the unicorn’s fetlock.

“GHRGH!” Devon winced. Normally the bite of a gosling was more of a tickle, but this was made of granite, and its bite fierce. Biting his lip, Devon rode out the agonizing pinch as he curled his hoof around and gently dragged the gosling out into the open. “Ow...ow...ow....” he repeated over and over until he could cradle the stone bird and extract its mouth. “You are a...” he had a very good avian curse in mind, but gulped it down, “a very bitey little guy aren’t you?” In front of him, the gosling peeped, gemstone eyes shining the same light as the one before it. “Now are you all done? Gonna play nice?”

Peep!

“Thank Celestia,” he murmured, taking a moment to asses his foreleg. After a moment, Devon stopped trying to count the individual cuts, scrapes and marks caused in his groping reach for the statue bird. Weaving through the path back to the door, Devon was not entirely surprised to find Gina and Luna waiting for him.

“Way to go, momma bird!” Gina called, snickering.

“Well done!” Luna echoed. Their tones were different, while Gina’s had pure derision flowing in her words, the Princess was far more sincere, a friendly face in the crowd. “Thou art doing wonderfully, dear!” That dear certainly felt like it was worth the cost of cutting his leg to Tartarus and back at least. Lifting the gosling, Devon fit it into another one of the holes and was rewarded with the mechanical churning and grinding.

“Any one of you wanna get the next one?” Devon asked hopefully.

I attempted another rebellion tonight. I took Crystal Shine’s contract and attempted to destroy it outright. Completely unmake that what bound him to me and the stars. I assembled all of the components, even pacifying the lava dragon long enough to secure the gauntlet all for nothing.

I should have figured that it would not be so simple. I know -how- to do the task, yet it eludes me. If I were more paranoid, I would say that the stars were keeping the knowledge from me, but if they had, they would not be so subtle. Could it be that these contracts are unbreakable? Are they permanent? Or do I simply lack the ability to change them once they are forged?

Regardless, there is a specific list of components that must be in place before the spell could even work. Naturally, the contract and all aspects affected by the contract are required. The gauntlet is crucial for mine, as it holds the essences of those bound, without it, the magic is useless. A powerful source of magic is needed as well. To this day, I can only think of the Element of Magic, but I imagine the Princesses could also reach such a level of power.

As a means of securing the contracts, all are sealed by a rune. This is not a decree of the stars, but one of my own devising. With the rune in place, I ensure that nopony can modify the contracts, and that they will have to go through me to even consider it.

Finally, all of this work must be done in the sight of the stars. If the contracts are manipulated in daylight or darkness, the magic will not take hold. The starlight is the very ink of the contract, and all work requires it. The sun’s light renders any change unbreakable until the next night.

* * * * *

“Sir...” Jetstream groaned. “Sir, is this really what we should be doing?”

“Pfft! This is extremely important, Jetlag!” The Second Captain paused in front of the great mirror, bedecked in jewels and ornamental weapons. “If I am going to make any kind of decent impression when I save Princess Luna, everything has got to be just right. It’s the art of presentation!” Stormblade raised a hoof to model a ceremonial, gem-encrusted sword, giving it a few test swings in the air. Somehow, some way, the jangling and jingling had found a way to get louder and more intense.

“Presentation?!” Jetstream sputtered, teeth raking with the new symphony of rattling noise. “Second Captain, we’re trying to find Princess Luna, right? Then why by Celestia’s beard are we fooling around in front of a mirror!?”

“Jetlag!” Stormblade barked. “Do not interrupt me! This is an important facet of the investigation!”

Something snapped in the pegasus’ mind. “No it’s not!” Jetstream stamped down and flared his wings in frustration. “Missing! Princess! Sir, we still don’t even know how we get OUT of here! And this place needs more than just us taking some treasure t-”

“Don’t question me!” Stormblade roared with a new cacophony of jingles. “I know what you’re up to, Jetlag!”

“We need to...wait.” The pegasus nickered, blowing a strand of rainbow mane aside. “What am I up to, anyway?” Jetstream’s tirade came to a halt.

“You’re just trying to steal the glory of this place’s discovery from me! I knew you were bucking for my position as soon as I got it!” Stormblade sneered triumphantly as the pegasus felt new gray hairs spontaneously in his mane. “Clever clever Jetstream. I applaud you for sticking to your plot, but the jig is up. I know every one of your little tricks to steal my job.”

He couldn’t be serious.

“You can’t be serious...”

Oh but he was.

“Oh but I am!” Stormblade clamped his hoof down in a shallow display of power and strength. “You will find no more ways to steal my achievements from me.”

The pegasus watched with growing horror as Stormblade seemed to have had this speech practiced, right down to hitting his marks with his steps and movements. Like it was all just one big long-rehearsed song and dance number.

“I always knew that the system in Canterlot would have those trying to exploit it. Luckily, I still have my honor, and I will be a pillar of it long after your scheme is uncovered.” A pause to reposition himself to the right angle. “Even if you somehow get promoted, you will never hold it because you lack valor and honor, Jetlag! You have nothing to offer Canterlot! You have nothing to offer Princess Luna!” Yep. Definitely rehearsed, judging by the dramatic swirls of his hooves and poses which may have looked imposing in some foal’s imagination. “And you most definitely have nothing to offer me!”

Before Jetstream could speak, Stormblade struck his final pose.

“In fact, the best thing you could do for me now is to slink back to your...politics and leave the real work of protecting Canterlot to those who are still dedicated to Lu-er...her!”

“Sir...are you sure? You’re going to-”

“The time for words and schemes is over, Jetlag, please remain here if you’d like or see yourself out.” He marched in proud cadence down another aisle of jewels, hoof-picking the subtlest of accessories.

“Are you...” the cyan pegasus’ head pulled back in disbelief, his teeth suddenly grating together with a fresh slug of tension surging up his ribs. “...Ack,” he winced, twirling his shoulder inward with a raised foreleg. “Are you, dismissing me sir?”

“Afraid so, private.” The Captain raised a brave heroic foreleg before him. “For it has always been destiny’s humble wish that I show my prowess and capability, not just as a Captain, but...” He lowered his voice to a dramatic hush. “...As her stallion.”

The pegasus’ rainbow mane frazzled. “P-Permission to speak freely sir?”

“Denied.”

Denied? No, no, something something protocol a flying feather! “Captain Stormblade, with utmost respect, you cannot, you must not, proceed alone you don’t know what-”

"-OKAY!" Stormblade slammed a hoof on the ground, the thundering echo devouring whatever words were in flight. “Okay,” he repeated in a deep exhale, lowering his voice. "It was all fun and such, derping around with you and being your good buddy,” his eyes lifted, softening for the first time his memory recalled through an eternity paved over by time, “but your attitude, Jetstream..."

What about his attitude? Was the Captain...would he...dare he even...?

"Sir?"

"See!?” He spat sharply. “That, right there!"

Oh, he would dare.

"What, sir?"

"That thing..." the Captain waved his black hoof before him in quick tight circles, "...there. What you're doing right now. Interjecting, interrupting, interfering, interacting. You're speaking too much, I needed you more in the background."

Somewhere in the world, a camel collapsed under a fluttering tendril of straw and a shattered spine.

"Stormblade, listen."

"Captain-"

"Listen!" The cyan pegasus slammed a hoof on the floor, his jaw clenching with the surge of tight pain slamming through his wing. The room echoed again, this time ringing in dizzying pirouettes within the Captain's ears. They twitched in the unfamiliar reverberations of a hoof not his own. "We need to seriously discuss-"

A black fetlock rapped into his chest. "You need to seriously oblige to me!" He would not be overpowered. “Oblige to me!” He would not be spoken down to. “You listen to me!” He would not have the slammed hoof of another being addressed at him, no, nopony puts a hoof down at him. Stormblade loomed over him, snorting a volley of hot air through his rainbow mane in a thick vaporous sheet.

Unimpeded, the pegasus attempted. “Please, will you...” Jetstream snagged the words in his throat, meticulously reassembling them. “What we need is to set our egos aside for a second to-”

“-Ego!?” Not a chance it was going to make any ground. “My ego!? This isn’t ego, private!” Oh, how he let the word sink in. Private. Peon. Underling. "I am a Captain, I am your Captain. I am to be respected, revered, and followed because I am a Captain!"

Without thinking. "And Sombra was a King!"

*Khlamm!*

Silence immolated the room following the explosion of two black hooves bucking a fissure into the crystal wall.

"Don't make me invoke Clopwin's Law in this!"

Oh, shoot. That line, the one his brain had always drawn out in plain sight when he practiced his telling off speech in the mirror late at night...

“Sir, wait.”

...Crossed it.

“Out!”

Blinking, Jetstream turned and headed away from the mirrored wall. Amazingly, he felt conflicted. Jetstream had no love for his immediate superior, and the spit on his dedication to Canterlot would have sparked a brawl were it anypony else, but still the private felt slightly responsible for him. They had recruited together and struggled through the same basic training. Indeed, before Stormblade had talked his way into officer’s training, they regularly shared patrols, and such camaraderie was not easily shaken.

“If that’s what you want, si-”

“OUUUUT!”

By the time he flew back to Canterlot castle and got help, he was sure that Stormblade would be battling tears again, and eager to regale the rescue party with his fabricated exploits. With a sigh, Jetstream lifted off and swooped away, back towards the door and hole that had brought them into this bizarre labyrinth.

The Captain’s remaining sting of words racked against him, the verbal fangs still clenching tightly around his ears. Combined with the remnant aches of his battered wing, each beat of his wings through the warm cavern air upwards shot a bolt of deja vu between the pegasus’ eyes.

*Floomf.*

“Private Jetlag you will honor my authority!”

*Floomf.*

“Show them your nephew’s screw-up that has been cast upon you!”

*Floomf.*

“Now, Jetlag, do that dance we made you do!”

He shook his neck, feeling the muscles pop refreshingly along his spine. Finally, in flight, and now carried through the warm updraft of the lava floor cradling him upward, he looked down again at the purple crystalline light pinching into the distance beneath.

*Floomf.*

“Finally you’re starting to learn at least something, Jetlag.”

No.

*Floomf.*

“There, see? Being humble isn’t that hard!”

No, no. Not like this. Not like this. He couldn’t just let the Captain get his way. Jetstream knew that when it came to humble wishes, he questioned not the Captain’s “constructive wisdom...” but simple as the desire is, he knew how easily simplicity falls to burdensome complexity.

*Floomf.*

“Though, heh, I do make it look easy.”

And while his words would always knock him down, belittle him, and make him feel two haunches tall, Jetstream had one skill nopony else in the Captain’s company could lay claim to. He wouldn’t give up on him. Sure, the constant tirades grew tiresome, but embers of pride emanated within his chest at the thought that he had just stood up to the Captain, that even after disregarding the tenets of protocol and attempting to drag him back to Equestria that he still felt bad about leaving him behind.

He felt bad.

After being rid of the pestering buffoon, he felt bad! Really bad!

*Floomf.*

“Finally you’re starting to learn at least something, Jetlag.”

He shook it off.

“Finally you’re starting to learn at least something.”

He shook it off.

“You’re starting to learn.”

The pain in his wing started flaring up again. And through his rushed gallop to the cavern mouth exiting to the starry winter sky outside, the throbbing did not recede.

It never did.

* * * * *

Back in front of the mirror, Stormblade beamed. “Finally, now Luna is all mine,” he said. “Oh Jetlag, running off like the cowardly lot you are was the best gift ever.”

He giggled delightedly. “You handed me the best way to usher in my name as the Hero of Canterlot.” Stormblade turned a circle to admire his new plundered attire, so engrossed that he did not see the equally jewelry clad hoof emerge from the mirror until he was drug through with two eagerly clasping forelegs.

* * * * *

“And that’s...five...” Devon groaned, the peeping stone gosling happily squirming into its nesting keyhole. It settled in with a happy chirp, leaving the charcoal unicorn to assess himself. His forelegs was gouged with cuts and bruises, matched by marks on his face and stomach borne from crawling and straining to reach into nests of broken crystal.

Turning back to the tangle of paths, the charcoal unicorn swallowed hard. He did not relish going through the painful hunt once more.

“Dear!” Luna protested, “thou must rest, I think thou hast given enough, more than thy fair share.”

Looking over his cut forelegs, Devon shrugged. “They were all scared of you and Gina, they only go with me, Luna. Besides,” he smiled slightly. “I’m scratched up already. I don’t see any reason for you to be like it as well.”

Kindness was always so much easier when it was small, meaningless things, in meaningless days. Holding a door, helping with a fallen bag of groceries, they were all acts of kindness to be sure, but what did they truly cost?

Everypony always spoke of the ‘little things’ in kindness, but the sentiment always felt incomplete to Devon. While a certain warmth existed in the small things that brought joy to another, the heart of it beat when the kindness came at a greater cost.

Sacrifice.

Kindness when kindness is not easy, or smart is when its resolve is tested. The test takes so many forms, when nopony would carry a grudge for turning away from it. Reaching through shattered stones and shredding one’s legs even more, swallowing pride to allow painful honesty through or even putting aside rage and indignation to summon up the ultimate of kindnesses: forgiveness.

* * * * *

Even I felt slightly indignant towards her as she finished up her story. Gina was always good at telling them, had a certain flavor with her words that made me stop and think her intended message several times after she told them. Every story had multiple meanings.

It racked me for months after hearing the duckling didn’t... how she failed to raise the duckling. It had chosen her, she was more than capable of hoof-raising it, but seemed to feel no guilt in telling me it... that its life was unfortunately brief.

Yet as I look unto her, I feel a despair of hopelessness brimming. Unlike the duckling, she’s my own kind. She’s supposed to be my wife one of these days. One of these days...

If I can feel the panging regret in my own fiance imprinting upon me, I could only imagine the greater hopelessness of the duck choosing her. The second she appeared in its black beady eyes, the second the duckling identified her as another living creature, it was too late. One second that didn't need to happen. One second that sealed the poor thing's destiny. Because one second.

Well.

One second... is all it takes.

Strange.

Seems that in setting aside an evening to talk only of me, I’ve inspired myself for the next challenge for our chamber.

* * * * *

“Phew, all done!” Devon exclaimed as the last gosling slid into place. With the final whirling grind of cogs and locks, the door shuddered as it freed itself from their grip. The tortured sound of ancient hinges ripped through the stillness of the cave as the door swung open on its own weight and momentum. Turning to Luna, the charcoal unicorn smiled. “One more of these and we can finally get out of here.”

“Indeed!” Luna replied brightly. “I have so much to discuss with thee,” she followed, pressing against his side as they strode towards the hallway. “But much that should be saved for later,” she added, finishing with a small wink which ignited Devon’s blush.

“Jeez, you two,” Gina sneered, picking up her pace. “You’d think this was a date or some...” her voice trailed off, her own orange light disappearing down the hallway in pursuit of the mingling gray and cobalt sparks. However, as they wound through the new corridors, Gina sped up, keeping her eyes firmly on Luna. Something about her behavior troubled her, the way she leaned tightly into Devon’s side, the way she gradually went from leading the charge to allowing Devon the chance to lead. Annoyance gave way to affection. Focused determination gave way to care and playful flirting. It was all natural, nothing about the changes immediately spoke of anything other than a hardened heart softening to sincere, if perhaps clumsy, affection.

Yet...

Gina’s train of thought came to an unceremonious end as she ran into a pair of cutie marks. “Gyoof! What’s the big deal? C’mawn what’s the holdup?” Muscling around Luna’s side, the orange mare saw what had drawn them short. The hallway opened up wide, revealing a torrent of rushing water falling in a single wall in front of them. Moon and starlight filtered in through the water, bathing the open cavern in a weak, watery light.

“We’re below the palace!” Luna declared with a sudden rush of recognition. “I remember this place! This is directly below the castle, hidden by the waterfalls.” Luna stepped forward. Now armed with a point of reference, she looked almost familiar in the unfamiliar cave. “Of course...of course! I remember this very cave when I...” she trailed off. “When I went to meet somepony here long ago.”

“Pft...you don’t need to lie to us,” Gina growled. “You were meeting Ghasen, we have the journal, remember? Just what did you meet him to do?”

“We see no need to explain it to a scoundrel such as thee!” Luna’s retort was acidic. “We know that thou cannot be trusted, so we shall keep our secrets to ourselves, thank thee.”

“Hey, that’s no fair!” Gina snorted, laughter mixing with her anger and frustration. “You all know what my deal was, Why can’t I know what you were mixed up in?”

“Hey.”

“Because we hath no desire to share it with thee. Thou would most likely use it against us given a chance!”

“Ladies?”

“Pfft! I’ve been nothing but good to both ya! Who pulled your flanks out of the fire like...five times already, huh? Huh?”

“Luna. Gina.”

“And was it not thee who got us into these perils from the beginning?!”

“HEY!”

“What?!” Both Gina and Luna wheeled on Devon, their ire directed at the unicorn who would dare to interfere with a downright good argument going on.

“There’s something in the journal here.” Devon ran his gauntlet-clad hoof over the open journal in his hoof. A flicker of gray telekinesis lifted the folded page out from its hiding place. “Looks like somepony stuck a note in this or something. Slowly, as not to damage the ancient paper, Devon unfolded the folded pages into its full size and began to read as the two mares ceased their argument for the time being to join him.

Even in the murk and from such a distance, Gina instantly recognized it. Her eyes sparkled in a sudden surge of opportunistic delight. Then, just as suddenly as she spotted her chance, she ground to an immediate halt.

“H-hey...wait...” she spoke aloud, drawing Devon and Luna’s gaze. But her voice was not directed to either one of them. The mare’s eyes were straight to the starlight filtering in through the water. “Hey! Don’t talk to me like that, I’m doing exactly what you as-what?!” Gina shook her head. “Wa-wai...WAIT!” she pleaded loudly, bracing her hooves into the stone and dusty. “Whaddya MEAN I’m done?!”

“Gina? Are you okay? What’s going on?” Devon asked, turning his attention back to the mare from the inviting open door. As he spun to fully face her, the charcoal unicorn was momentarily blinded by a flash at the ground around Gina’s hooves.

“Oh no...” Gina whispered as the light retreated. “Oh no no no...no...” she gasped, voice cracking as the light swirled and flowed up and around her. “I can’t be done now. I...I did everything you asked and you’re...”

Her eyes narrowed, then shot open in bewildered disagreement.

“But I don’t WANT the Gray anymore! I don’t...I have new friends now!” The orange unicorn tried to lift her leg to move, but despite her efforts and straining body, she was firmly rooted to the cavern floor. “They, they actually speak to me, and care about my feelings, and actually tell me to stop talking and call me annoying and other things ponies do to other ponies, I can’t remember when I, when I-” She nickered, spinning atop her rear hooves while waving in all directions. ”NO! GET OFF OF ME!” Gina screamed in a growing frenzy and panic. “LET ME GO! I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK!”

“Devon!” Luna called to the charcoal unicorn, sprinting behind him to regard the agonizing transformation. “Look upon her leg!”

Around Gina’s leg, the light had condensed and slowly climbed upward. Where it passed, the fur and flesh were gone, replaced by cold stone.

“I see, I-I kn-know!” Devon stumbled over his words. “How do we stop it?”

The orange unicorn halted, firing a hopeful smile to Devon. “You can do it!” Gina exclaimed. “Dev’s, this is your thing! You can break the contract for me, can’t ya?”

“Huh? ME?!”

Gina thrashed against her petrified hoof again. “Yeah! Yeah! You can do what...G-G-Ghasen did on me, just in reverse yeah? You’re a Bookmark! The contract is right there! Right in your hoof! All ya gotta do is...” Gina trailed off, looking more to Devon for the answer.

“Is...?” Came a flummoxed response. Devon turned to the paper that fell from the journal. “Wait, are you saying this is...” Turning his light to the parchment, Devon saw symbols. They were not scrawled in any ink he knew, but something else entirely. The markings glistened and glimmered, very faintly pulsing like starlight. They somehow both held the quality of fresh ink, and the permanence of inscription. The symbols bore resemblance to hoofwriting, yet how could anypony write this?

“I don’t know! I just know that you gotta help-ACK! NO!” Gina warmed up a verbal broadside before another surge of light drew her eyes down. The light was picking up in speed, climbing her legs and leaving new trails of ashen stone where her orange coat used to be.

Devon flung a twisting forehoof over his head in exasperation. “Well I don’t know either!”

“Please help me!” Gina’s wild panic had died into a sobbing plead. Tears rolled freely down her face as heaving cries replaces her breathing. She was no longer speaking directly to Devon, Luna nor the invisible forces. She pleaded to anything that might listen and help with utter sincerity. “I was free. I can’t go back...” Her eyes drifted, directed towards put peering through the charcoal unicorn. “I had...friends.”

The Princess and stallion jilted their necks back. “Friends?”

"Dev's...c'mon..." Gina whimpered as stone closed up one of her legs. "C'mawn, don't leave me like this. You gotta help me!" Straining against the inert weight that her hooves locked into, the orange unicorn leaned and stretched towards Devon.

Desperation rolled clearly off of every word.

"If you don't, I'm gonna be like this again! I don't want to go back!" As stone swallowed her chest, Gina coughed and gagged as magic took over where her body once was. Stone forced air from her lungs, leaving her gasping and sputtering uselessly in front of Devon as the ashen coating began to creep up her neck.

"Help you?" Devon repeated. Conflict coursed through him. She was the one who started this whole thing! She stole the Element of Magic! She attacked the palace with a train car! She was clearly plotting malevolence against him! Her own words hung with treachery. She was dangerous. She was, if nothing else, a tool of whatever greater evil swirled around the archive.

She had saved his life, too. She had made it possible for them to get this far. She had thrown herself into the jaws of doom to make sure that all went well. She was necessary. She was, if nothing else, a victim of whatever greater evil swirled around the archive.

"D...v..." she choked out once more before the stone swallowed her neck, strangling out the rest of her voice in a single, unsettling gurgle. All that she could speak with now was her face and eyes, begging for his trust and forgiveness. To Gina, it was a feeling all too familiar, the clutching darkness and growing silence from every one of her senses as her body ground to stasis, alive but utterly disconnected. The Gray was back, but no longer the steadfast companion to her madness. Stone swallowed her face, locking it in a permanent expression of terrified begging, even capturing the tears that flowed from her cheeks. No artist could match such emotion with their skills, no master could even approach such sincere fear. As her last choke echoed off of the crystal, the cavern eventually melted back into chilling, terrifying silence.

Staring at the pony statue, Devon swallowed, trying to control the conflicting battle of emotion within him. All his life, he had fantasized of the times where he would possess such power, a cruel fantasy of holding redemption to those who had wronged him and keeping it just out of reach, inflicting tacit revenge on the life which had so regularly kept his own growth denied. It was even reasonable to leave her behind, right? Even though he held such a power now, he found himself struggling to turn his back on her. She had helped them, but more than that, it was her final plea. Even though he had never been in such as position, he could not shake the undeniable need of Gina’s begging. "What do you think, Luna?" Devon asked, eyes still locked on the pleading statue.

"I..." Luna began, approaching and standing resolutely beside the charcoal unicorn. "I think that thou should make the decision. I shall support whatever route thou think is best."

Devon looked down. Part of him hoped that Luna would have a stronger opinion, something to hang his responsibility on. But now it all fell to him. All it would take is a momentary surge of practical cruelty to turn and continue, to leave her to the fate that she had fallen into. By now, though, with as much as he had learned, Devon couldn't fully see Gina's fate as her own anymore. How much of her actions were the madness of her confinement within the contract? How much of it was her acting on her behalf, or on the behalf of another? If she were forced or coerced, does she deserve freedom and a chance to make things right?

Some long-lived instinct stirred within Devon. He may be unable to influence much, but he held the power to allow things to be made right. He had the power to give Gina the chance to make recompense for her actions, forced or otherwise.

His foreleg trembled against the gauntlet's interior, as if his own conflicts agitated whatever foreign and distinct personalities resided within it. "Luna," he finally spoke. Devon could even believe he was allowing himself to relieve such a burden from another who had so clearly been plotting against him. "I'm going to free her."

"If thou believe that the wisest course, Devon," Luna nickered, raising the Element of Magic in her telekinesis. "What must be done?"

"I..." Devon breathed softly. "I have no idea."

I have no idea.

He aligned the jeweled tiara above him, seeing the fluctuating energies coalescing between it and the gauntlet in his grip. This had to work. This had to work! This had to...oh hoof fungus, he was going to have to...

“Luna, if you laugh, I will-”

“Wouldn’t dare, sweetest!”

He was going to have to wear it.

“Methinks thou would make a most wonderful princess!”

Ha. Ha. Ha...

Devon closed his eyes, and focused on the magic flowing around him. The only clue he had was the resonant hum between the contract, gauntlet and pendant around his neck when collected near Gina’s statue. All around him swirled the unavoidable feel of powerful magic, a nearly invisible tickle on the back of his mane that made his fur quiver on end. Experimentally, Devon lit his horn and tried to reach his magic out and match the resonance.

His consciousness slowly melted away and faded into the same frequency of the sparks and jolts that swirled around the items. Something was there, and as he pulled his focus towards it, Devon could infer its importance, he could tell on an instinctive level well below any intellectual level that it was something he should not see. Some reflex, some twitch of feral, primordial thought recoiled at its presence. Devon’s very spirit urged caution as he drew his mind into it before he realized its weight.

The unicorn’s mind swam in the very stuff of destiny. Fate.

All around his mind flowed through the medium, Devon experienced Gina’s fate. In a dazzling flash of sensation, he saw her fillyhood to her pleading with Devon. But it came not in emotions or even memories, it felt more like he saw the plan, the outline, the very design of her life from beginning to end. It was striking in its lack of emotion, all of her secrets past, present and future laid out before him with such stark plainness that it shocked him. There were none of the feelings or context that were such an integral part of a pony's being, leaving an icy cold dossier on the unicorn's fate. Her budding love for Ghasen, her enslavement, the madness that now swallowed her mind, all of it were experienced so coldly that it sapped Devon's own passion and heat. He found his mind bending to adjust to the cold logic of the stars. He fell deeper and deeper into it, logic crushing the spirit and drive from his heart.

With the Element of Magic resting on his head, Devon felt the magic in the gauntlet surge like a barely constrained beast. Where before, he could merely observe and read the flowing destiny around Gina and her contract, he now could see its workings. The unicorn saw the machinations of fate for a single moment, and even the peek at such a thing birthed a splitting headache deep in his skull. Staggering forward, Devon strained simply to just maintain consciousness as the overwhelming magic from the Element coursed through his body and horn.

“Ggghr...” he groaned, struggling up on his hooves and gazing at the contract. In his perception, Devon clearly saw every piece in place. The contract glowed with trapped and intensified starlight, each ‘word’ carved into the stone petal exuding a soft influence on the same field of destiny that flowed through, in and from Gina. The gauntlet shared the same flow as the mote of Gina’s very essence strained to be reunited with its true host, to be free of confinement and constraint. Yet, while it was separated, the contract held ultimate sway. Even the quill spoke openly to Devon, not in words, but in ideas and feelings, granting him an almost instinctive understanding of what must be done. Finally, atop his head, the Element of Magic provided the force that a mere unicorn needed to push aside and manipulate the binding fates that ensnared the unfortunate Gina in their grasp.

Slowly, Devon saw a new swirl of movement and magic from the quill. His own. Fed by the Element and channeled through the gauntlet, Devon could bend the words of the contract, rewrite the rules binding Gina, change the terms of the deal or...

Destroy the contract entirely.

Guided by a knowledge not his own, Devon angled the flowing magic from the quill at the contract, spiking it towards the words with the sole intent to tear it apart. Crude, but he saw no need to do anything beyond breaking the contract. Gina would be released and the stars’ grip on her banished forever.

It was in his blood.

He reminded himself constantly, with the remembered words of the architect, his own ancestor who created and preserved the magic... it was all in his blood.

The charcoal unicorn’s heart fluttered in excitement as the binding contract began to melt away under his magic, his gift. It was moments away from completely vanishing entirely before he felt an invisible hoof smack across his horn. He reeled back from the sudden unexplained shock, waving a flailing hoof over him hoping to fend off whatever had just blindsided him, but only found his limb cutting through featureless air.

The aura around the fluttering contract writhed, shuddered, and ground to a halt. An invisible force locked the words of the contract to the slab, and while Devon’s magic could tug at it, they remained bound and shackled snug.

Only the rune of the contract will allow any change...

One piece to the puzzle remained, and it lay before his eyes. Etched into the stone petal was a symbol, blending a hummingbird with the fiery symbols of Gina’s star-shaped cutie mark. With the image before his eyes, Devon forced his magic to assume the same shape and design. The silver pendant around his neck fluttered, the twisting silver quill elevated before him and danced in rhythmic cadence to the weaving pulses of magic bridging the divide between parchment and horn. As the magic bent and folded over, each step it made towards matching the shape caused the words on the contract to grow looser and looser.

It was working.

By the reign of Celestia, it was working!

Almost there...

The rune he crafted bent into rough shape. Not quite perfect, but close.

Well now...

Devon’s head felt like a thousand buffalo stampedes. Every sense burned. His sight was nothing but blinding light and the vague shape of the symbol he struggled to hold in place and perfect. His hearing was gone for the roar of invisible magic all around him. All he could feel was the rushing pressure of fate itself struggling to prevent something from changing it. Even his smell and taste were dominated by the sensation of unseen might fighting back. Like a pebble trying to divert a river, Devon was overwhelmed by the force, yet pressed on.

The rune twisted closer. Only a few details left...

Devon felt fate struggling on some level that was well below his normal thought. It was not personal instinct, or even pony instinct, the overwhelming call to not interfere or alter fate hit him at something of a tadpole or primordial level.

This changes things...

Ping!

The contract pulled taught, lifting before him as the miasma of spiraling magic rampaging around it shifted color from dull purple to a brilliant green. Tight vespers of electrified energy dispersed to cloudy slabs of thick smoke, and they pelted through and around the fragile parchment.

Through a narrow break in the hazy chaos, a sliver of clarity divided through, showing the parchment still intact, but tugging viciously on each end, as if every energy the universe could afford was working to shred it apart.

Every energy...except one.

A lone purple shard of glowing light bound tightly down the middle, its edges holding tightly and resealing with each vengeful tug of the churning green smoke. A weight shifted in his saddle bag with each pulse of purple light cutting through the haze. Looking down, he saw a narrow shred of light pulse over his saddlebag’s rim.

Unclasping it, the architect’s journal immediately shot out, spinning and aligning directly before him. The churning green smoke pulsed away, clearing the room and drowning the parchment in a sea of spiraling blues and violets. Letter by letter, the parchment’s contents shifted, realigning and shifting back to their previous form, slowly undoing each intricate detail of the etched emblem.

“Oh, no no no!” Devon rushed towards the hovering book, the pages flung open and faced towards him. The hastily etched sketches of the architect’s run-on squall of consciousness illuminated and beamed outward, various symbols and designs popping off the pages to manifest into defensive magics around it. A ring of fire sputtered around the floor. Steel oozed and hardened across the cover. With a retreating spin, it opened its leatherbound maw, and clenched down on Gina’s contract, devouring it back within its binding.

Pages tore out, folded, and attacked Devon’s charge in the form of origami cranes, planes, and...

...Hummingbirds.

The volley of oncoming paper creatures suddenly parted around the charcoal unicorn. He slowed his sprint to see them twist around him, making every effort to provide space around him without slowing.

Of course. They wouldn’t attack their own blood! They’d attack...

… Oh cinnamon swirl!

“Gyah, by my-ACK!!” Luna reeled back, her horn suddenly illuminating in new shades of blue and violet. “Devon! What art thou doing!?” Sweeps of telekinesis racked the space before the Princess, but with each swipe clearing the screeching flock of paper birds, another would immediately fall into its place.

The journal. It couldn’t attack him. It was...defending him! It was mistaking him for Ghasen!? Only designed to help its bloodline? He didn’t know anymore, he didn’t care! Without thinking, Devon closed the distance to the tome, and flung it shut. An explosive torrent of energy bubbled between the covers, daggers of blinding violet light sliced between the pages, but Devon clamped it close to his chest as he began his run.

Pages twisted and lurched, freeing themselves from the tome, leveling before his eyes in purple glow as he sprinted forward.

He had an idea.

It was not much, but it was all he had.

As the stars had stated, as long as a contract physically exists, it cannot be broken. Whatever magic remained imbued in the tome was ensuring of that. But what if he could make the contract not exist anymore. What if he could throw it... out of physical existence?

Rounding the corner out of the room, he spied the crystalline mirror across the twisting bridges and walkways. Bolts of violent energy ricocheted through them, rings and blasts of jetting debris exploded from their bases as the bridges came alive, lashing and whipping across the room. A single path remained in place; the old rickety wooden scaffolding that twisted in lurching arcs beneath the bridge it previously wrapped around.

One of the bridges dropped downward, slamming against the wall behind Devon! A heavy wave of compressed air vaulted him foreward. His forehooves spun backwards in a tumble as his rear legs skidded to a halt just a half haunch away from the cavern’s pit. Another bridge wound up, and like a mallet propelled with world-crushing force towards him!

He jumped forward, feeling the volley of pebble buckshot digging into his charcoal coat. Shoulder first, he landed and tumbled on the wooden scaffold, and floundered over skittering hooves to find his footing beneath the warping supports.

He wasted no time beginning a frantic dash across to the other end of the cavern. More bridges aligned and swung through the air, dropping down and smacking against the walls. Each deafening blow forced the wood beneath him surging upwards, none of his hooves ever finding a confident hold in his frenzied sprint.

A narrow stone bridge suddenly looped and whipped downward towards him. He felt the scaffold just a couple haunches behind him give and snap, the reverberating force catapulting him forward. He spun, watching helplessly as the room twisted into a nauseating angle, before the telltale reassurance of wood smacked him squarely in the chest.

The wind rushed as the bridge whipped up for another blow against him. Devon flung his rear legs sideways, righting himself on his back. He looked up, seeing the stone tendrils of the room’s masonry join together into a single unified knot of stonework and architecture.

They immediately plummeted downward, the charcoal unicorn instinctively holding his forehooves over him... the tome still in hoof. Dozens of violet bolts suddenly surged through the bridges as they stopped, hovering in tense anticipation as if avoiding any harm to the architect’s journal.

A succession of iron and wooden cracks brought the world spinning again as the scaffolding finally gave way, and listed weightlessly downward. Devon began his run again, and feeling the last fiber of wood shiver and recede beneath him, he gripped the tome between his teeth and pressed all his weight down on his rear legs, propelling him airborne with extended hooves.

His fetlocks snagged into the rocky ledge, but the ledge immediately peeled and voiced no interest in holding his weight with a short diatribe of pops and cracks.

Gravity prevailed, dragging him into the chamber’s dark depths.

A deafening whoosh of air broadsided Devon’s ears as his rump plopped unexpectedly on solid ground. Well, ground more solid than usual. Cracking open his eyes, bolts of purple magic coursed beneath him as the union of bridges caught him. Or, more importantly, caught the precious book that controlled them.

A final lurch of weight propelled Devon across the chasm, safely before the crystalline mirror. In front of him, the eager grin of a charcoal unicorn stared him down.

“Is that?” The reflection beckoned. “Ah, the Princess gave you the Element of Magic! It’s what I always wanted!” The charcoal projection waved its hooves forward. “Yes, it’s perfect! It’s always the thing I needed to...hey, hey w-w-wait!”

Devon sprinted into a leap, and with both hooves, swung the tome into the beckoning reflection’s muzzle. The mirror’s apparition impulsively grabbed the offending book, peeling it off his face.

A page peeled free from the book, immediately twisting within violet magic and taking the form of a folded hummingbird.

“What in the, h-hey!” The reflection held the tome of his head, trying to protect himself from the assaulting origami bird. “Ow! Stop! Ow! Oww!”

A teal and cyan sliver of light crept up to the edge of the book. In disoriented and dizzy flops, Glyph crept to the surface.

The Glyph! What was it...!? Oh for Pete’s sake!

Retreating backward into the mirror, the reflected charcoal unicorn swung at the hummingbird with the book, Glyph chirping dizzily with each rapid swing.

A pinging bolt of magic coalesced atop Devon’s horn as he directed a hoof at the darting bird. The gauntlet effortlessly obliged his conscious whim, summoning a tight pinch of telekinesis around the hummingbird. It twirled and darted, trying to pry free from Devon’s magical grip, but was helpless as Devon aligned it with the tome, pressing it against the cover.

“Glyph!” Devon called out to the chirping paisley swirls, pinning the hummingbird to the tome. “Get on!”

“Hrnnrgh!?” The Glyph questioned him, but feeling the cold kiss of the mirror surface creeping up the tome’s cover, immediately got the hint. It darted to the bird’s wingtip, compressed, and with a succession of frenzied rapid swirls, cleared the gap. The origami bird burst into an eye-piercing glow as it pulled free from the tome, spinning and darting clear from the turmoil.

The reflection reached out to the glowing teal hummingbird, but his eye immediately caught a swirl of dark blur in its peripheral vision as it saw Devon ready himself with both hind legs raised.

“Do not want...” The reflection groaned, before every ounce of air within it blasted through his nostrils under the explosive weight of a double-buck square into the tome. “PYUU-uuffgh!” The book crashed into his sternum in a shattering crack. The tome disappeared, swallowed in the shimmering blue depths of the mirror, fading away in the grip of the tumbling charcoal projection.

A discomforting stillness emanated around Devon. The air sucked away, dragged upwards to the ceiling. He looked up, and saw the lurching knot of bridges collapsing, cracks and fissures crept menacingly across the looming twisting pillars, regiments of rock and masonry peeling off.

Devon whirled his shoulders behind him, and sprinted along the pit’s edge away from the collapsing bridges. A large chunk popped off, a killing shadow enveloping him with a cold blast of wind. He rolled to the floor, jumping forward and skidding across the coarse floor.

*Kwa-kwoom!*

A volley of thick air propelled him away at a disorienting angle. Devon flopped onto his back and looked up, only to see several more huge rock slabs converging onto him.

“Hyaaah!” A familiar mare’s voice ricocheted through the crackling air. “Swing in low, Luna!”

A screeching torpedo of orange magic sliced through the air, embedding deep into one of the rocks. A dozen fingers of dust exploded outward, a ring of quickly expanding fire surged outwards, washing Devon in an exhale of scorching heat.

“Brilliantly done, Gina!” Luna chided from across the chasm. Looking over, Devon saw the cobalt Princess flying rapidly towards him, the orange unicorn holstered tightly within her forehooves.

More careening slabs of collapsing bridge dropped viciously, dozens of heavy boulders cracking free and falling.

“Shots away!” Gina called out. “Heeee-yaag-aag-aag-aag-aaaagh!!” Several bolts of gleaming orange magic connected, again clearing the space above Devon with a rapid volley of fiery blasts.

“Huzzah!” Luna called out in glee. “How many points do I-”

“Seven!” Gina called up.

Luna coughed, her breath catching in her throat. “Oh!” She blinked heavily, and refocused back to the charcoal unicorn. “Seven.” She shook her head. “Huzzah.”

“Danger close, Dev’s!” Gina grit her teeth, a growing orb of coalescing orange energy pinching tight on her horn illuminated the room vividly. She was prepping a big one.

The wrapped bridges finally dropped in unison, buckling as one under its own weight. The thick gnarled column of stone masonry fell as a single dark cleaver of mutually assured destruction upon the charcoal unicorn.

“Quickly Gina, quickly!”

Looking up, a fluttering green piece of paper caught Devon’s eye. With a swipe of a hoof, he reached up, clenching the dizzy Glyph. He pressed it into his chest, and tumbled to his side. “I’d get down if I were you.”

The origami hummingbird halted, then clenched tightly against his sternum.

Like watching a sunrise... from ten hooves away... blistering heat lapped across the room, wrapping and crackling through the dropping behemoth above.

“Ack! Too much!” Gina squealed in surprise. “Pull back Luna!”

“We can not!”

The orange unicorn reeled. “Hard to port!”

“Not with thy weight!” Luna groaned through clenched teeth.

“Weight!?” Gina shrieked. “What are you saying about my-”

The column blasted maniacally with supernova force.

“Dive! Dive!” Gina reached up, wrapping a forehoof around the Princess’ mane and dragging her head down. “Hit your burner, pilot!”

The scalding shockwave slapped against the two mares, a salvo of simmering rocks pelted across them.

“Quit pulling upon my-” Luna yelled, “Upon thy twelve!” The Princess snapped a hoof forward, pointing at a massive slab careening towards them.

“On it!” Gina unleashed a single bolt of magic, the beam glancing against it. “Woaaah, hold ‘er steady gal!” She aligned her head again, her horn pulsing with crackling energy. A second blast cleaved through the rock, dividing it before them, each slice splitting clear. “Ha ha! The stone has been doub-”

“Inbound!” the Princess shouted. “Eyes ‘pon ten!”

“I see-PYEEUUUFGH!” Gina flopped sideways as a large chunk of falling bridge dislodged her from Luna’s grip. Twirling through the air, she reached upward, feeling the navy blue fetlock in her grip. But the fetlock... did not grab back. “Luna?”

The Princess did not respond.

“Luna!?”

She looked up, hoping to see teal irises staring back, but only saw a spinning stunned face. “Hrr-gh...”

“Princess!” Gina clamored up her leg, positioning herself over the falling Princess. A black silhouette blotched out the room’s fiery light in a menacing silhouette. “Evasive maneuvers, pull right pull right!”

“Unnghf...” The Princess clenched her eyes shut, her body lurching to the side. “Myeeengh, my head, I-” She felt a pair of forehooves grip on her wings. “By yonder, art thou daft!?”

“Switching to manual power!” Gina planted her rear hooves in the Princess’ back. “Roll tight and lift!” With a quick pull, she extended the Princess’ wings out, feeling the telltale flow of air coursing beneath them. They ascended and tilted, the tips of the Princess’ regal slippers catching the edge of the killer projectile. “Get up Dev’s!”

Devon lifted his head, a pile of soot and glowing embers shaking off his muzzle. “Gina, what are you doing!?”

“Oh, nothing!” She yelled back. “Just flying a Princess around, the usual! Get ready for extraction!”

“Extraction!?” The charcoal unicorn stood up, seeing the fast approaching pair barreling down upon him with seemingly lethal velocity. “Shouldn’t you slow down!?”

Gina looked down at the Princess, her eyes still swimming without focus. “That’s a negative, control.” The wall behind Devon began crashing around behind him, the facade sliding down and angling over him. “Suck in your gut and exhale!”

He stepped back, readying for a pick-up hopefully more graceful than his imagination envisioned. “Exhale!? Why do I-PWOOF!!!” His imagination was pretty spot on. A circle of stars danced around the unicorn’s vision as his lungs were emptied by the impact into Luna’s hooves.

The collapsing wall piled onto itself, the roof above following suit. Columns, supports, and boulders chased after the half conscious Princess and winded unicorn, but Gina held the Princess steady within her hooves, keeping the wings extended and maintaining flight through the explosive chaos. She glided back around, aiming for the kindness chamber, then pulled the wings back at a sharp angle to bring the Princess to a steep descent through the narrow door into it.

Devon hung on, clinging around the Princess’ neck, his dangling legs clamoring before feeling them scooped up and clenched to Luna’s chest. Cobalt forelegs cradled him, holding him close, Luna’s teal irises finally focused. Not on her direction. Not on the crazed orange unicorn commandeering her own wings.

Not on any of that.

Time slowed and sound peeled away, Gina’s energized cries of excitement faded to an echoing muffle, as for just one moment Devon found himself being held tightly by her. A peculiar sensation of warmth crept through his chest, his mind trying to take it all in, as they ignored the collapsing room around them to hold onto the other.

A single brief moment that reigned paramount in the young bookkeeper’s life that lasted as long as the ground would allow before bucking him across the spine with a hard landing. A single second. A single, long and well-received second.

Because one second...

Well.

One second... is all it takes...

* * * * *

I found myself pitying the duckling for weeks after Gina told me that story. I know that I wasn’t the one it imprinted, I wasn’t the one who let it down, I’m not even the one who had to deal with the guilt afterward. But I still pity it, for how powerless it must have been to its own whims; whims it had no choice or influence over.

At least with our own challenges in the chambers, we allow some choice and control in the matter. Like many things in life, it is but another test of character to see if you have the virtues to proceed.

Yet it is the lack of control in this regard, this inability to change your own feelings, especially with an emotion as volatile as love... It scares me sometimes. It scares me, yet it happens to every duckling in the world, every gosling, and even to those...

… To those we care for the most.

The things that bring destruction don't frighten me as much as the things that bring unconditional love.

One you can overcome.

The other you overcome... and regret for the rest of your life.

Probably my greatest regret is knowing I’ll never bring Gina the dreams she always had. Nowadays, every dream is just me, me, me, by simply being in the same room as her I am fulfilling her woefully shallow comprehension of existence. She always wanted to see the world outside of Equestria. She always wanted to learn how to sing. She always wanted to write a novel.

Now that I think about it, I think I understand why she had such an affinity for ducks, why it depresses me so much that she did.

She always wanted to know...the freedom of flying.

* * * * *

“Devon! Darling!” the voice seemed a thousand miles away. “Answer me!”

“Murrhumph...”

“Curses, he fadeth from us again. Gina! Stop thy foalish prancing and help me wake him! T’was thy landing that crushed his head so!”

“Wheeheeeheeee!”

Darkness folded around Devon’s eyes and ears again. Until that is, a telekinetically thrown splash of water washed him out of it. In front of his muddy vision, the unicorn first beheld a blur of cobalt. The blur spoke, to the side as if scolding.

“That whilst SURELY bringeth him back, thou bouncing dunder-whaa? It worked!”

“Dev’s...ya...ya did it...” Gina stammered. Running a hoof across her head, she laughed. “Y’did it! YA DID IT!” The laughter of glee mixed with tears of unutterable happiness. “Ya broke it! I...I’m...I’m free.” She spoke in a whisper, like she worried that if she spoke too loudly, it would somehow break her out of the dream she now lived. The orange mare experienced a full body quiver before she burst out in bouncing, tumbling jumps of pleasure. She bounced in tight circles around Devon and Luna.

“I’m free! I’m free! I’m freeEEEEE!”

“Ugh...” Devon groaned, rolling out of Luna’s forelegs and slowly up to standing. His head still rang like a Summer Sun Celebration parade, but at least the spinning had come to a stop and his vision focused. Piece by piece, his memories rearranged in his head to form a coherent assemblage of the past few minutes. Gina...the journal...the twisting cavern and his maddening run. Did all of that work?

“DEV’S I COULD KISS YA!”

Must’ve worked.

“Please, Gina, quiet thyself,” Luna chided, moving to Devon’s side to help him as he staggered up to his four legs. Lowering her voice, Luna spoke gently, though her tone betrayed the rush of urgency she just experienced. “I am so glad the thou succeeded, and safely! I couldn’t bear losing thee after helping us get so close.”

“I dunno...” Devon groaned as more memories closed in around him. “To get us here, I just threw away that journal, without it, I don’t know if we’ll have any way to figure out the last cham-” His despondent protest was cut off by a silver-clad hoof gently pressing his lips closed.

“Shh shh, thou mustn’t panic, darling,” Luna said smiling. “Such a journal is no match for the power of thy mind!” The Princess of the Night wrapped an encouraging wing around his shoulders, guiding him forward. “We shall be astounded as we see thy quest to the end. I know that thou whilst win thy prize!”

“Wait...you mean your prize, right?” Devon turned a head, moments from meeting Luna’s eyes before another voice barked into his ear.

"Dev's! Dev's!" Gina cried, stopping him at the door. "Waitaminute, don't you see what's happening here?!"

"What do you mean what's happening?" Devon asked slowly, looking around the room for some unseen trap. "Gina, what are you going on about?" Devon braced himself against Luna, who squeezed into his side in turn. Turning to the unicorn mare, he found a face in fast-thinking panic, eyes darting as pieces and logic pieced together in her mind.

"It's the Princess! You gotta get away from her!" Gina barked, charging towards the pair. "She's caught in a contract!" Luna cringed at the sudden rush of movement, tucking in against Devon. "We gotta help her! She can't be with you like this, Dev's!"

Devon blinked. "Wait..." he looked between Luna and Gina with a slow sway of his head. "You think that she's...?" Devon shook his head. No! She's not under some spell! I would have noticed this, I would have been able to tell. This is my gift after all! "Gina, come on, you're acting crazy, Luna's fine." Devon laughed slightly, echoed by Luna's own soft chuckle. "I know you went through one yourself and being all paranoid and stuff, but I think she's fine, you don't need to wor-"

"Dev's!" Gina interrupted. "I know it, too! I was hoofing THERE when it happened to me! This is wrong!" Gina argued with rising anger and shocking clarity. Gone were the erratic laughs and giggles that marked her speech, whatever was in her head it was gone and replaced with desperate sincerity. "You can't be with Luna! You just can't, Dev's!" As she spoke, the orange mare threw her shoulder in between the pair, trying to physically separate them. "We can fix this, don't worry! Once we get further, we can get her out of that. But we gotta make sure that neither of you get too close so it is easier to free Luna fro-"

"Gina!" Devon tried another dismissive chortle. "You're completely overreacting." The charcoal unicorn braced himself and repelled Gina's attempt to force him and Luna apart. She's just freaking out at any sign of love. Luna's acting perfectly normal and this is all right and good. She's just being Gina. Devon placed a foreleg on Gina's shoulder and changed his tone to calming and reassuring, doing all he can to pull her out of the feverish hallucination. "Just take a few deep breaths, Gina, we're not caught in any kind of contract or trap. We gotta keep going, yeah, but just take it easy alright?" Devon smiled. "I understand, but I think Luna and I are just fine. You alright, Princess?" Devon asked, leaning back into Luna's cobalt mane.

"Of course, dear," Luna responded instantly, with a sweet smile.

"Y'see, Gina, just fi-"

"She's NOT fine, Dev's! Look at her! Look in her eyes and ask her to say that again!" Gina pleaded, batting the reassuring hoof off of her shoulder and pressing her own hoof into Devon's chin, trying to turn him into Luna's eyes. "Look! LOOK!" Gina strained as her resisted and squirmed when he would not cooperate. "Dev's, you wanna help the Princess, don't you? What're you waiting for? I thought you'd be kinda in a hurry to get her freed from all of this. Free from all this fake..."

"Fake!?" Devon snapped, forcing Gina away from him with a surge of agitation and anger. "Fake?! Of course it's not fake, stop this, Gina." How DARE she? What, is she so completely gone that she is trying to hurt me still, after I saved her?! Devon felt his cheeks flush with indignant anger. "I just helped you out here and now you're trying to break me away from Luna, I thought you said you were on my side, Gina!" Devon felt the sting of genuine betrayal, "I help you and you try to stab me in the flank, you're a real piece of work, Gina, real piece of work." With a stomp, Devon turned his attention back to the path ahead and leaned more securely into Luna's side. I was just getting happy and comfortable, go figure that somepony would take offense and tell me that I was getting too happy. Not anymore, I earned this and I'm not going to let Luna go. "We've been through too much together to just stop because you think it is wrong! What, have I messed up something else by actually having something go my way?"

"Dev's, you know what I'm say-"

"I know, and I know you're wrong! Luna knows you're wrong!" Devon's face burned. How dare she try to put doubt into the budding romance, poisoning it at the very root! Shaking his head to banish the thoughts, he turned his gaze back towards the affectionate Luna, who nuzzled at his cheek. I can't pay any attention to her, Gina is just being crazy.

"Pay her no need, darling," she said, almost echoing his very thoughts. "Yonder unicorn is lost in her own muddled mind, she doth not recognize affection." At those words, Devon let out a relaxed sigh as they rounded another bend of mirrored crystal hallways. Affection was all it was.

As their reflections whipped and trailed behind them, Devon watched Luna's. She was smiling, happy and fully pressed in mutual affection with Devon. Finally, things were looking up. Gina had no idea what she was talking about, and Devon's confidence grew with every step.

He wouldn’t let the malicious whims of a sporadic stranger get under his skin. Something was ahoof, he knew she was still concocting something. How ungrateful she was after being saved.

Yet upon passing every puddle, every marble tile, every mirror, he intentionally avoided Luna's eyes in every reflection. He couldn’t pin a hoof to why, just something his gut feeling mandated.

The feeling had always lingered.

Chapter 9: Ethereal Dance

Illustration by Bunnimation and Vest.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Pulled face first under, to crystalline trance.
Regains his thunder, a second chance.
Memory’s eyes foretell, hold guarded stance,
They rest a spell, in ethereal dance.

_____

___

Chapter 9

Ethereal Dance

What exactly transpired around him, he could not put a hoof on.

He’d traversed many an exotic locale with regiment in tow, braving the outlying lands that encompassed beyond the eyes of those civilized deep in the comforting hearth of Equestria’s borders. Yet with each memory of ducking low between the mountainous canyons of dragon nests, creeping quietly past the bogs of sleeping hydras, and suspiciously tranquil fields of bunnies and dandelions (none of which to be trusted), the memories carried with them the same luxury.

Company.

The shrill bristling of armor, the rhythmic cadence of hoofsteps, the low chatter of gruff voices whispering tales of their own forays; none of which were to be heard where the Captain stood in rigid stillness.

A monotone rumble swelled and carried past him in heaving breaths, faint trails of blue and purple light ebbing forth and dissipating with each passing roll of sound around his hooves, like the unending cavern of shimmering black was alive and purring softly in slumber.

And how it slumbered.

His ears tensed and twitched with each reverberating cascade of deep noise, a pressure embraced around every tendril of his black mane as if he was standing underwater.

When he first found himself falling inward to the mirrored surface, his last recalled thought was of shock, disbelief, a thought that rarely came to him upon looking in a mirror. Or, so he thought was himself. It was too late when he found that such was not the case, that it was not the adorned frame he inhabited in the reflection.

It was something else. Something different.

Something of, but not from himself.

Yet before any question could be asked, before any dodge, drop, or defense could be mustered, a sudden tug of a forehoof yanked him inward, bringing with it not a sharp sting of shattering glass but an unexpected splash of chilling metallic cold washing over him.

It had to have been a full minute before he dared open his eyes, probably two before he gave up on a desperate struggle to hold his breath. He exhaled, and feared the sensation of inhaling; he feared a soupy metallic gulp of liquid crystal would generously fill the vacuum in his throat. However, despite the heavy embrace of the chamber embracing tightly around him, his first tentative inhale didn't fill his nostrils with a sickening gush of metallic asphyxiation, but instead a frigid lick of reassurance. He winced, exhaled, then took another small sniff.

Exhale.

He dropped to the floor, gasping heavily to refill his lungs. Whatever, wherever he was, it certainly wasn’t to be his destined grounds to perish. Not here, not today, his story would go on. His story would get another chapter. She was to be his, after all; that’s how his greatest story begins, not ends. Destiny was proclaiming itself clear, the Princess was certainly going to become his. His story cannot end before it even begins in her deserved embrace.

Between strained heaves of the dense air, he looked down, seeing the telltale flicker of golden medals mirrored in the dark navy crystal floor. With his eyes floating in lazy orbits from disorientation, his focus pulled and blurred, the reflected silhouette of his head shifted into tight legibility beneath him. Another wisp of soft blue and purple swirled around him with the passing of another murmuring rumble cascading beneath him, the ghostly lights illuminating the mirrored image’s facial features in clarity.

It was smiling.

He hopped to his hooves, pulling his head as far away from the floor as possible, holding up a forehoof up to his shoulder to keep it safely nestled away. He blinked heavily, wiping his brow, and took his first glance at where he had fallen into. It wasn’t a blurred miasma of foggy black he expected, but a very clear crystalline plane at his feet that shimmered and glared with a ghostly ebony opalescence. The oily blues and purples wafted across its gnarled cracks, reaching deeper and deeper to an indecipherable black well of receding aether.

The alien and hostile lands that Equestria’s outskirts bountifully provided could not equate to what he had fallen into. Nothing like this.

He hazarded a single step forward.

It wasn’t the suddenness, it wasn’t the unexpected entry...

Jangle.

...It wasn’t the locale that furrowed his brow.

Jangle, the chamber responded in an echo.

It wasn’t the darkness that was off putting.

Jangle, it echoed again.

It wasn’t the thought of being trapped here.

Jangle...

It was his certainty that he was truly, sincerely alone.

Jangle, jangle...

And his certainty...

Jangle, jangle, jangle...

... That echoes aren’t supposed to get louder.

* * * * *

The charcoal unicorn’s eye’s shimmered like a school filly showing off her new ribbons. "Wow... " He squinted hard, hearing the high pitched squeal escape from him. “Err,” he gruffly cleared his throat, putting forth his most stallionly poise. “Impressive.”

Maybe his mom was right all along...

“You were more believable the first time,” Gina chided him.

... Maybe he was supposed to be a daughter.

As the door creaked open, Devon noted the amazing sight around him. Unlike the crystalline mazes and bare dirt floors of earlier, he set his hoof on elegant wood planks untouched by the dregs of time. It was a stark contrast to the twisted and eroded stone walls of all the previous caverns. There was something peculiar about the room, something that made it seem intricately preserved through time.

“This place is wonderful,” Gina rapped a fetlock along a wall mounted shelf. “Five bits says we collapse this roof, too.”

Devon rolled his eyes, keeping his attention focused upon the unexpected serenity and assuring sturdiness of the room. While mentally prepared for the worst, what lay before him were rows and rows of books, carefully arranged and shelved. But there were no shelves, every book was enchanted so it sat in air, perfectly in line with its neighbors. Without the walling effect of shelves, the party could see its full scope in a single panning motion of their heads.

Devon breathed in sharply through his nostrils, swinging a narrow-eyed glance to the orange unicorn. “Ten bits says we don’t.”

The room itself was well-furnished, far more accommodating than any of its predecessors. Dusty, but soft couches and chairs clutched in small groups all throughout the room, each one equipped with small tables and ancient oil lanterns, not having shed light in centuries. Central to all, though, was the elaborate table that sat dead center in the chamber. It was vast in size, but notably uncluttered. The only distinction it had apart from its size was a delicate-looking piece of wrought metal in the middle. Bent backwards slightly, it rested bare and empty. All around the table were piles of pony-sized cushions, clearly intended as seats.

Devon recognized the design immediately. "This is a library!" he exclaimed with a sudden brightening tone.

“By jove, you’re right,” Gina groused sarcastically, rattling a hooftip along a line of books. “The old Foalnecian architecture. The unique Romane features. The thousands upon thousands of books organized in neat alphabetical order in multiple rows of shelves.”

“Hey,” Devon sharpened his tone. “I was just noting the obvious out loud, I’m allowed to do that.” He kicked a forehoof against the furniture. “Wow, this couch looks comfy," he sarcastically continued noting the egregiously obvious. "It sure is bright in here. Wonderful weather it is today.” He swung a rear leg at one of the glassy bookshelves. “Amazing how clear this crystal case is-woah!” The leg passed right through the shelf, sweeping a trail of cloudy energy in a flickering wake around his hoof.

He stumbled, his back legs buckling and flinging him flank-first against the bookshelf. In a blink of speckled light, he collapsed out the opposite side of the shelf with a saddlebag's load of books falling to a rest at his side. The hole he punched through the rippling magic shelf glowed intensely around the edges, then slowly sealed back into its original form, all evidence of Devon’s clumsiness nowhere to be found...

“Hyah,” Gina chortled. “I’ll remember that forever.”

... Save for reliable testimony.

He stood up, brushing old manuscripts off his shoulders and face. The only difference between this place and the archives was the lack of physical shelves and Lily Boxtop. With confidence born of familiarity, Devon stepped towards the nearest set of floating books, throwing his gaze across the spines.

The first title set his heartbeat accelerating, the second's author drew a gasp of withheld amazement. By the time the charcoal unicorn had read a dozen names, he turned with a look of stunned amazement to Gina and Luna.

"These books are ancient!” Seizing a tome in newfound telekinesis, Devon impulsively yanked one book from its position and thrust it towards the two mares. “This is stuff that nopony has ever seen before! Look at this!" He held up the book, releasing it into Luna’s grip of cobalt telekinesis. "This is a work by Aristrotle! Nopony even thought anything he wrote survived!" He didn't wait for any reaction before continuing. "This kind of stuff is just... just... wow!" He dug his face back into the shelves, lost for greater eloquence.

"Yeah... " Gina pursed her lips. "They're sure books alright. Look Dev's can we talk abou-"

"Oh Devon!" Luna's voice drowned out Gina's sentence. "This is truly a marvelous discovery! I knew that this venture would yield further rewards for thee." The Princess trotted and pressed forward to examine the tome further. "Come! Time be of great value," she added brightly. "Thou must sit forthwith and enjoy it! T'would do me so well to see thee enjoying thyself after such a dreadful adventure!" Smiling insistently, Luna pressed forward, fussily pushing the unicorn towards the center of the room and one of the cushions. "I insist!"

"Erf! Woah!" Devon laughed, trying to keep his position. Luna's playful tugs overpowered him, and he found himself being led like a misbehaving colt and plopped down onto one of the cushions. "Careful! I mean, don't we need to..oof!"

"Don't be daft, dearest! We know thy love of these tomes. We couldn't bear to just breeze past these and leave wanting!"

“But... ” Devon couldn’t believe how well his focus was holding up amid the Princess’ demands for some book time. "But the contr-"

The Princess grinned excitedly, settling down beside him. “It can wait!”

Gina protested. “But the contr-”

"It can wait!” The Princess adjusted her forelegs beneath her collar, and draped a wing around the unicorn’s shoulders. “Now, dearest!" Luna insisted, pushing him down onto a cushion and tossling his mane with one of her forelegs. "Now, wouldest thou wish for me to join thee? Shall I find some more books for us to share?"

Every question hung heavy with a deep desire to please, a needy, pleading smile that the charcoal unicorn found himself unable to resist.

“I-”

"Now just sit thyself and I shall procure something for us to indulge in together!" Despite his murmured protests, Devon's body and still-aching head longed for the break and comfort, and if the Princess of the Night was offering, who was he to deny her?

Settling back into the cushion, he watched with admiration as Luna sped through the stacks, only pausing her perusal occasionally to throw a devoted look back to the unicorn. "Dost thou prefer romances or adventures, Devon?”

“I-”

“Nevermind! I shall bring thee both!" she called from a back corner. Her cobalt mane rounded into another floating set of tomes and Devon settled deeper into the cushion until another voice, very near broke into perception.

"Y'know it, Devon," Gina murmured, her frustration stifling the usual giggles and chortles she spoke with. "Y'know she isn't all there, don't you?"

"She... " Devon sighed with aggravation. "I told you, there's nothing wrong with her!"

"There's everything wrong with her! You have to have noticed it by now, she's doing everything you say!" Gina stamped loudly, the echo carrying effortlessly through the ghostly magic shelves. "I lived it, Dev's! She's doing it right now, if you asked her t'jump off a bridge, she'd do it without even blinking!"

"She has wings."

"She-" Oh. Right. "Listen, that's not-"

"Please Gina!" Devon scoffed. "Look, she said she is fine, she's fine." The unicorn chuckled dismissively, "I think if anypony here would notice something wrong with her, it'd be me right? Luna is still her own pony, and we're just taking a little break before we sort this whole mess out." Placing a forehoof against Gina's chest, Devon lowered his tone to a small growl. "I'm being patient as I can with you, but I'm not going to let your paranoid crazypants head ruin this. For everything I went through, I deserve some happiness, don't I?"

The orange unicorn exhaled heavily, seeing Luna’s cheery teal glance rounding the corner in brainless bobbling bliss. She rolled her eyes upward in a long aggravated arc. “Yes, Dev’s. You certainly do Listen, I’ll make you a deal.”

“We already had a deal, ten bits says you don’t blow this place apart.”

Not one atom shifted on her face. “I’ll make you another deal. You can have your happiness, yes. You can have your fun. But just for a little bit, we need to fix the Princess eventually, and it has to happen before you get complacent with what you have done here.”

The charcoal unicorn coughed. “What I’ve done?”

“Yes,” Gina continued, “but me? I’m just going to sit on the sidelines, and watch. I’m going to keep an eye on you two. So help me if I let this mistake happen again to somepony else.”

Devon shifted his glance to his forelegs, then back to Gina. “No mistakes are happening to me.”

“Not you!” Gina seethed, jetting a hoof at the Princess giddily settling down with a stack of collected books.

“Alright, forgive me,” Devon lowered his chin to scrunched shoulders, “I’m sorry she’s taking a liking to me, and as you know I have quite a liking for her, too.”

“Woah!” Gina’s eyes illuminated. “You do!?”

“Wait, you didn’t... I didn’t tell you that I... ”

Gina’s eyes narrows in agitation.

“... Sarcasm, right.”

* * * * *

The faster the Captain ran, the louder the jangling hoofsteps behind him augmented. He was no longer certain if the metallic rattling came from his own adornments or the ones gaining on his tail.

The thick layered air lapped and buffeted against his face with each bound, his legs straining to find the energy just to push through the soupy atmosphere. While he stumbled and punched heavily with each stride, the shadowy apparition encroaching behind him swam through the air almost weightlessly.

His eyes darted side to side, desperately scanning the unending black horizon for any sign of a way out. A swirling shift of low rumbles cascaded beneath his feet, kicking up licks of violet light that cast his shadow through the mist before him. The light yielded no signs of a door, not even a wall.

How large was this chamber anyway?

Another rumble rolled again underneath him, carrying with it another wave of purple and blue light from the shimmering ground beneath him. Waving shadows cast forth before him, and clearly to his side, the silhouette of another stallion galloping uncomfortably close.

He swung his head to the side, dipping his shoulders low. His forehooves slid across the polished ground, screeching an arced scuff in tow.

A gravely nicker followed closely behind, the telltale percussion of skittering hooves trying to maintain formation with the sprinting Captain. A meaty thump followed suit, and from Stormblade’s peripheral vision, saw four black flailing legs kicking wildly into the air. Whatever was tailing him had just slipped behind his sharp cornering, and thudded into a tumbling mass of flailing limbs.

He sneered, twisting and sliding across the floor to face his pursuer.

“This is my story,” he growled while running toward him, his forehooves cracking the crystalline floor with each thundering bound. “It doesn’t end with you!” He lowered his head, and peered with intense ferocity at the grounded figure.

The floor rumbled beneath him, vespers of twisting light emanated from the floor to clearly reveal his pursuer; a black-coated stallion desperately kicking to get back off the ground. It twisted a chiseled teal iris to Stormblade, two locks of orange hair adorning a jet black mane. Stormblade screeched on his charging hooves in a startled panic, losing his hoofing and flopping sideways against the chilled floor.

He slid, and with a limp form, slowly rested to a halt nose to nose with his own reflection.

After an uncomfortable second staring into the Captain’s condemning eyes, the reflection shifted his face to the side, pulling his nose away. “I, umm... ” The reflection murmured, then spoke through a tight smile. “I would hope your story doesn’t end with me. Kind of hard to end a story by your own hoof.”

Funny.

“Funny,” Stormblade remarked, rolling his eyes and dragging a fetlock under his side. “So I’m pretty certain I’ll regret asking this.”

“I’m you.”

Stormblade’s fetlock slid beneath his shoulder, his torso toppling back over. “Well, let me ask the question first so I can regret it, instead of... ” Instead of thinking his reflection was a smart alec? Instead of knowing the displeasure of meeting somepony to finish your sentences for you? Instead of letting somepony else hog the dialogue?

The reflection bowed his head, and gently closed his eyes. “Naturally, my fault, continue.” He smiled with utmost reverence and sincerity. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

Captain? Oh, how could he stay mad at a handsome face like that.

“Is this going to be a long-ish explanation?”

“Indeed,” the reflection extended a hoof to the downed Captain, only to have it swat away. “This might take a while.”

Apparently he found no difficulty being mad at a handsome face after all. “Great,” he groaned. The Captain reoriented himself, and exhaled deeply in a long huff. “You got a Crop’s Notes version?”

“Sir, I shall do my best to be brief, Captain.”

“Well then I... ” Wait what? “Wait, what?”

Huh, so apparently the dark brooding scary dimension of no foreseeable end at least yielded some pleasant neighbors. Sir? Captain? I shall do my best... to be brief? If all the denizens of this realm were as dapper and well-groomed as this fashionable chap, he might have just found a great place for that ungrateful Benebit Farmold to learn a thing or two from the locals.

“You mean Jetstream?”

If scrunchy-faces could be weaponized, Stormblade’s could obliterate farmhouses.

“Sorry, it’s just,” the reflection dragged a forehoof below him in tight circles. “Your thoughts are my thoughts, I am you after all, I’m kind of picking up on all the head noise you’re-”

Scrunch.

“... I apologize. Ask away about what exactly is this place you’ve been dragged into.”

Stormblade nodded, then jammed a hoof into his reflection’s shoulder. “What exactly is this place I’ve been dragged... ” His voice trailed off, the hoof sliding dejectedly off the reflection’s shoulder, falling limp to a clunk against the floor. Despite his airtight mannerisms, sincerest maintenance of reverent poise, and sweet heavens that conflagrant charm...

“You’re in the mirror.”

By the honor of Commander Hurricane, was that reflection getting irritating remarkably fast.

“You live here?”

The odd pony laughed, bobbing his head back and forth as he sauntered up to the Captain. “No, you do.”

Stormblade nudged the reflection back, and stepped away. “I... ” He began, cracking a hoof upwards to the abyssal horizon. “... Live outside. In the world!” He sunk his neck, turning his head and nodding his chin at the reflection. “You live in here.”

“Of course I do,” the reflection approached the Captain again, putting a foreleg around his shoulder. “I have to be here when you’re in here. I couldn’t be here without you here which is why I brought you in here so I could be in here too.”

“You... ” Stormblade groaned through grit teeth, waving a shushing fetlock to the reflection. He closed his eyes, letting his mind reset. That was a bit too much, too fast.

“Sorry, I’ll repeat that.”

“Woah, can you repeat tha-” the Captain’s voice seized in his throat, percolated for a second in a pitched whine, then sunk along with his patience and dropping eyelids. “Okay,” the Captain sighed, dragging a hoof down his face. “Back up.” He opened his eyes...

“Like this?!” The reflection called from a hundred haunches in the distance.

“Not literally!” He clenched his jaw, peering upward to the horizon. It was hopeless. He knew that if there was a way outside of this realm he had been pulled into by this foolish but phenomenally accurately handsome imposter, it was going to have to be through some other means. But he knew all too well, he was just wasting time with this bumbling black-coated lummox; he knew he’d have to find a way out on his own. He turned sharply in the opposite direction, “Pyoof!” smacking against a black jangling flank. “Aaack!” He hopped back.

“Find a way out, you thought?”

“Don’t do that!” Stormblade snorted, dropping his head and gritting his teeth beneath closed eyes. The ground peered back at him, but no light mirrored himself, just the emptiness above. Another passing roll of deep rumbling lingered beneath his hooves, wispy tendrils of violet and blue light kicked up.

He was in a mirror.

…

Wait.

He was in a mirror!

Stormblade winced heavily, realizing he was neglecting something extremely important. “Wha-he-hey wait!” He snapped his teeth together, furrowing his eyebrows, and shot an accusing hoof forward to where his reflection stood. “Why’d ya’ pull me into!-huh?” The black coated reflection had vanished.

“Why’d I what?” A gravely voice inquired from beneath Stormblade’s hooves.

A quarter-second later, Stormblade peered downward at the arc of his eight-foot leap of panic, beaming searing irritation to the elusive apparition.

“I know your questions,” the reflection buffed a hooftip against his chest, the medals on the red jacket jangling with each tight wave. “You just seem to get mad when I try to get to the point, so I’m waiting on you to ask why did I so eagerly drag you into this place.”

“Why did you so eagerly drag me into this-” Oh for the love of. “I mean, why did you... you so... why did you so eagerly... ” Odd. His mind couldn’t reorganize the words despite his billowing desire to not satiate the smug satisfaction of the coltish mirror psychologically antagonizing him. “So eagerly drag me into... this... ” Place. Place... How come he couldn't find another word!? He sighed.

“Would you like to finish?”

“No.”

The Captain grumped, shifting his face to the side. Another deep rumble rolled beneath his hooves, a bright cascade of light crackled around him. He stepped back from the circle of emanating violet luminance, the reflection quickly whirling and smooshing to a single tendril of warped black and red before snapping back to the chiseled stallion he projected.

“I would like you to get to the point.”

“My pleasure.” The black stallion slowly ducked his head, turning his back to the Captain. He waved a forehoof before him. “I am a reflection of you, and without you, I cannot exist. While the reflections that live in all mirrors are bound by those rules, they have not the life nor consciousness we were imbued with thousands of years ago.”

The reflection waved a hoof before him, and lifting it to the air, a flat pane of crystal elevated in front, angled to show Stormblade’s suddenly intrigued expression on it’s mirrored surface.

“You see, normal mirrors are just nothing more than a million specks of light bouncing off a solid surface, but we... ?” The reflection extended a forehoof over him, and the pane suddenly hoisted into the air. “We live. And when you step away... ”

He flung his hoof squarely on the ground, the mirror shattering flat with a piercing blast of noise. A phalanx of skittering crystal shards slid around the Captain, the flickering pieces clicking against his hooves.

“We cease.” The reflection stepped forward, lowering his head and sauntering slowly back to the Captain. “We fade away.”

“And... ?”

The reflection’s bottom lip sagged, his nostrils stretching low. “And we cease, we live no more!” He glanced downward, sweeping aside a couple shards of crystal. “So to survive, we cannot demand our host to remain standing before the mirror forever.” He looked directly into the Captain’s eyes. “We bring them into our world! To live among us! Forever and ever!”

“Ah.” Stormblade nodded. “Therein lies our impasse.” He strode up to the black-coated reflection, and tapped his nose. “You see, this ‘forever and ever’ thing,” he twisted his head back and forth in a mocking tone, “isn’t going to work for me.” He laughed, flipping his mane to the side, smiling, and cracking his neck. “And... after the daily head-kickin’s I spend the rest of my years administering to you, it’s probably not going to work to your favor either.”

“Hah,” the reflection scoffed. “You can’t frighten me! You’re in my world now!”

The cliched nature of words that just bounced off the Captain’s ears nearly caused him force himself awake, thinking he was in some fevered dream wrought by reading bad fanfiction over a large bowl of ice cream. His scowl drooped upon opening his eyes, only seeing the obsidian cavern looming around him. Yep. He really did just hear those words.

The reflection's claims seemed impossible, this couldn’t be his true reflection. The Captain assured himself was a far better writer than that.

“You do realize,” Stormblade growled, shaking a hoof threateningly before him, “I’ve got a wicked double hay-maker that can awaken your ancient ancestors, right?”

“The Buck-Tooth Be Gone, yes,” he nodded, similarly cracking his rear legs in quick tugs. “I know all of your moves. They are both ours... ”

To the reflection’s credit, he was certainly a worthy adversary should a fight arise. Oh, how the Captain would love to engage hoof and molar against somepony worth his energy. But to truly test if he was the real deal...

"...And?"

“Yes. Even the Spinning Quintuple Lightning Dervish.”

Oh, ho ho, yes. The real deal.

“Oh good,” the Captain eased his stance “Saves a demonstration.” Stormblade stepped closer to the reflection, gritting his teeth. “So, continuing with the ‘getting to the point’ part.”

The reflection’s face softened. “The point is,” his eyes widened over a growing smile. “None. What’s done is done.”

Ding. It’s punch-out time.

“While other reflections will come and go as their hosts pass us by... ”

Wait, waaait...

“... You and me? We need worry none of that!”

“Other... reflections... ?” Stormblade grimaced, planting a solid hoof against his own face. “There’s more of you?”

“Oh yes, but they’re... well, they’re also opposites of those they reflect When they get close to the mirror, they see who we are.” The reflection’s brow lifted, feeling a surge of words coalescing at the roots of his larynx. He couldn’t believe it! Social interaction! Honest to Ghasen socializing!

The Captain blinked. “Who... we are?”

“Oh I’m so excited! I get to tell you all this!” The reflection jangled excitedly, shaking his rump at the Captain.

“Eesh,” he obviously responded.

“I can’t believe I get to have a friend! Ha, ha!” He sang. “I have retrieved you, and will keep you for-e-ver!” He leapt onto the floor at the Captain’s fetlocks, flicking his tail against his temples. “Booty booty booty booty rockin’ ever-”

“Enough!” Stormblade kicked his flank aside, sending him stumbling forward. “What do you mean by ‘who we are’?”

“We’re the inner evils that remain deep down inside you, friend!” The reflection clapped his hooves together, bounding giddily in his steps. “We’re your bitterness, hee hee! We’re the deepest darkest most horrible doodads that your exterior tries to suppress and hide!” He shot his forelegs outward over his shoulders. “Isn’t that the greatest!?”

“I’m so confused,” Stormblade scratched his head. “If you’re the inner me that’s supposed to be hiding within, the one I keep locked away, then why are you so cheery and chipper and polite to me?”

“Well, that’s what the spell mandates,” the reflection hesitated, choosing his words carefully. Why was it that if he was the inner suppressed emotions of this pony, that he was the upbeat and optimistic one? “Guess we’re just supposed to be... ” The opposite of our host? The part of them they’re afraid to bring out? The paradoxically uplifting and encouraging traits this thuggish Captain snuffed out decades ago? “... Different,” the reflection attempted to lie, his mouth curling up and his wide eyes scanning the periphery around the Captain. “Heh, suppose little ol’ bad pony me is just a flaw in the spell.”

Duh. “Suppose you’re right.”

“Because, wheeew-ie,” he swung a foreleg around his chest, diverting the topic away from previous inflections. “Those other guys you want to know about, those other evil bad ponies, they are some tough, mean, evilest thorns a manticore ever stepped upon if I ever seen any.”

The Captain nodded, allowing him to proceed. He narrowed his eyes, taking a stand beside the quickly chatting projection.

“Why, one of them was this orange unicorn mare, could summon the very deadbolts of Tartarus right off the tip of her horn.” He jumped back, cracking a hoof on the floor and waving his head around menacingly. “And another, really tall regal thing, blue and really powerful but never really uses it, awful lot like that figurine in your jacket pocket.”

“It’s not a doll!” Stormblade hissed. “It’s a figur-... ” He paused, realizing that was the first time anypony had called his trinket a figurine. All his closest aides who had accidentally seen them called them dolls, and always said it with an excess of syllables to ensure a three-act symphony of snorts and giggles were wedged into the pronunciation.

Fillystines.

He blinked heavily again. “So wait, you saw... they were here!?”

“And this third one...” The reflection resumed, glossing over the question. “Not as dark-coated as you, more grayish, but all he did was stomp around and mope about whilst waxing poetic about separation anxiety, his family, and his childhood home, really messed up kid. He could barely breathe, barely talk, he complained incessantly about his chest hurting between coughing fits, kept telling the Princess ‘but that charcoal one kicked me’. You’d think he would’ve been taught how to buck up by his fath-”

“The Princess was... here!?” Stormblade tugged at the reflection’s collar. He fumbled about his jacket, tugging out the Luna figurine within. “This one! You saw her!?”

“Oh only for a spell,” the stallion turned his head away, glaring into the black distance. “She faded away just like the rest of ‘em. Says she almost got them, too. But just before you showed up.” He tapped his chin. “All I really remember was the tantrum she threw, and then all three of them fading away at once while clawing at the floor in the most cantankerous howls of despair I ever heard.”

Woah. “So they... ”

The reflection huffed, his voice becoming soft and airy. “She lost her’s.” He looked back at Stormblade. “They all lost their’s.”

“Their hosts... ” The Captain could only imagine.

“And all I got to see was what happened of them when they lost. Horrible way to go. Because without a host to feed their very existence in the mirror... they... ”

Stormblade inhaled deep, peering into the same distance as his own reflection standing before him. “...Cease.”

“Leaving nothing behind.”

Stormblade nodded.

“Except that little mopey one.” The reflection dug into his coat with a forehoof, pulling at a square bulked lodged tightly within. “Strangest thing, this book of his didn't disappear at all... ”

The Captain peered curiously at the cover image peeking from a receding jacket collar.

Hummingbird.

* * * * *

“What was on the cover?” Devon peered curiously at the book twirling before Luna’s face, her excited giggles unable to hold it still. He held up a hoof, clenching the book by the corner. “The Gait Gatsby?”

She settled it down before the two of them. “Perfect, this stand shall let us read togeth-”

Before the last word left Luna’s lip, the book snapped open of its own volition, pages flipping rapidly as a blazing light flared from the ancient paper, washing over the stunned pair. Both Devon and Luna shifted rapidly, convinced they were caught in yet another trap until the room bent and twisted.

“Easy, dearest,” Luna laughed, pressing down on the charcoal unicorn’s shoulder.

He wasn’t inclined to jump, startle, or run away from the book in the least. “Thanks, I'm glad you got my back.” But at least he appreciated her consideration.

"Mm-hmm!" She giggled under her breath, nostrils flaring in demure grace. Devon felt like a rabbit dove into the back of his legs the way his balance gave out from his knee. “I’ve hath witnessed upon such tomes before,” Luna continued explaining to him. “Yet they’re reserved for the highest of magic users and royal scholars.” She looked down to a pair of pleading orange irises, their quivering clearly emoting that he was neither royal nor... well, any tier of magic anything. She gripped his forehoof, lifting the gauntlet before him.

“Will it... ?”

“Perchance we can make exception of thee,” Luna nudged a fetlock against his cheek. “Should anypony inquire, we hath ensured the validity of yonder artifacts as genuine upon one such as... well...”

Devon’s eyes narrowed. “A commoner?”

“Oh forsooth, no, I was going to say-” The Princess pinched her words, then cast aside the conversation elsewhere with an anticipating laugh. She tugged him close, and gestured her other hoof towards the book. “Look upon here, dearest Devon!”

“Wreegiee-woo, looketh upon yonder here,” Gina huffed from around the corner, spewing out the imitation with labored sarcasm.

They paused, giving the interloping unicorn a cross look. Devon wiped a strand of mane off his face, and pressing his head into the Princess’ neck, motioned her back to the waiting book.

He wasn’t going to let the orange unicorn’s interruptions get into this moment. She said she would allow him this, and if she was going to be petulant about it, fine. As long as he got the moment she granted him. Heck, knowing it was bugging her so much, it made it even more worth it to Devon. His enjoyment was her dismay, finally things were starting to go right. Exactly how he wanted it to.

“Upon yonder stand,” Luna explained, “this book reacts immediately to magical touch.” She lightened her voice, speaking in a dulled whisper into his ear “Allow me.” She wrapped a forehoof around the gauntlet. “Easy now.”

He didn’t know if the warmth emanating up his shoulder was from the luminance prickling around the gauntlet, the soft light ascending from his foreleg, or the Princess’ gentle puffs of anxious breath rolling up his neck...

... Easy. Easy. Focus on the magic. Focus on the-

Before Devon’s eyes, colors warped into images, but it was more than a simple visual illusion. Joining the images came upbeat music and the sounds of drink glasses clinking in cheer. Joining the sounds came the smells of expensive pipe smoke and fresh floor polish. Joining the smells came the shaking bitter taste of a beverage Devon would normally enjoy dancing on his tongue and down his throat. All of the twisting sensory experiences were nothing, however, next to the warping going on in his mind as the book poured its images and plot into his mind.

No longer was he an idle spectator, but he was becoming a character! The unicorn’s thoughts twisted so he felt the urges and motivations of the character as keenly as his own. Yet he was still Devon Bookmark. His thoughts were clear, yet he felt perfectly at home in the growing scene around him.

* * * * *

“Mister Gatsby!”

“Huh?” Devon blinked, turning his gaze. He was no longer in the dank chamber, yet he knew this room. The party was his own. He invited strangers in the hopes of seeing her, a violation of his opulent privacy but well-worth the risk.

“Devon Gatsby, a pleasure, my name is... ”

The name didn’t matter, it was all just the usual banter and fluff that was part of his plan and scheme to reunite with her. Devon was now the title character, and he thrilled as his solaces from his youth took a form so real around him that he swore he could smell the very varnish that his staff had laid for this event. Even though consciously, he knew this must be a projection of the book, the effect was so pristine that the unicorn was compelled to play his part, to follow the story. He even felt his own thoughts merging with those of the character, both of them making an immense plan, taking risks all to grasp for...

Devon spotted her across the party, standing out like a cobalt beam in a sea of drab outfits.

... Her.

Luna chatted breezily with members of the party, her outfit a dazzling combination of allure and vitality. While some mares at this dance wrapped themselves in the stuffy clothes of the age, Luna and a few other bold souls bucked tradition and outfitted themselves in extravagantly modern clothes.

“Excuse me,” Devon said, brushing past another self-infatuated bigwig of high society as he wove between guests and staff. Intense, jazzed music rose from all corners as Devon felt the bold surge of his character replacing his own. Strengthening was his own assumption of this being a shared illusion, and if he was in a show, then by Celestia he is going to perform without regrets! Gatsby saw the mare of his dreams, coming back from a distant past to give him another chance. Devon saw the mare of his dreams, reaching out to him to offer a future that he could never make for himself.

About two-thirds the way through the party, her attention flicked to him. It was a look that was flighty and challenging. She turned, mingling her way away from Devon, leaving nothing other than a whisper of beguiling laughter.

Devon Gatsby faltered, but continued his pursuit. The voices and faces of the partygoers turned to nothing but a blue as he tailed after the provocative dress hanging off of a cobalt frame. Energetic music flowed like water around him, wrapping him up in a blanket of sound that urged him to chase her down. But every time he got within reach, Luna took another giggling sway to the left or right and disappeared. Finally, he turned a final corner in the endless series of twists and turns and found himself on a grand balcony, his balcony.

As he took in the panorama, a thought entered stealthily through Devon’s mind. This scene was not right. It never happened like this in the story. At this point, all that Gatsby should have seen was a whisper of the mare’s dress before losing her for the night. He emerged to his balcony to brood and bemoan the pain he went through for just this chance. But...

“Mister Devon Gastby... ” Luna turned, smiling. Behind her, the moon cast ten thousand glittering diamonds across the great lake his home was built overlooking. This was definitely not part of the story, Devon was certain. “Do not be alarmed,” she continued, as if sharing the same thought. “There’s no need to worry about those side roads, I believe that we’re the ones in command this time.”

“Wait, you mean... ”

Luna grinned through a showy, exuberant dancing sway. “This is our story, Devon, we’re writing it how we wish it to be.”

* * * * *

“Blech!” Gina’s voice rattled through the refractive aisles in disgust. She stuck out her tongue in an exasperated raspberry. “Just, yuck.”

His vision still blurry, the edges still glowing with the opalescent tendrils of moonlight from the book’s spell, Devon looked over to the indignant noise.

“I know it was big back in my day,” Gina groused heavily, waving a dark-covered paperback before her in protest. “But Fifty Shades of Neigh!? Classic for all the wrong reasons!”

The illusion shattered. In a weighted blink, Devon scrunched his brow to regain his focus. Upon opening his eyes, he hoped to find himself back on the balcony, back in their own story, back in the story he had absolute control over and could manipulate as he saw fit for them.

Instead, he returned to the real world, seeing the Princess gently swaying her head as she too emerged from the book’s magical immersion. Devon breathed in heavily, as if emerging from underwater, his mind still racing, trying to discern a grasp upon which reality was tangible and which was just a storybook fantasy.

“Dearest,” Luna slid a concerned glance to him. “Art thou well?”

“Oh wow... Luna, did you see all of that?!” Turning, he saw the cobalt mare with the same face of breathless exhilaration as he had. He peered down at the gauntlet, the embers of dissipating magic pulling and fading into thin disappearing threads. “That just happened, didn’t it?”

“Well, aye, I think it did, darling!” Luna said after a moment, and before he could speak it was as if she read his mind. “Shall we try another?”

“Er... nyyyope!” Gina barged her head in front of the couch. “I told ya,” she snickered, “I told ya both that ya could have one. Meaning one. Not two. This is no free sample time.”

Devon’s jaw hung low, waving a pleading gesture before him. “But-”

“Neh!”

“We-”

“NEH!” She stomped the ground, silencing him in a sharp bang of echoing protest. The orange mare cackled in a few involuntary laughs, “to think that I’m the one makin’ sure everypony’s responsible and in control!” Gina allowed herself a long moment to laugh before she took a breath and shook her mane. “Hooo... funny stuff, Dev’s, now c’mon, foals. Get your coats and scarves on, we got-”

“Well, that wasn’t too long,” Devon mused. “We could probably do another one... that was such a rush!” He turned to smile back at Luna, who nodded eagerly. “I didn’t know that kind of magic even existed let alone could be shared!” Turning back to Gina, he somewhat expected her understanding nod, but instead found a face on the very edge of fury, a rare show of restraint from the orange mare.

“We’ll b-”

“What part is hard to get!? The N? The E? Or the H?! NEH!” Gina took a breath, compelling her frustration down into rational calm, a foreign state. "Look Dev's, ya saved me, you deserve all of the good times in the world," Gina retorted with a snicker. "But this... this is just an illusion. Heck, it’s all just you making stuff up! It ain't gonna keep ya happy. You want the real thing don’tcha?”

“But... ” But it was real. She was right there. She was as real as the cobalt arm and wing she had draped over his shoulder, tugging him close against her. This was the most real anything he’d felt, not just with the Princess, but the most sincere closeness he’d experienced with anypony who’d give him directions to the Ponyville Tower.

“It’s difficult, I know,” Gina continued. “I’ve seen how hard it is for ponies to accept.”

Yeah, he knew.

“But, you’re a grown stallion now!” The orange unicorn’s tone harshened. “You can’t live in your own pretend-land any more!”

He knew.

“Get you head out of the little colt dreams of Princesses an-"

He knew he heard enough.

"And who are you to go on about my dreams?!” A charcoal forehoof swung at a nearby shelf, flinging a line of books to the floor. “You're only happy when you're making other ponies miserable!" Devon barked, heat in his face and voice. "I saw Ghasen's journal. I know what you’re about, and that you have a cob on your shoulder!”

“Hey!”

“Even before that contract thing,” he hoisted to his tiphooves, attempting to loom above her. “Even before!” He yelled to her neck, “it seemed like you just loved to make him upset! Just disagree with every little thing he did!”

“Dev’s!”

“Always standing in his way!”

“Dev’s!!”

“It's a wonder that he stayed, when you’re better off ignored!"

“... ”

The biting words reverberated and echoed through the room.

You’re better off ignored...

Devon’s ears twinged and retreated, hearing his own voice coming back to him. He lowered himself from his forehooves, turning his head to the side and barely opening an eye, expecting to see a deserved orange fetlock to smack him in the face.

"Dev's... " Gina flushed, the vigor dying instantly from her voice. "You don't even... you... "

The slap never came.

“... You’re better than this.”

But the sting did.

She finally hissed. "Enjoy your slave then, you stupid stubborn featherbrain!” Unfiltered venom fell from every word. “Wonder how long it'll be before you're making deals to sell out Equestria! To sell out Luna!" With a final huff, “To sell out your own momma!”

If there was any semblance of a counter-argument or plea residing anywhere within Devon’s mind...

“I thought you were better than this.”

... A smoldering crater took its place.

Gina whirled away from the central table. "If y'need me, I'll be tryin' to help the Princess and findin' a way out, like I shoulda been doing. Like you should be doing. I swear, you’re just..like... him!”

Him.

With what remnant shred of energy remained in his shoulders, Devon turned his head to watch Gina storming off, verbally disarmed and sputtering.

I’m nothing like him.

He flinched lightly when the cobalt foreleg slowly settled on his back. “Do not pay her any heed, dearest,” Luna’s voice pulled his attention away. “For I hath returned and we shall drink in these tomes together.” Her sudden falling weight puffed up the cushions around Devon as cobalt telekinesis floated a book against the metal stand on the table and the flare of light engulfed them again. “We can indulge as long as thy heart desires whilst poor Gina seethes. I hath chosen something special for us.”

He shifted his focus from the fuming mare storming down the aisle. A resonant voice of distant memory crept up to him, and on impulse, squeaked in foalish irresolution.

“Why am I so bad at this?”

“Say again?”

He swung his head low, coughed, and righted his eyes level to her’s. “Nothing, nothing.” Devon exhaled, trying to shake off Gina’s words. “Yeah,” he cleared his throat, attempting to mask any doubts in his voice. “Yeah,” he repeated, resting down beside the Princess.

Another book. That’ll help. That’ll clear his mind. It always did. Feeling her hoof wrap around him and grip him tight against her, he fidgeted to raise the gauntlet before them. The light danced and twirled in proximity of the book, and the telltale flickers of energy and warmth crept up his legs.

Devon closed his eyes, feeling Luna’s grasp on him tighten suddenly, pulling him close against her chest. His mind blinked, for ever just a millisecond, flashing a dark bedroom, his old bed, and an older mare holding him equally close and comforting him.

His mind called out.

Not to her.

Not to anypony in particular.

But in a quiet rippling prayer sent skyward, in a voice of... but not from himself.

Why am I so bad at this?

* * * * *

“Mister Bookmark?”

Devon snapped to attention, finding himself embraced in regal elegance.

Again, the voice called to him. “Mister Bookmark?” Her smile was utter, unspeakable radiance. The newest tome had shifted the perspective again, but now they were used to the mane-raising shifts in setting. Where before, they had rolled with the images, relying on their memories of the book to make sure that the plot played out as it should, now Devon and Luna recognized the magical playground they had found.

This was, without a doubt, the dance hall of Northanger Stable, Mane Austen’s posthumous tale of romance. Devon’s voracious appetite took it in years ago, though he always found the tale intensely dull. Unlike most stallions, he loved the romances, but as always the payoff in Austen’s work was far too small and slow in coming.

Likewise, Princess Luna found her memories of its study as part of some touted royal need to be more educated and literary than her subjects. To Luna, she always wished the heroine had gotten over the insistent bonds of social pressure and just made her own move.

Now both of them knew that they could make that story happen.

“Miss Luna.”

They both smiled, bypassing the chapter upon chapter of youthful uncertainty and the fluttery butterflies of budding romance. Why bother with the whole building when he prize was right there waiting to be taken?

“Shall we?”

Devon strode purposefully across the ballroom floor. Gasps of shock from the characters echoed all around him as they willfully broke the story and headed for their own destination. The other dancers parted like waves before the two as they stepped. They clicked hooves in the center of the room and waved for everypony’s attention. Even the orchestra fell silent, seemingly shocked that their background role in the story had been hijacked, and that it was the climax already.

“Rather uncouth,” the Princess remarked, glancing at the cavalcade of shocked expressions radiating around them. “Devon, dearest, thou art mindful we’re indulging unto the most utterly gaudy of self-indulgent fiction.”

“I know,” Devon joked. “That’s why I’m speeding it up.”

Not what she meant. “Perchance thou hear us in improper context,” Luna attempted. “I mean, we’re changing the story so much that it’s no longer the original, it’s an abridged sophomoric fantasy of-”

Devon extended a wry smile at her.

“... Ah.” Luna realized. “Thou hast... fun at expense of this story’s author.”

Music rose around them very slowly. The soft murmurs and ricocheting chatter melded together into a drone of conversation filling the dance hall. Tentatively, the notes picked up pace and sync, forming together into a perfect waltz.

The dancers all returned to the floor, filling the center of the room around the interloping manipulators of the story. Their bodies reared up and braced against one another, exceptionally intimate and close for pony dance. Closing his eyes, Devon felt Luna’s hoof trailing up the side of his neck until it rested snugly against his cheek, holding his face in a gentle, caring caress. Angling his foreleg, the unicorn caught Luna’s neck in an embrace, their bodies twining together in a blissful, musical grasp.

“So... shall we?” Devon repeated.

“Aye, we shall. I hath waited for this forever, my dear.”

“And I’ve waited even longer.” An odd feeling percolated in the back of his mind. It caught him off guard, but it was as alien as it was so natural feeling. “My moonflower.”

Devon had never been in a dance like this before, but Luna confidently positioned him until they rested in mutual support of one another. These dances were rare in modern Canterlot, with culture going towards dances that allowed expression as individuals; something like their dance was exactly where it had been relegated to, an object of a far older age, a dance that was more teamwork than personal expression. But to those who could share and support so deeply, the dance became so personal as to make the room, the other dances, anypony looking on and even the very music to become nothing.

Luna led the first steps, walking Devon at a slow pace to allow him to settle into the dance partly, but also seeing the distracted flush on his cheeks. “Tis no rush, dear,” she whispered, “thou may take as much time as thou need. For this is the first of many.” Cobalt forelegs graced up and down charcoal cheeks as a swirl of movement took Devon into the first spin. It was not fast or dramatic, but that first surge of movement set his heart beating like a marching band. With the increased pace of his heart, the unicorn’s breath accelerated until he nearly panted.

“Shh... ” Luna reassured him, another turn drawing Devon into something resembling an embrace. So close was Devon that he could no longer look into Luna’s face, just feel her muzzle rubbing over his face and soft air blowing across his ear. “Calm thyself, Devon, thou art losing the rhythm.”

“Doing my best, I just... ” he tried to explain through his delighted embarrassment. “Kinda new to these dances.” He stumbled slightly as Luna spun him again.

“Simple. Just count out the steps,” Luna giggled. “One-two-three, one-two-three... .” she whispered, moving her back legs in time with her count. Still finding him lagging behind, Luna smiled warmly and tightened her embrace. She lowered her voice to a soothing whisper. “Just listen, listen through me.” She hooked her neck around his head, pulling him close to her collar. “Count my heartbeat, Devon, follow that.”

Swallowing hard, Devon pressed forward. Ignoring his own heart’s wild cacophony, he focused on the steady, calming heartbeat from the Princess holding him. He could hear it. He could actually hear it. Through the music, the reverberation of conversation, and the rhythmic hoofsteps surrounding them, it was clear.

It was real.

“Ready?” The Princess subtly shifted to the side, ready to waltz in step with the rest. “Thou art able to hear it?”

He knew.

“Move with me now.”

He knew it was real.

After a moment, he began counting. “One-two-three... ”

And matching her steps.

* * * * *

He nodded his head to the side, flinging the errant strand of rainbow mane out of his eye. He rested a cyan forehoof against his brow, looking out into the star-speckled night sky.

Finally.

Jetstream exhaled as one final flap of wings carried him out of the cave’s mouth and back into the frosty night air.

Without the need to chase his superior officer and supervise every step the clumsy oaf made, the trip back seemed a lot calmer and slower, allowing him wide vistas of the carved chambers upon his ascent. While the cyan pegasus was never the strongest student of history, even he recognized the value. No way that that place should be so unknown. It was something that the unicorns in the archive would be most interested in.

A blast of drifting snow snapped his attention back to his immediate situation. Recovery teams, guards to make sure that the entrance was secure, more guards for the treasure vault, probably a few to keep Stormblade out of it to boot.

The cyan pegasus’ thoughts returned to his commanding officer still down in the labyrinth below. A nagging sense of guilt dug into him with each straining beat of his wings, the tension tearing him between his loyalty to his commander and his loyalty to his commands.

Infuriating as Detective Head Quartermaster Commodore Stormblade Storming Do was, the pegasus still wanted to ensure that his delusions did not cause serious harm. He did not want to see anypony hurt by Stormblade’s ambitions, including the very owner of those ambitions. With any luck, the dark-coated second captain would be so lost in his vain delusion of a “quest” that his absence would not be noted until Jetstream returned with help.

As he took wing on a casual arc towards the core of Canterlot, Jetstream paused to take in the starry night sky. At least he could allow a moment of reprieve. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. They were out in immense number, moreso than he remembered. Must have been a naturally clear night, an exceptionally dark sky, or Celestia put forth some extra effort in place of her absent sister. But how they illuminated the steep mountainous decline between the cavern entrance and Canterlot’s walls, each star washing every twinkling patch of snow, every lick of frost, every glimmering icicle with enchanting pale blue light.

Yet, something was unusual about the panorama. While he was no astronomer, Jetstream could swear that the constellations were... different. It was imperceptible, but just a general feeling that he had never seen this particular starry night tapestry. Even though he had lived and worked under the stars all his life, he did not ever think of their shape, but it still was unusual. Discordant. Staring up at it longer and longer, Jetstream felt a slight tremble, a bad feeling.

“Wait a minute... ” he said aloud to nopony. Something else was wrong. Something more obvious than the unusual starscape. “I could have sworn it was supposed to be a snowstorm tonight... where are the weather crews?” Jetstream cut his flight to the side, casting his view towards the skyline and far distance. He expected to see panicked crews of pegasi hard at work to give Hearth’s Warming its usual fresh cloak of thick snow, but Canterlot’s skies were universally clear horizon to horizon.

He couldn’t recall the last time he could see both the dim glow of Ponyville and the distant flickering ember of Dodge Junction on the horizon.

Angling his wings, Private Jetstream rolled into a swoop across the scope of Canterlot’s statue garden and hedge maze. It was a patrol he had flown hundreds of times, each swoop and descent deeply embedded in his muscle memory.

Jetstream threw a proprietary gaze over the curling pathways and intertwined hedges knitting between their marbled adornments. He could hardly admit it to himself, let alone his fellow brothers in bridle, but the night patrol in the statue garden always raised the hairs of his mane in the wrongest kind of ways. He never understood why the cantankerous Second Captain enjoyed it so much, why Stormblade got such great enjoyment out of it.

Probably from the way his convoluted imagination would twist the landscape into his... eesh... little scenarios.

Dozens of soulless, empty-staring statues backdropped by the gloom of moonlight made the garden’s night rounds a popular posting for the greenest guards. Both Jetstream and Stormblade worked the route in their earliest days, back when they were hazed into thinking the place was haunted by their superiors...

Ah, fond memories.

Back when he could address him by name, address him without something something protocol...

... Address him as a friend.

Though when years dragged on and the Captain’s ambitions outpaced his own humble graciousness to just be a part of the elite guard, the pegasus always found himself covering for the burly earth pony. In fact, Jetstream knew the garden so well that he could tell all was normal with his eyes closed.

Well...

Everything except that glowing near the center...

Wait... glowing?

Folding his wings back, Jetstream dove, his slow swoop replaced by a precise dive that brought him straight to the odd light that hung near the center of the statue garden. Light bent around him at bizarre angles from an unknown source. He couldn’t put his hoof on it, but just being in this unusually lit garden felt wrong on some detached level. Much like the night sky, there were no direct signs that he could instantly point out as being malevolent, yet the air around him tingled with an atmosphere of rising potential.

Regaining his focus, Jetstream examined the ambience more closely, and identified a nearly invisible trail of light, revealed only by the tiny bits of dust and dirt kicked up by his movements. He followed the beam until it alighted on one of the statues. Now that he had a fixed thing to look over, Jetstream finally had a point of reference. The statue was lit, as if on display, yet instead of the harsh lanterns of magical lights used for the nobility’s garden parties, this illumination was cooler, more natural. If nothing else, it looked like it was lit by natural star and moonlight, yet much more intensely.

Turning his perception wider, Jetstream noticed that the next statue in the line was lit similarly to the one he was in front of. So was the next one... in fact, every statue in the central rotunda was lit. With a beat of his wings, Jetstream took to the air and found many dozens more statues wrapped in a glow that seemed to grow stronger with every passing second. He looked back to the first statue to check and, to his concern but not to his surprise, it was glowing stronger.

A small sound made the cyan pegasus swing his head back towards the more distant statues. A scrape of stone on stone.

Every statue was closer.

* * * * *

“Eh, closer.”

The Captain snorted, arching his eyebrows upward to try and sneak a better look at what was in the reflection’s hooves. “It’s... a key.”

“Nope!” The reflection chided him, “Further! Guess again!”

“Okay, you said if I could guess what was in your grasp,” Stormblade reached a hoof outward, trying to grab the tenacious stallion’s foreleg, “you’d tell me what I need to get out of here?”

“Yep, I will if you solve this riddle!” He sang. “Fiddle biddle rin-bin skiddle!”

“That doesn’t even... ” Help? Make sense? “It... ” Doesn’t make his face appear less punchable? “It’s a... ” Think metaphorically. Metaphorically. “You said, ‘What doth rattle in my grasp about? It’s the answer to let you out’.”

“Indeed I did!” The reflection jangled with excited hops. “What doth rattle in my grasp about? It’s the answer to let y-”

“It’s obvious!” Stormblade laughed, clicking a hooftip against his chin. “You’re holding... the answer!”

Oh how those stallion’s eyes sparkled and shone. “Brilliantly deducted, sir!” The reflection pulled his clenched hooves tight to his chest. “A most amicable answer indeed!”

Stormblade sighed in relief, the invisible boatload’s weight of stress off his shoulder. “Whew, about time-”

“But it’s still wrong.”

The invisible boatload’s weight analogy was, indeed, just an analogy. But the reflection wouldn’t have known any different the way the Captain shrieked and flopped onto the ground.

Stormblade fumbled his legs across the slippery obsidian floor, and lunged outwards at the apparition. He stretched outwards, clamoring tenaciously to pull those mischievous clenched hooves apart and solve this riddle the way he solved most of life’s gregarious obstacles.

Sheer brute force.

The reflection pulled away from the swinging ebony hoof, his jacket unbuttoning and draping loose in his quick motion. A purple flash of light poked out, and the tome flopped to the floor. The reflection gasped, and reached down with his forelegs to clench the book and pull it back up.

“Hey!” Stormblade protested in a fiery snarl, slamming a hoof to the solid ground. “There really was nothing in your hooves!”

“Oh yes, indeed sir, there, umm... there was, but you... ” He rolled the words around with his tongue, trying to pick out the right ones. “Correct!” The reflection jovially outstretched his arms. “Nothing! Nothing will get you out!” His excited proclamation deflated to a pitiful squeal when the Captain gave him a deathly squooshy face. “But you see, you didn’t guess that-”

“It was the first thing I said!” Super squooshy face.

“I... ” The reflection fumbled with the book, bobbling it in an attempt to grip it in his teeth. “Ff-Well err-yes it... ” The reflection coughed, trying to slide the book back into his jacket. “It’s no fun though when you get it right that fast, and you and I, if we’re to, eh-heh heh, heh-heh, spend time here we must... ” The book slipped, clomping on the floor. The reflection paused, staring for an unsettling second into the Captain’s menacing eyes. “... Hyeh heh heh! Yes, if we’re to be here we must make the most... the most fun of it we can!”

“You know what’s fun... to me?” Stormblade’s face contorted into wrinkles and angles prevalently unknown to his muscle memory.

“Umm... ” The reflection’s jaw dropped in his mouth, his pupils pinching inwards atop his dropping face. “Shadow puppets?”

“No.” The black stallion seethed, jetting a black forehoof into the reflection’s shoulder. “Guess... again.”

“Eh-heh heheh... ” The reflection stuttered, clenching his teeth and rubbing against his shoulder. “It’s not your turn for the guessing game, you’re not following the rules, sir.” He gripped the dropped tome.

“I. Want... ” He reared, swinging his legs in wild circles over the cowering reflection. “Out!” The reflection pulled his legs up to cover his face, sending the tome into an echoing flop. “I want out!”

A pulse of purple light shot from the book as the Captain’s hooves smashed into the ground around it, the shimmering black surface crackling and spitting sparkling ebony dust into the air.

Another reverberating wave of deep rumbling noise throbbed beneath the Captain’s hooves, sending several tendrils of wisping light upward. The zephyrs of luminance caught along the page’s corners, gripping them, turning the book over, and gracing the edges of the hummingbird emblem adorning the cover.

The pages shot open, most of them torn out, large sections of bare binding lining the gaps between errant parchment. Heavily sketched entries fluttered quickly before the Captain’s eyes, the shimmering purple magic sputtering and cascading around the rapidly passing pages embraced and illuminated the hastily sketched designs within. A single page caught his eye, large text glowing in blazing violet atop it.

THEY EXIST.

“Well,” the Captain chuckled in a low note. “What have you been keeping from me, here?” He lifted the book, nestling it against his chest.

The page turned, passing by even more fevered sketches of twisting lines, circles, spirals, and dots.

The reflection stepped toward him. “Now wait just a-” The book heaved in Stormblade’s arm, rifling to a single page and tearing it out instantly. “Aaagh!” The reflection hopped back. “It... it’s never done that before!”

The page hung before Stormblade’s muzzle, the only text his eyes could make out in its quick twirling was...

“Now it wants to write about ducks,” Stormblade read aloud, confused.

The page jumped, folded, crumpled, then popped instantly into an origami crane. The paper bird torpedoed at the reflection, and like a fiery purple comet, spun and dove repeatedly into his face.

“Wha-ow!” He nickered, waving an irritated forehoof at the attacking parchment. “My game was better-hey! Ow, ow!”

“Well,” Stormblade breathed easy for the first time since entering the black chamber. “Seems we finally have something willing to be of actual help to me.” He looked down at the book, the pages now pulling and waving frantically towards him, the purple magics flickering around the margins ebbing and pulsing with each spoken word. He jammed a hoof down on the pages, holding them tight against the binding. “Get to the point.”

The book rattled and thrust beneath the Captain’s hoof. Easing his weight, the pages slunk in a single disconnected flop, prying free of a single cluster or entries that dangled near the book’s end.

We are finished. All of us.

While Celestia has saved us from the eternal night the stars had summoned through the power of Luna, she’s on the warpath! My own family has been taken to justice, I know not of the fate of my beloved Gina or where she has disappeared to. It has been three days since I last saw her, since she took the Element of Magic from our construction site to try and stop Nightmare Moon. Her intentions were true, our plan was set in motion, we could fix this!

We were going to fix this!

The page peeled away, whipping to another entry right behind it.

I snuck a safeguard in the Princess’ contract. After seeing what happened with Gina, I took extra precautions to ensure that should the stars overstep their boundaries as they did before, I could undo it.

It was foalproof.

Like I had inadvertently done to Gina, I added an addendum to have her bound to me. The contract I penned bound her not just to me, but to my whole lineage. Should something happen to me, at least one of us could step in. We had the element of magic in our possession, it was the anchor, the bridge back to reality, the artifact that would save all of us, and Gina took it with her to try and stop the mad Princess.

She had been driven to madness by her own eternal lullaby!

But she would still be obedient to me, or at least, anypony of my blood. My sister. My aunt. My nephew. They could do it as well... except.

Celestia had to step in, and in her rush to benevolence and what she called “reluctance” just threw all those safeguards out of the way! She didn’t save her sister, she couldn’t! My family has been apprehended by Celestia’s closest guard, the whole archive has been torn apart and gutted, all that remains here in the deepest sanctum is my personal collection of literature and the hope that nopony is crazy enough to traverse the mirror gateway I have enhanced.

The treasure room, with the obvious answers of paintings of colts and foals, paper hearts, and hoofknit scarves and sweaters... it all has been replaced by the most gaudy of cheap artificial vanity I could shake out of the Toys and Sofas shop! The mirror prison is an inevitability for all who trespass now! Nopony would be able to find a gift worthy enough to grant them safe passage.

Nothing within would give them the sincere feeling of heartfelt gratitude; it’s all just trivial vanities now!

Stormblade’s eyes lightened, his arm still outstretched to hold the reflection by the forehead, his hooves swinging wildly before him. Finally, the book was starting to speak of his predicament.

“You... mustn’t... know... !” The reflection complained and whined. “You’re supposed... to be... my friend!”

The book lifted under its own power, shifting perpendicular to Stormblade’s face and flinging itself to a previous page.

When one pony offers a gift to another, the mirror reflects the true nature of the gift to the recipient. If the gift is truly heartfelt, and matches the honest desires of those receiving it, then the mirror will do them no harm.

“Aha!” Stormblade reeled, tapping a hoof against Ghasen’s journal. “So there is a way out of the mirror!”

The reflection lowered his head, and tackled against the burly Captain in a twin symphony of jangles. “My friend, don’t!”

“So you have been keeping this from me?” Stormblade adjusted his poise, forcing the reflection to flop below him. The Captain rested his shoulder against the downed stallion, keeping him pinned down while the book floated before him. “Why... it says that if I get a gift I really like, then I get out of here.”

The pinned stallion struggled, gnashing his teeth against the Captain. A clump of the Captain’s jacket wedged into his mouth, and he thrashed crazily against him.

“Why, I get it now,” Stormblade laughed, pulling his jacket from the reflection’s mouth.

“Ptoo!” He spat. “Give it!”

“Ohh,” the Captain leered to the grounded reflection with a thin smile. “But, this might be... hmm, it said something about, what was it... a Princess?”

A black hoof flung free from under the Captain, the back of a fetlock contacting hard against his chin. Stormblade twirled off the reflection, skittering across the opalescent black floor. The reflection jumped onto his gut in a quick dash for the book, knocking the wind out of the Captain.

Stormblade flopped to his side, reaching a hoof out to the reflection. He waved his foreleg in a tight circle, the motions causing the violet magic to swirl around the book. Stormblade coughed into a laugh, breathing in deep.

He couldn’t believe he was manipulating the book with... with the magic he always knew he had. It was actually working! The book was being obedient to his every whim and desire. And he desired for it to...

“Py-oww!” The reflection yelped, the thick cover smacking into his face.

... Well, not exactly that, but very satisfying. Do it again.

“Fpt-bt-Awww! Yeow!”

The book leapt from the reflection’s grip, making a sideways swing that clocked square into his brow. Two more pages tore from the book, folding themselves into the shapes of two hummingbirds. They illuminated in a hot violet glow, and surged toward the reflection, pecking and batting against him in rapid strikes.

Stormblade rolled to his forehooves. He understood. He knew what he needed. But he just wanted to make sure it was right there in front of him. He held out a forehoof, letting the floating book rest gently atop it, the pages rifling madly in anticipation of his question. “What makes you the best gift?”

The pages flopped heavily all to one side, leaving just a single entry with it.

Whomever reads this, you know what to do.

You will know who to find. Anybody of my family name, any of them. I cannot anymore, my fate will be with the rest of the architects, the rest of us, preserved by Celestia to spend the next one thousand years in stone so we may be judged dutifully upon Luna’s return.

All I can do is what I did with Gina when we imbued a piece of her essence into the lava guardian’s gauntlet. I’d rather it be a diamond embedded in a timber wolf so I may be quick, low profile, and as eternal as the forest. But my options are limited, and the hummingbird design on this cover is made of the finest tungsten an overbloated Canterlot budget can afford.

Just one more spell. One to imbue a nice piece of my soul into his journal, so I may know who may find it, and that I may assist them.

And just one more contract. One to preserve my body, similar to how Celestia would choose to, but down here beyond her meddling grasp.

Whomever reads this.

This journal shall tell you how, it shall tell you well. Find anypony of the Bookmark lineage.

Through the stars, they can control her destiny. They can save Luna.

* * * * *

Gina sighed. This puzzle was foal’s play, in fact part of its deception was that the books and the projecting stand were a defence meant to slow down intruders who were certain of their importance. It was all the concept of hiding in plain sight, after five chambers of hidden clues or wild danger, the only danger this room presented was distraction, the only puzzle was the simple star-shaped recess in the final door.

It struck her how easily some would ignore the most obvious of clues when they were so focused on evidence that did not exist. Ponies would charge ahead in ignorance, knowing their path was clearly dangerous, or safe and would never think of the pitfalls that were plain in front of their faces. In the past, even to her shackled and broken mind, the thought of intruders defeating every trap, only to be foiled by the obvious hole in the wall was very amusing. Now, with her mind free, it felt more tragic, though in her state, Gina laughed anyway.

But it was not the intruders she was laughing about. It was the pair lounging in the cushions behind her Devon and Luna blundered right into the trap, comfortably indulging in the illusions and stories. Further, Devon blindly ignored what was right in his face, stubbornly clinging to the illusion that Gina knew too well. How could he be so stupid? How could he ignore it? More to the point, why would he ignore it?

Gina hesitated, mulling the inevitable answer in her mind in long loops before she snickered once. “Because he’s an idiot in a crush. Stupid, sentimental, stupid...STUPID!” Gina roared out her displeasure, forced to watch another mare wrapped up in the same terrible curse, made even more bitter as the one shackling her was the one who was most instrumental in freeing her. Only when he saw the gains he could make did Devon falter, did his willpower finally surrender to temptation. To allow it to blind him to the obvious truth. Gina’s cheeks flared red as another book floated blissfully up into the stand and bathed Luna and Devon in its illusions.

As she turned back to the next lock in the puzzle door, an origami hummingbird surrounded in a nimbus of swirling light climbed up her shoulder and chirped.

“Hey Glyph... glad somepony here is actually paying attention to the important stuff here other than me,” Gina murmured bitterly.

Chrrrp.The sound was frustrated and Gina saw a flash of Glyph trying to enter the books on the table, to see what those two ponies were so interested in, but something blocked it.

“Wait, you’re serious? Wow. I guess it’s a private show. Too bad, I coulda used you to break that idiot out of there.”

Prrrm?

“Of course I mean Dev’s,” Gina laughed. “He’s the only idiot in here,can’t believe he’d be so stupid as to just ignore all the evidence right in front of his face. But he’s crushing so bad on that Princess.”

Prrr!

“Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re on his side!” Gina giggled and shook her head. “Sorry, little guy, but he’s just as lost in it as Ghasen was.” The orange mare was about to speak again before she was bombarded with images bursting from the swirl of light. Memories of her time before Ghasen’s foolish bargain with the stars. If only somepony then had given that idiot a good kick to the head.

Now Devon needed somepony to shake him hard.

Or, Gina’s eyes ran the stacks of books, if somepony couldn’t shake him out of it, maybe he could shake himself out of it. All that he needed was the right jolt. Throwing a glance towards the floating stacks, Gina sought just the jolt he needed.

“First... ” she murmured, turning her head to the stacks of books. Luna had depopulated many sections already of the sappiest and most painfully clingy titles, but Gina’s eyes looked for a classic. “He thinks Luna’s gonna do anything for him, idiot,” Gina muttered with a growl as she pulled a hefty book from a shelf bearing a sign of Plays and Performance Works. Taking a stroll through it with her eyes, Gina’s grin grew sharp when she found what she was looking for. Turning, she stepped back into the central rotunda and paused to look at the blissful picture of Devon and Luna, pressed tightly against one another as the illusions from the book washed over them. To anypony else, it would be the scene of the utmost tender affection and shared closeness, but Gina knew better.

With a single sweep of telekinesis, Gina obliterated the stack Luna had brought to be shared with Devon, sending them clattering to the floor with a tumult. Neither Devon nor Luna reacted, they were far too gone now.

“Figures,” Gina sighed and opened the tome to the right passage and gingerly floated the open book over the stand. “Well, time to take up, Dev’s,” she whispered, dropping the book down into place and forcing its images through the stand and into the audience on the couch. “And wake up the Princess, too.”

Hrnn-um-hrr hrrn? Glyph fluttered beside the orange unicorn, and extended the origami hummingbird’s wings. An old familiar scene from Gina’s foalhood sputtered to life in a blur, the sight of the night sky twinkling into existence over a setting sun coalesced before her.

“Not to worry,” Gina laughed at the concerned glowing hummingbird. “Luna’s going to be fine. Celestia will take care of tonight’s sky, I reckon.”

Mrrm-hrrn-rn-hrr?

The orange unicorn gave Glyph a reassuring nod. “Indeed, Celestia’s amazing with her night skies.”

* * * * *

“Indeed, Luna’s amazing with her night skies.” Celestia smiled softly as she peered out the hallway window.

She emerged at last from the tangle of ministers. At long last, the final paper had been signed and the most fiddly fine point addressed. It had taken hours of delicate wordplay to appease most of her staff, but it was done at last. With the council chamber still a disaster area, they all had to crowd into a stuffy meeting room and the Princess was happier than ever to simply get out of there and take in a full measure of fresh air.

Even more heartening was the sight she saw outside the palace window. Night had come just as scheduled.

That’s one worry off of my mind.

Another passing smile. Luna always had a grasp for the larger scope of things. She was still able to keep her fiery determination and focus on the core of her duties, even in the face of the quagmire of politics and doubletalk. Celestia always admired Luna for her clarity of purpose and unwavering dedication to the larger picture. Even this crisis would pass, most ponies, even in Canterlot would not even be aware of the Discord statute or the flying train car, but everypony would notice when the sun and moon failed to report for their shifts properly. Even considering the danger of whoever was moving the statue, failure of the sun and moon would be the bigger panic, and both of them knew it.

Thank you, Luna.

“Princess?” the demure cough of a purple unicorn drew Celestia’s gaze back behind her. “I’m terribly sorry, your Highness, but you were so busy that we did not know what to do with your dinner.”

“Dinner?” It was later than she thought. “Oh that’s no matter, thank you, Twilight Sparkle. I’ll be fine, you don’t need to worry” Twilight seemed to brighten at having a chance to help the Princess and scurried from the room before any other words could be spoken.

“Oh! Oh! Can I get you something? I’ll get you something, don’t worry I’ll be right back!” Celestia knew that she’d make a small production of it, but that was simply the way of things, she knew better than to try to stop Twilight. In fact, doing so would make it worse, besides, it didn’t matter. There was enough panic over grave matters to go around, maybe some panic over the minor would be good for everypony.

Settling against one of the windows, she looked out over her sister’s work on the night sky. Everypony in Equestria was familiar with the brilliant night skies, but Celestia knew them best of all, seeing every sky raised up and drawn through by her sister in strict adherence to the elaborate star charts that served as Luna’s compass to weaving the night sky. “Hm... ” Celestia murmured, “that one is out of place.” She spotted a star that was ever so slightly misaligned, its light altered by a nearly imperceptible degree. To the average pony, it would surely go unnoticed, but to the builder of the night sky, it was an pretty sloppy bit of work. “Luna must be more worried than I thought. I’m glad to see she got the night sky handled, still.”

“Princess Celestia?” Twilight again. “I... I’m not interrupting anything am I?”

“No, of course not,” Celestia’s welcoming tone came on like a light. “Please come in. I’m actually glad to have somepony to talk to who isn’t shoving paper in front of me.”

“Oh not at all, Celestia,” the mare laughed nervously. “The kitchen staff all went home, so we just kinda whipped up what we could find.” With a small, proud flourish, the mare revealed a dessert tray that spoke clearly of design by a committee, an arguing committee, an arguing committee with loud voices in favor of cupcakes and apples. Cake mixed with pastry mixed with cupcake and an apple accompaniment. “Not quite a full meal, Princess, but with the hour, it was... ”

“It’s perfect, exactly what I had in mind.” This was not a casual dismissal. “Would you like to join me?”

“Of course, is everything alright?” The poor unicorn was in a fluster. Knowing that if she were to let the unicorn speak on she’d be lost in a harried panic, Celestia gingerly draped a wing over the stammering unicorn and drew her to her side.

“I know you’re scared, but please, Twilight. There’s nothing to worry about tonight. This whole mess at the palace today has been more than enough for me. A little snack, and I think bed is exactly what I’m needing.” Celestia let out a small puff of breath, doing her best to ignore her own station and crown to calm the serving mare. “It has been a long day for everypony.”

“I... ” the mare was slowly settling, and finally smiled nervously. “I suppose so, your Highness. I kinda got lost in all the tussle trying to help, especially when Princess Luna took off as well! I’m glad that you still could handle the night for her.”

Celestia stopped a piece of cake halfway to her mouth.

“Where did Princess Luna get off to anyway, Celestia?”

“Oh, Twilight, I’m glad you’re looking out for my dear sister.” She took a nibble, diverting her attention back to the window. “She’s... ” Celestia hesitated, “fine. Probably busy, too. Wherever she is, she still took the time to bring out the beautiful stars.” She rested an assuring hoof on the purple unicorn’s shoulder. “It’s just how she’s always been, nothing different.”

* * * * *

This was different. Very different.

All of Luna’s selections up to this point had been warm settings, tales of love and coming together. But the place he was in now was nothing like the lavish ballrooms, sunset-bleached beaches or mystic glens. With every illusory breath, Devon tasted musty, dank air and drew in earthy, cold scents. Beneath him, the surface felt more like stone than soft beds. Perhaps most telling of all was that Devon felt the force of the story compelling his eyes closed.

Voices carried down from an unseen distance and after a moment, he picked out Luna’s voice, harried and desperate.

“Go! Get thee hence! For I will not away!”

Where did Devon remember those lines from?

The charcoal unicorn tried to move, but his limbs were heavy and distant, perfectly fine as far as he could tell, yet far away and sluggish. Near his foreleg, he felt something round, rolling away as he sluggishly wove his hoof in its direction before clattering down onto what Devon surmised was the floor. Rapid hoofsteps came in response to the clatter of object on cold stone. Even though he could not see her, he could tell from the tone of breath that it was Luna rushing into the room, but coming to a sharp halt. Any doubts were eliminated to her identity when Luna let out a sob of unspeakable pain at what she saw.

This scene seemed so familiar...

Luna’s weeping came to a small pause as she found the object that Devon had nudged. He could hear her murmuring as clear as day.

“What’s here? A cup, closed in my true love’s hoof?”

Devon’s mind exploded in recognition and terror. They had torn through every classic adulation to love in the library, yet the classic tragedy had slipped in. Palamino and Juliet. The finale was underway right now! Why was Luna so consumed by this role when she was so happy to play outside the rules before?!

“Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
O churl! Drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after?”

Seemingly unconscious from his own sleeping draught to feign his death in the story, Devon could not break this illusion as easily. His mind flailed and struggled as Luna loomed over him. She had to have some plan! This was getting scary and out of control.

“I will kiss thy lips;
Haply some poison yet doth hang on to them,
To make die with a restorative.”

Before another thought could fire through his mind, Devon felt Luna’s forelegs seize his neck and head, lifting him up in a cradling embrace. Still sobbing, she did not hesitate for a moment, pulling the unicorn into a kiss that both exhilarated and mortified Devon. Princess Luna was NOT deviating from the story! She truly could not live with him, even in an illusion. As it dawned on him, Devon finally felt it was too much; his affection was for a life with her, never a tragic or dramatic end. Summoning all his will, Devon forced his eyes open, only to find Luna laying him back on the slab of the dank tomb.

“Thy lips are warm.”

Luna, don’t do this. This isn’t what I want. Please.

Devon forced against the influence of the story, but could only helplessly watch as Luna lit her horn, lifting a elaborate noble’s dagger from near where Devon lay.

Don’t! Luna! We can make a better story than this!

“This is thy sheath... ”

Devon struggled, freeing himself to sit. “Luna!”

“There rust, and let me die!”

* * * * *

Devon gasped sharply, the shock of the event sending him reeling off of his cushion and to the stone floor. The jolt from the final images of Luna raising the dagger to herself ended just before it sunk home, casting him back into reality and to the magic library. Still at the table, Luna broke from the spell, aghast at the sudden change in the charcoal unicorn. "Devon!" the Princess called, rising to her hooves in a clatter to rush to his assistance. "Dearest Devon, what happened?! Art thou well?" Before he could respond, Luna had fallen to his side, wrapping him protectively in her forelegs. Her presence relaxed him ever so slightly, though the shock of Luna so happily throwing her life away still sung an unsettling note. Even though they had been so happily rewriting great literature to suit their getaway, just the notion was enough for Luna to stick to the script to the terminal conclusion.

"Luna!" Devon heaved, face strained from exhaustion. "Why... why did you do that?! We could have just made our own story! You didn't need to stick with that kind of ending!" His tone was more terrified than accusatory, confused and trying to piece together what seized Luna that she'd have chosen that kind of finale. Despite it being no more than an illusory performance, to Devon it was as real as it could have possibly been.

"I could not carry on without thee, Devon, thou must surely know that," Luna explained with frank earnestness. "If I lost thee, I would hath nothing to live for."

Devon did not look into her face as she spoke.

"I owe my life to thee! I owe everything to thee, Devon Bookmark."

Devon winced, aching to ignore the gnawing fear in his gut as Luna squeezed down in an embrace that would carry such weight were it between any other ponies. His heart urged him to wrap his forelegs around her and draw her against his chest. To look her in the eyes and say...something. Anything to reassure her, and shed his own fear.

"You heard her," Gina's voice broke in with a solemn strength. "She owes you her life, Dev's." Gina did not smile, fighting down her own maddened laughter in light of the situation. "Shouldn't you say something about that to her? Maybe something about the ending"

No Gina, don't make me...

"Devon?" Luna asked softly.

"Just look up at her, Dev's. She made a big promise to you. It's the right thing to do."

No, don't make me. I don't want to see it!

"Devon, dearest, look at me! I need to hear thy voice again."

"Do it, Dev's. You need to see it."

Just let me have it a little bit longer...

The charcoal unicorn clutched his eyes closed and slowly lifted his head to Luna. That hint of doubt that followed him swelled and grew from a lingering uncertainty to inevitable dread. His heart struggled to grasp at any ember of hope that he might have held onto, but they offered scant confidence. Gingerly, Devon opened his eyes. He didn't know what he would find, but he knew it would not be what he wanted to see.

He was right. Luna's face was nothing like the regal image of confidence, wisdom and strength that he had drawn his own resolve from before. While all of the features remained the same, her eyes were different. Gone was the sparkle of vigor and will that defined her strength and vitality of spirit. Gone was the fire that a ruler needed to hold her own against the dangers and temptations of her position. Even the flickering sparkle of kindness that was needed to tend to the dreams of thousands with wisdom and care had faded entirely. All of it had been replaced by a deep, unsettling look of need. It was the look of a lost foal, willing to take any advice or guidance, terrified of life beyond the guide's sight and approval. If he looked deep enough, Devon saw Luna beneath that layer of dependency. Despite the smile and warm embrace, she was aware of what was happening, but enslaved to others' whims and powerless.

"Oh..." Devon stammered, tearing his eyes away from Luna back to the ground. "What did I do to you?!" Planting his rear hooves, the charcoal unicorn scooted backwards until he was stopped by a wall of levitating books, vainly attempting to escape Luna’s gaze, both needing his approval and condemning him. “No no...” Devon felt guilt twisting inside as each moment up to that point suddenly and irrevocably tainted. How much of it had been a growing lie? How could he have willfully ignored the growing affection? It made no sense, but he wanted it to be so, so he ignored his concern.

“I’m sorry Luna,” Devon croaked, tears of shame welling in his eyes and the monstrousness of the whole adventure reared its head before him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” he whimpered. Before him, agonizing in its own way, Luna smiled, even though now that he knew how to look closely, he saw the pain in Luna’s eyes.

“Tis...” she began, speaking slowly, but disjointedly as her mind and mouth worked out feelings that were from her, but not of her. “Tis nothing to worry about, darling. Thou hast simply overreacted, I could...” Luna choked slightly, as if her willpower flared up for a desperate struggle. “I...could not...be...happier.”

“No! No you could be, Luna!” Devon pleaded, trying his best to salvage something of this. To bring back her dismissive glare, her fire or simply to get her to glare disdainfully. “I...” All of his fear was now a sickening knot of guilt. “If I was paying attention, I would have noticed you...if I wasn’t so stupidly selfish...if I wasn’t so...so stupid I could have...”

“Dev’s!” Gina barked, shaking him momentarily. “Get a hold of yourself!”

Panic mixed in with the seething guilt. “How? How?! I just...ruined the Princess! I just ruined everything!” Pressing back tighter against the invisible bookshelf, the unicorn’s chest heaved in erratic breaths. “I...I can’t...I didn’t...” he stammered. Everything he had worked this hard to nurture had collapsed before his eyes, and his failure stared back in his face.

“Dev’s. Breathe.” Gina’s command drew his focus. “Breathe. Just. Breathe.” Slowly, by degrees, Devon began breathing again, though he still sputtered and gasped over guilty tears. “Yeah, not gonna lie to ya,” she huffed in fiery honesty, “you’re in it deep. You’re doin’ exactly what Ghasen did t’me. Exactly. He saw what happened, freaked out for a bit and...” Gina’s voice rose in passion and ire as her memories pieced together a clear path. “Then just got lazy...started thinking that he’d be fine if he just ignored it.”

Devon sniffed deeply, looking back helplessly to Gina. “Yeah...” he signed. “Yeah, you’re right. I got lazy, I didn’t think, I just thought if she looked happy then it was all good...you’re right, Gina. I’m just as bad as Ghas-”

Devon’s words snapped to an abrupt halt as Gina’s hoof snapped across his cheek and rattled his mind.

“Dev’s, you’re great, but shut up.” Gina paused to laugh, though her scowl remained firm on her face. “Ya are just like him except...Ghasen never broke one. He never went through with any of it. He’d chicken out the first time the stars or whatever talked back to him. But you just kept on pushin’ and you broke me out of it.”

“But I...” Devon tried and was silenced by another slap.

“But nothin! You had the stick-to-itiveness to fix me, and now you’re quitting on Luna? Maybe you really want her like this?” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you that much of a hypocrite, Dev’s? Are ya that sick?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Good! Then what in the hay is holding you back now?” Gina grinned.

“Well...um...” Devon stammered. “I just...”

“Y’just have the skill to do it, experience with it and all the tools y’need. And I just opened up the door for ya. Time for ya to make that bloodline of yours get t’work.”

Devon planted his forelegs, puffing a few times as he finally wrenched control of his breathing back. He risked a glance back at Luna, and found the same needy look masking the immense sadness. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and she smiled on. Urging the orange unicorn away, Devon strode back towards Luna.

“Luna,” he said, peering past the mask of forced devotion, trying his best to speak to the imprisoned mare. “Luna, I don’t know how much of this you’re hearing, but I’m going to fix this.” He sniffed once, feeling his own tears returning. Always got emotional. “I promise that I’m not going to stop until you get it out of that. We’re going to...” another long sniffle. “We’re going to walk to the ends of this maze and find your contract and I’m going to rip it up and set you free, you hear me?”

“Devon, darling...” Luna replied. “Thou..art crying. Please be not sad on my account.” The Princess of the Night smiled warmly at him, the kind of smile that minutes ago would reduce the charcoal bookkeeper to a flopped-over pile of melted happiness. Despite it, she was crying too. “I...oh dear,” she stammered, trying a laugh to restore his spirit. “Thou’rt getting me to do it, my love!”

“She’s never gonna stop that, Dev’s,” Gina said directly. “Luna’s stuck having to do exactly what you want. But it’s more than that.” The orange mare hastened her pace, but kept talking. “Everything you say or think is the only thing that she’ll need to do. She’s got all her wits, all her mind, she is just forced into it.”

“Right...” Devon sighed, stepping away. “We’re almost done. Let’s get moving.” HIs words felt sour. We are almost done. Once you’re free, if you’re free, you’re free to hate me for this. I’d hate myself for making a slave like this.

“Dev’s,” Gina joined Devon at his side, murmuring into his ear as the party set off again. “Might not help ya out now, but...Luna is there. She’s hearin’ and seein’ everything that is going on here. She heard ya there.

“Are you sure, Gina?” Devon wavered, turning to look back at Luna, still smiling with tears drying on her cheeks. Everything about it stood as a monument to Devon’s folly.A mindless, enamored pursuit that left him with the prize safely in hoof, yet a prize that was tainted. “I didn’t mean to do any of this, I just...” he spoke again, starting to lose control before Gina pressed a hoof to his shoulder. “I hope you’re right,” he sniffled.

“Have I ever been wrong, Dev’s?”

Devon finally smiled a little bit through his aching guilt. “Do you really want me to answer that?” Looking forward, he saw Gina grin and let out a small giggle, a rare one not tinged with hints of madness and lost control, but heartfelt. Lighting her horn, Gina pushed the doors open. Devon squinted into the darkness and turned to Gina.

* * * * *

“Not that look, oh no no no,” the reflection shook his head, flipping his forehoof in gesture between Stormblade and the journal. “Don’t you give it that look.”

“Look?” The Captain flinched sharply, sending a ring of jangles with his wide stride backward. “What look!?” He motioned his forelegs towards the journal levitating in its own violet aura. “Oh, right, you mean this?” A gleaming smile slapped across his face. “This look!? The one of ‘oh why thank you so much for showing me my path to winning Princess Luna’s heart!?’ This one?” He tilted his head back. “Hah, yeah. Check it.”

“No don’t.”

“I said check it!”

The reflection grunted, his eyelids sinking low.

“All my life,” Stormblade sauntered towards the black-coated apparition. “I’ve always wondered what I was doing wrong.” He peered upwards, shaking the thoughts between his ears. “I always thought I wasn’t trying hard enough.” Black hooves thud heavily on the floor in his determined pace. “I always thought that maybe I was just being too nice of a guy.”

“Well,” the reflection’s voice cracked, stuttering heavily. “You, sir, y-y-you sure are one...eh-heh hyeh-heh, you sure are one heck of a hard...try-er of things!” The slid inwards, hoping to hook a hoof around the journal. “Hardest tryer I ever done met, my friend!” His fetlocks shook timidly as they crept into Stormblade’s proximity. “And wow oh my wordiness, niceness doesn’t even start.”

Through a deep gravely chuckle. “Hah, I know, right?” Stormblade quickly reached out, snatching the journal away from the reflection’s approaching grasp. “Yet it just turned out, I just wasn’t creative enough!” He shot a forehoof appreciatively towards the slowly retreating stallion. “But you, my best friend...”

The reflection stopped, glancing his eyes in each direction before squeaking out the words. “Best?...Friend?”

“Oh, hah hah, yes,” the Captain clenched the book close to him. “Only a friend as true and sincere as yourself...” The journal pulsed to life, a fiery violet plume of energy wafted upwards. “Would truly know that which-”

“Wait, I take it back, sir,” the reflection quickly pelted out the words. “I’m, I’m, I, I am not your friend, oh hoh no sir! I was just,” he tried, “AHA! I was just trying to, trick you, yes! I tricked you you fell for the bait!” He whirled his forehooves over his head, but suddenly stopped. A single droplet of obsidian peeled from his hooftip, splashing against the reflection’s quivering cheek.

“Well then,” Stormblade hummed joyfully. “You got me!” He hung the book to the side, waving it dramatically. “You done caught me in your oh so nefarious snare of sugary kindness!”

“I-!” The reflection coughed and spat, more dark reflective droplets misted from his jaw, landing onto the floor with sudden pulses of blue and violet light. A roll of deep rumbles passed beneath them again, this time louder than any previous. “I always thought that you were just a big pudgy budgy, eh-heh heh, that. that,” the words flowed out in the most adorable barrage of natural spontaneity, “smells like a rotten apple core that’s been wrapped in moldy hay and dripped in dragon perspira-”

“Oh don’t be so modest,” The Captain reassured him. “This journal you got is beautiful!” He clenched the tome close to his chest, pressing it tight to his medals in muffled jangles. With a foreleg dangling off the top of the floating tome, he looked towards it with a nod. A crack of light peeled into view behind the Captain, and Stormblade turned with an excited grin back to the reflection. “We all think so.”

The reflection jumped towards him, but his back legs faded transparent. The apparition’s rear hooves pulled and narrowed in a liquid black miasma. The floor illuminated brightly, the dull rumbles beneath it augmenting to a chaotic roar. The reflection fell forward against his chest, his forehooves splashing against the ground into black obsidian blotches. He slid to the side, on his descent kicking his legs towards the Captain and sputtering.

“It wasn’t a gift!” The reflection flung his head to the side, sliding tendrils of black sludge drooping down his neck, the medals jangling to dulled shrills of metal submerging to the gelatinous mass. A limp viscous foreleg shot out. ‘I wouldn’t give you anything you bumbling-” the voice descended into a bubbly gurgle.

Stormblade stepped back from the melting reflection, then held a fetlock against his forehead, waving it outwards in farewell. “I agree, my truest friend,” the Captain guffawed warmly, playing his fullest to the mirror trap’s physics. “It’s not a gift at all. You have instead given me...” He turned, peering intently with arched brows to the slowly expanding crack of white light emanating before him. “...My destiny.”

An incoherent vociferation of jumbled pleas echoed forth from the thrashing mass of opalescent ebony behind him.

“Oh believe me,” Stormblade cooed, turning a narrow eye over his shoulder. “You have done all a true friend can do. I have nothing to give in return, but as your friend, all I can ask is you need not spoil me further, you are free...”

The reflection's liquefying remnants halted in flabbergasted shock.

“...To cease.”

A high pitched whinny echoed behind the Captain in a shrill note before being immediately silenced in a blinding thump of light. Thousands of thick bands of purple and blue light rocketed from the floor. From where the reflection melded into the floor, a thick beam of luminescence punched through the ground beneath the Captain’s hooves, careening straight into the base of the shred of white light. Like a curtain, the white light flung open, casting a fiery orange glow over the Captain.

The droning rumbles receded from the floor, a sudden quiet enveloped the room.

The Captain looked forward to the newly opened portal, then timidly snuck a concerned glance at the floating tome hovering nonchalantly beside him. Smoke, flames, collapsed masonry, and the overlapping tendrils of what appeared to be a collapsed column of intertwined bridges greeted him with an unwelcoming breath of musty heat.

Fidgeting with his jacket, he sighed heavily, pulling the Luna figurine out of his pocket. The doll’s waving cobalt hair gently pulled forward, reaching towards the marigold inferno before him, tugging itself into a single grasping cone beckoning him to follow its direction.

“My kind of peril.” Stormblade laughed, charging voraciously. “This is just the beginning of our story, Luna!”

* * * * *

“This is it, Dev’s. One more hill fer ya, and then it’ll be fixed. Come on.” Lighting her horn, Gina strode purposefully into the murk with Devon in tow. A few paces behind followed Princess Luna, looking completely normal save for the almost imperceptible shudder to her steps and movements. Before them stretched the innermost chamber of the entire labyrinthian archive, the core where the most valuable treasures rested.

“Huh...it’s...light,” Devon observed. He had grown so accustomed to the murky darkness of the caves or, at best, the uncomfortably dim light from horns, that the fact he could take the room in its entirety in a single sweep of his head was striking. Pale light filtered in from a ceiling that stretched to the very limit of his sight, illuminating a massive hollow chamber which stretched in all directions, rounding out in a circular room that was at least twenty lengths across. Vertically, Devon could not tell where it ended.

“Tis from the stars,” Luna said, her tone without inflection or character. She turned to the unicorn and smiled, sensing his confusion with a discomforting perfection. “It is pulled in from mirrors and small tunnels, darling. Gesturing upward, the Princess indicated one of the small channels that collected and bent light from above.

“But why...?”

“Ghasen,” Gina hissed, the very name like a bitter taste through her mouth. “This was the room he had built once everypony was in his pocket and under contract. Was suppos’d to be something like his big planning room,” she carried on. “I might have been his little toy, but I heard all of his talk about how this is where the stars would work. Wager he needed starlight to make it happen.”

“Hold it...” Devon interrupted. Something wasn’t adding up in his head. “If this place was supposed to be for the stars, why is it underground?” Turning his head he looked to Gina and found a blank look of puzzlement. He tried Luna, and found the same helpless devotuion from before. “Nevermind.”

Unlike the rough-hewn caves of the previous chambers, the sanctum was heavily-engineered, its walls all carved stone and crystal. As his eyes adjusted to the light, Devon saw that the walls were covered in murals and symbols that matched the journal he had abandoned. Astrological charts were turned from overly detailed drawings into art that turned the entire room into a tapestry of astral wonder. As his eyes traveled up and up, the charcoal unicorn spotted a narrow focus of light, one of many leaking light down towards the center of the room.

As he stepped deeper into the room and the light washed down onto his body, Devon felt a mild tingle ripple over the back of his neck. It was more than just a shiver, and he came up short. He breathed out, looking back up at the light sources. “Did anypony else feel that? Are you sure we should be doing this?”

“Relax Dev’s,” Gina said reassuringly. “We’re past all the traps. Only thing in here is a rat.” The sound of a hoof tapping on stone drew the charcoal unicorn’s attention towards the center of the room. Gina jabbed at a large structure with one hoof in vindictive spite. What her hoof fell on was the statue of a unicorn stallion poised contemplatively next to what appeared to be a closed flower. “Hah, all yer plans ain’t worth much are they now?” Gina asked the stone. “Where’s all your knowin’ it all?”

As he approached it, the statue’s features came into focus for Devon. The quality of the sculpture work was exceptional. Details down to the small wrinkles of time in the unicorn’s face were preserved in perfect detail. Its expression was stern, contemplative. What struck him was how singularly natural the statue appeared. Even his limited knowledge of art told Devon that he should expect small marks, angles that do not exist naturally or other signs of artifice on a statue pony, but this one was utterly perfect and yet despite this perfection, the subject seemed plain, unremarkable. Gina’s attention was fully on it, its very existence seemed to agitate her.

Where the statue was unremarkable, the flower was an explosion of intense craftwork. Deep petals formed a deep bowl, radiating in a near star-shape, but to a scale far beyond any normal flower. Slowly, for the unusual light and lack of contrast in stone impeded him, Devon realized that it was a lifelike, though outsized carving of a moonflower. To carve this piece must have taken years, decades even, with almost all of the loving attention going towards the petals, which were woven and layered with the utmost care. Even in larger than life size, the whole appeared as delicate and perfect as the tiny plant.

However, as his attention withdrew to the wider view, Devon felt an unsettling sense of displacement, an unnerving vertigo that spun around the very edges of his perception. It was the same feeling he had Gina’s contract was found, but multiplied. Instead of small pressures and unnerving notes, it was a full chorus of disorderly sensations, all emanating from the flower carving. Stepping closer, Devon lit his horn, focusing the light across one of the petals. After a moment of stillness, the unicorn recoiled from the flower, the light from the room and his horn still showing the contractual words etched and stamped into every one of the petals. Overcoming the shock, Devon looked again, and felt his jaw lowering. “Gina! Gina, come look at this...” he murmured. “Gina! Stop slapping the statue and come here!”

“What is it, Dev’s?” Gina groaned, walking to look over his shoulder. “I got a LOT of backlogged beatings for him and you are kinda eating into that time.”

“This isn’t just Luna’s contract, Gina...” Devon ran his gauntleted hoof over the petals of the stone flower, feeling the trembling resonance of each one through the riled emotions contained within the brass mechanisms over his foreleg. “These are all of Ghasen’s contracts!” When Devon closed his eyes, he could feel their emotions through his gauntlet with almost perfect clarity.

The starlight flowed more strongly into the chamber from above, completely engulfing the room in its cool embrace.

“Er...Dev’s...” Gina’s tone changed instantly.

“What is it, Gina?”

“Where’d the statue go?”

Chapter 10: Moonlight

Illustration by Bunnimation and Vest.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

A remaining deed, give life that she chose.
Lost love guaranteed, in strife to repose.
An aurora gleams, brings night to a close.
Freedom only dreams, moonlight only grows.

_____

___

Chapter 10

Moonlight

The time is now.

Time.

The very essence of time, the illusion that was days and nights, had fallen so far back into the musty alcoves of memory that...

That...

Memory.

How long has it been since she had it?

And why did a full millennium seem to disappear with the very emergence of it?

In a blink, it triggered in an unfettered squall of consciousness hinged on the precipice of thought within the orange unicorn. Seeing that grizzled face again. Those downtrodden, desperate, unknowing eyes that quivered in perpetual disbelief in how far he had fallen into his own convoluted weave of contracts...glaring into them again was like wiping clean the span of a thousand years.

A thousand years? Might as well been a week ago. That’s only how much she aged outside the numb embrace of the Gray.

As did he.

He looked no different, no less preserved, than the night when she followed through with his desperate plea for her help. That night when she knew it was all wrong, but the impulsive coercions mandating her daily life begged to differ and took fate’s helm. After all, as she was always taught...hold virtues true to give me might, the wrongs I do to do what’s right.

The wrongs I do to do what’s right.

Right?

Oh how much her clearer mind wanted to finally lament and stew and rage at him for putting her through such misery, to casting her a slave within her own frame. The contract with the stars had been broken by Devon’s quick thinking, and by casting away the only remnant of her fiance’s soul by flinging the architect’s journal through the generosity chamber’s mirror, Devon was free to rework the astral manipulation over her as the sole wielder of magic in his bloodline.

Free. Fuming. Having ten centuries to indulge in rehearsing the words, it was as if the stars had delivered it all to her with a side of hay fries. Yet as the worn architect stood there stoically, her mind could not focus on the pressing circumstances at hoof. She could only see his face. The anchor that rattled her psyche, and dragged her back.

Back.

All the way back.

All the way back to that...

Memory.

Wrenched by the silence that suddenly seized her mind, the whole span of existence between her last enslaved good-bye to him and her first sincere exclamations of vengeance mysteriously absent from this most appropriate of moments vanished. It all mattered nothing now, like her mind had traversed a single momentary gap of irrelevant existence between then and now.

All that remained, all that could retain cognition, was that night over a thousand years ago when she went off to fulfill her star-sent obligation to her love, her keeper.

She remembered.

The night she took the element of magic to save Luna.

She remembered.

The mournful gaze of Celestia wrenching to unbridled fury, plunging her into an opalescent column fading to a parched Gray.

She remembered...

She had a job to finish.

* * * * *

Before any other thought could enter Devon’s mind, roaring rose from all quarters of the room, shuddering through the chamber with a force that rippled every stone like water. With a surge of movement, the floor suddenly rose. The jerky movement of suddenly animate stone threw Devon, Gina and Luna to the lurching ground.

Expecting another trap, the charcoal unicorn gripped the edge of the moonflower sculpture in the middle of the chamber, and exerted himself to his back. He looked up expecting to see the ceiling rapidly approaching to end his foalhardy journey. But instead of a bank of spikes coated in liquid fire, the only danger came from a pelting barrage of loosened rocks.

The room heaved upward, its force pressing everypony down. Whatever was moving the chamber upward intended to waste no time.

The heavy churning swelled intensely matching the unearthly roar of shifting earth all around him. Devon clung tightly to the moonflower’s dias. Luna’s powerful wings allowing her to keep a modicum of balance. Gina pitched and rolled with every list and turn until the back of her head slammed into the wall.

“Gina!” Devon called out. He peered to Luna, motioning his neck toward the stumbling orange unicorn.

The Princess called back, dust folding before her in the force of her Royal Canterlot Voice. But even the gale of decibels cracking through the air faltered and was devoured by the pounding chaos demolishing all sound.

With the dull thud, Gina’s body grew loose and limber, conscious but stunned, tumbling like a scarf lost to a high wind.

Devon only had a moment to ponder the movement before a light, steadily growing in intensity from the stone moonflower, drew his eye.In synch with the rumbling, the light blazed hotter and wilder as the room shook with increasing violence. It glowed with such brightness that Devon’s eyes stung when he looked upon it, yet behind the blaze, he could vaguely spot movement.

A shadowy blur, hidden by the brilliance of the light around it, paced in a tight pattern around the large stone flower, his certain steps unimpeded by the crushing physics pressing the rest to the floor. Through the scraping of stone, his slow steps could be counted out in the usual four-beat of a pony’s walk.

Clip. Clip. Clip...Clunk.

As the unusual pattern of walking made itself clear, Devon realized that while the room still shook, he could lift his shoulders. He staggered to his hooves, wavering and wobbling to keep his balance. Up on all four legs, the unicorn immediately felt the movement of not only the room, but the vast force of something far more behind him.

It was like being on a train, a steady might pushing this room onward. Yet unlike a train, this was pushing the room...up.

“I didn’t expect you,” the shadowy blur spoke as Devon rose. “I was not told you’d be here.” The voice did not match his companions. “Well, speak up then. How’d ya’ get up in this tragedy a’mine?”

The charcoal unicorn’s attention was divided three ways. One third was square on the voice before him, with others aching to find and confirm that Luna and Gina were well. “I...” he started, though his voice did not carry weight or strength.

A sharp clunk pierced through the room’s bellowing cacophony. “Speak up, boyo!”

“I...I am...”

“Shame,” he sneered, breaking the uneasy hesitation. “This must be doin’ a number on your mind, laddie. Can’t imagine how you made it through everything to get here. Unless it was all done before you.” The voice warmed, though lost none of its weary menace. “How bout yer name, kiddo. One step at a time then.”

“Devon.” The answer came on impulse, timid and humble in the manner he always responded to his overlord back at the Archive floor. “Devon Bookmark.” Try as he might, Devon could not make his voice inspiring or assertive. “And you...” If anything, it sounded like a colt in trouble, quivering with the pitiful mews of a newborn kitten. “And you don’t need to introduce yourself, I know you well.” He held his head up, clearing his throat. “I know that you, you’re the one who is responsible for this! Ghasen the archive architect!”

“Aye,” the architect sighed. “Did that sound better in ye’ head?”

“It did.” A charcoal head drooped dejectedly.

“Such is many things.” The stone moonflower blazed and rose in intensity, the contractual script burning hot on the petals as the sculpture gradually woke to life, blooming. “Thinks it sounds great, then when it comes out, it’s just funny.” A thin smile scrawled across his face. “Funny that, y’call yerself a Bookmark?” the unicorn asked with a long-suffering chuckle. “Been watchin ye’ I have, up unto when ya’ threw me journal square through the mirror.”

“You saw all that?”

“Every bit I have, laddie. You shoulda’ heard the whimperin’s of the mirror fellow ya’ kicked me inta’, I thought he’d never stop howlin’ ‘bout his kidneys.”

“Heh, well,” Devon scratched a hoof behind his head. “Never knew just how much strength I had in-”

“But!” A yellow forehoof jammed into Devon’s muzzle. “I may know not of what became my library after that, but I seen enough to then t’know what became of ye. But y’can’t fool me.” He sauntered around, and swat his tail against Devon’s haunch. “Every Bookmark has th’ same cutie mark, been that way forever, and ain’t not a hummin’bird on yer flank, lad.”

Devon huffed, the completed scroll on his flank was the first non-hummingbird cutie mark for as long as he or his mother could remember. “That doesn’t mean anything!” Devon barked, though without a show of conviction to match. “What matters is that I’m not going to let you do this to Princess Luna!” Another simple idea to cling to allowed him a small measure of stability and courage.

“Again, better in ye’ head, lad?”

Oh stop it. Another rueful chuckle was the last thing the charcoal unicorn wanted to hear.

“You know what I mean. I am not letting you do...your whatever star wizardry craziness on her!”

A warm impressed glow emanated off Ghasen’s cheeks. “Oh are ya now, boyo? And just how do you plan to change fate?” Ghasen circled around to another side of the moonflower, shielded behind the blazing light of the petals. “You don’t have the gift, laddie, I do, I do.” Lifting his foreleg, the sandy elder unicorn rubbed his hoof affectionately over one of the petals like it was a treasured antique. “I worked fer’ it, studied hard fer’ it, and I tell ya’ now kid, did I ever lose for it! Every one of these petals is another one of my mistakes, boyo. But I have a chance to make it right tonight. Y’aren’t going to fix this, even if you could.”

Devon pressed forward, mounting the steps towards the floor. All around him, he felt the ebbing distortion that came when he got this close to Gina’s contract, the same feeling of potential energy and unknown force that he manipulated before. “Well, believe it or not,” he murmured, “but I am a Bookmark, and I’ll prove it to you.” Lifting his foreleg, Devon displayed the gauntlet, blazing with its own magic as the captive essences strained to be used with the contract. “I found this and figured it all out. I understand it.”

“All this here falls to me,” Ghasen dragged a heavy hoof along the ground. “You can’t. You don’t understand a thing, boyo.”

“More than you’d expect.” Devon grinned. He knew his position was stronger. After all, without the gauntlet, what could Ghasen do to the contracts? “Stand back.” For a rare moment, Devon held the power. “Watch.” He placed the gauntlet on one of the petals, feeling the magic flowing through him. His telekinesis pulled the Element of Magic out and settled it on his head, only regretting a moment that he had to wear the uncomfortable thing. “I know you need this to do anything. And you can just stay there while I-GHOOOF!”

A blast of force threw him away from the flower and down to the stone floor, rattling his illusion of power like his ribs. Gasping and sputtering, he scrambled back up to his hooves on the vibrating floor, throwing a shocked look back towards the figure of Ghasen.

Clip. Clip. Clip...Clunk.

“What are you doing!?” Devon exclaimed, waving the gauntlet before him. A threatening orb of concentrated magic pulled into a tight fiery singularity at its tip. “You attacked me!”

“Nay, I done no such thing.” Ghasen rounded to the front of the moonflower, fully ignoring the simmering bolt of impulsive destruction primed in his direction. “There are alternatives, safeguards...” Clip. Clip. “A plan B.”

Clunk.

Devon’s eyes slid down to the source of the heavily falling hoofstep. Where the hoof clunked down in the ebbing glow of swirling magic illuminating from the gauntlet, a stone-cased hoof jammed into the ground defiantly. It was carved, intricately patterned in a match to the gauntlet wrapped around his own hoof. “This,” Ghasen snarled lowly, following the charcoal unicorn’s stare. “You’ll learn, too. Stars always have a backup plan, boyo. Plan C, D, aye by now they run the whole Chineighse alphabet.” He twisted his gaze, slowly blinking, his eyelids lifting to impatient pupils. “Needs more than that.”

Ghasen strode calmly towards Devon, his face heavy and weary. The bookkeeper sauntered back defensively, keeping a guarded stance. He shifted his weight around his chest, the tingling of the magic blast still throbbing around his collar. “What’s stopping me from getting that contract?”

“Still on and about with the contract!?” The architect’s voice lightened into a hearty chuckle, then quickly subsided. “I’ll concede to ye’ that ya’ crow with the ol’ Bookmark stubbornness, but not the flame. Ye’ hunger and pain for answers like Bookmarks, but cower from truth.” He hoisted his jaw high, pointing a forehoof to full extension. “Ya’ have the wits ta’ wield my beloved gauntlet, but why no hummingbird on ye’ backside?” Devon flinched as Ghasen circled, eyes intently focused on the scroll on his flank.

“It’s what makes me who I am,” Devon muttered weakly, sneaking a glance at his own cutie mark.“I always had a thing for reading and wri-”

“I see,” Ghasen dejectedly huffed to the ground in a loud sputter, his eyes closed tense in remorse. “Tha’s tragic...and ya’ don’t even know, do ya, laddie? By keepin’ a muzzle so deep in the pages, ye’ don’t even see a world beyond the margins.” The architect waved before him to the ceiling. “Ya don’t even know how deep in’it ye’ fallen.”

Spotting an opportunity, the charcoal unicorn darted forward and pressed his hoof into the flower again. He wasn’t sure what he could do, but he knew that anything to save Luna would need him on the flower.

Pulsing wisps of light rattled and snapped together at his hooftip, coalescing into a kinetic wave. A sharp punch of telekinesis thrust back with a rattling slam against his bones. He recoiled, falling with full forward force against it, gritting his teeth intently. Another pulse of light formed into a burning ring of energy around the gauntlet, peeled away in a wind-up, then smashed together. A converged blast of a hundred blinding daggers sent Devon arcing through the electrified air.

As he skidded and flopped painfully over stone tiles, Devon felt a soft tuft intercept his crash. He blinked heavily. Wiping dust from his eyes he found himself pressing against Gina’s prone form, the orange unicorn still mumbling from her rattled head.

“My, laddie, seems we...oh how did that stallion explain it to his reflection...” Ghasen tilted his eyes up. “Ah. See. Therein...therein lies our impasse.” He sighed, eyeing the charcoal unicorn. “Obviously, we’ve found a conflict in the contract. And we’ve a problem.”

A heavy thump echoed behind him, a flickering of cobalt reflected off the edges of the moonflower sculpture. Luna pulled her head into her forehooves, tensing heavily on the ground next to Gina. Her forelegs wrapped tightly around her face and eyes and body jerked and rocked with internal pain. “I...I...!” She seethed heavily between each word, desperate eyes laying upon Devon. “Beloved!?”

“Luna I-”

She grit her teeth, gazing intently to the stoic architect.

“My beloved!?”

Oh horse apples.

“Luna!” Devon’s focus immediately leapt from Ghasen to the Princess. What he found was a face contracted in confusion and locked in struggle. “Luna what’s happening?” he asked, risking to turn and kneel beside her, desperate to bring her some measure of comfort or relief. “Luna!”

“An impasse,” Ghasen murmured to himself. “I like that word.”

“What are you-” Devon cracked a forehoof towards the architect. “You’re just going to stand there!?”

“She is stuck, conflicted, you could say she’s...” Tilting up his chin, he lifted his stone gauntlet across his chest. “...Snagged upon two imprints.”

Clunk.

“Nay, until we sort this out, laddie.”

“We?” Devon hissed, picking himself up again, struggling to overcome the shock of Luna’s screams. “What did this become ‘we’ for anything?!”

Ghasen did not answer and stepped outward, tracing a long circle around the room past the prone Luna, who still clutched her head, speaking as if Devon had said nothing.

“It’s simple, boyo. Stars recognize the leader of the Bookmark family as their emissary. The pony with the best control of the gift...the best ability to use it...the best mastery of it, is who keeps it. And,” he ground his stone gauntlet into the floor. “They haven’t decided which one of us that is yet. And until we sort it out...they will pursue their own ends. Gina and I weren’t the only statues given a night of purpose.”

“A night of-?”

“Nay, hold that thought, laddie.” Ghasen lowered his head, peering intently upwards. “This part of the ascent’s a tad spotty.”

* * * * *

With a great heave, a structure burst from the earth beneath the Canterlot statue garden, a single pinnacle of carved stone and tortured metal whose appearance cast Jetstream to the ground in a clattering tumult of armor and feathers.

With his attention so affixed to the moving silent statues, he did not notice the tower’s growth until he was struck. Groaning, the pegasus struggled up to his hooves and looked behind him at the very major addition jetting up through the garden.

As if tonight couldn’t get worse...

There was no time to contemplate the hows and whys pertaining to the garden’s statues suddenly springing to life, or why they unanimously decided to go full attack mode. He could only afford a moment’s glance, for the statues reacted to the tower as well, moving from their orderly and silent procession to a sudden active ferocity. Four of them rounded on Jetstream, heads lowered in aggressive posture.

“Now just hold on...” the pegasus tried. “I’m just trying to figure out just what is happen-” The scorching ray of prismatic light from a stone unicorn quickly ended any form of rapport that the guardspony might have built with the granite ponies. Jetstream only managed to twist away from it just in time to be caught in the chest by the bull rush of a carved earth pony, only the private’s armor keeping it from being more than a blow felt the morning after.

As he fell away from the charge, Jetstream felt training and drills kicking to startled life. Hours of countless instruction finally rustling to use after years of complacency.

Multiple attackers.

To a guard who had never seen worse than an aggressively combative pickpocket in the market, Jetstream found a certain comfort in the strict lines of tactics that he was taught.

Don’t throw your life away. Delay and escape for reinforcements for a better defensive position.

Rolling to his stomach, Jetstream planted his forehooves and bucked backwards, driving his feet into the slate jaw of a rampaging pegasus. The blow’s impact rippled through Jetstream’s legs as they reported that kicking moving stone hurt just as much as kicking regular stone.

Fortunately, unlike most stone, the pegasus statue rolled to the ground. It dropped stunned, giving the private some hope that he at least might be able to hurt them back. It was a short-lived comfort as his wings fired and carried him skyward.

Don’t panic. Keep a clear head at all times, Canterlot Guards are the calm in the worst storms.

Wheeling around, Jetstream finally had a moment to observe the scene around him. At least fifty, sixty, several dozen statues formed into orchestrated lines and began to march outward from the settling tower. They moved with singular purpose, ringing around the tower as if they might be protecting it.

With his focus free to go to the power, Jetstream finally saw the burning torch of light at the top. And the line of statues now arranged in regiments, facing Canterlot.

Other guardsponies, drawn to the clamor, rushed from all directions. Jetstream counted a dozen in rapid approach. The private’s elation turned to regret as the statues’ heads turned and honed in on the motion as well. They did not speak to one another, shared no vocal communication, but they moved like a well-drilled unit.

“Hail!” A frenzied voice called from above. The clamoring of metal shimmering against wind followed a squad of patrolling pegasi. Jetstream whirled and twisted upward, joining alongside them.

“Private Jetstream!”

“Jetstream?!” a helmeted pegasus called. “What the hoof is going on? Where is the Second Captain!?” Before he could answer, a translucent orb of force slammed into the bunched pegasi, caste from a pair of stone unicorns weaving magic in unison. The force bowled them out of the air, dashing all but Jetstream to the ground, where heavy earth pony golems were already on a collision course with, as if they already know where the pegasi would land.

Turning, Jetstream opened his mouth to call for the aid of the unicorn and earth pony guards, but fell silent as he found them harassed and cut off by swirling stone pegasi. Well-drilled Canterlot guardsponies met silent stone, and to Jetstream’s horror, the stone was seeming to win out in every skirmish. One guard fell with an injured leg, and with the weakness in the unit exposed, soon other guards found themselves in a rout. The statues worked with ease, countering every attempt to hold them back with automatic fury and unfeeling strength.

“Fall back!” A guard in the middle distance called out. “Get the injured out of here, there’s no way we can do this alone!”

“Jetstream!” The pegasus guard called to him again. “Again, where...is...Stormblade!?”

“I...” He went to go on a silly treasure quest. “I...” He went scampering off to live out his stupid Princess Luna fan fiction. “I...”

“Get a hoof of yourself, private. You’re most familiar with the Captain’s orders, what’s the call?”

“We should...”

Oh, what would a blatant foalhardly lummox like Stormblade do?

“Chaaarge!” A sweeping line of pegasi screamed three seconds later, plummeting headlong to the waiting stone uprising.

* * * * *

“The equation is simple, boyo,” Ghasen droned, his tone completely free of inflection, even as the tower’s eruption echoed across Canterlot and the stone figures ranked up around it, each one of their wills irresistibly bound to the will of the master Bookmark. “Stars want Princess Luna, I’m here...to collect.”

“But why?” Devon snapped, putting his body between the elder unicorn and Luna’s convulsing body. “Why?! You were trying to free her before!”

“I was,” came a simple answer. “But that was a long time ago, lad. I am not taking any pleasure in this, you are right, after all. This is a betrayal of everything I worked to arrange up to this point.” His voice did not rise or fall, it was not an enslaved monotone, it was the voice of a pony who had simply broken and was cleaning up the pieces. For a moment, as memories flared, a flicker of heat entered Ghasen’s gaze and voice. “Think of a thousand years of being whispered to...hearin’ nothin’ but the pressure to give up and become the monster they want you to be. Stars aren’t so different than ponies in that way. Now, Princess Luna, stand up and join me. I’d like this over and done with.”

“I...of...course...” Luna murmured, her voice and face the same thin mask of obedience over immense agony. Her silver-clad hooves trotted lightly, delicately towards the moonflower altar like she was at a formal procession and stepping up to perform some duty or give a speech that the bureaucracy would quickly forget.

“No Luna!” Devon barked, the voice driving her back to the floor in an unsettling spasm. “What are you doing to her, Ghasen!?”

“Me?” he chuckled. “More like...we.” Ghasen’s stone hoof clicked heavily on the floor as he paced backwards towards the flower. “I suppose I was a mite reckless in my contract writing.” Devon considered the words for a moment before it finally made sense.

Devon stewed the thought in his mind. “We’re both Bookmarks...” He slowly nodded his head.

“That’s a start. Work it out.”

“Luna has to serve the Bookmark family...”

“Makin’ yer ancestor proud now.”

“But we want different things.”

Ghasen nodded once. “And so as long as we disagree and can influence her directly, our Princess of the Night is...” Instead of elaborating, Ghasen allowed Luna’s pained seething suffice as her mind struggled to go in two different directions, neither of her own accord, met with the rending pressure that threw her back to the floor.

Torn.

Conflicted.

“Listen, the stars want her back but they never said a thing about what kind of state she should be in when I bring her in. And while it does irk me to make her suffer so, I’ll deliver her in any condition.” He levelled his glance at Devon and growled. “And just how much of this do you think she can take before she completely loses her mind, boyo? Everypony breaks at some point, even a Princess can lose her mind, so give her up and I-GYHOOF!”

Despite his frail build. Devon found the element of surprise to his advantage as he threw himself into his ancestor, tackling him to the ground. The shock was enough to toss Ghasen to the floor, Devon pressing both hooves down on Ghasen’s mouth before he swung his head to Luna and shouted.

“Luna! Take Gina and get out of here!”

“My beloved!”

Ghasen bucked and struggled, an elderly body straining to match the younger star emissary’s desperate vigor. “Argh...” Devon growled, knowing that he had to at least dominate this conversation. “This isn’t a debate!” He shuddered inwardly in disgust at what he was about to do and looked back at Luna.

Sorry, Luna.

“Luna!” he suddenly roared, fury in his voice as he summoned a tone he would never imagine using on her. “Don’t waste time! I am ordering you back to Canterlot Palace! Take that orange mare with you and do NOT come back until I come for you! IS THAT CLEAR?!” The effect was immediate, causing the charcoal unicorn to wince as Luna reacted much like he feared she would. Quailing in terror, Luna instantly changed her tone to match his whim.

“O-of course, Devon, please be not angry with me. We’ll go!” Luna whimpered, seizing Gina; limp form in an aura of blue and turning immediately for the open windows of the tower. “We shall wait forever for thee should we ne-”

“NOW!”

Moments after Luna flapped from the window, Ghasen finally threw Devon off with a battering strike from his stone hoof. “Bampot! Get offa me!” Rising to all four hooves, Ghasen lit his horn, his stone gauntlet firing in time as he summoned up the raw force he commanded. “Alright then, ya want to do it the hard way, boyo? We’ll do it the hard way!” With a single gesture, Ghasen’s gauntlet pointed out the window, at the walls of Canterlot. “My ponies’ll get Luna back right quick.”

In a quick blur, Devon found himself back on the ground, a telekinetic club pressed against his collarbone. He scrambled, but found his neck pressed under his own weight against the moonflower dais.

The architect’s forelegs pressed heavily against his shoulders, his horn levelled at Devon. “And while they’re busyin’ themselves there, I’ll deal with you, boyo. I’m not going to let you get in the way of my freedom.”

“Well come on then!” Devon barked, fury honing him into a pony aching for a fight. “The more you hesitate...” He grabbed Ghasen’s stone gauntlet with both forehooves, hoisting it off his torso. “...The harder it is!” With a sudden roll, he pressed Ghasen off him, the stone gauntlet still fixed tightly in his hooves. He whirled his back into the architect’s chest, then jammed the stone gauntlet into the moonflower heavily.

A quick pulse of magic ricocheted back, and with a quick repulse, flung Ghasen head under hooves in a skyward twist. A tuft of dust trailed behind him, settling to a smoky drape silhouetting the architect as he dragged himself up in bitter eagerness.

“If that’s what ya want...” Ghasen murmured through the dust. “I don’t need to beat ya physically, boyo.” The elder raised his gauntleted hoof to direct the arcing flows of strained destiny around himself, his eyes piercing with intense luminance against his silhouette. “I just need t’prove to the stars that I’m the one who’s in charge.” Ghasen’s willpower manifested around him as a coruscating barrier of force.

* * * * *

"The statues!" Jetstream bounced into the dining room, his careening armor rattled loosely over his dirtied and sweat-matted cyan coat. "They've...I just- we, hebuh-juh...we, bwuh-buh-buh..."

"Easy there, private," Celestia replied, putting down a cup of tea beside a donut-topped mousse cake. "One word at a time, it's too late for so much excitement! Tell me, private, slowly, just what about the stat-"

"The statues are alive!" The shaken pegasus blurted in a pitched yelp, immediately knocking the Princess back a step. A dim silence fell upon the room, an echoing cough emanated from the corner. Servants and attendants paused in their duties, every eye turning silently towards the Princess. A purple unicorn and her companions all turned, looking straight at Celestia for explanation and direction. The pegasus righted his demeanor, straightening his helmet firmly atop his head. "Ahem, I, umm, sorry your highness. But we really, really, really need a hoof out front like sometime within ten minutes ago!"

"Show me," the alicorn ascended into the air on her glittering wings, gently clearing over the table in a single airborne step, landing into a full charge out into the castle's main passage. “Twilight Sparkle, you and your friends stay close.”

A contingent of groaning, shuffling guards made their way down the hallway, manes coated in the soot and pebbles of white marble, blackberry bruises running long lengths across their shaking bodies. Realizing the severity of the situation, Celestia's eyes narrowed on the archway leading out to the royal hedge maze, where within the great Canterlot statue garden loomed somewhere beyond the darkened haze of the ebbing fog. Nearing the doors, the clanging of armor, the yelling of orders, a fitful war cry, and the throbbing crunch of rock pummeling against earth shook through every surface, particulate, and wisp of air between Celestia and the arch.

"Your highness!" Called the cyan pegasus guard beside her. "We cannot hold on our own! We tried! We really-”

“Easy,” Celestia narrowed her eyes and peered outward. “I understand, just tell me what you know.”

“Celestia, my...we...!” Jetstream heaved for breath, only one word coalescing. “Orders!?"

Orders.

It had been years. No, decades. Centuries? Celestia's memory failed to grasp upon the moment one of her hundreds of royal guardians ever looked up to her demanding action. The very thoughts of olden days formed like a swirling mix of a flour batter, the sights of battles arose in crispy flaky dough, her ears twitched as her own stressful recollections frosted a dripping layer of howls, cries, screams and regimented diction of calloused soldiers icing thick and creamy on the edges.

And yet all she could think about was cake.

"Princess!" The guard called again, bringing the surrounding corridor of limping armored pegasi and rushing unicorns back into periphery. "Orders!?" Desperation lined his voice.

How long? Centuries?

"Private, we must..." Celestia started, her breath falling short. Testament to her grand rule was a lengthy period of undisturbed peace, a time of coexistence woven concisely through Equestria that knitted a delicate but dependable line between pony, buffalo, griffon, mule, hydra, zebra and minotaur. A line that had been in motion for a lengthy duration of history. A line that forged a boundary between even the most tenuous of squabble and the collective memory of modern pony. And in that long time, Celestia had assumed herself into the position of amalgamating into that line, now melded seamlessly into it, a physical manifestation of the peace and carefree world devoid of deception, conspiracy and conflict.

A manifestation of a thousand years of pacifism...being asked to lead by a stalwart youth displaced within an equally crippling sensation of consternation and unknowing that racked the royal alicorn beside him. Without the guidance of their acting captain, or even the Second Captain, the Royal Guard was disorganized, many heads with no direction.

"Celestia!"

"Diplomacy!"

"Your highness?"

"Yes!" She shot her head up, running again for the arch. The blue pegasus slipped on his hooves attempting to get enough traction to pursue after her. "Diplomacy, we must always try that first!"

With the comfort of longstanding peace came the whimsical idealism of utopia tailing behind it.

With a sweeping drop of extended wings, Celestia rocketed upward into the starry sky, perching upon the top of the arch leading into the Canterlot statue garden. Before her, through the gray mists, the shambling tumbles of rock-encrusted ponies lurched menacingly as shadows cast before multicolored bursts of magic thrown from both sides. With each blast, the stone incarnations' shadows projected temporary moments of the battle.

Fwoomp! A blue bolt of telekinetic energy shot outward from a formation of stone unicorns. It was a simple spell, nothing more than their telekinesis turned into a piercing bolt of force. But combined, it was a lash that scattered guards without mercy.

Byauwwm-pff! The telekinetic lash exploded against a shimmering dome of force, white pinpricks of living horn barely visible from such a distance, one of her own barrier teams. While he was not present, Shining Armor had rigorously instructed the unicorn guards in protective magic, and his caution was paying off now as it bought Canterlot’s defenders enough time to carry off the most injured.

The Princess had never seen such a large scale fight in such close proximity to Canterlot. How easy it was to diffuse a hoof-slapping dispute between sugar-intoxicated stallions who went too heavy on the sprinkles. How obvious it was to pacify a quarreling town fighting hoof and molar for a single doll with a dignified wave of the horn to disenchant whatever ward had possessed them. How simple it was to maintain her kingdom with selfless gifts of gemstones, fancy outfits, and...

...Cake.

Lots of cake.

So very much an amazing assortment of the most dazzling cakes.

And no cake could break up...whatever this was.

Another blast of cobalt energy warped sideways, catching into a maelstrom of magical essence, fusing into a twirling torpedo that drilled through a thick legion of stone silhouettes, a combined charge of heavy earth pony guards sending dozens more of the rampaging statues careening through the air before disappearing in the darkening shroud of thick dust.

Diplomacy. Here goes.

"My esteemed subjects, quarrel no longer!" Celestia shook her head, aligning her mane behind her to wisp proudly and elegantly through the early morning breeze. "For I have come forth to hear you!" Her royal Canterlot voice dimmed between breaths, receding gracefully into the tacit drone of pacifist homeostasis. She cleared her throat, and with a deep inhale, readied another volley of booming diplomacy from atop the arch. "Your Princess is here! Speak now and sow seeds of..." Peace? No, maybe, the future? New beginnings. "Friendship!"

Centuries. Definitely centuries since she'd last done this. It was always so easy.

An eerie quiet sliced across the landscape. The clouds dampening beyond the hedged corridors of the statue garden dissipated coldly, revealing the disjointed and separated groups of remaining guards making a quick retreat back to the Canterlot castle. Through the diminishing smoke, a straight line of silhouetted statues stepped forth. Massive, intimidating, brawny and varied. They stood tall with all manner of sword, club, scroll, wand, staff and horn in hoof, each an instrument of their own stone-cased penance, each an accessory to the crime that landed them in the statue garden in the first place. Now, alive, staring coldly with marble-textured glances of fury, all fixated unanimously upon their judge.

Their Princess.

In a cacophonous upheaval of indescribable sound, an explosive chorus of blood-curdling howls lapped against the castle walls. An unsettling roar shattered the moment of silence, it had no words but the message was unmistakable.The air rippled with each decibel striking forth, the unearthly screams for their years of imprisonment channeled forth with the intensity summoned from the stars above, channeled with the driving desire to maintain on top as the million specks of astral light adorning the black sheet of the looming cosmos overhead.

Jetstream landed beside her, adjusting his armor once more. "So...Princess." He smiled, apologizing in advance with a timid look. "What now?"

Another bombardment of stone-laden cries cracked against them, the buffeting noise blowing Celestia's mane back. She opened her eyes halfway, a tight grimace looking halfway between the impetuous line of statues and the expectant pegasus.

"Yep," she mused, blowing a lone strand of hair out of her eye. "Diplomacy failed."

Of course. Her delivery was all wrong.

"And, our orders are...?"

Would've gone so much better if she brought a cake.

“I...” she hesitated. Deep in the recesses of her subconscious, Celestia strove to bring out the fundamental strength that was needed in such times. Part of her was aghast at just how difficult it was to bring forth. Questions and doubt flooded her mind, but with a shake of her mane, Celestia banished them. Doubt could come later.

“We need to make sure Canterlot is safe,” she finally said. The first order made the second come more easily. Old instincts stirred to mumbled wakefulness. “Sound alarms, make sure that the citizens are moved as much out of the way as you can get them.” A rumbling march rose from the direction of the statue garden, they were moving again. “Since Second Captain Stormblade is missing, and you’ve seen the most of them, I’m putting you in charge when I am not here.”

“Wait...me?”

“Is that a problem, private?” Celestia growled. “Canterlot does not have the time to go through the proper channels.”

“N-not at all, your Highness.” Turning back to face the battle, Jetstream rubbed his temple with a hoof. “Just need to take charge...no problem...heh heh...” With a flap of his wings, he took to the air, gliding low to assess the situation. Everywhere he looked, things were going from bad to worse. Guards hauled injured or dazed comrades over their shoulders, statues pressed forward with only faltering resistance to stop them and a clutch of guards on the walls were all pointing at something in the air. Following their pointed hooves, Jetstream spotted wings of stone pegasi in tight formation. At their head was the first statue he encountered.

“They’re headed for the city!” a voice called. Something in the tone of utter panic set off Jetstream’s instincts. He knew he was no formal leader, but he could at least buy them a moment of time to clear out. Beating his wings once, the private squared up to the wing of stone flyers. Following the example, the few pegasi guards who were still flying fell in behind him without a bellowed Stormblade order.

“Right behind you, Jet,” one unseen guard. “What’s the plan?”

They want MY plan?

Jetstream’s heart pounded like drum, his nerves jittered, making his flight unstable.

“Hey, Jet! Come on, boss! We saw Celestia talking to you. You’re in charge now.”

If Stormblade were here, I suppose he’d begin by making a glue shield out of the ensigns...

“Try to peel them off of anypony in trouble,” Jetstream spoke, fighting the tremble in his voice as his mind caught up to the fact that he was asking others into danger for him. “Keep them safe but don’t do anything crazy yourselves.” Behind him, a small chorus of affirmative grunts and responses did a remarkable amount to steady his nerves. “I’ll try to draw their leader off.”

* * * * *

“Holdeth fast!” Luna called, tilting her wings and bringing the groaning Gina in for a landing. “We shall see to Devon’s whims post haste!” Below them, the guards around Canterlot’s walls and towers scrambled, little glints of golden armor leading into a clattering display as they made way for Luna’s landing, a long graceful swoop that would end in the feather touch befitting the most regal alicorns.

“Sister! Luna!” Celestia’s voice made Luna’s eyes bolt open and the landing became a slam, dislodging Gina’s grip and tumbling her to the stone floor of Canterlot’s outer walls.

“Celestia!”

The jarring impact with the ground snapped the orange unicorn out of the dazed fog in her head. Immediately, she knew she was no longer in the tower and her brain desperately struggled to piece together how she wound up here. However, before she could get too far, she heard a familiar voice approaching. Gina gulped loud when a four gold-clad hooves tramped up past her prone position, memories flooding back in a disorienting torrent.

That...

Memory.

* * * * *

Everything had gone out of control by this point.

Even under the misty-eyed guidance of the stars tugging every hair of her coat, Gina felt the terrible repercussions of Princess Luna’s apotheosis. Night eternal fell over Equestria, blanketing it in darkness and terror, reflecting the dark resentment that had consumed their Princess from within.

Her plan had been drawn up in the rare times she was away from Ghasen’s influence, his mere presence and voice enough to completely dominate every action; her saving mercy was that he had become so complacent that he had never suspected her of acting outside of his control.

At the outbreak of the crises, Gina

“Nightmare Moon!” Celestia called, her voice imbued with the fury of a wronged sister and wronged ruler. “This has gone on long enough. If only you had not been so foolish...”

“Hah, spare me the platitudes, Celestia,” the only answer was dry, bitter disdain. “You didn’t come this way to appeal to my good nature again, did you?”

The Sun Princess’ voice softened. “Only to bid you farewell.” As Gina approached, she reached for the Element of Magic within her saddlebag. It was all she needed. She remembered the incantation, she remembered the star’s decree controlling the Princess of the Night, she remembered...

She remembered.

“Do thine job!” the armored black alicorn taunted her. “Thou hath not the heart nor will to summon all Elements hither without my own hoof, too!” Lightning cracked behind her as a maniacal laugh swelled through the air, punching through Gina’s ears. “And thou hast not the Element of Magic!”

Celestia lowered her shoulders, digging her front hooves into the dirt. “I have enough not to dispel you from my poor sister, Nightmare Moon.” Five glowing lights of different colors emerged around the white Princess, “but it is enough to banish you into your own night sky!”

“What do yo-”

Gina’s experience of the banishment laid onto Nightmare Moon was a flash of light that transcended simple light, its brilliance searing every one of her senses and even into her very thoughts.

“Be gone from Equestria, scourge! Begone, one thousand years, begone!”

“Thou knowest not what thou set in motion!”

“And when she emerges from you, tell Luna I...”

The armored alicorn hesitated, her eyes lifting.

“...I do not blame her.”

Nightmare Moon’s gaze shifted, widened, and her glowing irises pulsed into a gentle teal.

“Sister?” Luna asked in sudden panic. “What art thou-” A sudden blast of white light pierced through the landscape, the intensity emanating through Gina’s own tightly clenched eyelids. “SISTER!!!”

It echoed.

And echoed.

And echoed...

For minutes, her last cry for help reverberated off every tree, off every hillside, off every mountain range, all ricocheting and converging back in muffled reflections of terrified sound. For minutes, it echoed.

Gasping and heaving, the white Princess fell to the floor, struggling for breath. Soft sobs trickled through the deafening stillness.

But as her thoughts coalesced, a new horror replaced the burning impression in Gina’s mind; she was too late! Every risk she had taken to free Luna from her contract without Ghasen’s knowledge, to restore her, had fallen away with Celestia’s pained and impulsive action.

“Luna...” Celestia spoke aloud, eyes cast to the moon and its new glow, its new impression. “Why did you steal the Element? Why did you take it away? If I had it, I could have...I could have stopped you without having to do this!’ Tears of impotent agony rolled down Celestia’s face as she pleaded with the moon. “Everything is changed forever, I can’t bring you back now! Of all of your crimes, I could have forgiven you, Luna, but without all of the Elements, I had no choice. Please...please forgive me...”

Gina stepped forward. Clutched against her chest was the Element of Magic, stolen with ease in the catastrophic confusion when Celestia confronted Nightmare Moon, her plan hastily scrawled on a few scraps of paper to use the Element to break the contract binding Luna to her role as Nightmare Moon. She held it before her. An assortment of images, diagrams, text, and arrows in front of it. The statue of a draconequus. The constellations of a winter night. The sacred hymns of spellcasters of old...no doubt much older now. In the center of it all, revealed with a final wisp of gray dust twisting in a wind-driven helix, a sketch of five jewels in a ring...A rapidly drawn circle and arrow over a sixth jewel embedded in the-

A tinny clatter drew Celestia’s attention. Through a crying haze, she beheld an orange unicorn mare fumbling at the ground, at her hoof was the Element of Magic, thought stolen by Nightmare Moon.

“You...” Celestia whispered, voice hoarse and face wet from her tears. The Princesses’ eyes darted first to the mare, then to the incriminating artifact at her hooves. “It...it wasn’t Luna who...” Gina stammered uselessly as Celestia rounded on her, sorrow morphing into incandescent rage as her mind assembled a new situation in her mind. “It was you who stole the Element! You stole it!”

Unable to speak, Gina could only step backwards, her hooves skidding on the floor as Celestia rose to her full height. The voice that had been whispered cries before now saw the villain. “You.” Celestia’s hooves rang with each powerful step. “Stole.” Her horn ignited in golden fire. “My.” Gina knew she had no hope of escape, she didn’t even consider trying.

“SISTER!”

All Gina had was a small prayer, still ebbing in muscle memory from a full night’s reflection.

My stars above reigning the night,
Our darkened eyes yearn for your light.
Hold virtues true to give me might...
The wrongs I do...to do what's right.

Celestia did not notice the unicorn mare hold still. She didn’t plead, fight or beg for mercy, all she did was step back from the Element of Magic. Gina lifted her head, remorseful, yet accepting.

“You and all of your conspirators will feel justice for this. You are simply the first,” Celestia huffed, still lost in agony, and the rage of her misplaced banishment. “You are the first!” She smacked a hoof down, flicking it in a spasm of emotion. “You are the first!” The Princess’ quivering jaw clenched tight, an opalescent column of light transcended over the orange unicorn. “But be not judged by me!” Gina tried to reach outwards to throw the parchment in her hooves hoping Celestia would see. “But it will be by Luna’s hoof when she returns.”

Yet the paper, the diagrams, the draconequus drawing, the star charts...they did not even clear her hooftip before being crinkling within a stone vice, the details fading...

...to Gray.

* * * * *

“Princess Celestia!” another voice, more immediately familiar, broke Gina from the memory, though with a renewed sense of dread. “This orange unicorn...she stole the Element of Magic and I bet she had something to do with the train and all of this going on!”

Celestia balked. All of this was too familiar, and a momentary glance into the mare’s eyes revealed that they shared the sentiment.

“Where is it?! What did you do with the Element of Magic?!” The purple unicorn barged into the conversation with a full head of steam. “What’s with all the statues?! What are you doing with Princess Luna?!” Even Celestia could not blunt the verbal barrage that hammered down on on the orange mare with her mind so distracted.

“Y’wanna know where it is?!” Gina found her voice this time, aided by the maddened laughs that punctuated her anger. “It’s up there in that tower. Annnnnd I’m going to get it back from the pair of idiots that are fightin’ over it right now!”

“Like I’d trust you with any of that! You aren’t going anywhere!” Twilight snapped. “Princess Celestia, I’m sure this is the pony behind all of this.”

“Luna,” Celestia’s attention refocused to her sister, who sat with a bizarre calm at the guard tower. “Luna, do you know what is going on? What’s happening?” Her sister did not answer until she had walked to the tower and flopped down onto her flanks with a distinctly less-than-royal flop. “Luna?”

“I am fine, sister,” Luna spoke evenly, though her tone was distant. “I was told to stay here by...” she winced, clutching her head in a foreleg. “By...” she shook her head furiously, trying to clear the compulsions out of her head but failing.

“Look there’s no time for that,” groused Gina in exasperation before another few laughs rippled through her chest. “If I took the time to explain all of this, we’d lose it all. We might as well’ve given up. The way we stop this is to get up there and stop em. I can’t get there fast enough.” Gina paced in agitation as her voice rose impatiently. “Take a good look at Luna if ya don’t believe me!” The orange unicorn grinned as both Celestia and Twilight first peered closely at Luna, frank confusion on their faces slowly morphing into a different kind of puzzlement. They realized something was off, but could not put their hoof on it.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia finally broke the uncomfortable silence. “I need to see to Canterlot, I need to ensure that the guards and any citizens are out of harm’s way. Can I count on you to help this unicorn?”

“Princess, I...” Twilight hesitated, torn between her well-founded distrust of Gina and her deep-rooted trust of Celestia. “Is it a good idea to bring her?”

“Hyah!” Gina laughed before the Princess of the Sun could respond. “Not really, heck, I’m trustin’ that you don’t try to tie me up again, but I got too much at stake to not trust ya, and yer in the same spot as me.” Twilight looked to Celestia, who was already galloping back towards the rapidly deteriorating battle.

“What are you waiting for, Twilight?” Celestia barked over her shoulder. “Go!”

“Arrrgh...okay!” Twilight sighed. “Look, keep your hooves to yourself, alright,” she warned Gina sternly as she closed her eyes. “And don’t move til we’re there.” Twilight felt her teleportation spell swelling up, the odd sense of displacement and vertigo as her magic began to channel her body away until the telltale flash of white.

* * * * *

“Give it up, boyo,” Ghasen pleaded, though his tone had the same monotone drawl as any of his other urgings to the younger unicorn. “Please, make it easier for both of us. You don’t need to endure what I went through.” Even as the elder stepped forward, pressing the roiling force into a strength that drove Devon to his fetlocks on the tower floor. “Why do you keep resisting? Why?!” Pleading morphed into frustration. “WHY!?”

Devon quaked under the force hammering into his body and mind. Even though his gauntlet sang with a droning scream as he delved for more power, more reason, more anything to get an advantage against Ghasen. He had to prove that he was the better Bookmark, that his understanding of the astral contracts and magic could overwhelm Ghasen’s mastery of the application of force and condemning rhetoric.

“I know what yer tryin’ to hold onto, boyo,” Ghasen’s voice softened. “But you got no winning play here. It’s a coin toss.” The older unicorn strode across the room, magic radiating from his horn and stone gauntlet as he drew in more power from the amplified starlight. “Heads, I win. Ya give up on provin’ that you’re the rightful head of this outfit and I’m free.” Was Ghasen’s voice turning sympathetic? “You lose your Luna, the stars keep talkin’ to ya and yer gonna walk my path, boyo. They’ll eventually break ya down and you’ll do what they want. Yer gonna become the monster you think you are fightin’ right now.”

Devon groaned, trying to pull himself off of the stone floor before another battering magical wave put him back down like a gavel silencing an objection.

“Tails, ya lose. Ya beat me at this game, and prove you can make contracts better than me...maybe ya save Luna maybe ya don’t.” Ghasen stood and turned a wistful look past the rolling waves of light around the tower to the stars beyond. “But everypony in Canterlot’ll know what you are. What you did. What you could do. Ponies are like the stars, boyo. They’ll keep whispering, they’ll keep talking, they’ll keep thinking that you are a villain, boyo.” Devon could only see sandy-colored legs passing around him as his ancestor paced. “And eventually, no matter how right ya are, you’ll agree with em.”

“No matter what way this coin lands, you’ll give in, boyo. You’ll crack to the stars or to the ponies and you’re me.” Ghasen’s tone was unknowable. “You’ll finally stop trying to defend yerself, no matter how innocent ya know you rare, no matter how much strength ya know ya have. Like I told ya...heads they win...tails ya lose. Don’t matter what you do, the coin is in the air and it’s gonna land...”

Devon collapses to his stomach, eyes pinched shut as he started, inch by inch, to believe Ghasen. He struggled mentally, but it was already laid out in the journals. Ghasen tried to fight off the stars’ influence, and eventually cracked, accepting their desired role for him not because of any desire to be that, but his inability to further resist the constant accusation. By making his own move to save Luna, Devon had cast the coin, and even he would have to abide its outcome.

Heads they win.

“So what’ll it be, boyo?”

Tails I lose.

“DEV’S!”

In an explosion of gossamer light, Gina emerged in a full-blooded charge, orange magic flaring up her horn and eagerly firing off at Ghasen. A coruscating ball of flame splashed across his violet cloak, rippling up and down harmlessly before dissipating into the starlight. “Get her hooves off of him!” Another burst of flame shattered uselessly over Ghasen, though now from the floor, Devon saw something new. Something that Ghasen had never expected. “I said!” Gina roared. “GET. OFF. OF. HIM!” Each word was punctuated with a splattering blast of erratic destruction, and in its wake, Devon rose.

Behind Ghasen, two mares stood. Gina spewed firelight from her mouth and horn as she unleashed every kind of attack she could muster.

The tailing unicorn he only knew by reputation, Twilight Sparkle, prize student of Celestia and frequent cause of many hours of re-shelving books even before he was hired at the archive. She looked frantically around the chamber, struggling to get an assessment of the situation. Even though it was nearly imperceptible, Devon could see fate itself in how Gina’s spells dissipated harmlessly seconds before scorching the sandy unicorn to a cinder. So shrouded by destiny, Ghasen was unassailable, but Devon saw something else in Gina’s reckless charge. At first, it was vague, a slight inconsistency that he only recognized on the periphery. The next raging assault sputtered ineffectively away from Ghasen, but the image grew more focused to Devon.

“I understand now.”

* * * * *

Jetstream had never thought stone could be this agile, but the pegasus he fought in the skies above Canterlot was handily dispelling that notion with every blackout-inducing twist that the cyan pegasus pulled through in an attempt to escape. Casting a glance over his shoulder, Jetstream saw the statue performing aerial corkscrews that he had never seen before. Were it not trying to smash him into the ground below, he’d ask for tips.

Every passing second of the chase allowed the statue to close the distance by another half-flank. Tightening his body, Jetstream banked hard to bob and weave around the towers and crenellations around Canterlot, hoping to find some kind of weakness in the statue’s flight, yet after every banking turn, it closed.

Desperation crept into the Private’s mind and he dove hard, back over the battlelines and around the sparking tower. Below, Jetstream saw that his fellow guardsponies were in equal straits; they were all nearly equally matched, but somehow the statues held the upper hand in every skirmish. By all logic, even an indestructible golem should be dragged down by weight of numbers. Injured and hurt earth pony guards hobbled back to the relative safety of the walls and unicorn barriers, yet even the magic shields were uncharacteristically cracked and flawed. While Captain Shining Armor’s mastery of shielding magic was missing, they should’ve held better than this.

“FIRE!”

As the disheartening scene unfolded before him, one voice carried over all of the din of battle and onrushing air. Princess Celestia invoked her royal voice as she joined a line of unicorns on the walls. Jetstream couldn’t close his eyes in time as a searing beam of opalescent light streaked from Celestia’s horn, devastation trailing in its wake until it slammed into the base of the tower, followed by dozens of smaller telekinetic blasts from the unicorn specialists. Celestia’s protective fury burned so intensely that Jetstream’s retinas burned and tingled, his pace slowing as he struggled for sight again.

They must have felt that one...

Blearily, Jetstream dared to try his eyes, expecting, if anything at all, a gaping hole in the tower, but the only sign of Celestia’s attack was a trail of wispy magic that sizzled off of the illuminated tower, like the beam missed entirely, or had not happened at all. Statue ponies lay scattered by the blast, but after a promising moment of stillness, all rose again.

“Again! Hit it again!”

Another bellow from the Princess of the Sun mercifully allowed the cyan pegasus to avert his gaze as another blazing light lashed out into the tower, yet left nothing more than the smoking trail. It was clear that it was having some effect on the statues, at least with raw power enough to drive them away, but it was only doing so much, while the battle decayed with every passing moement elsewhere. Doubt and desperation were slowly turning into terror in Jetstream’s heart, if even Celestia was struggling to land a telling blow, what hope did Canterlot’s guard have? What hope did Canterlot itself have?

“Change of plans! Protect the guards on the ground!”

He paused, hesitating to watch Celestia’s movements, hoping that she might have some way to get a hold of the situation.

Jetstream remembered his pursuer at the same time he felt granite on his flank.

* * * * *

“You’re right, Ghasen,” the charcoal Bookmark admitted. “You’re completely right.”

“Dev’s?!” Gina blurted, her attack screeching to a halt.

“Glad to hear it, boyo. I can finally rel-”

“I can’t beat your use of the contracts. I just can’t. You have more experience than me in all of this...” Devon smiled softly. “But it’s clear that you don’t understand any of it.” Ghasen paused, levelling his gaze as Devon finally found a grip against the maelstrom of magic. “After all...you only know one trick. You don’t understand the rest.”

“And how do you figure that, lad?” Ghasen sneered, a slight hint of contempt in his tone as he rounded again on Devon, his attention so focused on him as their eyes locked. “I’ve had to build an army and all of these contracts, I think I’ve more understanding of the price and magic than you could ev-”

“How many have you broken?” Devon interrupted, finding strength in every new word, like the pressure of the room was relieving at last, giving him his chance. “How many did you break?”

“Why,” Ghasen scoffed at Devon’s naivete, “none, of course. You can’t break star contracts, that’s just all in sorts’a oatmeal, kiddo. Stars make em that way. No matter what you do, they find some new way to make you leashed to it. I did everything a pony could do to break one and everything I did was a failure.”

“So it’s impossible?”

The coin is still in the air.

“Yes!” Ghasen barked impatiently. “What are you getting at, boyo?!”

“What if the coin can land on its side?”

“...”

“Ask Gina if she loves you.”

“Hyah!” An agitated laugh bellowed from him. “Thinkin’ that her loves gonna set ever’thing straight, like some no-bit touche villain of yer silly books!” His voice returned to the tone of poured gravel. “Now this her be real life, lad, mine don’t end with no weddin’!” Ghasen narrowed his eyes in a spark of pained anger. “Don’t you be darin’ ta’ wave my failing in my face, boyo...”

“Ask her.”

He growled. “I may be leashed up by the stars, but if you make me do that to her, I’ll find some way to make yer life rough, boyo. I don’t need to hear that little duckling peep out ‘I love you’ and not mean it ever ag-”

“I hate you.”

Ghasen immediately fell silent, turning to look at the mare.

“I hate you.” She had a thousand years to rehearse. “I hate you.” A thousand years to make it perfect, make it as clever and creative as for him to remember it through eternity. “I hate you.” A thousand years...

“Orangina...?”

“I. Hate. You.”

...That might as well been a week ago. That’s only how much she aged outside the numb embrace of the Gray.

Ghasen’s attention immediately left Devon, fully grabbed by the words.

Before him, Gina glared, eyes burning with the fury of her recent freedom. “Did I nicker?” she barked, laughing spitefully as she closed the distance. “Or were you so used to me just whimpering for ya?!” And then... “I’ve waited more than a thousand years to tell you how much I hate you.” ...She remembered she wasted a thousand years rehearsing such rage. “For leaving me like this and QUITTING on me!” Beautiful rage. “Ya think I’m a puppet? Look at yerself!” Angelic rage. “I hate you, Ghasen.” The last sentence was lacking Gina’s animated laughter, it was as harrowing and heartfelt as anything she had ever felt.

Sentiment both from...and of her.

“Gina...I...” Ghasen stammered, dumbstruck and fumbling for words.

“You what? You want me to go back and make you that DISGUSTING mesquite slop you always eat?!”

“I...”

“You want me to bring you more victims?! Find another poor pony who’d do anything to get outta their life and just ripe fer you to make a slave out of em?!”

“I’ve never been so happy to hear that.”

“Lend an ear to your trvi-huh?”

“You hate me...you really hate me,” Ghasen chuckled. “Finally.” The sandy unicorn turned to Devon with a wistful smile. “Well-played, boyo.You did this?”

“His name is Devon,” Gina snapped, the rage all too happy to reignite. “And yes, y’see, he didn’t feel the pressure and run away. And he barely knows me! How much did ya EVER give to a pony ya didn’t know?!”

“Devon Bookmark...” Ghasen mused, lowering his head and then lifting to look out at the stars. “Maybe, but just maybe.” He shook his head, the mist in his eyes dissipating as the strict monotone returned. “Aye, not a hummingbird on ye’, sure. But...” He contemplated for a second, then lowered his brow at him. “Your struggle is not over, Bookmark.” Even though his tone had changed, it was no longer broken, it had a spark of vigor long since forgotten, the name Bookmark was used more like a title than a family now. “You’ve got the ability to fix this but...” The elder unicorn hesitated, as if judging what he was about to say and how it might change his future. “There’s gonna be consequences to this, Bookmark. You got lucky on this coin toss but...you aren’t free, Luna’s not free...not yet.”

Devon rose again, strength growing with every new breath he took. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Before Ghasen could speak again, the tower suddenly lurched to one side in a violent rumble of stone.

“Ack!” Ghasen gasped, nearly toppling over before catching himself on a wall. “It means that ya got a lot of fixin’ to do and a time limit, boyo! You’re clearly the most accomplished weaver of fate here, Devon Bookmark. And since we sorted that out at last...means the stars aren’t so keen on holdin’ this tower together.”

Devon looked slowly up at the glowing flower. “You’re right, I do,” he said, turning and making a determined path towards the halo of glowing petals. “You teleported Gina here, right?” he asked, not even turning his head to look at the flummoxed purple unicorn. “Can you get everypony else out of here, and then come back for me when I finish?”

“Um...now just hold on a minute...”

“Yes or no. That’s all I need, ma’am.” Devon’s tone was distracted, his attention entirely on the flow of light across the moonflower. Twilight recognized the tone as what she would use when ponies would try to interfere with her planning and research. “You want this stopped, right?”

“Of course, but...”

“Please do it,” Devon paused, turning to give Gina a firm look to silence a protest that was already brewing. “If anypony else is here, it’s going to distract me and I might mess it up. I have to do this right or everything could get a whole lot worse.”

“Now just hang on!” Twilight sputtered uselessly before the older unicorn raised a sandy foreleg to halt her progress.

“I assure you, miss,” Ghasen spoke evenly. “He has everypony’s best interests at heart. This unsavory business is my own making, but it falls to him to unmake it.” Turning, the elder unicorn gave Devon a long look, the gaze penetrating right to the youth’s heart. Saying nothing, he simply nodded once, the elder passing his approval to the next generation a thousand years down the road.

“C’mawn,” Gina broke the silence. “We gotta give Dev’s his space to do his thing. We got the bad pony here.” The orange unicorn mare shifted with clear disgust as Ghasen stepped to Twilight’s opposite side, though her composure held. “And Dev’s...” she hesitated, face heated. “Dev’s look, I know we had our weirdness, but just don’t do anything too stupid, okay?” She smiled, a small giggle wiggling out of her throat. It wasn’t quite the storybook words of encouragement, but Devon rolled with it.

“I’ll only be stupid for as much as is absolutely necessary.”

“Atta boy.”

“Wait!” Twilight interjected. “How will I know when you’re finished?”

“Luna will tell you.” Devon smiled once. “She’ll know, trust me.” Turning back to the glowing aura around the moonflower, the unicorn waited only for a moment for the snapping flash of the teleportation spell to come and go before before stepping into the petal’s light. “And I’ll make sure the Element gets back to you as soon as I’m done!” He wasn’t sure if that last call was heard.

Alone in the miasma of fate, Devon closed his eyes and tried to focus. The sensation was just the same as when he freed Gina, a wailing roar of potential energy that penetrated and resonated with the deepest fibers of his being. But where Gina’s alone was a tremble, all of the contracts contained in the moonflower were a tempest. Simply standing in it and not falling unconscious required constant vigilance and tension. Joining the force of the contracts’ magic were the shuddering spirits from his gauntlet, all aching for the same release.

“Okay...” Devon spoke aloud, mind clinging onto his own voice as an anchoring point in the storm. “Okay Devon, you can do this. I hope...”

There’s gonna be consequences to this.

Ghasen’s warning drifted around in Devon’s mind, much like the gnawing doubt when he first began to suspect Luna’s enslavement. Part of his mind knew that it was the most dire of warnings, yet was equally aware of the necessity of action. Even without Ghasen, the statues still had their mission to take Luna back, and Luna was still bound to her own. All of it was so much for his mind to process that the charcoal unicorn would have preferred hours to consider the implications of meddling with fate so much. But the tower shuddered again, reminding Devon that he had...more like seconds to consider the implications.

Swallowed by so many different contracts, Devon groped blindly, hoping the bound essences within the gauntlet could provide enough guidance as they sought their matching contracts. As the metal-clad hoof pressed into a contract petal, he felt the intense surge of pressure, same as when he freed Gina. Now that he knew how to do it, he could manipulate the quill with more focus and command. It was no easier, just as burning to his mind, but Devon was relieved to see that, at this ephemeral level, the contracts functioned on the same level. Despite the massive power that was so dense it had physical presence, Devon understood its workings. He understood the impact of small changes, the hidden gaps in the magic binding them and the forces at play that he could manipulate.

Armed with all he needed, Devon drew the starlight through his quill with a force of effortless will, and plowed its tip into the first contract. The mind of an earth pony squire, willing to gamble everything with a chance to grow in stature, surged through Devon’s and into the silver quill. Bracing his mind, the unicorn made the final stroke of the pen that he used with Gina, and felt the spirit bound within his gauntlet dissipate as the contract itself lost its starlit glow, its binding energies breaking apart with Devon’s influence.

One down...

Lashing out, Devon seized the next petal. Experience made the process smoother, his developed understanding responding well to increasing use. Instead of blindly groping for power and application, the unicorn had complete control of every action. Three more contracts faded into uselessness, but as Devon freed the fourth soul from its astral legalese, a growing realization built. Every time a bound pony was freed, Devon felt an old barrier returning in his mind. Where before he could channel the spirits’ emotions to reignite his magic, as their power faded, Devon realized that his newfound grasp on magic was faltering as well.

Oh no...

For a flickering moment, Devon doubted. Was this the consequence that Ghasen was talking about? By freeing the ponies imprisoned by their contracts, Devon also sacrificed the gifts that they had unwittingly granted him.

I’m going back to how I was...

Clenching his eyes shut, the unicorn banished the thoughts from his mind. They were never gifts. They were never his to begin with.

Worth it.

Devon surged the starlight outward, tearing apart contract after contract. Personalities, memories and lives of ancient ponies flashed through his mental perception. Everypony who has been duped, tempted or blindly led into the stars’ trap surged for the freedom that they pleaded for over the course of a millennium. Soon, the numbers of contracts began to dwindle as the tower shuddered again. The stars were abandoning their fortifications, and without fate bending the magic away, the stone felt the full force of Celestia’s magic.

Come on, Luna....where are you?

Plucking through the petals, Devon finally arrived at the last two. Without such a crowd of spirits in his gauntlet, Devon could clearly define each essence. One essence was undoubtedly Luna, regal, noble and all the things that had drawn Devon’s heart before. Another was heavy with ambition denied, embittered by his failures and seeking respite; Ghasen.

Two to go...

Devon closed his eyes and started unweaving Luna’s, unaware of the terrified colt essence still hiding in the periphery of the gauntlet. Reaching out with his faltering magic and spinning head, he seized the next inscribed petal and felt Luna’s spirit mingle with his own. The contract was powerful, deep and inscribed with very real power. While he could not comprehend the depth of the language, Luna’s essence told him all he needed to of the circumstances surrounding her fateful decision.

A simple desire to be appreciated spiraling out of control into resentment. Resentment over perceived neglect spiraling into seething hate. And that hate spiraling into a maniacal scheme to bring eternal night. It struck Devon, as he felt the binding magic melt away underneath his abilities, that it could have all been averted with appreciation.

Luna never wanted her night sky to be worshipped. She never sought to be more than Celestia. She just wanted somepony to notice her for the mare she was, not some elevated and untouchable goddess. Anypony wants to know they do a good job.

Come on...come on...yes...

Devon felt an immense upwelling of pride as the contract finally gave way. Risking opening his eyes, he saw the words burned onto the petal melting away into the ancient starlight that had served as their ink.

A heavy exhale of wind wafted around him, tugging at his forehooves. The contract pulled back together, the words reforming.

The parchment would have none of that. It wasn’t going to give way at all.

Devon shifted his eyes all over, desperately searching for what made this contract special, what made it unique. A single line in the bottom told him all he needed, a line as ancient as the archives themselves, and a line that needed one extra special authorization.

It needed a co-signature to nullify the contract, a task held to lowly peons whipped into doing the most menial and mundane tasks. It needed an absolute nobody, a lowest rung, a real bottom feeder in the political monotony of Canterlot’s bloated hierarchy.

It needed an undersecretary to an undersecretary.

“Thank you for the training, Lily Boxtop,” Devon groused sarcastically, cursing himself for being thankful for once to his loathsome boss. He leveled the silver quill pendant before him with his own telekinesis, the magic on it pulsing and prickling against the parchment. He carefully started scrawling his name on the line-

“Hyak!” Devon jumped back from a blue jolt of energy shooting up the quill. He watched as his name started erasing itself, fading away. The tower lurched around him in contempt, the contract clearly not accepting of his signature.

But whose was it? Who would know? Who was with Luna when she made the contract?

“Hyrrm, hrr?” A teal chirp emerged from his saddlebag, an origami hummingbird wafting in playful arcs around Devon. “Hrr! Hrr!”

Might as well.

“Tell me, Glyph,” Devon nudged the flittering bird with a fetlock. “Would you know?”

The paper extended and unfolded, and warm magic tendrils reached to the forefront of Devon’s memory. Within the swirling paisley designs and shapes, Glyph transformed into a crystal clear recollection from Devon’s recent history.

The gate from the honesty chamber pinched into focus, the large wooden barricade preventing them from entry looming high above them. He saw the memory of Luna looking at Glyph, maintaining his guard on the door.

"A hummingbird," Luna declared. “We seeketh a hummingbird.”

He could clearly see every detail and line of the design Glyph made to conjure such a memory from Luna’s memory.

A hummingbird.

She could see it in the design. But he clearly was unable to. He distinctly remembered thinking it.

What made that crazy hodgepodge of nonsense a hummingbird!?

He could clearly see every detail and line of the design.

A hummingbird.

By Starswirl’s ancient flecks of dandruff!

“It’s...it wasn’t a hodgepodge of nonsense!”

“Myr-hrr-hrrrn!”

“Glyph!” Devon bounded giddily, making extra effort to not asphyxiate the chirping apparition with his tight hug. “It’s not a hodgepodge! It’s not a hodgepodge!”

It was...

“Glyph, listen, take that memory, take that design you made in that memory, and,” he pointed at the cosigner line, “right there, make it right there!”

...A signature.

The glowing swirls of green and cyan slapped onto the old parchment, and the Glyph crept into the text, dancing between the words to the final line. It then pulsed, tugged on itself, then rearranged into an exact replica of what caused Luna’s memory to see a hummingbird.

A perfect template for a perfect forgery.

Devon hesitated, holding the silver quill in agonizing trepidation. He just realized that for the second time in less than a minute, he was praising his boss for teaching him mundane skills.

“Thank you again Lily,” Devon groaned, bringing the quill to the surface, “for teaching me to fake so many signatures.”

Making the final touches on his trace, and no blue surges of magic to knock him on his flank to be had, the parchment floated freely with the last detail dotted in place. Glyph uprooted from the line, and with Devon holding the origami to the corner, quickly exited with an encouraging succession of whirs and upbeat chirps.

The ground beneath him slid, the supports of the tower buckling and collapsing inwards. He had no time to waste!

“Crud, I totally should’ve had a line for this!” The bookkeeper seethed, then narrowed an eye at Glyph. “When we get back, tell Luna I said something really really awesome when I did this, okay?”

“Myrr-hrr!”

Without a word, conjuring the collective whims and wills of a thousand years of Bookmark lineage unable to bring forth this very moment within his hooftips, Devon gave a final yank on the parchment’s opposing corners.

A stream of cobalt light poured forth, whirling outwards and knocking Devon back.

Done.

It was done.

It was all done.

Yes!

“Mrr-hyrr hrrn!!”

“That’s right! We totally are awesome!”

The charcoal bookkeeper allowed a moment of pride to wash over him as the last magics binding Luna to her old fate melted away.

Come whatever else, she no longer had the stars pulling the strings on her. Trailing on pride’s heels was his old sense of duty; one contract still remained, Ghasen’s, the architect of this entire thing. Desire for power led him to abandon simply reading the futures of fellow ponies and to try to harness the stars’ power, and the cost were so many destinies and stories blunted or fired off course. Every contract up to that point stemmed from his quill.

Last one.

Feeling no urge to leave him suffering out of spite or vindictiveness, Devon pressed his gauntlet into the last glowing petal. While the journal provided more than enough perspective, as Devon’s mind melded with the spirit in the contract, he felt everything. Ghasen was not wickedly toying with fate, he was caught in a spiral where one contract’s mistakes were fixed by another. Rather than understand the source of his issues, Ghasen figured that he just needed more application of his force to free himself until he was utterly trapped. Amazed at himself, Devon found an odd empathy for Ghasen.

I might have done the same thing. I was about to.

The gauntlet was nearly out of power, Devon’s magic nearly exhausted and back to its old repressed form. But he had what he needed.

I’ll fix this for everypony.

It was hastily written. It was desperately penned. It was made on a whim and entirely for serving the selfish author that penned it.

His contract would disintegrate under direct sunlight.

As the final contract melted away, the unicorn felt the magic around the tower dissipating as well. Without any hold on the pieces, the stars’ influence faded. Above Canterlot, the starlight morphed back into its old natural state. Ghasen’s contract broke apart and as his senses returned, Devon allowed himself to relax for the first time in what felt like days.

Or he would if the tower didn’t start shuddering violently.

“Right, that.” Devon exhaled deeply, then shot a glance to the flittering hummingbird beside him. “Well, up to you little fella. Gonna take your own chances?”

“Mrr-hrrn!” The Glyph twisted quickly, and nestled deep against Devon’s chest.

“Yeah, me neither.” The bookkeeper smiled to the hummingbird, and opened his saddlebag for it to take shelter. Glyph was followed by the gauntlet, echothyst shard and, before he forgot, the Element of Magic. "Keep track of these, alright? Hopefully when Ghasen digs us out, he realizes he was wrong.”

“Hrmn?”

Free of the fate-bending protection of the stars, the tower quaked from the magic that was laid on it, particularly the devastating barrage from the Princess of the Sun. And with an unsettling groan, started tilting.

“Yeah,” Devon sighed to Glyph, feeling the floor drop out from under him. “That I do have a hummingbird after all...” The cold darkness of the opening abyss licked across his back.

“...I have his.”

* * * * *

A stone hoof slammed into Jetstream’s flank, throwing his flight path into an uncontrolled pirouette. In the private’s distraction, the stone pegasus closed the gap and grabbed tightly onto Jetstream, hooves clinging and clamping down to pull him off of balance and use his own momentum to crash him. “Oh no you don’t...” the pegasus nickered, suddenly wrenching his body into a twist, flopping the statue around onto its back and hoping to squeeze away from the granite embrace. It was the most basic escape technique, every pegasus was taught it and it always worked.

The statue gripped even tighter. It didn’t work. Jetstream was seemingly not surprised as the statue rolled him and pressed down, pushing the speeding pair on a course to slam into the ground at lethal speed. “Rrrgh!” the cyan pegasus growled as he struggled uselessly to break the lock. Every idea or move he could muster started to work, yet as soon as he was about to free himself, the statue would clamp down or adjust its grip to keep him in place. The statue’s strength simply would not give out, it was as if something else was aiding the golem against Jetstream, keeping the hooflock a perfect vice.

The ground closed rapidly. The sky flickered with erratic blasts of light from the tower.

Jetstream made one last push, throwing everything into an escape attempt. Like before, he could feel his body about to pop free, the statue starting to slip off of him only for it to settle down and squeeze tighter.

But suddenly, the forelegs clutching him released.

Immediately, Jetstream whipped into the safety of the air moments before the statue plowed into the ground in a landing that was sloppy and chaotic, skidding into the dirt near the statue garden’s former home. Expecting it to rise, Jetstream braced for the chase to begin again, yet all the statue did was shiver and quake on the ground, caught in spasms of increasing violence. Before his eyes, Private Jetstream saw the statue arch suddenly and the stone fell away, revealing a stallion pegasus, eyes wide open in shock.

Adrenaline drove Jetstream to charge towards the prone figure, instincts to defeat the opponent spurring the private to press the advantage. Rounding, he lifted his hooves to strike down before the sounds of crumbling stone and confused cries hit his ears. Casting his gaze to the wider world, Jetstream found the battle completely changed. The only statues that still moved were fighting the same convulsions as the pegasus, stone falling away in heavy chunks to reveal the ponies trapped beneath. Each one bore expressions of mixed horror and bewilderment.

“Sir!” a voice snapped out of the din, directed at Jetstream. He didn’t respond.

“Sir!”

Oh wait...he was in charge.

“What is it...” he began to ask, turning to find a sergeant, clearly outranking him, reporting dutifully.

“Celestia put you in charge, didn’t she?” The sergeant barked. “Bout time if I say so. Anyway, all of the statues have stopped, sir. Looks like they’re normal ponies under all that rock.”

“Normal?”

“Well, they’re all pretty senseless, sir, but they don’t look like they’re any more danger. What’s the next move?”

Before Jetstream could speak, could issue his first order ever, the tower behind shuddered began to come down. Tumbling heaps of brick and stone pelted down onto the hedge maze with jarring impacts.

“Oh horsefeathers.”

* * * * *

Like bursting from an infinite depth of water, Luna gasped as a haze burst away from her mind, every compulsion, word and act that was forced out of her despite her mind’s protests dissipated instantly. There was no confusion or muddled air in her mind, she had seen the entire battle unfold and sat idly as her sister attempted to bring Ghasen’s tower down. She remembered Gina and Twilight’s panicked and hasty alliance to get back to the tower. She remembered...Devon’s apologetic look as he turned to face Ghasen and his machinations alone after shouting her away.

All of the memories were clear and real, even with her motivations and desires so twisted, and as her mind awoke, the pieces quickly began forming in her head. Devon had succeeded! It took a moment for the thought to fully emerge, but it did with joy. At last she was free of the insistent pressure that had lived in the corner of her mind since the day she had struck that accursed bargain. However, before her mind could fully appreciate the fact, a conversation caught her ear.

“Whaddya mean she can’t go back?! We still got somepony in there!”

“Princess! We can’t just leave him up there! The Element of Magic is up there!”

“I won’t allow you to go back now, even with your magic, nopony is that fast, Twilight Sparkle. Do you think I’d be light about this? I have to make sure that you’re safe.”

“But-”

“I’m sorry, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Twilight Sparkle!” Luna’s voice boomed with a vigor that had not drawn out to its full strength in what felt like weeks. “Devon Bookmark!”

“Huh? Princess Lu-”

“Tis no time to stammer, the unicorn that you found in the tower. Where be he?” The purple unicorn stammered, adrenaline making her words come in unsteady jumbles before Gina spoke for her.

“Dev’s stayed behind,” she said, plainly before a small laugh rippled through her. “He said he had two left to go, he had you an-” Before Gina could speak further, a shuddering rumble in the far distance drew every eye to the tower. Without the strands of destiny holding it together and upright, the impact of Celestia’s magical fusillade was finally seen as the structure began a slowly accelerating inward collapse. “Oh horsefeathers, Dev’s...”

By the time Gina had finished the utterance, Luna was already in the air.

“Princess!”

“Sister!”

Devon!

The Princesses’ wings beat in powerful, broad strokes, each one increasing the power and thrust of the last in a crescendo of speed and force. Luna’s face crushed in determination as cold night air whipped around her face, the crumbling and shaking tower looming larger and larger as the distance disappeared. For hours before, her mind had fought for control of her body and words, and even though she had acted so strongly, everything was swallowed in conflict and discordant impulses. For days before, she was consumed and distracted with a growing worry that such a price might be called to collect. For years before, she knew that it was a decision that would not leave her lightly, and it colored her judgment.

Now she had never been more clear.

Devon, thou imbecilic hero. If thou whilst stop mine own muddled head from taking my life, then I shall happily stop thy own foolishness from taking thy own. Thou wouldn’t dare.

* * * * *

So this is it...

Another twist and Devon skidded and flopped head over hooves towards rocky oblivion. Reflex and instinct caused him to scrabble for a grip, yet a growing part of his mind was coming to terms with the stark reality around him.

He may have saved the Princess, but it was clear that the price he was going to pay was his life.

Another twist of the diminishing tower pitched Devon in a sickening circle with a downward angle and he had a look through the dust at Canterlot and the few straggling ponies fleeing from the tower.

Worth it.

He tried to look towards where he had ordered Luna to flee to, vainly hoping for a last glimpse of the whole reason for this, to know that he had accomplished what he set out to do in his single challenge to Ghasen and the stars. All he could see through the stone dust were many confused bodies that were little more than specks of movement. He knew the palace was far too great a distance to spot anypony, but he at least hoped he saw that the others were safe.

I’m sorry, Luna.

The thought hung heavily in the strange arrest of time that Devon assumed to be what all ponies felt when the end was coming quickly. All he could muster in his final moments were apologies.

I’m sorry, Luna. I never meant to put you through all of this. Love does terrible things to a pony. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, Gina. I should have trusted you more. I should have listened to you more. You knew exactly what was going on the whole time, but I let it all get to my head.

I’m sorry... mom. Sorry for everything. Sorry for how...he turned both of us into what we are.

* * * * *

“Everypony get back NOW!” Jetstream bellowed, looping his foreleg around the dazed pegasus who had mere moments ago been encased in stone and engaged in trying to kill him. “The tower’s coming down right towards us!” Beating his wings, Jetstream drew on every bit of training in protecting ponies he could.

Falling debris. Move away fast and perpendicular. You don’t need to be as far away as you think. Look for cover. Put yourself between falling objects and the victim, you have armor for a reason. It’ll protect others as well as you.

The private-in-command managed a small smile of relief as the other guardsponies reacted to his command, or at least saw what was coming as well. Enlisted ponies, officers and others hurriedly drug stunned bodies out from the danger, putting themselves between the tumult of stone and the injured. But the tink of a partially disintegrated brick across the crest of his helmet quickly put Jetstream back in his place, and his mind back on his duty.

Heaving to the side, Jetstream rolled his body over the mumbling and shocked pegasus just in time to catch a barrage of small stones and rocks with his helmet and back plate. The staccato percussion over his head worked far better than any watch sergeant's training calls and Jetstream zeroed in on the stone archway that marked the entrance to the garden. Figuring it was better than nothing, the cyan pegasus bundled his adversary into the furthest corner and turned to watch the tower come down.

Seconds after he threw into the meager cover, Jetstream felt pelting debris begin to rain down across the field. Smaller chunks of masonry or ornamentation reported their impacts with a staccato melody, occasionally drowned out by basso thuds of heavy pieces digging into the earth.

He had no choice but to watch for now as the tower came apart. Jetstream couldn’t see much from his position, but at least his cursory appraisal assured him that he was the closest pony to the tower, and that nopony else was in any immediate danger.

The tower shuddered, rocked by internal crumbling that could be felt in his chest.

“I sure hope nopony is in there...”

* * * * *

“Hey! HEY!” Stormblade barked upwards as a shower of debris and noise fell all around him. “What are you foals DOING? I’m in charge here!” His blustering shouts passed like irrelevant wind to the guard ponies in flight. Before him, he saw not the stalwart regiment he had envisioned under his iron hoof, but several prone and unconscious ponies whom the guards were pulling. Not one of them standing to face stampeding demise muzzle to muzzle, but instead making a hasty, unrehearsed retreat away from the tower.

A surge of fire plumed within the Captain’s chest. “Where are you running to!? Stand! Stand!” Stormblade slammed his hoof on the dirt, but the sharp crack ricocheting through the air was immediately devoured by the thundering reverberation of sound. “I command you, hold!” Not a single iris even shifted in his direction.

Fine. If that’s how they want it.

He had no more orders for them.

“Cowards!” He had no faith in them. “Cowards!” And he shouldn’t have expected greater. “Each and everypony all!”

This wasn’t their story.

The stallion barked irritably before a rumble above him caught his attention.

*K-KWOOM!*

A falling slab shattered a half-haunch from his hooves.

“SQUEEP!” The captain flinched sideways, “Fweeee...” deflating in a long high pitched exhale.

Another blast of stone slammed down beside him, the shuddering impact carrying through Stormblade’s chest. Then another. And another. The Second Captain clumsily hobbled and danced while weaving through the blazing salvo of pony-sized granite chunks.

Surprisingly, the Captain somehow managed to go against his recent intuition, and did in fact have a new set of orders for those retreating cowards.

“WAIT FOR MEEEE!”

While far more reasonable, the Captain’s exclamation was also lost to the sound of falling rubble. In his flight, Stormblade did not see the shadow closing down on his head until the shadow’s owner struck him solidly. “AH! NO NO! I’M TOO HANDSOME TO BE...hey...” he started to moan before his brain caught onto the fact that the object simply bounced off his head, and was much softer and gentler than stone.

Assuming stones were not made out of canvas and buckles.

Thankful to not be squashed, Stormblade quickly reeled to face the offending projectile. A saddlebag, crafted with old buckles and straps, leered up to him in the flickering firelight. Thinking quickly before another chunk of deadly masonry could crash down upon him, the stallion seized the bag in his teeth and quickly darted sideways. A break in the wall peeled open, and with no other opening presented in the churning chaos, the Captain dove for it, rolling shoulder-first into the protective alcove. A thick sheet of dust and pebbles slapped across his face as a landslide of shattered masonry slammed to a rest at the tip of his tail.

“Ah, now...” Stormblade exhaled deeply, curling his rear legs away from the felled stone. He shifted his attention to the heavy saddlebag. “And what brings you to me?”

The bag responded as most bags do.

He snorted, twin wisps of dust pelted out his nostrils. “Let’s find out how fate is helping me this time.” Reaching a hoof into the darkness of the bag, Stormblade withdrew item after item. An unusual ornament that looked like it hung on an ear was first, the shimmering blue of the gem catching his eye. “Ooooh...” he cooed, holding it up in front of his eyes before he murmured in a quietly respectful tone. “And for saving Canterlot, we award you with the Blue Medal of Valor and...er...” A moment’s pause. “The Aquamarine Medallion of the Sun and Moon. Now enjoy your honeymoon with Luna, PRINCE Stormblade.” He peered upward through narrowed eyelids, letting the name swirl in his cognition. “Yeah...”

Cognition likey.

Digging further, his hoof banged against a heavy sleeve covered in intricate fixtures and decoration. “A boot?” “He pulled it out, the loose fixtures underneath pinging his memory. “A gauntlet!” He recognized the raw shape of the garment, any guard would get that much, though few others would keep going on. “What are you doing in here anyway?”

The gauntlet responded as most gauntlets do.

Stormblade set it aside gingerly. “Must belong to Canterlot’s long lost war heroes! And it is just...erf...” Stormblade’s monologue came to a halt as he tried to press his hoof into the gauntlet and found it five sizes too small. “Oh come on...really?” the black earth stallion muttered, struggling as much to fit the undersized armor into his narrative as much as onto his hoof. “Guess old war heroes were much...erf-gh...wimpier in...hrrf!...olden days.”

Plan B?

“Okay okay...um...recovering the long lost relics of the past?” Plan B. “Your knowledge of history and ancient treasures is stunning, Professor Stormblade.”

Cognition also likely.

Tossing the gauntlet back into the bag, he found the last big object inside purely by accident. “Ow!” Stormblade whimpered, withdrawing his hoof as it snagged a sharp point. He reached back in with care, gracing a fetlock against more and more points. Whatever it was, it was clearly elaborate. Or a mutant hedgehog. His thoughts raced ahead of his hoof and began filling in his future already. “What a weapon, Captain Stormblade, you smote the Hydra Legions of Black Swamp in one fell swoop!” Finally finding a grip that didn’t feel like broken glass and lemon juice, he tugged the object outwards into the revealing light, a lone glisten of brass luminance fluttered from the shimmering surface. “And you did it so well that Canterlot can expand and your actions will be rewarded...this will be your land, Baron Stormblade! You and Luna can oversee all of this with our blessing.” The item came free from the bag.

“Your new royal chamber is this...”

Stormblade’s eyes widened with unrestrained glee. It couldn’t be. But the dazzling golden shimmers and flecks of light jetting from all the ornately gilded edges and grooves, the perfectly symmetrical design, the solid purple gemstone embedded firmly within its ornate casing.

Oh Luna would just smother him with nuzzles for this.

In his hoof quivering hoof, singing with the angelic choir in the Captain’s head, the Element of Magic radiated before him, glittering softly in the erratic light caused by rolling dust and starlight.

He peered into the tiara’s purple gemstone. “Hero of Equestria Stormblade,” he declared to his reflection within it.

Hastily, the Second Captain stuffed everything back into the saddlebags save for the small gemstone. “Now get in there you...” he muttered, jamming the shard of echothyst onto the overstuffed patch of medals and awards before it hooked in. “Perfect! Awarded for saving Canterlot while finding irreplaceable treasures under extreme danger and duress.”

He could see it now, his own story writing itself before him. All the narratives, all the symbols, all the adjectives just fell into his mental grasp. The inky blackness of the...inky black hidey hole where in the inky blackness he...

*Shff-Cloomp!*

He’d figure it out later.

*Kr-Klam!*

The marble slab behind the Captain peeled away, a rush of brilliant fiery light washed over him. The ground beneath him surged and lifted in heavy waves, pressing the Captain back up onto stumbling hooves. Gripping the saddlebag in his teeth, he dodged sideways into the piled stacks of debris and stone, his eyes searching for any pathway out through twirling smoke.

The light dimmed slowly. Looking up at a disorienting angle, the Captain was unsure whether the ground was lurching upwards to the tower, or if...

* * * * *

“The whole tower is falling!” Luna panicked.

The Princess of the Night knew time was short. Bands of ethereal color rippled around Luna’s forelegs as she tightened her body and hit her full flying stride.

Each wingbeat pushed her further. Faster.

She angled upward to where she hoped Devon still stood. She hoped. She did not hesitate.

Push.

Faster.

Coiling drapes of color turned into a rolling nimbus at her forehooves shaking feverishly against thickening cushion of resisting air. The smoke-draped atmosphere, the shrieking cascade of wing deafening her ears, the very laws of physics, all conspiring to slow her down.

In vain.

“Devon!”

There was no stopping her.

“I’m coming!”

The air collapsed into itself, surrendering to a pinched ring of emanating light steadily courscating in waves of green, blue, red; icy and cool.

Push.

Luna’s eyes widened in surprise at the sudden bolts of energy coursing at her hooftips. They were not of the colors of day, but the cold tones and hues of the rarest of night skies.

Aurora.

A spellbinding curtain of light expanded through the air, radiating from her in surging waves of green, teal and cyan.

Push.

All eyes, all attention turned to it, all witnesses turned agape to the sight, nebulous to the streak of cobalt careening through the raining stone.

The tower’s last fragments gave way, falling out and crumbling in a final heave. Through narrowed teal irises, Luna spotted a tumbling object, silhouetted against the moon. Unmistakable. It was not stone but it fell as fast and helplessly as one. As it plummeted through a cloud of gray dust, Luna spotted a single shimmering bright spot...

A stray beam of starlight glinting off of a silver quill.

Faster.

The wind would not surrender any more.

Faster.

Her wings could not deliver any more.

Faster.

Physics itself decreed it couldn’t give any more.

Faster.

A beam of aurora colors fired across the starscape. Natural forces no longer holding any rules, no longer holding any relevance to the speeding Princess, Luna torpedoed a straight-shot through the narrow gaps of collapsing masonry, unimpeded by drag, dust, or peril.

Alien green bands swelled from blinding ripples into a churning of dazzling color radiating out from Luna in irregular swaths of color. All eyes stared shocked and frozen, first overwhelming the fatigued denizens of the statue garden, then spreading across Canterlot’s skyline in previously unseen tendrils of luminance. Greens melted into blues, which sparked into chilling violets and reds. Luna’s aurora trailed off of her wings and body, loosely hanging off of her as she pushed past its ability to keep pace around her.

Twisting in the air, Devon saw the explosion of green aurorae in the same instant a force slammed into him, moving far too quickly to realize what it was.

“I have thee!”

Speed blended Devon’s senses into a whirling tempest of colors and sounds, moving so fast that his battered mind could only catch the most muddled of sensations. He was moving sideways, something other than falling, that was certain. Risking opening his eyes for the first time since losing his footing on the tower, the unicorn only saw blurs of color as the world whipped sideways.

Looking down, he saw the ground approaching on a steady descent; but he also saw a solid pair of cobalt forelegs banded around his chest.

The ground slowed to a smaller blur as a harsh back killed the speed they had. For the first time, he allowed a taste of relief to enter his mind.

They did it!

Ghasen was wrong! As the ground pulled closer, he felt the cobalt vice clinging to him from behind loosening and weakening. Devon’s relief swelled again as the pace slowed to a speed that might be more comfortable for a landing. Just five haunches further down...

The grip on him weakened again, and Devon slipped downward. He looked up to the Princess, but where he expected a pair of comforting teal irises-

“Ee-ack!”

A blinding flare of silver light assaulted his eyes.

“Lun-!”

His gut wrenched to his neck, his body flopping into a sudden freefall.

The grip was gone. The cobalt hooves were gone. The sensation of her tightly clenching him close to her chest was...

Was...

He reached his hooves outward, cast into a tumbling fall to the earth. Momentum curled his path until soft grass bashed across Devon’s back, jarring him with the shock of a hard impact. His breath expelled from his lungs in a gnarled puff of air, his vision rattling to a fade.

I have thee.

“Urrgh...”

I have thee.

She really did say that to him. He clunked his head back on the grass, breathing heavily in the sudden silence that enveloped him. Her words repeated in his head as his consciousness tiphoofed the line between his aching body and comforting darkness.

I have thee.

He shot up. The world recoiled in a dizzy spin, lazily banking from side to side. Seconds passed before Devon’s eyes refocused and his thoughts caught up with him.

Am I alive?

He shifted around and felt the aches and pains from his struggle atop the tower. A sharp breath filled his chest and strained his ribs. He buckled inwards, his brow clenching his eyes shut, a pained exhale seethed through grit teeth.

Oof...unfortunately.

With that question satisfactorily answered, Devon’s mind focused on the next.

Where am I?

With his back on cool grass, the unicorn deduced he was some distance from the tower, which he guessed was in the direction of the heavy crumbling noise behind him.

Opening his eyes, he peered upward, the brilliant aurora that blanketed Canterlot and the surrounding countryside greeting him in thick glowing wisps of crystalline jade, teal, and cyan. The slow plodding steps of ponies silhouetted in the distance, their jaws as open as their eyes, came into focus through the dissipating stone fog. They too were all looking up.

They were looking up to her aurora.

To her sky.

She did this.

Luna...she did this.

The night she wished for.

The night so brilliant, so beautiful, she would sign her soul to Ghasen to have everypony talk about it for generations.

The night, to last forever...

He found his attention going back to the aurora, it was comforting, familiar. If anything, it reminded him of how he felt for that fleeting second when it all seemed worth it in her arms, in her warmth, but this comfort came sincerely. It was like she was still there, wrapped around his shoulders and...

Where’s Luna?!

The question hit with a sudden shock, the aurora suddenly dissipating. Above Canterlot the embers of her fleeting nocturne peeled away, retreating to a clear night sky dominated by the moon and vast sea of stars.

But the moon...it was different.

Yet somehow familiar.

It bore a new shade and tone, but one that didn’t identify as alien to the bookkeeper’s memory. It was no longer wreathed in the pure, cool light that he had loved in the past two years since Luna’s freedom from exile.

Now, it shone in a dull...somber...

...Cobalt.

Devon remembered that hue.

It was the shade that he grew up with, his constant companion in lonely foalhood nights.

The moon shimmered again, a blotchy pattern, still fresh in Equestria’s memory, returned. The Mare in the Moon stared down over Canterlot, to Devon, its eye squarely focused on him.

I have thee.

Chapter 11: Sunrise

Illustration by Vest.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Breathing freedom due, in failure’s confines,
Hope should stand true, yet undermines.
Lost to the moon’s light, he missed all signs,
Memory takes flight, the sunrise shines.

_____

___

Chapter 11

Sunrise

Dust.

Muffling the ricocheting shouts and cries across the moonlit knolls of the Canterlot statue garden, the thick sheet of opalescent mist descended from the settling cacophony. Each aching groan of fatigued ire, each rustling of dragging armor, the confused back and forth of ponies nickering and muttering in disoriented ramblings, it all attempted to permeate through the dust.

It all diminished. Suppressed. Suffocated.

It all fell into the thick air, powerless to carry through, all sound thumping in comatose droning heaps in a single low note.

That note.

Low. Monotone. Confining.

Comforting.

Gray.

“You miss it.” An orange hoof prodded against his aching shoulder. Gina leaned in closely, exhaling deeply. “That look in your eye.”

Ghasen tilted his chin downward from the featureless aether. “I don’t know what you’re-” He turned his head to her, but stopped mid-motion, catching himself halfway to eye contact. He blinked heavily, rolling his head back forward. Opening his eyes, the soft unchanging note of stifled sound filled his ears again, the gentle embrace of stone comfort crept up his body once more in a vestigial reflex.

“I know,” Gina’s voice cut through again beside him. “I miss it sometimes.”

“Aye, yes,” Ghasen slowly let the words seep out, not thinking them though, not letting them break his immersion into the cold thickness drifting around him. “‘Tis amazin’, really, that something ‘ere so quiet be such wondrous company.”

The orange unicorn nodded, slowly turning away from him to face the sky. A break in the dust cracked open through the morning’s teal light, and from high above, a single eye from the moon’s surface looked back upon her.

The projected image of the Mare in the Moon pierced through to her heart in a jolt of old memory, the last sight before she too made acquaintances with the same companion Ghasen reminisced over. An enraged Sun Princess, a column of blinding energy washing over her, a curtain of gray blurring over her eyes before pinching shut around the last blades of light permeating around the lunar projection above. That memory, how it held on.Like reliving an old dream in real life, the moon disappeared, blurring over in a curtain of gray.

She understood the universe seemed to conspire as one, doing everything in its power to deliver an unmistakable metaphor for how badly things had gotten. But her heart still pounded, blood surged through her body in rapid pulses, and she just needed a moment to wrap her mind around it all.

The featureless expanse around her provided the desired solace in bounty.

“Tell me,” Gina dug a forehoof into the cold grass, feeling the numbing cold of dew lapping up her leg. “Tell me, what was it like for you?”

“A millennium in its embrace, you ask?” Ghasen chuckled lightly, then tilted his head away. The smile disappeared from his face. Not a decibel of pride came forth. “Truly, truly fell in love with it, I had.”

“Me too.” No wait. She seized her breath, surprised to see how quickly she was to share the same experience. Yet it was out. She hoped her old fiance could at least pick up on the same revelation. She hoped he understood. She had always wanted to know that he was capable, that he was able to open his heart to something else, and...

And...

...Move on.

That he found the ability, the gift to just...

...Move on.

She softened her voice. “Me too,” she repeated.

An old yellow hoof reached through the air.

An orange shoulder let it rest.

“Me too,” she closed her eyes, letting her mind convince itself that a piece of her old gray friend was still clinging to her shoulder, pulling her closer, tighter, stronger.

The comfort came in abundance.

Her eyes shot open, “I still hate you.” She swat the hoof off her neck.

The comfort came in the gray.

She trot forward, but her legs strangely buckled and gave way beneath her. The adrenaline was wearing off, the events that transpired within the Canterlot statue garden started to coalesce into legible imagery in her recent memory, and the ringing in her ears subsided.

Sound started permeating through more clearly, and the cozy tendrils of gray air dissipated in thin apparitions. She shook her mane, a fleeting drape of dust unlatched and fluttered into a sooty aura around her head, the swirling particulates illuminating against the morning moon’s light.

The moon.

She could clearly see the moon.

It was at that moment that a sharp sting of looming dread fell onto her. She couldn’t see the moon earlier. It was concealed. It was blocked out. It was masked by the shadowed silhouette of the archive’s tower.

But now in its place, a curtain of moonlight poured over her, unhindered by what was standing in its way.

Gone.

“De-...Devon?”

The tower was completely gone.

“Dev’s!?”

* * * * *

A succession of fluttering carried through the narrow crevices of toppled masonry. Trailed by a cascade of green and teal light, it spun and spiraled upward, trying to follow the maze of musty light crackling above. The hummingbird narrowed itself on its approach, flittering wildly in a fast upwards lunge to a hairline fracture beaming with luminance through the fallen architecture. It quickly unfolded, the aged parchment pulling taught in the Glyph’s paisley aura, and sailed between the cracks as a single flat sheet into the cold morning mist.

Glyph twirled upwards in a swelling of breeze, reforming back into the origami hummingbird.

Glyph knew he was down there.

But somewhere between the soft landing on the grass under a shimmering aurora blasting across the sky, and a storm of bricks raining over them as they scurried for shelter, the bookkeeper went rushing back into the settling ruins.

Something about a saddlebag.

Something about notifying Gina he was okay.

Lowering its head, the Glyph cast as much of its energy into those wings, beating feverishly through the hovering dust to hopefully locate-

“Dev’s!?”

...An orange unicorn.

Not even ten haunches from where he popped up from.

Glyph chirped excitedly in good fortune, making quick excited spins around Gina as she clawed at the piled blocks. Her magic scooped and lurched against the masonry as she gripped them, pushing them aside and releasing them nonchalantly behind her.

“Dev’s, c’mon where’d you get off to,” Gina muttered desperately, seizing loads of rock into her magic and tossing it aside, “if you wind up dead under some rock, I’m gonna kill ya.” Another scoop of debris fell aside in a tumult of noise, kicking up dust that left the unicorn in a coughing fit.

Glyph, darted to the side, avoiding the tumbling debris in a quick swoop beside her. The unicorn jumped back in surprise, then softened her expression upon seeing the familiar gatekeeper hovering beside her.

“Glyph!” She smiled, then paused, feeling a pained grimace creeping up over her. “I don’t know if I should assume you both survived, or if you’re the only one who...” She paused, shutting her eyes tightly. “Just...” She lightened her tone, certain she wasn’t ready for either the relief or bite of knowing, “...Don’t tell me how he is, just show me where.”

The hummingbird suddenly looped upward, then plunged through the narrow gaps in the rubble.

Gina looked downward, watching the green light throbbing downwards through the shadows. She immediately hooked her forehooves after Glyph, her magic clenching and helping lift the piles of stone aside. Greens and cyans danced before her, chirping encouragingly, driving her to dig faster and more strenuously.

A dull rumble permeated from beneath her, her rear legs bumping downward as the ground shifted under natural gravity. She stepped back, but could only pull herself onto a toppled section of column before the whole pile dipped downward as a single slab of clutter. It slid into a steep angle, pulling the unicorn under the floor into a thick cushion of billowing detritus.

Orange torch light danced around her, lighting up a narrow passageway that tilted at a nauseating angle. While mostly intact, the whole room was warped and skewed by the collapsing tower’s crushing fall.

She cleared her lungs, rising slowly to her hooves. Gina’s ears suddenly perked up, and she locked her body still upon hearing more stones shifting behind her. Turning apprehensively, she spotted a hazy figure rummaging through the tower’s ruin, obscured by rolling clouds of dust.

The figure shoved a rock aside with a foreleg...despite the horn in its silhouette.

Gina smiled.

Only one pony would do that.

“Dev’s! Thank Celestia yer alright!” Rushing towards him, the mare expected him to at least turn to meet her, maybe open some sort of embrace, perhaps an obligatory Great Celestia you’re alive, I thought you were a goner, I’ll never leave your side again oh my best friend ever!

Would’ve been nice.

But all Devon did was shift another stone, speaking as if Gina were creating an unnecessary distraction. “Good, you’re here right on time, look can you help me here? We need to find the saddlebag, we need to get back down in there.”

Right on time?

Was he just...expecting her to return and spontaneously Deus ex Machina through a collapsing wall to help him find his stuff? He was just as bad as Gha-...

...Oh.

Heh.

Classic Bookmark.

“Uh..Dev’s?” Gina balked. Watching him, she beheld raw, shell-shocked panic in the charcoal unicorn’s face and movements. “Dev’s what do ya mean? Why? Ya did it, ya saved everything, right?”

“No I didn’t! Luna...” he gasped, the very act of vocalizing the fact causing him to flinch in pain. “Luna got sent back to the moon. I don’t know what happened, but I know it was something I did. We’ve got to fix it.” Devon allowed the tiniest pause in his search. “She saved me and I let her down, Gina! You’re going to help me, right?”

“Uh of course, Dev’s,” Gina respond after only a moment of stunned stammering. “Ya know I’d never ditch out on ya, I owe ya that much. So where’d the bag go?”

From behind them, a pair of heavy hooves slammed to an elevated poise. “You mean THIS bag?” An arc of black motioned upward, carrying a sound of rustling canvas and jangles.

Great.

No growl nor howl nor skittering of a thousand scorpions. It just had to be...

“So.” Jangled the Captain.

“So...” Gina groaned, slowly turning towards the black-coated stallion emerging from the dense haze.

“So!” The Captain sneered, dropping the bag at his forelegs. “Here she is again, a face I can’t forget. Little miss Discord thief.” He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. “Or as Princess Celestia would probably call you, that wretched minion of chaos who drops trains onto Canterlot Council meetings.”

“Wait,” Devon held a hoof up before a furrowed brow, “You dropped a train on-”

“No!” Gina gawked, shooting a defensive look at Devon. “It...well for starters it was a caboose. And secondly,” she took a long step forward to Stormblade. “This bag doesn’t belong to you it belongs to this fellow. And if you don’t-”

“Evidence.”

Gina cleared her throat, seeking some telltale expression to Devon for what he was insinuating. “Uh...” Devon shrugged. Thanks for the help. “Evidence that...” Gina attempted, “...that this is our stuff?”

“Oh, no no no,” Stormblade laughed, pulling the bag close to his chest. “I’m sure of that. I mean...evidence evidence. As in...this bag is now evidence! And it is being confiscated for analysis of the crime scene!”

Crime scene?

“Crime scene!?” the orange unicorn again sought some sort of helpful expression from Devon, but his equally confused glare lent no favors. “Where!?”

“Right here!” The Captain slowly paced around the edge of the collapsed room, dragging his hoof along the sagging walls. “Let’s just say a little hummingbird told me everything. The stars. The contracts. The gift of irresponsible quantities of power to Nightmare Moon!”

A hummingbird? Devon wasn’t certain where he was coming up with talking hummingbirds. The only ones he knew of were Glyph and...and...the emblem on the cover of....

...Oh tail dander.

“This whole archive that you and your cohort, what was it...Bookweight? Bookend? Book...” He peered straight into Devon. “...Mark?”

Devon craned his neck back, his teeth clenching together. “The journal.”

“Ah,” Stormblade flicked an open hoof to the side, a satisfied smile unfurling across his muzzle. “Bookmark it was! That must be her name, and you must know her.”

Wait, her?

“Yes, you Bookmark,” Stormblade straightened his neck upwards, returning eye contact on Gina. “You. Oh you put up a good poker face, yes you do.” He motioned his jaw to the side. “Too bad your friend gave you away just now when I said your name.” An obsidian hoof cracked forward, pointing right at Devon. “Thanks, kid, your lack of initiative makes my job so much easier!”

Gina spat, and with a quick turn, flicked her tail towards the Captain. “You are a fool of fools! What makes you even think I am one you seek!”

“You are making it obvious.”

“You are out of your league, earth pony.”

The Captain lashed back, a grimace scrunching up his face. “You dare to...” He paused, exhaling deeply. The wrinkles subsided back to a relaxed visage. “But of course, it’s so obvious, one with the power to control the stars, to conspire towards bringing about Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago in such a terrible mismanagement of great opportunity...of course would also have the gall to hit me across the brows with a draconequus statue.”

A burst of snickers erupted from Devon’s nostrils. “You actually did that?”

The orange unicorn snuck a sideways glance and a quick nod to him. “It was satisfying.”

“It was also a doozy of a way to say hello,” Stormblade stopped in his pacing, opening the saddlebag before him. “I should’ve known immediately that somepony out to harm Princess Luna again would come back to finish the job, even after a thousand years. But this journal, these artifacts, you’ve been busy recollecting them haven’t you? And now after I stop you here and now, I won’t even need to bring you in. I’ve got all the evidence right here.”

So he was really dead set on doing this.

The orange unicorn ran idea after idea through her head, but couldn’t on the spot figure out a way to persuade the bumbling Captain to hoof over the bag except with force. While his obsession with their initial encounter in the statue garden clearly weighed heavily upon his memory, no doubt a lingering scar on his pride, she too couldn’t help but feel a percolating desire to put him in his spot.

Easy, gal.

“You...!”

Easy.

“You are...way beyond mistaken,” Gina sighed, choking down the bloodlust coursing through her veins. “I see that you’ve done a lot of work, been through quite a bit, and...and...” Empathy failed to come easily to her. “Maintained your poise.” Compliments, even less so. “But for the last time,” Gulp. “Sir.” Ow. “My bag please.”

“Evidence.”

And snap.

“Fine!” Gina growled, lowering her head. A shimmer grew to life around her horn, a thick orange glow crackled from the piling debris that slid through the room. “You want evidence!? Then don’t forget...” An explosive crash rocked the room, flinging a solid barrier of scattering masonry to the opposite side. “...the accomplice!”

A battered luggage car tumbled into the room, a sporadic flurry of orange telekinesis surging around it.

Devon fell back, tripping over his own tail. “Eh-hyeh heh, Gina? This plan of your’s-”

“WHAT!?”

Yeah. Argue with a mare with eyes glowing like hot coals while swinging a train over her head. Real good idea there. “N-n-nev...er-r m-”

“Dev’s,” Gina seethed, summoning the very last bit of patience forth. “I’ll hold him off. Just get out of here, I don’t want ya caught up in this. I’ll find ya after all this okay?”

“Gina...no.” He peered to the Captain. “He’s an idiot, he’s a bully, but he’s not our problem.” He could swear, the morning moonlight against his back suddenly felt...warmer. “We gotta get the bag, that’s all, let this one be.”

“I know Dev’s!” Seethe. Long breath. “I know.” Exhale. She turned back to the Captain, lowering her shoulders. “He’s just...old business from before.”

The charcoal unicorn’s voice cracked. He couldn’t believe this. “Old...what do you mean old business!?”

“Just trust me okay?”

“I trust you’re about to do something really brazen and excessive!” Devon slowly paced backwards, readying to bolt up the debris ramp back to the surface. “But fine! Fine!” His forelegs skittered over the loose ruins, clamoring upwards with progressively uncertain hoofing. “Do it your way! When you come to your senses, don’t come crying to me about how nopony ever trusts you!”

Gina turned and looked over her shoulder with fiery eyes. “I got your back always, ya know that!” A response did not come forth, only her words echoing off the lone debris ramp. “Ya know I do! Right!?”

More silence.

A heavy hoofstep followed by jangles banged from across the room. “You know,” the Captain began, “instead of politely waiting for your ‘friend’ to betray you and leave you behind like this, I could’ve probably applied a bear’s chiropractor’s worth of justice into your face.” He pretended to ignore her savage snarl through her grit teeth, waving a forehoof aside. “But you know, a stallion of honor and class like myself, I feel it courteous to give you the first-”

The caboose flung through the air, torpedoing straight for the Captain. Leaping backwards, he extended his forelegs while feeling time descend to a screeching crawl. In a graceful arc, he aligned his body with the open rear door of the caboose, feeling the metallic edges grace gingerly around the tips of his mane. The luggage within spiraled and tumbled around him, and he dug his shoulder into a flowery bag to use as a shield to knock aside the others. Still gripping it against his shoulder, the bag smacked into the opposite door, dislodging it open while the luggage within burst out into a flurry of filly clothes.

The Captain spun forward through the flurry of scattering pink linens. “...shot.” A skirt and blouse settled perfectly around him. The Captain groaned, shaking the skirt from around his hips. Eh, good enough. Aside from the dismount putting him in a mare’s attire, he felt he’d succeeded at asserting his awesome nature to this usurping aggressor.

“My word, Captain,” Gina groused. “Are we off to a tea party to play with Princess dolls?”

“They’re not dolls, they’re-!” Quip. Quip. It’s just a quip, she couldn’t possibly know about... “I mean...” The Captain made a mental note to omit that from the record.

He dug his forelegs into the dusty rubble and bucked them upward, showering Gina’s face in a choking cloud of granite dust. “Show me your power, Bookmark!”

Caught flat-hoofed, Gina wrenched backwards, dragging her foreleg across her face with a startled shriek. “I’m...NOT...Book-GUH!” Before she could finish answering, an obsidian fetlock grabbed her square around her shoulders, throwing her to the ground.

She rolled into the fall, vaulting off her rear hooves back into an upright stance. “Do you insist on bringing this to yourself!?”

The Captain smiled wryly. “Bring this on myself? You just threw a train at me.”

“Just the caboose!”

“You assaulted an officer of Captain Stormblade’s Elite Royal Guard of Captain Stormblade!”

“Assaulted!?” Gina groaned, “I’m hardly even trying.” She tilted her head away, rolling her eyes. “This is more like...like an improv combat readiness exercise.”

“You’re stalling. Enough with the semantics,” the Captain reached into the bag, pulling the brass gauntlet into clear view. “Show me your true power!”

Gina lunged forward to the Captain, making a wild reach for it.

“Oh hoh,” he quickly jumped to the side of the room, kicking open a door behind him. The pink glow of magma crept through the opening, the room on the other end now a collapsed well to a fiery pit. “So you too know what this gauntlet is for.”

Gina’s horn lit up again, gripping the luggage car firmly in the air behind her. “Drop it!”

Oh, of all the sweetest circumstances, how his adversary was just feeding him his one liners. “As you wish,” he carelessly motioned his eyes upwards, daintily flinging the gauntlet to the pink magma fifty haunches below.

The luggage car slammed firmly on the ground, and an orange bolt of sprinting hooves slammed into Stormblade, knocking him aside. Righting back to balance, he peered through the door, watching the orange unicorn make the suicidal dive after the artifact.

He could feel it in his bones, she was holding back, covering up, trying not to reveal her true identity to him. But he was convinced she would be the one to bring Luna to him, she was the one the journal had instructed to seek out, the Bookmark to find to bring Luna under control.

Stormblade set his test in motion.

“Show your true self,” Stormblade muttered to himself, his eyes hanging over the pit’s door. “Show your power.”

Gina straightened her body, keeping a firm eye on the descending gauntlet clattering from rock ledges to brick wall. The dizzying miasma of pink magma churned below, the heat steadily increasing against her chest.

Fifty haunches.

She heard the brass gauntlet’s metallic whine as it sliced through the air.

Forty haunches.

She narrowed her eyes onto it, her horn igniting to life.

Thirty haunches.

Orange telekinesis wrapped around it, aligning the gauntlet parallel to her.

Twenty haunches.

She reached out her forehoof, and pulling her head back, slung the gauntlet firmly in place. A marigold glow pelted and crackled around her. The magic plumed in a blinding orange light.

Ten haunches.

Shutting her eyes, the bookkeeper’s words echoed through her mind once more. Devon was right. This was all unnecessary. What was she even doing? All she had to do was get the bag. She didn’t need to-

Zero.

...

A pink splash glittered outward.

The Captain looked on, a sudden dip in his chest falling against his ribs.

She...she....Did she just...?

The flecks of scattering magma rested and ebbed back into a liquid flow.

“I...I sent her to her...” His voice cracked, and his ears immediately reacted to the alien quivers emanating from his throat. He coughed, pulling his chest out in a rigid posture. “She failed.” Stormblade groaned. “Pathetic.”

He breathed in heavily, looking around the room in a slight panic. Nopony. Nopony saw this. Nopony would know. He looked over the door’s hinges again, the pink glow staring back. He couldn’t...

“What a waste.” He couldn’t look... “Bookmarks. Hah.” He couldn’t let this setback hold him down. He shook his head, cracking his neck, trying to dislodge the festering depression making itself known in his heart.

Or dislodging the affirmation he even had a heart to empathize with such blatant evil.

No.

She did this to herself.

Her friend even said she was being brazen, and she befell a brazen pony’s destiny, just like the Bookmarks always were according to the architect’s journal. There will be a lesson somewhere in this. Somewhere. He assured himself, he’d pen a lesson from such a senseless act of careless foalishness.

He looked over the saddlebag, and with a quick kick of a forehoof slid the journal out onto the floor. “Got a plan B?” The journal slowly shuddered to life, subtle wisps of violet threading around the cover’s hummingbird emblem. “I think that orange unicorn mare you were having me chase after...” The journal suddenly lurched upwards in a purple swirl of magic, hanging apprehensively over him. “She dove into the dragon’s swimming hole, so to speak.”

The journal spun into an aggressive angle, quivering menacingly above Stormblade.

“Nopony could live through a bellyflop like that.”

With a succession of twirls, the hummingbird emblem on the cover fired to life, illuminating with the rage of the imbued spirit within. Stormblade raised a hoof in front of his face, uncertain of why the journal was even reacting in such a manner, but unable to bring forth any words to pacify it. Nothing to do but clench his eyes shut, and prepare for a lot of bruising.

Suddenly, a searing heat cast across the Captain’ back. Pinching open a shaking eyelid, he saw a pink glow dancing across the floor, his own shadow flickering and weaving across the masonry in front of him. He blinked, and looking up, saw the journal come to a rest and slowly descend.

Whirling across his back legs, the Captain flopped onto his back. A large pink orb of magma loomed through the door over the pit. A single point of light converged into a bright white beam, and shot out into the room.

Widening into a thick glowing beam, the light pulled apart a widening portal through the magma. The flickering energy of a marigold shield shone through the portal, repulsing the drooping lava into a protective cocoon around it. An orange hoof adorned in a brass gauntlet extended through the portal, glimmering with brilliant surges of churning marigold magic.

Gina quickly leapt through the door, the orb of pink magma falling to the floor. A ghastly fireball erupted behind her, casting her into a silhouette against a thousand magenta daggers of light. Only the energized jewels of the gauntlet and her eyes stood out glowing against her shadowed figure.

Stormblade looked on in awe. “That’s...” Impossible? Incredible? “No, no, no, no, no...” Not fair. Definitely not fair. “You’re...” History? Toast? “You’re not supposed to have better entrances than me!” Ah. He had his own story to write. Of course.

The orange unicorn raised the gauntlet beside her face, narrowing her eyes. “As I was saying. My bag, please.”

The Captain paced around to her side. “Fine,” he continued. “Round two.”

“Three.” Gina sighed coolly.

“Wha-I, er-ff-yes.” The Captain sprinted quickly towards her. “Three!”

A blast of searing orange sliced the air in front of her. The Captain rolled into a dodge, feeling the heat singe the tip of his tail.

“Stop!” Gina called out. “I said-Aieep!”

In a rapid recovery, the Captain immediately righted mid-dodge on his rear hooves, and propelled himself in the air. He tackled firmly against the orange unicorn, pinning her to the ground.

“I said, stop!” Gina pulled her neck to the side, but immediately reeled inward feeling obsidian hooves tugging against the gauntlet. “You are mistaken!”

“You are deceiving me!” The Captain lashed back, digging his shoulder against her collar. “All along you have been hiding your identity, Bookmark!”

“I’m not-gyuugh!” Gina struggled further, trying to pull the gauntlet free from his grip.

“Let go!” He tugged harder against the brass adornment, unable sense any bit of give. “Cease this resistance!” Lurching his spine upwards, he exerted all his weight to his hooves in a final tug. His grip unlatched, flinging his fetlock upwards toward her face.

“I’m not a Bookm-pyaafgh!” A black blur cracked against her cheek, turning her vision into a momentary swirl.

The journal bolted into the air behind the Captain.

“Y-y-you...” Gina couldn’t believe it. All this talk of honor and dignity and being a hero. “You’d suckerbuck a mare with your own bare hoof!?” Her horn illuminated quickly, a surge of marigold exploding from her foreleg.

Stormblade clenched his teeth, pulling the offending hoof close to him. “Well,” he stammered in defense, “You made me do th-KHYACKT!!”

The corner of a swinging caboose immediately flung him like a rag doll to the opposite edge of the room.

Shaking her head, she held a hoof against her cheek. The stinging bit deep. She hoped it didn’t bruise too badly. She knew what she signed up for, she knew what she’d gotten herself into, and she always considered herself above the trivial nuances of gender roles and getting special dainty-wainty treatment because mares are allegedly delicate creatures of love and nurturing. But. Seriously. A Captain striking a mare? In the face?

Even a wretched stallion like Ghasen wouldn’t have even thought to...oh wait, no. No, no no no!

Gina’s vision sharpened to clarity with a heavy blink, showing the journal fully ablaze in purple magic. “Stop! No!” Gina called out to the journal, but the enchanted tome raged with deaf vengeance. Whatever shred of Ghasen remained in that tome, it was a shred of him from long ago, a long-standing piece that never had the luxury to fall in love with something else.

While she’d been toiling in the comforting embrace of The Gray, the tome remained with nothing but the imbued mission of saving Gina from the stars. And after a millennium of festering on its own failure, the enchantment acted as expected upon seeing its beloved getting so disgracefully smacked by another stallion.

Stormblade squealed in panic, darting to the side as the tome smashed through the wall behind him. The explosion of masonry and bricks jettisoned out against the Captain’s back, pressing him square on the floor.

Immediately, the ground beneath him in a purple bolt, flopping him upwards in a careening twist of flailing limbs. The Captain skittered to his hooves, and without any semblance of balance, leaned aside in a panicked trot.

A third explosion of purple rocketed through the wall, launching the Captain head under haunches to the pink wall of flames surrounding a black menacing doorway. He landed collar first beside Gina, a thread of scattering detritus lapped against her from his heavy impact

The Captain stood up, wiping a foreleg across his muzzle, a cloud of dust fluttering from his nostrils. He lowered his head, sneering at the journal, slowly backing away from it in defensive posture to the open door’s hinges. A sliding of rear hooves ushered a quick flinch as Stormblade regained his balance, his rear legs overhanging the long fall to pink magma below.

Gina tried to scurry aside and pull the gauntlet out from beneath her. Yet the journal ascended, readying a final blow to cast the Captain through the door in a massive strike. It rose above the ramp of debris leading into the room, cast against sky light pouring through the ceiling.

And through the ceiling, Luna peered down at her.

Show me your power, Bookmark.

The journal flung forward in a blazing torpedo of solid energy.

Gina propelled upwards, “Don’t!” aligning herself in its path.

In a sudden screech, the journal lurched back, attempting to slow itself and divert away from its beloved. Gina scrunched her brow, and angled her horn at the charging tome.

A sharp crack echoed across the walls. In a moment locked in time, Gina’s horn pierced through the hummingbird emblem, the journal impaled clean through and smacking heavily against her forehead. A halo of sparks and orange magic embers blasted outwards.

“Eee-yaiee!” She yelped loudly in pain, turning and flopping against the floor. A clatter of brass banged and rolled to stillness, leaving a muffled silence enveloping the room.

Stormblade peered over to her, realizing that his adversary had just saved him. He...Could he...

Great.

How was he going to rewrite that in his favor? This hero’s journey thing was going so well for him before she had to come in and-

“Stop.” Gina softly cried, curling up tightly against herself on the floor. “I told you,” she sniffed lightly, “I told you to stop.”

Despite his greatest efforts, he could clearly see she was taking all the honor for herself. And he...no, he wouldn’t let her out-honor him. He slowly paced over to her, picking up the gauntlet on the way.

She quivered as her hooves rested on the book speared by her horn. “Eeh...” the orange quietly whimpered, then pushed upwards. “Aaackt!” She cried out, her whole body lurching and tensing as the tome flopped to the floor beside her.

He’d heard stories.

Oh, how the Captain had heard stories.

He knew it happened very rarely, but when it did, nothing in the world hurt more.

A jagged crack ran down the length of the unicorn’s horn. A thick glittering drip of leaking magic fluttered out of it in a slow stream. He held up the gauntlet, then back at Gina. Holding it up in his obsidian hoof, he compared its size to the size of the unicorn’s hoof.

With a weak shimmer of purple, the tome slowly lit to a dull glow. It attempted to hover, but fell flat with its cover open to one of the few remaining pages within. The Captain peered down to it, noting that the markings etched on the gauntlet matched the markings of the journal looking up at him from the floor.

The sound of parchment on dirt scratched rhythmically. The journal scoot in timid weak presses towards the fallen unicorn. Unable to lift itself, it dragged, finally aligning up beside her, the dissipating ward bleeding from the torn cover struggling to be in her presence, that final shred of Ghasen’s old troubled soul reaching out to her.

Her eyes shot open, “I still hate you.” She swat the book off her neck.

She could feel the pain building in her head, knowing that when the adrenaline wore off, she was going to be facing the migraine of a lifetime. She heard the dragging scooching of the journal again, the tome making another approach to her. Reflexively, she started to wrap a telekinetic field around it to push it away, but a crippling jolt of luminance fractured across her eyes. Her horn rebelled furiously, seeping magic exuding before her in a thick glistening sheet.

She gasped, dropping her head back down. She waited for the throbbing to recede, but as the discomfort made way for sentience, the telltale nudge of a leathery cover pressed against her cheek.

“Get off of me.” She whimpered. “Get off of me.” She exhaled. “Get off of me...” She pinched her eyes shut. “Get off of me...!” She slapped the journal from her cheek. “Get off of me!” She pulled herself up to her front hooves. “Get off of me!” She clenched the journal. “GET OFF OF ME!” She twisted her foreleg back.

“GET OFF OF ME!”

The journal warped and unfurled from the unicorn’s throw.

“GET OFF OF ME!”

She shouted towards the careening trail of purple magic.

“GET OFF OF ME!”

Her cries echoed off the pink magma below.

Get off of me!

True power.

Stormblade asked for it.

He thought he was expecting too much.

But now...

“So, I...”

Now, as he watched her sink back onto the floor, the disorienting jolt of her injury weighing her down, the Captain saw that true character, true power...came from sacrifice.

Sacrifice of the self. Sacrifice of one’s past. Sacrifice of that which defines who they were, even if it was from a thousand years ago.

Yes.

Yes he could work with this.

If there was a lesson from all this to be had for his story, it was that ponies could learn the true value of ‘power’ from the virtue of ‘sacrifice.’

And this mare was going to learn of his power from his sacrifice for her.

He was going to sacrifice his due glory this day to heal her!

Brilliant! A perfectly fitting justification for an early defeat to define the hero’s journey!

After all, she was no use to him injured, and would need to heal first. If he was to help her, he would win the enemy’s trust. And maybe if he could convince her that he’s evil like she is, that he wants to use that power that she has too, she’d help him rescue Luna and bring his fairytale to fruition later on to reveal his sincere benevolence all along!

“Well, I’ll give you credit.” Stormblade tapped her shoulder with a fetlock. “This little improv combat readiness exercise?” A glistening red iris looked up to him in irritation. “Best one I’ve had, compliments for upgrading to a train, much better than the statue you used on our first rough and tumble.”

She rolled her head back against the floor. Apparently, there was something more disgraceful than suckerbucking a mare across the face...

“Your form has improved, but still has a lot of space for better things.”

...He was critiquing her while she was down.

“I was a bit disappointed the first time around, seemed too short and jarring, but I blame myself mostly for not expecting to be kissed by a stone draconequus so voraciously.”

If I help her, she’ll be certain to help me. Maybe even...oh would Luna hold it against me if I scrounged up a bit of romance with this firebrand on the journey? I always wanted to romance his enemy, my story could have that chapter.

How his mind reeled so joyously at the prospect of building up her good emotions, then rejecting her to prove to Luna how much he truly loved her instead of this secondary orange character. His story was writing itself beautifully.

“You’re...such...a jerk...”

“I do thank you kindly,” the words grinded out of him behind a forceful smile, “for saving my life so. Come now, I’ll see to it you are taken care of and healed, you’ll come to find that I’m really not such a bad guy, especially when you understand why I’m going to need...” The gauntlet slid to a rest in the saddlebag. “...your help in particular.”

* * * * *

He could still feel the tendrils of stone dust gracing against his nostrils.

Weary and narrow-eyed, a navy mane swung in slow rhythmic cantor with a fatigued droop. He was unsure if the numbness coursing through him was from the biting night air or the scalding splash of conflicted emotions that washed over him earlier, but his only prerogative lay in each advancing hoofstep forward through the back alleyways of Canterlot.

He could still feel the ache where armored hooves pulled him away from the tower’s scattered remnants. He was only halfway back to the Canterlot palace before some command from higher up demanded a full withdrawal from the garden, something about clearing way for a VIP being extracted from the premises.

Yeah. He lived embedded in Canterlot politics long enough to know that VIP was just a tourist-friendly euphemism for prisoner. They thought they had a “VIP”.

Wouldn’t be long before they realized they had the wrong pony.

A rusting from an adjacent alley snapped Devon’s focus back into place. Canterlot was waking up. He needed to keep making distance.

Breathing heavily, his lungs reached feverishly to the wind before him, demanding further portions of oxygen to replenish from the soreness. He’d not run so fast in his adult years, didn’t even know that the short charcoal legs that once carried his foalhood frame in flight from bullies and life’s bountiful unpleasantries of so long ago still retained the memory to flee from the statue garden.

He could still hear the cries of confusion.

In the awkward silence harbored within the narrow alleys of lower Canterlot, each interloping kiss of wind would transform within the creaking architecture and draping linens overhead, twisting into a gnarled cry that pinged and tore into the charcoal unicorn. He thought better of his own mind, thought it would be able to overcome such silly metaphorical interpretations, but each slow plod forward carried him no further from the frackus within his own mind, leaving him equally as downtrodden as he was on the previous step, the previous breath, the previous minute, the previous hour...

He could still...

Shaking his head, he quickened his pace. Home was just a few blocks away. Nothing that a rapid trot would take off his mind. Right?

He could still see what happened...

The ground beneath him blurred. Gritting his teeth, he lifted his head up, feeling a peculiar heaviness at the corner of his eye. He cut through the air, causing a stirring of alien-sounding wind to lap and shear across his face, intruding into his hearing with uncanny resemblance to the previous hollow yawn of wind that greeted him when the smoke cleared.

He could still see what happened...

When the wisps of stone smoke cleared in the pre-dawn light, revealing the low moon in the sky, the hush of soldiers around him only amplifying the haunting weight of what happened...

...To her.

Reigning above, the moon hung between the looming barriers of houses and shops. What once hang perched as a symbol of guidance and company in younger years, the ever present companion of a youth who ensured it remain in his peripheral vision as an anchor to the real world while delving into his books, now returned in a radically new shade of blue.

Her.

Now nothing more than another pale blue reminder of his failings, a pale blue manifestation of his own inability to properly pull a plan together, another pale blue dip in his own life. How characteristic it all was, how it coalesced to yet another turn toward the typical.

Pale blue.

He hated pale blue.

Intruding from between the brick walls, a narrow lick of jade light stretched across the alley. He paused, tilting his orange irises into view, seeing the main Canterlot avenue bustling before him with frantically scattering soldiers. Earth ponies and pegasi traversed in tight regiments, all looped up in the panicked chaos that gripped the whole city.

He peered towards the moon, his former guardian, his long-standing childhood friend, the only entity even willing to lend patient council to his worries and tribulations, and a face he couldn’t bear to look at anymore. He did this to her. He left her all alone, back to feeling abandoned once more. Instead of sticking it out and thinking through a proper solution, he just acted on impulse, thinking he was doing the right thing, thinking he was freeing her, only to plummet her back into a pale blue prison.

He couldn’t bear to think it.

Pale blue.

No.

He couldn’t bring himself to make the correlation. Not now. No. He’s not...he’s not like...he did what he had to do, there was no other choice. She would understand, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she? Back up on her lunar confines, the Princess of the Night would understand it as one big misunderstanding right?

A sharp clatter of armor shot his attention back into reality, the moon’s facade dipping back into periphery. Devon pulled back, retreating narrowly behind the wall and watching the close shadows of marching soldiers project across the jade lick of luminance in front of him. He remembered how just moments ago, the soldiers were making a formation to surround him, to grab him with the others, and what would they have thought if they saw him in possession of the forbidden artifacts from the lower archive and star chamber?

Ghasen was right.

Even if he fought against his destiny to perpetuate the cycle, the rest of Canterlot would band together in an attempt to pin the blame on him. To blame him as the mastermind who deceived the Princess into going to the archive. To blame him as the overseer that freed Gina, and commanded her to follow along with his plan. Even if in his heart he knew it to be true, Canterlot would not, and if they accused him enough it was only a matter of time until his heart buckled...just like Ghasen’s did under the accusatory bombardment of the stars.

Just like Luna did to herself when she thought her beautiful nights were shunned.

Just like how back in his foalhood, the way his mother tried to keep that pale blue ranch home together, but ultimately succumbed to her own shortcomings brought out and pressured on by-

“Stop,” a deep gravely voice bellowed from the end of the alley. Devon narrowly twisted his head around the corner, spying a black earth pony holding his chest high, the adorning medals atop the excessively ornate coat jangled as he positioned before the regiment. “Turn!” He commanded the line, pulling his chin higher as they turned their backs to the alley.

Hiding wasn’t helping him at all. But hiding was all he could hear his mind screaming at him to do. Whether it was impulse within, a distrust Luna shared with him regarding Canterlot’s bureaucracy, or Ghasen’s troubling insights on the psychological breakdown of being constantly accused, he knew he had to get home and lay low.

Devon quickly crept past the gap, clearing into the other side. From the edge of his eyesight, he saw the tall jangling Captain quickly turn his glance down the alley. Devon sunk his shoulders low, skittering quickly out of sight.

“Hold the line!” the earth pony bellowed. A slow rhythm of jangles crept up from behind him. The charcoal unicorn immediately propped himself against the side of the alley. He shot a glance towards the lick of jade light behind him, only to see the encroaching shadow of the burly captain gradually filling it. Devon found a thin door frame in front of him, and twisted himself vertically into it.

He saw the black officer pony stomp firmly at the edge, peering down both sides of the alley. “Colts,” he sneered. “Disrespectful yearlings.”

A chilling air crept up Devon’s side, almost summoning a shiver, forcing him to cringe and swallow down the reflexive convulsion. He sucked in his breath, letting the breeze pass through him unimpeded. As the caressing air subsided, the frigid sensation receded. Devon exhaled in relief.

Loudly.

“Hyuh?” The burly pony’s attention suddenly shot down the alley at him. He slowly edged forward, his figure sinking into an ominous black silhouette as he dragged himself out of the jade light behind him.

Jangle.

Jangle...

Devon plopped flat against the door frame. He contemplated sliding down to the ground to be less visible, he sought routes ahead to dart in escape, he searched, scanned, pleaded the alley to yield at least some sort of viable solution within hoof’s reach! He looked up to the moon...

And choked on his own throat in the pale blue light.

He did this to her.

He had to face the consequences.

Ghasen was right, it was only a matter of time until the weight of their questions drives him to snap and admit to being somepony else, the somepony they vilify him as. He might as well give up now. Give up now. Give up, turn out with both hooves up in the air.

Yes, I am the one you’re looking for, I am the pony who put Luna back on the moon, and if the bureaucratic hivemind of Canterlot decrees I’m the villain, then hogtie me and hoist my guilty flank off to-

“Stormblade?!” A pegasus called out from above. Devon nudged his attention upward, seeing the winged soldier poking his head over a looming rooftop. “Where’d you get off to?!” The pegasus’ voice mixed relief, shock and dread perfectly.

“I, Jetlag, have been busy working to stop this mess. While you were out ruining the investigation, I was caught in a fight with the very architects of this scheme.”

Devon heard the muffled wind puffing out from a pegasus’ landing. “Really...” Apparently, the pegasus was not quite sold on the story. “Care to fill me in on that, sir?”

“Need to know information, Jetlag, all you need to know is that I’m in command of this search, are there any questions?”

“Plenty, sir.”

“Well, you can just stow them, Private.” Devon could not see, but he could certainly hear the Captain raise his voice to address other guards, presumably. “Investigator Commodore Stormblade is back in command of this operation. We are searching an accomplice, black coat with a blue mane. Consider his magic extremely potent and dangerous.”

Well, aside from the magic potent and dangerous bit, Devon was getting the impression they were talking about him. This wasn’t sounding good.

“Should you encounter him, do not engage, but get me and I’ll take care of anything he has. I’ve already taken down his superior, and she’ll not be any threat to us anymore.”

They got Gina.

“Really, sir?” The cyan pegasus’s voice picked up, caught in honest surprise. “That’s the first bit of good news we’ve had all night. Do you need any guards to cover the palace dungeons, then? She sounds like the type who might be a flight ris-”

“No need for that, Jetlag.”

“Wait...sir what do you mean?”

“I mean there’s no need for you to worry, Jetlag!” Stormblade repeated the words in a powerful shout. The gravely voice barely kicked up over the rising clatter of soldiers continuing their patrol beside them.

“Where is she being held?” Jetstream pressed.

“Recovering in Canterlot Hospital, she had quite a nasty horn injury that needed immediate assistance.”

“What!?” The private’s loud cry of protest provided the perfect cover for Devon to sneak back around to the corner to eavesdrop. “Recovering!?” He snarled, stamping quickly to stare down the pegasus nose to nose. “Of all the...why isn’t she in the deepest holds of the Palace right now for questioning!?”

“Because she is going to be far more valuable to us set free.”

“You said she fought hard against you! You said she threw Discord at you!” His wings puffed out intensely. “Literally!” It wasn’t often he got to use that word in conjunction with something so absurd and still be grammatically correct.

“Very astute, Jetlag,” the Second Captain assured him with a condescending sneer. “But...unicorn with a broken horn. That’s like... pressing assault charges for a foal sneezing on you.”

The pale blue light seemed to augment in intensity, the chilling embrace of frigid moonlight enveloping over Devon’s shoulders as he leaned in for more.

“She can’t use magic.” The officer pony swished a dismissive hoof through the air, chuckling at the private’s worry. “She is an opponent worthy of respect. I’m ensuring she is provided our fastest and best treatment.” He jabbed a hoof into the cyan pegasus’ shoulder. “After her recovery, she’ll come straight for me.” He seethed, turning his gaze back down the alley, forcing Devon to tug himself back into the shadow. “We have something of her’s she’ll be quite familiar with, but make sure she’s comfortable and treated well for now.”

“Sir?”

“Nothing huge.” The officer disappeared back down the sidewalk, the line of soldiers following in step. “Because only she will be able to use it,” he chuckled, “she might want. It. Back.”

The artifacts.

They must be talking about the...oh ponyfeathers.

He didn’t look back.

He must get away, keep low, and do everything in his power to stop himself from hurting anypony else just by existing.

That’s it.

Enough of this fool’s errand, enough!

Enough!

The gauntlet. The echothyst. The contracts.

The stars.

Enough of this!

His heavy breathing coupled with the sweeping night breeze. The gasps and whispers of memories flickered through his tightly clenched eyes.

Enough.

Swerving between two wooden gates, Devon lunged into a cobblestone street, his home finally standing before him. In the early morning’s pale blue glow, it shone and flickered, how he didn’t want to go in, but how it was the only place that would be safe.

They would know soon enough.

They would know to search for him. His only saving grace being that his pursuers knew not of his residence, and how he would have to eventually find a solution by then, yes?

Or...find the gumption to face the music?

A lone light clicked into life upstairs. He heard the concerned calling of a mare inside, her shadow draping across the mango-lit window. “Dev’s?” He heard her voice softly through the chilled air. “Ya’ home yet ‘er wh’ut? I heard that awful racket back in th’garden, ya alright, honey?”

Or...to turn his back on it all, throw himself back in time, and return to how it once was...?

Go back?

“Dev’s!? I knits ya’ somethin’ fuh’ yuh’ big head ta’ wear inna’ cold!”

Go back.

He slunk his neck down, the pale blue moonlight behind now disappearing from his peripheral vision as he slowly made the last leg to in slow fatigued steps to the front door. He swung it open quietly, seeing his mother rounding into the base of the stairs.

How to sum it up. The multiple runs through the deathtraps, the dragons, the golems, the army of statues, playing amateur lawyer with celestial bodies, winning the heart of a Princess only to fling her to the moon...

“Long day.”

Okay, long day, that’ll work. Sure.

“It’s...” The mare cringed, looking at the clock, “...Six er’clock inn’uh mornin’!” She puffed out her chest, clamping her hooves down. “Right now mist’uh, you goes upstairs ‘n getcha some shuts’eye!”

Didn’t have to tell him twice. Without a word, he hauled himself in a hefty drag upstairs to his room. He inhaled deeply, seeing the familiar comfortable retreat greeting him. Books. Bed. Posters. He flung a stack of books off his bed onto the dresser, paying no heed to the teal glint of curious chirping light peeking inquisitively through one of the covers. Everything in there would have to be dealt with, but it would be dealt with later.

Later.

It could all be done...later.

For now, his focus was in mentally falling back, and starting the process of retreating...

Home.

He was home.

Back to the way it was, back to him being a lowly cog in an irrelevant machine. Back to bureaucracy. Oh, bureaucracy. To fade away once more, to diminish beyond the memories of Canterlot’s collective consciousness back into the featureless aether of his former existence. To once again cross that line, and feel at home and comfort in the abundant company that came with such a life. Plopping flat against the bed he breathed out, hoping the pressed exhalation would carry the weight off his shoulders.

Yet. His idealism diminished in a sudden bite of dryness. With his final lick of consciousness before blinking to sleep, Devon coughed, summoning a flickering squall of cobalt memories to the forefront of his consciousness before transitioning into a dream-filled slumber.

He could still feel the tendrils of stone dust gracing against his nostrils.

O - O - O - O - O

One last lullaby.

The charcoal colt was far too old to be sung to at this age, but as is with any mother, she knew something was amiss when it came to her own son. The young unicorn could be read like the very books he clung to his entire foalhood, his attempts to hide them were entirely in vain.

He refused to speak earlier when she kissed him on the forehead. He refused to speak earlier when she tucked him in. He refused to speak earlier when she opened the closet door and found him shivering, clinging to a navy blue blanket in a panicked state of half-asleep, half-awake.

He heard it.

He heard all of it.

He heard them downstairs.

“I understands’ya,” she slowly attempted to reassure him, sliding a forehoof down his cheek. “No need ta’ talk. It’s okay.”

He turned away from her, gripping his forelegs around the sheets and pulling them together in a bunched wad. She lowered her head, resting a forehoof against his shoulder.

Slowly, she sang, the lyrics carrying in purest sincerity for him, in a voice of, and from herself.

“Resteth eyes, sloweth mind.
Blessed day, it has been.
Come tomorrow, you will find,
The sunrise shines once again.”

The unicorn flinched, a high pitched squeak emitting from between his lips. The charcoal colt’s voice quivered and cracked with each quickening exhale. He tried. How he tried. But each breath carried augmenting betrayal, projecting the reality that even at an age when he should be starting to think about fillies, playing rough, and spending all his free time with schoolmates instead of mother, he was anything but tough.

He feared she’d see that he was regressing back to being a meager foal, showing fear and retreat.

She on the other hoof...she feared he was being forced to grow up too fast.

How she yearned to hang onto it a little longer.

Hang on.

A little longer.

Hang on.

“Wander soul, ponder blind,
Carry on, nightly stream.
Leave today far behind,
Lose thyself now in a dream.”

Devon felt a warm breath against the back of his neck. He pulled the sheets closer, only to feel wrapping hooves looping around him. He closed his eyes tight, gritting his teeth, but only felt her squeeze tighter. Hanging on. Like she knew...she knew...

She knew, too.

And he too was scared. But didn’t have to be scared alone. How she nurtured him, gripped him tight, not wanting the moment to fade.

“Worries pass, thoughts unwind...”

He cracked.

“Hopes amass, listen when...”

He cracked and buckled under the constant pressure resting atop him, and immediately swiveled around into her expecting forehooves.

“Come tomorrow...” She quivered, sniffing lightly, “Come...t-tomorrow, a-and..you...f-find...”

He nuzzled deep into her neck as she swayed side to side. Her voice trailed off, and gently kissed the sniffling unicorn on the cheek. She pressed her forehead into his, pausing in the heavy silence hanging over them.

Come tomorrow...

Bearing witness to them.

Come tomorrow...

She knew.

“C-Come tomorrow, and y-you find...”

Devon tried to adjust to slide back under the covers, but her forelegs looped and tugged him even tighter around him. Her cheek pressed against the side of his neck, nuzzling him silently, softly placing a quiet prolonged kiss on his temple. Her lips held on as tightly as her forehooves did, nurturing him, covering him with her warmth. He pulled his neck away from the mare’s tight embrace, turning to look up at her.

Luna smiled back to him. “The sunrise shines, once again.”

O - O - O - O - O

Devon heaved, propping himself from the dream with a startled gasp. “Princess.” He breathed out, looking at the early afternoon sun creeping through his bedroom window. “The sunrise shines.” He looked over to his bedroom window, a pearlescent cascade poured across the floor in a wave of platinum haze. “Home.”

* * * * *

Suffused with purpose, Devon left only a note to his mother that he would be gone for the day. As he galloped down the streets of Canterlot, his focus made the chatter on the streets seem vague and distant. Small snippets occasionally brushed over his ear, rumors and gossip over the wild events of the last night.

“I hear somepony made all the statues MOVE!”

“Well I heard that it was some magic spell gone out of control.”

“Do you believe that Princess Luna got lost in the fight?”

Devon felt oddly disconnected from the mumbling talk that ran through the city. For not only did he know the terrible truth of the events, but he was truly alone in pursuing a solution to it. Guilt filled his thoughts in equal measure as the determination. Yet through it all, a single unsettling notion came through clear.

I have no idea what to do.

“If only I could get back into the tunnels...” he muttered, realizing moments later that he was powerless without the tools. All he still carried from the Archive was the silver pendant that tapped his chest with every step he took. Slowing, Devon tried to assemble the events from his shattered memory. Piece by piece, he adjusted what he knew with his best guesses, and continually fell short of an answer. Clearly by breaking of Luna’s contract, the unicorn set an event into motion that led to her return to the moon.

That was the only answer he could come with as he hit another random corner of Canterlot, his pace and destination unknown with the turmoil in his head still roiling.

Think, Devon.

It did not seem like Luna knew of the consequence either. If she did, why not warn him? Why not chastise him in his dreams? Every question birthed others, and more desperation soon joined the questions. What was most infuriating of all was how close he seemed to the answer. Ghasen warned him of consequences; he knew they were there but could not name the specifics. What did he know? Where did he go? As the questions spiraled into new ones faster and faster, the charcoal unicorn’s mind slowed, bogged down in despondent guilt.

This is my fault.

I did this. It’s the only explanation. I’m-

“No!” Devon barked aloud, drawing a few surprised looks from Canterlot pedestrians. “Er...sorry,” he muttered as he lowered his voice back to an inner level.

I’m the only one who can fix this. And I’m alone on this one. I’ve got this far. First thing I need...is some kind of clue. Maybe there’s something still at the tower!

Turning sharply, Devon vaulted down a side street on a course that meandered eventually towards the statue garden. Each step towards his goal brought out more plans. It was all forming perfectly in his mind now. Glyph would be a huge help, letting him relive the moments of the contract with perfect clarity. Perhaps Luna’s contract held some clause or loophole that put her back there if it was broken. If it was there, then with the rest of the tools, it would boil down to getting her back that night! It could be over just that easily.

By the time Devon reached the outer wall of Canterlot, still scarred from the battle, he was almost optimistic about the enterprise. The whole area leading out to the statue garden and former hedge maze swarmed with guards and official-looking ponies. All he needed to do was blend in and-

“Halt!”

Horseapples.

“Hm? Me?” Devon blurted, the startled swing of his head towards the voice adding considerably to the simple lost idiot routine that he had not planned. “What’s the matter?”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stay clear of this area,” an armored guard added, finding no threat in Devon as he approached. “We’re still combing through the area for clues, and...”

The guard paused to let out an exasperated sigh, as if the next words were some kind of disgusting medicine that he had to swallow.

“High Inquisitor Second Captain Stormblade has ordered that all civilians be barred from entry until we’re finished. Besides,” the guard continued in a more cautionary tone, “there’s a huge hole where all that rubble is. One bad step and it is a very long fall for anypony.”

Devon balked. He had to think of some reason to get up to that rubble pile, the saddlebag had to be there. “Oh I see,” he started a halting bluff, doing his best to portray nothing more than utter wholesome honesty. “It’s just that I left some important documents there last night.” The guard’s brow started to raise. “Well, ha ha...” Devon laughed. “It’s that I was walking home from work, worked late at the archive you know, and I decided to take a stroll to the garden then this all...um...happened.”

“I see, sir,” the guard said slowly. “Well, not to put a damper on your Hearth’s Warming, but if it is anywhere near where that tower was, your work papers are going to be under that for a good long while yet. I’ll ask that you fill out a form at that guard post over there and-”

“Oh but sir!” Devon tried to be ingratiating, obsequious. “I would hate to take your time on something so little. All I have to do is just pop in and pop out and you won’t even know I was here. I assure you that it is very, very important for me to get my hooves on my saddlebag, sir. There’s way more than my flank riding on this.”

“A...saddlebag, sir?” The guard’s tone changed immediately. Suspicion brewed from the far corners of his face as he started to form connections. Devon could feel his stomach falling to a depth somewhere well beyond the underground tunnels he spent last night tunneling around in. “Sir, do you think I could have a word...”

“Oh, actually wait!” Devon let out a fake laugh. “I just remembered that I left my bag in my other pants! Ha ha...” The laugh was not helping the guard’s expression. “I’ll just...um...get out of your guys’ manes then and be moving on.” The charcoal unicorn did not wait for a friendly goodbye from the guard before turning and heading back towards Canterlot. Yet even as he hustled, he could hear the guard’s voice over the bitter winter breeze that the open field invited.

“Hey, can you keep your eyes on that black unicorn? Fancy scrollwork cutie mark.”

Again. Horseapples.

“I don’t think he knows much, but he knew about the bag. Did Stormblade find anything in it?”

Devon whipped tightly around another bend, hoping to get back into the cosseted embrace of the city and bureaucratic anonymity, yet he was shaken to the core. His mind raced, grasping hopelessly for a Plan B. There was no way he could get close to the tower’s ruin now. But maybe there was an alternative...

Of course!

* * * * *

The mirror told Celestia what she knew already; she was a complete disaster. Disheveled mane accented reddened eyes, both from the restless night. An invasion right at her doorstep that mysteriously ended, dumping dozens of befuddled ponies from a thousand-year absence into her care again, magical forces that somehow offset her own...

And Luna being cast back into banishment.

Long night.

All the Princess of the Sun wanted to do was hide away and solve the problem, undo her reckless banishment and figure out what forced Luna back into her prison. But she did not have the luxury of retreat, certainly not after last night. Even in the scant hours between the incident and this morning, rumors were already flying, the guards were in turmoil and all looked to her for strength and confidence, Celestia had to provide. Closing her eyes, the Princess took a deep breath before turning to the door leading to the wide balcony that overlooked the courtyard, already packed with an early morning throng of citizens eager for any kind of official news to placate their fears.

Deep breath.

Celestia inhaled once and looked into the mirror again. Of all of the skills and talents circumstance forced her to apply in her centuries of rule, the false smile of ‘all is well’ pained her the most. Even with centuries of experience, she never knew just how much the citizens under her protection bought it, but they needed it nonetheless. Even though she could not offer a solution to the true crisis, she held the power to alleviate the public crises. Stop the bigger panic by allowing normalcy to commence.

Put on the smile. Speak clearly.

The sunlight momentarily blinded Celestia before the crowd of her ponies melded into view.

“Hear me, citizens of Canterlot, my friends and pupils!”

They need this.

“I feel your fears and I can assure you that Canterlot is in no danger.” Celestia found that the words came more easily as her speech went on. A small part of her conscience chafed at how easily she could put aside her own true fears and worries to assuage her citizens. “As some of you may have heard, yes, Canterlot fell under some kind of magical attack last night. But thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of our guard, nopony was seriously injured. At this time, we believe the force behind this attack has been removed from the equation as well, but even in this victory, we should be ever vigilant until we fully restore everything.”

They need hope and a hero.

Celestia smiled. Even if she did not have Luna yet, she could at least provide these to her subjections. “In addition, I must recognize the actions of our own. Step forward, Private.”

There was a moment of awkward stillness before a slightly disheveled and very confused pegasus appeared on the balcony next to Celestia, the tired wisps of a rainbow mane poking out from beneath his helm. He looked downright terrified, though torn whether to be more terrified of the cheering crowd or the approving, yet expecting smile of the Princess.

“Private Jetstream, in recognition of your courage and leadership above and beyond the call of duty in Canterlot’s defence, I award you the highest honor royalty can present upon its service stallions of Equestria uniform, the Alicorn Cross.” Nestled in a bundle of glowing telekinesis, the exquisite medal levitated before the cyan pegasus for a moment before it pressed forward, hooking onto the pauldron of his still-scratched and battered armor. “Congratulations, dearest Jetstream, Canterlot is in your debt.”

“Buh...” Jetstream always had the best things to say when in the spotlight. Eyes danced first to the charm on his chest, then to Celestia, then to the crowd and back around to the medal to start the cycle all over again. “Well, Highness, I...”

That smile was telling him to say something. Something important. Something inspiring.

“I really appreciate this.”

That’ll have to do.

“But, ma’am,” Jetstream continued, fidgeting as the crowd’s cheering died down to hear his words. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got to catch up with my patrol.” The pegasus managed a small smile, “we’ve still got a lot to work to do. So...erm...” Another hesitation as he sought for the right words. “Permission to be dismissed?”

Celestia couldn’t help but chuckle once. “Granted, Private,” she said softly, turning back to face the crowd alone.

Now the hard part.

“Also...as some may have heard already. Princess Luna, my sister...” Celestia hesitated, a charge of emotion struggling to escape before she worked it back down. “Princess Luna was caught in a magical spell during the battle and has been returned to the moon.”

The gasp that gripped the crowd was expected. Celestia winced once.

“But fear not!”

Predictably, the murmur died and hopeful smiles returned.

“For we have recovered all of the Elements of Harmony, and we will not rest until she is back to us. In fact,” it nearly hurt physically to put on her confident, even playful, smile in such a situation, “I’ll see to it that she is back by Hearth’s Warming Eve. Luna has missed the plays most of all, and there is no way I’ll let her miss it.” Immediately, the crowd erupted in high-spirited cheers, as if they were simply waiting for the word to become jovial again. “But we need everypony’s help. So if you have any information that may be of assistance, let a guard know right away.” Cheers floated up to Celestia’s ears as the crowd finally began to disperse, all of them eager to spread the news and renewed cheer to an otherwise shellshocked city.

If only somepony could give me that kind of inspiration...

Turning back into the castle, Celestia strode past the royal guard, some still bearing bruises from the battle and holding their posts, into the throne room where her pupil awaited. “Good, I’m glad you’re here, Twilight Sparkle. We have a monumental task ahead of us.” The purple unicorn mare stood still, the Element of Magic already on her head, and Celestia felt a slight wave of comfort in seeing her prize student’s confidence.

“Understood, Princess!” Twilight’s enthusiasm was infectious. “Since we managed to recover the lost Element, we’re all ready to put it all into helping get Luna back. But do you have any idea on where we should start?”

“That...” Celestia mused, settling back into her throne with a foreleg pressed onto her temple. “I’m sorry, Twilight Sparkle, after I cast that banishment spell, I spent the next thousand years trying to forget everything about it. It was such a mistake to do it in the first place. I have no idea what might have brought her back.” Sitting near her, the unicorn joined the alicorn in rumination.

“Maybe...” Twilight muttered aloud, “maybe it had something to do with the amount of magic you put out last night? Maybe something got out of control?”

“But so long after I had cast those spells to bring the tower down?”

“Hm...” Scrunching her face, Twilight delved back into the firmaments of magic, the core lessons and mechanics, searching for some kind of explanation. The purple unicorn shifted from one hoof to another, rocking slightly. “Well, I can’t think of anything yet, but this kind of magic is really old, I’m sure there’ll be something in the Archives, right?”

“That would be a wise place to begin, Twilight Sparkle. I’ll see to it that the archive is cleared and you and your friends can work without interruption.” With visible pain, the Princess of the Sun turned towards the palace. “I have a great deal to do to keep Canterlot in order, but should I find an opportunity, I will be by to check on your progress.”

“We’ll get there right away,” Twilight affirmed, but added in a softer tone. “I won’t let you down, Princess, I promise.”

* * * * *

“You got wh-wh-wh-wh-WHAT?!”

The shout carried down the musty hallway. A fluttering of agitated shadows cast against the wall opposite of the janitorial closet. Stormblade’s base of operations erupted into a flurry of shouts and stomping hooves.

“Yes sir,” Jetstream beamed with pride as he opened the box in front of Stormblade. Inside the small oaken frame was a delicate purple pillow on which rested a small medallion. “The Alicorn Cross for Distinguished Honors in Combat.” The cyan unicorn closed the box and laid it back in the hooflocker that he had got it from. “We didn’t have much of a ceremony or anything, way too much work to get done with everything else that’s going on.” However, when Private Jetstream turned back, he saw Stormblade blustering and flabbergasted.

“H-how did...I’ve been...”

The Alicorn Cross, an extremely high honor for guardsponies who demonstrate outstanding courage and leadership in times of duress, was the one medal that Stormblade did not have. It was his to earn! How did this little...Private...get it before he did!

This wasn’t right.

His story was not supposed to have this chapter.

Or it should’ve.

But with him wearing it!

And Jetlag stomping about in envy and beaming pride to be under his illustrious command!

“Well, sir,” he explained with a modest shrug. “It was pretty much like I said. When the battle happened, Princess Celestia put me in charge and I just kinda put all our academy training forth. There wasn’t really a plan. Maybe it is a pegasus thing, but I pretty much just winged it.” Jetstream grinned broadly at the egregious pun.

The grin stung more than painful wordplay.

How dare he!

“But don’t worry, sir,” the cyan pegasus immediately added, sobering his tone and straightening up. “We have a big job ahead, so I wasted as little time as possible getting back to work.” Stormblade couldn’t figure what enraged him further. On the one hoof, this dinky little nopony had somehow got awarded for what should have been his heroic moment savaged his pride, but on the other, this same nopony’s nonchalance bit even harder.

“Lots to be done,” Jetstream added, cinching the last strap of a non-battered piece of armor over his chest. I’ll report after my patrol as usual, sir.” And with a swoop of wings, the pegasus was gone. Left behind, the Second Captain managed to keep silent only through a colossal force of will that rapidly broke down.

“RrrRRRRAGH!” Stormblade roared in impotent frustration, sending his hoof crashing down into the closet wall. Withdrawing it from the new dent, the stallion struggled for composure. Looking down its length, he could only watch it tremble, manifesting the indignant rage that pumped through his mind. All of the jangling medals at his chest seemed pale; while certainly Stormblade held more achievements and honors, Jetstream had one that was impossibly rare and replete with adulation. Even outside the door, Stormblade heard other guards’ chatter, dazzled by that pegasus and how he can really shine when given the chance.

“That private’s going places, I tell ya, he’ll make one great officer. And sooner rather than later, I think.”

If they think his story is going to be great...

Second Captain Stormblade ran a hoof down to his own unique medal, taken from the bag back at the tower.

They haven’t seen anything yet.

* * * * *

“Oh you’ve gotta be kidding me, Lily!” Devon bleated in a voice that was equal parts frustration and devastation. “What do you mean we can’t get in?” The charcoal unicorn stood outside the great doors to the Canterlot Archive, brought up short by the imposing foreleg of his boss. She wore a face of complete irritation. Such a disruption rubbed her all the wrong ways; not only did she miss out on advancing her station, but it also meant the irritants like Devon had to be dealt with in settings where she had no power.

“I mean that thanks to you and Princess Luna, the whole Archive is shut down. It means that all of the work that you should have had done two days ago will sit even longer.” Clearly, Boxtop was more than happy to foist responsibility for Canterlot’s current crisis onto her lowly employee. Indeed, she embraced the chance with genuine relish, revenge for his perceived misdeeds which lead to her beating at the voice of Luna. “Bet you feel pretty clever too, you really lucked out, but I know you were skipping out yesterday.” She puffed, blowing a lick of mane out of her face. “If it wasn’t for mommy dearest pullin’ for you, calling in sick for you and using her clout to dissuade me from writing up another demerit, I knew you’d never amount to anything, Bookmark.”

Of all the things I didn’t need now.

Shaking his head, Devon found it easy to shrug off her words. Bigger things on his mind, he supposed, turning his focus to getting into the Archive. All he had to do was get in; nopony would possibly look back at that forgotten wing where he and Luna first descended into the earth. Lily’s droning rant continued to fall on his ears like a persistent and loud downpour.

“You’re never going to amount to anything, Bookmark.”

Venom from Lily’s mouth was nothing new, but this batch came with passion.

“You should be thankful I even keep you, Bookmark.”

But it was all things he had heard before.

“All of this because you have to chase coltcrushes and not do your job.”

Thou hadst best be flailing in thine attempts to deceive us, Bookkeeper!

“Are you even listening to me?!”

Finally, some weight crashed down onto his shoulders.

He managed to bring his attention back to the real world when he sensed a gap in the tirade. Hoping that her force was spent, Devon spoke up, distracted. “When did all the guards show up anyway?”

“Finally you speak, Bookmark,” his manager groaned, happy to demonstrate how Devon’s mere presence made her life that much worse. “Guards were here before I showed up and said nopony gets in til they give the word. Think Celestia’s student is doing some kind of investigation there.”

“Uuugghhh...”

“Why that reaction, Bookmark?” Lily arched a critical brow. It was the same kind of look that she wore whenever she thought something was fishy. “I would have thought of everypony here, you’d be the one happiest about this. Don’t let it get to your head though, you know how big that stack is going to be with a whole day lost?” The quizzical expression morphed into a more well-worn devilish grin. “And that big pile that you left unfinished? Hope you didn’t have many Hearth’s Warming plans, Bookmark.”

“I have to get in, Lily.”

“Heh...and how are you gonna plan on that, Bookmark?” Her voice was harsh vinegar, her smile nearly sadistic as Devon foolishly revealed a need to her. No way would she let this chance slip past her, not after how he got Luna to yell at HER for HIS mistake! “As manager of the Canterlot Archive, I’m here to make sure that the guards’ orders are seen to. Though as much as I’d love to let you wander in and get arrested, Bookmark, I have to consider my career.”

“So...”

Lily strode purposefully to bar Devon’s path. “So yeah, you aren’t getting in. You can thank me later for that. Now get out of here, Bookmark. I’ve got to make sure that your disaster doesn’t get any worse.”

Devon stood still, not out of stubbornness, but out of a complete dumbstruck frustration. Everything he could think of was stopped dead in its tracks. Already, the guards around the garden were suspicious and Lily was keeping him from getting anywhere inside the Archive.

Once again, helpless introduced itself as a common acquaintance...or more specifically, the one that kept emptying the cider and permanently changed the scent of the couch after the number of nights it slept on it without showering. Yeah, that friend.

“Hello? Move it, Bookmark!” Lily snapped again. “Unless you really, really want to explain to the guards how it was you who was with Princess Luna last and...” Lily Boxtops stopped her growing rant, face contorting as mental connections grew. “And you were with Luna before she completely fell off the face of Equestria, weren’t you?” Devon’s manager tapped her hoof on the icy cobblestones. “Yeah...yeah you were! The guard said something about a black unicorn with a blue mane!”

“I told that captain guy yesterday, Miss Boxtops,” the charcoal unicorn suddenly found himself stammering for an explanation. His voice rose in pace as he blurted out. “She ran into me, we had our little thing and then I ran into her again when I was trying to handle that overdue stack of missives like you wanted me to. J-just that simple!”

“My hoof it was that simple, Bookmark,” his boss sneered. “You know something, don’t you?”

“O-of course not!”

“You’re such a terrible liar, Bookmark,” Lily laughed mockingly. “You couldn’t lie to save your own skin, which I suppose is what’s going on right now.”

“Lily, think.” Devon exhaled deeply, waving a hoof before him. “You think Princess Luna would want to remain in my company that long, and that I would have the magical capabilities to somehow, oh I dunno, overturn a millennium-long conspiracy and singlehoofedly cast her back on the moon out of my own will?”

Lily’s eager expression dropped off her face, dejection taking a firm hold. “You can’t even pick up a pencil with that bum horn of your’s.” She dragged a forehoof down her cheek. “Yeah, silly me, thinking you could actually...do...” Motioning a hoof before her, she gestured toward him. “...Anything.”

Thanks, Lily.

Way to earn that ‘#1 Boss’ mug you bought yourself.

“I guess I’ll...” the charcoal unicorn slowly twisted his shoulders away, motioning back to the main street. “Just...clock on out early?”

“Git.”

“Clocking out early it is. I’ll just get out of here then, alright?” Devon’s shoulders slumped downwards as he turned... ”Alright.” ...beating a hasty retreat before his boss changed her mind to act on that vile spite.

* * * * *

After a final test, Twilight Sparkle could finally confirm that slamming her head into a book of ancient magic did not make the desired spells appear. “Guh!” she huffed in frustration, flinging it away with a flicker of telekinesis, “nothing in that one either, why is this so hard?” It was well past dark and the only light in Canterlot’s Archive came from the small gas lamps that Twilight burned as she ravenously devoured every book of magic or history she could, searching for any clue on how such a powerful banishment spell could be undone.

How long had she been here, anyway? With a breath, the unicorn allowed her senses to go to the wider world for a moment. Thanks to her show of confidence, Twilight had something to prove, she saw the glimmer of hope in Celestia’s eyes and knew it was not something shown lightly.

I can’t let Princess Celestia down.

Twilight repeated the mantra over and over in her head as she delved back into a tome of ancient magic for the fifth time. Eyes danced over the lines and scribblings of old scholars from a time where magic was far less tame and control. Unicorns then were lucky to have any kind of instruction; and what instruction was there shocked the modern unicorn mare. Instead of rigorous study and class time, magic was confined within chants and song-like incantations. It was all so...primitive.

“Gyugh,” she groaned. “I could really use some sort of pick-me-up about now-wha-Hey!”

A pink pony hoisted Twilight up in the air. “And lucky for you,” Pinkie sang to the unicorn held over her head, “I just read a most interesting poster on proper usage of the word literally!”

“Pinkie!”

“Like right now, I’m literally picking you up!” The pink earth pony bounded to the side, lowering her then wrapping her forehooves around her neck in a fast hug that sent them stumbling sideways. “Hee hee, and now I’m metaphor-uhh...meta-met-meta...” Her eyes paused in thought, trying to remember the word. “Unliterally picking you up with a hug!”

Seeing her face not shifting in the least, Pinkie slowly dropped her forelegs back to her side, and slid away from the unicorn’s agitated scowl.

Twilight huffed. “Hyuff, thanks Pinkie, but...” She looked up to the rows, aisles, and floors of endless books spiraling up the Archive’s rotunda. “I don’t need hugs, I need answers.”

“Well,” Pinkie started, “I’m usually good at finding things when I knock all the books off the shelves, should I go start destroying some aisles!?”

“That’s...!” Twilight gestured towards her to halt. “No, no. If you could instead just go find me a daisy sandwich instead?” The purple unicorn lurched forward, the pained growling of her stomach called out to her. “I’m so caught up here, I’ll forget to even eat.”

She didn’t even know when she last ate. Breakfast? Did she even...? No, not her focus. Not to worry about.

“You got it, Twilight!” Pinkie started bounding out in rhythmic hops to the door. “But, listen, you’ve always been a great friend to me, and anything I can do to help, I owe you so much.” Her pupils quivered and expanded, her blue irises retreating. “As my very best friend ever, I’d do anything to help you with-”

“No destroying the books!”

“But I wanna!” She grumped, tipping her nose up. “Fine, one daisy sandwich, coming up.”

The booming echo of the door slamming held Twilight locked in a flinch for several seconds. She wished she could muster the integrity to let her friends know how much she appreciated them, too. Why did she have to be the stressed out one? Why were all her friends obliged to help out the one too bogged down to give proper thanks like they always did for her?

No, no.

Not her focus.

Not to worry about.

What made the search all the more frustrating was that Twilight did not even know where to start. She had no lead or clue to chase down and analyze. It soon became a tiring exercise, where a possible clue meant multiple trips back into books the mare thought she had put behind her to see if they held any new insights.

I can’t let Princess...

Twilight yawned heavily, pausing a moment to look on the moonlight sneaking in through the Archive’s windows. The darker cobalt tone of the light was undeniably familiar, after all, she had grown up only knowing this form of moonlight, but now armed with the knowledge of what that light meant, the moonlight filled with a foreboding tone, unsettling yet motivating at the same time.

“I can do this,” Twilight muttered, lowering her head down to a tome. Before her eyes, the words blurred and shifted, struggling to fall into obedient focus. Squinting, the unicorn leaned slowly forward until her head fell short, horn colliding with the wooden desk with an audible thunk. Moments later, sleep claimed her.

Clip...clip...clip...

Clunk.

Twilight mumbled softly. This was not the first time she had fallen asleep in the middle of studies, or the middle of the Archive, hoofsteps were not all that unusual. They’ll go away and bother somepony else..

Clip...clip...clip...

Clunk.

What was that sound?

Stirring slightly, Twilight opened her eyes and beheld a sandy frame, facing away from her. Its steps matching the unusual hoofbeats. It took some time for her fuzzy vision and mind to fully awaken, but as they drew the shape into focus, she recognized the other pony at the top of the tower. As she sat up, Twilight disturbed one of the tomes she had abandoned to the floor, sending it to the floor with a loud clatter of parchment and binding.

“Apologies for disturbing ya, lass,” the stallion spoke without looking. “Was just touring the legacy of what we planned.” Turning, Ghasen faced Twilight fully and let out a small, deadpan sigh. “Amazed what you did with the place, can’t find anything anymore. I had t’follow the mess t’find ya.”

“What are you doing here?” Twilight interrupted his reverie, guard raising in turn with her suspicious tone. “How’d you get past the guards?”

“Aye, m’lass, I was here when this place was conceived,” he chuckled. “I may be old, but I haven’t forgotten all of the Archive’s little secrets. These windows are always easy t’get into. Lots of blind spots.” Approaching Twilight’s table, Ghasen continued, “as fer why I’m here. Well, I was hoping you’d know where my boy Devon got off to. Seems he is in a bind. All of Canterlot, more like.”

Twilight remained silent.

“Don’t trust this ol’ bag uh’ dirt, eh? Can’t say I rightfully blame ya, but I assure you that my interests are...” Ghasen hesitated, rolling the word in his mouth a few times. “...mine. For the first time in a long while, in fact. I’m here to make good on the wrongs I’ve been up to, lass. Oh how’d they always say, what I had’ta do here. Makin’...yes that’s it, makin recompense.” His head drifted to the side. “Recompense for what the Bookmarks have put ya through.”

All he received was more guarded silence. “And just how are you offering to help?” Twilight finally broke the silence. “I’m not saying I’m going to go along with what your idea is, but I’ll hear you out. Because,” she sighed, “I’m pretty lost already. Princess Celestia was thorough about removing any mention of what she did to Luna.”

Ask for a starting place.

The universe presents a starting place.

What, was the purple unicorn not going to roll with the petty ramblings of this old intruding stallion at this point? Desperation...well...desperation does crazy things to ponies sometimes.

“Pretty much the only ponies who’d know about that, would be the ones who were there.” Twilight looked up at the sound of a quill scribbling. Encased in brown telekinesis, the pen danced across a blank sheet, sketching in designs and scrawling words. “I was worried about what was happening with Luna when she came to me.”

“You saw her last night?”

“Oh, ho hoh no, I mean when Luna came to me,” Ghasen paused, his drifting eyes dropped firmly to Twilight’s. “For her eternal night.”

Yet when the universe presents a starting place...The universe also didn’t have a good sense of scale in the grand scheme of things. This was starting to become...eh...

“Freaky.”

...Yeah, basically.

“So,” the architect resumed, unimpeded by her quizzical glance, “I done thought a means to break her out of the stars’ hold. Not sure if it’ll work here, but like y’said, you’re lost already.” Ghasen turned the paper around when he finished, sliding it across the table into Twilight’s gaze.

“What is this?” she asked, looking it over. Central to the drawing was six symbols she instantly recognized, the Elements of Harmony. Archaic and ancient-looking lines and rings circled the symbols, recognized after a moment by Twilight as the oldest form of recording magic. One thousand years of unicorn magical use changed the conventions of describing and depicting the flows of magic but the more she looked at the old writing in fresh ink, the more the purple unicorn drew the pieces together. Where Celestia had invoked a powerful banishment, this was a summoning of equal scale.

At the bottom, scrawled words were deeply inked, displaying priority:

Majestic light through the night's darkness strewn,
Restoreth freedom to souls on thine moon!
Spirits astern of thine astral disguise
Giveth back to us thine imprisoned prize!
Invoked and imbued with harmony’s stone
We call to thee, bring our loved one home!

“Ya know,” Ghasen continued. “Thought of making a puzzle of it, eh-hyeh heh heh!” He waves his hooves over his head. “Scatter the words in different pages of different tomes all about this here archive, make clues for others to locate and assemble this spell!”

Twilight lifted the paper above the tabletop, scouring over the spell’s words. “So...why didn’t you?”

“Couldn’t. T’was taken from me before I could trap all the books in the earth pony cooking aisle.” His face seized, the pupils narrowing in sudden panic. “Just remembered. Don’t read the chimicherrychonga book. Full of scorpions, it is.”

“Uh-huh,” Twilight reflexively implied, her focus so on the spell that she no longer heard him.

Not waiting for her to look up, Ghasen spoke again. “This spell was taken before I could hide it. My beloved Orangina had thought to use it to free Luna from Nightmare Moon,” his voice grew heavy with regret. “The poor girl was so sure she could have stopped it, but even though the Element of Magic is important, it is just a piece.” The sandy old unicorn paused. “Course I can’t guarantee it’ll work for ye, girl. I’d wish ye good look, but we both know that luck’ll have nothin’ to do with how this works out.”

“And what do you mean by that?” Twilight pressed, eyes still locked on the parchment. “I’ve never seen a spell like this, but I get the idea.” Thousands of questions whipped through her mind, but one assumed dominance. “Do you know if this will even work?”

Ghasen took in a long breath. “I can’t rightly say, girl. If the conditions are right...if the spell is right if...” He trailed off.

“If...?”

“If there are no...conflicts with its effect and yer intent. That, I’m afraid lass, lies outside of your hooves.” A clatter of hoofbeats caused Ghasen’s ear to flick. “Well, suppose you’ll figure that one out on your own.” Before Twilight could speak, the elder unicorn slunk back into the corridors, his unusual cantor the last sign of his being there at all.

“Twilight? Hey! We’re back with the sandwiches! Twilight? Everything okay?” The loud voice burst through the normally silent halls with all the subtlety of the blue pegasus who spoke them. “And I think Pinkie kicked over another bookshelf.”

“Gyguhh...oh, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight shook her head, rubbing her eyes a few times. “Yes I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” The blue pegasus scowled dubiously. “You were doing a whole lot of talking with nopony around for you to be alright. Listen, books can talk to ya, I know that much, but don’t talk back, alright?”

The purple unicorn hesitated, debating silently if she should explain her encounter with the mysterious unicorn before deciding that it would not help anything, and might actually get her friends focused on tracking him down rather than freeing Luna.

“I got a little excited, Rainbow Dash, sorry. But I think I might have something. Can you bring everypony here?”

* * * * *

Had it been two days already?

Time bled one sleepless night into another as Devon sat up in bed. Muddled attempts to sleep, to return to the dreamscape with Luna’s comfort all failed when fresh pangs of guilt or half-baked ideas sprang to life, forcing the unicorn into bleary-eyed action. Inevitably, these actions only made it as far as the desk in his room, covered in parchment with scatterbrained notes of how to get the Princess back, all without substance, only wishing and not acting.

Rising from his bed for what he believed was the fiftieth time that night, the charcoal unicorn loped towards his desk, lit by the cool light of the moon streaming in from the window. Growing up, it was his nightlight, his companion who was always there to watch over him, but as he sat in the silvery light now, it felt like an accusatory stare whose silence screamed louder than any yell.

Hunching over his desk, Devon set his quill to scribbling and dashing. “I’m trying, Luna, I’m trying,” he muttered as he wrote out the same list he wrote before, complete with the same notes.

Saddlebag
Gone. Guards have it.

Ruins
Can’t get there.

Under the Archive.
Can’t get there either.

Pendant.
Useless without other pieces.

Reading over the list again, a slow, groaning sense of inevitable futility washed into Devon’s mind. A small seed of fear took root and the questions that he struggled to keep from rising up exploded violently into his active thoughts.”What if...” he whispered to the moonlight, “what if I can’t bring you back, Luna? I...I don’t know if I can...I mean what can I do?” Devon sniffed once, feeling the pull of moisture at the corner of his eye.

A pinprick of light seeped into the corner of his vision. Pulling out in front of him, Glyph swirled in a brief miasma of color. Unfortunately, the charcoal unicorn only stared into the barrage of what Glyph hoped to be encouraging memories before he turned back to the quill and repetitous notes. “Not now, Glyph,” Devon murmured, trying his best to summon a genuine remorse in his voice for something not on his mind. “I can’t get distracted.”

Of all the things he wanted now, he wanted sleep. To let dreams take him again, or at least have the chance to apologize and escape his guilt momentarily.

His escape.

Yet his own guilt and desperation drove his body to ignore the call for rest. A logical part of his brain knew fully that the unicorn was in no condition to do anything, let alone concoct a plan to un-banish Princess Luna. It was foolish to keep pursuing this course with his body and mind battered and aching. Devon knew that.

And he began writing the list again.

Saddlebag
Gone. Guards have it.

Ruins
Can’t get there.

Under the Archive.
Can’t get there either.

Pendant.
Useless without other pieces.

Setting the quill down, the charcoal unicorn returned to bed, collapsing with the distant hope of his body submitting to exhaustion and sleep, but even as he ground down into the pillow, Devon knew he wouldn’t get it. Tossing and turning, he ran through a buffet of positions and pillows, vainly straining for sleep before he lay still.

All he wanted above everything was to fall back to sleep. At least in the dreams, he could see Luna. He had a moment of comfort there, free from the clutching guilt and fruitless scramble. In the cloying darkness, a final thought, seeded when Luna vanished, finally bloomed.

“I should quit...”

Devon rolled, yet the thought, now vocalized sought rationalization, each moment spent in reflection adding to its strength. “I mean,” the unicorn muttered into a blanket, “maybe I should just stop. Did I really do anything to help in this whole thing?” Devon was familiar with this sensation; the logic of self-deprecation undermining truths that, until that point, had been firm and secure in his heart.

“Pretty pathetic,” he mumbled into an old, mushy pillow. “survive all the traps, stop Ghasen and you still managed to screw it up, Devon.” He ground a black hoof across his face and under his eyes. “Bet Gina would be getting one good laugh out of this...” As the words left his mouth, Devon flopped around on the bed, toying with the silver quill with one hoof. Closing his eyes, the unicorn took a deep breath, trying to force sleep for a solid five minutes before inevitably he rose again to his desk. Seizing the quill in his mouth, Devon scratched out a new note.

Gina. Does she know anything?

“Dev’s!” an older mare’s voice called from below. “Listen you, uh, you’s beens up there’s for abouts like eighty years now!”

“Yes, mom, I’m busy!”

“Nots too busy for hot rose bread and lentil soup, I hope!” The voice echoed through the floorboards. “I know you loves it, so how’s abouts you loves your mother too with some appreciation and eat somethin’!?”

“I’ll grab some later!”

Later.

“Oh for cobbler’s sakes, kiddo!” The voice shot with agitation.

“I’ll eat when I’m ready!”

“But I’ll be in bed!”

“I can get it myself, ma’!”

“It’ll be cold!”

“I can reheat it I-” he nickered, pressing an impatient hoof against the desktop. “I can take care of myself, ma! I’m a grown stallion for the love of Starswirl!”

A long pause hung in the air. The silence rippled away with the muffled closing of her bedroom door downstairs. He looked out the window, the moon above fading behind an intruding regiment of clouds. No Princess to look up to tonight. He’d might as well take the moment to grab some food, but...

Gina. Does she know anything?

Later.

It could all be done...later.

Chapter 12: Platinum Haze

Illustration by Arctic-Sekai.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Whispered cries with empty gaze,
Witnessed by starlight’s blaze.
Foalhoods lost in rapid phase,
By steps beyond the platinum haze.

_____

___

Chapter 12

Platinum Haze

Fates assist, and fates conspire.

Fates bring life to one’s desire.

Or so the rhyme kept playing in the Captain’s head.

It was all he could get.

Wait.

Fates can bring...one’s inner fire?

No, no, no.

A sudden rustling of hooves rushed past him, a white jacket nudging in a fast trot against his shoulder. Adjusting his clipboard, a doctor turned to motion some semblance of an apology to him, but whirled back into his step into a trot that faded into background. The lowering sun glazed over his eyes, making it impossible to focus proper on the world around him, yet the world had no reservations shaking him out of his own inner train of thought.

Fates assist, and fates conspire...

So I learned in...a rocky spire-

No! The story needed to open with a zinger. A real bombastic opus of lyrical wizardry. It needed to assure that his journey was one that embarked with twenty-eight lines of spectacular rhymes to really clench just how unbelievably grandiose his journey would begin.

And yet, only one line retained any hold.

The fates conspired.

The Captain could hardly let anything else intrude into his inner stream of consciousness. Curses to that cyan pegasus and his ridiculous rainbow clown mane. Curses up and down to him.

Sir, we have just received wonderful news from Captain Armor, sir!

Jetstream’s intruding words played over and over in his recent memory, their five-minute lifespan managing to set all urgencies alight. He didn’t know why Jetstream was so happy to deliver them to him.

She said ‘yes!’

So little time. He had so little time to accomplish the task the very stars, the very essence of fate had dumped upon him at the base of the collapsing tower. The saddlebag. The gauntlet. The succession of ponies striving to steal it from him. He hoped his plan would pull through, and the orange unicorn mare would pull through.

The orange unicorn mare. How just thinking of her made the back of his neck feel all prickly. She claimed to be somepony else. She insisted he was on a fool’s errand.

“She said nothing,” he groaned to himself while stepping out of the urgent care center. A nurse stopped mid-trot, leering a quizzical glance to him. Stormblade continued, addressing nopony in particular. “She still wants her stallion friend to take the fall for her and admit he’s the Bookmark.” The nurse made a fast dash through the hospital doors, weaving aside like she heard nothing. “Typical. Conspire with the stars, then think you can outwit even me.”

Perhaps fate itself was throwing a few jabs at him, rustling up his karma, for the sake of making way for something good.

Stormblade huffed, his head dipping as it immersed back into crafting the intricacies of his impending sojourn.

It didn’t matter now. Fate would certainly bring him to greatness.

“Fine. I’ll bite, Miss Bookmark.” He cracked a smile, angling his head to ensure his teeth shimmered in the low sunlight in a heroic gesture. “It’s obviously a trap, or a diversion, but while you rest comfortably here, you’ll come to find yourself unable to get up to help your little friend when he tells me the truth about you.” A tightly lined patrol of armored guardsponies rounded beside him, giving Stormblade an affirming nod. He waved a hoof forwards, motioning them into position. “I’ve made sure of that.”

If Jetstream was so elated as to break away from his own patrol to personally deliver the petty news of Shining Armor, he couldn’t imagine the parade he’d throw when telling Captain Armor of Luna saying yes to him.

Hmm.

Fate can make...life a mess.

But it’s all worth it when...she says yes.

When she cries yes.

When her kiss says-

“Hey Captain!”

“ACK!” The Captain leapt sideways, his balance skittering on the slick icy sidewalk.

“You, uhh, called for us here!” A quick succession of shuffling armor assembled at his forehooves.

The world pulled into focus. Finally. Took them long enough to show. “Affirmative, conscripts,” his voice cracked, attempting to punch through his quick hyperventilating. “Line...Line up!”

“You got it, bro.”

Bro.

“That’s Captain.”

“Ah-hyah, right sir, right!” The young stallion tucked his legs together, raising one to a quick salute that banged against his metal helm. “You got it bro, Captain! Heyah-hah!”

He could see why Captain Armor warned him of these three. They were the kinds of featherbrains that watched too many Schwarzenicker filmstrips.

“And, huh-huh,” piped up the shortest of the three. “I says’it sir be a true honor’s bein’ all in as your specials forces here!”

They weren’t a thing like the recruits Shining let through.

“We won’t let you down bro Captain, bro, you can count on us to always never let you down!”

They were perfect.

He crossed before them in slow, heavy strides. Stormblade’s hooves dug a deep trench in the snow outside Canterlot Urgent Care, pacing until he had secured the attention of the unsteady line of blank gazes. They fell into an eager, if ungainly semblance of a line, heads bent forward to better hear the illustrious officer’s words.

Stormblade cracked a hoof on the ground, commanding their immediate attention. “You have all been chosen to form a new organization within the Canterlot Guard!” the stallion paced in front of the assemblage of the greenest rookie guards. “I realize that you have only just finished your basic training...albeit, after your fifth or eighth swing at it.”

A shrill dragging of a helm slid across the Captain’s ears. One of the conscripts looked up to the sky, anxiously tracking a single snowflake dancing in the early evening breeze. The helm succumbed to gravity, clanging sharply on the cobblestone walkway.

Stormblade regained his voice, booming loudly in his best inspirational octave. “But that is precisely why you are fit for this task. You see, mares and gentlecolts, the fact of the matter is that Canterlot needs ponies like you who have not been infected by the kind of thinking that goes on at the higher levels of our guard.”

She said ‘yes!’

“Irrelevance!” An obsidian hoof cracked through the air. “We are in a time...of irrelevant time wasting! We should be tail deep in action!”

Stormblade paused for a moment, letting the implications and imaginations run rampant amongst the rookie guards.

“Yeah-hah! Action bro!” The short conscript flinched. “I mean, action bro...Captain!”

Rookies? Eh, cadets really.

“What Canterlot needs are guardsponies who are eyes and ears, focused on the task without being lost in the...glory-chasing that some other guards might engage in.” The black stallion bitterly stamped his hoof to send his medals jangling, a complete set save for the Alicorn Cross. “As Captain, I have chosen you because you lack that temptation, and I know I can trust you to report to me...and only me...what you see on your patrols.”

“But Captain,” a brown earth pony in armor three sizes too large piped up, “I thought we needed to report up our chain of command so w-”

“This!” Stormblade interrupted. “This is why you are better than just your run of the mill guardspony. You report directly to me, the Captain.” Brightening glances raised a devious smile on Stormblade’s face; they would happily be part of his story for merely the idea of acting in a special unit or group.

“Woah-hoah, yeah, totally awesome man, we’re like you’re right-hoof stallions, bro!”

He’d...rewrite them as perhaps a mysterious ninja force.

“H-hyuh, I mean, Captain, right-hoof bro stallions Captain!”

Who took a vow of silence.

At birth.

“Step forward.” He drew in a deep breath of wintry air and held it, feeling the chill permeate his body through his lungs before calling out again. “Step forward, all of you.”

Obedient in naivete, the guards stepped forward, eyes wide with pride and deep-seeded, earnest desire to actually do something. “Right on, Captain!”

“From this night onward, I dub you all...” Pause, for dramatic effect. “My Stormblades.” Stormblade stiffened and delivered a sharp, respectful salute.

The expressions faltered slightly. One small choking sound slipped from the far side of the line.

“Well? You’re supposed to salute back...” the Captain’s own salute wavered and his proud smile morphed into a scowl. “Is something funny, cadets? Speak up!”

The owner of the choke finally piped in. “We-well sir...I mean...it’s great we have a new assignment and all. It sounds important. But...”

“But what, recruit?”

“Do we really have to call ourselves that? That name is like...”

The short conscript interjected. “Outta’s a rejected Daring Does novel?”

“Yeah, like we’re a band that fights crime and solves mysteries in groovy rock montages?”

“And a dumb uniforms?”

Stormblade made a mental note to not send out the capes and specialty armor clasps just yet. “Enough!” Later. Maybe. “If you are finished making foals of yourselves, I have the first mission for my Blades.” Clearing his throat, the black stallion evened his voice. “We have in our custody one of Canterlot’s most dangerous criminals, one who we know is responsible for instigating last night’s attack and putting our Princess Luna back to her lunar banishment! And she refuses to even admit to her own name!”

That shut em up.

“But if we can’t squeeze a confession from her, I do remember her having an accomplice, one she keeps speaking of. It is a dark-furred unicorn, male, navy blue mane and tail. Cutie mark is something like a scroll with a quill. Glasses.”

The recruits’ eyes widened. The attack was common knowledge, the danger very real to them. Nothing in their very small training had prepared them for dealing with this kind of situation.

“I expect you only to look for him and when located, find me immediately. He is extremely dangerous, but also extremely valuable. I will need to personally deal with him if we are to get the upper hoof.”

Gone were the laughs and chortles already, each recruit swallowed hard, summoning up the courage that had brought them to Canterlot to stand with the Guard in the first place.

“I also have reason to believe he is in collusion with members of the Royal Guard. So this is why you must report to me, and me alone as soon as you see him. Do you understand?”

The three young stallions exchanged glances, then nodded to each other. “Aye aye, Cap’n!”

“Then-” Stormblade raised his hoof, his mouth motioning to speak but cutting itself short. His hoof sank dejectedly under its own limp weight.

Yep. They really just aye aye’d him.

“Stormblades...deploy!” His call ended with him smacking the obsidian hoof down into cobblestone, scattering the confused-but-determined rookie guardsponies in all directions to search. “Scour every street, every alley, every shop! Go!”

They were so caught in their scrambling exit that none spotted the navy blue tail slipping behind them into Canterlot Urgent Care.

* * * * *

The sheets.

He dodged and weaved between table, chair, and curtain around the shuffle of guards ponies. Seeing the Captain standing guard at the entrance made the necessity for stealth all the more reason to practice caution.

She was definitely here. No reason there wouldn’t be such clamor at Ponyville urgent care with active guardsmen of such high rank as him.

Yet deep in the quieter halls where denizens rested and recovered, the only ruffling object that snagged his eye was...

...The sheets.

Rounding the corner to enter into the bright fluorescent hospital room, he stepped back as a nurse impeded his path with a cart of her sheets resting atop. Blue. Disheveled. The telltale signs of dampness rimming the edge of the thin fabric.

A sporadic flurry of images caught up to him. He had to ensure Gina was okay, he had to at least start making the slightest effort to become the friend she deserved, the friend she expected him to be. She’d been left to fight everything alone all her life, to handle things in a solitary approach, but not this one, no. No.

The biting remnants of his words remained in his head. Saying nopony trusts her. Saying she was too caught up in old business, whatever she implied by such. He couldn’t leave it at that, not at all.

He took one last glance at the cart of blue sheets squeaking down Canterlot Urgent Care’s hall. The droplets of moisture, flickering pearlescent glitter, lapped along the sides in an uncanny way that caused the hall to fade into a twisting blur. He looked down to readjust his vision, shaking his head. He must have taken a harsh fall somewhere in the statue garden, his head still throbbed. Yeah, he must have been tired, must have been fatigued. Must be a bit of a concussion somewhere in there, because the more he tried to pull the repeating checker pattern of the hospital’s linoleum floor to cohesion, the more it seemed to recede into a gnarled wooden texture.

He felt like he was shut in a dark metal box again, confining and maddening.

He blinked hard, only a lone circle of approaching rainbow light filling the imagined gap of existence between his pupils and eyelid. Opening his eyes, the vivid memory of creaky wooden floorboards peered back up at him, the physical sights of the hospital fading away into a distant platinum haze.

Concussion. Check.

The clamor of Canterlot Urgent Care’s bustling confines fell away into a distant well, his eyes only able to keep intent focus on the blue wooden door leading into Gina’s room.

He slowly swiveled his head around the corner. Instead of the deep orange light of late afternoon, alien summer light trickled in through the thin drapes over the window. A line of books and toys snaked across the floorboards to a foal’s bed, and the charcoal stallion’s senses surrendered to his wavering memories at the sight before him.

O - O - O -

The young charcoal colt hardly slept well, not when the night crept deep into the formless aether of early morning hours with incessant shouts and clatter downstairs. But the last night...the sheets were still disheveled and flopped haphazardly around him in the countless phases of him pulling them around his head, wrapping them before his young muzzle to suppress the high-pitched croaks of distress his body involuntarily shuddered forth...only to then push them away as visions of the happenings downstairs would instill the space between his eyes and his mind during the fluttering window of borderline sleep.

The sheets.

They were still heavy and weighted in the cold dampness along the edges. He swore, it was just sweat, it was just another warm summer night gracing upon the ranch home, there wasn’t even any sense of cooling breeze lapping through the endless expanse of tall grass outside. No, not tears. They couldn’t be tears. Nopony could cry that much. Nopony.

Or so the frail youth brought himself to believe as he rolled to face the window. A dry burning tugged at the base of his eyes, the gravity of another sleepless night driving his limbs to ache.

Finally.

Finally a silence permeated through the walls. Whatever fight was going on downstairs, the marathon session of heated words and vitriolic half-confessions driven lesser by actual truth than by ire and emotion, had once more come to a rest. Quickly, too. Quite suddenly, actually.

Too suddenly.

A hollow thud echoed from the distant corner of the house, the intensity of the quickly opening door reverberating the window in his room. The newborn silence flickered and phased before coming once again to rest, now draping a hefty blanket of discomfort over the young charcoal unicorn that couldn’t be shaken off. Something was amiss. Every instinct, every sense in the colt’s body tugged at him yet his tired hooves, sore neck, and reddened eyes pushed back.

Meeting halfway, he spun back to face the window. Just in time.

Far off in the horizon, just below the rising sun, he saw it. An arc of light rose gradually in the air, cascading wildly across the sky at a supersonic speed, expanding majestically in a piercing ring of rainbow hues that sliced eagerly through the sky. His eyes widened, watching as the atmospheric phenomenon raced towards him. Peeling himself from the sheets, he quickly sauntered to the window to see the multicolored taurus continue its rapid approach, each color cycling and churning with surging energy.

It was a feeling he’d never felt before, just the sight of the great rainbow ring was stirring up a miasma of sensations and mercurial thoughts in the young colt’s mind. His horn ebbed forth in unseen inspirations of great magics he knew he had but couldn’t deliver beyond his own threadbare hold his mental capacities could conjure. The bedroom faded, its pale blue walls and floor descending into an unregarded sect of irrelevance as the colt’s fascinations were held firmly by the supersonic overture of light now mysteriously cascading over the ranch home.

As the young charcoal unicorn’s mind somehow found itself mysteriously able to piece together the very essences of cryptic powers, spells and incantations he hadn’t even heard whispered within the lessons of Magic Kindergarten, his concentration suddenly peeled away, his face contorting as if watching the map guiding his entire life got torn in half in a lightning-quick rip.

For a fleeting second it all made sense.

It was always there.

It was always churning to get out.

The feeling had always lingered.

The window shook wildly before him, refracted pins of light danced wildly across the panes of glass, and before his synapses were knocked back into his brain from the rainbow explosion’s impending shockwave, the visions of magic and ritual coalesced into a single voice from...but not of...himself.

Wake up.

Kra-KWOOOOM!!!

O - O - O -

Devon’s eyes flashed awake, his shoulders leading his backwards charge over scrambling back hooves as he twisted to a sideways flop on the checkered linoleum floor. He shook his head, the low-hanging light of the late afternoon sun pierced through a tree’s shadow outside a window. Groaning, Devon pulled himself up to his feet, shaking his head to cast aside the annoying flickering sunlight bombarding his tired face.

“You okay there sir?” A guardspony looked down at him, lifting his helm over his brow.

“Oh, me, heh yeah, I’m just, you know,” Devon stammered. Come on, pony, they don’t have any reason to doubt you, no reason to disbelieve you, you’re just...just... “I’m just, hyeh-heh, here for eh-heh...”

“Ey, boys, gather round here fellas.” The guard motioned to the others to approach. “Check this out, I knew this all along.”

Knew!? “You knew, I-I...heh!”

“Yeah!” The guard nudged another in the side of the armor. “Totally called it. Ever since that rockin’ showdown in the garden!”

Play dumb! “What’s...a garden?” Terrible effort!

“Naw, naw, it’s okay,” the guard hung his head low beside Devon’s resting a forehoof atop his shoulder. “Just easy, okay, real easy now,” looking over his shoulder, the guard twisted his head for the others to approach closely. “Guys, come in and tell me if this is the face we were told about...”

He gulped heavily, feeling every urge to stumble backwards. “What’s...what showdown?” No, stop with playing dumb, try another plan. “Oh, my face, it’s like...”

“Yeah,” chimed in a larger guard with a deep rumbling voice. “Just as you described. All’uh it.”

Oh sweet Celestia, now would be a good time for a pink dragon to spontaneously come crashing through the wall! Anytime now!

“I know that face.”

Because right this very instant there really was a pink dragon gliding in Canterlot’s vicinity that totally owed him quite a favor right now! Celestia? Dragon? Hello?

“Totally!” The guard hopped back with a laugh. “Look at us!” He headbutt the large guard excitedly. “You’re right, he totally is ‘fraid of us! All them ponies think we’re totally boss all up around here now after that tussle in the garden!”

Wuh-huh-wait, huh?

The low voice rumbled with deep laughs. “I see how you made his face all scrunchy up like that in your presence, classic you, man. Classic you!”

“I know, right, we’re like all heroes in this, and everypony’s gonna be cowerin’ away from us round here for certain!”

Ah.

Not an arrest.

Ego boosting.

Just back away.

“Hyeh!” the low voice throbbed the floor at Devon’s hooves. “Gettin’ to stand guard right here so everypony can check us out? I tells you all, Stormblade’s assignments just get easier and easier.”

Keep backing away.

“Wait!”

Wait.

The large guard suddenly grumbled, his eyelids fluttering with the skittering of neurons firing to life within his cranium. An idea was forming. A thought. A recollection. An order.

A face.

“Hold on, little fella.”

Thanks. Little fella. Be less unmistakable please? Devon’s throat seized within, jumping up his neck.

The large guarded rounded beside the others, dropping his flank in a meaty thud on the linoleum floor before him. “Riiight, I...I remember ya’s face.”

An uneasy pause crept between them. Tentatively, Devon tilted his head slowly, angling his eyes around to view the hospital hallway behind the burly deep-voiced guard. Still no pink dragon in sight.

Drat.

Last time he does a favor for anything with scales.

“Of course!” A heavy hoof hooked around Devon’s neck. “Bookmark!” Oh please be easy and only leave bruising with the hefty takedown coming his way. “You’re Sara Bookmark’s boy, with all those scarves!”

Please don’t-...

…Oh.

...Oh, in that case then, please don’t tell them about the-

“This poor kid here’s the one that gets a new scarf every other day from Sara!” On second thought, Devon figured he’d just stop thinking about bad things, as apparently he’d awoken some obscure superpower that makes all his embarrassing scenarios come to instant fruition. “Don’t even know what he does with all thems!”

“Of course, yes, you...” Devon tried to lower his head and unlatch from the heavy grip. “You’re that fellow, yes,” he exhaled deeply trying to tuck all that overt guilt safely away. “The one who...woo, right out with the...in front of the Archive every day, so good to see you I must now be-”

“Indeed, I say hello to y’all every’morn!”

“Well you don’t much, you just berate me and give me a tough-” Stop right there, kiddo. Devon thought twice about sassing back and saying he ridicules his attire. “Right, every morning indeed kind sir!” Let it go. Because he’s about to let Devon go as well.

“Anypony of Sara’s ilk, tell y’all right now, can be anypony of mine good favor!” Another clamor of armor and laughter rolled down the hallway, catching the wayward glances of many passing through. “Tell y’all about his mama, she the sweetest caringest most loving gal ever to her boy, hyah hah! She too good at it, even, poor thing in her threads just looks, shoot man, just no words can describe it!”

Devon sighed, figuring now the opportune time to make a silent departure.

“Man, and some mornin’s, just no colors can describe it either!”

As sobering as it was to see the guards unconcerned with his status as a pony of interest, he felt the reality before him far worse. It finally happened. His life was officially over.

Mom’s scarves were talk of legend.

Getting banished and thrown in a dungeon in the place he was banished to seemed far preferable now.

With grit teeth, Devon quietly ducked backwards, sauntering along the edge of the hallway. Seeing the concerned glances of nurses turning to him, lining up to check on the dark unicorn stumbling about in the hall, he nodded in a subtle gesture to excuse himself before making a quick and stealthy entrance to Gina’s room.

* * * * *

A heavy door swung clanged behind the fatigued unicorn, her purple mane waving in an exhale of forced air brushing up from behind her. She trudged heavily through the Canterlot archive’s front rotunda, slowly making her way back up the wide spiral stair ascending around the center. The few light fixtures still glowing in candlelight shimmered in the reflected edges of an armored guard standing in a relaxed lean against the banister.

“Miss Sparkle,” the guard stepped aside, letting her pass. “Are you sure you wish me to remain here, and not accompany you personally?”

“Oh,” Twilight quickly replied, shuffling her hooves backwards. “I, uh, thanks sir but...” She peered around him, scanning the opposite end of the rotunda. “Your eyes would, um, they would be more use being, heh, open.”

“Open?” The guard’s eyes tilted.

“Out here in the open!” Twilight chuckled, timidly taking a step back.

The guard clicked his forehooves together on the floor, standing upright. “I understand Miss Sparkle.” He quickly turned in place, exaggerating a looking motion into the empty Archive foyer. “I shall not disturb your studying methods in the least.”

Twilight began a brisk trot through the archive shelves, weaving and dodging into darker and mustier corners. She considered herself fortunate to have Canterlot’s elite extending such courtesy to her, though such would only be expected of them when conversing with Princess Celestia’s most studious student ever.

How fortunate. If they actually treated her like any other pony and escorted her this deep into the labyrinthian confines of warped bookshelves aligning the ancient structure’s lonely corners, Celestia wouldn’t even trust her with collecting newspapers for her pet phoenix’s cage.

But to her, it was worth the risk. She had no ideas just hours ago, she begged and pleaded for an answer, and when the universe throws a mysterious old weirdo claiming to have traveled from a thousand years ago, she was a bit more inclined to listen. Desperation. It makes ponies act strangely, but it makes them act regardless.

Rounding the last corner, a bitter wisp of cold air graced against her muzzle. Before a lone candle, an old yellow stallion labored intensively over a single parchment, his horn feverishly directing a quill across it in wild incantations.

“How goes it?” Twilight tentatively inquired, tapping Ghasen on the shoulder.

He grumbled in frustration, the quill coming to a sudden, shuddering halt.

“I see.” There was very little time for her to have even gotten a backstory on the old stallion, even less time to ask more questions. She knew little of where he came from, and could only deduce cursory details on him from the wild exclamations of the statue garden...

...Incident?

Seemed like such a trivial moniker, but accurate all the same. Incident. Nothing else seemed to fit, as no words could really describe the sudden existence of ancient ponies jetting out of the ground in a massive tower buried beneath the palace grounds.

No. Fester not on that. He was no adversary. The old weathered face? The gravel-strewn voice lurching through frustrated grumbles? That quizzical, tenuous glance Princess Celestia kept throwing his way before immediately cracking back into regal demeanor?

Oh, how she noticed that.

Much how she noticed other things...

“Sir?” Twilight tried again, knowing he had something to say, but just not enough irritation to coerce it out. “I know that look, like there’s a problem.”

...The weight of those exasperated grunts, and all it entails.

“There is.” He seethed. “That...boy, that little laddie who guided Luna through the lower sanctums?”

Twilight looked at him with confusion. She knew there was another pony who accompanied Luna through her foray to rebanishment, but the details floating about them were sketchy, wild and inconsistent. “He? A lad?” This was different. “A...colt?” Strange, all the reports she heard from the guard was that it was a unicorn mare the whole time.

“I have to believe it, I do, tough though it be.” Ghasen lifted the quill again, and leaning to the side, let the flickering candlelight wash over the paper. A rapid succession of symbols and numbers looked back at them. “I’ve been runnin’ numbers here and addin’ up, see.” A purple telekinetic grip lifted the paper, spreading it before Twilight.

“This...” The purple unicorn immediately recognized the timeline, a series of phrases and verses long chronicled over the millennium past. “These names, they’re...” Along the timeline, a sequence of initials transcended in a tight march down the family trees.

GB. AB. EB...

“Bookmarks. All of us.” Ghasen set the paper down, and stood up. “Starting with me, Celestia summoned a one thousand year long stop to the Bookmark’s power to the stars.”

“Well,” a sudden discomfort struck Twilight. Her neck itched with the very accusation that her own teacher brought such harsh discipline upon this old stallion’s entire bloodline. The feeling compounded with representing the Princess as her most prized student. Yes, Celestia did do those things. She never liked affirming the dirtier side of maintaining order in Equestria, especially in earlier years so long ago, but-

“Tis not a smidge personal,” Ghasen reassured her, seeing the sudden quivering of trouble in the unicorn’s eye. “We all done things we regret, but, for the greater good, yes?”

She still had a Princess to save. “Yes, exactly.” Twilight lifted her tone, easing the words around their seams. “So how’s progress, then?”

“And that, my gal,” Ghasen suddenly flung a hoof upwards, the quill shrieking through the air in a vertical slice of telekinesis. “That be a true thorn in m’flank!” He turned, the dangling quill above remained lodged firmly in the ceiling. “Aw, no, no! Tis not as straightforward as simply askin’ ‘em all polite like for our Luna back. There may be complications, y’see, as the stars ‘emselves not lend us one flick of an ear!”

Naturally. Another problem. Always another problem! Always just one more setback, one more...no no, hold it. Twilight assured herself with a heavy breath and extended forehoof out, let the stress go, let it slide, let the architect work. With a quick clench of her eyes, she regained her composure, and nodded for him to deliver the bad news.

“The spell Celestia cast upon the Bookmarks was a ward. An enchantment. And the ward was not created that night when Nightmare Moon was first banished.”

Twilight pinched her nose up. That didn’t make sense. “Well, she couldn’t have made it after the Nightmare Moon...” Incident? “...fiasco.”

“Aye, t’was made before all of it.” The yellow pony softened his eyes, dragging his hoof across the parchment with a gesture pointing well before the sketched timeline. “The ward was made many years before!”

“Why, though?” Twilight contemplated, wondering if Celestia had some reason to create such a thing in preparation. “Why was it even made?”

Ghasen nodded, vigorously tapping a forehoof against the table. “It was a part of my original terms of employment under the Royal Mason’s guild to have my magic bound to an external ward of power.” He flicked his hoof against his horn. “The ward was supposed to give me more magical strength to handle the heavy lifting and enchantment binding during the archive’s construction, so to speak.”

“Right,” Twilight affirmed. Looking up, she focused her magic on the quill embedded in the ceiling, trying to pull it out. “They made it so...” Twilight huffed, tugging harder on the embedded quill. By Starswirl’s shedding, did Ghasen really dig it in there it with his frustrated outburst. “...So you could have the magic you needed to construct the archive, extended only to the highest ranking of Canterlot’s masons. Given your importance to the project-”

“But it didn’t turn out to be an improvement of my magic.” His words fell beneath a gravel croak. “It was a safeguard.” Ghasen grinned sheepishly at Twilight.

The purple unicorn hesitated, again locked with a permeating waft of discomfort. If there was one thing she had difficulty grasping, it was picturing her own mentor, the widely beloved Princess Celestia, having a lack of trust in anypony.

Ghasen cleared his throat, lowering his head. “Because of the actions of myself and my family, Celestia had to banish her own sister to the moon.” Through narrow eyelids, he glanced to the purple unicorn. “Something she hoped to never...ever do again.”

“Which is why,” Twilight thought aloud, “she modified your ward of power, to take away your abilities to speak with the stars, and extended it to...”

Ghasen’s neck sunk, his body resting against the table. “Every. Single. One of us. Done yanked our power, cast ‘em to stone, and...” He coughed, breathing in through grit teeth. “Sorry,” he dragged a fetlock across his brows. “Sorry, it even happened to my brothers, my nieces, my nephew...”

Twilight slowly lowered her head, her eyes narrowing in contemplation. “Well, as you said...” She cleared her throat, trying to cut him off from this angle of diatribe. “It was in Celestia’s greatest interest of Equestria to-”

“Indeed, indeed!” Ghasen’s eyes lifted. He looked upwards, his face’s contours relaxing. “It all just be water ‘neath the bridge, esteemed student! But...” Ghasen nudged the paper back into the center of the desk. “But what’s important, see, Celestia didn’t cast a new ward,” Ghasen raised a hoof over his forehead, waving it in a forward motion. “She just used the one that was made when I was hired fifteen years prior.”

Suddenly, the timeline, the tree of initials, the numbers dotting the edges of the parchment...The math came together. Twilight quickly snagged the parchment from the desk, unfurling it. Her telekinetic grip around the embedded quill dissipated, dropping from the ceiling.

Ghasen lowered his head. “My girl, the magic to speak with the stars?”

The falling quill jabbed over the last set of initials on the timeline, a wild black splotch bleeding down to the margins in thick beads.

FB, EB, IB, SB...

“The ward ended before Princess Luna came back. The timing was off. It’s been loosed in the wild now for fifteen years.”

...DB.

* * * * *

"So...listen, I'm sorry that you-"

"-Got hurt?" Gina smiled, "Nyah, shucks Dev, it's not your fault."

“How bad’s the damage?”

“Just a crack. They’re sayin’ it’s nothing big, but Celestia does it sting!” Gina fixed him with a small pout as she pointed a hoof up at her forehead, her horn wrapped tenderly in a white bandage around the crack. “Rest up fer a few days and I’ll be right as rain.”

“I guess that’s pretty standard. Hey, given everything that’s happened, a few days in bed doesn’t sound half bad,” Devon remarked, part of him slightly envious of the orange unicorn. A full night’s sleep was both something he longed for, but knew he couldn’t afford. Devon didn’t linger on that thought, he was here for Gina, he had to hold up.

“Oh puh-leeze!” She reached over, fumbling with a cup of water on her bedstand. "Gyaagh, stupid little bridle-nickerin'-no-good-bracken!" The glass slipped from her hooves like a bar of soap. "Fyeep!"

"Oh!" A nest of dark gray telekinesis wrapped around the cup, slowing it before gently tapping the linoleum floor with a glassy ding. Devon, exhaled deep. "Phew!"

"Oh, you liar!" Gina chuckled. "You said your magic was-" The gray aura flickered, a shrill clattering rattled across the room, the rolling glass cup dragging a trail of water behind it. "-poo."

"At least it wasn't juice," Devon attempted. Her eyes still peered longingly at her water, noticing a chip climbed up the side like a crystal lightning bolt. "Or coffee." She remained fixated forward, her tongue trying to lap up the spilled liquid from several haunches away. "Or tea."

"Oh sweet Celestia!" She flopped back in her bed, nestling her head into a pillow with exasperated rolls, singing giddily. "Tea. Sounds. Amazing!"

"Yeah, but unfortunately you can't pick up th-" a smart pony in Devon's chest kinked his larynx like a garden hose, "-Hyrck!" But was unfortunately too late, as he found himself on the receiving end of the most agitated 'no kidding' look her face could muster.

"Hyurff!" A much-deserved slap of annoyed breath smacked Devon in the face. Gina slowly wrenched her head up. "I don't know how they do it," she raised her hooves before his eyes, waving them in complaint. "Look at these stupid things! Can't even eat without my stupid horn. No offense Dev’s, but I don’t even get how you made it.”

"But you've been here for two days," Devon started to fetch the glass. "How are you eating?"

"That yokel drawling nurse lady. Feeding. Watering." Gina strained her pupils up, glaring at the speckled ceiling. "By Starswirl's beard, I'm like a plant! I lose the one thing that ninety percent of the rest of the functioning world doesn’t even have, and..." A familiar maniacal laugh seeped through, "Hyee-hkk-ha, ha! I'm so stupidly worthless!"

"Eh, you'll get used to it,” Devon raised an encouraging hoof beside her shoulder. “Us unicorns always find-"

“-Hyugh!” Gina mashed the back of her head into the pillow, knocking his hoof aside. "She has to do every stupid thing for me!" With a silky floomf, her protesting legs kicked the snugly tucked bedsheets upward.

Devon lifted the glass in his teeth. "Oh'ff come aww-n, eff'rythin'?"

"Yes!" She nickered. "Everything!"

"Eff'ery-thin'!?"

"Every. Single. Thing."

"Even go to the...?" Devon stopped, narrowing a brow while glancing upward, feigning innocent contemplation. Gina immediately caught the implied question, and responded with an agitated whimper, spinning twice into her sheets like a chimicherrychanga. "Ew."

"I KNOW!" The sheets swelled in agreement as she curled up tightly beneath them. "Lose the horn, and bam, can't even...that for myself anymore!"

"Well, look, if you need me to help you-"

"NO!"

"-IN! OTHER. Ways..." Devon groaned, setting the glass back onto the table, "I'll be glad to."

She exhaled heavily, an irritated puff of breath struck the opposite wall. "Thank you, Dev's, but..." She looked down at her hooves again. "...Really I don't need your help." She yanked a pillow over her face, muffling her drawling words. "I just need to sleep," a stifled voice bled through the linens, "I'll be fine, thanks for coming."

"Well, if you need anything-"

"-D’ya think you can get that guard captain guy to stop staring at me? Otherwise, I think I’m good, I don’t need your help."

I don't need your help.

In Devon's mind, the hospital room quickly flickered away, melding into hazy pre-dawn twilight. Scattered memories of rampaging statues gleamed at the edges of his peripheral vision, a blurry visage of Gina fully enveloped in her magic flashed towards him with an extended hoof. It was a symphony of shouting and cries, clanging and chaos, and as the turmoil amplified to deafening volume...

“Just trust me okay?”

She asked him to. Nothing big.

"I trust you’re about to do something really brazen and excessive!"

Devon's mind recalled. Never. He couldn't trust her then, it was just the smart thing to do. The words echoed in his memory, each reverberating syllable bucking him with stinging guilt.

Devon shook his head, the hospital room settling comfortably back into view. Gina still lay curled up, useless, incapacitated in the bed, her gestural language clearly indicating she was done speaking with him for now. He turned towards the door, trotting briskly...

...Smiling.

As Gina attempted to submerge into another nap, the only thing she didn't need a nurse's help to do, she felt a nudge against her shoulder a few minutes later.

"Mrrrff-duh," she groaned, unwinding herself from her blanketed pastry. "Errrm-ff, no, no, I'm fine ma'am, you don't need to take me to the bathroo-" Devon blinked, "-NYAAAAGH!" With a flailing of hooves, she ensnared herself in her own bedsheets, flopping helplessly to the floor with a tail of linens arching in tow with her panicked leap backward.

"Just trust me okay."

"THIS BETTER BE IMPORTANT! OR ELSE I-wait, wuh?"

Devon tilted his head to the side, training an inquiring eye against her. "Just trust me." he repeated, shakily levitating a cup of tea in front of him. She could see every lapse of concentration cause the cup to wobble ever so slightly. Devon’s face contorted in a mask as he forced magic through a recalcitrant horn.

“Dev’s! I thought you couldn’t...”

“I can’t...erf...do it very well!” The very act of speaking and diverting attention to Gina made the teacup wobble and splatter a few droplets onto the floor. “Gyah...this is really hard. But I think I got it. Do you trust me?”

Gina strained her neck up, her nostrils dancing at the sweet aroma she yearned for, golden rays of heavenly sunlight flickered off the glinting surface of the teacup. She glanced tentatively at the cracked water glass on her bedside table. Wispy tongues of scalding hot vapors stretched with whirling pirouettes into the air before Devon.

"N-no..." Gina groused. “I trust you’re about to do something really brazen and-”

Oh, that smile of his.

“What did you just make me do?” Gina’s eyes widened, disbelief gripping around her larynx.

"It’s on your mind, too." He saw right through the niceness charade. She could smile and laugh about it as much as she wanted, the charcoal unicorn knew that she wasn’t fully over it. “So, you can understand why I-”

“Hush, sweetie,” the orange unicorn’s face lit up again, the eyes focused intently on the tea. So much for heartfelt apologies.

Nervously, Gina lifted her head to accept the lip of the teacup into her mouth. “You have the nurse called already?” she asked, swallowing and immediately wished she hadn’t. The aura around the teacup flickered, Devon’s concentration sputtering. “Woah, easy! Just...easy...” Gina moved quickly, wrapping her lips around the teacup and pushing her head forward to tilt the liquid into her mouth. Gina finished the tea quickly, wincing as it seared into her system. As soon as she finished, Devon let out a grunt and the empty teacup fell with a soft thud onto her bed.

“Phew...nice job, Dev’s,” Gina smiled. “Didn’t think ya had it in you. At least not without that gauntlet on your hoof.”

“Hey, I can do magic right once in awhile, that was about the best I’ve done in months, my Magic Kindergarten teacher would be so proud,” Devon tried to joke, but the exhaustion showed in his eyes. “I better get going, Gina. Take care of yourself and try not to drive the nurse’s too crazy.”

“No promises.”

“Naturally.”

“Hey.” She grinned as Devon turned out of the room. Devon paused, looking over his shoulder. “What about you? Are you alright?” she added with a direct look. “You look worse than I do, and I’m in the one in the bed with nurses tending to me.”

“Haven’t been able to sleep well,” Devon replied, rubbing his face with a hoof. “But don’t worry about me, I’m not the hurt one.” Even he wouldn’t buy the weak smile and facade of steadiness.

“Horseapples, Dev’s.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yeah. Very.” Gina adjusted her position on the bed, sitting up more fully and turning to face him as best he could. “Look Dev’s, ya couldn’t have known what was gonna happen. Don’t be going and blamin’ yerself.” Extending a foreleg, the orange mare delivered an affectionate jab into his shoulder. “Besides, I know ya, you’re just as stubborn as Ghasen. You’ll figure somethin’ out, no sweat.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” Devon murmured, lowering his head. “But I don’t even have a starting point. I was hoping you might know something from back then.” The charcoal unicorn ground a hoof across his face in a feeble effort to ward off the exhaustion. “All I can figure is that it is something to do with how she got banished in the first place.”

“Huh...” Gina pursed her lips and sifted through the shattered bits and pieces of her memory. “Well, I got a good look at that when it happened the first time, but,” she laughed. “I kinda got preoccupied by the whole statue thing pretty soon after. Best I can give ya is that the Elements of Harmony probably are gonna factor into it, Dev’s. Sorry.” Gina looked genuinely remorseful, especially when Devon let out a flabbergasted groan at the scant information.

“Yeah, I just need to walk up to the castle,” Devon murmured sarcastically, putting on a jokingly friendly tone. “Hello! I’m the pony who was responsible for putting Luna back on the moon, do you all mind if I borrow the Elements of Harmony for a hunch of mine? I totally promise it’ll be fine!” The sarcasm ended on a nickering bleat and Devon drooped his forehead to rest again. “Think they’d buy it?”

“Dev’s, I told ya, ya can’t get all beaten up over this,” the orange unicorn pressed her hoof into his shoulder, guiding his gaze up to meet his eyes. “Look, things are bad, but that’s exactly the time ya aren’t supposed to quit.”

Another nicker and his eyes fixed on the floor.

“C’mawn Dev’s, look at me,” Gina shook his shoulder to jar his head upward. “Look, let me tell ya somethin’.” Devon raised his head and stared blankly. “Let’s say ya do quit, what do ya do when we find out that there was a way to help Luna? What do ya tell her?”

“But Gina, we don’t even know if there is anot-”

“Don’t know for sure.”

“Well bu-”

“What are you gonna tell yerself when you let that chance go by?” Gina’s tone grew to a simmering heat. “You’re head over hooves for Luna, aren’t ya? Well, time to step up, Dev’s. If this is something more than a coltcrush, kinda yer job to prove it. Or ya can do what Ghasen did and just quit when it got too hard.”

Devon was completely silent, expression torn between breaking down, determination and complete surrender. All of them fought for dominance. He didn’t speak for nearly a minute before he stood up and turned for the door.

“If she’s worth it, Dev’s, you’re never gonna quit.”

“Yeah, you’re right...”

“Dev’s.” Gina’s words brought him up short of the hallway. “There’s nothin’ worse than giving up and finding out later you coulda won. Giving up when you still have a chance, tell you what...”

“Yeah?”

“That is brazen and excessive, m’dear.” She grit her teeth, a exhaled deeply. “K-nnskt...” She wrenched her brow down tight, a slight glow of magic permeating from her horn over a leaking stream of glistening energy. Devon reached out to her, waving his hoof, but halted when he felt the nestling of the blue hospital blanket wrapping over his shoulders. “It’s...cold...” Her face softened as she released the telekinesis, dropping her head against the pillow.

“Oh Gina, one more thing,” A deep snore responded back to him. Jeez, that was quick. He pulled the blanket snug over his neck, leaning his head in through the doorway. “Happy Hearth’s Warming Eve.”

Hearing a rattle of armor rounding the corner, he ducked down low, pulling the blanket over his head. He pretended to shiver and grip it tightly, concealing his face, as three unusually young guards made a quick pace past him.

* * * * *

Ghasen stood up, his horn lighting up the narrow tendrils of warped shelves looping and weaving over his head. A succession of books aligned one after another, sliding back into the gnarled crevices.

“The problem...” the yellow unicorn explained to the purple mare adjusting the gas lamps to a dim on the opposite side of the aisle, “The problem is timing. Fifteen years is a long time, m’good lass. There is no accounting for what this DB might’ve done in that time.”

“Why is this so important anyway?” Twilight pursued, walking a tight circle to look over the elder unicorn’s shoulder. “This is to bring Princess Luna back, he doesn’t seem like he has anything to do with...”

“Quite mistaken, lass, he has everything to do with it. If all contracts are not balanced and harmonious, this spell will fail. I know I will not be a factor as he did me the service of destroying my past mistakes. But...” Ghasen trailed off in a small reverie of his opponent on the top of the tower. The inheritor of the power bore a symbol on his flank. “But all I can hope is that his past be satisfactory to the stars, otherwise nothin’ll work.”

Twilight turned to him, slowly walking to the next gas lamp to turn it off. “But he would’ve been so young back then, no way such an incredible skill like,” she rolled her head, gesturing to the ceiling, “star-talking would even be considered feasible for a colt his age.” She laughed, turning the gas dial down. “I mean, heh, it’s not like they’ll just, you know, even listen to a little colt innocently wishing upon a star, right?”

She turned, seeing Ghasen’s unshifting face. Not a single muscle carried a burden of life through those sunken brows.

The purple unicorn coughed. “Right?”

“In the grand ol’ perspective of things, gal,” he drooped, twisting a hooftip into the floorboard before him. “ A pony’s lifetime is a blink to ‘em, I doubt they know the difference between my ol’ pipes and a colt’s. To them we’re just all ageless faceless grains of impulsive matter skittering about like dust before a window.”

“Uplifting.”

“And you knows what happens, then, when one of ‘em grains, the one ordained to be lent an ear, can’t be trusted? When just another insignificant speck soon replaced by another in an irrelevant bout of time breaks a contract and fails to keep their word?”

Twilight extinguished the last of the gas lamps, a heavy veil of pale blue moonlight crept back into the unregarded archive’s corner. She turned, ready to bid a final adieu to the weathered stranger, but only saw an empty desk with a dimly flickering candle.

Where did he-?

“Break a contract.” A gravel hiss echoed from every aisle looming around her. “They stop listening.”

She tensed her shoulders, and slowly approached the desk. She readied herself for the brisk trot back to the Archive rotunda, leaving nothing but darkness far behind in her ascent back into the light. As she leaned over to blow out the candle, a new parchment stuck out to her, one with writing briskly written in heavy ink gobs from a stubbornly thrown quill.

Majestic light through the night's darkness strewn,
Restoreth freedom to souls on thine moon
Spirits astern of thine astral disguise
Giveth back to us thine imprisoned prize

Twilight tilted her face, jaws pressed in a subtle grimace. “Wow.” She tipped her shoulders back. “Catchy.”

She gripped the paper, and blew out the candle. A choking stillness draped over her in the silent darkness as she wound and dodged back into the warm glow of the Archive’s center. She looked back, wondering where the aged stallion had disappeared to. Twilight could swear that in the musty cushion of motionless air trapped in those twisting aisles, his last words reverberated in circles.

Break a contract. They stop listening.

* * * * *

Evening had long settled in by the time Devon stepped from the hospital and into the streets of Canterlot. Groups of ponies strolled happily through the late evening chill, busy with Hearth’s Warming preparations while others bustled around the growing decorations, delighted at passively drinking in the wave of colors and impending celebration. It all felt so distant to Devon; he could reach out and touch a jovial string of lights, he could hear the carols of fillies unwilling to wait for the official celebration to start singing. It was all so utterly real, and yet in his mind, it was an image played out like from the words of a book.

Among all the lights and dazzling tinsel, Devon’s attention only returned to one. Hanging high above Canterlot, well beyond the strings of decoration was a single light. Pale blue, the moon stared down at him.

Of all the colors...

A meandering whsiper hounded Devon the entire walk home.

Every color they could've picked...

Deceived into the wayward sanctuary of the silent back streets of Canterlot, he found that with the crowd of scurrying ponies jostling him back and forth behind him, their erratic babble disappearing into a muffled drumming of inaudible voices...a new member of unpleasant company made a resounding introduction.

Himself.

Just why did they make the moon such...such a distinct...

All over Canterlot, the citizens were buzzing about to pull together for the Hearth's Warming Gala. The tumultuous ensemble of shuffling wagons, rattling hoofsteps, music, chatter, bells and blaring horns and whistles would pursue through the narrow reverberating alleys. Like a city-sized brass instrument, Canterlot's winding concrete channels accented and amplified the song of bustling life, projecting and absorbing every loose decibel to every crack, crevice, alcove, and pebble within until it all melded into one note.

One single note. And tonight's flavor of song was in G minor pentatonic. Somber. Urgent. Alarmed.

Such a particularly depressing shade of...

Cutting through a plaza between two tall houses, Devon emerged back into the open. The night's commotion had nowhere to go; the soft blades of grass lining the cobblestone walkway absorbed the night's song in thousands of gently rocking green fibers beneath his feet. While passing across a fountain adorned by a stone statue of two cherub pegasi, bronzed wings outstretched in a wafting gesture of freedom, the moon peeked in between the gap of the homes, the twin silhouettes of the cherubs arcing adrift with a rolling sway outwards like a pair of black horns basked in the moon's...

...Pale cobalt glow.

"Princess..." Devon sighed. The cratered designs of the mare on the moon looked downward, scanning the whole surface of Equestria. With no pupil defining the face, it was impossible to know just where she was even glancing, but to Devon... "I, I don't know. I just...don't know what to do anymore." That featureless eye adorning the moon's surface followed him with the stabbing precision of fixated attention, a stare that pierced deeper than he could imagine.

Devon leaned against the plaza fountain, a sharp thread of steely night air wrapped around his ears, like the guilt-inducing whispers of his consciousness. Even in the dead cold of winter, the fountain flowed warmly, keeping a school of koi fish happy and comfortable year-round.

Pale cobalt.

Groaning through clenched teeth, Devon slid down against the tiled barrier against the fountain, exhaustion overwhelming him. The small diamond tiles glistened along the edges, their sides catching the slightest strands of the bright moonlight like a cascading regiment of cackling stars.

"Please..." Devon pleaded to the tiles swaying against the distorted smudges of oncoming tears in his peripheral vision. He blinked hard a few times, vainly attempting to ward off his sniffles. "Luna." He nestled his brow into his forehoof, wiping the edges of his eyes until the world convened back into focus. He sniffed in deep, inhaling bravely. "If...if you can hear me. Please." He looked up to the moon, honing on the non-existent iris gazing down upon him.

It's such a sad color.

"If you hear me, please give me a sign!"

The night fell away into a hushed tranquility, his eyes and ears suddenly aware to the sudden absence of any sound, rustle, disturbance, or subtle hint of air. The stillness was so enveloping and total that it took Devon half a minute to remember to start breathing again.

So sad.

Figures. Getting back up to his hooves, he rested a fetlock against the edge of the tiled fountain, glistening porcelain ridges danced in his eyes as he rested his chin down, looking dejectedly into the water. A dejected, rippling face met his gaze, as well as the curious glances of a few opalescent gold koi fish glancing inquisitively between a couple lily pads.

Why not. "Okay. Umm, m'lady, dearest Luna..." Devon cleared his throat sarcastically. "I you can hear me, then how 'bout you give me no sign whatsoever.” He sighed. “Give me no sign at al-GYAAGH!" Three koi fish leaped out of the water, chomping down viciously on his ear, nose and throat. "Aaagh, bad fish! Bad fish! Hyaaagh!" Tumbling backwards, flank under hooves, he spun and whirled onto the grass shrieking in terror, shaking the vicious koi off of him.

Hyeh...heh, heh, heh...

Wait.

Hrumph...heh...he-heh, haw haw!

Hold on, who...who is this?

So sad. So very, very sad.

The voice was suddenly too clear. It sounded exactly like him, had no volume but boomed deafeningly within his mind. Crystal clear.

"What are...?" Devon hesitantly inquired, slowly pulling one of the fish off his ear. He shook his head, flicking water droplets off his temple. “Who...”

Ah, so you can hear us. Finally. It’s been a long time.

Another tongue of chilling night air lapped against the back of Devon's neck, almost cooing to him with false pity and cynical nuances of feigned remorse. Like an old friend, the air gripped him with a wispy hoof around his shoulders, tugging him in closer. "Who are you?"

Isn't it obvious?

Carrying the wriggling koi in his mouth, Devon returned to the fountain. "Mrr-nope'ff, n-w-not reall-ry'ff." He dropped the large golden fish beast back in the water, and started tugging at the second koi monster still latched firmly onto his chin. "Probably...just...hrnngh, tired! And now...talking...hyarrff, to myself-seriously do these idiot fish things ever let go!? Hyaaangh!" With a bubbly pop, the koi released from Devon's chin.

Huh, thought it would be more apparent...

"Yeah, well," Devon murmured. With a deep low plunk, the second fish was released back into the fountain. "I'm kinda not in the mood for talking, and knowing my luck, I'd probably end up talking to myself anyway despite such."

Ah. You could say that's what you're doing.

"So I will."

But that's not the whole truth.

"Pooh."

Oh hush, it's actually a good thing! You see, you're not going crazy, not at all.

"Wonderful. Then what is it?" Devon snorted, looking down at the third koi still gnawing with pulsing gums against his neck. "Jeez, look at me, covered in angry fish, talking to myself with imaginary beings like Gina does when she said she was talking to the st-OH SWEET PRINCESS BUTTER CHURNING CELESTIA!"

Yep.

The hurried orchestra of Canterlot's streets was suddenly ruffled by an insubordinate sting of Princess butter churning Celestia echoing through the brass piping of the back alleys. The frantic wiggling around Devon's neck suddenly stopped. With a wet thump, the third koi dropped off, and skittered sideways across the cobblestone path to flee from the crazy-shouting lone stallion.

"So you. You...YOU!" He stammered, his head shaking and hooves scraping against the ground.

Us? What did we do? What are we guilty of?

"You did this to us! You did this to Luna!"

Oh please, Mister Bookmark. We didn't do anything.

There was a rattling of pebbles to Devon's right. Looking over, he saw the third koi fish flopping in panicked upward jolts, its head caught in a groove between two cobblestones. Sighing, Devon started approaching the fish empathetically, though his voice was anything but empathy. "You're the ones who imprisoned her! You put her back up there!"

We did nothing of the sort.

"Donkey scraps! I'm calling it!"

Mister Bookmark, you're usually not this brash. Have you forgotten so quickly what happens when you act rashly?

Nestling the koi in his forehoof, Devon lifted it to his shoulder, slinging it over his neck. "Then tell me, why are you-PBBRYACK!" There was another mighty chomp against his other ear. "Why....ughf...why are you choosing now to actually start talking to me?"

Why are you choosing now to start listening to us? It’s been a long time since we last spoke.

"I just never..." with a heavy, grumbling exhalation, Devon yanked the offending fish off his other ear. It immediately lunged to take a bite out of his hoof, but with a flailing of his legs, he caught the koi between the cheeks, clamping it firmly looking up to him. "I don't know why!" he bellowed into the fish's face, its gasping mouth stopped in mid-gasp in surprise.

The feeling is mutual.

"Touche."

Indeed.

"So you mind telling me how is all this...not your doing?" He slowly plodded on his hind legs back to the fountain, wrestling the aggressive golden beast between his hooves. "I'm all...hyergh, all ears."

She made a contract with us. We accepted. YOU came to US.

"But...nyeff!...why would you even-"

-Why would YOU? All we're guilty of...is doing what you told us to do!

"Over a thousand years ago!"

A thousand?

"Yes!" Reaching the edge of the fountain, Devon raised the fish up. The spiritual aura of the lunar glow wrapped around the fish's glistening scales, turning them into a silvery shine of moonlight. "Luna made that contract over one thou-"

Try fifteen years ago.

He nickered, rolling back away from the water. "Fifteen? But she was...Luna was still banished then!"

We're not talking about Luna. We’re talking about the morning you got back into the Bookmark family business. We’re talking about how one’s natural magic was lost to make room for another sort of magic that was awoken by seeing a sonic rainboom.

The golden fish shot a glance at Devon, straightening its body perfectly still, driving a fixed stare straight into his soul. "We're talking about you," the koi explained.

"GYFFFAARGH!!!" Devon bounced up into the air, and in two rapid motions, pulled the fish in tightly against his chest with elbows perpendicular to his body, then jettisoned it away with a violent shove. Trembling and quaking hooves failed to cradle his oncoming weight on the return trip, gravity prevailing magnanimously over him as he flopped into a ragged heap.

Hyegh...heh, heh heh...you said "give no sign whatsoever." How was that?

Scowling through flecks of dirt lining his outer gums, he narrowed his eyes against the streaks of moonlight gracing the tile edges. "I see where Gina got her sense of humor."

Now that we have your rapt attention.

“What do you want?” Devon groaned, trying out his legs in a failed attempt to pull himself up.

We’re here on business. You’ve seen enough to know what that means, we assume?

Swallowing a breath of night air, Devon spoke. “The Bookmarks...the old ones of a thousand years ago. They spoke with you, right?”

Some spoke. Some merely listened. It was only the last Bookmark changed that relationship and introduced contracts to it.

“Ghasen did his ‘business’ with you.” He hissed, the collected records and journals from the Archive flooding into his memory. While his kin were content to guide and read as fortune tellers and seers, Ghasen wanted more. He wanted to use the power that could not be understood, and fell on a tumbling slope. In his struggles to correct his first mistake of star contracts spiraling out of control until it ended with Luna’s enslavement.

Devon knew better than to get caught in the stars’ game.

“Forget it! I don’t want anything to do with you!” Devon shouted, defiance desperately clinging to his words.

This isn’t really a matter of your choice, Mister Bookmark.

“Like you expect me to do what you wan-”

-You WILL fulfill your obligations. Like it or not, your gift comes with duties. Responsibilities to abide by.

“I didn’t ask for any of this!” Kicking atop the rim of the fountain, the reflection of the two cherub pegasi statues rippled away, their reaching flight of freedom dissipating away into pulled and gnarled streaks of incongruent abstraction. “Do you think I wanted to get involved in your...whatever?!”

You don’t have a choice. It’s your obligation.

Devon bristled, his breath hefting his chest up and down as he struggled in vain to think of some kind of argument, some kind of way out. This voice in his head scolded him like he was a colt, sermonizing even as it lorded over what they had taken from him. And for that? To keep dancing at their whim?

“What’s stopping me from just walking away?”

You know exactly why. Don’t play coy.

That’s low. “Luna...”

There we go. We knew you were dense but we were worried we’d have to spell it out to you.

“Okay, fine.” The dark unicorn stepped back, turning a baleful gaze of contempt to the omniscient specks reigning above in the evening’s darkening twilight. “I’m listening. What do you want?” Devon groaned, distaste hanging in his mouth as he not only spoke to the voices in his head, but settled in to the negotiating table. “Just tell me. What do you want to get Luna back here?”

Luna is both within your grasp, yet impossibly out of reach for you. Her contract...

“But I destroyed all of the-”

Exactly.

“I...what?” Devon’s voice came in a deflating breath. This was not going well.

You destroyed all of the words of Ghasen, yes. However, you failed to understand its repercussions. It was her own contract with us that allowed us to bring her back last year. As the old story goes, on the longest day of the thousandth year...

“The stars would aid in her escape.”

You removed its influence.

“Right!” Devon retorted. “And because it is gone, Luna should be back!”

No. Her contract merely gave her an avenue to return. We were her conspirators in her escape, not her apotheosis.

All the charcoal unicorn could muster was a slightly agape jaw.

Celestia’s banishment? Should have been permanent. It was cast to expire when she could undo Luna’s transformation, not simply over time.

"But" Devon reasoned, "the book on the Elements of Harmony said that on the thousandth year, the stars would aid in her escape. Certainly, Celestia wouldn't have had it work like that, would she?"

Celestia never knew it was our intervention. Luna, or whatever being she had become by then, knew that if it came to her defeat, Celestia would choose banishment that would end at her whim. Luna has the foresight to prepare an escape. You, by contrast, have not the foresight to see beyond your own contractual obligations.

“My own what-KKKRAH!” Devon’s words were interrupted by the sudden unnatural lunge of a koi fish. Having fought them up to know, he managed to swing to the side so its jaws clamped down not on his face. “You’ve really got to start making se-rrf-ense,” the charcoal unicorn muttered as he tugged the fish from his flank.

A beam of moonlight reflected down onto the unicorn as he tossed the fish back into the pond, spotlighting where the koi clung.

See it now?

Devon’s mouth fell open.

On his cutie mark.

The rainboom causes a great release of magic in young unicorns. Some become uncontrollable outlets of magic. We certainly heard your’s.

“My...but I...” Devon stammered. His whole life, he had believed it to be his calling to literature, history and the written word. Given his career, he always felt it rung slightly hollow. But...

The delusions you ponies craft are a marvel. Ghasen believed that by adding more contracts, he could undo his past mistakes. You cling to flotsam to deny your reality.

His cutie mark was a contract. Signed.

“But I never! I couldn’t...I...”

But you did. You’ve been bound to a contract ever since you first reached out to us.

He caught himself immediately. A wisp of chuckles summoned to comfort the residing dread rising. He was starting to ramble incessantly just like Gina was. Impulsively, Devon rolled his head to the side, peering at the ground. Shimmering droplets of moisture reflected the moonlight off the thin trim of cobblestone, the blue light rippling and twisting as the unicorn’s center of balance relocated three haunches in front of him.

He skittered and hopped sideways, hoping whatever head injury befell him would rectify itself eventually. Coming to a rest, he raised a frustrated hoof to kick whatever stone lay before him. Looking up at him from the ground, one of the cobblestones shifted, and rippling in its place was a rag doll of a small pony.

The reverberating thud of a slamming door coursed through the old blue walls behind him...

O - O - O -

The small charcoal unicorn shook himself off, the colt far too tired to even be awake after such a sleepless night. But his body still shivered from the excitement and joy of seeing the explosion of rainbows screeching over his own home, the solid ring of glimmering light still causing his mind to race erratically with sudden thoughts of what capabilities he always knew he had and would someday harness.

If he knew what they even were, first.

Yet the sky returned to its crystalline dominance, the warm vespers of the mid-morning summer air intruded into the room. A wash of tiredness retained its hold on the unicorn colt, and his itching eyes lead the choir in cooing him back to the comfort of the bed now that the shouting downstairs subsided.

In fact, it went quite quickly. And remained gone for quite a while.

All intuition would force fatigue to prevail in this circumstance. With so little sleep and so much now begging to be imagined and reimagined in his dreams with the very essence of the spectacular supersonic rainbow somehow culminating every synapse within his mind to finally orchestrate in perfect sync with one another, every braincell joyously vociferated in ecstasy at the opportunity to lie down and make this whole ‘magic business’ make sense finally.

He closed his eyes, and the rippling cascade of incarnating magic within him bustled through his vision. A thousand gleaming specks of magic peered happily down upon him, a thousand flickering messiahs of phenomenal intellect ready to guide and mentor his dreams. This was it.

Wake up.

This was that legendary awakening moment every unicorn goes through. The young colt heard stories of others just waking up with the ability, with the capability to wield magic, and now it was finally happening to him! Every fiber within was ready to assume this tremendous milestone!

And yet, one highly illogical, highly irritating shred of instinct just had to pull him back to the window. Just had to take that extra second to look in the distance. Just had to see that little flicker, that little dark silhouette, that stallion crest the hill and disappear beneath the horizon, disappearing through the platinum haze.

O - O - O - O - O

Shaking off the spit and errant flakes of the offending koi, he immediately knew that his mother would be waiting back at home, anticipating his arrival to show him off once again as her accessory to claim her spot in the circle of attention among her friends.

It was a task Devon lamented, but one he felt obliged by the cosmos to follow.

Obliged.

How, his whole adult life he always felt like he was that granted pony that was just granted to always be there when you need him, a beacon of sheer dependability that would be forever obliged to follow such a title. Despite all his doubts and his inner self demanding otherwise, he knew that no amount of fighting could curb the fates, as he was already destined by greater forces to lose whatever impending argument could stem from such a desire.

Here he was, probably a good hour before an argument he knew he was going to have, an argument to try and weasel out of accessory duty for his mother at the Hearth's Warming Gala, and he had already given up in advance. The weight of the looming discussion weighed heavily upon Devon’s shoulders, but a glimmering ray of warmth, hope, emanated across his cheeks as the lonely pale blue light of the moon reflected onto him from the wet tile fountain’s edges. Even with the pressing matters all around, the monumental revelations, none of it mattered as he felt his own decisions warping in his mind.

The two cherub pegasi figures atop the fountain cast specks of sharp illumination outward, like they were breaking free, flying away from the moon in the sky while leaving the cratered visage of the mirror behind in jovial disregard to the moon’s disposition.

Dropping the final diabolical koi back into the fountain, the statues rippled again in the water’s reflection against the pale blue moonlight...two dark figures, and a pale blue ranch house coalesced before Devon’s eyes.

We’re talking about you.

Mustn’t think about it. Must not think at all...Or so the run-on sentience within Devon’s mind decreed. An impulsive reflex shot out from his psyche, taking hold of his hoof to swing it against the suppressed memory attempting to take shape before him.

A deep laugh sauntered from above as the rippling image settled back to the familiar reflection of the moonlight and guilded cherub pegasi. Through the steadying stillness of the fountain’s surface, three pairs of opalescent gold eyes returned Devon’s gaze.

Some things...

He pulled away, turning on a hoof to resume the brisk trot home. Turning down a narrow corridor, the familiar flavors of multicolored ambience washed away the intruding pale blue moonlight, casting a warm haze that shrouded the empty plaza behind him. The usual noises of Canterlot’s urgent melody resumed their hurried chorus, the familiar buzz of the Hearth’s Warming celebrations making the motions to ascend to a booming opus that receded into a dull thumping white noise.

...Some things you just can’t suppress, Bookmark.

He needed solace, refuge from the accusatory and triumphant gloating. More than anything, he needed sleep, but now that his ears have tuned in, focused, and simply heard the chatter of the celestial weavers of fate hanging maniacally overhead, not even the clatter of Canterlot’s busiest street festivities could overcome...

We’ll be there.

...The very beings who have subliminally controlled him for a decade and a half.

When you fail her.

* * * * *

"Come aah-n, eey, come aahh-n!" The hollow shouting from downstairs reverberated through his bedroom door.

Devon sighed, a soft huff of dejected trepidation blocking out the muffled demands of his excited mother downstairs. How odd it felt, a mix of sustaining guilt and retracting confidence had been slowly consuming him through his veins for the last couple nights. Only a few short days ago, he sprinted away from the smoke-licked haze of the royal statue garden, while others completely uninvolved flung themselves haphazardly into the maws of peril, simply because their uniform inspired them to. From it, many were hurt, yet many came out heroes.

If there was any silver lining in all this, word spread quickly of a certain pegasus being awarded the Alicorn Cross, Celestia’s highest prestige. Not even to a Lieutenant or Commander, but just an ordinary guardspony taking charge where there was nopony present to give instruction.

But how odd, he couldn’t even retain a firm hoofhold on that bright spot. His own recollections of news and events over the last year recounted numerous instances of "the hero of the week." Those who stood bravely against a vicious hydra...already an old tabloid. Defeating a stubborn red dragon through diplomacy alone, even after disturbing him from a century's nap...so yesterday. Even those who outwitted a powerful smooth-talking demigod of chaos...only months later to be given a cold reception at a garden party with a dismissive condescending goading of "important ponies? These ruffians?" How heroes came and went, replacing one another for as long as the goldfish memory of Canterlot would allow.

And before the week’s triumphs could even sing its departing adieu, it burned out with the silently shunned cataclysm of the setting sun.

How he remembered it so, watching the orange globe in the sky casting alien shadows and ghostly rays of shimmering light across the clouds, a haunting feeling creeping over him, devouring his flesh one cell at a time in timid nibbling bites. For as the sun descended the western crest of Equestria that evening, he stood firmly in the middle of the palace courtyard, watching the heavens. He was surrounded by a strident flurry of ponies scrambling all directions around him, but as the tendrils of cold night air hunted and assassinated him with an icy wisp of poisonous breeze to strangle his breath, the cacophonous shambling world faded away. The world faded away into the surreal lavender dusk...and the mischievous glowing dots of delinquent astral spirits cut through the darkness, ever present in their detestable immortality as they were before. He stood before them...face to face...eye to eye...

...And from the sky, they stared back.

But he brought upon Canterlot triumph! He found them a hero! The gossip and headlines were quick to herald the great liberator of the statue garden, the one who fought and nearly perished to bring salvation and freedom to the disgraced sinners of long ago! As stories compounded upon eachother, the feats of the guard only grew more ornate and illustrious!

The fates realigned, the stars' pact was finally broken, so why...why did none of that even matter if the nefarious deities that conjured forth Luna's dark millennium still existed and lorded over all of space and time?

"Ey!" Another muffled shout from downstairs. "Devon, don'tcha knows you's gots'a get ready, honey?!"

They were free. But what is freedom if the very entities that first enslaved so many were still hovering above? Bearing witness? Watching? Conspiring?

What was it doing...to her? What was happening to Luna, newly trapped on the moon? How could it even be a triumph if the stars held onto their power as tight as ever? He was no hero. He was a pawn. As long as those twinkling cretins above still reigned on their astral pedestal, what's to stop them from reclaiming what was rightfully theirs without some ancient parchment declaring it so?

*Kri-SKLAM!*

"Yee!" Devon jumped from the window sill, tumbling onto the floor. He jolted his head upward to the door, and saw a purple silhouette standing against the hall's mango light. "Great griffon's goblet, mother! You scared the absolute-"

"-Horse apples!" she groaned. "You're not even dressed!" She turned on the gas lamp beside his bed, and started sifting through Devon's socks.

"But, I-"

"Don'tchu ‘But I’ ME, mister, we've gotsa lotta folk down'ins a Hearth's Warm'ers gala," Reaching deep into the closet, she pulled a pair of bright green boots with dusty bells hanging off the side. "Brff-shhidesh" Jingle-jingle, "Wrreff aww-readgy mrff-ed uh Hurffs Wrrmffernn..." She paused, "Ptyooo-uck!" and spit the boots into a jingling pile beside his red crochet sweater.

"Mom, I don't want-"

"Besides!" She said, starting her sentence over, "Were've aw-ready missed'ere th'Hearth's Warmin pageant, don'tcha know that there was done by six young n'sweet fillies yer' age, boy!? Tha's six missed opp'er'tun'erties fer' y'findin' yerself a good mare bear, y'hear!"

"Mom..."

"Ah'll day, I've'uh been planner'in tuh'night! When we get there, I tell's ya, th'whole brave Cant'uh'lot guard wouldn'ta be able'in hold off all'em fillies!"

"No, mom, I am not going to-"

"And I'll be so proud'a my boy, th'great hero'n Cant'er'lot, Miss Carruh'tops'll be all'up in'er dander with'uh jealousy-"

"-Mom! NO!" Devon yelled, cutting off the improbably glorious fantasy playing in her head.

"Ex-cuh-uuuuse, meh!?" With an arched brow, Devon's mother tilted her head away from him. "Now, you just'uh knock'it off righ'there yun'man!"

Devon stomped a hoof on the floor, a fluttering glare rippled in the window behind him. "No, I don't want to go to the Hearth's Warming anything right now! I just need some time to-what are you doing with my!?-"

With an unexpected lunge towards his bed, she grabbed a neatly stacked pile of books and threw them carelessly against the bookcase. "Time tuh' what!?" She exclaimed. "I've been bustin' rump all'in tuh'day, plannin' yer' big'oll' 'ere comes'uh m'boy, mistuh' unwed ‘n wonderful party fuh’ ya’, and ya’ don’t wants ta’ even go!?"

"Oh come on, when you word it like-"

"Word'it like'wuh!?" She snorted bitterly. "Th'honest t'goodness truths!?"

"Word it like...like..." Devon's mind flailed for the words, "Like it's my fault to just, oh I dunno, have some free time to myself for once!?" His memories flashed, a navy blue alicorn perched atop a dusty alcove in the forgotten recesses of the Archive, staring longingly out a single window overlooking the Canterlot skyline.

"Dun' be all int'uh yer'self, I give'ya all'uh the free time in'th' world!" Her horn lit up, and a fan of his novels spread like a stubby hand before him. "All'uh that time, wasted in'yer' books instead'uh makin' friends or bein'a norm'uhl soci'uhl pon'uh like'a rest'a us!"

With shut eyes, clenched jaws, and wavering disbelief at the unstoppable torrent of words stampeding forth from his larynx, Devon swat a foreleg forward, tossing the fan of guilt-usurping books backwards towards the window. "But I don't want to be like you!" The books collided against the glass, the thudding window rustling the hairs atop Devon's ears. "I don't want to be a thing like you!" Devon repeated, screaming the sentiment for only the second time in his life. "I don't want to be a...social pony like you! I want...I want..." Unable to conjure any more fight from his breaths, he kicked the corner of his bed. "Hrrngh!"

Another clatter of books and clothes toppling over accented the shrill screech of the bed scratching against the wooden floor, a sharp thump of boots falling off the edge with a piercing clanging of dusty bells summoned an impenetrable stillness to the room.

"Look't you." She scowled. "I swear, the way ya' disr'spect me so!" Devon turned to half-face her, his brow leveled flat. "After all I do for you!" Once again, the same tangent. "Af'tuh all I care fuh'ya!" Yadda, yadda, yadda. "I thought yuh'd grow up'n be diff'rent..." Wait, huh? "...From..."

Devon's eyes widened, gasping deeply through his nostrils. No, don't go there...

With a muffled thump, she planted her head against the door's frame, her silhouette casting a somber cyan shadow into the flowing mango light. "I though'dya wou'd b'diff'rent from..." She seethed, banged her head against the door frame again, and with a quick whirling jump she faced him with her collar sinking into her shoulders.

"Him!"

A searing brand of white-hot memory singed into Devon's eyes. "Mother!" He shook his head, the dizzying motion jostling the blue ranch home out of his vision. Stop talking, he thought. Leave me alone!

"That's so tot'lly him what'yer doin'!" Please, stop. "At leas' he had'uh decency t'uh findin' his'self a life!" Stop it! "Look't 'chu, all shuttered indoors," Please, "Can'tcha even bring one love home!"

"Why!?" A screeching gale of tempestuous vigor strained the walls of his lungs to their breaking point. "So you can make THEM RUN AWAY TOO!?!" Devon shouted with the intensity of a trebuchet of pink magma, and immediately reeled with a hushed nicker.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh Celestia, please no, I'm so sorry...

A startling hush stabbed through the heart of the room, even the cold winter drafts of lapping rhythmic wheezing stopped buffeting against the window. He looked at his mother, she seemed paralyzed, as if choking for any word to come out. Her eyes exclaimed don'tchu use'at tone'it me there young man! But her lungs, scrounging for resonance, flailing for the vernacular, came up empty-hooved, her mouth agape in wait for the words that would never come.

He'd seen that face before, on many late nights, hours after he'd been given his sweet-dreams story and saying prayers to Celestia...sneaking to the banister long past his bedtime to listen in on the raucous commotion of quarrelling voices below. That face, her face, a haunting memory he'd witnessed too many times from the safe refuge atop the stairs...for the first time in his life now locked...onto him.

The anesthetized silence cracked away, a very subtle, somber note. Almost undetectable, but so very definitive in this auditory limbo. A sniffle.

"Devon, thou art one mentally insignificant bastion of cantankerous obliquity!"

He heard the goring words of Luna echo in his recollected consciousness. He yearned for her to be there, to beat him over the head with his own stupidity as she always was so good at. He snuck a glance out the bedroom window to escape his mother's expression, to distract his eyes from her pained gaze with the stirring night life ebbing beyond in the streets...

...And from the sky, they stared back.

No! Devon closed his eyes, swallowing hard, and turned back from the cackling specks of opalescent starlight to face his mother. Where she stood just seconds ago, voluminous mango light now poured through the empty door. A hollow slamming of the front door downstairs transcended through the bedroom walls. The thunderous bang shook the floorboards, knocking a Soarin action figure off the bookcase, bouncing with a flat thud against his canvas book cover on the dresser.

There was an errant shattering of glass emanating from downstairs, the force of her departure still reverberating through the other loose furnishings in the house. In the decaying whisper of subsiding noise, otherworldly snickers, jeers, and laughter taunted at him through the window from the heavens. There was no way he was entitled to the hero moniker if the very enemies that threatened him and the Princess were ever present, immortal, eternal and in ultimate control of the fates. Already, they were relishing in their first comeback victory, watching with condescending smugness from the safety of their astral thrones, getting a good laugh at how he could triumph over them momentarily but still couldn't get an edge against his own flesh and blood. All while denying him the prize.

Mentally. Insignificant.

On his dresser, a warm green needle of light punctured through the book, peering curiously through a small gap at the base of the zipper. With a tired groaning chirp, Glyph extended with a yawning arc onto a Daring Do poster hanging above, reforming into the familiar bobbing splotch of iridescent circles and spiraling lines. With a pulse of light, Glyph twirled into a succession of orbiting dots. A wafting of sporadic memory triggered in Devon's mind-

“Dev’s?” A pang of deja vu shot through Devon, Glyph’s swirling designs reached with warm tendrils into his memory. "What's wrong?" Gina asked him through the projection on his bedroom wall, pink magma trickling down the corridor behind her.

"Nothing."

With a rapid shuffling of light and errant symbols, Glyph reformed, then expanded once more across the whole poster. Another shot of deja vu correlated with the organization of swirling dots and lines before him.

"Dearest, art thou well?!" Luna's voice carried forth softly from the projection. He flinched, hearing the familiar memory so clearly from Glyph’s essence, but only saw a blurry library floor in the paisley weaves..

"There's nothing wrong, she...mom...she's just being, you know...ever since my old m-"

"You can’t break star contracts,” Ghasen appeared, destruction and clutter reverberating around him. “That’s just all in sorts’a oatmeal, kiddo. Stars make em that way. No matter what you do, they find some new way to make you leashed to it." Ghasen’s tired dejected eyes slowly closing over his drooping expression at the statue garden, his pupils lathered in hushed defeat. "I did everything a pony could do to break one and everything..."

Like hoisting a palette of bricks with his skull, Devon looked up to the projected memory of Ghasen, mouthing the words along with him. "...and everything I did was a failure."

Ghasen was unable to save them...because he was too conflicted to maintain his own contracts with the stars. But why, then, were they not inclined to help him earlier? He had all his conflicts in check. He felt he’d made amends with Gina, that he’d at least gotten a bit of respect from Ghasen, but why were the stars so concerned about some contract he made fifteen years ago? Sonic rainboom? Magic coming alive within him? One last contract?

Glyph flickered to life. “You’re just like...him!”

Fifteen years ago.

When he saw the sonic rainboom outside, causing him to see the lone figure disappearing into the distant platinum haze.

Everything I did was a failure.

Mother!

With a quick tug and wave of his horn, he lifted the crochet sweater and rolled his forelegs through it. He galloped into the mango light, tugging at the sweater's collar with his teeth to straighten it out.

Glyph chirped with concerned trepidation, curving towards the door frame expectantly. Upon hearing a percussive racket of hoofsteps clamoring down the stairs, Glyph swirled and danced quickly back into the canvas bag with a proud melody of quavering tweets.

Devon bounded with long strides through the living room, dodging a chair, a table, and the jacket closet door that had been left open by a pony in a particular hurry to leave. The front door curved into view as Devon slid over spinning hooves to the dark entryway, lonely pale blue moonlight bathing the walls in a pale blue coating of luminescent paint.

Twenty haunches.

He had no time to waste, Devon needed to catch up to her and apologize.

Eighteen haunches.

He should've known better. He should've been more mindful. How could he have been this stupid!?

Fifteen.

He can't run from the past anymore. While he'd spent the last fifteen years ignoring it, stomping it out, summoning it away from his collected consciousness, she had been simmering in every painful second of that day ever since.

Twelve.

How could he do this to her? "All's I'd ever wanted's fer'my fam'ly-" No, no no. Not now. Don't think about those words now, must keep strong.

Ten haunches.

"Get off of me!"

Ten haunches...

He stopped, looking at the door, his lips quivering with the inevitable fate he had been sentenced to face.

Looking at the floor, he saw a shattered picture, bits of glass speckling the dark wooden floor, catching errant blades of the the moon's blue radiance, surrounding the frame like a hundred bellowing pinpricks of vengeful starlight. Streaked in the spiritual glow of the cold atmosphere, the ethereal image within the frame reached out...a blurry ghostly stallion standing in the distance beside a blue ranch home.

Ten haunches.

Every year that passed, one year of inexcusable ignorance feigning as blissful fantasy, how try as we might there are sometimes variants of destiny that must be confronted.

Whether we want to...or not...

Ten haunches.

We must.

Nine haunches.

We must.

Eight haunches.

We must!

Six haunches.

I must!

Three haunches.

I must!

With a sprinting dive, Devon dropped a hoof onto the door latch, flinging it open to a volley of blinding streetlight, a salvo of winter wind becoming the only sensation he could hear and feel...

One haunch.

I MUST!

...and with youthful grace, he bounded desperately with suddenly tear-laden eyes-

O - O - O - O - O

-Into blazing mid-morning light. The golden sun kissed the blue porch, the wooden blue floor creaking to the cadence of his quick gallop. The dark unicorn colt followed the path he thought he heard the rapidly clamoring hoofsteps go, leading out a front door violently bucked shut with such force it dislodged from the hinges. He weaved around toppled furniture, collapsed porcelain vases, and smashed plates that were strewn across the porch's blue floor.

Nearing the maw of the gravel path leading from the porch, he cleared the three steps in a single bound, quickly making distance between his tail flowing in the warm summer winds and the blue ranch home blending nonchalantly into the crystalline sky. There, at the end of the gravel path ahead, surrounded by an angelic golden aura of light reflected from the dirt road before her, she sat alone, motionless, her gaze fixated upon the singularity where the road collided with the horizon through an unbroken jade ocean of grass. The road fell away before her, disappearing inevitably to the obscured veil of platinum haze.

Platinum haze. Streaks of rippling green waves carried by the persistent drafts of temperate air filled the atmosphere with a perpetual rustling of benign sound, a monotone orchestra that enveloped and embraced her...until the gradual arrival of Devon's crunching hoofsteps encroached upon her stoic resting place.

Her ears perked up. She turned her head to meet him, but only made it halfway before stopping, sinking, and leveling back with the expanding horizon before her, the road seeming to lurch further and further away as it distorted through the clouding vision of narrowed, wet eyes.

He slowed his pace, not knowing all that was happening. The rustling of the tall grass around him enveloped his ears, a delicate gust of wind wailing lightly across the fragile blades of sun-drenched brush into a melancholy chorus of lonely melodic despair. Devon couldn't even see above the grass, he was far too short to get his eyes above it; a weakness his school mates took advantage of while playing tag in those fields, but now a weakness that only acted to prevent Devon from distracting himself from anything.

Like a gnarled ancient corridor, the grass waved like a thousand pointing hooves, constantly pressing his attention forward to see...her...The only feature from his short vantage point. The road sunk away in front of him. The blue ranch home subsided behind him, trying to camouflage itself into the sky.

The anesthetized silence cracked away, a very subtle, somber note. Almost undetectable, but so very definitive in this auditory limbo. A sniffle.

"Mommy?"

She couldn't anymore. She tried to cover it with a cough, tried to choke it down, but there was no hiding it from her son.

"Are you...?" All his short life, Devon knew that mothers care. Mothers help. And mothers will shout and yell and go bananas on the moon every now and then. "What...are you? Are you...?" But they would always laugh and snuggle and make it all better with tea and cookies, mothers never actually started... "Crying?"

She snorted deeply, riveting her face into her forehooves with a sudden twisting motion. Turning to the side, the morning sunlight projected a ghostly cross of pearly glare through a telltale streak of moisture rolling gracefully down her cheek. She sniffed again, a high-pitched whine croaked from the trembling depths of her heart, delivering rhythmic gasps of broken breath.

"Mommy?"

"All's I'd ever wanted's fer'my fam'ly," she started, but rasped her words into another fluttering bouquet of pitched whines, the lapping despair crashing heavily upon her exhalation. "All's...I'd, I'd ever want...wanted fer'my fam'ly, was t'have somethin' I...I..." She turned her shoulders towards Devon, trying to pull a smile onto her face. "T'have some'un..." Her eyes opened, a distinct glow emanated from them, a glow Devon knew. He remembered how they lit up so when she surprise-enrolled him into ballet classes at the buffalo dance school, or when she hoof-stitched a pair of bright purple boots with bells on them to wear on his first day of magic kindergarten. That look of a mother's true grace. Power. Love.

And now, they were lighting up...just seeing him there.

"T'have somep'ny t'give all m'heart to."

A shadowbolt bit Devon in the fetlocks, the life from his legs asphyxiated into a numb coldness.

Him.

Where did he...? Is he...? Can dads even do that!? You can't just take off down the road, and leave her behind, leave...everything...behind...a distant speck of a sad silhouette projected against the telescopic memory of a blue house fading against the morning sky. Can you!? Can you!?

Platinum haze. Just how far did the world extend beyond it? Into it? How many souls have descended into it, never to return?

Stumbling forward, Devon faltered lightly in shocked inebriation, ultimately twirling with lucky clumsiness right against her. He didn't know what to do, he'd never seen her cry like this before, never even imagined her being so vulnerable and out of ideas. She always had ideas! She always had something to do! She was always coming up with plans, galas, dinners, parties, festivals, carnivals, charities, galleries, auctions, bashes, feasts, festivities, fiestas, tailgates and hosting delightful soirees! And she was always in a bustle getting everypony ready for them and bringing them along! But to see her lost, motionless, obliterated and so depleted...it didn't make sense.

To Devon, it didn't even register. No other impulse coalesced within him but one.

He limply plopped his head against her neck, and nuzzled against her.

"You can always-" Devon squeaked through trembling lips, and caught himself. He didn't even realize, similarly, he was tearing up. His suspicions were immediately confirmed when he felt the soft caress of a marbled tear cascading across an eyelid. He breathed in deep, "You can always give all your love to me, mommy."

She flinched, closing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth. She pulled him close against her chest, and embraced him with the orphaned love long-intended for another stallion. Through the whispering summer breeze, hiding behind her flowing mane, the blue ranch home stood like a solemn ghost, bearing witness to them. Watching. Almost...conspiring.

"I promise," Devon continued against the muffled whimpers as she clenched him with soft hooves. "You can always love me, I mean it." A sudden tide of words came forth. Words from...but not of himself. "I'll be your's. I promise to never leave you...I promise..."

Words bearing witness to them.

"...To the sun..."

Watching.

"...To the moon..."

Conspiring.

"...And the stars."

Chapter 13: Harmony Sincerest

Illustration by Vest.
Special pre-reader thanks to Dracon Pyrothayan

___

_____

Conflicts within, memories storm,
Icy kinship that once was warm.
A desperate gambit to perform,
Harmony sincerest lost to reform

_____

___

Chapter 13

Harmony Sincerest

I promise.

The charcoal unicorn grit his jaw, firmly weighing his brow tight.

To the sun...

His balance shifted without him, pulling him against the wooden door frame.

...To the moon...

He strained his eyes narrowly open, the ambient clatter of Canterlot wind weaving through the Hearth’s Warming street decor.

...And-

"The stars..." Devon heaved, thrusting himself headlong through a turbulent wave of receding white light, the vibrant blues and summer greens cast out behind his mind's reeling perceptions. He plunged forth into the cold unwelcoming night air churning belligerently through the Canterlot street. The gentle stings of frosted dew greeted his return to the real world, the memory flashing away to finally clear the way for the inevitable confrontation.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years he had put this off.

In a rolling leap forward, Devon propelled off his haunches before the neck-high fence. Time crawled to a muffled stillness as a surge of adrenaline launched Devon forward; the shrill note of the night's breeze deadening to a low inaudible whimper as he arced over the picket gate in front of his home. A solitary clang of wood echoed through the still silence as he cleared the jump, his right rear hoof just gracing against the top rim of the gate.

You're set on doing this...aren't you?

Like a held breath sputtering out in a droning exhale, time resumed its normal pace, the quick rhythmic clatter of Devon's hooves beating a frenzied percussion that snaked into the bustling chorus of Canterlot's festival activity. The world focused back into comprehension, and with a narrowing of fixated eyes Devon charged forth down the street. The surrounding structures, signs, overhangs, banners and lights bleached into an obscure amalgam of warped streaks, his mind becoming nothing but a vehicle of pure determination.

You sincerely believe you can fix this.

The stars...

The stars continued to taunt and hound him as he made the quick escape from his home, making a straight shot to the Hearth's Warming Gala to intercept his distraught mother.

She's a Bookmark, Devon.

The stars continued to taunt and hound him.

A Bookmark. Just. Like. You.

To taunt and hound him.

If she can't change your mind about anything...

The swirling fusion of the Canterlot street froze, receding back into legible clarity.

...How can you possibly change her's?

"Why are you so evil?" Devon scoffed, slowing to a paced trot. He quickly made eye contact with a nearby pink filly standing confused in a doorway, glaring curiously with green eyes towards the dark-coated unicorn. She watched him talking to himself, watching him contemplate to the skies about the evils of an invisible being. He attempted a relieving smile to defuse her worried gaze, but was interrupted by a violet mare pulling her by the mane into the safe confines of the house. "Gyagh," he sighed continuing down the street, realizing the astral masterminds above were once again making him talk nonsense to himself.

Evil? Why, we just do what you tell us to do.

"But why then," he pleaded, looking up to the twinkling weavers of fate, "why is it that everything always comes back and...and..." he snorted, closing his eyes, "...and bites us right in the flank!?"

Well obviously, it's because you ponies don't truly know what it is you want.

Devon huffed at the cliche answer. He half expected that.

Listen, it's just the way fate works. It the way we work. If you will not abide by the terms you set, what do you expect us to do? Poor foresight leads to this.

"Then just what is..." The charcoal unicorn started asking for further elaboration, but found himself in an intersection behind two wagon-loaded mares in a conversation about a donkey and a mule. He already made himself look like a lunatic once already, he wasn't in the mood to perpetuate attention upon himself. He let the stars continue. They seemed to be on a roll anyway.

Why do you think so few ponies can even converse with us? Why do you think Celestia went through so much trouble to suppress the gift we gave to your ancestors? Because not everypony can handle it. It takes a strong will and phenomenal foresight to understand the gift of the stars, the gift of reading fate itself, and not transform it into some debauchery of selfishness! You saw how quickly Ghasen fell, and you are nothing like him. Not everypony has that kind of sentience, Bookmark.

Ducking into a back road between a bakery and a donut shop, Devon checked around to ensure he was alone to continue his conversation.

Especially you.

“Now listen, I-...”

The breath and confidence squeezed out of him with a bellowing huff. His neck contracted, the strength within his shoulders failing and dripping off of his sinking frame. With a low trot, he spun back out into the street, no words coming to mind to combat the copious diatribe lambasting him from above.

It's not our fault. Are you going to blame gravity for that tumble you're about to take?

"W-woa-hah!!" Devon wailed as he helplessly flopped headfirst over a sack of kumquats haphazardly strewn on the street. He turned, shuffling over slipping hooves as he lurched further to a sideways angle before being propelled like a stuffed doll against the ground. "Krugh!" he grunted, landing on the back of his neck, the rest of his torso and limbs collapsing around him like a crumbling house of cards.

Sure, it was gravity that took you down, but that's just what gravity does. It's not at fault if gravity was always there.

"Gyick, yeah," Devon groaned, righting himself back on the street's cobblestone surface. He brushed his haunches with his tail, flicking an erratic spray of gravel and winter frost off his cutie mark. "And like gravity, you sure are a pain sometimes."

Fate cannot lie, fate cannot extend pity. We are truth, pure and painful, Devon. We simply are.

Painful is right. As adept as ponies were at baking sugar-coated pastries and candies, one thing Devon always admired about Ponykind was their deeply rooted ability to sugar-coat just about any words that came from them. Ponies could always spin truth in ways to make it more digestable.

It was some pony that made a rhyme once. ‘When all truth does is make your heart ache...’

“Then,” Devon took over, filling in the pause, “Sometimes a lie is-”

Not us.

Ponies had a way with handling truth, yet ponies...the stars were not. They lacked empathy, they lacked context.

You thought you could handle something as simple as letting your mother love you. Something all mothers do anyway, and you made a pact with us stating that you'd let her. And all good sons love their mother too, right?

The lacked understanding.

Ponies, the stars could never be.

So the grand Bookmark lineage has become this. One thousand years have passed, the restriction on speaking and making pacts with the stars is lifted, and the great recipient of the proud Bookmark bloodline to be once again gifted with such a tremendous blessing...is this lowly...

Ponies, the stars should never be.

...Whiny...

Ponies, the stars will never be.

...Pitiful beacon of helpless dependency who has taken life for granted with such regularity that he can't even let his own mother love him!?

The stars...

And now you think you can actually fix this!? Figure it out, Bookmark! You failed in that pact, and since you have shown yourself outright incapable of maintaining that very first pact...we haven’t a choice. You cannot be trusted.

“I was...” The unicorn spat, the burden of frustration pressed onto his shoulders. What could he possibly say? I was just a colt? Trying to soothe a grieving mare? Rendered wildly incoherent by a mind distraught with the sudden departure of his own-

You were reckless.

The very vastness of the heavens above put into perspective only one thing...that perspective didn’t exist in the least bit. Remembering the analogy Ghasen had explained earlier, it didn’t matter what circumstances mandated his actions, or what maturity level he was. Understanding the situation did nothing to change it.

How can we extend our voice and trust to one who can’t accept their mother’s love?

Dust in sunlight. That’s all they saw.

Henceforth, all contracts created and modified by you are null. And the contract that manifested Luna's return to Equestria over a year ago? That's also null! By your hooves, Luna's banishment remains, as our intervention that brought her back to summon her foiled plan for eternal night is no longer rendered complete. Not even the Elements of Harmony can bring her back now!

Her words.

"All's...I'd, I'd ever want...wanted fer'my fam'ly..."

Her words haunted the back of his mind.

Everything you worked for, all you’ve achieved, is for nothing. Luna? Nothing. Your gifts? Nothing. All because you couldn’t even uphold a pact so stupidly easy to follow, something all ponies do anyway. How could you even think yourself entitled to be with royalty if you can't even accept the admiration, pride and love of your own family?

"...Was t'have somethin' I...I..."

Yeah. That. You couldn't even give her that.

A slamming of hooves cracked down the chilled alleys and streets of Canterlot, a percussive snare added to the frantic droning of melodic activity permeating through the city. "Shut! Up!" Devon cried. "Why are you so evil!?"

A snap of surprised gasps wafted from all corners around Devon, realizing he had just snapped while walking indifferently through a crowd of elderly ponies waiting on a street corner.

"I-" Devon started before being promptly interrupted by the boisterous crunch of two-dozen rear hooves stepping back in unison. "Sorry... I just..."

What? Out for an evening stroll, speaking with your ol’ pals, the stars?

"...Err, I, I kinda..."

Kind of forgot that like some Mare-do-Wells, those with great capability sometimes need to keep it a secret? Particularly, mmm-hmm-hmm, those powers that were banished for the last thousand years?

“I kinda...” Devon winced, shaking off the pestering words from above and extending a reassuring chuckle to the line of confused ponies. "...Wasn't...thinking...?"

Great job on that family tree, Bookmark clan. Love what you've done with the place.

"Pffooey!" The old mare reeled her head back, discounting him. "But at least I caught a 'Sorry' in there, and that’s just enough to keep me from deckin' ya one!"

He tried. "And I am sorry!" Gold star.

"Yeh-heh, sure ya are, young'un' pooter dooter!" She disappeared into the grouping of other elder mares and stallions, all shooting concerned and inflamed glances his way. Before their emerging chatter could drone out her voice, one last exclamation snuck through the frosty air, digging deep into Devon's ears. "Lucky 'sorry’ lets a pony get away with anything!"

Lucky sorry lets a pony get away with anything. A soft smile permeated across Devon's face, the gloomy spirit lifting from his eyes as the orange irises beamed with newfound optimism.

You think apologizing will change her mind? You think that will just undo what you did?

"No." Devon snickered, looking down into a reflected puddle ebbing softly, his dark features rippling away into the ghostly visage of a long-past stallion. "It won't change her mind. It won’t change or fix what I did tonight." The reflection seethed new meaning through his synapses, a blue summer glow enveloping around the stallion looking back in his mind's eye. Of all the pain and repressed memories he had tucked away, the reason for this one in particular to make such a strong reincarnation couldn't be any clearer. He never thought of...him...for years, but as the memories poured back, so did that ghost's mannerisms.

Perhaps Devon was blessed in one way, blessed to be in a family that would bequeath the greatest power of all of Equestria; a power so immense that Celestia herself saw to it that it was locked away lest any descendant should threaten the nation. To desecrate the royalty. To act such as his foalish ancestor who over a millenium ago formed the first pact with the stars, blunting his destiny and, ultimately Luna’s. How blessed he was to be so aware of his own limitations and failures, blessed to be reminded incessantly as a means that ultimately protects the nation from his own follies...

You're welcome.

...To an extent. Of course, it came at great psychological expense to himself. Knowing limitations is one thing, as it would prohibit Devon from ever chancing future endeavors with the stars. And by Celestia's mane, was it quite the burden to be followed and chastised by the stars.

Feh...

But if there's one thing that he would grow an acquaintance to with much greater familiarity than the stars' malignant provocations...It was knowing first-hoof what his mother went through. What that stallion put her through. And how remorseless that stallion was with every outburst, complaint, gripe, threat and word.

"All's...I'd, I'd ever want...wanted fer'my fam'ly, was t'have somethin' I...I..."

...Could get an apology from.

"I'm not going to change her mind, no." Devon breathed in deep, looking with confident assertiveness towards the cosmos. "I'm going to change her heart."

In his head, the words sounded so right.

“Because the heart is where our power truly lies!”

Eeesh, and they should’ve stayed in his head.

Pardon?

The stars could never understand the difference. To their binary contracts, there was no such thing as a gray area, no such thing as love enduring through hard times. An unforgivable mistake, such as his outburst to his mother, was exactly that. Unforgivable. From their lofty perches, the stars lacked the understanding that all ponies were born with. They only saw black and white.

Did the fall knock your brain more than usual, Bookmark? A pony would not forgive like that. They would never do it. You short-lived little things do not forgive betrayals like this. You banish your own kin over quarrels, you make legends of those who did you wrong so that even eons beyond their misdeed, they are demonized. When the crime hurts enough, love dies.

In a quick spinning dash, Devon sprinted with full force, continuing a frantic pace to get to the Hearth's Warming Gala. The architecture, signs, streamers, banners, lights, and decor of the Canterlot streets stretched into a streaked amalgam of color as Devon focused intently upon the road before him through narrowing eyes.

Watch out for the-!

In a jolting flash, Devon found himself somersaulted over himself, his neck now underneath his shoulders. The world spun into a blurry haze that relented just long enough for his weaving eyes to catch a glimpse of a sack of kumquats randomly strewn on the street. A burst of the small orange fruits encircled him on his airborne twisting waltz with gravity. A rolling cacophony of meaty thumps kept harmony with the rhythm of the world's pirouette, the horizon contorting into a sickening angle before resting to an awkward stop that turned the Canterlot streets and gathering of surprised ponies upside down.

Blinking hard, the dark unicorn spat a rogue thread of blue hair out of his eyes. "After you mentioned it," Devon groaned curling his forehooves against his chest, "I'm going to blame gravity more often."

* * * * *

A line of chattering ponies wrapped down the street, multi colored outfits, hats, capes and jewelry danced in a complimentary bouquet of dazzling spectacle that flickered with equal splendor in the reflections of the damp cobblestone streets. The streaming decorations of the Hearth's Warming celebration weaved with intimidating grace overhead, the lights and floral arrangements of countless hues were stitched together with impeccable precision, the surgical placement of each bead, thread, bulb, stud, and petal even left Devon speechless as he rounded the corner to see the gathering of ponies.

A procession from the theater down the street coalesced into a single cheery mob of enchanted ponies, their cadenced march down the cobblestone walkway augmented with the sweet carols they bellowed. Clearly, the night's performance left them elevated in a dazed stupor, inebriated from the great old tales of lore, of more tumultuous years of when Equestria was nothing but a concept in the xenophobic minds of pony, unicorn and pegasus. When the world was perceived to be more hostile, more feral, more wild and yet the dawn of binding friendships was discovered to overcome all with its warmth and hospitality.

A shiver crept up Devon's spine, the night's biting grip catching up to him. "F-p-p-pbt, whew," Devon raspberried, "I could go for a hot cup of friendship right now."

Though the frosty breath of the environment was beaming an efficacious chill through him, the ponies surrounding him appeared completely unaffected. It seemed the air itself was singling him out as he stood disjointed from the rest of the herd. They all cavorted, sang and laughed in a single unified chorus of contentedness, of joy, of companionship, togetherness, and harmony.

Harmony.

Not even the Elements of Harmony will bring her back now!

He was there to win his mother's forgiveness. To change her heart.

So maybe Devon wasn't intended to become a weaver of the fates, maybe he wasn't one bit qualified to even converse with the stars themselves. But was that truly what Bookmarks were destined to become, anyway? Or was it simpler than that? Were the stars their reason for their very existence, or just an intermediary to a grander, more encompassing purpose? If his gift, his power, wasn't in changing fate itself on the whims of others, perhaps it was in simply making recompense for history's sins with simple pony intuition and grit.

Making recompense.

The upbeat vibes of seasonal whimsy couldn't even cut through to embrace Devon, as he shivered once more. Trouble was brewing, and as the newly-adorned ambassador to the stars, Devon was the only one who knew it.

"Did you hear!?" chirped the jovial vociferation of a nearby mare nudging a stallion beside her. "The bearers of the Elements of Harmony are here!"

Words trot to his ear hoof in hoof, right on queue.

"No kidding, m'dear, they're already here!?" exclaimed the stallion, adjusting his hat to level. "Well, I say now, we'll be seeing Ms. Luna coming back in no time, for I say, there's nothing those six strapping young fillies can't accomplish!"

"And on Hearth's Warming Eve!" Proclaimed a third mare, her lofty Canterlot accent carrying heavy between them. "It’s like something out of a story! So delightful how friendship does, it just cures all, I say!"

Not even the Elements of Harmony will bring her back now!

"But, it won't!" Devon interjected. The three sharply attired ponies turned quizzical glances towards him, the stallion lowering the brim of his hat so it rested at an annoyed look to him.

Like some Mare do Wells, those with great capability sometimes need to keep it a secret?

"But..." slowly inquired the stallion, his voice lowering to a haughty chortle. "What?"

Particularly, mmm-hmm-hmm, those powers that were banished for the last thousand years?

"M'boy," scoffed the accented mare, turning away from him, "I do proclaim, if you haven't something to say, you shouldn't interrupt a lady!"

He didn’t have time for this. No point in arguing the point when the moment of truth was at hoof. The Elements of Harmony gathered, and were ready to attempt some means to return Princess Luna. They didn’t have the knowledge Devon had in what caused Luna to be imprisoned on the moon once more. They barely even had the background. They weren’t the ones under the stars’ astral demands, they weren’t tasked to make recompense.

A line of royal pegasi guards cordoned off a stretch of the plaza before the ballroom, their pearled coats and glittering armor prying apart the crowd. In a radiating nova of dazzling luminance, the carriage’s opalescent door opened before seven figures. They poured regally between the blockade of royal guards towards the front entrance.

Devon quickly approached the mob of gathering ponies hoping to catch a glimpse of the splendor and frenzy surrounding these important guests. The thick crowds made it easy for him to go unnoticed, and with the guards all in the same jovial spirit at the party, attention would’ve been hard to get even if he had the whole town join him in a spontaneous song and dance routine.

"I did! I just saw them tonight!" gushed a young colt jumping excitedly in front of Devon, the calico spots on his haunches occasionally blocking his vantage point. "They were most absolutely brilliant in that play, they were!"

A burly stallion pegasus hurried the group along, his wings extended to prevent the prying eyes of tabloids as they made their entrance. Through the grooves in the wings, Devon could hardly see them, though his eyes were more focused on the door. There were already dozens of ponies also making a hurried press to the front doors, eager to get a look at the new arrivals.

A pegasus spun and twirled in acrobatic precision before the onlookers commanding greatest attention to herself. She smiled wide, her rainbow-colored mane and tail twisting expertly in a brilliant streak of motley hues, waving her forelegs to direct a loud chorus of cheers and chants.

"Rain-bow-Dash!" The crowd called in unison. "Rain-bow-Dash! Rain-bow-Dash!"

"Rain-bow-Dash!" screamed the calico colt, once more leaping into Devon's path, his wildly waving appendages causing Devon to lurch back a step...

"Rainbow-Da-HEY!"

...his haunch smacking into the face of a pink pony right behind him.

"Oh!" Devon yelped apologetically. "Didn't see you there!"

"Yee-heesh, is this some game Twilight came up with?" the pink filly seethed while rubbing her nose, then chuckled. "It's okay, I just wanted to cheer my friend on!" Her face suddenly popped in excitement. "Okay! Done! I need to get back in the fracas!"

In a pink blur she darted forward into a single bound, landing between the two lines of royal guards. Devon watched as she playfully aligned herself in front of a purple unicorn in the ensemble, and stopped suddenly in her path. The unicorn bumped nose-first into her haunch, bouncing back. The pink filly giggled with snort, nodding approvingly and shooting a wave of a hoof toward him.

Well, at least she thought it was funny. The groaning purple unicorn...not as much.

Finally, behind them all, the wispy tendrils of a cyan, teal, and pink mane signaled the approach of Princess Celestia. The crowd erupted into a refrain of impassioned cheering for the Equestrian ruler, her tall poise and sincere grace maintained absolute dominance over the populace as their riotous exaltations echoed to humbled quiet. A procession of dignified bows waved outward from the holding line of pearlescent armored pegasi, as a sweeping menagerie of strings and horns billowed with imperial majesty to her every step. Soon, all ponies were kneeled in collective deference towards Celestia, with exception to a chocolate gray earth pony cellist, a teal lyrist unicorn...and Devon, still eying for a direct shot into the door.

Taking advantage of the show of adoration around him, he took quick steps above and around the kneeling ponies, making wide gaits and fast progress towards the entrance. He spun to the edge of the entrance plaza, finding a narrow gap between the tightly packed crowd of ponies and the stage of musicians still proceeding through a grandiose anthem for Celestia's arrival to the gala.

A rickety crate lay in the gap at Devon's feet. The edge of the stage blocked one side, and the squat fat flanks of a few unusually large old ponies blocked the other. Devon attempted nudging the crate to the side, the splintered edges catching against the hind leg of the old ponies sitting before him, winning him an agitated scowl. He couldn't clear it in a single step, either. A shuffling of hooves behind him sealed his return pathway through the gap as a few more ponies arrived from the outskirts and immediately dropped into a reverent bow to the Princess.

Devon huffed, looking at the crate, and cracked his neck in anticipation. He sized it up, two haunches high, two haunches wide, six haunches in width, probably used to carry a large string instrument, about two bales in weight if empty...eh, nothing to it for most unicorns. But unlike most unicorns, Devon looked at the dastardly crate and tried not to weep in intimidation.

For the first time all evening, Devon illuminated his horn, casting a telekinetic aura around the lone crate. With all his focus, he attempted to lift it, brainpower he'd reserved for his novels and studying literature and history were reworking within his cranium to contemplate the very process of converting his natural magics into lifting. As if by reflex, his mind bent towards letting the magic happen, flowing naturally like when he still bore the gauntlet. He knew that overthinking magic made it less effective, how the infantile instincts of foals could far outshine all other magic users in the way they wielded it without even contemplating its methodology. But Devon couldn't bend his magic without hitting internal barriers...the problem was only tempered further by his astute contemplation towards its use, a quality that could only be broken if something were to trigger his seldom-used instincts.

With a creaking lurch, the crate ascended from the ground in a dark sparkling aura, lifting in a swaying uneasy flight to Devon's eye level. He grit his teeth, hoping his magic would hold true as he stepped slowly beneath the heavy crate. Just don't think about it, Devon thought to himself. Magic is your instinct, just...use your instinct is all...

Trusting his gut, Devon peeked a glance at the hovering crate, the tensions in his fetlocks eased when seeing the old cargo carrier level and hold steady in place. With such relief came even greater assurance of his magic instincts, the crate almost feeling weightless in his telekinetic grasp.

Instincts.

Huh.

Seems he's actually not half bad at it when he doesn't put his mind to it so much. With a satisfied smile, Devon crept the rest of his body underneath it, clearing the obstacle. Running on his instincts' cruise control, he relinquished a bit of the telekinetic aura's intensity.

A sudden crack rang through the still air. From the underside of the hovering crate, the rotted wooden bottom peeled away, revealing the twin brass shines of a pair of cymbals plummeting with dreadful speed towards the cobblestone ground. Devon only caught a glimpse of metallic orange dropping in his peripheral vision.

A bone-shattering explosion of terrifying noise jolted the charcoal unicorn's senses, sending an energetic lightning bolt of unadulterated surprise straight to his instincts.

With forceful might, Devon's magic reflexed vociferously, a vehement onslaught of unfiltered magic bombarded the broken crate. Like a blazing grey comet, the crate lifted with supersonic force upwards with speed as startling as the initial bang of cymbals. A shrill scream of distorted air sang a shocking falsetto that disjointed the plaza from Princess Celestia's procession. Now a jumbled projectile hardly resembling its former cubic self, the crate tugged upwards at the fabric ceiling draped over the band stage, the fabric's fibers holding firm and bending with rubbery resistance before recoiling and flinging the black sparkling torpedo back to the stage.

In a mortifying crunch, the crate landed with breakneck velocity. The whole stage floor bent inward, the momentum and breaking supports conspired in chaotic harmony to force the stage to snap. A dozen band members careened airborne like ragdolls. A wooden beam kicked outward with the force of a dozen applebucks, catching against Devon's underside. His hooves made a snappy departure from the cobblestones, the air courteously stepping aside around his flailing arc upwards.

A second snapping of wooden beams and supports folded the stage back outward in a reverberating clamor. A double bass launched straight towards the charcoal unicorn. He feebly held out his front hooves hoping to somehow cushion the impending impact.

His sternum volunteered in place of hooves.

"Pfwoo!" Devon coughed, the wind knocked clear out of him in a forceful puff. The world blurred into a pinwheel of colors. After a cacophony of wooden thuds and snapping strings summoning the equally harsh landing of the large instrument beside him, a hushed silence enveloped him.

Easing the tense grasp wrapped around his eyelids, the concussive dots bobbing lazily through his spinning pupils expanded vividly into opalescent bursts of overwhelming light as he opened his eyes slowly. He groaned loudly, clasping them shut once more to retreat from the crushing radiance bombarding him. Cracking just a sliver open to let a blurry shaving of vision through, white luminescence enveloped the ground as a lone white foreleg adorned in an elaborate ivory slipper took a single anxious step in his direction.

Princess Celestia.

All nerves fired simultaneously as a blast of life flung Devon back onto his hooves. Devon hazarded a wry smile in the Princess' direction, meandering in a disoriented lean to the side as his hooves shuffled to keep up with his wrenching frame.

His forehead smooshed solidly against a pink tail.

"Bonk!" chortled the pink pony, bouncing in a single leap to face him. "You're it!" she laughed, springing low getting ready to run. "Totally got you back!" She narrowed her eyes towards the purple unicorn standing a reserved distance between them. "Though Twilight wouldn't play, because she's all 'Elements' and 'Luna' and 'Nyuh-nuh, get yer' flank outta my face!'"

"Pinkie!" protested the purple unicorn. "This is really serious business, I don't even know if the spell matrix will even reach the lunar plane! The research I did only hints at it being possible, there’s nothing concrete behind it!"

“Well, duh!” The pink pony grinned with a sarcastic swoon. “Because you don’t use moonrock to mix concrete, silly!”

The unicorn huffed. “How does tha-...” She started. “How do you even-” Attempted. “Gyuuugh!” Surrendered.

A solid hoof gripped Devon's shoulder. Celestia looked sternly down to him with deep violet eyes. "Ah, so you're okay?" she smiled softly, waving away a line of royal pegasus guards collecting behind her.

"Princess," Devon began, rolling the words like stones in his mouth, trying to pick out the right ones. "I didn't mean to, I just...I..." He softened, breathing in deep, "I hope I didn't just ruin everything."

"Ruin!?" the princess chuckled. The guards snapped back as perplexed as Devon, even the six other ponies tilted their heads askew to see the Equestrian ruler laugh. "This is the most surprisingly entertaining anything to greet me in years!"

"Fwoo!" Devon heaved in relief, swinging his head forward. The pendant around his neck jostled loose, the silver quill shimmering a cross of light at the Princess.

"Oh," the Princess commented, raising an inquisitive hoof at the pendant. "Is that a...is that what I think?" Devon looked up with his head tilted away, a single eye watching the Princess as she reached forward to examine it more closely. Cradling the silver quill in her hoof, Celestia lifted it slightly off of his neck. "Bookmark," she exhaled slowly, her hoof clattering softly with a shudder, dropping the silver quill pendant back against his neck. "You're a Bookmark?"

His eye widened, fully rounded from top to bottom, the pupil receding in surprise. "Y-y-yes ma'am," he stuttered over the words. The words of the stars rushed back to him.

Particularly, mmm-hmm-hmm, those powers that were banished for the last thousand years?

Banished.

"My...uhh..." He thought quickly, hoping something would stick. "My m-m-mother, she...she helped put together this gala."

"Ah!" Celestia's gaze eased once more, a crack of laughter seeping through. "Great!" Whew. "That's great to hear!" The Princess beamed another smile his way, continuing her walk towards the entrance once more. The other six ponies in tow followed alongside her. "So the Bookmarks have taken up...contracting with curators, entertainers and caterers now have they?" She quickly snuck back a twinge of relief that was creeping on her face, leveling her royal countenance back into place. Politely, Devon let it go, pretending to ignore Celestia's temporary bout of sporadic unease, but the shudder in her diction spoke volumes. "Well, if she's as spontaneous and...umm..."

"Crasherific?"

"Yes Pinkie." The Princess nodded softly to the pink pony. "If she's anything like what I've seen tonight, I'm sure the gala's just going to be full of surprises." Princess Celestia waved her head forward, signaling him to walk alongside her. "Just like you."

You have no idea, Devon thought to himself.

The stars were right. They were right when they said that some powers, particularly those that had been banished for over a thousand years, should best be hidden. What would Celestia do if she found out he could wield the dark art of penning contracts with fate? How desperately would she succumb to a millennium's old panic if she did the math, realizing that if she banished her sister for a thousand years, her thousand-year banishment of the Bookmarks' gift at the same time would coincide with Luna's first return and Devon becoming the recipient of what changed her? Would Celestia cast him into exile, turn him into a statue, or exile him then turn him into a statue if she learned he was even conversing with the stars above?

Why do you think we’ve been so quiet?

"Eh-heh...yeah," Devon snickered, hiding his startled jolt from the stars’ words. "Us Bookmarks, for certain. Makin' the best...uh, deals, and...contracts-err I mean, contracting all sorts of...yes. Curators. And, musicians." He caught up to the Princess in a quick series of bounds, his legs more able to follow his weight. "And curators." His mind still a bit jostled to follow his words properly. "Lots of...you know...contractin’ and all."

The purple unicorn hesitated in her step, slowing down to walk closer alongside him. She peered into his eyes curiously. Devon felt a shiver, as if those dark violet pupils were examining his every word. He remained hushed as she narrowed closely at him, staring intently into his mind.

A panging tore against the back of his neck like the splintering bite of a timber wolf. While his ruse might have worked on Celestia, he suddenly recognized her esteemed student. Devon felt his blood turn to ice water as he remembered the tower and her intervention at the top. But did she...did she recognize him?

That look.

She was definitely starting to make the same connection...

"Ah, shoot, Twi come on," the orange pony beside her lamented. "Yer’ lookin at him with a stinkin’ winkin’ that could peel paint off a barn. What’s gotten into ya, gal?"

The unicorn unlocked her gaze, dropping her neck low to the ground. "I'm..." she flicked her ears back, a ripple of turbulent anxiety reverberating across her face. "...Honestly, Applejack, I'm just nervous is all." She turned back to him. "I'm sorry, sir...mister...Bookend was it?"

Devon cleared his throat, only a silent whimper able to sneak through the trachea. "Bookm-"

"Dearest!" nickered the orange pony, waving her over, "Ya' said it yerself once, Twi. Always expect the best from your friends, and never assume the worst.” The orange earth pony rested a reassuring hoof against her shoulder. “Ah believe in ya', gal, we all do.” She bounded in two steps, standing beside a yellow pegasus with flowing pink hair. With a nudge of a hoof, she turned her around, putting an arm over her shoulder to direct a second set of encouraging eyes her way.

“You’re, the, umm...” the yellow pegasus paused timidly, shuffling the words like she shuffled a forehoof against the dirt. “The, umm, best magic user I, I, umm-”

“-And, well shoot, if we don't geddit right the first time, I know we can try again and again." She lowered her head, nudging her hat up. “...an’ again.” She walked towards the purple unicorn. "After all. Ah didn’t get my first ribbon on the first rodeo. And I still get reds and silvers now an’ then, but there's always gonna be more rodeos, just as..." She pointed a hoof upwards, sweeping her foreleg across the speckled astral expanse above. "Just as there'll be as many stars in the sky." Nudging her shoulder against the purple unicorn, she sighed.

Devon’s eyes lifted to the blanket of stars. He kept quiet.

"I promise," Devon continued against the muffled whimpers as she clenched him with soft hooves. "You can always love me, I mean it." A sudden tide of words came forth. Words from...but not of himself. "I'll be your's. I promise..."

"Twi, ya’ just gotta do whatcha gotta do." She walked briskly to the door, following a white, blue and yellow pony in close succession. They turned back. "I’ll still be your friend no matter what happens," she smiled, holding open the door with a rear hoof, and extending a foreleg with an inviting wave. “Just as long as you try, sugar cube.”

The purple unicorn breached a constricted burst of joyous laughter. "Applejack, I mean it," she ran to join the other five. "You just always know what to say. You're right, I shouldn't be so worried." She turned back to face Devon from the doorway. "Or paranoid." She smiled brightly to him, the unexpected grin making Devon stop in his tracks...

"Byoof!" Devon spat, lurching forward as a mass smacked into his cutie mark.

"Grawwwl," groused a pink pony behind him, her eyes rotating wildly in place. "Aw, you got me. I'm it."

* * * * *

A line of brass horns ascended to the ceiling, draped in multicolored streamers and banners decorated in embroidered icons of the Hearth’s Warming celebration. The lights in the ballroom dimmed, as several beams of shimmering white burned over the entourage of ponies entering before him. The spotlights drooped downward, following Celestia and the six friends around her with a rehearsed arc.

With a swell of horns and descent of confetti, the denizens of the gala erupted into applause, rhythmically stomping their forehooves on the floor in excited cheers and adulation.

Hanging behind, Devon attempted to duck out of the entering procession, but couldn’t find any gap between the tightly stanced royal pegasi guards holding a solid barrier between himself and the rest of the gala attendees. Behind Devon, another line of guards pushed forward, a dark gray unicorn holding the middle with a box decorated in a shimmering blue chassis trimmed in gold. Multicolored gemstones of red, violet, and teal lined the box’s sides, its metallic casing shimmering against every sparkle crackling from the telekinetic aura holding it majestically in the air before him.

A single, narrow finger of light extended across the gala floor, and upon its projection onto the blue case, a torrent of multicolored brilliance flickered across the walls.

“The elements!” A young filly gawked, poking her head between the line of guards. She glared curiously with green eyes, then glimpsed at Devon, and as if triggered by a recent memory was awash in a familiar gaze of worried trepidation at the dark unicorn she saw just minutes ago talking to himself in the street.

“Shh!” Interrupted a pink-maned mare, pulling her back away from the guards. Waving towards the stage, she directed the filly’s attention to the stage where Celestia stood with the six other ponies in line behind her.

A subdued cough behind him nicked the hairs at the tip of Devon’s ear. Turning around, he saw the grizzlied faces of two construction ponies leaning against the scaffolding supporting a large rig of lights. Standing between them, a unicorn remained focused on keeping the dozens of sparkling bulbs ablaze and directed onto Celestia.

“I says, m’boy,” groaned one of the construction ponies, his words snaking deep under the swelling melody of music and applause augmenting around them. “All of this fancy presentation for introducing em, huh?”

“You’d swear,” gruffed the other stallion, leaning his head close to the other’s. “That one lady there who saw to all of this. She’s wanted this dance gala thing to be bigger than Hearth’s Warmin’ itself.” He jabbed the unicorn beside him with a firm hoof. “Can’t fault her for bein’ ambitious.”

Reflexively, the unicorn’s horn flashed brilliantly with light, the surge of magic cascaded and tumbled upward like luminescent water trickling against gravity through the ornate bars and wires of the light scaffolding. The light fixtures pulsed with rings of twirling sparks spiraling outward, causing a dozen sharp beams of intense color to converge onto the metallic blue casing now levitating towards Princess Celestia.

“You thinkin’ she overdoes it?”

A line of fireworks marched across the stage. Along with the crowd, even Celestia stepped back in amazement as several glistening tails of sparks rocketed to the ceiling in synchronized dances of shrill whines, popping into a rapid fire blur of psychedelic shapes and dazzling splendor.

“Yeah.” The burly construction stallion adjusted the orange vest around his shoulders, wiping a smudge of frosting on it. “But what’s-her-name in charge of this gala, Bookmark?” He laughed, nudging the other stallion into a smile. “She was all about this y’know? I’ve worked with ‘er before and she doesn’t know what ‘over the top’ means, but this one’s special. I think she wanted to really impress somepony. Made us cupcakes to get us all motivated.”

She really wanted him here.

“Ah yeah...heh...kinda found that out on my own already.” The other agreed, poking a hoof at his own vest, the matted coating of frosting shimmered more vibrantly than the vest’s reflective safety orange in the spectacular light show around them. “But other than this bein’ the Hearth’s Warmin’ gala and all, did she say anything about why it was so big?”

She put everything into this night.

“Hyeh, huh, yeah.” The first stallion gnawed with a smile on the stain on his vest, his eyes drifting upward with euphoric glee.

“Fillies and gentlecolts!” A dark blue stallion announced to the crowd. The stomping hooves subsided with the roars of cheers, the music receded to a calm tone and tempo as dimming lights rolled onto the stage. Devon stood in disbelief at just how much thought and effort had gone into this ordeal.

And it would be an all to pieces disaster if...

Come on, Devon.

Yes. That. He needed to work fast.

“Princess, Celestia!”

Another wave of applause and cheers erupted forth, the excitedly bouncing crowd of ponies turned the ballroom floor into an indiscernible jumble of color and abstract blur.

Looking down the tightly clustered regiment of royal guards, not a single opening presented itself. The doors behind him shut firmly, and a line of workers and organizers also caught in the aisle cleared for Celestia drifted back against the closed doors to stay low. Clear of the packed clutter of the other ponies, Devon also took advantage of his vantage point to scan the aisles.

The voluminous gathering of ponies weaved back and forth, pressing closer to the stage Celestia stood atop. While all eyes were intently fixated upon the Princess readying herself to begin her speech...

“My esteemed pupils, welcome!”

...Fixated upon the Princess now delivering her speech...

Tick, tick, tick...

...A tingling in Devon’s mane perked up his ears, diverting his attention to a dark corner atop the stage, the only pair of eyes not intently focused upon the princess...lay firmly upon him. Two deep brown irises cut through the shadows below the stage’s curtain, the stray wafts of dim light venturing from behind illuminating the mare’s orange mane.

She was here. Devon breathed out a heavy huff of calmed relief. “Oh thank Celestia-”

“-Thank you!” Celestia declared to the audience once more. “Tonight we have gathered for a glorious spectacle, to bear witness to the first ever public display of the new Elements of Harmony!”

With another jab of a muscled arm, the construction stallion slugged the unicorn at the base of the light fixtures, a twirling amalgam of colorful electricity surged forth casting a single beam of blue, purple, orange, yellow, pink, and white light upon each of the six ponies standing behind the Princess. The music picked up intensity, blaring a triumphant cacophony of heroic resonance through the hall. One pegasus hovered above, shaking two proud hooves over her head.

“Rain-bow-Dash!” A pocket of the crowd chanted. “Rain-bow-Dash!”

The others on stage bowed reverently. Bowed with practiced grace. Bowed with timid shakes at all the attention of so many other ponies. Bowed but unable to hide a commanding smile radiating warmly. Bowed while tipping her hat upward to keep her eyes clear.

Bowed, and desperately hoping her spell would work.

Devon glanced back at the dark corner of the stage. His mind reeled in familiar shock, the world blurred momentarily with a spinning vortex of blending hues culminating around the spot he just saw her, but now replaced by the imprinted memory of an empty doorway, an alien shade of mango red casting an empty glow out.

He shook his head, the world focusing once more into discernible clarity. “No delays this time,” he grunted, eyeing for any sort of vulnerability or method of breaking past the interwoven steel-tipped wings of the pegasus royal guards holding firmly the barrier between the main aisle and a path to the stage. Through them? No. Between them? No.

Over them?

Devon slowly crept to the base of the light scaffolding, hooking his hooves into the criss-crossed bars snaking up the structure. He pulled himself up, the structure slightly tipping to the side. It could hold the weight of dozens of lights, but add one short pony to the mix, and the whole balance is thrown off. They really did engineer these things to an exactly specific burden.

“‘Ey, you there!” A gruff voice shot at Devon, the force lapping the tips of his ears. He looked down, and saw the two construction stallions giving him an irritated look. “Git!” A few royal guards looked over, their poise shifting as if ready to quickly dart towards him. Their wings arched back, and they dipped their heads low into a take off position.

He needed a quick distraction. Gina was always so good at coming up with a spontaneous show of sporadic combustion to confuse and overwhelm others...but the best Devon could do was accidentally propel a crate into a stage. Same type of spectacular explosion, but one well outside of his control, and furthermore, far outside of his intended result. Gina...she was always so good at creating bedlam as an intended result, not just an accident.

But...maybe there was another nearby unicorn who could. Thinking quickly, Devon thrust a rear hoof outward, swinging from the bars and firmly contacting against the gently glowing horn of the unicorn operating the light fixture.

“Kyugh! Hey!” The unicorn cried out in protest, rubbing his horn. The lights flickered with a bright flare of suddenly intense light, the hushed gasps of a few gala patrons followed suit. Devon reached his rear hoof back with a solid wind-up. “Why would anypony...wait what the-hey wait!” In flash of speed, Devon jettisoned his hoof with a square impact against the unicorn’s horn. “Pyack!”

The horn reacted with insane potency, a surging wave of raw unfiltered energy coursed up the scaffolding like a terrifying tsunami of unrelenting power. Each bulb in the wave’s explosive path burst forth and popping with a sharp crash of burning glass, shards, and sparks raining outward. A succession of exploding light and rings of smoke wiped across the stage.

The scaffolding lurched further to the side. Devon climbed up further, avoiding the grabs of the guard and construction ponies as they ducked to shield their eyes from the blinding display above. With a sickening tilt, the world twisted upwards, the metal interlaced between Devon’s hooves warped and buckled drooping him outward over the crowd.

A final surge of electricity shot back around, now proceeding quickly down the scaffolding straight towards Devon in a deadly wall of pure uncontrolled magic. A blaring, bursting cascade churned towards him. Without looking down, Devon propelled off the metal bars, feeling the tingling burn of stray energy reaching out to grab him from almost two haunches away. The sensation faded, now replaced by the soft twinkling clatter of exploded glass bulbs shimmering around his ears.

As an encompassing embrace of light torpedoed away from him, an encompassing embrace of darkness wrapped around him as he fell towards the crowd of gathered ponies. He couldn’t distinguish just which one would be the unfortunate soul that would involuntarily break his fall. “Please be a fat one, please be a fat one,” Devon pleaded out loud to the forces of physics before his synapses were plunged into darkness.

Whatever pony he landed on, it was fortunately very large...but unfortunately very wooden, and very floor shaped.

Sarcastically, Devon groaned into the floor. “Thanks...gyagh,” Devon rolled off the ground, stumbling to the side into the shoulder of a waiting pony. “For the-Hyagh!” The pony waited no longer and stepped away from the crazy dark unicorn, leaving him to fall face first back onto the floor.

The murmuring panic and concerned outbursts bouncing around the gala’s patrons subsided into a silence as a single lone note cut through the chaotic melody. A soft, dignified giggle, very particular in its resonance and royal candor. All eyes drifted back to Princess Celestia, her face convulsing to contain a hefty laugh within.

The Princess smiled, creating her own light in place of the precariously drooping scaffolding dangling above. “Crasherific.”

* * * * *

The dark stillness echoed away in a single metal clanging, a door leading to the prop storage room swung open gently letting in a narrow sheet of piercing white light in. The thin line of interloping lumination drifted across the piles of open cases and outfits lining the walls behind her.

“I don’t know,” a distant male voice echoed through, not directed to resonate enough to reach her ears, but still loud enough for the room’s vacuum of sound to ensnare and deliver into her perceptions with a conspiring swoop. “She’s been like this all night...”

Another quiet voice cut in. “Tell her,” he stated in a low whisper.

“No you tell her.”

“You’s tells her.”

“Fine, we’ll both-”

“-I’m not takin’ the fall for your screw up.”

“I told you it was not!” The low whisper rasped back. “I was kicked!”

“So? Everything exploded anyway”

The dark cyan mare perked her head up, waving her thick orange ponytail to the side. Devon’s mother stepped forward from the shaded recesses of the stacked props into the thick white light pouring in through the dusty atmosphere. “What...” she growled. “...Exploded...?”

The unicorn shrunk back out of the doorway, leaving the construction stallion alone as the sole recipient of her annoyed glance. “Well, y’see, Miss Bookmark, there was a bit of an incident, and...” He brushed his shoulder, dropping his head low to the side, “And then this guy went off and set off all the lights at once, blew out every last one of ‘em.”

She exhaled deeply, swinging back around to turn into the darkened shadows of the prop room.

“Miss Bookmark!” The unicorn interjected, swinging into the doorway. “At least the show’s still going on, though!” She took another slow step towards the dark corner. “And, and...and the Elements of Harmony are ready to go, and...” He stepped into the room reaching a hoof towards her. “We know how much this means to you, and we...we all think those cupcakes you made for us were just all sorts of wonderful!”

She sighed, turning to extend a comforting smile over her shoulder. “Don’tcha worry ‘bout it,” she huffed, taking another step away.

The construction stallion took stance beside the unicorn. “So, then’s uh, why are you down here instead of bein’ topside?”

The unicorn shushed him, propelling an irritated hoof into his ribs.

“Wuh-Hey, I was just curious.”

“It’s not that,” she spoke slowly towards the corner. She ran a foreleg along the laces of a pair of boots on a wall-mounted rack, the bells atop the laces jangled in tepid chimes. “It’s not that at’all.” A rustle of hurried hoofsteps clamored in ascending echoes from the door. “It’s-”

“-Somepony named Devon to see you, Miss Bookmark!” A middle-aged mare with glasses stood in the doorway, adjusting her clipbook against her with an elbow.

The white luminance peeled away from her as she took a succession of rapid, heavy steps away from them. She climbed on top of a stack of crates against the wall, and leaning against the bricks, nudged open a window placed at ground-level to the outside. A regiment of vertical pale blue descended down her face in cold streaks as she looked out, glimpsing at the last few gala guests being ushered into the ballroom entrance by the last of the royal guards, the brightly lit streets were empty except for the rhythmic cadence of decor and streamers gently swaying in the cold winter breeze. Everypony in Canterlot was there.

“Miss Bookmark?”

“Take charge,” she stated gently. “I needs a few.”

“And...As for-”

“-Send’im in.” She looked deeply out the window. “And close th’door.”

“Miss Bookmark, what’s about the lights?”

“Just go enjoy th’show,” she replied calmly, warming up her voice to them. “Sounds like Celestia’s got this’un, and...” she breathed in deeply, turning to face the unicorn and the stallion, “Well, you’re such good apprec’ative young men. Tell’ya what...” She snorted, half conflicted between a laugh and a whimper. “There’a two cupcakes in th’fridge upstairs, one wit’ blue frosting, th’other wit’ black. I puts extra special care into those fer, well, a special lil’ celer’bration I was savin’ fuh’tonight, but...”

A whimper crept out. She immediately regained her composure, choking it down with a bitter cough.

“You two have ’em.”

* * * * *

Fifteen years.

A lick of cold air buffeted against Devon as he cornered into the doorway. He wasn’t sure just where his mind was going or what bouquets of words were being orchestrated within his larynx in preparation of the encounter, but of all he knew, experience mandated that this would be neither easy nor pleasant.

Immediately apparent upon entering the room full of props were the piles of discarded trinkets and outfits strewn over crate, trunk, lid, and cabinet, like a piled culmination of various plays and events stacked atop one another like memories. Memories of performances past, shows of various whimsical acts of music, dance, comedy, tragedy, romance, adventure, drama, and fantasy. How they all swirled into one another in the doorway’s bright ghostly light creeping in from outside, Devon’s shadow cast like a draping silhouette overtaking and enveloping them in a devouring mass.

The shadows played off the lace trims of outfits and strings of countless marionettes, morphing into dark visages of old school mates projected as vicarious spirits of childhood recollections, taunting and ridiculing him. Descending tendrils of light snaking in between the ruffled skirts and capes of a wardrobe rack cast flooding blades of grass-shaped shadows swaying above him, the platinum white haze reaching above into an infinite falling plane. The disappointed scowls of familiar faces burst through the walls where illumination scattered through the jeweled trims of crowns and scepters stashed in a criss-crossing pile beside Devon, the masonry assuming the remembered countenance of his supervisor giving him a baleful stare down.

Stepping into the prop room, Devon’s own shadow walked before all of them, and they all looked back onto him, looming and glowering back in collective indifference.

With a slight creak, the door behind Devon swung closed, the ethereal projections faded away in silent trepidation. The swirling halos and ghostly images tore away, seeming to take sudden refuge into the folds and crevices lining the edges of the room, and in its place...

...She sat atop the crate, looking out the window.

Devon’s memories swelled within his mind. In the darkness, cast from the blue rimmed silhouette at the corner of the room, a wash of orange sunlight spilled down the floor between them. A cobalt shape wisped before him, looking out a window atop a bookcase.

The anesthetized silence cracked away, a very subtle, somber note. Almost undetectable, but so very definitive in this auditory limbo. A sniffle.

“R-remem...” Her voice pierced through the darkness, the cobalt figure casting away in a spiraling strand of errant thought, the dark cyan unicorn sitting in her place. “Rememb’uh w-when...” She started again. “When you’s was...so small?” With a soft rustle against the top of the crate, she emitted a subtle laugh quickly consumed by a crack in her voice. “You couldn’t, heh-hyeh, evens see over’s the grass?”

“Mom, look.” Devon attempted. “We both said things we-”

“-It’s like,” she interrupted him, tilting her head up in contemplation, “like your world, it jus’ ended right there, and everythin’ was so easy to explain t’ya.”

He decided to roll along with it. A rumble from upstairs signaled that the gala was continuing, as the muffled applause of the patrons crept into the dark room.

“Devon,” she closed her eyes, resting her head against the window beside her. “Y’know, the scariest day’a my life, was when’s we’s were goin’s to school, an’ you asked ‘bout the mountains beyond that grass.” She cracked another soft snort, and breathed out heavily. “Because then I knew...you was gettin’ taller, you could actually see them over the grass, an’ you wasn’t gonna be my little Dev’ no more.”

She looked up again, out the window to the now completely empty street outside the ballroom. She placed a hoof against the small window’s glass, the reflection of her violet eyes looked squarely upon Devon, the pupils fluttering between him and the rapid whirlwind of emotional memories flashing in the space behind them.

“You said the mountains were where the world stopped.”

“An’ then,” she continued, directing her view up to the ceiling. “Wasn’t long after, you’s start askin’ ‘bout the forest...that forest beneath them mountains, an’ I knew you weren’t gonna stop growin’. I knews it was comin’, and I was so scared that before I could teach ya’ right from wron’ you’d be all big and han’some and be jus’ anoth’uh...anoth’uh...”

Him.

“An’ before...” an uncontrollable uprisal of unfettered emotion reverberated from her lungs, the telltale gasp of whimpering despondency uttered forth into the musty environment. “Before ya’ could see the hills, before ya’ could see the valleys and basins that surrounded us, before ya’ could see the windmill, town hall, boutique, an’ apple farms that lay in the land beneath our own hill, I had to get ya’ outta that place, jus’ hoping that a change in scenery would...you would...”

“Mom, what are-”

“-But’chu didn’t!” She cried out, flopping her head into her forelegs, her body heaving forward with desperate cries into her hooves. “Not a bit! I couldn’t save you! How thoughtless to think, I could’a done you any good!?”

His mind was now fully certain where it was going...full certainty that this wasn’t going to be easy. Consulting his thoughts and inner voice, all bouquets of words conjured forth wilted and limped in gray defeat. For fifteen years, she’s faced this reality, and fought to keep Devon away from it so he’d not be prone to repeat it. And yet...in a grandiose slip of judgment, he realized that his own flagrant stupidity would still trigger those old traumas that culminated within her.

Despite all the resilient facades and disguises she wore, whether it was the proud mother or the lording planner of Canterlot’s biggest festivities, she was still a pony on the inside. A pony with history, with memories...

"If she's anything like what I've seen tonight, I'm sure the gala's just going to be full of surprises." Princess Celestia waved her head forward, signaling him to walk alongside her. "Just like you."

* * * * *

With a metallic whine, a second scaffold hoisted up against the ballroom wall. A dozen aura-coated bulbs ascended into place, and in a graceful motion, dropped with delicate unison into their fixtures.

“Alright, easy now, EASY!” the construction stallion jabbed the unicorn in the shoulder. “No exploding the lighting, alright?”

“Hey, I told you, somepony kicked my horn!”

“Uh huh, it was parasprites bumping you.” The stallion pressed a testing hoof against the base of the structure, confident that it was holding in place. “Can you ask them to help prop up the other end of this?”

Princess Celestia continued on the stage, and with a swing of her horn, elevated a blue and gold-trimmed case above the stage. The gemstones flickered and beamed multi-colored trails of errant light across the ballroom’s walls. The box unclasped within the Princess’ telekinetic field, shimmering within were the grand ornaments of the Elements of Harmony.

“Wow,” the unicorn exhaled, impressed with the ornate jewelry being hoisted out of the case. “Even from across the room, they’re amazing!”

“What’re you mmrpmh?” The stallion gripped a screwdriver in his tooth, tightening the base of the new scaffold to the floor. “Oh, the jewelry?”

“Those,” the unicorn scoffed, “are the keys to defeating any threat of evil to Equestria!”

“Yeah, yeah,” the stallion waved his hoof. “Unicorn things.” He unicorn grimaced unapprovingly at him, and ignoring his condescending words, silently illuminated his horn and sent a plume of gentle energy cascading up the metal bars of the scaffolding. Each bulb pulsed gingerly, a full spectrum of colorful light resonated down the length of the scaffolding.

The stallion nudged him again. “Well, I think we’re ‘bout finished here, wanna grab those cupcakes Miss Bookmah’k said we’s could ‘ave?”

“I can’t right now, you go get them.” The unicorn lifted his head, fully extending his forehooves while craning his neck to see over the crowd towards the stage. “I think my cue is coming up.”

* * * * *

“I present to you!” Celestia proclaimed, dimming the light around her horn. “The six greatest beacons of friendship Equestria has to offer, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony!” With a nod to the back of the great hall, she smiled to a unicorn standing at the base of the newly raised lighting rig. After a quick jab from a construction stallion standing beside him, the unicorn nodded back, casting a lone orb of orange light ricocheting up the metal rebar towards a single bulb. With a vibrant plume of peach intensity, a thick cone of marigold shot around a proudly-standing mare poised beside Celestia.

The mare lowered her head, gently peeking a timid green iris beyond the crest of her hat laying in front of her face. She then stepped forward, presenting herself before the ballroom, nudging her hat up with a hoof, and with a soft tilt to the side posed with one foreleg crossed in front of the other, a mellow smile reaching across her lips.

“Applejack,” Celestia announced. “The bearer of the Element of Honesty!”

* * * * *

“I am being honest!” Devon tried to reason.

“Don’ lie t’ me!”

“Mother!” He suddenly caught the volume of his words, and with a quick shake of his head nickered the intensity away from his voice. “Mother. It’s the truth. I got pulled down into this whole thing with Princess Luna and we...” Devon hesitated. “I honestly learned a lot when I was with Luna down in the archives, about myself, about us, about what we both need.” He took a step towards the mare, but reeled when she flinched back towards the blue-tinted window.

“An’ why should I believe you!?” She turned furiously, and started perching herself back upon the prop crate to gaze upon the empty street beyond. “All you were sayin’ to’ me was just a lie after lie!”

“Because...” Devon held onto his words, carefully turning them them within his mind.

She paused, halfway on her reach up the crate. “B’cause what?”

“Because you’re my mom, and...” Should’ve turned those words for a bit longer. “And-”

“-Pfft!” She rolled her head up, and pulled her legs onto the crate. She curled inward, pointing a muzzle into the vertical blue stripes of the night’s light creeping in. “That nev’uh stopped ya’ before.”

“Well...” Devon coughed. “Okay, so maybe I’ve held some of my...personal opinions from you.”

“Personals opinion!?” She scoffed. “Goin’ fuh’ fifteen years, an’ nev’uh askin once about-”

“-Because I never!-”

“-Nev’uh WHAT!?-”

“-Never wanted to see you cry again!” Devon choked, and through grit teeth, exhaled hard onto the floor, a hoofprint of precipitation lapped against the concrete before his muzzle, like a platinum haze spreading across an imagined horizon. He breathed hard, expecting another defensive retort sent his way; a retort he knew he’d have no proper follow-up to.

It was selfish. The proper avenue of being proper family, of being a proper node of the bloodline would be to openly comfort and address such. But the resilience to such transparency had gone for so long, so untouched, he had grown beyond cozy with the notion of silence is best.

“I didn’t...” Devon whispered to the floor, another layer of platinum haze enveloping before him. “Didn’t want to...remind you.”

A long silence stretched into the room, not even the dull thumping rhythm of the festivities above could intervene as two minds simultaneously converged within themselves, simultaneously sharing a single solemn memory of long ago.

* * * * *

With another nod to the back of the hall, Princess Celestia extended a wing to a blue pegasus mare with a wildly flowing rainbow mane sitting beside her. From the scaffolding a single orb of pulsing cyan bounced up the metal fixtures, landing on a large bulb to summon a cerulean cone that illuminated the blue pegasus.

“Yes!” The pegasus whooped, and pressed off her rear hooves with lightning force, “Hyachh!” Only to find the tip of Celestia’s wing holding her firmly in place, reminding her to wait to be announced. She twisted her eyes up in agitation, hardly able to wait.

Celestia beamed with a light chuckle to the colorfully maned pegasus. “Rainbow D-”

“Rain-bow-Dash!” A chorus of young fillies and colts interrupted, shaking makeshift wigs of similarly multi-colored hair streaming over their heads. “Rain-bow-Dash! Rain-bow-Dash!”

Celestia snorted gently, and with a soft tilt of her head smiled with a conceding glare to her. “Introducing a mare that apparently needs no introduction,” she started again, “Rainbow Dash!” The collective cheers and chants of a pocket of gala attendees waved excitedly to the blue pegasus. “The Element of-”

“-Loy-al-ty!” The chant switched, more young ponies joining in on the chorus. “Loy-al-ty! Loy-al-ty!”

“Awww, yeah!” With a quick dart upwards, she shot above the stage with a spectrumed blur tailing behind her, casting a swath of color jetting in tow. The blue spotlight strained to keep up with her as she spun and dodged across the stage, showing off dives and flips to the delighted chants of youth who had followed the acrobatic legend across all locales of Equestria.

“Loy-al-ty! Loy-al-ty! Loy-al-ty!!”

* * * * *

“Stick-to’it-ive’ness?”

“Yeah,” Devon’s eyes beamed softly. “Sticking to it,” he repeated. “I thought...well, I just thought that if I were to just stay, you know. Why does it matter if we talk about it, I said I’d always be there.”

In his head, the words sounded so right.

“I’d always be there for you.”

They fell flat on the mare’s unchanging face.

“Yuh’ weren’t, though.” She sighed. “I know, just like t’night, you was jus’ makin’ ‘scuses t’not come with me.”

“But those weren’t excu-” Devon suddenly chomped down onto the words. Were they really not excuses? Even if he wanted a night to collect his thoughts, to send his wishes and feelings to the re-imprisoned mare on the moon, would he have made any progress at all? He felt determined that within his own faculties he’d find the strength and knowledge to find a way to summon her back, but from the sound of the events of the gala she organized, it seems that a solution was already in order.

A solution...he undone.

Undone...By attempting to find his own solution. By not trusting others. By being wrapped up in his own world that he excluded those who...

I promise...

...Loved and needed him most.

So were those excuses? Was he just trying to prove something to himself, prove to everypony, that he had the mind and ability to bring about Luna’s return? Was he trying to prove...to Luna that he would always be able to rescue her? So many contemplations and what-if’s danced around his thoughts, taunting him. Silently moving behind his mother, he joined in peering solemnly out the blue window to the empty street, directing his attention above the looming Canterlot skyline.

He awaited the bold cackling of the stars above to come beating through his skull, though in their reserved silence found himself troubled. Together, in a silence that knotted through their own hushed nerves, they stared outward.

...And from the sky, they stared back.

* * * * *

A cone of white light reached across the hall, landing upon a gracefully poised unicorn mare. She shook her intricately styled mane with a light bob that flowed with her step, and greeted every particle of light with a glamorous expression.

From backstage, the construction stallion turned his head to the unicorn. With a stealthy raise of a forehoof, he flicked his horn lightly, summoning an errant flurry of sparks around it.

“There, it’s going now please don’t blow anything up here alright?” the stallion briskly turned to make his way along the hall’s decorated walls towards the stage. “Hey! Are you even listening?”

“Sure in a minute...” the unicorn murmured, eyes elsewhere.

“Will ya stop ogling that mare?!”

“Excuse me!?” The unicorn objected, holding his head still to focus on the lighting, but shifting his body with agitated weaves between forehooves stomping in protest. “That’s not just some usual eye-sugar filly!” He softened his voice, exhaling deeply. “That’s Rarity!”

“Uh huh, whatever helps ya out, bud. Just focus on the show.” The stallion teased, disappearing behind a wall of draped ribbons lining the ballroom wall.

“Hey!” The unicorn called out, quickly regaining his poise at the base of the light scaffolding. “Hrrrgh,” he stomped, scowling to himself. “Some nerve, talking like that about the Element of Generosity. I’m sure she’d be generous with a hoof to his jaw if she overheard that, she’d give him more than he asked for...”

* * * * *

“I know,” Devon sighed, “I could’ve given more. More attention, more time, more everything.”

Pacing through his collected memories of past, it seemed like such a simple request. She needed somepony to help her, to help carry her weight. And though she made some effort to try and shield him from perceived negative influences that may have been previously assumed, Devon never really went further beyond his own humble promise to her.

Yes, he did let her love him. He stayed by her side, and attempted to remain a part of her life so she’d be able to reach out and mean something.

But how much did he ever, truly, honestly give back to her?

“He was,” she slowly breathed in timid whispers, each word caught in a clenching gasp as she delivered them. “H’was your age,” she closed her eyes. “An’ I was promised, too.”

Devon churned the words in his head. Wait. Did he miss something? Promised? Promised what?

“Promised what?”

Her breath locked in a snare pulled within herself, not the slightest wisp of sound came from her. She fidgeted, slightly turning her head away, a vertical bar of blue light streamed down her face, catching with a narrow crescent through the refracted bead of a tear resting at the bottom of her eye.

“That I...” her head dropped into her forelegs, a dull wooden thump echoed fastidiously through the rows of props encircling them. “...That he wou’d give me...” a silken stirring crept into the rims of Devon’s ears as she shook her forehead into her hooves. Her voice cracked with dampened syllables through the side of her lips. “He promised me...Ev’rythin’ I’d ever need.”

Devon waited, expecting her to follow up, but realized that with the emergence of a few throaty cracks seeping out from her, discovered she was waiting on him. After all the arguments, squabbles and conflicts he shared with his mother, Devon had many instances of losing the fight, losing his stance, losing all content to his words as he would just shy away stupidly while her infinite repertoire of verbal counters and counters-to-his-counters would hold unwavering to whatever he could muster.

But in the corner, with nowhere to go but in the solitary gaze into the blue night sky creeping through the prop room window, Devon recognized a peculiar helplessness that he certainly didn’t know the sight of...but had intimate familiarity with the feeling.

She ran out of ammunition. She wasn’t fighting back anymore. She wasn’t trying to win the argument.

Promised what?

“So, did he...” Devon felt a wave of comfort come over him. He no longer felt the need to choose his words, find the right balance of diction that would weave between her defenses, or contemplate just what she could say in response. No contingency plans or premeditated strategy to his questions. He could finally, sans verbal feudalism, just have a conversation with a Bookmark. “Did he...keep his promise?”

“Yes,” she replied without pause, much to Devon’s surprise. His eyes darted to her, and saw her staring towards the stone walls of the room, as if peering beyond them into her own memory playing out upon them. Anticipating another long story to follow suit, Devon leaned against the prop crate, checking towards the room’s door to ensure it was still shut. It wasn’t often that his mother would suddenly become so open and quick to respond, and he feared at any moment somepony would burst in with a pressing issue with the gala plummeting into a lake of spiders or whatnot, thus removing her from this fragile mindset and lobbing her careening back into officious overlord mode.

In her usual state, she always had some way around his prying questions, but Devon wondered...did he never ask because she would act defensively?

Or did she become so defensive...because he never asked?

“He did.” Her voice trembled behind tightly clenched eyes. “He did give me ev’rythin’.”

Was it possible that in the similar manner he was looking after her, fearing she’d not want to address the reality of what had become of their familial situation to avoid bringing her any pain, did she take it upon herself to suffer in silence as to not drag him into her own troubles?

Devon’s racing questions crashed to a cluttered halt when the placid contact of a foreleg rested upon his shoulder. He turned to see her deep brown eyes fixated upon him, looking deep and solemnly into his own.

He promised me...Ev’rythin’ I’d ever need.

“He gave me you.”

* * * * *

A splash of lemon yellow spread across the stage, focusing intently upon a slightly shaking pegasus mare hiding a cyan eye behind a protective curtain of long flowing pink coursing from her mane. She timidly stepped back, concealing her vanilla yellow form behind the wings of another boisterous blue pegasus still pumping her forelegs and twirling to her own delight.

“Fluttershy!” Celestia announced to the crowd. A line of fashionably dressed ponies near the front erupted in jovial exclamations of support toward her...support that seemed to push the shy mare back.

“Eep!” She chirped. “There’s...there’s so...so many...”

“Oh come on!” The blue pegasus whipped her rainbow tail, thwacking her in the thigh.

“Hyiip!” she squeaked, jumping forward. “Pyee-hee-et!” She scampered backward, only to be caught in place by the blue pegasus, holding her in front.

The blue pegasus looked out into the crowd, making concentrated eye contact with the denizens of young fillies and colts still shaking rainbow-colored wigs atop their manes.

“Rain-bow-Dash! Rain-bow-Dash!”

“Flut-ter-Shy!” The blue pegasus countered, encouraging the others to follow suit. “Flut-ter-Shy! Flut-ter-Shy! Flut-ter-Shy!”

An errant stumbling of words resonated through the chants in a confused garble of mixed syllables. Then, gradually, a sporadic congregation of unified voices took hold, and in an augmented rise of clearer harmony between them, the chanting shifted.

“Flut-ter-Shy! Flut-ter-Shy!”

The blue pegasus laughed. “Oh, yeah!” She excitedly pumped a foreleg inward, then gave an enthusiastic wave to the crowd while pointing another hoof at the yellow pegasus mare beside her. She sauntered gingerly to the front of the stage, then as if intoxicated by the crowing of her own name en masse, opened up with her arms extended to them, lifting into the air beside the blue pegasus. Spinning around in a coiled wisp of multi-colored trails behind her, the blue pegasus put a forearm around her shoulders, still cheering the crowd on. The timid pegasus’ face warmed up before them.

Her smile was infectious.

“And...” Princess Celestia resumed, fully conscious that whatever routine they rehearsed earlier was pretty much moot at this point, “Fluttershy.” She raised her voice to still be audible over the new cavalcade of chants reverberating through the ballroom. “The Element of Kindness!”

* * * * *

“Take kindly?” Devon wondered. “Well, I thought it was a nice-”

“-Y’uh didn’t take kindly to the Buffalo Ballet School neith’uh?”

“Well,” He pulled haphazardly from his collected feelings. “No, mom, it was kind of...” Devon’s mind reached further into the unfamiliar realm of thought it had contemplated many times before, but never actually delivered through his own tongue. “I felt...”

I felt.

Did he ever get to start a sentence with these words when speaking to her? Ever?

She inquired airily. “Like what?” She raised her eyelids with sincere curiosity, a soft giggle on the cusp of bubbling over.

“I felt kind of humiliated!”

“Oh per’fooey!” She laughed. “A good ol’ humil-er-atin’ nev’uh hurt nopony. It builds character.”

A stinging resonation of truth seeped in. Looking back on the events of the last few days, particularly in the winding archives with Luna, he pondered just how much humiliation he was subjected to, and how much humiliation his character repelled because of how much it was conditioned over the years to do so. He couldn’t sincerely measure an exact figure, as many instances of teasing and running him through the critical gauntlet seemed to slip off of him like the moonlight reflecting off the window’s panes. A stallion with less fortitude would have surrendered and stormed off, fed up with the trials.

A rogue thought snuck into Devon’s mind. It seemed he was losing focus on his bid to free Luna from her imprisonment on the moon, and redirecting its energy on his mother. Yet it was in this temporary solace from the greater task at hand that Devon could grasp a sense of progress. Accomplishment. Years had progressed since the last time he was able to be so candid with her, especially when the topic of their own standing with one another was at the forefront.

“An’ some days,” she murmured, grinding the tip of a forehoof against the crate she was perched on. “Som’uh them days, y’just ignore me completely, like you’ were ashamed ‘a me.”

Devon chuckled with his newfound bout of honesty, envisioning all the bells she made him wear on his boots in his youth. “Heh-heh, yeah, well sometimes I wa-”

But really...was he?

Leaning on the wodden crate, Devon put a foreleg around her shoulder, tugging her in close against him. “You...did know how to embarass me from time to time.” She slunk her head down lower, slightly dejected, but Devon tempered his voice, swinging his head around to achieve some eye contact with her. “But you also knew...” Her eyes turned towards him, her brow rising slightly. “...How to build character.”

* * * * *

A vibrant oval of pink descended down the stage, falling upon a curly-maned earth pony pacing giddily, eagerly awaiting the rose light to be cast upon her. Her eyes glistened with joyous anticipation, watching every stray beam cast off every streamer, banner, decoration, and ornament bordering around their stage, just waiting for her moment to be announced and become the gala’s center of attention.

It neared, it crept, oh how it seemed to take forever. Her toothy grin widened with each passing millisecond as her moment approached. The muscles within her neck and shoulders tensed, retracted, and tensed again in rhythmic oscillations with her excited breathing. Just seeing the volumetric aura of the spotlight’s magenta tendril conjured a sugary supernova of combustible unfiltered glee to churn ominously within the pink pony’s humble frame as the first photons touched upon the tip of her nose. She beamed, she shook, she was precariously tiptoeing the edge of exploding twice as she was basking in the spotlight’s revealing luminance.

She immediately snapped into complete nonchalance.

“Myeh,” she sighed quietly, buffing a forehoof against her torso. “Another party, another job, another big important magic spell..”

“Pinkie Pie!” Celestia announced. The pink pony leaped into the air, and bounced with uncanny weightlessness before the Princess in long arcing hops around her. “The Element...of...” The Princess turned her head, tracking the pink pony still bouncing in circles. “...Laughter.”

* * * * *

Crying.

He didn’t quite realize how it came to this. A quick scuffle of hooves, the creaking lurch of a stack of wooden crates rustling as a dark cyan form squeezed against him in a single fluid motion. A face pressed against his shoulders, and the warm telltale feeling of wet eyelids gracing against him.

The laced and jagged silhouettes of wardrobes, theater equipment, fake weapons, and dolls encircled them with the rim of blue light cast upon them from the window emanating behind two tightly embraced figures. Pointing inwards around them, they seemed to peel back as reality seeped away from their cogniscience.

How many years had it really been?

Fifteen, Devon knew, the obligation he felt to his mother was for certain. But of course the time for him to be there for her, even in his youth, must have extended longer beyond that, must have been easier to ignore too since he wasn’t the only stallion...colt....in her life. It had to have lasted longer than this, because a vestigial nuance radiated forth within his mind at the feeling of her quivering shoulders beside him.

A feeling he reached for in the past. A feeling...complemented with memories of warm summer mornings, endless seas of tall grass and the unending curtain of platinum haze converging with brightening intensity to conceal a horizon that separated them. Every word he meant, every intention as sincere as his soul could craft make it...yet how misguided and improperly placed it was when he fatefully embraced his destiny, assumed the heir to a gift cast off for a millenium...to squander command over the stars to wish her happiness.

All he had to do was be there, be a good son, and instead of assuming the celestial overlords above would handle it, he just needed to realize what it meant to be the stallion she really needed.

The stallion she was promised.

A subtle crack would emanate through her tightly pressed lips, but she dared not disturb the silence they had formed for themselves. It was what she needed. Not just an outlet to unleash a raw, unfettered squall of unfiltered emotion running rampant from her system, but something greater. An affirmation. A sign. Faith that there could be somepony there to help with her burden.

Not necessarily to carry it for her, or even assist in sustaining the load, but to truly understand it, to truly empathize.

Devon breathed in deep, a tingling in his nostrils signaling the onset of sniffles trying to break out. He immediately halted. No. He must remain strong, right here and now above any other times. He tried being strong before, tried being strong the last time she was at her most vulnerable, most scared, most needing of another’s comfort. All that attempt yielded was him throwing their bond to the stars, for them to look over and protect instead of taking the initiative to protect it himself. No, not this time. He had become better than that, better than the stars. He had become a tried and proven stallion capable of handling himself in the company of Luna down in the archives.

Luna.

She was still imprisoned. She still...

The run-on stream of bewildering contemplation broke free of his mind as his lungs betrayed him, making a sudden gasp of breath that gave him away. His nostrils snorted, his throat fluttered, and in the reflexive choke to hold back the pained whimper reverberating back up his larynx he buckled forward with a heavy exhalation of tearful shudders.

Not since his foalhood had he ever felt so weak.

A neck extended outward, wrapping around his, and with two forelegs over his shoulders he drooped lifelessly forward in his mother’s arms. Devoid of judgment, criticism, and sarcasm, the enveloping darkness and gentle blue light from the window transformed the whole room into an collison of broken souls, their consciousness intertwined around the mutual need for a sort of closure they conspired against for a decade and a half of miserable existence. Devon had run from it, his mother shielded them from it to take the brunt of it, and together they had acquired the ability to finally face it.

In breaking down their walls and uniting...they let the fifteen years of hurt and turmoil spill out in tightly clenched tears. Tears not designated for that moment in time, but backlogged for far too long, neglected.

They found the honesty to lay it all out, the loyalty to endure the long years, the kindness to find forgiveness, the generosity to offer it, and as their tears streamed from their eyes they finally pulled back...

...Laughter.

With relieved giggles and nudges to each other’s shoulders, they had found that without the need of some gift, some proverbial mandate set forth by their own bloodline’s fantastic powers over the very fabric of one’s intended destination in life, they were able to hold together and overcome the conflict that permeated between them for years. Caught in the glistening aura of light distorting through descending tears, there emerged the prickly burst of refracted luminance.

There emerged...a spark.

* * * * *

“Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia beamed, levitating a large crown before her. She lowered her head, leveling eye to eye with the purple unicorn. “My most esteemed and treasured student,” she descended the crown atop her, noticing the familiar look of anticipation on her face. “It’s okay,” Celestia reassured the nervous unicorn.

She lifted her hoof to the crown to adjust it. “But we don’t even know if-”

“-Twilight,” Celestia interrupted. “I know you’re a bit fluttery in the stomach. But remember, it’s okay if it doesn’t work the first time, we can always try again.”

“R-right,” stammered the purple unicorn, lowering a solemn glance upon the orange earth pony standing beside her. She breathed in heavily through her nostrils, remembering the encouraging words from the orange earth pony outside, “as many times as there are stars in the sky.”

Stepping forward as violet spotlight engulfed her, Twilight blinked a few times for her eyes to adjust, the searing daggers of direct opalescent light pulling away from her peripheral vision. Spread before her was a throng of ponies, all beaming and cheering in support, but around her were her closest friends, each of them smiling expectantly. Twilight felt her cheeks burn slightly while she walked forward, the crown imbued with her element nestled firmly upon her head. While her heart nestled comfortably in the warm companionship, her mind raced and panicked behind her fluttering purple eyes.

Everything in theory made sense. But it was only theory, and it rankled Twilight’s analytic mind and style. There were too many unknowns, too many variables, this spell was a complete shot in the dark, far from the collected and intricate study she had so expertly disciplined herself in over the years. But Celestia believed in her. Her friends believed in her. And most importantly, she believed in them.

It should work.

It must work.

“The Element of Magic!” Celestia’s voice sang proudly out behind her, setting the crowd into a new wave of applause. Shrill whistles from the direction of the blue pegasus only intensified Twilight’s blush. She paused, mind struggling to organize itself as her eyes moved from one friend to the next. Meeting their gaze, Twilight’s courage soared when they all fearlessly met her eyes with confident, prepared smiles.

“Alright girls,” Twilight whispered, her voice lost to the swirling cheers. “We can do this, we can bring Luna back.”

The six ponies stood in a line as the spotlights dotting the stage faded away, a dull teal shadow of ambient glow reverberated through the darkened ballroom. The patrons hushed, all leaning forward in expectant anticipation, all preparing to bear witness to the great spectacle of legend that had protected their nation, their lives, for over a millenium.

A lone triangle of purple glow dimly shimmered into life, exhaling with softened tones of twinkling auras pulling together into a magical essence that danced in conscientious steps atop the unicorn’s horn. Like the rustle of wind gracing a hooftip through windchimes, the aura grew, and after a few seconds, pulsed suddenly with a sharp pop of blazing light that reached the furthest corners of the ballroom, even reaching between the cracks at her feet, darting wildly through the floorboards to cast a phalanx of luminescent purple lines on the prop room floor.

* * * * *

Her voice sliced away the silence. “Sounds like they’s gettin’ on with th’show.” She unclasped her forearms from around Devon’s shoulders, letting him go. Without a thought of trepidation resting within his mind, Devon leaned forward into her, lowering his head against her neck. He then huffed a quick snicker, inhaling through his teeth as he also stepped back.

Breathing out subtly, there was one last thing on Devon’s mind that he couldn’t let go of. The final step. The stage had been set, the conditions were right, and hypothetically everything should be right.

It should work.

It must work.

“You don’t really think...I’ll become like...” He dipped his face, glancing at her feet. “...I act like, you know...”

She righted her head suddenly, hoping to glance solidly into his eyes but finding they had wandered well below the angle to do so. “Sometimes...” She stepped forward, and also sinking her muzzle low, tapped her forehead against his. “Well, som’times, Devon...I...” She cracked softly, suppressing it behind curled lips. “...Nothin’ could scare me more t’see you-”

“-Because it’s impossible.” He mumbled lightly to the floor. “Because there was one thing he could, and never will do.”

"I'm not going to change her mind, no." Devon breathed in deep, looking with confident assertiveness towards the cosmos. "I'm going to change her heart."

“Mom...” Devon pulled his head up, placing his lips gently on her forehead.

Making recompense.

She inhaled heavily, flinching in response to the soft kiss, looking up to peer into his eyes as he stepped back. “I’m sorry.” He turned halfway in thought, gazing toward her with a partial turn of his head. Another pulse of sharp light seeped into the room from above, as five different colored strobes projected crackled veins against the floor.

In his head, the words sounded so right.

“I’m sorry...for...for everything.”

They came out perfect.

* * * * *

Circles, designs, lines, and archaic symbols orbited and ebbed around the purple unicorn as five arcs of swirling paisley designs spread towards the other bearers of the Elements of Harmony. As each contacted the bearer’s hoof, the necklace resting against their neck shook, and elevated slightly off their coat, the encompassing magic twirling around it ensnaring and firmly hoisting the bearer into the air.

The crowd stared upon them in awe. Rustles of chatter coursed between them, but were immediately stopped as a loud blast of blinding magic blared across them, the light blazing around each of the jeweled elements casting a ray of solid enchanted energy into a ring framing them in rainbow splendor.

They lifted, higher and higher into the air, hovering with grace and strength as even more archaic symbols jetted out from the crown of the purple unicorn. She extended her forelegs outward, a web of mystical energy wrapped around each hoof, a growing sphere decorated in ancient languages and orbiting symbols stretched between them.

In words rehearsed of texts well beyond her own collection, texts concealed within the deepest echelons of the Canterlot’s spell collections, the purple unicorn called out into the room, the Elements uniting their magic together to project her voice beyond the chaotic whirlwind spinning rapidly around the six glowing ponies.

“Majestic light through the night's darkness strewn,
Restore freedom to souls on thine moon!
Spirits astern of thine astral disguise
Giveth back to us thine imprisoned prize!”

Another circle of designs and shapes pulled together in the center of the ballroom, and spinning sideways, it righted itself to a vertical position. From within, another circle formed, angling perpendicular to it.

“Invoked and imbued with harmony’s stone
We call to thee, bring our beloved home!”

The room rocked and lurched as another pulse of errant energy exploded from the two discs in the middle. Constellations formed within them, spatters of stars that formed clearly between the interconnected weaving patterns of archaic words and astrological etchings. The purple unicorn eased, her voice elevated to a new level of confidence, seeing the intended effects of the spell starting to take form.

The ponies stepped away from the rapidly churning magic overhead. The stars focused steeled glances toward the purple unicorn, who in turn peered fiercely with glowing white eyes...

“Come forth and shed thine black starry veil!”

* * * * *

You haven’t sway on us, your spell will fail!

“Huh?” Devon asked, his words suddenly cutting through the silence.

Irrelevant magics, our word is thus.
Your petulance has no holding with us!

He lowered his brow. “Wait, are you-”

His mother turned toward him. “What’s that, Devon?” she asked curiously.

He face seized, seemingly forgetting where he was upon hearing the familiar echoing voice booming within his mind. “Oh, that was...I...” Devon looked up through the floorboards, the rippling motions of sparkling light intruding between them grew in intensity and speed as the whine of whipping air started to seep into the auditory stasis around them. “Nothing,” he coughed, shaking his mane. “Thought you said something.”

“I did, hon,” she replied, turning from the door. “I told ya’ t’stay here. There’s somethin’ I got’sa go get real quick. Upstairs.”

* * * * *

The choir of voices repeated the verse again, the chant growing in intensity as the magic swirled and crackled through the ballroom. Quivering pulses of force rattled the floorboards and drove the onlookers back in startled leaps. Below the stage, the thumping shockwaves were not dispersed at all from the thick boards. Devon rose, peering out the window. Even though the stars held their usual position in the night sky, Devon could feel agitation, as if their indignation at being challenged was stirring the entire sky.

You will not have her!
She is OURS!

Devon felt a tug at the pit of his stomach. Was it from the magic in the air? Was it a sign from the stars? Was it the insistence of responsibility in the face of monumental duty? Through that straining pit, Devon saw something that had eluded him in the past days and nights, something made clear only after his penance was earned.

Hope.

Devon rose to his feet and his entire body quivered. This was his moment! This was his opportunity! But how? What is this moment needing? Devon’s mind raced, scrambled over disjointed memories for some clue, for some trail that the stars’ own mocking voice may have left for him.

You thought you could handle something as simple as letting your mother love you. Something all mothers do anyway, and you made a pact with us stating that you'd let her.

Devon raced from the prop room. His body and mind burning with newfound purpose and drive.

* * * * *

“It’s working! It’s WORKING!” a voice called from the crowd. “I see the Princess!”

Engulfed in swirling magic and ethereal scrollwork, a shadowy figure materialized in the ball, head raised in profound curiosity and trepidation. But the shape was unmistakable; the billowing mane and regal countenance could only belong to the Princess of the Night. From her perch behind the spell, Celestia felt her breath leap out of her throat and her body tense in fearful anticipation. It was so close, a recurring nightmare about to end.

The ball of magic swirled faster and faster, and for a moment the shadowy figure seemed to shimmer further into shape. Celestia would swear she saw the familiar teal of her sister’s eyes in the maelstrom of lights and words.

But just as suddenly as that jolt of hope hit her, the shadowy figure melted away and the spell tore itself apart. Like scraps of burning paper, the spectral text fluttered in the sky as residual magic consumed it.

Confused murmurs rippled through the crowd as the six ponies drifted back to the ground. As her hooves met the floor, Twilight doubled over onto her fetlocks, heaving for breath as if coming down from a brutal sprint. Immediately, the orange pony was at her side.

“Twi! Twi! Ya’ll right?” she asked, hooking her head down to support her friend.

“I am...I am Applejack...” she panted after an agonizing silence. With a few more breaths, she unsteadily rose to her feet. “We were so close,” she sighed, disappointment gripping her heart and showing on her face. It was unmistakable; as the first member of the audience saw the purple unicorn’s crestfallen expression, it quickly spread in a reverberating somber note of despair. The evidence was plain; the spell...no...the Elements of Harmony, had failed.

Dejected murmurs rumbled across the crowd. There was no anger or irritation, but profound sadness.

“I...” Twilight whimpered as another hoof pressed onto her shoulder from behind. “I’m s-so sorry, everypony!” Before she could turn or flee, the hoof pulled her into an embrace.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Celestia whispered down to her. Battling her own sorrow back, she pulled away from Twilight just as the other Element bearers circled her in support. “You nearly brought her back for us, it is possible.”

“No way we’re giving up yet!” the blue pegasus bellowed. “We all saw how close we were!”

“Dern’ tootin’!” the orange pony echoed. Looking between the ring of friends, and the courageous encouragement of Celestia, Twilight swallowed hard.

“I can...” She thought for a second, hoping for some plan of attack to pull together at the moment. “Maybe make a few adjustments...” she murmured, straining for hope and a plan. Nothing was coming to mind, everything should’ve worked as it was, she studied it harder than any other spell before. “If you give me some time, I think I can try it again.” The purple unicorn swallowed again, pausing only to readjust her tiara. “I’ll need a few minutes, so just be ready when I call for you, okay?”

“Phe-EW!” the pink pony gasped in abject relief. “Be right back! Totally need to use the little filly’s room while you do your adjustment thingy dingy!”

* * * * *

Devon burst out from the prop room, nearly knocking another unicorn aside.

“Woa-ho there! Where’s the fire?” he called as Devon turned to race past him.

“Mom...er...Miss Bookmark...where’d she go?” Devon asked, trying his best to maintain a calm tone, but his pace and the intense huff of his breath told otherwise.

“She went up to the balconies, I think she was lookin’ fo-hey!” By the time the unicorn had finished, Devon was headed towards the stairs up to the ring of terraces that circled the ballroom.

All around him, Devon heard the mumbles of ponies who had been denied a miracle. All around him, he heard the concern, saw the hopelessness as guests tried to fathom something that could not be, yet happened right in front of him. The Elements failed, something was terribly wrong.

How different he felt from mere hours ago. Where before, he drowned in a sea of joy outside of the gala, unable to feel even the residual pleasure of anticipating the power of the Elements of Harmony, now he held the one spark of hope that Luna had. Alone, he couldn’t bring her back, he knew that.

You’ll never be able to bring her back.

“Maybe I can’t,” he proclaimed out loud, shutting his eyes tight. “But I can give those who can their chance.”

As Devon circled the balconies, he saw the complete reach of the gala. The mood was reserved, the air was heavy with an unspoken burden.

“Come on, where ARE you?” he hissed, poking his head into each alcove in a desperate search. The Elements didn’t matter now. They couldn’t matter now.

“Aw come aw’n Miss Bookmark!” a protest brought Devon up short. “You said we could have both cupcakes!”

“I knows, I knows! But...well, things took a change fer me! Promise t’make it up t’ya! Don’cha pout now! Trust me, it’ll be ev’n bett’r!”

Devon skidded to a halt as the worker pony strode from the booth that the argument came from. Devon nearly ran into his mother as he stumbled around the corner.

“YEE-HEE-HEEK!” they squeaked in unison, both nearly tumbling over.

“Devon! Yeesh, y’scared the cutie mark right offa m’flank!” his mother chided with a broad smile. “I was plannin’ on surprisin’ ya’s with this,” she added, floating a plate with a solitary cupcake on it, coated in a navy blue frosting that matched his mane. She looked at him from beyond the telekentic haze. “I made two...but...” she offered a little nervous shrug as she set the plate down on a small table before a comfy sofa.

“Don’t worry about it, mom,” Devon replied instantly as she settled into one of the posh seats to look over the party, still heavy with disappointment and forced happiness.

“N’ver been in this dead of a party...think they took that magic fizzle hard.”

Joining her, Devon turned his eye to the plate. As his mother spoke, he narrowed his focus and drove a small wedge of magic into the cupcake.

“Can’t blame ‘em, that show got ev’rypony ready to see a miracle,” she laughed. “N’ver had to plan a party for miracles.”

He didn’t answer.

“Devon?” she asked, turning her head away from the gala to the silent figure beside her.

“Ick...sorry mom, I was never really precise,” he finally spoke. On the plate, the cupcake was roughly split in two, cut with the same precision as a hammer used to cut pie. Remnants of frosting and cake rested conspicuously on the velvet seat. Smiling sheepishly, Devon lifted one half of the cupcake to his mother. “Well, miracles happen,” he mused, taking his own piece.

“Tha’s right, Dev. Got’a see the litt’l miracles.”

Devon looked out into the ballroom, a procession of dejected faces looked away towards the stage, seemingly in an entranced state still awaiting some miracle to spontaneously erupt forth from the placid air above them.

“Mom?”

The enchanting vigil of bright vibrant expressions had faded, but above the crowd, a dissenting pocket of Hearth’s Warming cheer remained perched on an overlooking balcony.

She turned to face away from the ambling bodies below. “What is it, Devon?” Backdropped by the somber tones ebbing behind her, a warm smile complemented a light quiver in her eye.

Devon extended a forehoof, hooking it around her neck, pulling her close to him. “Happy Hearth’s Warming Eve, mom.”

She exhaled deeply, letting the dreadful turmoil of the blown display of Elements waft away. “H’ppy Hearth’s Warm’er’s Eve, Devon.” She kissed him gently on the forehead. Unbeknownst to either of them, an eerie point of light graced atop each of their horns, a stray flicker of cross-shaped light glided gently along the metal trim of the pendant around Devon’s neck. “I don’s says its enough’s but, y’uh do so well...” She pulled him in again close, the pendant pressed squarely against her. “An’ I really do love ya’.”

“Oh, pfft mom,” Devon nickered, feeling a wash of warmth creep across his cheeks. He tilted his head to the side, unable to pull back the bashful grin tugging upon him. “Heh, heh, really now, I...” He paused, feeling her let go, the pendant rattling with a magic hum clinging against his collar. He sucked in a quick sharp wisp of breath, leveling his speech to fitting sincerity, seeing her brown eyes locked onto him with that familiar motherly tenderness. “I love you, too.”

Devon bit into the cupcake, but only had the time to chew once before the world twisted.

* * * * *

With a roar, the ballroom flooded with erratic crackling light. An unbidden hurricane of magic burst through. Simultaneously, small storms of magic erupted from across the gala, all of them turning on the Elements of Harmony.

You didn’t...

“WOOOAH!” the blue pegasus yelped, caught in the middle of a slow-motion demonstration of the Buckaneer Blaze when a ball of crackling force snagged her by her necklace. She flopped sideways and careened neck-first with the grace of a Benny Hitch chase,

I did.

The legs of an orange mare flailed wildly beneath an overturned tablecloth, apple fritters and candies dangling and dripping off its side as it lifted upwards. “The, hay!? Twilight, gimme a warnin’ next time ya-woaah-oh-oooh!” The cloth dropped. “Twi!” She twisted and kicked at her unexpectedly airborne disposition.

How did...what did you? You couldn’t have...

“Applejack!” a white unicorn groused as fritters and half-bitten apples sloshed down in a dismaying downpour. “How could you be so insens-WAAH-HAHAAA!”

You had no way of knowing.

The doors to the outdoor balconies burst open. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness!” Seized in the same force as the others, a yellow pegasus clawed at the floor.

Then that...it means...

Twilight had a moment to feel something terribly amiss before her tiara rocketed towards the whirl of magic in time with the others. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” she yelped as the tiara dragged her across the whole length of the table, scattering books and pastries from shocked guests as she went. Frosting, cake and sprinkles, and a sporadically torn wall tapestry draped from her mane and tail.

But she would never forgive you...

She never had to, you don’t understand ponies. We’re more than just one act, we’re better than that.

Where the storm of magic had seized all five ponies in the ballroom instantly, there was a curious absence of the sixth. Absent, that is, until the insistent thumps of a door being pounded managed to find hearing in the chaotic gala.

Your contract with your mother is fulfilled. Her love is without question.

“I...said...OCCUPADO!” a voice wailed despondently as the door to the restrooms finally gave way in spectacular fashion. “Hey, I was next!”

All contracts made...and modified by the patriarch of the Bookmarks...

The sphere of magic returned in a glorious surge. Wrapped in the heavy tapestry, Twilight’s voice muffled out an incantation, destiny forcing them it of her throat.

“Majestic light through the night's darkness strewn,
Restoreth freedom to souls on thine moon!
Spirits astern of thine astral disguise
Giveth back to us thine imprisoned prize!”

Are henceforth...

“Invoked and imbued with harmony’s stone
We call to thee, bring our loved one home!”

Valid and binding.

“Come forth and shed thine black starry veil!”
“So that fate’s decree shall hence prevail!”

...Now.

The shadowy figure appeared again in the sphere. In a brilliant explosion of light and force, the ball heaved outward. Contrails of dazzling starlight twirled in its wake, leaving a dark miasma of blues coalescing into a tightening form. Turquoise eyes opened momentarily from within, and it weakly staggered before all four legs pulled into a tightened solidity. A wave of cobalt light permeated forth. Her legs descended, making contact with the ground before the last embers of the spell dissipated.

Firmly planted in the center of the gala, Luna’s legs gave out in unison and she flopped to the ground.

Every pony in the gala held still, breathless. No one dared speak or even move as the enormity of the situation loomed all around them. The bearers of the Elements of Harmony staggered to their hooves, trying to free themselves from tapestries, or wipe birdseed from their noses, disheveled and scattered compared to the princess who lay serenely at the center of their circle. Finally, after a moment stretched into an unknowable eternity, a voice quaked out of the silence. An accented voice belonging to a calico colt.

“Th-the Princess! Princess Luna is back!”

The room exploded in joy in a multitude of clopping hooves, tearful cheers and simple, dumbfounded silence. No pony had the foggiest idea what had happened, but it didn’t matter to a single one.

“Oooooh YEAH!” the blue pegasus whooped as hushed silence gave way to jubilation. Wrapping a blue foreleg around the trembling yellow pegasus, she squeezed tight. “No idea what we did, but I knew we could do it!” The earth ponies, pink and orange, pounded hooves together before the pink one helped the other to remove the bucket.

Up above the mess, Devon and his mother were as fixed as the rest of the guests.

“Oh m’stars!” his mother squealed. “I n-never imagined somethin’ like this! Oh!” she was fluttering in her joy. Looping her foreleg around Devon, she let out a keening yell of her own to join the others. “Looks like m’racles are still on the plan fer’ this party,” she smirked, but then her face twisted into a mask of sudden panic. “Ah shoot! Th’PARTY!” Devon’s mother flew into a small flurry, “just ‘njoy yerself, hun, I’ll finish up in a jiff!”

“Glad to be here with you,” Devon gently replied, unable to hold back the smile to see the Princess of the Night descend into the ballroom floor. “I wouldn’t miss this moment...for anything.”

“Aww, Dev’n!” She playfully nudged him across the ear. “But first...” she followed. “I need s’me cider. A big one!” As she stepped out into the hallway, Devon leaned forward, eyes fixed on Luna. Residual magic had kept the area around her clear, and with glee, he turned from the balcony to rush to her.

Along with...just about everything else with four-hooves and a mane within a quarter mile radius.

The night’s still young.

From his vantage point, Devon watched powerlessly as every echelon of Canterlot above him...well, basically the entirety of Canterlot, swarmed around the dimly glowing cobalt figure disappearing behind an interwoven series of silhouettes clenching more tightly around her. He quickly spun on his hooves, and darted back down the stairs, but found himself stuck behind a meaty wall of similarly excited ponies clamoring furiously to work their way through the narrow corridor back out to the ballroom.

Don’t get too excited, yet. You can’t see all we see from up here.

The stars...

They always had some clever way to just rain on the mood didn’t they. Looking around him, Devon ducked down out of everypony’s view. “Really now?” Devon protested upwards. “What now!? What could you possibly see from up there to end this perfect little moment we have here!?”

Devon waited, sneaking another glance to the crowd gathering before the Princess. A ring of armored pegasi descended downwards, taking immediate steps to keep the gathering orderly.

“Well? What could you possibly see!?”

Hard to miss, really. You’d think he hates falling into the background the way he dresses and jangles...

Chapter 14: Cobalt

___
_____

Within his reach, his luck improves,
A window opens, mother approves.
Numbed in body, yet he still moves,
Dropping lifeless in cobalt hooves.

_____
___

Chapter 14
Cobalt

With a rustling of fast clamoring armor, a regiment of royal guard formed a stalwart barrier around the Princess. Luna hadn't even opened her eyes by the time her form, her flowing astral mane, and cobalt glow disappeared behind a line of burly pearled pegasi with outstretched wings.

Of what little details he could make from his vantage point, Devon saw an elated Princess Celestia descend rapidly behind the guarded line. He could make out voices, shrill gasps and tempered hiccups of panicked embraces clinging to that which was feared lost.

Despite the joy of the situation, and of his own renewed life, a bitter taste shivered into the back of Devon’s throat. How cheated he felt, to be depleted of such an honor after all he did for the last two days. Of course, it would be the higher echelons to get their first hellos and welcome backs, and naturally it would be Celestia and her best student at the front of the line. By the time the usual bureaucratic order of Canterlot's towering hierarchy of class got to him, after giving audience to all the scribes, advisors, scribes to advisors, undersecretaries to scribes to advisors...well...considering his position, Luna’s hooves would've been ground to beryl grains of cerulean glitter by the time she even began descending the tiers of his department.

More and more curious ponies piled against the phalanx of royal guards, their brute supremacy prohibiting any hint of budging or signs of weakness. Devon trotted towards the gathering crowd, hoping to get one last look at Luna and maybe get her attention before being carted away once more.

He had to see if she was okay, he had to see if she was even herself. All sorts of grim scenarios played out in Devon's head. He shuddered at the thought of her losing her memory, his insides groaned with pained dread thinking she was hurt, his heart sank to his fetlocks at the very comprehension of her being angry at him, fearful of him, for inadvertently sending her back to the prison in the night sky.

In a brilliant flash of light, a rippling aura of white ascended above the crowd, even turning the shimmering pearl coats of the royal guards into a dark silhouette of shadow. The crowd lurched back in one united step, looking up as Celestia unfurled her wings above them. The music immediately stopped, and with a nod towards the lightning-cyan maned DJ on the stage, smiled.

"My esteemed pupils," Celestia spoke in an encouraging articulation characteristic of a millennium-long rule. She paused, letting the expected whispers and shushes to dart through the crowd. "My esteemed pupils," she began again, "we are gathered here on a glorious night, as we have all witnessed the power of the Elements of Harmony!"

A rustling of dazed voices arose, and Celestia outstretched her forehooves as if to embrace the entire gala with her beaming smile.

"Luna...is with us once more!"

A surge of cheers thundered through the crowd. The six ponies, the Elements still flickering with residual magic, descended into the roaring crowd. The blue pegasus was the exception, taking to the air in a small acrobatic victory dance that immediately ended when Celestia spoke again.

"However!"

The applause subsided quickly, leaving the echoing patter of a hopping baby dragon rooting loudly atop the flank of the purple unicorn at the head of the Elements. With a smack of her tail, he gulped down his rapture with blushed cheeks. "Sorry," echoed dejectedly through the silent ballroom.

"However," Celestia continued, "She must be taken to the castle immediately," a disappointed groan exuded from the rim of the gathering crowd, "to ensure she is still at her Canterlotian royal capabilities," a very disappointed groan broke forth from Devon's lips. A sudden glance of nuanced agitation struck him from the hovering white princess, his body immediately sealing all speech as if his speaking privileges were unanimously revoked by every force of the universe.

After all that Luna had been through, all that she had said. Her fatigue and apathy with the overburdened Canterlot system of royal decorum was what got her to run away in the first place, got her to first go to the library to just escape from the noise of it all. And now they were going to throw her right back into it, as if it's some way to properly welcome her home?

Despite the objections of logic, reason, and all manners of common sense, Devon needed to get a word in. He briskly trotted to the edge of the crowd, nestling his chest in between any gap he could find.

"Hey!" Sneered a grizzled old stallion.

"Sorry, just gotta...move...though..."

"Well, do pardon me sir!" complained a posh mare in a simple yellow dress.

"I apologize madam, I'm in desperate need to-"

"What the-" griped another posh stallion...also wearing a simple yellow dress.

"Sincerest of-" Devon blinked. Huh. "I didn't mean to-"

"-Be such a ruffian, oh for sure," he sarcastically jeered, waving his curled brown mane to the side.

A small space between the ebbing gathering of ponies aligned before Devon, showing just a few more rows of the gala's patrons before reaching the line of armored pegasi standing between them and Luna. Above their outstretched wings, Celestia continued to address the attendees, occasionally looking down upon where Luna lay.

"By tomorrow morning," Celestia resumed, "we shall have more to say!" She was finishing up her speech already!? "Until then, resume celebrating!"

No, no, no, no, NO!

Devon lunged forward, passing by three lines of the assembled ponies.

"What the hay!?"

"Sorry!"

"Cut that out!"

"Didn't mean to!"

"Yeep!"

-Firmly into the gray flank of a pegasus that appeared out of nowhere with astute spontaneity. She sauntered to the side, swaying her front hooves to catch her balance. She looked over her opposite shoulder, scanning the far wall looking for what ran into her.

"Ah, I'm so sorry," Devon again apologized. "Please forgive me."

"For what?" She slowly drawled, pulling her blonde mane to the side from her eyes, adjusting the brown paper headdress over her forehead.

"Oh, for so rudely...rudely..." Devon winced, slightly tilting his head reflexively seeing that one of her yellow eyes seemed to be drifting away from focus on him.

"Naww," she smiled, waving her head to the side, jangling a pearl necklace, the paper headdress bobbing back down. "Not as rude as that...that stupid column thingy there!"

"Stupid...Column...thingy?"

"Yeah-hah!" She enunciated carefully pointing an accusing hoof at a random column sitting innocently in the corner, "Always sneaking up on me like that!"

Oh, great galloping galoshes, Devon didn't have time for this. "Sneaking up like...what?" He asked, shooting exploratory looks around her and the three rows of ponies still gazing up towards Celestia as she was slowly descending back to the floor.

"Just like...like it just did right now before you said 'sorry'-wuh-huh-hey mister!" The gray lazy-eyed pegasus called after him, "Where you going!?"

Ignoring her, he clamored onto the backs of two egregiously complaining unicorns, propping himself up to get a better look. With a sideways lurch, he wormed in between them along the floor, intruding into the second row. Through the pearl armored legs of the guards, he could see yet another ring of muscular pegasi tightly congregated around a dim cobalt glow, a single astral adornment snaked through the securely intertwined regiment.

"Luna!" Devon called towards her. A snarling pearl cascade of cross faces descended under the first row of ponies, the royal guards returning his call with irritated scowls. "Luna, m'lady!" Devon called again, ignoring the guards as best he could. "Answer me! Are you hurt!?"

A sharp gasp shot through the air above him as an orange mare above him nickered in despair. "The Princess is hurt!?"

"No, I'm just asking if-"

"Really Daisy?!" Interrupted a rose-maned earth pony next to her, "Everypony! Daisy says the Princess is hurt!"

Bedlam ensued.

Like an avalanche of marshmallow boulders, the crowd stampeded forward against the pearled line of pegasi. Devon dodged and snaked through the careening onslaught of hooves, clamoring desperately to get his hooves solidly underneath him. His ears rang beneath the perpetually shifting wall of panicked kicking all around.

Behind him, Devon heard the frantic barking of orders. "Get her out of here!" Bellowed one of the royal guards. "Everypony please!" Exclaimed another, his shouting evaporating to irrelevant vapor in the stupefying pandemonium.

"Meester!!!" A drawling voice called out beneath the others' hooves. Through the flickering light shooting between the other ponies, a gray body wriggled and thumped against the others' terror-stricken stomping. "Heeey!!" She yelled a second time to him, but with a yelping swoosh of blonde, recoiled her head away as a thick stallion's leg broadsided her neck.

With a final look behind him, Devon saw through the pearl armor legs a rapid descent of aides, scribes, and medical ponies. Their formation broke just long enough to catch Luna's face, at rest, sedated...motionless.

Another pearl head descended to greet Devon's curious visage, a grating expression more than ready to bring murderous consequences for starting this whole mess.

"Meess-terrr!" A much more terrified cry echoed back to him. Devon whirled around, once again making eye contact with...

...Well..."eye" contact, singular...

...The gray pegasus mare kicked haphazardly away from one set of lurching hooves into another, into another, and into another. A thin white leg from an unseen mare tripped over her, twisting and dropping a flank with floral adornments into her wings, twisting them into a sickening angle.

We can make it if we try...

In a flash of uncanny strength, Devon whirled his rear hooves beneath him. But before surfacing above the rampaging crowd...

...With a hop...

...Time slowed, the desperate yellow eyes looking onto him glistened in telltale fear, the schizophrenic labyrinth of flickering light jetting through dozens of legs and hooves oscillated in a nonsensical rhythm.

...Skip...

Until, like the eerie astral alignment of the constellations, a perfect gap was presented.

...And-

Jumping with all his might forward, he rolled underneath a nickering body. With a rapid press of his forehooves, Devon launched again backwards, spine grazing the raised hoof of a large dark stallion. The dazzling lights of the ballroom danced above Devon as his momentum landed him on his rear legs, and with acrobatics comparable to the slick maneuvers he observed from Gina, he leapt skyward over three stout male pegasi, hooves digging deep into a basketball cutie mark as he jettisoned into the air looking downward.

Do you trust me?

No.

Too bad.

With gravity and physics taking full control, Devon could only observe with helpless faith as the world spun and floundered beneath him. A mass of multicolored bodies, manes and tails rushed and pulsated below him, the lights above weaving disorienting webs of reflected strobing glows and teetering shadows. A rapid-fire gale of shape and indecipherable motion played out beneath him as he flew head under hooves over the crowd. Yet amid the ruckus and riotous tempest raging before him, a searing crack in the turmoil blossomed beneath him.

And the feeble glint of two yellow eyes gleamed back. Devon reached out his forehooves to make his daring entrance to save her.

With a sharp crunch, Devon landed chest-first against the hard ground. "Hrrrnnnnk..." he groaned, getting his hooves beneath him.

"Mister!"

"Hang on!"

"My ankle," the gray pegasus shifted to the side, dodging another homicidal round of stampeding hooves barreling around her. "I think...my ankle, it's-"

"-Where, which one!"

"The one at the end of my leg," she sniffed. Of course.

"I know, which leg?"

"My leg!"

"No, I..." Con sarnit. "Just..." Time, Devon, time. "Come on!"

Devon extended a forehoof. Craning her neck out, dragging body in tow, she gripped onto his hoof with a sharp clamp of slobbering jaws.

"Ow, what the-"

"Mrm-ph sh-srrr-wy!"

"Hey!" Devon pinched his nose back, rolling his eyes.

"Rrumph," she pleaded between her pressed teeth. "I said-ff, I sorr-y-fmf, my ank-lmff!"

"I know, your ankle, whatever, let's just..." The stampede parted, presenting a clear shot towards the ballroom wall. "Now! Right now!"

With a rapid tug, Devon pulled backward, lifting the swaying gray pegasus to her feet. She stumbled forward, but with a labored flap of her wings, caught herself while hobbling forward on three legs, cradling a bruised forehoof against her chest.

Celestia's voice rang through the ballroom. "Please, Luna will be fine!"

Still pulling backwards, Devon kept his eyes fixated on the pegasus mare behind him. The density of the crowding onlookers began thinning as they made their way out, away from the cacophony of noise and chaos still rampantly surging out of control to get a glimpse of the princess. While they clamored and fought to see if Luna was okay, Devon finally broke free of the mob, away from the spectators and emerged gasping for breath with the injured pegasus in tow.

"Your...ankle," Devon breathed heavily, resting a hoof against a column. "How...how is...it?"

She frowned slightly, easily resting it against the floor. She narrowed her eyes, doing her best to keep at least one of them angled to see her hooves. Flat on the floor, she slowly rested her weight on it, her face slowly receding from clenched panic to calmed relief.

"Oh wait," she smiled, "must've been my other ankle!"

The stupid column thingy snuck up on the entirety of Devon's aggravated face. Repeatedly.

"Mister!" She called out to him, tapping him on the shoulder. "Hellooo, what are you..." She chuckled. "Wow, just what happened back there!?"

* * * * *

"I just don't know what went wrong." Devon explained.

"Well, consider yourself lucky," one of the royal guards replied to him. "At least it wasn't a complete disaster. Doesn’t help that Captain Armor’s away, nopony was really in charge."

It took a few minutes for order to be restored. As Celestia made her exit by Luna's side, the throng of desperate onlookers started thinning out as word circulated that there was unfortunately nothing to see. A line of pearl armored pegasi still held rank before the rear double doors of the ballroom, but if there was anything to be seen beyond, it would've departed ten minutes ago.

The music started up again, and the lightning-maned unicorn spinning the records up front led the charge from panic to celebration.

Shuffling the reflective tile floor, Devon leaned against a wall in the shadows. The crowd that had surrounded and bombarded Luna was only growing in volume and headcount as more joined in to catch up on whatever gossip ricocheted between their dancing. With fresh mugs of cider in tow, more and more Gala patrons pressed into the pulsating halo of frantically energized ponies clamoring for more hearsay of the princess's return. As is the habit of ponies of all sorts, wishing for the best beget assuming the best, and the originally intended flurry of jovial festivity churned onward into the night.

The music continued to swell, the lightning blue haired DJ captured the moment by complementing such a triumphant reunion of ponies with an uplifting pop anthem from Sapphire Shores.

Sing with a Canterlot voice!
Sing because we can rejoice!

Low-hanging spotlights descended a hundred multicolored sabers of arcing luminescence into the center of the augmenting crowd, casting a black pulse of rippling dancing shadow against the wall.

Sing about the blessed ways,
our love defeats the pale blue days!

It was supposed to be different.

Everything played out so differently in Devon's head. Luna was supposed to descend like an angel from skies in a ray of glittery moonlight, sheer in wispy vespers of retreating haze, landing softly before a hushed gathering of dignified onlookers...onlookers who part in choreographed grace, heads bowed in reverent submission, making the perfect aisle of cadenced admiration towards her as she slowly traversed the distance towards him in a succession of thankful steps...steps that gradually increase in speed, in excitement, in adulated joy as the gap between them closes, her eyes tear-filled with jovial exclamations of raw multi-faceted emotion running rampant from her heart to her hooves as she finally makes a final enigmatic bound with outstretched arms into his...

Oh how much we must athwart!
Nothing we endure apart!

...His...Into his...

When will they just set me free,
Loving that was meant to be!

Everything played out so different. Through the rising waves of excited squeals and clattering hooves still mobbing the dance floor, the words in the music cut through festive measures and heightening intensity with a whole new meaning, as the dream of her return dissipated within his own head, fading away with dizzying curtains to reveal the maelstrom of awe-struck ponies preventing him from his due reuniting.

Or was something else at work?

"Hey, uhh..." Devon called out through the perpetually thumping air. "Is this...? Are you guys...?" He took a few steps towards the middle of the ballroom, looking through a skylight to the crepuscular expanse beyond the glass. "Is this still your doing?"

The night sky responded with an old familiar ambivalence, reassuring in its dignified silence of defeat, but now seemingly a prisoner of Devon unwilling to give any further detailings of a diabolical plot. Were they ignoring him, now? Or spiting him?

"Well!?"

Spiting seemed to make sense. He did mess up their plans, after all.

“I did everything you obligated me to do!” he snarled, his rage burning, but impotent. "WELL!?" With energy propelled to the heavens, Devon bounced off his front hooves like a yapping dog. "Gyugh," he heaved, another wave of dancing shadow enveloped around him as the celebrating lights descended like opalescent rain.

"Well what?" Replied an uncomfortably close pair of yellow eyes intruding just over his shoulders.

"NYEEE-HEE-YEE-EEESH-" Devon whirled to the ground, grinding every fiber of his coat against the tile floor. "Don't do that!"

"Sorry, mister, I didn't mean to." She slumped her head down, swaying it softly to the side. The gray pegasus then shook her neck, flicking a bushel of her blonde mane over a timid eye looking up at him. "I just never said thanks right."

"Oh, you did," Devon recalled. It took about ten minutes to get her to understand he accepted her thanks for pulling her out of the stampede. It was the least he could do. Always glad to help anypony in need! Really, it was nothing. All in a day's work of an...assistant undersecretary...to the undersecretary...to the treasurer of the lieutenant scribe of the secretary of the chairman of development of state. All in a day’s work for a Bookmark, the ones who made things right. "You already did, plenty, and I bet those muffins you promise will be exquisite!"

"You were calling for Luna."

"Wait, what?"

"Princess Luna," the mare recalled, her eyes contracting to brace with a sudden wave of recollected clarity. "You were calling for her."

Devon looked up through the skylight above, giving a quizzical look to the stars beyond. They were up to something, they had to be. They had to be!

"Ah," Devon shook his head, blinking hard. "Right, uh, yes." Cough. "Why yes, miss, I was. You see, she's actually a very good friend of mine and-"

"She ran away."

Okay this was bad news. Luna decided to run away from them!? After all that, she just took off on her own!? Something had to be wrong! Had to be! Hold up, wait. Wait. Devon whirled his ear skyward, listening intently through the throbbing pop music. Cackling? Taunting? Anything?

No?

Where'd all those voices go?

"Because, mister, after you pulled me out, I went to go fly around to see if my wings are okay and I remembered they were taking that Princess lady out." She flapped her wings, stretching them out before him. "So then, I got good and high up, and saw her jump off that flat carrying thingy-"

"Stretcher."

"That um...offic-...um...captain...jangling guy ran up to her and started talking, then she just ran off!"

Okay, definitely something is up, and it can't be good. What would compel the princess to leave them all behind like that? He had to go find her.

"Miss, now it's my turn to thank you!" A sudden grin of hope stretched onto Devon's face. "Did you see where she went!?"

"Tried to but..." the gray pegasus mare suddenly shook, her quivering yellow eyes narrowed and darted around in all directions but the same. "...but...I kinda backed into that column thingy again…”

* * * * *

Sing with a Canterlot voice!
Sing because we can rejoice!

Leaving the ballroom floor behind, Devon bounded quickly for the double doors. The pitched laughter of a passing group of older mares perked up his ears.

"And then, I said's to 'er, my son's gonna be'it'ha Hearth's Warmer's gala tonight, an' he's all ready to stick up for his momma and-!"

Instinctively, Devon ducked out of sight beneath a pile of balloons. His mother's loud chatting continued swelling over the rising laughter of her friends. Her duty complete in setting up the gala, Sara indulged in the rewards now, enjoying it in a deeper sense than anypony in the gala, probably.

"And so's then, she's all, she's all...get this, Miss Carrot Top, she jus'about went rainboomin’ over it!"

After all he said, all he did, all he promised, how much was in the balance, she couldn't find out he was suddenly ditching her massive gala celebration early! There was too much at stake, way too much on the balance, if she even got wind he wasn't even in attendance, she'd probably go nuts again and undo all the work they did. He’d have no good explanation and she'd probably go crazy.

"Ey'ladies, I know'I's ah shouldn't, buuut it’s Hearth’s Warmin’, who’s up for another cider!?"

She'd definitely go crazy.

Staying low to the ground, keeping the pile of slightly deflated balloons between them, he slithered towards the exit to continue his search for-

"Byleeegh!!!"

"HYYAAGH!" Devon jumped, clamoring backwards over his hooves kicking up a wake of surprised-to-be-airborne balloons. "Woah, woah, Woah!" He arched backward, unable to recover, his weight flinging him careening backwards, "PYOOFT!" landing firmly vertical against a column.

"Hyee-hee-hee, ha-haww-haw-hawww!" A pink filly laughed at him, slumping back into the pile of balloons. "Beware the Loch Ness Pinkie," she growled playfully before rolling back into another fit of giggles. “Now YOU’RE it!”

Devon quickly ducked his head low, shooting an eye back to his mother. She was still chatting with her companions vociferously. "Gyech," Devon sighed. This wasn't going to be easy. He couldn't just sneak out, she had to be completely preoccupied to even forget he was completely gone.

"Oh, come now," the pink pony cooed toward him. "You're at a paaar-taaay! Why do you look all sadder wadder pooper dooper doopey poop?"

Her friends could only hold her for so long. Sweet Celestia, that cider could only hold her for so long. If memory serves right, it's usually about mug five or six by the time she starts getting all weepy and needs Devon there to reassure him he's her only light in the world or something.

"And why are you so quiet? Why, I think everypony should be loud, and dance, and sing, and be loud! And not loud like that frackas when we finished our Elements thing. But loud like this song and dancing and..." Devon threw a glance back at his mother’s knot of ponies, even as the pink pony rattled off a longer and longer list.

Ten o'clock. Yipes. She was probably on mug four by now. This plan of his needed something more ornate.

"Wait, I said loud twice. HEE HEE HEE, silly me! You know how many words rhyme with loud!?"

Something...extreme.

"Cloud, proud, allowed, shroud, plowed-" the pink pony suddenly gasped, "GYUUUUH-HEY! Speaking of rhymes, we've gone through this whole gala thing for the last twenty minutes without a single Hearth’s warming song!”

Devon's face suddenly contorted, his consciousness making an effort to purge what traces of the pink pony's words seeped through. Looking back at her, he scratched a hoof against his shoulder. "You sing?"

"YOU SPEAK!"

"I speak?"

"I sing?"

"Huh?" To avoid any attempt at inadvertently making sense of the bouncy pink pony's words, Devon's brain divided by zero.

"Hyee-hee-haw haw haw, you're so silly! Just like Twilight! Except, you don't even need to tell me to call you silly to call you silly."

"..."

"...Silly!"

Back to what was already set in motion. He needed out. But his mother, whose forgiveness he'd just won over, needed to be kept intact. Therefore, she couldn't know he was departing early, as it would absolutely devastate her. In order for this plan to come together, he needed more than just a stealthy escape.

"Helloooo, Equestria to Pout-ey Doody!"

Devon grinned mischievously, a thought percolating into brilliance behind his hopeful glistening irises. "You know, I think I'd like to hear you sing." Oh, and how well he knew exactly what would distract his mother long enough for the rest of the evening.

"Does it require a chicken costume?"

"A...wait, how did you know I was going to request-"

"See!?" She plopped on her back, wiggling her hooves upwards. "Knee twitch, leg wiggle, flank shake!" Squee.

Devon narrowed his eyes in a confused squint. "What does-"

"That means...get the chicken suit!"

This called for...the big guns.

* * * * *

Sing about the blessed ways,
our love defeats the pale blue days!

"An' Miss Carrot Top," a voice crept through the muffled hollows of a raised cider mug, "She's just all sorts of hoppin' mad, hee hee!"

A chorus of dizzy laughter followed suit, before being promptly interrupted by a quick flash of white and pink whizzing onto the stage. With a forehoof...err, wing around the DJ pony's shoulder, the chicken-suited pony whispered into her ear. Her lightning blue mane twitched and her brows rose, and with a dipped head, she lowered her thick glasses in quizzical contemplation. The DJ's deep magenta eyes scanned every cell of the pink pony chicken's face looking...hoping for any sign of joking.

"Puh-leeease..." the microphone barely picked up her desperate pleading in the background, her feathers quivering with sincerity equivalent to her soft appeal for a favor. "It's for a super snooty spooty spoots spooter spoot who isn't laughing." Her string of adjectives kept beat with the music. With a quick spin of the record and clattering of buttons, she expertly remixed her imploring into the song.

Spoots, spoots, spoots, spoot
spooty, spoots ,spooter, spoot.

With a nod, the DJ smiled excitedly with her new sample, and bowed politely while relinquishing control of the turntables.

"Hyee-eee-hee!" The chicken squealed frenziedly. "Hello, everypony! This is yer' ol' pal Pinkie Pie!"

Devon slowly made his way for the double doors, keeping an eye on his mother and the chicken on the stage.

"Are you kidding me!?" Interjected an astounded crackly voice behind him. A blue rainbow-maned pegasus swung around him, looking towards the dancing pink pseudo-DJ. "I thought that knee twitch, leg wiggle, flank shake one was just her being random!"

The chicken wrapped both wings around the microphone, beckoning to the gala. "Come ooooon, everypony!" With a drop of the needle, a blaring of Muleican horns replaced the throbbing bass shaking the ballroom's foundations. A low throaty cry of inebriated celebration bellowed from the speakers as an ensemble of tubas, trumpets, and an accordion followed suit. "Sing with me now, you know it!"

Looking towards his mother, Devon saw her swing her head towards the stage in puckish delight! She clapped her hooves together, and whirling back to her friends, started flapping her forehooves at her sides.

The chicken pumped her wings to the air, a flurry of feathers descending before the stage. "You guys ready for some Mareiachi!?" With a pink swoosh, she leapt onto the front of the turntables, waving for everypony to congregate to the middle before her. Assembling in a quick flurry of excited steps, a flock of middle-aged mares and stallions formed across the dance floor with their forehooves flapping similarly. The younger ponies looked on.

Terrified.

"I don't wanna be a chicken, I don't wanna be a plank, so shake your flank!"

In a rhythmic impulse of vestigial reflex, the dancers jumped to their rear legs, clapping their forehooves four times with the music.

"I don't wanna be a chicken, I don't wanna be a plank, so shake your flank!"

The younger ponies still looked on.

Still terrified.

Just a few haunches to go, and Devon was out the door. His mother had disappeared completely into the crowd of forehoof-flapping festivity, her own uncontrollable laughter and merriment blending seamlessly into the rest of the amalgamated chorus of raucous exaltation.

"She's...so...random," sighed the rainbow-maned pegasus.

"Well, Ah reckon there ain’t no thing more unfortunate 'bout makin' this hoity toity gala hootnanny a bit more a string pluckin' hoedown." An orange mare stood beside the pegasus, adjusting her hat to the side scoping out the scene with a sarcastic bent to her smile. "Now, I do say so, this be one heckuva good way to keep em from knowin' ‘bout Luna wanderin’ off."

"Applejack!," a purple hoof jabbed in her apple cutie mark. "Shhhh! Not so loud!"

"Aww, shucks Twi', ain't nopony knowin' here," she smiled back to the purple unicorn, dusting off her cutie mark with her tail. "Y'all are makin’ a fuss over nothin’, she'll turn up."

Devon could feel the wisps of night air against his tail. The cold tendrils seemed to wrap around his legs like a snare, beckoning with chilled whispers, beckoning to remove him from the security of the gala where his presence solidifies his mother's allotment for his freedom. Come on, it hissed. Take the risk. For her.

Take the risk.

If she found out Devon left without her, if she learned he ditched what she thought to be his own ascension to the chronicles of Canterlot's heroes, especially on her fourth mug of cider at minimum...it would all be for nothing.

"Well, I must say girls," a white unicorn with a finely curled purple mane slung in between them. "I do have to agree here with Twilight," she voiced herself regally, swinging a fine-knit pink and white scarf over her shoulder with a graceful sway of her neck. "Darling," she murmured to the orange mare, nudging her hat over her brow. "Ixnay...on the Una-Lay."

"Okay, now Ah'm quite serious ladies," the orange mare groaned playfully, trying to hide a chuckle. "No fair when y'all talk circles 'round me by speakin' in Fancy."

Devon could feel the cold sidewalk against his hooves, icy crystals in the cracks between stones seeped upward as if to ensnare him. It had grown much colder as the night progressed, and Devon couldn't keep the shivers at bay. With a final look inside, he could hear the pink pony in the chicken suit still leading the song.

It was the perfect plan, after all. Make up a story about how he only smiled after two hours of the "Chicken Dressage." Request it. Press play. Laugh and watch Equestria burn. The fillies in attendance will have emotional trauma for years, acceptable collateral damage. With a final relieved breath, Devon impulsively directed a message of heartfelt thanks to the heavens.

Hmm? Thanking us?

With a rogue gust of violent wind, the gala's doors slammed shut before him, the metallic clanging reverberated into the alleys and back out again in a continuous cycle of echoing sound as if the door had let another out, a familiar voice.

Ah. So you want to live dangerously, huh.

"Ok-k-kay," Devon shuddered in the cold air now embracing him, huddling against him like an old friend. "Y-Yeah. Yeah, so I d-d-d...do."

She's that important.

"To m-m-m...me, sh-she is-" He quickly shuffled his hooves against the icy ground, rubbing his forehooves together to generate any sort of warmth. He coughed laboriously, fighting the icy night's tendrils from interloping down his trachea.

Oh, listen to you, you're going to catch pneumonia out here.

"Wh-what are y-you...you getti-"

Nothing at all, oh no. we’re just watching.

Another flurry of coughs snuck up on Devon, his convulsions carried through the silent alleys, traversing back to his own ears a few seconds later. This definitely was a bad idea.

Tick, tick, tick...

* * * * *

Oh how much we must athwart!
Nothing we endure apart!

Alone.

Once more, truly alone.

Just what would drive Luna to suddenly perk up and run away from it all like that? Was it something Devon did? Something he said? It just didn't line up, and with a slow canter down Canterlot's major streets, he make a thorough contemplative lap around the gala ballroom.

Even the stars were keeping their quiet. Instead of the orchestrated ensemble of goading, bragging, and attempts at dissuading him from pursuing further, they had now unleashed their most vicious verbal attack they could sling at him.

Silence.

Alone.

Suddenly, Devon's ears perked up. A stifled clattering of hooves danced through the ice-kissed streets, and a dim orange lamp illuminated a pegasus mare across the street.

From above, the thudding wings of three royal guards quickly swooped down and confronted her. With clumsy hoofsteps rapidly sauntering backward, she bounded off balance with flapping wings against a column.

"Ma'am," commanded a pegasus stallion, the rim of his armor gleaming with jets of furious orange light glinting off of it. "By orders of Captain Stormblade, curfew has been enacted, you must remain off the streets!"

Devon whirled back, tucking himself behind a bench.

"I'm sorry, mister," drawled the pegasus mare in the distance. "My bad."

Slowly, Devon crept an eye over the brim of the bench, before hearing an odd sounding gust of wind above him-Oh pony feathers!

Literally.

Whirling into the narrow space beneath the bench, Devon tucked out of the aerial view of a passing wing of royal guards. Peering carefully through the narrow gaps of the seat, he watched as one wing of Canterlot's toughest fliers graced across the skies in a well-drilled search pattern. A longtime citizen, Devon knew what a guard patrol looked like, and this looked nothing like a guard’s normal patrol. It was more aggressive, less disciplined and completely erratic.

“Stormblades patrol pattern delta!” A voice barked above him and the wing of guards splint in various unlikely directions.

That was new, too.

How it would ruin his mother if she discovered he not only abandoned her at the Hearth's Warming Gala, but also got busted for curfew as well.

Hyeh-heh-heh-heh, let's get dangerous.

"Hey!" Devon hissed through the bench's woodwork. "I thought you were going to be quiet!"

You thought a lot of things.

Sigh. While listening to the beating wings and hoofsteps to recede into the distance, Devon carefully ascended from the bench back down the sidewalk. He stuck close to the edges of buildings, making sure to keep a keen ear out for any pegasi making their rounds above.

He just couldn't wrap his head around it. Luna vanishes and Canterlot enacts a stringent curfew while they complete a search for her? Who even authorized such an action? How could such an action be authorized? From all his experience, Devon knew wholeheartedly that it could take weeks to approve a single crosswalk, but to organize and execute such a tightly-enforced measure on the entire city in the course of just half an hour?

It seems that despite all of Devon's experience working the deepest inner-sanctums of the convoluted Canterlot bureaucracy, there were had to be other inner-inner-sanctums he didn't know about. Just a couple sunrises ago, he emerged from-

Heads up.

Devon immediately bounded five steps back whirling over scuffling hooves into an alley. He ducked his head low, and with a swift flailing of his arms, flopped two large garbage bags on top of him.

Through the settling rattle of detritus resting atop him, Devon swiveled an ear into the air to listen for the metallic ring of armor flying through the air above. His ears were met with the usual reassuring drone of the twinkling breaths of frosty air. He was clear.

Sputtering, hacking the wet stench of garbage out of his throat, Devon pinched his eyelids in curious inquisition. "You're helping me, now?"

Helping you?

"Yeah, you told me to hide!"

Huh? Oh, no no no, We were just telling you to pay attention. You weren't in any jeopardy.

The sickly odor of the alley meshed with the pungent rancorous offense the trash sticking to Devon's coat.

"You be quiet."

Just trying-

"Ignoring you."

You're really going to act this way?

With a single wave of both forehooves through the air outstretched over his head, Devon taunted the celestial apparition. "Yyyyeep, yep-yep-yep-yep-yep!"

A sharp clanging of banging metal sounded down the alley. Though the frozen silence that ensued, the gradual emergence of frantic hoofsteps sauntering back and forth, pacing in long deliberate steps. Another rustle of plastic and skittering aluminum graced the hairs atop Devon's ears, causing them to swivel around him.

With a primal snarl, another raucous bang unsettled the ice lining the edges of the alley, small pools of dingy water rippled in response as a lone trashcan lid rolled in a wobbling strut from around the corner. Shadows played off the walls beyond that corner, a hunched figure searching, digging, scavenging and plodding.

Slowly rounding the brick corner, Devon peered tentatively down the alley. Disappearing into the frigid darkness, the alley ended abruptly into a chain link fence ten haunches away, a single light above a dilapidated wooden doorframe burned with a weak lemon glow. Four trashcans lay strewn across the alley, water from within still trickling out from being recently turned over.

But the snarling creature was nowhere to be-

"-ARF...Ar-ARUFF!"

"HYAAAGH!!!"

Pffft-hyeh ha-ha-ha!

Leaping excitedly behind him, a teal-coated mare with silver hair barked giddily before Devon. A white hospital jacket dangled loosely off her torso.

"Arrf! Aruff-Arf!!"

"Uhh..." If he hadn't previously befriended a mind-reading etching of glowing paisley with a ravenous appetite for sketching, Devon would've run the other way. "Sit?" Devon curiously commanded with no semblance of running in his decorum.

The teal pony's purple eyes suddenly contracted, her cheeks puffing out in surprise. After a second of contemplating, she plopped her rear legs down against the ground.

"Play dead?"

Her silver mane bobbed as she cocked her head slightly askew, contemplating that command. Her purple eyes drifted upward, following a fire escape to the top of a roof, then descending her glance back to the ground to a dumpster filled with broken bottles and worm-laced pita chip muffins.

"Actually, don't."

"Arf, aruff!" She shook her head, fixing her attention back on Devon. "Arf!"

"Huh..."

Huh. Didn’t think you were getting this desperate.

"Hey wait, I bet you know where she is, don't you?" Devon glared up at the sky with an accusing glance towards the stars, only to see the same unsteady and awkward wing of patrolling pegasi swoop in just over the rooftops.

Of course. We’d love to work out something to help you.

With a rapid spin to ground level, Devon flung the same garbage bags back over him to conceal himself. A jagged glass tooth pressed menacingly against the plastic membrane just inches from his snout. "Oh, no, don't you even..." More clattering refuse within the bag shifted, pressing even more weight against that glass, the black bag's dermis turning translucent around the bladed glass dagger. Splotches of fetid thick lumpy water started to fill up against the side of the bag, blocking the alley's refracted light passing through it in the shapes of spoiled fruits, wadded napkins, and shriveled sprouts.

All you have to do is ask.

From above, the barks of an examining pony explored through the garbage pile, seeking the stallion hiding beneath. To Devon's shock, he felt a tampering pressing atop his hiding place, each tap pressing that glass tooth further through the breaking bag's membrane.

"Arf! Ar-aruf arf!?"

"Hey!" Came the muffled voice of a burly stallion above. There was a succession of heavy flapping wings, and three clamoring rattles announcing the arrival of a wing of royal guards. "You there, digging at the garbage!" With a startled yelp, the mare took off down the alley, her hoofsteps descending rapidly down the echoing corridor of Canterlot's back streets. Following in pursuit, three more sets of heavy hooves. One of these sets landing right on top of the pile of trash Devon was under.

Feeling the hoof plant firmly in his gut, Devon exhaled with his mouth agape as the wind was knocked out of him. Then the bag broke under the strain, sending a torrent of multicolored fluid pouring off a broken glass funnel into his mouth.

"KRREYA-" Devon began to scream before clasping his hooves against his face to keep his mouth shut, "-nrrrryrrrr-hrr-ynrrrrrrgh!!" He finished his apocalyptic warcry within his shuddering frame, the caustic sentiment gargling the malodorous water at the back of his throat, burning fetid like dragon perspiration. "Nyrrrrrr-hrr-hrr-hrrrrrn!" Devon howled again within, waiting an agonizing eternity for the three guards' hoofsteps to disappear from his hearing.

The moment silence reassured him to come out, Devon rolled out into the alley, heaving massively into the chilly night air. With his tongue out and flailing for any semblance of freshness, Devon bounded to a nearby fount and promptly slammed his head into the pool of hypothermia.

With a shake and a severe case of shivers, Devon left the horrid alley of bizarre horrors behind him, the amused cackling of the stars following suit.

Why did he even put up with all this? Why was he being subjected to so much pain and torment just to seek out a mare who may not even feel for him, might even be resentful towards him, he could never know for sure at this point. After all Luna's been through, Devon thought it was no wonder she felt so overwhelmed. Probably left the whole of Canterlot altogether, or at the slightest hint of being slapped back into her royal duties, fled the planet entirely to go back to making sandcastles on the moon.

Her flight away from the overburdened Canterlot system of government was only perpetuated further, and with the bonds of the stars released from her, she could now move about freely to only be shackled further. How ironic. Win your freedom, only to have said freedom immediately pinned down with the bevy of exciting new forms of obligation now available for the picking.

Devon contemplated, are we ever truly free if the base definition of "freedom" is "the ability to do anything we want?" Because with that ability at our hooftips, do we then suddenly become obligated to do everything we can do, simply out of the necessity of some mandated royal decrees and decorum or the relentless obligations of the stars themselves?

Even with his own relinquishment from life's obstacles like paying rent and tending to a family, Devon still felt the pressure. Living with his mother, though liberating on the fronts of certain responsibilities, actually held him down further. How she demanded so much of him, and through the sporadic whims of the stars taking advantage of a desperate youth seeking only the greatest for those he loved, how she almost destroyed him.

Yet even in the face of such destruction, how blessed he was. Walking down the silent street, the echoes of the pink chicken pony's song continued to blast through Canterlot's back alleys with the augmented acoustics of a saxophone into his ears. Her excited squeals melding against the Mareiachi ensemble, weaving and reverberating unto itself into being a melancholy echo of its former self. A distant soundtrack to complement this run-on stream of consciousness Devon plunged himself into.

How blessed he was to even have this moment. To have a moment at the forefront of great risk to himself and those he cared for, to ascend and mature and prove himself capable finally. For when he lacked the strength previously, he wouldn't dare take the risk. He had no reason to take such a risk. He wouldn't dare contemplate a path with potential consequences dotting the path like the beads of dripping water freezing behind him against the paralyzingly hyperboreal sidewalk.

No, all he could do back then, when he couldn't face up against life...

...Should no other form of refuge take him away...

...As all he needed was a temporary means to escape it...

When will they just set me free,
Loving that was meant to be!

...To run away.

"The library!"

Bout time.

* * * * *

The street spun lazily like he was traversing the sidewalk atop a succession of hammocks. Devon’s head drifted to the side, slunk far behind the motion of his body and drooping limply low to the ground. In each crack woven between stone, pavement and brick, beads of ice scaled the cobblestones’ edges, wrapping the stone like a lucid blanket mirroring the world above. For an ever so insignificant moment, the ice’s reflection occasionally expressed the tired expression of a fatigued and shivering unicorn within; the rippling glint of orange eyes wrapped in wavering tendrils along the glassy edges of the sheeted ice.

Another wave of crippling shivers ricocheted through his frame, like a vacuum permeated within his ribs, sucking in the paralyzing night air through his tense skin. Small crystals of ice clung to his pelt from the impromptu bath with the fountain. With each step, the slick cobblestones beneath his hooves faded deeper into obscure numbness, frigidly descending further and further away as his steps deadened into lethargic floating plods echoing off the fibers of his ears.

The soft howl of the frost-kissed breeze faded into the background as the telltale shrill whine of airborne metallic armor whirled through Devon's ears. Another wing of Canterlot's guards flew low overhead, upsetting the loose tiles, gutters and underpinnings of the closely huddled rooftops. Spotting a narrow alcove between a door and an empty vending cart, he darted quickly out of the bright cyan moonlight, wedging himself into the narrow darkness with his back pressed against the frosted masonry of the structure. Like a thousand clay jaws, the ice-coated bricks lashed out, chewing with frozen canines against his back as he pressed against the wall to remain concealed in the chilled embrace of shadow and ravenously devouring the tiny scraps of warmth that his body still held.

The same pegasi guards passed overhead, fading into tepid silence as the pitched song of their armor slicing through icy breeze receded to a distant irrelevant whisper in the starry darkness.

Heaving a relieved sigh, Devon leaned forward to continue down the moonlit sidewalk to the Canterlot library...

"Did you hear that?"

The presence of another wing of royal guards circling overhead reminded Devon to get a move on. Though the ethereal grasp of the wintry wraiths of night air hardly leeched a breath of heat as Devon bolted into a frenzied dash toward the Canterlot Archive.

"You there!" An aggressive voice commanded overhead. A higher pitched screech of metal cleaving through the air signified the rapid descent of the guard. "Stop where you are!"

In a stretched blur of pearl, a pegasus dropped with a heavy, clanging thud to a forbidding pose. He stretched out his wings, narrowly staring down Devon through his helmet's scintillating rims bordering his eyes. "I said stop!"

Stumbling over his hooves, Devon darted to the side, finding a narrow back alley twisting madly between the twisting brickwork of two eroded houses. He bounded rapidly towards the inviting darkness-

Until his shoulder was slammed into the alley wall. "Don't ya’s move!"

-Another pearl streak dropped before him. The guard's pupils sunk away in surprise, gasping with a sudden twinge of familiarity upon seeing Devon, and impulsively shot Devon a murderous glare. With a bolt of memory lashing across his expression, his mind recalling a particular similarity to such countenance, Devon blinked to find himself on the ballroom floor in a forest of stampeding hooves, the same murderous glare looking firmly upon him. The memory's chaos blurred and gradually diminished into fading wisps of swirling embers, but the guard's murderous expression carried over seamlessly into the dimly lit street before him.

Devon turned again, facing back to the way he came, only to find himself muzzle to muzzle with a third royal guard looming with commanding imperviousness before him. In a stout grunt, an exacerbated puff of irritated steam punched into Devon's face, forcing him to step back. The large pegasus stallion took a long saunter forward, lowering his head eye to eye with Devon, when he suddenly rolled his eyes backward in a shocked gasp.

“Hyah!” The guard’s partner called. “Nice catch, Stormblade’ll give ya a medal fer sure!”

"Don't worry," the robust stallion smiled, speaking in Devon's voice. His words bypassed his ears, throttling straight for his mind as if they were coming from his own thoughts. "She's coming." The syllables echoed eerily with each utterance, carrying a ghostly hum following like they were echoing off the speckled membrane of the night sky.

"Sir, stand where you are! Don't run!" The first guard quickly navigated in front of Devon.

"Yeah, you's." The second guard growled, aggressively lowering his shoulder at him. "I know's ya, kiddo. From that’a Gala stampede we had all back there, it was you's that got's that mess stah’ted!"

"Hey, yeah, I..." The other guard nudged the second in the shoulder. "Of course, I'd recognize that ornate cutie mark of yours anywhere, yeah." The agitation slipped from his voice, elevating to a tone of amused sincerity. "The statue garden! I was there!"

"Hey wait's, this guy was at the statue garden too?!" Though his expression veered into a semi-smile, it easily spilled back into a ravenous scowl. "You caused a whole lotta trouble, huh?" He stomped a hoof on the ground, sending a sharp jostling ripple up Devon's foreleg, amplified by the numbness that hung from it. "Because if you dids, I swear's-"

"Woah, woah, easy there jefe grande-"

"Ey!" the second guard nickered, jabbing a forehoof into the first with a clanging shuffling of armor. "I told ya to never call me th-"

"-Take it easy," the first argued back. "He's-"

"Take's it easy!? Why are you suddenly on their side?! Stormblade said to bring in anypony breakin’ curfew. Don’t you wanna be one of his best?!"

An echoing voice cut through the arguing guards, pressing their bickering into the recesses of muted obscurity. "Duck," commanded the tall stoic guard.

Devon immediately dropped downward, flinging himself as flat as possible against the ground, as an orange and red blur of flailing hooves screamed strenuously over his head carrying an envelope of encapsulated wind buffeting against the back of his ears and through the vacant tufts of missing fur along his back.

A succession of meaty smacks and metallic racket pulsated around the street. Devon pressed down as close to the ground- "Hey, you gy-AAAACK!" -as one of the guards bounced and sailed over him, his metallic armored wings slashing like a fan of feathered razors half-a-haunch over his head.

"What are you doing out!?" Gina bellowed incredulously.

Devon propped his chin up off the ground, his mind racing. "What are YOU doing out!?" He huffed deeply, coughing, the cold air taking a firm hold on his throat causing him to wheeze through his words. He cleared his throat, his voice receding to a regular lower pitch. "And just how did you-Behind you!"

"I see'im!" Gina groaned, bucking the first guard in the chest with a single hoof. He took to the skies tail first, careening through the air. He rolled along his spine, attempting to regain his footing, but slipping on a patch of ice he continued flopping backward over frantically waving rear legs, helpless under the combined wrath of physics and gravity...

"Pyoof!" ...flopping sideways against the front chestplate of the large guard stallion.

Gina raised her rear hoof forward, giving it an approving wiggle. "Yeah, yeah, I know you're wondering. Why am I out?" She loomed above him against the shimmering starlight. "The creep in charge of these two mules kept blabbin’ about Bookmarks.” She chuckled, letting loose another trademark maniacal smile. "Kyeh-hff-heh, heh! Thought it was me, or he had a crush on me or somethin’ all I had to do was listen for him to say what he was up to! Figured it wouldn’t be long before he found ya."

"-Now, you's missy bett'uh," groaned a faltering voice behind Devon, the screech of dragging armor accenting the wobbling clatter of recovering hoofsteps, "you bett'uh...bett'uh-"

"Ah," Gina chirped giddily, "just a moment."

In an orange flash, she jumped over Devon's prone form, carrying forth a swiftly delivered volley of crashes and thumps into the second guard, tossing him against his backside on the ground. With a downward twirl, Gina wedged her rear hooves in a drilling motion, wedging them firmly into the ruts between his armor and proceeding to lift him flailing helplessly.

"I told you!" Devon laughed.

"Told me...hyurngh!..." Gina forced all her weight upwards, bucking to the skies with the flailing silhouette of a ranting guard, cannoned like a pearled meteor arcing with shimmering flecks of reflecting moonlight into a pile of two other armored pegasi moaning in pained displeasure. "Told me what?"

"That unicorns don't need their horns!" He smiled gently towards her, conveying his best encouraging words. "We always find a way somehow."

"What!? Oh come on," Gina groused, pinching her nose in agitation. "Now go! You're clear!"

"Gina!?"

"I got this!" She wheeled back towards the third guard, his towering figure dwarfing her, his encompassing shadow swallowing her with ravenous darkness. "I think..."

Devon leveled his forehooves against the ground, looking up to her. "Why are you helping me!?"

"You brainy types!" She laughed. "Always want to know everything about every-"

"-Why?!"

"Oh, for the love of..." Gina leaped over the guard in an acrobatic forward flip, planting her forelegs squarely around the neck of the large guard. "Because!" She wrenched back, planting her rear legs into his neck, attempting unsuccessfully to wrestle his head towards the ground. "That Stormblade guy told me!" She pulled again, only able to rustle the hairs on the back of his pearly coat. "If you...Hnnyk...Dev's, if you don’t get to Luna first he’ll-"

Devon's eyes contracted, his mouth dropping in shock.

"What? I was there, Dev’s! Don’t you even remember that he’s up to something?!" Gina bounded off the guard's back, and caught a glimpse of Devon's face, the bewildered expression conveying the telltale realization that he was marvelously unaware of yet another threat to his and Luna’s future. "Oh seriously, really!?" She hollered, bounding to stare down Devon nose to nose. "So you didn't think messing around with the stars all willy-nilly would not get some creep with a power fantasy’s attention!?"

“Well, I...”

Nope.

"Seriously!?" Gina reeled on her hind legs, spinning her forehooves maniacally before crashing them loudly into the cobblestone Devon's chin huddled against in sudden terror. "Really!?" The cobblestone cracked dejectedly. "You selfish, inconsiderate..." she seethed. "...Loathsome!" Grimaced. "...Vile!" Raged. "...Wasteful sack of festering STUPID!"

"Gina, listen," the dark unicorn shivered, his features retreating beneath his navy mane. "I'm sorry I didn't know-"

"-You apologize!?" Her pupils blazed widely. "I pulverize!" She raised her hooves high over her head, her forelegs quivered as raw anger pulsed menacingly through her muscles. A blind tsunami of rancor exploded, sending her limbs into a sporadic blast of charging death. "KYAAAH!!" Like a blazing orange bullet, she pounced twice into a sideways leap against the side of the large royal guard, torpedoing all four hooves squarely into his ribs.

"Pyook!" He sharply huffed, the inertia sending him toppling sideways at incredible speed. He flipped across his spine, carrying back over to his hooves, unable to find any footing as the momentum hurled him further back again into a screeching drag against the side of his armor, a sheet of sparks fluttering behind the fast tumbling hulk. "Kyuck!" He yelped crashing into a pile of garbage bags, launching him like a ramp into the air, his body spinning wildly with hooves outstretched, crashing with his back flat against a column.

"Woo-hoo!" Gina cheered, the homicidal tirade snapping instantaneously out of existence with a bright beam of joyous triumph taking its place. "Dev's, I'm so glad you're such a dope sometimes!" She sauntered happily towards him with an increasingly augmenting smile of tightly clenched teeth. "You know exactly what to say to bring out my inner berserker!"

"Oh, thanks," Devon groaned, huffing snidely. "I say, it goes quite nicely with your outer berserker, too."

"Haw, haw, Dev's," Gina peered over her shoulders, then reached a forehoof down towards Devon. "Get up. And go."

"Gina, I-"

"-You want to find Luna?!" She lowered her head, similarly dejected in slunk melancholy like at the garden's porticullas. She attempted a smile towards him. "You got a dream to chase down, doncha? I’m not going to try and stop you. You're clear, just go." Her smile started to fade behind gently quivering eyes.

"I'm-"

"-Devon I mean it, I..." she blinked heavily, noticing the pathetic dark unicorn pushing futilely against the cobblestones, his torso getting yanked back against the ground as he thrashed against the unrelenting icy grip that had frozen him in place. Water from the fountain and icy cold locked the unicorn snugly in place. She choked back a laugh.

"...Stuck."

"Pf-f-bt-Ha, haw haw haw!" She lurched forward, rolling on the ground. "Then allow me to help with that." She groaned in agitation as her cracked horn illuminated to life. "Ynnk!"

"You sure..." Devon observed quizzically, "...that you should be using your horn?"

"I'm more...Yrnngh!...worried about casting...Rrrnk!..." She coughed down a burst of pain, thrusting her head forward as the glow intensified and wrapped a thick orange aura tightly around Devon's shoulders and hips. "...About casting a memory erase spell on those...Yrnnk!...on those guards." Sparks illuminated and cascaded from between the cracked gaps now burning intensely where her horn fractured, wisps twisted ablaze in magical coils of leaking energy.

"Ah, jeez." Devon gasped, clearly seeing the pain in her shuddering eyelids as she plunged her magic into her cracked horn. He felt the telekinetic energies wrap firmly around his body, the wrapping tendrils clinching like thousands of determined pinches taking hold of every fiber of his skin and coat. "This is really going to hurt isn't it..."

"Celestia's going to get a few new middle names, yep." Gina grinned with smug reassurance. "Hynnngh!" She heaved, bracing her neck with her shoulders. She lowered her head, getting ready to pry Devon's frozen torso off the ground.

"Hold on wait wait," Devon turned his head to face Gina eye to eye. "Listen, if the shock kills me," Devon closed his eyes to a narrow gaze, a warm smile creeping onto his face. He exhaled deeply, softening his voice to a calm poetic tone. "If the shock kills me, I just want you to know...if I don't make it..."

Gina sighed impatiently. "Know about what?"

"How I always felt, well..." He timidly murmured, "...about you."

Gina opened her eyes wide, her pupils expanding suddenly as the pain on her face receded to meek curiosity. "Yes, Dev’s?"

"I always thought...I knew you..."

"Yes?" She smiled toward him.

"...Would be the one who murders me."

“D’aw, you’re makin’ me blush, Dev’s. Now hold still...”

* * * * *

Still stings?

"Yes."

Aches?

"Quite a bit."

Bites like the furious ticks of a thousand camels?

"Eh,” Devon dragged a hoof through the sporadic holes torn through his coat, still dusting specks of stone and dirt from around the edges. “It'll grow back."

The hairs on your underside? We were talking about how you left her to deal with those thugs.

"Oh, Gina?" Devon laughed. "She'd be more mad if I stayed." The unicorn grinned, "you're trying to guilt trip me now." With a slight stumble, he shuffled onto his hooves once more, the fading edges of his vision catching enough details to determine up from down and left from blue. "She'll be fine, she's just being herself you know, crazy crazy Gina."

And a lone stallion walking down the street in an inebriated daze from hypothermia...isn't crazy?

"Crazy?" Devon laughed. "Me?" He snorted condescendingly to the stars. "It's just really really, really cold out, I'm not losing it, not at all!"

Look at you. You're tired. You can’t even walk straight.

"Am not, I'm...I'm..." He sauntered slightly sideways, his footing slipping off the edge of the sidewalk into a muddy tract running down the gutter. Catching himself, he righted upwards, attempting to keep his eyes as horizontally level as he could. "I'm not tired, just, well...I'm fine." The buildings at the end of the street faded into alien swirls of unfamiliar architecture, the signs and windows coalescing into a rapid fire whirlwind of color and shape.

You can’t even function, you should just get some rest.

“Th-th-then, m-maybe you should-d...” Were the stars really trying to coerce him to turn around, go home, give up? “Sing m-me a lull-ullabye.”

What? Oh, no no no, We’re saving that one.

Huh? Later? What’s later?

And you missed the Canterlot library's turn two blocks ago.

"Okay so I'm a litt-t-ttle t-tired!" he drawled, dragging his body behind him as he spun around.

Devon, you don't look so good. We can help you.

"I'm f-f-fine, I'm..." the street peeled away, the cobblestones at his feet dropped out from underneath him. A wave of soft summer blue descended from the skies, pouring over the horizon with an iridescent wave of glistening sunlight, washing away all of Canterlot's structures into an ashen haze of irrelevant dust. Puffy cotton balls warped in from the ashen detritus, and a sea of rippling green shadows washed over the ground. A wall of jade grass shot upwards, a golden path of dry hot dirt poured like spilled liquid under Devon’s hooves. A warm morning breeze licked against the back of his neck.

"Mommy," a dark unicorn colt called to him, his voice echoing gently into the rustling breeze gracing the infinite expanse of grass around him. He turned, but only met halfway before lurching his head back, looking down into a wispy quilt of platinum haze devouring the dirt road where it kissed the horizon. "Mommy?" He felt the warm thud of the young dark figure, his little shoulders nuzzling deeply against Devon's own. The colt looked up to him with shimmering orange eyes.

You promised.

"I'll always love you," the unicorn colt gulped softly. "To the sun," he smiled comfortingly, holding a hoof up to his heart. "To the moon."

You promised her you would.

The colt smirked malevolently, his voice deepening. "And the-"

“Get out of my head!”

We've always been here, Devon. Your refusal to compromise is bringing all this on you.

Staggering around another corner, Devon slumped heavily against the wall, panting and heaving. The adrenaline of the close call was slowly burning out of his body and he could feel the momentary strength and clarity fading, replaced with the peculiar mixture of pain and numbness brought on my extreme cold. Turning his head, he scanned behind him, fearing reinforcements or even worse, Gina coming in with more of her style of help. For a long moment, he looked across the empty streets before finally deciding he was in the clear for now.

“Captain!”

Or not... Devon heard the sharp report of a guard’s voice just around one of the numerous corners of Canterlot.

“Captain Stormblade, where’d you get off to?”

Scrambling, the charcoal unicorn, dove towards the nearest alley, shock and fear driving him into a burst of speed he would normally never possess. In the dark alley, Devon pressed through, hoping to elude the voice.

“Captain, it’s me, Private Jetsream, where are you? Everypony is looking for you back at the gala!”

At least this one wasn’t hunting for ponies breaking curfew. Devon hoped that he could just get around and get lined up towards the Archive…

Until he spotted a pair of cyan wings and silver uniform from behind.

“Captain!”

Devon recoiled slightly, reflexively seeking to avoid the armored figure of a guard, guards he had been ducking for the past sleepless nights. However, as he attempted to shuffle back into a darker corner of the alley, the chilled unicorn’s leg collided with a trash can, sending it clattering into noisy, metallic oblivion.

“Who’s out there…?” The guard stepped cautiously towards the sounds of clatter. Narrowing his eyes against the dark, the pegasus squinted in the direction of the noise. “It’s way too cold for somepony to be out here. Are you alright?”

Silence filled Canterlot’s side alley as the statement disappeared into the icy winter night. A standoff burning inside the hidden pony’s mind as he struggled with trusting one who he had just escaped from. On the one hoof, he had just escaped arrest, and thanks to Gina, it was no clean getaway. But on the other, this particular guard’s approach was nothing like the brutes from before. On the third hoof, well, the third hoof could not be felt for the stinging, biting cold that made every movement hurt and every joint scream in agony. Finally, from the shadowy murk, Devon spoke.

“I didn’t mean for any of that fight to happen.”

Jetstream balked. “Fight? What are you talking about? There was a fight out here tonight?”
Now, it was Devon’s turn to falter. He had started talking thinking all the guards of the massive machine of the Canterlot guard were aware of the other, but now had stumbled into the realm of self-incrimination. “Isn’t that why you’re here?” Devon asked through chattering teeth. “That whole ruckus when guards tried to stop me for breaking curfew?”

“Curfew?” Jetstream’s confused expression took root and blossomed. “I didn’t hear about any curfew tonight, who told you about this curfew?” The cyan Pegasus racked his memory for the last time a curfew of any sort had been enacted and found nothing. All he could remember of it was that a curfew was a frowned-upon, last-ditch, do-this-only-if-things-are-Discord-bad measure to keep control and order in the city during a disaster. It was certainly something he would have heard about, as it took royal censure to enact curfew, and Celestia was at the gala or parties all night. Unease replaced the confusion.

“Y-yeah…” Devon continued, his voice picking up an iota of stability as he found somepony just as confused as he was. “Two big pegasi, they had…um…” A moment’s pause. “One stripe on their…armor things.”

One stripe. Privates.

“And they said it was curfew? Just on their own?”

“They said they had the Captain’s orders.”

The confusion was completely gone now, now Jetstream was nervous. Worries about his friend and commanding officer rose through him. Definitely something amiss now. “Stormblade, you featherbrain, what did-“ Jetstream started to mutter under his breath before duty shifted his attention back to the figure in the shadows. “Sir, please come with me. I don’t know the reason behind this curfew, and I’m not going to punish somepony for something I didn’t know about. Let me get you to where you are going. If you’re with me, any patrols ought to leave you alone.” The Pegasus held his ground, waiting for an answer. “I can tell by your voice that you’re halfway hypothermic, and if you don’t let me help you get to where you’re headed, I’ll have to help you to the hospital. I assure you that you’ll be fine.”

The silence held.

Yet again, Devon faced down the perilous path of trust. He knew full well that he could walk right into a final ambush set by fate to end his quest. Yet just as well, he realized that hiding away could be fate’s trap as well. One path had a chance of disaster, another path guaranteed failure.

“Okay, I’m coming.” The unicorn started to shuffle back into the flickering light of the street.

“Thank you, sir. I’m glad you made a good deci-jeez what happened to you?!” Jetstream beheld a mangled pelt and legs quivering with cold. “Is this from those guards from before?!” The pegasi’s heart leapt to his throat for a moment. Curfew was one thing, but this was unspeakable!

“Well, not exactly. It was the pony who helped me out…”

“Wait…”

“I’d really rather not dwell on it.” Specifically, Devon did not want to dwell on being torn off of the sidewalk like an old bandage.

“Fair enough, sir but…” Something else tugged at the guard. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? You look terrible.”

See? This pony knows what he sees.

“I know I look bad,” Devon breathed, taking a few gulps of wintry air in an attempt to steady his body. It would have worked were it not for the cold making all four of his legs quake. “But I have to get to the archive, I just…”

Just what?

“If I don’t get there, a whole lot of risk is going to…”

That explanation is terrible.

“Well, what I mean is…”

Jetstream coughed and held up a hoof. “Sir, you don’t need to explain yourself to me.” Striding forward, the guard helped align the unicorn towards the street. “If you think it is worth going through to get there, kinda a guard’s help to help you, right? Long as you aren’t planning a robbery or something, right?” Jetstream chuckled and jabbed a foreleg into the unicorn’s side, immediately wishing he hadn’t when his leg pressed into a bare patch of skin. “Erf, sorry.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Devon squeaked, proud that he managed to silence the yelp before it left his chest. “But thank you, and no, it is nothing criminal, but it is important.”

“Good enough for me, sir. Let’s go.”

“Wait...you’re serious?” Devon muttered. If his shaking lips could muster more of a dumbstruck look, it would be all over his face. “Just like that? I thought all of the guards were...”

“Somepony is up to something,” the pegasus responded before Devon could finish. “Not sure what it is all about, but since I haven’t heard about it, technically I’m not in anypony’s orders. Besides, I have this feeling that even if I took you somewhere else, you’d just keep at it anyway.”

Shouldering the unicorn, Jetstream turned them to angle towards the Archive, mere blocks away. “Nothing I know about. But it wouldn’t surprise me.” The pegasus let out a long sigh, pausing to watch his breath whirl out of his nostrils in rapidly fading steam. “The politics and leaders here really chafe sometimes. I wish it was better. I don’t mean to ramble, sir, but I think the guards should be spending more time helping ponies than following the orders of a captain. We don’t need orders for that.”

Turning, the guard expected confusion, or at the very least a feigned polite interest. Instead, he found a face full of empathy.

“Preaching to the choir here,” Devon responded with a pained smile. “I work for the whole bureaucracy, all we do is push papers because somepony tells us to do it. We could do more if we used our heads more, but...”

“Doing that would mean that the person in charge is not officially in charge,” Jetstream finished Devon’s thought with precise accuracy. For a moment, the two laughed in the bitter cold before the guard composed himself. “Yeah, but I’m hoping I might be able to change that. All of that fame that award brought me might be my ticket to getting some ideas to Captain Shining Armor when he gets back. He’s way more understanding than the...” A moment passed to aerate the gulf between Captain and Second Captain, “acting Captain.”

“Real shank in the flank?”

“To say the very least.” Another laugh rippled through the icy night, drawing ever closer to the Archive. Soon, the two swapped stories, each cringing and sympathizing in mirth of one another’s bosses. It helped Devon ignore the cold hanging onto his joints, and it gave him a surge of optimism. For Jetstream, it was a sympathetic ear from somepony with similar experience that heartened him.

As for the charcoal unicorn, it was a strange sensation, something he had forgotten about in the past few days. After dungeons, battles and trying to resist the stars, optimism seemed just so wondrously out of place. Things were working out, at last! Not even the stars could throw anything to stop them now as the pair rounded the last corner.

Before them loomed the plaza of the Canterlot Archive, utterly still in the winter chill. No lights burned in any of the windows and the fountain at its entry plaza lay silent, its surface stuck by a thin skin of ice. Pausing, Jetstream turned his attention to the unicorn, whose shivering was, if anything, worse than before.

“Sir, are you certain this is where you need to be?”

“P-positive,” Devon replied, breaking the close stride with the pegasus to close on the archive door. With slightly regenerates strength, the unicorn staggered off of Jetstream’s shoulder to approach the door. “Just need to get in here and...”

“What’s the situation here?”

A voice snapped, followed by a melodic jingle of dangling medals dragging against his chest. His voice cut with a surgical edge, only leaving the subtle jangle of metal hanging onto his words. Clearly its owner was in no mood for trifling.

“Sir!” Jetstream pressed on, ignoring his superior’s posturing. “What in Celestia’s mane has gotten into you? Did you just call curfew without any orders or consultation?!” While the private had long been used to the second captain’s antics and self-inflating grandeur, this action took it to a higher level than it had ever seen. “Sir, please tell me this was not your idea…”

“What it was, Jetlag,” Stormblade leveled, gaze fixed on the wavering unicorn who had found the wall of the archive to brace against. “Was a risky move to secure the future of Equestria. And, thanks to you, it was a complete and undeniable success!” Rather than the expected irritation with Jetstream’s questioning, he seemed pleased at the situation. “The ‘Bookmark’ who has been keeping Luna from me walked right into your ambush, just as I had planned.”

“The Bookmark? Ambush? Stormblade, what are you going on about?”

“You’ve done more for Equestria’s future than you could possibly know. This is going to look very good on your record and your career.” Lowering his head, Stormblade walked closer, his smile tinged with a desperate urge to complete the deed. “This would not be just some little gold star in your record, this is the kind of heroics a career is built off of.”

“Well, sir, I really don’t think-“

“You won’t be ‘sir’ing anypony at this rate. This will be the first of many promotions for you.”

“Sir I-“

“Just taste it in your mouth…Lieutenant Jetstream.” The private wavered. Did he say Jetstream?
He roamed his memory, searching for the last time he said his name in full and with such respect, or even the idea of moving upward in the ranks of the guard. Swallowing hard, the cyan Pegasus turned to look back at his charge. What Jetstream saw was the unicorn shifting backwards, using his brace on the archive wall to slide and grind towards the door, still a painful distance away. Devon froze under the guard’s look, locking eyes with him.

“Now Jetstream,” Stormblade’s voice rose behind him. “Let’s just make things nice and official. Hand him over to me, and return to the barracks so you can start the report that’ll lead to your promotion.”

“Sir, I don’t think-“

“Hop to, private! Hey, this is your promotion on the line. And my future here. No pressure or
anything on getting it right.” Stormblade’s voice hummed with a new growl, impatience manifesting as an angry growl, emphasized with a hard stomp into frosty cobblestone. “What are you waiting for anyway? This unicorn was responsible for all of my Luna’s troubles! Arrest him if you want! Drag him down into the dungeons for me later. It’s all the same to me.”

Jetstream turned and took a step towards Devon and he felt a cold twinge, not from the weather, ripple down his spine. Everything about this seemed wrong, from the curfew, to his captain and even the strange, battered unicorn who apparently was the malevolent architect of all of Canterlot’s recent woes. Or at least that was according to Stormblade. The cyan Pegasus took another step forward, closing to lower his voice for Devon.

“I don’t know about any of this, sir, but please…” Jetstream turned to look back at Stormblade, who let out another snorting growl. “Please come with me, I know this officer, if you go with me, I promise you that I’ll get things sorted out. I have no idea what he is up to.” Devon shook his head and continued his agonized trek closer to the door. “Sir, I know I promised to keep things safe for you, but I can’t really stop him if he decides to go after you. Let me help you.”

Without pause, the unicorn replied.

“I know you are trying to help me,” Devon huffed, dragging his body another step down the wall. “But I’ve been running and escaping for too long. If you have to stop me, stop me, but I’m not going to go back on this.”

“Sir,” Jetstream turned back to his officer, swallowing a breath of arctic wind as he squared around to him. “I agreed to escort this unicorn, I don’t believe he means any harm. Is this reall-“

“JETLAG!” Stormblade roared, stomping over until his breath washed over the Pegasus’ face. “Did I just stutter or something? Or did you just tell me what you think about this case?” The earth stallion’s medals jingled with his aggravated motions and gesturing. Turning, the Second Captain slammed his hoof against a fountain that stood outside the Archive, the thin sheen of ice over the water disappearing in a thousand cracks. “After all I’ve done for you, you are not going to do this for me? Not going to do this for Canterlot?! What happened to your priorities and level head, Jetlag?”

“My level head…” Jetstream repeated, heat entering his voice. “What about you? Ordering a curfew on your own for no reason? I want to be on your side on this, Captain, but what is going on here?” The question only incensed Stormblade further, his hoof slamming powerfully down onto the fountain’s ice.

“That is none of your business, Jetlag!” Wheeling around, Stormblade closed the gap between him and the unicorn, shouldering him away from the Archive door. “What your business should be is following orders. This criminal has gotten into your head, Jetlag.” With a shove, the earth pony threw Devon against the fountain. “Everypony is getting a little too hotheaded, I think.”

“Agreed, sir!” Jetstream barked, circling warily as a shadow of doubt crept into his mind. Maybe he was aiding a criminal act and he just didn’t know it? “Sir, let’s not do anything hasty. He’s doing nothing wrong that I know about.”

Stormblade laughed. “That you know about. Precisely, Jetlag.” Stormblade proudly held his chest high and turned his attention back to the unicorn, still propped against the fountain. “But what you don’t know...” He lowered his eyes to Devon’s level, pulling his proud posture low into a sneaky arc that slithered around Devon. “...is that this pony has a duty to do for Canterlot.”

“Y-y-you...you n-need me...t-to...” Devon scraped his hooves in a scrabbling attempt to get leverage against the icy fountain as his lungs struggled to get coherent words out.

“Your job.” Stormblade repeated. He then saw the look of worry creeping on Devon’s face as the officer slid sideways, blocking the view of the Archive door. “Oh! Don’t you worry, I haven’t let anypony else know, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately.”

“Sir!” Jetstream called. “Sir what the hay is happening here? What are you talking about?”

“Can it, Jetlag!” Turning his attention back to the unicorn, the pony grinned. “Yep, well, it was more or less a few scraps.” The large dark guard leaned in even closer, the heat of his breath glazing against Devon’s wide, wavering eyes. Stormblade eased his glance upward, reminescing. “You made a mess in that tower, Bookmark. And using an innocent mare as your cover? Shameful. You left that bag of yours behind,” He waved a hoof before his face, turning his head to the side. “Awful lot of evidence there. And a lot of knowledge that...” he leveled his face to him. “...can’t fall into the wrong hooves.” Stormblade guided a searching hoof into his jacket, the familiar tin ringing of its contents pierced through the ruffling fabric. A dagger of reflected moonlight stitched across Devon’s vision as the metallic lip of Stormblade’s prize crested into the open air.

No. No. No. No. No. No.

A clanging of hollowed brass echoed through the night air as a shimmering gauntlet rolled across the cobblestones to Devon’s hooves.

“You know what I need.” He quickly got to the point, skipping the necessary sugar-coating Devon expected. “You, Bookmark, are the right hooves. I need a contract. You’re going to provide it.”

NO!

Oh yes. We've decided you're going to help him.

Stormblade didn’t even give Devon the chance to respond. “You’re in no position to disagree with me.” Didn’t even give him the chance to think over a retort. “And I know you’ve got that power just waiting to be used.” Like he’d rehearsed his whole spiel the whole night.

“Sir!” Jetstream interjected again, his hooves clattering on the frosty cobblestones until skidding to a halt. “This is getting out of control, let him g-”

“Both of you seem a bit hot-headed, though, how about you cool off a spell!" Before the pegasus could speak, or even react, Stormblade wrenched a foreleg forward, driving Devon’s head down into the freshly exposed fountain.

“SIR!”

From his perspective, all Devon experienced was the icy, engulfing embrace of water. Voices melted into unrecognizable blurs and his vision. The shock of the cold forced a reflexive gasp from the charcoal unicorn, which drew more water into him and another shocking burst of cold before he was yanked back, sputtering into the air.

“You know how this is going to work, Jetlag. You’re going to back down an-"

"Captain!" Jetstream interrupted, "that's enough! I have to stand up for myself on this one, let me handle him sir!"

"Standing up for yourself? Oh, no no no Private, you are standing up for this criminal." Stormblade slammed his hoof down, forcing the unicorn into a thrashing struggle under the fountain water again.

"Want to save him?" The stallion hauled the gasping, shivering form from the water again. "Stand up for him, do the right thing, and walk away without another word."

“Sir...what are you doing...” Jetstream panted, fear more dominant in his expression. Hotheaded was one thing, overly aggressive was another, but this was well beyond anything that he seen from his friend and fellow guard before. The betrayal of all of their vows to protect and serve the ponies of Canterlot tasted bitter, and he was obligated to intervene. But if he did...

“This is between me and the unicorn, Jetlag. And my destiny.”

“Sir, please don’t do this, we can sort this out.” The pegasus’ mind solely turned to his former companion now. The cold had done a terrible number on him already, and repeated dunkings into the frigid water were taking a further toll. “If you keep this up, he’s going to be in serious danger of...”

Shame he won't be able to convince his captain to back down.

“Then I suppose he should become more cooperative, shouldn’t he then?”

Devon’s eyes fluttered, consciousness phasing a bit before Stormblade stomped his hoof, rattling his leg armor with a heavy metallic sound that jarred Devon’s attention back to the looming captain.

"So what's it going to be, Bookmark?" Stormblade snorted, calm and cool as the icy plaza outside of the Canterlot Archive.

Devon heaved, his legs unable to support his weight and he slumped against the library fountain. Cold had numbed his body, and it longed to simply fall, whether it was into the warmth of the library or the blissful sleep of unconsciousness did not matter. But his eyes remain locked on the guard captain.

"Are you out of your..." Devon spoke, icy water turning his last words into a soaking cough and drawing new daggers of cold into his body. "If you know then you saw the statues..."

"Yes. Of course I saw them and the journal." Stormblade approached menacingly, an ominous rustle of chains and metal augmenting the solid thump of each slow step. "You have a family history of this, Bookmark.” Each slow step...jostling a circular ripple in the watery cracks between the cobblestones. “You have a gift, a duty that has been stashed away for a thousand years. And now you have a pony wanting you to perform your duty."

Obliged.

"Th-the statues!" Devon hissed, pushing himself off of the fountain as as indignation washed into him, overwhelming the aching numbness. "That's wh-what...that's what bec-c-ame of..." Just as Devon tried to press his point, he slipped into a cough as cold re-asserted itself. “What’s the matter with you?!” he shouted with a burst of renewed strength.

Stormblade waved his hoof in a condescending arc. "That's what became of those who couldn't seize control of destiny," he huffed dismissively, reaching out to the convulsing unicorn. With a disdainful shove, he sent Devon stumbling back against the fountain. "I am stronger than all of them combined. I am one truly deserving of my destiny!” His black foreleg jabbed precariously close to Devon’s brow, the ebony hoof seeming to stab away at his aura. “Servant of Canterlot, servant of the stars, do your job!" His eyes narrowed into maniacal recession. “Fulfill your obligation!”

Devon scrambled at the icy cobblestones, relying on trial and error to find his footing as his hooves had gone completely numb. But through his dulled senses coursed a new strain of betrayal and horror. How could a guard who witnessed the battle NOT see the results? How could he NOT see the dangers?

Like we said, Bookmark. Not everpony can handle these gifts.

Growing impatient with the unicorn’s silence, Stormblade exhaled. “Right.” Looking up, Devon glanced upon him leaning back away from him. "I understand."

Wait...he understands? Devon's heart fluttered, maybe he had a change of heart? Wait, no, too easy.

"You think that because of your little adventure with the Princess,” a muffled chuckle throbbed in his throat, “that you have some future with her, right?"

Devon's stomach twisted. Yep. Too easy. As the unicorn tried to haul himself off of the ground, a hoof planted into his shoulders and forced his head back down for a momentary return to the icy water before yanking him back, sputtering into the air.

"Forget it, Bookmark,” he grumbled in a low tone. “My destiny is with Luna, you don't even know of the work it would take to get her heart. She needs a hero, a decorated upstanding beacon of Canterlot’s greatness. Not some...” He turned his face away from him, looking up to the softly cackling specks of light hanging nonchalantly above the library. “Whatever you are."

Jetstream stepped forward, trying to close the gap between an increasingly heated Stormblade and himself. He was rewarded with a sharp growl and the ebony hoof grinding down, pressing Devon mercilessly into the fountain, grinding patches of exposed skin to the ice and relentlessly crushing the warmth out of him like a sponge. Immediately, the junior guard backed away.

"Ponies like you don't understand the value of destiny.” Stormblade's voice continued, as if he were lecturing a child for misbehaving. “I do. Luna does. You?” He scoffed, his tone quivering with a soft cackle that blended seamlessly into the taunting chorus from the heavens. “At most you are a useful...tool...for it.” He spat. “Deal with it.” Stormblade’s hoof eased as he took a step back, swinging around while whipping his tail against Devon’s face. “I will have Luna. I've earned her."

"If..." Devon fought for each word between swallowed water. "If that's true...wh-why take a shortcut now? Don't you..."

You really aren't picking up on this, are you? You lose.

A black blur shot into Devon’s shoulder, and like a torpedo, a flash of ebony planted between his ribs. Squeeze. Grind.

"Because!” Stormblade exclaimed. “Because I know a good opportunity when I see it!” He heaved through tightly clenched teeth. “Destiny put me here! And put you here! Now are you going to fall into your proper place and weave my fate?!"

"You d-don't appreci-iate her..."

Tragedy. You know how you can get this to stop.

Grind!

"Funny sermon coming from the family who tried to seize power!” Heave. Heave. “And who had the Princess sent back to the moon!" Stormblade hooked his hoof around Devon's pendant and hauled upwards against his throat, dragging the unicorn to his hooves. "But I! I can do things your way, too!” Stormblade’s eyes warped, darting aside in contemplation. “Heh, okay, okay. You Bookmarks always play the angles, so let's play angles." The crazed eyes narrowed into vicious green and blue slits as he leered into Devon's face.

Stormblade twirled back around, a menagerie of rattling chains fluttered alongside the scraping motion of his regimented step. "Here’s my angle. It’s simple.” He cleared his throat, the proud boisterous diction of the esteemed captain boomed forth in dignified words. “You make this little contract for me. Just one contract. You guarantee that Luna is mine...and...” he sternly leveled his irises upon Devon, the sibling blue and green eyes gouged clear into his mind. “And I might forget to let Celestia know about just how deeply involved with this whole...star contract, star pact, whatever mess you are."

Devon wrenched backwards, stumbling until he hit the door of the library again. Celestia's worried face danced into his memory. The mere sight of his pendent had nearly caused the graceful princess of Equestria to panic. If his family history was laid out before her, and his connection to all of the events of the past days alongside them, his fate was sealed! Devon gawped, struggling to summon words.

“Stormblade!” Jetstream barked, having managed to slip around onto the stallion’s side during his tirade. “Let him go! This has gone on long enough!” Lowering his head, the pegasus dug his foreleg against the cobblestones. “I don’t want to have to do this, sir, but I will stop you if I hav-”

He won't.

“You, Jetlag?” Stormblade wheeled around, letting the unicorn crumble to a panting heap to the ground beside him. “I know you were sympathetic and soft towards criminals, but you’d actually turn on me after everything I’ve done for you?” The captain let out a devilish sneer, confidence hanging off every word. “Please, Jetlag, I know you wouldn’t even think about it. Why don’t you run back to the barracks and let the real guards work, eh?”

The pegasus grit his teeth and dug his hooves into the dirt as Stormblade dismissively turned away and put his focus back on the down unicorn, stooping down to speak.

"Your choice, Bookmark. And you're lucky you're getting a choice at all. Give me the contract, or I'll make sure the only destiny with a Princess you have,” Stormblade pointed a threatening wave of ebony at him, “is when Celestia passes judgment on you for your role in this entire...star affair."

“Like yer one to talk!” A new voice sliced through the frosty air with all the controlled grace and subtlety has a buffalo stampede. “Get off of him!”

Slumping down from the fountain, Devon managed to crane his head in time with the other two ponies, all of their gazes falling on a panting, maniacally grinning orange mare. While he had hoped to see the officer's expression falter, it only held more confidence.

Still not out of trouble.

“See?” Stormblade smirked, not even turning to look back at Private Jetstream. “Now you see his accomplices coming out to help him? And I thought there was no honor among criminals. She’s a special one, I admire her in a strange wa-”

“Don’t even flatter yerself, creep!” Gina hissed, cutting the Second Captain off. “You’re the only one with plans here!”

“It’s tragic, really,” the black stallion said, rolling his grip on the unicorn’s neck “I thought we could have grown closer, but then you are stubbornly refusing to help me get to the actual goal. Luna.” His foreleg shunted forward and drove Devon under the water again. “Tragic. I’d think anypony would be worthy of redemption.”

“It’s two on one, chump,” Gina snarled, circling to the stallions far side as Jetstream instinctively matched her movements, the two tightening a gradual circle around the earth pony captain. “I’m not gonna ask anymore.”

“By all means,” Stormblade smirked. “Just try and stop me. All of this combat training needs to be worked anyway.” With unflappable confidence, he released Devon to the ground and turned slow circles. “Which one of you is going to make the first move?” Each turning step punctuated with a jangle of medals. “A unicorn with a broken horn and a weedy private who I trounce daily in training drills?” The scorn was undisguised. “Come on.”

“If that’s what he wants so bad...” Gina’s body tensed. “You going?” Her eyes flicked momentarily to Jetstream, then back to the second captain. Finally, for a moment, her eyes fell on Devon, who now that he was free from the fountain, heaved on the ground, shivering and sputtering for breath.

“Don’t want to, but yes ma’am.”

“Good. On three...one...”

One last jangling step as Stormblade set his hooves.

They probably could fight him off, if they went together...

“Two...”

The jangles were superseded by soft cracking sounds as he rolled his neck in preparation. Jetstream’s wings beat, building momentum added a rolling percussion. Gina’s low growls and scraping hooves completed the tense medley.

But...

“Oh, before you get to three,” the second captain interrupted. “Just let’s keep one thing in mind.” With a back leg, Stormblade dug his hoof into Devon’s back, pinning him to the ground with a grunt. “I’m still holding the cards here. I got what I want and I can break him just as easily.”

“Thr...er...” Gina’s count spun to a halt.

And her concern for you is making her hesitate.

“Sir!” Jetstream pleaded. “Leave him out of this!”

“Oh be quiet, the both of you. I see neither of you have the courage to risk it, so if you don’t mind...” Turning back to the prone unicorn, Stormblade leaned down to speak to Devon, only occasionally twisting his hoof when he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. “Now, I’ll stop wasting time asking you, Bookmark. You’re giving to give Luna to me.” Feeling the unicorn attempt to writhe free, Stormblade tightened his hoof down on him, punishing him for daring to break from his planned script. “You never had a chance, so just give it up and be happy that you helped put Luna where she belongs.”

Give her up.

Every bit of logic implored Devon to give up and end the torment on himself. The voice behind fate itself commanded his surrender. Surely the pain would cease, and his own future secured if he bent fate to the will of this captain.

Just let her go.

It was the smart thing to do. Finally collapse to fate’s insistence and accept his fate away from Luna, scraping out what he could while she is inevitably made the plaything of the stars. To be sent off to this stallion whose only interest in her is his own ego needing such fulfillment. The gauntlet rattled onto the cobblestones before him, its sleeve an open path to safety and relief.

“Got this from your bag, I know how important it is. So put it on and give Luna to me. Maybe something admiring of my combat skills.”

She is a pony. Appreciate her.

Let her go!

“Wear it!”

Devon refused fate.

Run away, like usual.

“You...you d-don’t deserve Luna.”

Devon took it for his own.

“She deserves to be free to make her own choice.”

Not outsmarting us this time.

“Brrt! Wrong answer, unicorn.” Stormblade’s foreleg shot out, expertly aimed at the bruise on Devon’s shoulder from the first guard. Pain snapped through his body, made all the more stinging and electric by the gnawing cold. “Wear it!” The Captain dug a knee onto the unicorn’s shoulder, squeezing last bit of warmth, the last droplets of feeling out of his back. Through the numbing chill, Devon fought to right himself, not knowing if his muscle memory was letting forth the proper convulsions, but hoping that his unfeeling tendons and blurring vision was insinuating some semblance of fighting back.

“I said, Wear! It!”

“You’re not going to..” Devon panted. “Get it from me.” Even with bruises and icy cold rampaging through his body, the unicorn smiled. He could have given up, but he didn’t. He never felt better. The combined fury of Stormblade and the stars washed over him, the only warmth he had another onslaught of kicking hooves landed upon his chest and neck from all angles. An unfamiliar wisp of frigid air crept into the deep recesses of his underarm as Devon spat to the ground, looking down to see his right foreleg forcefully extended by a red jacket sleeve. A green eye peered at him balefully, and in the Captain’s mouth...

“Do...it...”

A familiar tin ringing permeated through Devon’s ears, and a warmly inviting sensation throbbed up his arm. Even without his horn tapping into the brass gauntlet, the artifact immediately recognized its host.

Wear it.

A foreleg wrapped around his chest, and in a single wrenching motion, attempted to yank him up to his feet. Devon’s head slunk down, lurching to the side. His forehead collided into the ground, dragged forward by the imbalanced momentum of his body attempting to regain its footing. His horn snagged on the edge of a cobblestone, and his body having nowhere to go, toppled into his neck. He felt a harsh tug on his jaw as his neck curled at a sickening angle, the horn just letting go in time for the strained bones in his neck to compensate and whip his head back into a natural angle on the ground. Moments later came the whole-body pain that his neck transmitted all over.

“Oh come on,” Stormblade groused, impatiently stomping to the downed unicorn. “You finally get shown the way to fulfilling your ultimate destiny, to ushering in the greatest era of Equestria history. Don’t you want credit as the architect of...” the Captain extended his hoof to the stars, waving an imaginary weave of magic through them, “...The Age of Stormblade? Admit it, kiddo, it’s got quite the catchy sound to it, doesn’t it?” He paused to brush off the chest of medals. “All it needs is somepony to grease the wheels.”

Devon’s rear legs attempting to push away across the cobblestone street, making way for the library door while the captain circled around him. Battered and aching, teetering on the border between consciousness and unconsciousness, Devon found strength in his conviction.

“By making a sl-slave out of her, you mean. No.”

“What?”

What?

“No.”

LET HER GO!

The stars’ rage in his head was mirrored on his body as Stormblade vented his frustration. Neither of them liked losing, yet as their growing rage showed Devon, neither could do anything else. Every shove or scraping fall down the snow, battering as it was, bolstered the unicorn’s resolve. For the first time in his life, he refused to break, refused to give in to the wills of others, be they pony or astral body. He would not shift, and he knew that despite the abuse they could level against him, neither stars nor guards could drag him from his fortress. And despite their force, despite their unrelenting pressure, neither pony nor astral body could break the unicorn's will.

He may not be able to fight, but the urge to retreat and compromise ended.

You selfish...suicidal...why would you just throw yourself away!?

“You get this opportunity,” Stormblade suddenly roared, “To be such a tremendous...” Suddenly his words exploded with sour malice, “...Hero!” The Captain kicked into Devon’s spine, the shock sending a charcoal foreleg flailing into a metallic clattering. “This moment is yours!”

“You’re right...it is mine.” The unicorn forced a defiant grin into the corner of his mouth. To everypony's astonishment, not least his own, Devon pushed himself up onto his legs. Physically shaking, his willpower held. “And I’m still saying no.”

Another kick. Devon twisted, finding the ground changing from cobbled street to the steps of the Archive. Something was finally giving up in his body as his vision clouded, and the hoofsteps of the approaching black stallion took on sharp focus. However, a mere length from him, they came to a sudden stop. For a moment, Devon assumed he had slipped into unconsciousness entirely before something else came to his ears.

Hoofsteps coming from the other direction, muffled by a wooden barrier, the regal, graceful cadence of hoofsteps that...that only...

Kr-kreeakh...

The sound of creaking wood tumbled through the air, as the metallic ring of twisting locks sang with a chilled lapping of breeze. Stormblade quickly lowered his hoof and stepped back in surprise as the library door swung open, his wide eyes capturing a sporadic reflection of cobalt blue dancing on his pupil. He quickly shook his head from side to side, hoping to fling any semblance of guilt off of his face.

"Princess Luna!" Stormblade recovered quickly. “You’re safe!”

In a slumping flop, Devon fell against the side of the open door, one barely open eye catching a deep blue glimmer reflected in a spiked shine caught on the chrome of the door frame's large hinges. A regal, majestic aura stepped forth, looking accusingly down onto the earth pony guard captain, his armor clanging in tune with his panicked yelp as he dropped to a reverent bow before her. In utmost royal splendor, she assumed a staunch poise, a strong-postured silhouette against her sparkling blue presence.

"Halt!”

Like a thunderous squall, her voice rippled down the rows of structures, shaking windows and sending hanging signs on a swaying dance of synchronized swings. Both Gina and Private Jetstream stopped in their tracks, eyes locked instantly onto the new arrival, and both wisely said nothing, aware of the tsunami of rage about to crash into the plaza. A few curious windows illuminated to life from the inquisitive, while many more extinguished into hiding from the wise.

“Oh th-thank Celestia!” Stormblade bleated, not as wisely. “I was so worried that when you ran off after you saw me that I-”

"And pray tell, Second Captain Stormblade." Another pulse of sonic onslaught rocked the ground, causing pebbles to dance into the gaps between the streets cobblestones. "Are these thy orders?! To assault our subjects?!"

"This was not just an order," he recovered, that grin returning, “I was hoping to catch, err uhh, recover you...find you myself, eh-heh-heh, well, I mean punish the ones responsible for-” an uncomfortable laugh broke free, betraying Stormblade’s faux countenance of pride. “Princess, heh-hyeh, there’s just so much I need to sa-”

"Speakest as if thou art to speaketh to a princess!" Luna exclaimed in sheer aggravation, the fire in her eyes made Stormblade's tirade seem pitiful and halfhearted.

"M-m-Miss Luna, err, Princess Luna, I was trying to get you safe from this...this unicorn! He was trying to do some horrible magic to you!" The captain coughed, getting back onto his feet to collect his thoughts. "We had declared a curfew to ensure that you were safe, I had stopped the city and mobilized the whole guard, well a special task force, for yo-”

"Thou hast declared a curfew!?"

"To clear th-th-the streets, Princess!"

Luna sighed, rolling her eyes back. Of course. The bloated Canterlot system of irrelevant checks and balances were overriding one another to declare martial law. She felt a pang of raw malignity venture through her veins, but couldn't even draw the strength to summon it forth. So common it was for those with the slightest grasps of authority to tear open loopholes as to declare their own brand of utilitarian law. Luna had been an overseer of Canterlot's varied assortments of sideshows and petty political carnivals to understand and acclimate to such a despicable practice, but also couldn't let said apathy be detected.

Luna breathed in deep, already knowing the answer to her question. "And who doth ordered such curfew!?"

Stormblade caught the shining opportunity to deflect responsibility. "C-C-Cel...Princess-"

"-Celestia!?" Luna reared, a blast of spontaneous thunder bolted in chaotic anger through the wintry sky. Her frame was masked in a flash of blinding light, only her eyes and clenched grimace blaring a definitive white upon her rancorous silhouette. The captain pushed himself back, pulling his jaw back to an imperturbable sneer as he shielded his eyes under a narrowed brow. She dropped back to her forehooves, the impact causing a frozen puddle of water to leap before her into thousands of airborne shards. Moonlight arced through the precipitation, enveloping her in a ghostly aura like a poltergeist. "Impossible, never, mine sister be thoughtful and caring. She hast absolute love and trust to me.” Luna growled. “In fact, we believeth that she doesn’t even know of this.”

Luna approached the guard, and with a coy smile, faced him eye to eye. "Telleth me, Second Captain Stormblade. Just whom do I thank for providing Canterlot with such an order?"

"Well, Luna," Stormblade saw another opportunity to salvage his pride and his standing, “it was me, as acting guard captain while Captain Shining Armor is away! I felt it was in my...our...” He coughed. “Your best interest to ensure that there were no threats...and that I could get to you.” His face seized into immutable shock. “I mean! That I could get...to you...as quickly as, umm, possible to make sure...make sure you were unharmed by-”

With a lunge, Princess Luna loomed before Stormblade. “Is that so?” she asked, her horn illuminating. A cloud of telekinesis wrapped around one of the stallion’s medals and, with the smallest tug, separated a single object from the jangling mess. “We hath heard otherwise,” she continued, a new pulse of magic lifting an item from her ear and floating it alongside Stormblade’s prize.

The two pieces of echothyst matched perfectly.

Gingerly, Luna floated one piece to rest near Stormblade’s ear, while whispering into the other. “Thou would make a puppet of me. And I will not complement thy ‘combat skill’.”

He heard her perfectly, judging by the way his face drained of color and his eyes bulged.

“B-b-b-b-b-b...”

“Thou would turn me into some little dancing dream filly who would for forced into devotion with thee!” The shout bursting from the echothyst sent the stallion stumbling to the street, clutching his ear. Floating one piece near the tottering stallion, Luna glowered at the captain while he gawped.

“But Princess! I mean I was just...well I was going to make him let me be able to...um...protect you! I just didn’t want to to fall into it ag-”

“And thou would endanger the ponies thou swore to protect to get thy mincing ways!” As much as Stormblade tried to escape her voice, Luna’s magic kept the shouting, raging echothyst crammed near him.

“I needeth not thine prattling dressage of some obnoxious showpony to giveth shelter upon me!” Luna’s booming decrees gradually softened, as she peered idly to the shivering dark coated unicorn curled against the library wall, the dotted marks of bruises and matted dirt spattered against his quivering exterior. “Mine life hath been long and rife with many tales, we needeth not protection from nopony. We need...” She smiled, focusing intently upon Devon, feeling a tide of words emanate from within.

“...Somepony who doth sincerely understands me.”

Words from.

“Somepony to see me as one who needs their own tale to live. And who does not wish to change me.”

And of herself.

“But, Luna, Princess, m’lady!” The Captain lurched forward, waving a foreleg in protest, his tail whipping in a panic as he attempted to reason with the Princess of the Night. “I can! He’s just..! I mean, sure, I’ll listen, I’ll do what you say, I’ll...I’ll let you have your own story sure, ah-eh, heh heh heh! Right!?” He fumbled with his tongue, a clumsy onslaught of jumbled diction bellowed forth. “I can watch over you, and let you be my own, uh, erh-umm, your own-”

“-Second Captain!”

"Y-y-yes, m'lady?"

"Were we in thy horseshoes, we would look into explaining thyself to Celestia and myself before we decideth to enact justice right here. Unless thou wishes for it now.”

The disgraced captain skittered away from the library plaza, leaving the petrified Jetstream and Gina behind. He shot a look at Devon, another familiar murderous stare slung around the shoulder of a dejected gait. In Devon's eyes, the world suddenly flashed away to a wispy bouquet of white flurries, as his old supervisor's memory of a similar walk of shame surfaced.

That moment.

“Guardspony! Gina!” Command returned to Luna’s voice, focus and drive. “Get thee to the castle quickly. I do not trust that wastrel, he may have some further scheme or he may attempt to poison mine sister’s thoughts with his tongue.”

The voices were ghostly, seemingly from miles away.

“But what about Dev-”

The moment.

“I shall take care of him. Tis too cold to keepeth him out any longer!”

It was the one time in Devon's life when he actually felt...appreciated.

To feel...appreciated.

“Go!”

“Right away, your Highness. C’mon, miss, we better hurry.”

Cutting through the numbness and permeating cold now ravaging every cell within his core, the fading hallucination of reality giving way to the familiar glimmers of recognizable memories, the true sense of rare appreciation whisked and caressed Devon's perception. He knew, unlike the malevolent apathetic stars cackling nonchalantly from the astral expanses of an unfeeling cosmos. Unlike the brutal lengths his fellow ponies would enact on others to get a wish.

To feel like...a pony.

The shrill tin ringing the last coherent noise before enveloping it all into a single tone note of an everlasting song, his hoof making one last feeble attempt at shaking off the gauntlet before his hoof drooped like a ragged fabric out of his sight. With a final satisfied smile, Devon dropped to his side. The final photons his eyes absorbed was the fervent shuffling of cobalt hooves approaching him, before blurring into obscurity between the hazy edges of succumbing eyelids.

Part of him longed to speak, but all that came from his mouth before darkness engulfed him was a ragged, shallow exhalation that drowned out the desperate pleas of a Princess running towards him in muffled echoes.

Chapter 15: Moonflower

___
_____

Subdued of thought, devoid in word.
The nocturne plays, but isn’t heard.
In silent comfort, world blurred,
The moonflower, and hummingbird.

_____
___

Chapter 15:
Moonflower

Breathe.

The burden of years weighed heavily upon Luna, an immortal expanse of time that spanned as a featureless aether of cognition within her memories. How dulled and weathered they had become over time, to a point where time itself became irrelevant. Guaranteed she'd always be reigning side by side with her nights as long as the world desired its reprieve from the basking lifeforce granted upon them by the daytime sun. But the long hours of ardent preparation for the nightly performance, that frugal study and craftsmanship that testified to a mind having long ago tired in conjuring world-building magic, drove her into a fevered state more focussed upon the creation of the nightly song...rather than the ear it fell upon.

Just...breathe...

What it meant to her, though, was assuming the role of the one who would always provide shelter to those seeking the comforting embrace of the routine nocturne. Her song. Far in the distance beyond the windows, their glass facades glazed in a blurring sheet of speckled ice, the urgent chorus of Canterlot still boomed through the narrow alleys and streets that wove and intertwined like strings. The final verse of the day traveled between the elaborate web of architecture and avenues that diverted and pulled at the stray clatter of the city's life with the crafty precision of a brass instrument. The city itself hummed in its usual melodic...

...Breathing.

With an adjustment of her wings, Devon's body realigned atop her shoulders, a dangling hoof flopped clumsily against her foreleg with a shrill tinny whine as the dull metal gauntlet reverberated in the still winter air.

He's breathing.

She had him strewn flat across her back, hoisting him up the library steps on the long curving staircase. Shadows bent and wrapped around each step in schizophrenic designs, a cobalt series of twisting shapes snaked through the dark library's aisles, railings, and diminished light fixtures as a meandering blue form ascended to the upper levels of the library.

Like a shadowed maw clenching shut around her, the light angled into a narrow lick of cobalt flow tailing behind her as her glittering tail retreated into a looming row of books, disappearing suddenly to leave the cavernous atrium in its familiar darkness. The soft echo of her hoofsteps receded as the final stray flecks of her aura retreated into the confined recesses of towering bookcases.

She leaned her head to her shoulder, twisting an ear towards the dark-coated unicorn hanging limply over her. She listened in closely, the tip of her ear receiving a soft caress from the wayward strands of his slightly disheveled mane.

Surely, he doth breathe.

A gentle arc of pressure ascended up her foreleg. Peering down to the dangling hoof slung over her shoulder, she saw the dark leg curl with a telltale sign of life...

He's...

...Slowly wrapping around her neck in a weak squeeze.

Bringing the night had never felt this personal to Luna before. It had never been so...tangible. The Princess of the Night seemed like nothing more than a metaphor, a symbol of the time to retreat and drift. Drift. Leave the exciting day behind you. Drift. Let the joy of dreamland find you. She had always been the one to give such sanctuary in the comforting shroud of nocturnal serenity, the one to provide it to all of Equestria as she had done for centuries before.

But...to provide it to all of Equestria...it was different. This was...

...Clinging...

Her mind wavered in the moment, as the very solace and comfort she weaved over the entire nation now focused upon a single soul. She nudged to the side, letting Devon slide onto a padded reading bench. He dipped into the cushions with a slight inward curl towards her, his foreleg still draped around her neck. The hoof pulled with a feeble, tense jolt, as if what few drops of energy remained trickling through his veins were trying to pull himself back up.

Or.

...Clinging upon me?

She reflexively pulled away, keeping a fixed gaze on his face. After a quick, short step, she raised her head slightly to look down at him; his eyelids didn’t flutter in the least, hardly any sign of life showed beyond the somber pulse of his jaw’s tepid quivering. His foreleg relieved, falling onto the library's wooden floor with a sharp thud that rocked the placid air around them, the softly throbbing noise of Canterlot's song of the end of the day diminished into the echoing wooden clatter...

Just breathe.

...Falling away to a featureless silence, save for the erratic, uncertain rattle of the unicorn’s breath clawing to the surface through a barrier of frigid shivers.

Breathe. Please.

A shuffled drag emanated beneath her; his forehoof lay draped on the floor as labored panting of desperate gasps cut through - a sound like muffled whispers of an audience awaiting the next song to commence. The hushed atrium awaited a nocturne to arise in place of the silence. A subtle clattering of molars ascended from a forced exhale, then fell away as his pained inhalation whimpered through her ears.

The darkness around them faded to a glowing maroon as Luna twirled the knob of a gas lamp above the bench, the flickering light just gentle enough for her to get a better look at the bruised unicorn without bringing too much attention to the library. Patrolling wings of Stormblade’s thugs may still roam out there. Any sign of activity from a civic structure that closed hours ago would be sure to raise their suspicions, or worse, raise their need to intrude upon her place for her to get away.

For...them to get away. To be able to get...their own reprieve. This was their place. Their harbor in the bureaucratic storm. They couldn’t take that away from them.

She searched beneath the bench searching for any form of cushion, sheet or quilt to wrap the hypothermic unicorn in, any sort of insulation to help keep his warmth sheltered inside and keep the interloping frost outside embed deeper into him. She peered down the aisles, searching for any sign of a closet or storage space, even some window drapes would suffice. But she was soon racked with an ominous revelation that she might have just dragged the poor liaison to the stars into a worse situation. She stepped beyond the initial archway leading back to the atrium when a tiny shrill echo delicately carried through to the tip of her ear.

She couldn’t step far away from him. A part of him, somewhere deep inside, knew where he was, knew who brought him there and knew...

Please cry not. I’m near.

...She couldn’t stray far.

How many nights she had fulfilled her obligations in the past, Luna did not know. Even with the gaping one-thousand year gap in her memory, there were still too many nocturnes to count. But never once had the very existence of the night sky felt so irrelevant. Never once had duty felt as tangible as this. Never once had the entirety of Equestria's necessity to find asylum within her soothing night song been secondary to...

I implore thee...

The beaten, frigid unicorn shivered before her and let out a hacking cough that rattled his entire frame.

Breathe!

Luna leaned in close again and swiveled an ear to his nostrils, hoping to hear any sign of sentience beyond the struggling heaves and involuntary hiccups that racked his form. His body writhed as the coughs took on a startling violence. He was doing better just seconds ago! When did he make such a sudden downturn for the worse? What caused him to plummet so suddenly back into pained coughing?

She placed a hoof upon his neck, feeling down his back with a curved fetlock. The pocked ridges of missing hair, tufts of vacant coat exposing skin, made her clench her eyes shut sympathetically.

What hath they done to thee?

She attempted a soft touch to his bruised shoulder. Through grit teeth, Devon seethed, forcing a shrill whine that quietly cracked through shaking lips. The patch of damaged skin whipped away on impulse, his foreleg attempting to reach for the injury before losing its energy and surrendering, again dropping flat against the wooden floor.

What hath they done!?

His jaw slunk to the side, hanging off the bench's cushion. Around a reddened ring subtly hiding against the skin of his neck, a silver quill pendant tumbled out. The burden of her years weighed heavily upon Luna, an immortal expanse of time that spanned as a featureless aether of cognition within her memories. But as the silver quill dangled, delicately reflecting the specular crosses of the lamp's light above him against its gilded contours, a flood of recollected instances associated alongside it fired within her weathered retrospection of time.

What hath...

The unicorn’s state bore testament to his sticking by the quest for her freedom. Luna’s cheeks tensed, the warm tingling of emotion graced under her eyes. Devon put himself through all of this for her.

...I done to thee?

Before her mind would let the gnawing pang emanate any further to her exterior, Luna slowly nuzzled her cheek against his. The strenuous pulls for air diminished as she nudged closer, his lungs willing to put their own turmoil aside while she stood so close to him. A high pitched hiccup convulsed deep within his throat.

Breathe.

The sputtering coughs subsided further. She listened in, hopeful.

Yes. Breathe.

His jaw relaxed as his chest dipped downward, long, easy breaths creeping out through loosely parted lips as his body weakly supped from Luna’s warmth.

Dark specks descended down the window's light against the floor. Luna turned, seeing that a gentle snowfall lapped against the library's exterior, collecting in matted tufts of white at the base of each glass pane. A gust of stirring wind buffeted against the window with a frigid tone, the chilling sound complemented by a shuddered huff as Devon curled up again in a shiver. His foreleg swayed outward, attempting to reach to the air, but not making a few inches before collapsing under its own weight.

Luna watched the dark unicorn in hushed trepidation, his beaten and barely responsive body convulsing to another fit of trembling quivers. She took his suspended foreleg, wrapping her hoof against his. His fetlock tightened, attempting vainly to wrap around hers before slipping away. Devon's breathing tensed as a pained jolt of energy lurched into the hoof, like every fiber of his soul attempted to hold it in place. Quickly, Luna caught the foreleg with her two front hooves, and lifted it to her cheek.

With the gentlest touch from her muzzle, the hoof immediately pulled upward, then descended with a tender grace back against her cheek. Luna slowly tilted her head into it, pressing the hoof against her with both forelegs while the hoof arced back and forth slowly.

Easing her hold gradually, the hoof glided effortlessly down the length of her cheek, caressing the tip of her chin. Luna leaned into him, guiding the hoof slowly around her neck as she pressed her cheek next to his.

Breathe.

With stumbling strength, the hoof fastened once more around her, wrapping at the base around her cobalt mane flowing weightless behind her. Together, they breathed in deeply as she pressed her neck into his, wrapping her chin around the top of his shoulder, his weak foreleg pulling with greater force. Tenderly, she graced the tip of a hoof against his bruised shoulder, but eased suddenly upon hearing a pained groan hiss through his nostrils again.

However, the leg around her neck didn't protest. It pulled harder, without tensing or shaking. Despite the aching, it remained in place, gently caressing small circles over the spot on where the hoof rested. Though Luna eased her grip upon him, letting the pitched sighs recede under his laborious breaths and shivers, the hoof started to gently tug at her, pulling at her. A rustling against the bench cushions slid into the silence, a second hoof starting to come to life with a shrill whine of dragging brass; trying to reach through the cold air, trying to weakly hold itself up under its own weight and the weight of the metal contraption around his leg.

Trying to connect with its sibling hoof around her neck.

Descending on her front knees, she graced her cheek against his chest, swinging her head around to the other side of his neck. His other foreleg attempted another strained reach for the one pulling against her neck, neither strong enough to contact. With a wisp of her starry mane sparkling behind her, she shook her collar, adjusting her shoulders to the side to allow her own forehooves to grip his faltering hoof around the fetlock. Dipping low, her forehead rubbing against his, she hoisted the second hoof up, settling it gently beside the other.

Shifting her body parallel to the bench, she kneeled lower, pushing her weight in his direction to close the distance between her sternum and his shoulders. A rustle caressed a warm tremor down her neck as the two hooves draped over her discovered one another, attempting to contact in their weakened grips. She pressed in even closer, angling her neck to assist the fidgeting hooves, and finally, they crossed over her, both pulling against her with foalish frailty.

Luna closed her eyes, gently parting her lips with a smooth exhale, letting the hooves pull her towards him. She aligned her body alongside the bench, at first attempting to ascend to the cushions with her back to him, only to find herself unable to navigate the space behind her, her head having nowhere to fall.

She slid a foreleg alongside his ribs, contact with the bruises and ice-burned patches of skin causing him to tremble slightly in a high pitched groan of unconscious protest. His shivering form, still awash in copious numbness, clamored and whined as she slowly slid alongside him with her face nestled alongside his. But as the tips of her eyelashes graced along his forehead, the vocalized gripes of his injuries descended to irrelevant whimpers as the only conscious extensions of Devon pulled with increasing alertness against her neck, pleading for her to push forward against him.

Breathe.

His cheeks pulled up into a tense huff of seething breath rasping through clenched teeth, as his brow dropped heavily downward. The wrapping contact of Luna’s forelegs burned and wrenched against his bruises, yet every time her reflexes would demand she relinquish the slightest bit of pressure, timidly easing away, those hooves at the back of her neck would pull tighter. It’s okay, they seemed to beckon. You’re helping me.

Helping him.

The entire duty of bringing about the night was always steeped in the nuance of helping other ponies. They needed a time to recharge and tuck away until the next day came. It was always just...granted. She just assumed that she would be helping them, she just assumed that it was what they wanted even though she never got to see the fruits of her own labor in crafting those dazzling night skies for them.

Celestia...she’d be able to stand atop her tower, and see plainly the denizens of her kingdom basking in it, playing in it, singing upbeat songs and uniting in spontaneous cadences about making them smile and brightening up their days.

But they also needed their sleep. They needed night. They needed her. But when she’d give them the night they so desperately long for after a strenuous day of work and taking care of their families, they hide from it. They set up bastions of lights and torches to fend off the darkness, to burn away her moonlight with the accursed glow of their own luminance. How could she even know if her nights were appreciated if the only indicator she got from the whole of Canterlot came in the form of their countless inventions to repel it? It was, after all, this kind of thinking...this line of reasoning that caused her to...made her...

Breathe.

...No. She was better than that. Reaching up, she dimmed the gas lamp hanging over the bench, only letting the slightest subtle ember of light emanate into the room. She rest her thigh against the cushion, and then hoisted her legs up..

Of course. She was better than what she was then. She had to be. The Elements of Harmony had transformed her back into her current self, removing all the dark nefarious energies of the stars from her! She no longer had desires to have the superior night! No longer did she demand tribute of such! If appreciation had to be assumed, then so be it. Let them have their night, she’ll protect them, she’ll shelter them, she doesn’t need their appreciation! She...suddenly felt another tug against her neck, the hooves slowly gracing along her shoulders and back to her neck.

It had never felt this personal to her before. It had never been so...tangible.

This is what she did for everypony. This is how they revered her. Beaten. Tired. Unconscious. Yet in silence, tremendously grateful. Unable to see her dazzling facade, incapable of reaching up and embracing her sky, only able to mutter the inaudible mumbles of sleepy droning, they held her like this. They always held her like this. A restrained tranquility that, in its shunned exterior housed the very essence of what truly shelters them.

* * * * *

“C’mawn!” Gina barked, digging her hooves to top speed through Canterlot’s alleyways. “That creep’s got one heck of a good head start and we gotta help Dev’s!” Despite the bitter cold, the orange mare felt nothing but heat, created by the frustration from being brought up short by Stormblade, and even more than that, the shame at her hesitation to help Devon. HItting a corner too fast, Gina skidded flank-first into the side of a building but only slowing long enough to adjust her course. “This’d go a whole lot faster if ya flew, ya know?”

“I know ma’am, but I can’t leave an injur-” Jetstream allowed the rattle of trash cans to pipe into the conversation as the unicorn battered through them rather than go around. “I’m not going to just leave out out and alone. You’re hurt and if Stormblade catches one of us alone, we’d be no match for him.”

All Gina could do was let out a snorting huff of air. As much as she hated to admit it, the straight-laced guard was right. If she wasn’t injured, if she had her magic, if she had a giant statue of a demigod of Chaos to use as a club, Stormblade would be nothing more than a trifle. But she had none of those things, and while she considered using the armored pegasus as a stand in cudgel, she figured it would make the explanation to Celestia more difficult in the end. Besides, she’d need some way to lift him and it was daunting, but not impossible without magic. All rather academic points, all things considered. Rounding another corner, they found a straight line to the Palace, lined with flickering streetlights and caked in winter frost and covered in a sheen of ice.

“Aw jeez…” Gina huffed, her lungs begging for a moment to catch up. “When…” pant, pant, “when did Canterlot get so big?!” Her tone was utterly incredulous, shocked that nopony consulted her on such a thoughtless oversight. Moments later, the cyan pegasus stumbled to a halt next to her, fit body still able to press on, though duty keeping him lockstep with his slower companion.

“Ma’am,” Jetstream breathed. “Take your time, we can slow down and get to the Palace just fine, there’s no reason to overexert yourself. Not with that broken hor-ERF!” Gina reacted to the sensible caution and levelheaded care for her well-being with a sharp hoof into his chest plate.

“Noooope! We’re not slowin’ down for anythin’, y’hear me?!” she bleated, her voice morphing between gasping for breath, growling threats and manic giggling. Shoving off again, Gina set off on a forced sprint towards the palace, but could only manage a few steps before being forced into a stop by her overtaxed body. “Look, you know what to do, just get to the Princess, we gotta help both of ‘em out.” The ice sent Gina’s legs into a spin until the exhausted mare came to a halt against a low wall, throwing an impatient look at the pegasus. “Only takes one of us to tell Celestia,” she snapped at the pegasus. “Just go!”

Jetstream hesitated. On the one hoof, she was absolutely correct. Every second they wasted or slowed, Stormblade got further away and the chances of stopping him grew dimmer. But on the other hoof, abandoning his sudden ally placed both of them in greater danger should the Second Captain come back for them, and that was to say nothing of leaving an injured mare in the middle of a freezing winter night. On the third hoof, Princess Luna had ordered him to make sure they got to the Palace. On the fourth, they had to get to the Palace together…

“Hello?!” Gina barged into Jetstream’s chain of thought with all of the delicate grace of a train crash. “You’re staring at me like I got three heads! Get goin’ or I’ll give ya a real good reason to run!” Before the Private could respond, the mare stepped in to assist his decision-making by driving her forelegs into his flank with a powerful shove. Icy streets provided little resistance to slow him down, made worse by four flailing hooves.

“Woooaaahh!” Jetstream stammered, tilting nearly over on one side before his hoof found some kind of grip only to lose it again and tilt him wildly the other way. As he spotted the less than welcoming embrace of a decorative pegasus statue fast approach, the pegasus flared his wings and with a single powerful burst of movement, lifted off the ground, immediately stable now that he relied on the air rather than the ground. “Now what in Celestia’s mane was that all about?” he sputtered, turning to the unicorn with offended incredulity. “If we get going like this, we’ll never get anywhere!”

Gina stood silent, eyes widening.

“Look, ma’am, you’re hurt and we’re both really stressed out, but if we don’t work together, we’re sunk!” His lecture picked up steam as he drifted back down to the icy ground in front of her.

A smile soon joined the widening eyes.

“Now whose turn is it to get their head out of the clouds? Hello?!”

The smile turned into something frightening as inspiration combined with a crazed mind.

“Ma’am…?” Jetstream’s indignation at the shove quickly found itself shoved out by a primordial nervousness, an instinctual knowledge that some idea was brewing behind those eyes, and he was part of it.

Finally, the laughter, more chilling than anything the Canterlot winter had to offer, rippled from the mare and she approached. “I just had a brilliant idea,” she said between heady guffaws. “Gonna solve both of our problems with one little thing. Hyeh heh...c’mere, this’ll work, I promise!” Before Jetstreak could speak or rise out of her reach, Gina lashed out with another foreleg, seizing the Private by the shoulder and twirling him in a clumsy pirouette.

“Hey, what are you do-ow!” Jetstream’s protest was cut short by a sharp tug on his tail as his back turned to Gina.

“Now all you have ta do is fly!”

“But ma’am, I told you I can’t just le-EEAOOW!” Looking behind, the cyan pegasus saw his tail firmly in the grip of the orange unicorn’s teeth. After a few more chomps to get the best grip, Gina locked her eyes with him and smiled around it. “You can’t be serious…” he muttered.

“Mrmprhm.”

“This would never wor-OW!” A firm squeeze of equine teeth made up the majority of Gina’s counterpoint. “Will you sto-EEP!” Chomp. “Okay! Okay!” Jetstream braced for another punishing bite, but instead saw a blissful smile and heard a contented squeal around his tail. Beating his wings, the guard pulled his hooves off the ground, ascending slowly until his tail pulled taut. “Hang on, but…” he hesitated, searching for words, “but not too tight, alright?”

“Mrrmphm!”

“Okay, okay! We’re going...that’s what you want, right?” With another beating pulse of wings, the pegasus guard flew low, slow at first until the nearly frictionless ice surrendered its grip on the unicorn’s hooves, gaining speed.

“Mrrrruuhhmmm!”

* * * * *

Luna inhaled in a broken pull for breath, her nostrils quivering unexpectedly as she pulled her forehead against his, rubbing muzzle to muzzle. She slid a foreleg beneath Devon’s neck, lifting his head above hers, settling it against her cheek as she craned her neck under his. Another groan ascended from the unicorn’s throat, though much lower than before, more...settled. A jumbled lull of just a couple words seeped out, before another wafting ripple of shivers gripped him.

On impulse, an instinctual pulse of magic surged up Luna’s horn. She gripped him tightly, interlocking her own forehooves together and pulling him closely, clinging to him. Breathing deep, she pulled her head beside the dark face, then nestling steadily against his forehead, she pressed her horn against his, magical heat flowing slowly into him. Devon gasped suddenly for air, his chest rising into her’s, the hooves behind her neck clenching tightly.

Breathe.

He exhaled a few seconds later, his body’s chilled shivering dissipated as his torso settled once more plunged into the cushioned bench. The dark forelegs adjusted again over her shoulders, locking together, and again pulled her close. She exhaled as well, seeing her sudden wave of magic had done whatever it had intended to do...though something she didn’t intend for it to do.

Her own mind, she felt, was regressing. Regressing to a primordial state, free of the very tenets of society, of reputation and obligation. The unfamiliar sensation creeped deep within her, a coalescence of relief and bliss that held steadfast. The immortal expanse of time that trailed through her mind in a featureless amalgam of incomprehensible noise could never be able to pinpoint the last time she, like an infant, just let a natural wave of spontaneous magic course through her like that.

A gentle sensation nudged against her haunch. She felt a soft, weak kick pressing knee-first into her. She rolled subtly to the side to let the curling leg pull into him, to let his cold, softly shivering body attempt to warm itself up in a tightly coiled position. Instead, the leg reached out, grasping out towards her own, his thigh settling against her knee. His shoulders jerked weakly in a debilitated twist, hardly clearing enough distance to barely make his frazzled coat rustle against the cushion. She felt another tug against her neck, but was unable to pull herself any closer while his legs were between them. Again, he softly shivered.

She extended a wing across him, draping it over his back like a blanket. The navy feathers formed an enveloping jacket over him, but now more exposed to his own chilled exterior, Luna choked down her shocked gasp of breath as she pulled more of his form closely against her.

A thought sprang to mind, and with another press of her forehead against his, she attempted once more the spontaneous warming spell that comforted and soothed him last time. She clenched her eyelids shut tightly, focussing on her horn, attempting to pull into the furthest recesses of memory, but no clamor of thought could permeate from the immortal expanse of time. That featureless aether. Not even a memory of sporadic bursts of spontaneous magic, not even a memory of the years when such would even occur breached the surface. So what did it mean, then...when she did it just minutes ago?

What hast...thou done to me?

Another agitated huff of cold air struck against her, the reverberating cough of weak breath sputtered out. Devon groaned again, his leg dropping limp to his side. A desperate cling from the two hooves around her neck pressed for a few final precious seconds, before they started to unhook and descend gently down her shoulders, caressing them before a quivering jolt of energy within caught them. The muscles strained, pulled and attempted as Luna ducked down on the couch to give them less space to traverse, a better chance to fight back, to hang on.

Breathe.

She raised her forehooves, dipping her head into his chest, and guided them back over her neck, back to their resting place. She pulled her draped wing tighter, his softly heaving torso closing the distance against hers.

Breathe!

Her mind empty of thought, vacant of premonitions, her synapses fired purely on the necessity for action, dictating quickness and desperate necessity. Don’t think. Just do what needs to be done. Do what comes naturally, and don’t bother contemplating just what it means or the details, simply let it happen. If bringing the night’s to all of Equestria, for all ponies to shelter and comfort themselves in after every day came so naturally to her, then so should an embrace for a single-

-A cobalt pulse flickered through the room, gracing the tips of all the millions of pages that surrounded her, dancing gracefully between the shelves up towards the ceiling. Her horn lit again, and before she could piece together why her shoulders were tensing so vigorously to pull herself forehead to forehead, the cracked panting of Devon’s sharp inhalation coursed through her ears. His body again ascended against hers, and the two sibling hooves wove through each other to clasp against her.

How much like the night itself. In thinking about it, pondering every facet that went into it, the night would chill and bring darkness. But the night...it wasn’t her skill. It wasn’t her discipline. Night was Luna’s gift. It was what she was intended to do. Something as natural to her as...

...Breathing.

His whole body rested back against the cushions, Luna drifting down with him. With his head tilting upward, drooping to the side, she slid her own muzzle up against his forehead, and with relaxed cautious breaths exhaled gingerly into the bangs of his mane. With each wafting of air drifting forth, the bangs flecked up in a timid arc, gracing the base of her horn. Cobalt wings tightened, taking a solid hold upon his back, allowing herself to lift him just enough with her lower foreleg to snake the second wing under him. The wings joined in a braid of interlocking feathers, regimented in stalwart poise pressed flat against him, and pulled.

Another jolt of chilling contact fired through her body, his matted underside biting against her. A subtle whine gently escaped between her lips as she seethed in reaction, but with a light shake of her head discounting the conventional wisdom of her frigid nerves’ protests, her wings stirred with the additional pressure of their muscles tensing even tighter.

Her chest constricted as an uneasy exhalation arose from her, Luna’s clenched teeth surrendering to a clattering rattle with the ripple of involuntary shivers that ricocheted down her ribs. Don’t think. Just do what you must. Just do what comes naturally. Shelter. Comfort. With a foreleg, Luna slung his head upward, reaching the foreleg behind him to press his neck against hers again, but with an errant rogue shiver that crept up her haunches, she gasped out in a loud whimper, the gently swaying strands of his dark blue mane gracing tenderly against her hooves as it dropped at a precarious angle over the edge of the bench, threatening to smash with the limp force of raw gravity propelling it downward. She lurched back, hoping to realign her hooves to catch him as his head fell, yet was subdued when a sinister puff of stray wind beneath his dropping muzzle summoned a convulsion of quivering shoulder muscles that impeded her, forcing her to clench her eyes shut, pulling her hooves away.

The shivers immediately receded. Luna’s sternum rose, pulling her lying body up with it in a net of slowly capsized gravity. Feeling the leathery press of a muzzle against her’s, the slowly waving caress of a thin veil of hair gracing the base of her horn, she opened her clenched eyes. A gray aura permeated around Devon’s horn, the side of it firmly held against Luna’s, a magical flutter of sparkling energy spun around and into hers. A gentle wave of warmth reverberated through her veins.

Then, as borderline comatose as he was before, Devon’s magic fizzled out, leaving him to slink back onto the bench with the whispering embers of gray magic gently gliding him back to the cushion. A soft smile formed on his face, his closed eyes fluttered subtly as his cheeks relaxed with the telltale signs of life reemerging.

Devon...

She pulled him close to her, laying side by side on the bench.

...Thou knoweth not...

She lay there, letting him slowly meld against her, his gradually warming body slightly augmenting in activity with every breath that fell from him in growing ease.

...What thou hast done to me.

A relieving sensation of tranquility crept down her in an imagined blanket of calm serenity, the gentle buffeting of the wispy breeze outside singing behind her. Her head descended against the cushion, her own forelegs and wings easing their grip as gravity itself pulled her over his shoulders, and with a lethargic exhale, draped over him in a final yawn before letting time coast between them.

Between the solace and comfort they had interwoven unto each other.

Her eyes wandered between the eclipsing darkness behind her eyelids and the towering bookcases looming above her. The cobalt dance of her mane’s aura emanated somberly through the gaps and alcoves between books, shelves, and rafters. Time descended away into its usual obscure irrelevance, now the dim corner of the library fading into dissipated tendrils of a featureless aether of cogniscience. As the world transitioned away, only the gently sleeping form of a beaten, bruised unicorn remained, his ruffled coat rhythmically falling and rising with each breath that passed through him.

Closing her eyes, Princess Luna allowed her magic to extend outward like she had done every night since her return. Despite the gravity of the power, the action was reflex to her, extending her consciousness into the ether, reaching out to her sleeping subjects. But unlike her usual nightly routine, this time it was focused. Instead of a wide tapestry of dreams stretching as far as the moonlight reached, Luna beheld Devon’s sleeping mind, one single thread in the whole expanse.

* * * * *

Angling her hooves, Gina skidded past a park bench, grazing her side fur as the pegasus towing her simply went over it. The only thing more incredible than the speed she could get up to was how silent it was, with only the erratic scrape of hooves on ice, and the occasional gust of wind passing her ears when they made a hard turn. Everything else was a bizarre, wintry calm. A mouthful of tail prevented the giddy, filly-like laughter that she ached to indulge in, but there would be time for that later.

Above and ahead, Jetstream was having less fun. A constant weight tugging him from behind meant he had to fly dangerously low, bobbing and weaving around obstacles that would much easier be flown over. Every turn, too, carried the extra load of a full grown mare swinging behind him like an out of control anchor. However, even he had to admit the speed was far better than if they had run, and her carriage much easier than he anticipated. With the ice providing almost no resistance, once the pegasus got up to speed, the mare’s drag grew less and less, flying on the wings of momentum.

“Almost there now!” The guard called. Peering from beneath his frame, Gina beheld the Canterlot Palace rising ahead of them, lit up brightly for the Hearth’s Warming Gala. Even at such a dizzying and precarious speed, the mare could not help but wonder at the majesty before her, and marvel at the bizarre choice of music that burst from it in painful throbs of blended bass and shrieks of mortified children. Another whirling bend and the orange unicorn beheld the final path to the Palace gate.

While his passenger admired the view, Jetstream narrowed his eyes, scanning for any more obstacles or obstructions. Luckily, he spotted no partygoers or citizens, everypony driven indoors by the cold of the night, so at least the Private only had to worry about damage to himself and the mare behind him. Even in times of crisis, he prided himself on slowing things down mentally, judging each possible step and obstacle. As long as he kept his wits and focus, nothing could keep him stuck for long. As he took small comfort in the thought, the mare stretched forward, flailing a foreleg up at the pegasus until she managed to swat his leg, drawing his attention.

“What is it? We’re almost there.” Jetstream’s mind turned to what he was going to do once they made it inside. Getting Celestia’s attention in the middle of this whole party without causing another raucous scene like before would be difficult, especially given the frantic speed at which they’d be hunting her down.

No. Got to keep calm and get her attention, then we’ll just explain-

The batting continued again, frantically.

“I told you! We’re close! Just calm down or I’m going to crash!”

But what if Stormblade’s here first? Well, I do have a witness and-

Bat! Bat! Bat! Bat!

“WHAT?!”

Across the open space, one of the two Privates stretched, bemoaning the uncomfortable pressure that dented armor put on his torso with every move. He stretched one way, then another before resigning to the discomfort and turning to his companion. What chafed more than the battered uniform was just how it got this way. Even if he racked his brain, all he could recall was an alley, something orange and then waking up in a pile of garbage.

“So what do ya’s think got under Stormblade’s skin?” A sharp question from the second stirred the first from his attempt to piece it all together.

“How the heck should I know? Probably somethin’ to do with how we wound up all beat up and knocked out in the alley.”

Throwing a withering glare at his companion, the Private turned his attention back to the empty approach to the Palace with a glum sigh. Sure, he was on the fast track with Stormblade’s personal support, but what started as a special night time curfew patrol turned into an increasing disaster the moment that orange mare turned up, letting the one unicorn they caught slip away.

“But at least Stormblade wasn’t mad!” His fellow Private chirped. Turning, he looked in at the gala through one of the palace windows. “I’da thought that he’d be blowin’ up on us after that whole screw up. All he did was tell us t’keep anypony outta the palace. Said it was real important, too!” Pausing to blow steaming air into the night sky, the guard leaned back against the door, eyes more on the gala than his post. “An’ with nopony even here, it’s a total cakewalk! Y’don’t think this is some kind of punishment, do ya?” When no reply came, he repeated, “do ya?!”

All he got in return was a single bat on his shoulder.

“Oh what? Silent treatment no-will you STOP hitting me? What is…” The first private’s head turned until he looked down the lane leading from Canterlot Palace. Before him, he saw another pegasus guard flying low, directly towards the pair, not terribly unusual. However, what did catch his eye was the orange figure flailing wildly at the cyan pegasus’ flank. Something about that figure seemed familiar, like he had just seen it somehow, but he only could guess at where.

“Oh…” Jetstream muttered, eyes growing with the realization of imminent collision about a second beyond his ability to do much of anything about it. “...that…” Bracing his body, the aerial pony flared his wings and threw everything into a backwards push. “Hold on!”

“MMMMHP!” Gina squealed, tail still clamped over Jetstream’s teeth, her foreleg sore with how many warning swats she laid out on his rear and leg. Normally, Jetstream’s maneuver would bring him to a sudden, but controlled landing. Normally, it would be a simple matter for even an amateur flyer to stop on a dime. However, no flight camp schools taught how to stop while towing a flailing unicorn over ice. Instead of a skidding four-hoof landing, Jetstream flipped head over haunches, his back half carried forward by Gina’s vice-like grip and out of control momentum. As the pegasus flipped over, the unicorn mare’s head snapped backwards, wrenching her teeth until a heavy tuft of tail hair come loose into Gina’s mouth and she snapped away.

“Hey now Stormblade said t’stop anypon-” the first guard managed to say before the icy orange missile slammed into his chest. The impact carried him down onto the mare, but only slowed her slightly, certainly not enough for the second guard to scramble away on icy cobblestones, who managed to let out a single yelp before being caught up in the mass and carried into the palace door. Where armored pony could not stop a sliding Gina, thick timbers could, and the entire knot of guards and mare slammed into it with a sudden, shuddering halt.

“Ooof…” Jetstream groaned, pausing long enough for the world to stop spinning. As his eyes recovered and he found a steady patch of ground to stand on, he looked over at the tangled heap of pony that now sprawled all over the entryway to the palace. For a single, terrifying moment, he saw no movement at all from either the two guards or the mare. “Ma’am?” he finally called, scraping towards the door, “ma’am are you alright?”

“Urrrghh…” one of the ponies in the pile responded, but in such a guttural tone that Jetstream could not place it as belonging to any specific individual.

“Ma’am?” The Private drew closer, extending a trepidatious hoof towards the orange fur in the pony pile. Moments before he made contact, the orange shape sat bolt upright, hacking and coughing.

“Gyaaack!” Gina heaved once, sputtering and spitting as she wrenched herself out of the tangle of armor and legs. “AgghhhGACK!” Another series of coughs before rippled through her body until she finally straightened her body and rose to her hooves.

“Is everything alright?!” Jetstream pressed, looking Gina over as she shook dust and frost from her coat. “Are you hurt?”

“Is everything alright?” she asked, laughing darkly. “Is everything alright?” Turning, the orange unicorn squared up in front of the pegasus. “You just...curled me at two guards while going at full speed! What do you think I am, some kind of...pony...curling...rock thing?!”

“And with your injury no less, I’m terribly sorry ma’am bu-”

“Everything is GREAT!” Gina cackled wildly. “Well, except for the mouthful of your tail hair, but yes that was completely awesome!” Another spit to emphasize her point. “We’re so doing this again! Now c’mawn!” And, with a flourishing wave of her mane, Gina strode past the door and into the gala, Jetstream following after a small, bewildered silence.

“Well...uh...alright.”

* * * * *

As her magic reached out, Luna found herself falling into Devon’s dreams. A sympathetic wince writhed out of her as the signs of struggle and injury carried over into the subconscious, bruises and strains became a feeling in the air, fresh lances of pain occasionally blazing red as the charcoal unicorn shifted onto a sore spot or rolled his head in such a way to aggravate his neck. Delving deeper, images and shapes began to emerge, the deep-seated memories dominating Devon’s thoughts and the immediate thoughts, arranged in disorder.

Devon was not actively dreaming, yet Luna knew that he was here. Strangely, despite guiding ponies through their dreams for centuries, the Princess vastly prefered observation and subtlety to announcing herself. But she knew he needed to hear her voice.

“Devon!”

Calling out created an instant effect. All around her, thoughts shifted and moved, images and symbols replaced and recombined until something more coherent formed and the landscape shifted. In a flash, Luna stood in the statue garden at the end of the battle, the tower frozen mid-collapse in the background. In the grass sat a charcoal unicorn, staring up at a moon that newly bore her visage.

“Luna?!” Devon blurted, his attention going first to her, then to the wider area. “Wait...aren’t we in the archive? What happened to that officer?” The barrage of questions ended when the Princess touched a hoof to the top of his head to silence him.

“Do not fear, thou art safe and well, but we are in thy dreams, muddled as they are from your injuries, Devon.”

“Then does that mean...” the charcoal unicorn mused, looking around a few times before returning his gaze. “Well, that means you are okay, right? No more loose ends or something that I forgot? I’m so sorry that I-”

The hoof touched his head again, stopping him before his apologies gained momentum.

“Aye, aye, I’m fine, thanks to thee. In truth, I am more concerned for thee.” Luna trembled at the memory of one of her sworn protectors rashly attacking Devon in his misguided pursuit of power and control. While she was no stranger to injuries on her citizens, to see it directly because Devon refused to give her up struck home. Like her nocturne, this was more personal than anything. And even injured and half-frozen to death, his first concern was for her.

“Well, as long as you’re alright, it was worth it. When you took off from the gala, I thought something else was wrong. And since it was probably my fault I wanted to see what it was.”

“Nay, t’was not thee...” Luna sighed and shivered. “Truthfully, I was terribly frightened, Devon, I had been to the moon before, and when I was thrust back, it was a nightmare returned in full strength. I fled for solitude because my mind was addled, panicking.” Seeing Devon’s confused expression, the Princess added. “The last time I returned, I was not quite myself, but this time, I experienced it fully. To worsen matters, that same guard who attacked thee, Stormblade, he loomed over me even as the others tried to aid me!”

Quiet descended on the scene. However, Devon’s roiling mind caused the dreamscape to whip around them, thoughts materializing into real things that matched his subconscious. Generally, dreams were a single construct, but Devon’s mind felt disjointed, struggling through the phantom aches of his bruises and the myriad of questions that still swirled around his mind. “I’m not sure what to say...” the charcoal bookkeeper admitted. “I’m just really happy that you are back but...”

“But what?”

“Well, I was kind of the reason you were gone in the first plac-mmpf.”

The hoof this time pressed firmly on his snout and mouth.

“Do not be daft!” Luna commanded, eyes narrowed in regal command. “For one, it was thee who saved me from the contract. For two, it was thee who found the means to bringeth me back. Thou had no way to know that breaking my contract would do such a thing to me.”

“Mmhphmphm...”

“And besides, I saw thy dreams when you finally slept after the battle. I saw how much thou suffered to set things right.”

Luna lowered her hoof. “And thou hast earned my gratitude. But only if thou whilst cease thy needless guilt, agreed?”

“Are you su-”

“Certain.”

Devon nodded. “Well, I can’t really argue against that, can I?” Turning his attention, to the writhing worldscape molding itself to his subconscious thoughts, a question rose from the back of his mind. “Um, you said you saw my dreams, right?” Sure, everypony dreamed, and everypony occasionally felt in control of a dream, but he had never stood within a dream knowing it was a dream.

“Aye, I did.”

“How much...er...how much did you look at? Did you...er…?” The unicorn felt his ears flushing, his mind making an idle mental note that apparently he could blush in dreams. Looking up to Princess Luna, he saw a reassuring smile.

“I only came in to thy dreams to do what I could to help thee rest. I would dare not pry, everypony has the right to keep their dreams as close as they wish. Why?” A sly smile appeared on her lips at his obvious sheepish discomfort.

“Oh come on, Princess,” Devon groused. “After all of this, what do you think I am worried about?”

“Devon...” Luna hesitated with her words. She knew it carried a lot of risk, not for herself but to ask for such personal things from the unicorn. And it certainly broke every other normal rule for getting to know another pony. “Dost thou...erm...may I see more of thy dreams?”

“Huh,” Devon blinked, tilting his head. “Well...I’m not sure, I mean even if I was sure,” he muttered, “how would I do it? I can’t exactly pick a dream, can I?” He laughed slightly, trying to deflect her attention from his awkward, yet understandable trepidation. For a moment, Devon realized just how strange life could be, presented with the chance to exactly show his dreams to the only mare that mattered, and he was balking!

“When I am here,” Luna added. “All thou would need is to touch my hoof and thy dream will change. But I understand if thou art unwilling. Dreams are something very close to a pony’s heart, I would not seek for you to bare something that thou art uncomfortable sharing.” Between them, both knew that her curiosity was more than just idle or wanting to know him better, she had seen plenty of his personality through the hazy mists and shifting forms of his dreams. Luna had a greater stake.

Devon hesitated. He knew if he showed more, he would have to show the dreams he carried for a mare like Luna. Embarrassment and a bit of guilty shame began creeping into his mind, immediately reflected in the candor and tone of the dream images all around him. Peaceful rest was replaced by cloying guilt and Luna reached out, placing a hoof on his shoulder.

“Thou needest not worry, thou hast earned a reprieve and I will not think less of thee for thy dreams, Devon.” She smiled encouragingly. “Thou hast nothing to fear from me.”

He looked up at her, following the cobalt leg up to her face a turquoise eyes and found courage. He faced the stars, he can handle this. Devon nodded. “Alright, but please try not to laugh,” echoed through the dream as he lifted a hoof and pressed it against Luna’s, swallowing the dream in rushing movement as he delved into the heart of his dreams. It was a place that is familiar, yet private, his deepest aspirations that normally ever came out to himself, now being released to reshape the reality of his dream.

As the scene swirled, Luna tried to predict what might come. She was no stranger to the dreams of admirers, and while she never begrudged their dreams, they always unsettled her. Not for another pony to love her so deeply, but in that their affection always saw her cast into a role. So many times she had been made into one of a galaxy of things, a lonely dreamer, a fiery revolutionary, an aloof goddess, a carefree firebrand and any other of a thousand idealized versions of herself that a subject or suitor would make of her. Always fulfilling their whims and wishes, and rarely were hers considered.

While she had the wisdom to not take such things to heart, Luna could never shake the feeling of being pushed into a role by all of these dreams. Everypony had a place for her, had a role for her to fit. It was their dreams, but they always lacked the space for her own.

Braced, Luna closed her eyes when the swirling dreamscape came to a stop. As she opened them, the Princess expected one of these fates laid out before her, but what she saw was completely different.

Before her sat dream constructions of Devon and Luna, but there was no setting, save for a single path, barely visible in an endless expanse, like a vast valley. While it lacked clear structure, what Luna sensed was untapped potential, an inescapable feeling of optimism and movement. Beyond any of the valley’s hills or horizons lay good things, but none were defined with clarity. “I...” Luna hesitated. “I don’t understand, is this thy dream, Devon?”

“It is, Luna,” he replied in a tone of slightly sheepish confession. “Now you said you wouldn’t laugh, I’m holding you to that.”

“But what does it mean?”

Before her, the dreamlike visions of Devon and Luna walked down a path that flowed in front of each of their steps. In the fluid ripples of the dream, the Princess could share in and taste the emotions and ideas behind it. It was nothing like the minds of those who have dreamt of her before. It was so simple, yet so confusing, but Luna chose not to speak, instead she allowed the charcoal unicorn to handle the explanations.

“It’s not really all that, Princess,” Devon shrugged. “All I really want is someone to walk with, I mean, on path of life and so on. Not just a road but-argh! You know what I mean, right?” His stumbled over his words, finding it difficult to discuss metaphors when they stood in front of him. “I don’t want to make you into anything, I just want you to be you, Luna.”

“But thy dream has no destination? Tis but a road, is it not?” The Princess turned her gaze to the scene before her as it unwound. While it only vaguely represented a road visually, the movement of the two dream forms made the idea work. Colors and paths twisted ahead of them, the pair always moving forward, yet never dominating the path alone. Occasionally, an obstacle would rise in the path, and one dream construct would help another over or around it. Or the path would give one a divergence away from the other, but it always wound back into a single, shared line.

“The destination really isn’t important, well, at least not any more important than any part of the road.” Devon smiled sheepishly. “The dream for me is to just find that destination with you. You’re too good for me to just want to say that I want just one thing with you. Remember that room with all the books?” On the corners of the scene, memories of the magical trips into literature fluttered to life. “All it was were the big moments, the climaxes, but I want more than just those single moments.” Devon sighed frankly. “I want to make memories, not just take something from a book that I saw and put you in it.” The dreamscape shifted, the road twisting into rolling hills. Occasionally, one of the two walkers would lead, but they never strayed far, even as the setting itself was nothing remarkable. “You’re better than just…moments, Luna.”

All Devon received in reply was silence. Internally, he winced at the sheer lameness of his dreams for Luna. Yet, simultaneously, he was proud of himself for laying it out before her. If nothing else, he had nothing held back anymore, he had no more regrets. Just as he finally let the built-up tension with his mother go, so too did he give his affections voice. Just as he found the courage for his willpower to stand against fate itself, so too did he find the strength to give his dreams a voice. There was nothing left for him to do but accept the consequences, and even if she rejected him, Devon felt at peace with it. He tried, which was more than many ponies ever did, even when it wasn’t about a Princess.

“I...” Luna chose her words carefully. “I’m not certain what I should tell thee...”

And here comes the royal rejection. Please be gentle.

“I would have expected thy dreams to have thee being more successful. Didn’t you hate thy job and station?”

“Well, I suppose I do,” the unicorn muttered. It was true, he had a lot of parts of his life that he wanted changed, or improved. But when compared to a pony like Luna, or indeed anypony who might steal another’s heart, all of that seemed like so much detritus. “But that isn’t what this dream is about. Little too much about me there.”

“But this is thy dream!” Luna responded with a broad smile and chortle. “Modest even here?” she pressed, her tone warming along with her expression. “Come, there has to be something here that is purely for thyself? I would not be offended, truly!”

Before Devon could answer, the dream image of Luna spoke, her voice directed to Devon’s dreamlike counterpart. The words were unclear, or at least the body of the message was too soft to be heard until the dream Luna kissed dream Devon’s ear and giggled. “Very well, from henceforth, I shall call thee angel!” The real Luna turned to a beet red real Devon. For a moment, she considered words, but the silence and her slowly raising eyebrow were just so much better.

“You promised not to laugh!”

“But...!”

“Promised!”

It took Luna whole minutes to fight back the outright laughter into something akin to a smile, though scrunched and strained. “I would...that’s...very unique, Devon.”

“Not quite what you want, I’m sure but,” the charcoal unicorn shrugged, rolling his shoulders and digging his hoof into the ground of the dream.

"Thou art...” Luna paused, collecting her thoughts. She looked into his fixated pupils, seeing that everything he said was marked with infallible genuity. Lies were not possible in dreams. “Mercy me mine words, Devon, thou hast feelings most sincerest and true!" Luna pulled her head back, a gently quivering jaw trying to suppress an emerging grin. "I...why I see, in thine eyes when thou speakest." A grin of what, though? Humor? Pity? Emerging dominant and acquiring the opportunity to take full advantage of him?

The dark unicorn sighed, his head lowering until it was level with the dream path. "Yes, m'lady." Devon turned his head away, pointing a single eye up to her, its pupil unable to resist widening into a proverbial testament of his words' genuineness. "I really do, I think you're the most wonderful mare in all of Equestria.”

"But..." Luna coughed slightly, clearing her throat and thoughts. A peculiar curiosity nibbled at the back of her mind. "I hath only been resident in this new Canterlot yonder a single solar cycle, hardly much more. How could'st thou?" A better question emerged upon her lips. "What did'st I do?"

Scrunching his face, Devon struggled for words. Even in a place where his innermost feelings and desires could manifest as crystal clear images, everything melted into a confused mess. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve never seen you before, I saw you when you came back to Canterlot, but I was just in the crowd and…” Again, he fell into muttering obstructions. How does one explain what makes one pony fall for another, to say nothing of something that makes a pony go to such lengths for one?

“I don’t really know, Princess.” He fessed. “Maybe it’s something in how you do everything, maybe it’s something in how you talk. All I know is that I want more of it in my life and that I’d do anything to get it.” A long pause. “Well...almost anything. I mean, outside of dealing with stars and all.”

“Of course,” Luna smiled, placing her hoof on the unicorn’s shoulder. “And I know thou must possess great willpower to resist such temptations. T’was thy heart’s desire and thou turneth it away, all for my sake.”

“And to do it the right way, Luna,” Devon added, one of his forelegs moving up and grasping Luna’s. “I’m not going to take any shortcuts, you aren’t just a prize, Luna. You’re...” The unicorn’s voice fell off again, “I don’t even know how to put i-mmph.”

Luna smiled down the length of her leg and hoof after silencing him. “Then do not try. Mayhap it is for the best that thou hast not thought of it so much. I can wait for thee.” Before he could answer, the colors around the two ponies shifted and twisted again, growing hazy and distant. Instantly, Luna recognized what was going on. “You are waking,” the Princess of the Night explained calmly, feeling her essence siphoning away from the dream. Normally, this would be the time where her final advice came out, a last minute pep talk to get one of her subjects over the problems haunting them, or to face their fears. A last bit of encouragement from the Princess before facing their trials alone. A final goodbye to those on their own quests and journies.

“I’ll see thee soon.”

* * * * *

Surrounded in a crush of dancing ponies, Gina wriggled one way, then another, every forward step deflected two or three to the left. “Grrrff…we had to pick the front door, didn’t we?” Beside her, Jetstream was faced by a similar bog of bodies, his armor and uniform doing little to dislodge clumps of dancing ponies or to push through knots of conversation.

Scanning the crowd, Jetstream tried to spot the telltale alabaster wings of Princess Celestia or, failing that, the tight clutch of ponies seeking her attention, normally the fastest way to find her in a situation like this. “Excuse me sir...ma’am...sir…” the cyan pegasus did his best to be polite as he shouldered another one of Canterlot’s nobility in an effort to reach the deeper parts of the Palace, away from the main ballroom floor. “Grr...come on, move it!” Gina barked, the orange unicorn finding a much more direct path, cutting between dancing couples and sliding underneath drinks and trays. “I didn’t just go through all of that nonsense just to get blocked by a crowd!”

Finally, like two cider corks, the guard and mare popped from the crowded dance floor into the palace proper. It was still a complete bed of celebratory chaos, but at least now they could walk easily between the revelers. Picking up speed, the pair wove through room after room, finding nothing but the seemingly inexhaustible throng of partygoers. Irritation gave way to desperation with every room found to be without Celestia.

“Horseapples!” Gina groused, stamping her hoof when even the throne room was found to be empty save for a number of tourists. “How d’ya lose two princesses in one night?!” Turning to the guard, she beckoned with her head. “C’mawn, she’s not here, let’s check somewhere else.”

“Alright,” Jetstream said, turning to follow. “We should check back towards the main hall again, I bet she will have to come by there eventually.” By this point, the energy of the sprint outside had long since worn off, and their brisk trotting between rooms slowly collapsed into a trudging walk as adrenaline lost ground to exhaustion. Rounding another corner, the pair found themselves on a high roundabout balcony overlooking a ballroom, the same, Jetstream recalled, that was being prepared for the spell that would return Luna. By this time, it was simply another room full of ponies.

With an aggrieved sigh, Gina slouched forward onto a railing, glumly scanning the crowd that she looked over mere minutes ago. With an inward groan, she counted the same groups over and over…

The group in plain yellow gowns prattling on…

A middle-age unicorn mare who is way too into the dance…

A blue pegasus tucking into an entire apple pie by himself…

A regal alicorn with a kind smile and flowing mane…

A gaggle of young ponies doing all they can to escape the cacophony from the dance hall…

Wait…

“Hey, hey!” Gina shouted, straightening up and tugging Jetstream towards her with a foreleg. “There she is!” Down and across from the balcony, Princess Celestia strode purposefully, slipping past the crowds braying for her attention with practiced grace as she moved with cloud-like peace. “Let’s get down there and get her!” It took a firm tug from the pegasus to prevent Gina from simply vaulting over the balcony and to set her on a course for the stairs. However, the same kind of grip could not prevent the unicorn mare from simply barging down the stairs, clearing the last ten with a single leap, skidding around to keep her eyes locked on Celestia as the Princess strode across the ballroom.

Unwilling to give up the chase, the guard and mare tore full bore into the crowd, Jetstream crossing it with airborne bounds while Gina simply bulldozed with her shoulder, determined strength blowing ponies aside. From the ballroom, it took only the briefest scan to spot the Princess, pausing only to speak briefly with a pair of Royal Guard before disappearing behind a door into one of the private hallways, away from the public, both of whom tightened protectively in front of the door as Jetstream and Gina approached.

“Hold it,” the first said with weight and authority. “Princess Celestia has asked that nopony see her until she’s concluded her meeting. If you need to wish her a happy Hearth’s Warming, you’re just going to have to wait.”

“Sir!” Jetstream straightened up, putting on his best official air of obsequiousness. “I respectfully request to pass, this is an urgent matter that requires the Princess’ attention immediately.”

“Huh, Jetstream?” the elite guard cocked his head as he recognized him, more from the forceful ‘sir’ than anything else. “I would have thought you were in there already.”

“Sir...I…what?”

“Aren’t you Second Captain Stormblade’s assistant or...well I’m sure he’s dreamt up some really bad title for it.” The heavily armored black unicorn guard pursed his lips in recollection. “I’m amazed he’d have a meeting with Princess Celestia without you, actually. That guy is helpless without somepony keeping his ego under control.”

“Oh yeah, well, I…” Jetstream laughed nervously. “Yeah, I got caught up with helping out this mare here and I meant to join up with him. Do you think I could get in to help him out, sir?”

“Sorry, Private,” the elite apologized with a roll of his shoulders. “I bet Stormblade’d want you there, but Princess Celestia was pretty clear that nopony could get in until she was done. She looked real serious about it. Princesses’ order beats your bosses’ in this case.” Seeing the pegasus’ crestfallen look, the guard offered a small laugh that he would hope would be comforting. “Ah don’t sweat it, Jet, I don’t think it’ll be too long. Just stick around and we’ll grab her for you the instant she comes out. I mean, how long could Stormblade possibly talk?”

You have no idea...

“...thanks, sir,” Jetstream muttered, head falling slightly as he turned despondently back to Gina who instantly recognized the look.

“Ya better not be about to tell me what I think yer gonna…” she warned, only to get a single nod from the pegasus. “Arrrghhhh!” Gina’s frustrated roar punctuated itself with a hoof slamming down onto the ballroom floor. “Now what are we gonna do?!” Snorting, she wheeled back towards the door. “Kick our way in?” she asked, perhaps a bit hopefully. “Throw these guards out of the way and ride their armor like sleds to save the day?” Really hopeful now.

“And prove to Celestia that he’s right by appearing crazy and dangerous?”

“Well,” Gina snickered, “I’ve been called that more than once already…”

“And I don’t doubt it for a second, ma’am. But it might make things difficult for Luna and your friend.”

With a another snort, Gina drug her hooftip over the floor. “Suppose ya got a point, wouldn’t really do Dev’s a lot of favors if I just wrecked up the shop, huh? Would be a good way to spice up the party though. Better than that song...” Disheartened, the orange mare flopped down onto the floor, her manic energy spent. A long pause passed between the two before she finally spoke again.

“Okay, so when he gets done, what’s the plan?”

* * * * *

Emerging from the fugue first, Luna shook her mane as focus returned her vision and pushed away from the couch. Below, Devon stirred and writhed, small groans of involuntary discomfort sneaking from his lips as reflexive movements translated into pain onto his battered frame. A final attempt at a stretch wrenched his shoulder hard, temporarily filling the Archive with a yelp. Falling still and silent, the unicorn lay for a long, agonizing moment before his eyes fluttered open at last. As the orange irises danced around the room, Luna lowered her head to his level. Their eyes met and held for an eternity.

Luna saw into those orange eyes, she saw the intense fatigue behind his eyes, the broken weariness of his battered body and mind, the shimmer of tears in a silent heartfelt show of thanks. But what she saw most, and what drew her in the very most was a small glitter.

A glitter of appreciation.

“Luna, I...” he began with a voice quivering in emotion. He looked stuck, halfway between yelling for joy and begging for forgiveness, but before he could speak further, Luna extended a hoof and pressed it on the top of his muzzle.

“I know, Devon,” she replied in a tranquil whisper. Leaning forward, she pressed her forehead against his. “I know...”

“I...” Devon curled inward, retreating his strewn hooves away from her, pulling them close against his chest as he finally met the Princess face to face. Despite speaking in dreams, the wash of her breath over his face reminded him just how real it all was. When he was just with Luna in the dream, it seemed all so inconsequential, and everything could be undone just by waking up. But by waking up, the consequences and risks of the world swelled. “I almost gave up. Trapped you again.” He spoke plainly, a frank confession as he recalled the abuse levelled on his mind and body. “The whole time, all I could hear...” He looked back up to her. “...Was the stars screaming at me to give up.” His eyes quivered softly as they fell into the turquoise irises reflecting back at him. “They wanted me to surrender, they wanted me to just give in.” He managed a small laugh at his own expense. “They had this whole thing set up. They thought they could put me right on the edge, hoping my willpower wouldn’t hold up.”

“Monstrous,” Luna whispered. “And all because thou would not bend to their whims.”

“-But one thing...” Devon interrupted. With a soft huff, he pulled his head level to her’s. “One thing kept me from doing it.” He looked firmly into her eyes, the corners of his cheeks ascending tenderly above curled lips. “I knew that I had to hold out for you. Even if,” he trailed off, “well, even if the stars offered me everything I wanted, or to take everything away from me, I couldn’t do it. ”

The words rolling contemplatively in wait within Luna’s lungs fell away. She smiled in return, unable to offer anything other than a supportive nod, and settled a foreleg atop his collar. She gently pulled him in against her, letting his neck fall to rest against her shoulder.

Devon lowered his face in shame. “I’m sorry, I...” he sniffed, a fresh tear rolling down his cheek. “I almost lost it when I saw you sent back to the moon. I wasn’t thinking.” Burying his face into the navy blue coat before him, “I just saw the chance to save you and I wasn’t thinking.” Devon repeated the final words over and over, aghast at himself in renewed guilt.

“And yet...” Luna lowered her head to press down into his. “Should thou hath not done of this, I would be dancing ‘pon the puppet strings of another. And what would have become of thee I shudder think.” Feeling the aching unicorn clinging to her hammered the point home to Luna more clearly than any words.

Minutes of silence fell on them again, broken only by the occasional sniff from either pony as raw emotion ran through them. As their emotional state waned, Luna at last broke the silence.

“Devon, shouldeth...how do we...where upon doth we...?” Luna’s question sauntered into an uncertain hush, but the meaning was clear. Centuries of rule and life did not prepare Luna for this kind of impasse. Both were all too aware of the traps the stars could lay for them, and how easily a promise could be made into imprisonment.

“I wish I knew, Luna,” Devon sighed, “because I want...” he trailed off, feeling a flush dance across his cheeks. “I want to be with you.” There was no poetry or overwrought flourish in his words, no dream images to emphasize his point, Devon was broken down and all that was left was pure honesty. “I’d do almost anything to get that. Well, except for...” he inclined his head towards the stars in the window. “Luna, I want us to choose something like this. I know what I would choose, but that doesn’t mean it has to be your choice as well.”

“Aye, Devon...I wisheth to...” Luna rolled the word in her mouth like delicate food, “choose my path as well.”

“I don’t even know if you want to choose it or not, if you want me to be with you, but it should be your choice. Not mine. Not anypony else’s. And certainly not some star.”

Devon turned his head, lifting it from her shoulder to nuzzle against the side of Luna’s face before locking his eyes to hers once more. “I guess we’ll just take things one step at a time,” he concluded, then let out a groan as his body reminded him just how battered he was, “not exactly a storybook ending.” Before Luna could speak, the groan morphed into a smile, a deep and earnest one, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Luna’s own smile met his. It was so simple, but it had an appeal. To the Princess, buried and struggling with the pressures of royalty, such a plan of simply winging it as they go, ad-libbing and dealing with every struggle and delight as they come seemed heavenly. “So then, what is thy first step?” she asked, sniffling hard and swallowing back the final swell of emotion in her voice, pulling herself together.

“Well, I suppose I have to start somewhere,” Devon said after a similar moment to collect himself. “I better to get back to the gala. If my mom found out I ditched her...”

“All this for thy mother’s sake?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “but I have a hunch that it will make it easier for Princess Celestia to find me without much of a fuss.”

“Mine sister? Whyforth would she seek thee?”

Devon responded with a nod towards his bruised shoulder. “If that guard, or officer, made it to her before Gina did, he probably talked up a storm about me.” Devon tried not to let his voice betray too much worry, but his expressive eyes told Luna of the aching trepidation.

“Let me speaketh for thee then!” Luna implored. “She is my sister and would listen to me!”

Devon wrapped his hoof with Luna’s, looking wistfully down at the physical bond between them for a moment before he shook his head. “Maybe. But it’s only right if I am the one who tells her. And there’s plenty else I need to explain.” The unicorn looked down at his other hoof, still clad in the arcane brass gauntlet, the tool which condemned so many ponies already. “If I don’t do it now, I’d eventually have to do it later, I’d rather I just lay out everything to her about the stars, this gauntlet, everything.” Saying nothing else and with shaky legs, Devon finally rose, standing on his own at last, though braced strongly against Luna until he found his balance. “But if you want to help me, could you walk with me back to the gala? You don’t need to go in, but I’d like to walk with you.”

Luna rose to her full height and smiled. “But of course, Devon, I shall be happy to join thee. And I shall come with ye further than the doors. I dost not wish Canterlot or mine sister to be worried any longer than it must.”

And I will not let thee face this alone.

* * * * *

The door to the library swung open, the labored creak of timbers sending its call out into the Canterlot night. High above, a wing of Royal Guard immediately sighted on the movement and sound, altering their flight path to charge directly towards the disturbance. Rumors had been flying about a unauthorized curfew and rampaging unicorns, causing trouble for the guard. Coupled with the increasing alarm about no Princess sightings, the newly-arrived airborne guards were on edge.

“Halt right th-ere?” the lead blurted, his voice falling into a confounded mumble as his brain caught up with his reflex. “P-p-princess Luna?”

“Aye, tis we,” she replied, eyes lifted to the royal guard. Immediately, the small squad of pegasi had dropped in front of her, heads bowed respectfully.

“Princess! We have been sear-”

“Yes, yes, we hath heard thine orders from the Second Captain,” Luna said, her tone surprisingly low and subdued. She was tired, her heart was tired. “We shalt get ourselves to the Gala with all haste, but we shalt do it on jhoof. Do inform mine sister, we shalt arrive shortly.”

“Yes ma’am!” the pegasus saluted, then paused.

“Something vexes thee?”

“N-no, your Highness, it’s just that...er...” the guard cleared his throat. “We didn’t know you had a companion.” Beside Luna stood a dark-coated unicorn who looked like he had been on the losing end of a fight with a whole battalion of royal guards armed with shears and frozen patches of sidewalk..

“Aye, this be our...” Luna paused in search of words, “our assistant in research. We had gone to yonder library for important research on...erm...mine banishment! We will explain everything forthwith, but get thee gone, we will arrive shortly at the gala!”

“HIghness!” With another snappy salute, the air patrol lifted off and in moments were completely gone.

“Assistant?” groused Devon with a sour smile and half-laugh. “After all of this, I’m just an assistant?!”

“We had to thinketh of something!” Luna couldn’t fight a small giggle. “Wouldest thou prefer thy usual title? Behold mine Associate Assistant of Assis-”

“Okay, okay, point taken!” Devon huffed, then picked up the pace to keep up with Luna. “Also, thanks for coming with me back to the gala. I appreciate it.”

Luna tossed her mane in a regal display of friendly dismissal. “From what it seems, our exit nearly destroyeth the fun. T’would be a shame if we were to leaveth it as such. But Devon, aren’t thou worried about mine sister? Hither scoundrel Stormblade surely waits for thee at the gala...”

Devon shook his head. “Not gonna worry about that. At least not right now.” Luna gave him a look of frank bewilderment. “Look,” he said as they wound past a corner and up the long path to the gala hall, where Pinkie’s song and the terrified shrieks of the young still boomed, “I know it’s going to be a problem, but right now, I’m choosing to enjoy this walk. And I’m hoping you’ll answer me something before we get there, Luna.”

“What might that be?” the Princess responded, tone betrayed her guard.

Devon grinned. “Are Associate Assistants to Assistants allowed to buy a princess a beignet? Donut Joe does always does good business on Haerth’s Warming, and I’m famished.”

Luna let out a hollow, incredulous laugh. “Of all the things thou wouldst ask...dost thou even have a bit?”

“Well, no, but I have a tab there. Hey, I work for the royal government and I get a discount,” he smirked with mock confidence, beaming with feigned slyness.

“I would imagine that mine discount outshines thine,” Luna responded dryly.

“Way to make me feel like less of a gentlecolt.” Devon attempted a carefree grin, but Luna was right. If he was at the gala as she feared, his assailant probably talked up his sordid past and ancestry to Princess Celestia already, complete with a few new chapters. Hopefully Luna’s presence might at least give him a moment to speak should it come to it.

Weaving away from the main entrance and throng of partygoers, the pair found a little-regarded side door that served as the public entrance to Pony Joe’s. Pausing at the door, Devon looked at Luna with a small grin.

“You know we are going to cause a stir, right?”

“We art used to it,” Luna giggled and, as one, the two stepped into Pony Joe’s like they were the stars of the show. While the raucous song raged outside in its final crescendo, the donut shop was mostly populated by those seeking solace from the music, almost all of the young ponies were there, burying their faces in abject humiliation and suffocating it with pastries. There was a moment of stillness where Luna’s entrance went unnoticed, the casually brazen and understated entrance first drew a few looks to determine who let the icy draft in. Soon, those glances then turned into double-takes and dropped plates. With saucer-wide eyes, ponies watched as the Princess of the Night, with no pomp or fanfare slipped into one of the unoccupied tables, it would have been a stunned silence if not for the racket outside as the song finally came to a close.

Across the room from Luna, Devon wormed his way towards the counter, where Dont Joe himself was locked in a stare at the princess as well. Devon was nearly swept away as a rush of ponies hurried to catch a glimpse, or out into the main gala hall to spread the word. While the attention and activity billowed into a tempest, Luna’s clout was enough that nopony dared approach her directly.

“Hey, Joe,” Devon tapped his hoof on the counter. “C’mon, never seen a Princess before?”

“Oh, heya Mist’uh Bookmark,” Joe said, remembering his position. “Nah, ain’t that, I just never seen a Princess gone missin’ come back here before. Everypony was wonderin’ where shot off to, but I knew she’d be alright, o’course, maybe it was my donuts what brought her back,” he added with a confident chuckle. “The usual?”

“Yeah, double it,” Devon added. Joe ducked into the back and returned moments later with a plate heaped with fresh beignets, each mound of fried dough topped with tufts of powdered sugar that brought tears to the eyes.

“Here ya go, Mistuh...uh...hey, Devon?” Joe began as he slid the plate towards him, cocking his head as Devon’s patchwork-holed pelt and bruises came into focus. “Ya alright? Or didja honk off the pony doin’ yer mane?”

“Never better,” Devon smirked, “I owe you one.”

“Nah, y’owe me more like…” A moment’s pause followed, just to aerate the count. “...seven, but it’s Hearth’s Warmin’ and I’m all fulla that generosity of the spirit. So ya owe me five.” Joe fixed Devon with a smirk and nod before shooing him off for another customer.

Hustling away with the plate clutched in his teeth, Devon slipped into the seat across from Luna. If the gossip about Luna wasn’t flying then, it sure was now, and now that the song had mercifully come to an end, the word spread like wildfire. Ignoring it as best he could, Devon offered Luna a piece of beignet, sugar falling off of it. Might as well enjoy a small pleasure before a big disaster.

“We never took thee for liking such messy fare, Mister Bookmark,” Luna chuckles as deluges of sugar soon coated both of their muzzles and lips. “Thou seemed so reserved about such things. We cannot see thee covered in sugar whilst working in the papers.” Luna allowed herself a small giggle as he took a bite. Almost instantly, his dark muzzle showed the dusting of sugar, made all the more noticeable with the contrast.

“Well, it isn’t like I just want to get messy, but I-”

“-Ah, m’word!” Interjected a familiar mare’s voice carried along the tumbling rattle of the door swinging open. “My Dev’n!” Before he or Luna could speak, a third figure flopped down at the table beside Luna and helped herself to a beignet. “I wonder’d where y’got to, can’t keep up with yer momma’s dance, right?” Devon’s mother let out a giddy laugh, fueled by renewed happiness in her son, three and a half mugs of cider and the kind of joy derived by dancing like a fool in public can bring. The food barely slowed down her talk. “Been here long? I heard that Princess Luna was back an’ turned up here’f all places!”

“Well, actually, mom...”

“Cn’ya imagine?” With a giddy chuckle, she nudged the Princess in the shoulder. “Goes missin’ an’ just finds ‘er way to the donut shop!” She gleefully snagged one of the beignets with an effortless, if slightly unsteady, display of telekenesis.

“Er, mine due apologies, miss,” Luna tried. Even the Princess couldn’t divert her.

“Figur’d she got peckish an’ couldn’ be bother’d t’party til’ she had her fill.”

“Um...mom?” Devon made another attempt, but this one was interrupted by rapturous smackings as his mother chewed into the pastry.

“Mmhercy these are good!” She grinned brightly with a glittery moustache of sugar crowning her upper lip. Looking upon her son, she suddenly stopped mid chew. “An’ff-whuh’ h’app’uh t’yuh, yuh, yuh...” She paused, rolled her eye up, and raised a forehoof motioning them to finish chewing before starting again. After a hefty gulp, she breathed in deep, leaning in close to his head, pivoting a hooftip on his chin. “An’ jus’ what inn’a name of Smah’t Cookie’s mane happned to yer face?! And yer fur?! Jumperin’ clog-dancin’ Celestia! Ya look awful!”

“Mom I-!” Shouting already? Come on, turn that new leaf already. “-Mother.” Better. She paused, only taking a sly second to stealthily nibble a quick morsel of the beignet. She chewed quietly, attempting to hide the motion in the back of her jaw with a subtlety betrayed by a sugar-dusted face. “If I may introduce you.” Devon turned to the cobalt mare sitting beside him. “Please say hello to Princess Luna.” Motioning in alternating waves of a forehoof pointed between them, he directed his foreleg back to his mother. “Princess, this is my mother, Sara.”

“Charmed,” Luna spoke calmly, an identical mask of powdered sugar on her muzzle. “Devon hath told us much about thy kind nature.”

The stealthy morsel of sugared dough jettisoned from the buried recesses of her jaw, and propelled by the raw energy of a surprised gasp, careened straight into Devon’s eye. He reeled, flopping backwards out of the stool in feeble attempts to rub it out. The tablecloth shuddered ominously as he tumbled downward, then in a horrible wrenching tug, it pulled taut. The meaty thump of the dark unicorn landing haunch-first against the linoleum was immediately followed by the clamoring rattle of silver and porcelain as the cloth flopped upward, catapulting a salvo of malevolent silverware in a smooth arc. The canines, fangs, and serrated blades of knife, fork, and other cutlery sliced through the air in a metallic sheen, before implanting deep into the floor in a tightly-knit halo around Devon’s head and neck. Through clenched eyes, Devon sneaked a quick glance upward upon hearing the sound of a hollow echoing whirl, seeing the porcelain dish of beignets spinning mercilessly towards him in a blur that was bathed in the shop’s fluorescent lighting, a spiraling trail of sugar twisting in a sparkling helix behind it. The whole setup of his oncoming demise played out before him like a beautifully painted piece of abstract art, before a warped slash of black dimmed out the world upon contact.

The echoing rhythm of the world immediately summoned back to his synapses, the muffled rumblings of surrounding clatter peeled away to the rattling noise of the plate vibrating to rest against the floor, all the remaining beignets resting comfortably atop the dish in the exact arrangement they were previously on the table. Devon groaned, rubbing his muzzle where the plate smacked him, and readied an embarrassed apology.

The laughter of his mother overtook the surrounding chatter of the shop, including his own. Upon ascending from underneath the table, Devon was immediately greeted with a sarcastic stir of applause. He turned to Luna, as she looked with a look of mild concern, and sheltered amusement creeping through her suppressing willpower. But one quick jab from his chortling mom was all it took to loosen up those defenses, her own humored reactions purporting forth alongside his mother’s until Luna herself extended her piece of beignet to scrape some of the sugar that now decorated Devon’s face in taunting powder.

Eh, at least he survived. Hey, even the beignets survived, too!

Devon couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle as he found himself trapped by his mother and Luna’s energy. It was such a rare sight to see the Princess so cornered and verbally disarmed. But in no time, Luna had caught up and soon enough she and his mother were going nonstop both in words and through the plate of beignets. Taking a bite of one, Devon simply savored his position on the margins, soaking up the low-level happiness that came from being with those he cared for most.

“Luna!” another voice, this one much heavier, stirred him out of the moment.

“Celestia!” Luna exclaimed. Behind Devon stood Celestia, flanked not only by her prize student and her friends, but the sneering shape of the Second Captain. But in the center of it all stood Celestia, quivering with withheld joy. Bounding across the table, Luna leapt to face her older sister, smiling sheepishly as they embraced.

“Where did you go, Luna?” Celestia scolded, though the delight in her voice more than overwhelmed the temporary scorn.

“Well, I hath...er...I think I may hath panicked somewhat. The change was so sudden that I had to flee.”

Minutes passed in a flurry of affection, and soon the crowd of ponies were applauding and cheering, relief and delight hanging off of each whistle and clopping hoof.

“I’m just happy you are back again, Luna. I’m sorry I didn’t give you enough time to recover. I shouldn’t have had this happen at the gala.”

“Dearest me, no, dear sister!” Luna proclaimed. “Whilst I qualied at first, the relaxation be most comforting! I hopeth we would revel more!” By now, Celestia had melted away into a full, merry laugh, relief hanging off of every lift of her voice and movement.

“Then we’ll revel! I, for one, could use it after all of this!” Celestia exclaimed, the crowd of ponies erupting into a raucous cheer. But before she could speak again, a cough interrupted the sisters’ reunion, penetrating the otherwise drowning cheers the entire gala had given them. From a short distance behind the two Princesses, Stormblade looked towards Celestia, then nodded once in Devon’s direction.

“Oh, of course,” Celestia murmured, her tone uncomfortable and wary as lines of concern crossed her face again. For a moment, Celestia felt the burden of her years as an unwelcome voice of control from within reminded her to not ignore such duties. “I need to step away for a moment, Luna.”

“What? What dost thou mean?” Luna said, her voice hovering between a laugh at the absurdity of the situation and a growing, gnawing concern.

“I need to...speak with Mister Bookmark,” Celestia sighed. To her side, Second Captain Stormblade’s face broke into a toothy grin that dripped with poorly-repressed triumph and venom directly upon the dark unicorn.

“Devon?” Sara asked, turning to her son with a confused look that was utterly ignorant of the gravity of the situation.

“Celestia!” Luna gasped in a sudden plea, but before she could carry on or Sara could react further, Devon spoke.

“Alright,” he said plainly, rising from the table and wiping his muzzle off of at least some of the powdered sugar. “Princess Luna, could you stay here and keep my mom company? This shouldn’t be too long.” Assuming a thousand years on the moon isn’t too long. Devon stepped towards Celestia quietly.

Devon came up short when Luna’s hoof extended, looping onto his shoulder and preventing him from advancing.Looking across her leg, he saw a desperate plea. Don’t go. All Devon could do was shake his head once, but before he stepped out of her grasp, Devon lifted the pendant from around his neck and placed it in Luna’s hoof, pressing it hard into her grasp with his foreleg hooves before turning back to Celestia.

“Ready whenever you are, Princess.”

“Thank you, Devon,” Celestia spoke, though her voice was much different now. This was all too familiar to her. Devon’s face bore the same quiet, accepting resolve as another face from her foggy memories. Another unicorn, orange with fiery eyes. She had the same face when Celestia stood in this position before, and, blinded by her outrage, had condemned her to a terrible fate.

“What have you done to my sister?!”

Condemned her...on a whim of sporadic knee-jerk panic.

“Orangina! You and your plans has come to an end! Nightmare Moon...Luna is banished! And you...you will...”

But she didn’t resist. Not once. She didn’t plead or struggle, she just accepted it, just as this charcoal unicorn accepted it as well. A sudden calm enveloped Devon’s consciousness, as he found himself standing with hooftips gracing over the edge of a great precipice, himself now on the same proving grounds Gina had faced nearly a millenium before, but the fears were downplayed with the beckoning opportunity to just once live up to her brevity and will. She may have been more powerful in the horn, but to live up to her resolve...he couldn’t have leapt off that stool faster to stare down fate like he did. Even battered and still sporting the bruises of his hardships, Devon stood to take what was, at least in part, his responsibility. His turn. And if the oncoming generations of ponies were to look upon his visage in the statue garden for the next thousand years...well...

...Better make that statue look proud.

Celestia stood tall over the accompanying guard. “Second Captain Stormblade,” she commanded in an unexpectedly assertive tone. “Do make sure the gala proceeds well,” She motioned him away with a wave of her head. “I’ll call you if I need anything.”

“But Princ-” he started to protest before he calmed his voice and spoke more evenly. “Princess Celestia, given his nature and what he is capable of, this is exactly what I was warning you about!” His voice softened lightly as he tilted his head slightly askew. “Do you think that’s wise? I should be there to ensure that he doesn’t...” He did not speak out of duty, but out of desire to feed his spite, to gloat in his victory. He was not going to have his triumphant moment taken away.

“I said, I’ll call you.” Celestia lowered her wings, taking a slow step towards the second captain. “Thank you for your concern, but we’re all weary and tired, especially you.” She turned to face down the street towards the reaching lights of the gala. Her voice hardened again. “Please do rest ,and do make a point to just enjoy yourself. Stick around.” The last part was not a polite offer, but a deliberately given command.

A familiar purple unicorn swiveled in around Celestia from the doorway. “Princess Celestia!” she looked through the donut shop, concern weighing heavily on her voice. “What’s going on? Is something happening?”

“Nothing at all, my dear student. Just a small private matter, and I’ll be right back. Please, all of you, enjoy yourselves, I’m sure Luna would love your company, you freed her after all.” Even as she spoke, however, the millennial exhaustion hung off of the Princesses’ words.

“But Princess!” the purple unicorn protested. “If there’s something wrong with you or,” she faced Devon, seeing the missing tufts of his coat and his battered shoulder coated with bruises. “Or, or with...with Mister, uh, Bookend...”

Devon coughed. “Bookma-”

“-Please listen to your student!” Stormblade cooed, “And allow one of us to join you. If for no other reason but your safety!”

“This is a bit of very old business between Mister Bookmark and myself. It’s something I should have handled very long ago.” Celestia shook her mane once, attempting to restore her demeanor but the success was limited. “And now is the perfect time to settle it once and for all. But I insist on it being between just us.” Celestia was firm as she turned away from the gala, Devon mere steps behind as they stepped through the respectful alley of bodies and into the darkly shaded castle halls. At the far end of the shop, mere steps from the private chambers, Devon spotted a fiery blur of orange struggling to get to the front of the bodies. He could only make eye contact with Gina for a fleeting second.

She smiled, weakly but hopefully.

Don’t blink, Devs.

The castle gate shut behind them with a thundering clang that diminished into the rock-insulated echoes of rattling chains, casting them into complete black.

It’s so embarrassing when your statue has the eyes closed…

Chapter 16: Beginning

___
_____

Two hearts loosed from running.
Two souls freed, yet twinning.
Unbowed by threads of fate spinning,
From one story's end, a new beginning.

_____
___

Chapter 16:
Beginning

Despite the gala going on, louder than ever, a mere hallway behind them, Devon felt a silence more oppressive than he had ever experienced all around him as he and Princess Celestia strode away from the revelry and into the darkened halls of Canterlot Palace. Neither of them spoke, but both experienced the guarded tension, the forced lack of eye contact or conversation as they would back into chambers and rooms that Devon had very no clear idea that they even existed. However strictly they avoided interaction, both threw the occasional glance towards the other, fleeting glances to gauge the other. Minutes passed in the hallway before they ascended a dizzying spiral staircase, the staccato pattering of hoofsteps only broken when the charcoal unicorn put too much weight on his sore shoulder, wincing and hesitating. Celestia mirrored his pauses with her own, waiting for him to catch up or recover before continuing her wordless trek upwards.

Devon found himself struggling to hide his growing aches and lack of breath. The staircase only rose and rose, and with every passing twist in the spiral, Devon took longer breaks, unable to hide his huffing, heavy breath. As always, the alabaster alicorn only paused long enough to allow him to catch up. Finally, mercifully in the unicorn’s case, the stairs terminated in front of a pair of glass sliding doors and with a single regal ave of her head, Celestia cast them open and led Devon forward.

“I believe this will suit our need for privacy.”

Stepping forward, the bookkeeper gazed out on a sight that earthbound ponies ever experienced. He stood on the balcony of Canterlot Palace’s highest spire, the Princesses’ roost where they observed and watched over their nation. Frosty whorls of air washed the platform in a cooling breeze, yet in a single pulse of light from her horn, the Princess bathed it in a comfortable warmth and allowed him a moment. Even with the gaze of Celestia following him, Devon took in the view with a small measure of reserved awe. Below him, the glittering lights of Canterlot were only the smallest detail on a tapestry that stretched for miles, mostly dark by this time of night but the towns and homes still showing pinpricks of light. Like a sea of stars below that mirrored the ones above.

From her perspective, Princess Celestia marveled, as always, at what the world of Equestria can lay before her. This battered unicorn, apparently, held a deadly threat to her, Luna and all ponies under their protection. Fate itself danced at the whim of this unicorn.

“So, how are we going to settle this?” It was the charcoal unicorn who broke the silence. Celestia did not expect him to be so matter of fact, or to seek the point so quickly. Part of the Princess hoped that he might be defiant, so that her mind could be made up more easily. How much simpler would it have been if he lived up to be everything Stormblade had warned her about, but instead he simply was...a pony.

“I have to admit, Mister Bookmark...”

“Devon is fine, your Highness.”

“Devon.” Celestia sighed as they finally were away from the gala and in the frostily silent halls of the Canterlot palace. “You don’t exactly look like the image I was expecting from what Second Captain Stormblade told me. He didn’t mention the patches of missing pelt and the bruises. Or the powdered sugar all over your muzzle.”

“Well,” Devon said with a small shrug. “Like you told me before the gala, I’m full of surprises.”

“Devon,” Celestia’s tone changed again, forcing herself from the flighty and approachable monarch to the role of an arbiter of justice. “You are a Bookmark, and inherited a gift that I thought was gone. The same time this comes true, my sister is sent back to the moon and my citizens are attacked by the statues of those who conspired with your ancestors to manipulate all of Equestria.” Each fact was laid out before him with no emotion or inflection, her tone neither understanding nor accusatory. “And my acting Captain of the Guard has laid out charges that you were conspiring to enslave Princess Luna.” Celestia sighed, all of this was too familiar. She felt an exhaustion, a deep desire to simply make a quick choice and be done with it. She had every right in Equestria to do so, and ample evidence to create a nefarious villain out of the battered unicorn who stood before her. She did it before. But this time something was different, it was too familiar. For the Princess, where the passing of a decade was more akin to the passing of a season, she had the experience to recognize that such a second chance was by no means happenstance.

This was her second chance.

“But what do you have to say about all of this?” she asked. It may be her second chance, but Celestia could not afford the luxury of blind pardon.

“Well, you’re right about some of it,” he finally said after a hanging pause. “I did inherit this power, but I wouldn’t really call it a gift.” Lifting the leg still clad in brass, the unicorn held it out for her. “It’s more like I’ve been given an ability with a lot of strings attached.” Devon smiled bitterly, “strings that are attached to me and anypony who might try to benefit from it. Strings that I’ve been hooked to for nearly my whole life.” Seeing a growing frown of confusion taking root on the Princesses’ face, he continued. “You were right in that I inherited that old power. I can change fate, sort of…”

“Sort of?” Now the confused face had a rising eyebrow. “I would think that controlling fate would mean that you didn’t need to worry about things like that. It’s total control, is it not?”

“Hardly, Princess.” Devon shook his head. “It seems like it would be, but fate isn’t just a blank slate for somepony to change. If you change one fate,” the unicorn took a breath, doing his best to form the complexities of weaving fate into simple terms, “every other fate changes.” He had an idea. “If I were to change fate to do something with Princess Luna, then you would be affected, and all the way down. Also, anypony who makes that kind of change winds up making a deal with the stars.” For as true as he knew this to be, the unicorn couldn’t help but feel like the explanation only added to the image of being unstable and dangerous.

That eyebrow didn’t help his concern, either.

“The stars, Devon?” she asked, evenly and patiently, but her tone spoke of her struggling to take the concept seriously.

“Yes,” he repeated, attempting to be sober in tone even though the content of his words spoke differently. “When you use this kind of power, you aren’t just making a wish, but it is a contract with the stars, a pact. They make what you want happen...but they want you to keep changing things. One tiny mistake in your contract, one mishandled word and you’re trapped living through it over and over, until you think to make another pact to break free. It’s what happened to my ancestor-”

“Ghasen.”

“Yes.” Devon felt a twinge of relief as Celestia helped him with his logic. “He made one pact, thinking it would make his life better, but he didn’t realize that the stars don’t understand us. To them, they had done exactly what he asked for, when it was a nightmare for him. He tried to fix it with the stars, and that led to problems...until he was doing what they wanted. It would happen with anypony making deals-”

“And the stars would conspire in her escape.” Celestia’s interrupt brought the unicorn up short, turning to her with his own mask of confusion now. “I always wondered how that line always survived in that story. Over a thousand years, and that tale was told and re-told and re-written so many times. But the line was always there.” She laughed slightly, hiding a wellspring of emotion. “I always thought it was some poetic license.” However, the mirth passed quickly, and the Princess of the Sun remembered her place, and the gravity of the situation. She could not be distracted. “Devon, how much of all of this were you involved with?” she finally asked directly.

“Well, what exactly are we talking about?” he asked. “I know a lot of it but…” he paused to remember Stormblade’s venomous glee. “What have you been told?”

“That you were plotting to do something terrible to Luna.”

“Plotting? No. Yeah I kinda got tangled up in things awful happening to her, but I didn’t plot them.” Seeing Celestia about to speak, he quickly followed. “Luna had a contract from a thousand years ago, and I would have stood to gain from it if I didn’t break it. Everything after breaking it...well I was partially responsible.” All of it seemed so long ago as he tried to explain it. From the shift from brave leader to clinging dependent, to the battle atop the tower as it crumbled around them, and even further to the depths of his guilt when conflicts within the contracts sent her back to the moon.

For the whole time, the Princess listened intently, not making any move to interrupt or delve for more information. Celestia had enough experience and insight to know that pressing now would not get her more information. Lies were never constructed with such personal responsibility, even as she saw numerous chances for the charcoal unicorn to shift the blame, or change the subject. Stopping him now would do nothing for her.

“And then I got help into the plaza in front of the Archive earlier tonight. And that’s where I met Stormblade, I think that was his name, right?”

“That’s correct,” Celestia replied, taking a breath before recalling his words. “According to him, he caught you in the middle of a ritual to enslave Luna. And even though you fought viciously, you used some foul magic to escape.”

“Do you believe that?”

“He’s the pony we’ve entrusted the command of the Guard with until Shining Armor returns.”

“That’s not really answering the question, Princess.”

He was right, of course. Both Celestia and Shining Armor agreed that the best thing for the overly ambitious officer was a taste of command. It was hoped that the minutiae of leading the guard on a daily basis might blunt the edge and soften his approach. Also, in a time of peace, during Hearth’s Warming, both figured that nothing could go wrong with giving the stallion his chance to prove himself. Naturally, Celestia knew of his single-minded approach, but aside from missing the occasional patrol, his record was flawless, and his drive admirable in a strange way. Celestia wished more of her guard would have the kind of motivation. But it did not take long for power to find its way to his head, and the folly of the promotion to reveal itself. Were it not for a robbery and errant train car through a window, Stormblade’s promotion would have ended as a mistake and caution to remember.

“I should believe him.” Not even the Princess liked the idea of what she just said. “He’s the acting Capta-”

“Look at me,” Devon pressed. “Do I really look like the kind of pony who needs this much to take down? I have barely ate or slept in four days now. And I was hardly able to walk when we finally ran into one another. He attacked me, Princess, he found out about what I could do and thought he could...talk...me into making wishes for him.” The unicorn hesitated, wondering if he should go into the details, wondering if he should ask for Luna’s help or to get her testimony.

“Stormblade warned me that you’d try to say something like that,” Celestia replied evenly, recalling his frantic words as he made it to the gala. “That you would try to...ahem...twist your thoughts and make you seem like the victim when I, Captain Stormblade, only tried to help your sister, my Luna.”

“Well-”

“And, in all honesty, I must wonder. If you can manipulate destiny, would this just be you changing things to your advantage?”

“I’d have a strange idea of what an advantage is, considering how beat up I’ve been in this whole thing. If I was going to do something like that, I wouldn’t have made you doubt me like you’re doing, Princess.” Everything he had seen and learned up to this point boiled forth in Devon in a wave of comprehension and understanding. “This is not as if I need a convincing cover, your Highness. If I used the power to save my, you’d believe me, there’s no way around it. You wouldn’t even question my story. That’s how potent it is. But that’s why I would never use something like that. Nopony should.”

Celestia remained silent, though her face betrayed the activity within her mind. The charcoal unicorn could tell that every word and angle of his story was being scrutinized. After all previous conflicts a millennium ago, Celestia felt compelled to forgive the entirety of the Bookmark family name. Despite the meddling, their stubborn demeanor and their haughty candor towards the Princess and her sister, if she could credit them for one thing...

"It's best to understand something before using it. And I don't know if anypony can understand the stars."

...They ultimately ended up with a level-headed stallion who comprehended the incredible power he had, and felt no desire at all to even use it. "That's astute wisdom, Devon." A selfless Bookmark, free of the desperate need to change fate. "You are certainly a reassuring breath of fresh air, and I'm willing to make..." Celestia paused, contemplating the next course of action. She eyed the brass gauntlet intently, then raised her head proudly above him, leveling a hoof against his shoulder. "...I'm willing to extend a particular..." The device’s sleeve shimmered in the moonlight, a pensive twitch tugged the bottom of her ear. "...Offer...to you."

Devon lowered his head, noticing the Princess' stare was no longer zeroed onto his eyes, but peering with a steadied apprehension at the brass adornment. With a couple pulls, he gingerly pulled it from his foreleg, feeling the shiver of unusual emptiness as borrowed magic left him and with a final kick, let it fall before the Princess. It shone brightly as it twisted to a rest, catching the reflective glow of the moon, projecting the dazzling caustics against his black foreleg like a hundred stars being torn away from the tip of his hoof. He was ready...to offer it away.

“Just like that?” Celestia balked. She was fully prepared to plead her case, expecting a price for this influence to go away. At the very least, she expected him to reluctantly part with the magic that had been denied to him for his life. “You don’t want it at all?”

“If it helps Luna, and helps me, then no.” The reply was blunt and simple. “But I’m worried about something else, Princess. What are you planning to do with it?” As he slid it across the porch, Devon lifted his eyes in an attempt to read Celestia’s intentions. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Princess, but I don’t want this to fall into the wrong hooves.”

"It's simple," the Princess began with resonating confidence. "We have an elite guard of Canterlot. Our greatest stallions. They take charge of the gauntlet, watch over it, protect it, shelter it." Celestia turned, peering out the over the cityscape, the edge of her face outlined in the moonlight casting from above. "You will no longer have to worry about it, be free of the stars' decrees, and also hold a really good standing with me." She attempted to reach a hoof to the gauntlet, but a vestigial pulse in her elbow timidly yanked it back. "The gauntlet..." Exhaling deeply, she lowered her hoof, looking again out over Canterlot. "It will be in good hooves."

"Well," Devon sighed. "I would like to be in good standing with a Princess." His thoughts wavered to an entirely different Princess. Celestia, however, grinned with assured closure as she circled around him. Finally, a Bookmark she could reason with. A Bookmark that actually appreciates her. She thought she'd never even see the day. "Yet...there’s more to it than simply locking it up. The gauntlet allows me to change and make those contracts, but it won’t silence the stars, and it won’t take this out of me.”

Celestia felt her hopeful optimism recoil. It was never quite as simple as she’d like it to be.

“I agree that we need to make sure this power is not used by anypony. And putting the gauntlet out of my reach is a good start. But that still leaves myself and the pendant. If I have that, it’s how I hear the stars. How I speak to them.” Closing his eyes, he started piecing the system together, hoping that in its explanation, he might offer a solution. “Myself, the gauntlet and the pendant, any two together is perfectly harmless. Split them apart, and it is no longer a threat. But…”

Devon needed more understanding. He deeply yearned to learn even more about the pendant. His mind travelled back to the journals of Ghasen, to his even further distant ancestors who used it for the betterment of others, scrying fate to glimpse at a pony’s road and not just a shortcut to making some ill-thought wish come true to the determinant of many more. There was nothing like this before Ghasen, maybe the words and decrees of the stars could cease being binding contracts, but return as guidance. It seemed like a safer arrangement. Their own words played in his mind again:

We are truth, pure and painful.

But was it truth? Despite their rage and rock-solid insistence on his fate, Devon defied the stars, broke fate’s plan for him. On top of that, he resisted their temptations, all of the joy of instant and unstoppable gratification he denied for a chance to allow others to share their destinies and not simply ride it. There was vastly more to it, but Devon could not tell if the paths led to further devious traps, or something of a return to normalcy, where the Bookmarks simply observed and skimmed fate, passing on wisdom and glimpses to others. Devon knew with certainty that he could not simply leave it be, not for long. In a way, hiding from the gift entirely would be an admission of defeat, clearly proclaiming that he could not handle the stars further.

There’s nothin’ worse than giving up,, Gina told him in the hospital. And finding out later you coulda won.

"Princess, I think I'll..." Devon lowered his hoof, the pendant sinking away from Celestia's gaze. Her lips parted slightly as she leaned foward in a subtle reach to the brass leg adornment, then her eyes finally tore away from them in a quivering jolt that locked those pink irises firmly against Devon's. "...I think it's best if I..." He pulled his head back a smidgen, slowly rolling his eyes down and to the side. “...if we found a way for me to observe the power further. You can lock the gauntlet up, bury it in Tartarus if you want my opinion.”

"Why?" The Princess softly inquired. This was not how she wanted it to go. Her mane twitched again as her thoughts started coming to grips with trusting the power to read fate in the hooves of this archivist. True as he has proven so far, what could he find? “Why not bury both the gauntlet and pendant together?”

"Because..." Devon began in a dejected whimper. This was now how he wanted it to go. His mane twitched with the perceptible tension descending upon them. Not because of the grave concern on the Princess' face, no. "...It's best if it was divided otherwise." His thoughts attempted, but refused. Outright refused. "Because you have..." Devon's mind refused to come to grips with the image of the pendant in the hooves of... "...Royal Guard." ...Stormblade.

"And this fortified castle, a secure tower," the Princess began. "It would take a demigod of chaos to break into that."

"Indeed," Devon agreed, still feeling the burning sting of the image of Stormblade even adorning the pendant, an abstract caricature of his brash shenanigans flaunting it like a schoolfilly with new ribbons, attempting to woo and flirt with... "Eygh..." Oh, how the image hurt his brain. "You certainly have the best defenses in Canterlot. And it would take a lot more than little ol' me screwing up somewhere to make a bad situation."

"Your understanding is-"

"-But," he interjected, holding the pendant over his head and weaving his horn and ears through the looped adornment. "Little ol' me screwing up shouldn't even be a fear if I was in charge because you see, Princess..." He shook his mane, the pendant resting with a shimmering ding against his chest. "You have protection." The reflected caustics of light twirled like a hundred points of starlight sucking into his heart. "I have more at stake."

"I don't think I know what you mean."

“The stars still will be looking for some way to interfere with our fates, and since I have that gift, I think I need to understand it fully to prevent it from happening again. Prevent another Ghasen from happening, prevent another incident like happened to Luna again. I want to learn more about this, but I don’t want to place anypony at risk by doing it.”

Celestia’s expression was guarded, restrained. The opportunity to end this whole affair had just seemingly slipped by her hooves, the power to alter fate still laid in an unsafe place. However, if what he was saying had truth, it was a valid point.

“But I understand what you want to do,” Devon continued, his laughter falling back into another sober expression through his bruises. “As secure as Canterlot is, something like this whole bundle, the gauntlet and the pendant, needs oversight by only somepony who knows what the weight is. Anypony else would only have instructions and stories, and those give way to curiosity. They start to wonder about that old gauntlet and that dingy pendant, and they get to talking about what they’ve heard. Curiosity gives way to thinking that one can overcome it, or that the stories were overwrought and meant to scare ponies away and nothing more. Sooner or later, somepony thinks it is a means to a wish.”

Celestia was silent.

“We can lock one of them up. Lock this gauntlet up in the tightest room you have. But I won’t trust the pendant unless it is with somepony who appreciates the weight of the responsibility. Somepony who knows exactly what it and the pendant are capable of.”

More silence.

“Somepony who I can trust. Not just to keep it safe, but to keep me safe from it.”

A small flicker of understanding took root on Celestia’s face.

“Somepony to watch over me.”

“Luna?”

Devon nodded.

* * * * *

“Princess Luna, what aren’t y’tellin’ me?” Sara pressed over a plate of cold beignets. “What’s the matter with m’Devon and Celestia?”

“Tis…” Luna found herself struggling for words. She could not betray her worry, lest it spread out of control, yet she could not lie to Devon’s mother either. “Tis a matter that thy son aided us greatly with, but our sister did not knoweth of the extent of his involvement.” The Princess lifted a sugar-coated piece of dough to her mouth, but when she bit down, all she could taste was her own growing concern.

If it was minor, surely he would hath returned.

Looking down at the table, Luna’s eyes fell on the silver pendant that Devon pressed into her before turning away with Celestia. But what did he mean for her to do with it? Was it a gift? Was it some message? Was it...his last memento before he was locked away in stone? Shuddering, Luna did her best to banish those thoughts. “Tis something all of us shalt simply have patience for.” Hooking her hoof around the pendant’s chain, she lifted it over her horn and head and looped the silvery chain around her neck. “We art sure that thy son and mine sister whilst be able to explain things further.”

I shall wait for thee, Devon. Thou shan’t keep me waiting.

“Reckon yer right, Highness,” Sara muttered over another bite of dough. “But I certainly didn’t expect my Dev’n t’be such an important pony fer Celestia to take him away in such a serious want. Ya don’t think he’s in any trouble, do ya?”

“Well, we think that…” Luna stammered, “mayhap it is a mere misunderstan-”

“Pfft!” A bawdy laugh and sudden rush of orange interrupted Luna as an orange unicorn mare flopped into the bench next to the Princess of the Night. “Nah, Dev’s has got this whole thing wrapped up snugger than a parasprite in a pickle patch!” Following the bizarre statement, an orange hoof lashed out at the plate, awkwardly scooping up half a dozen beignets into a ravenous maw. As one, Luna and Sara turned at the new presence, each unsure for a moment if it was a pony or some erratic alien force.

“Mmhmwow...Dev’swuhshright…” the orange unicorn spoke through a mouthful of dough and sugar. Realizing that she could not speak, she swallowed hard and let out a little, satisfied burp. “Ah, as I was sayin’, Dev’s was right ‘bout pickin’ these things. They’re great!”

“Gina?!” Luna blurted, the first of the other mares to realize that it was not just a hungry orange tornado that visited them. “What art thou doing here? Why art thou here? How dost thou know about Devon? What happened to thy guardspony companion?”

“Woah, woah, one at a time, Princess!” Gina laughed, “just gimme a sec, okay?” Allowing her a moment, the Princess and mother watched her obliterate another hoof-full of fried dough, mashed into a single titanic piece rather than trying to manage a dozen bouncing pieces at once. With another mighty swallow, Gina smiled. “Okay, well...I’m here cause you told me to be here, remember?”

“Ah...er...right,” Luna muttered. “Mine apologies. What didest thou hear about Dev-”

“What do ya’s know about my Dev’n?!” Sara exclaimed, bursting into the conversation without shame or restraint. The energy with which the mare called out the question caused even the unflappable Gina to hesitate, turning to look at Luna with a confused, questioning look.

“Devon’s mother, Gina. Miss Bookmark, this mare is another of our…” The Princess hesitated. “Well, we shalt call her an assistant for now, but tis far more complex than that.” Falling silent, the erratic orange unicorn squinted at Devon’s mother, sizing her up as if she was looking for some kind of hidden picture before snapping back with a bright smile.

“Ah yeah,” she laughed for a moment. “Yeah I can see Dev’s came from ya!” Seeing Sara blinking in confusion, the orange mare continued. “Y’got the same kinda look about the both of ya. Both of ya’s remind me of him a lot. In all the good ways, y’understand!” Gina’s rapid fire attempts at reconciliation and small talk only deepened the baffled expression on the stout mare.

“Gina!” Luna snapped, bringing her attention back to the issue at hoof. “Devon, what didest thou see? How art thou so sure he shall be fine?”

“Mmmwell…” the orange unicorn rolled her eyes. “I caught a look just ‘fore he got off with Celestia, and I got a good feelin’. Hey,” she guffawed. “I was in his horseshoes once, an’ he’s doin’ WAY better than I ever did!” Gina beamed triumphantly. “An’ come on, he’s faced down ponies way angrier than Celestia! He’ll be just fine.”

Luna sighed, she had hoped for something more substantial, at least more than Gina’s hunch and gut instinct on Devon’s fate. She could only watch as yet more beignets vanished into the unicorn’s mouth, forced to be content with more ambiguity. More worry. Without thinking, Luna found her foreleg grinding over the silver quill around her neck.

“And to answer yer last question,” Gina added between bites. “The guard and I are workin’ on our own. We weren’t able to catch up to that creep ‘fore he got to Celestia, but I reckon ya knew that one already.”

“Aye...we figured from the way he gleamed with victory…” Luna muttered, turning her gaze to the far end of the donut shop. Without any hint of subtlety, Second Captain Stormblade paced near the door that Celestia and Devon vanished behind, too cowed with fear to dare approach Luna alone, yet still delighting in an impending victory for his bruised ego and dashed ambitions.

“That guard, Jetwing or Jetstring or something, we’re makin’ sure that he doesn’t get too far,” Gina explained, pausing her feasting to speak fully. “If we just pounce on him right now, that’ll probably make it seem kinda bad for Dev’s.” The orange mare gave a pouting face, “I wanted to just kick him all the way outta the city, but we kinda have to be heh...patient. So we’re just gonna take our time, an’ make a move to stop him once Celestia an’ Dev’s get back.”

“Gina, for thee to embrace patience and a plan…” Luna murmured, torn between admiration and bewilderment at the mare’s adherence to a plan that curbed her wild impulses.

“I know, right? It’s killing me,” Gina muttered grimly. “But if we’re doin’ what we can to help Dev’s out, I gotta swallow this one.” Settling in the booth, she scooped up another hoof of sugary dough. “But don’t think I’m lettin’ him off the hook. These are his way of payin’ me back for it, otherwise I’d be kickin’.” Gina gave Luna a firm nod of solidarity before returning venting her frustration on pastry.

“But of course,” Luna groaned, rolling her eyes and feeling a small smile return to her face. Worry still clung to every thought she had, but at least she could take a small measure of strength from Gina.

“So...iffen both of you are finished,” Sara finally piped up. “Can one of ya explain how both of ya know my Dev’n?”

“Oh! Oh! Can I start?” Gina piped up with a sudden rush of glee. “Please let me start, Lulu!”

“Lulu?” Luna balked. “Nopony ever calls me-”

“Anyway!” Gina giggled, completely breezing past the comment. “So I ran into Dev’s way deep under Canterlot if ya’d buy that…” And without further ado, the orange mare was off, retelling their story with a gusto and bravado that Luna did not expect. Listening to the unicorn’s recollections relaxed the Princess slightly. She was not fully herself in those tunnels and dungeons, yet in Gina’s telling of her view, Luna found comfort in it. Her hoof returned to the pendant, twirling it around her fetlock as relaxation and calm struggled to take root. If even Gina could find the wherewithal to calm herself for Devon’s sake, Luna could as well.

It took all of Luna’s willpower not to simply follow Celestia and shout down her desire to meet him alone, and every minute that passed without either of their return spurred her harder and harder to change it.

Thou art a colossal fool, Devon.

She let him go to face his fate alone. But in letting him go, she showed a deeper trust, a deeper commitment. Luna trusted Devon to not disappear, to do the right thing. Just as Devon expressed his connection to Luna by allowing her to be free to make her choice, she too allowed him to choose how to handle this encounter. It was the choice of a noble fool, but it was his choice. Nopony, no force, coerced him into it,and he would own his choice.

But thou art my fool.

Luna went for another bite of beignet and found the sweet flavor again.

I am waiting for thee.

* * * * *

“Very well,” the Princess conceded. “You’ve shown wisdom to this matter before, and I am convinced that you are no threat to Canterlot, or my sister.” Devon could finally breathe normally, his relief showing in a rush of exhalation. “I will take possession of the gauntlet, and Luna shall be entrusted with the pendant.” She evened her tone. “I’m not certain of your idea to...listen in on the stars, but your talent should be there in case something arises. I’d be more happier and more comfortable with you lending us aid and warning than it catching us by surprise.”

“Phew…” the unicorn made no effort to hide it as his muscles finally relaxed and his mind eased slightly away from the icy resolution of facing down terminal judgment. Of course, he still would need to face the stars in the future, but for the time being, he landed safely. Fate had thrown his life to the wind mere days ago, and though battered and nearly broken, the unicorn endured and held out. Finally, he could relax slightly and put his mind to more pleasant thoughts an-

“But I have some other concerns that require your insight.”

Shoot. So close and yet so far.

“Like what, Princess?” Devon asked, his tone hiding the sudden surge of nerves and wondering just what she meant. Did his desire to act as a monitor of the stars land him in some kind of new role? Did Stormblade make up some other story? All of those questions were made all the more agonizing when they came hand in hand with Celestia’s relaxed tone, yet intent and focused eyes.

“Well, on a more practical note, Devon,” the Princess began. “those tunnels beneath the Canterlot Archive. You’ve been in them for the first time in many centuries. Are they still dangerous?”

Devon blinked at the oddity of the question. “Well, some of the dangers are gone, sure, but it isn’t any place a smart pony would just want to wander down into...why?” Sure, they had sprung most of the traps, and the dragon was long gone, but that mirror still haunted the depths, and far too many pitfalls into molten rock deep beneath the earth.

“Oh, quite simple.” Celestia’s vibrant tone returned quickly now, seemingly matching the relief felt by Devon. “It certainly is not something that should go unexplored, and if I am to send ponies down there to recover the history contained within, I would imagine that your expertise could be a valuable resource to keep them safe.”

“Oh, is that it?” the charcoal unicorn asked, tone brightening. While he would never admit it, Devon feared some underhoofed curve, a final twist of fate to completely turn things around again. “When you start doing that, I’ll be happy to give as much advice as I possibly can. In fact,” the bookkeeper added in a surge of optimistic relief, “if there’s anything else you might need for it, feel free to ask. There’s a lot of history down there, and a great library full of books that haven’t been seen in generations and-”

“I was hoping you’d say something like that!”

“What do you…”

“If Canterlot is going to explore this newly rediscovered underground, I’ll need a team of some of the best explorers and historians I can get my hooves on. You’ll do wonderfully helping put that group together.”

“I mean I-”

“It’s Hearth’s Warming, so go ahead and take some time off, but I’d like to meet again to speak with you about organizing an expedition. Please see me when you get a chance, I’ll make sure to make a little room in my day for you, whenever you can make it work.”

“Are you really sure?” Devon blurted. Mere moments ago, he worried that he might be banished to the moon or worse, and now the same Princess laid out an invitation to share his experienced with her. “I mean...after everything that happened up to that point. And then there’s…”

“There’s what, Devon?”

“The matter of your Second Captain. Stormblade.”

“Ah.” Princess Celestia’s hopeful tone faded as she revisited that point in her mind. Yet another loose end to be dealt with. “Him.” Drawing in a long breath, the Princess exhaled, letting the sound explain her frustration with the situation. “He’s the one who put you in the state. And he would seek to indict you further by misleading me.” Celestia was no fool, even after Stormblade came to her with his ‘warnings’ of a devious unicorn making a slave of Luna, centuries of dealing with other ponies made her wise to these kinds of ploys. He was not the first, not even the first officer of the guard, to fabricate danger to suit their own ends. But with the events of the tower and statue garden, who else to rely on by her Second Captain? All it took was one look at the bruised and battered stallion before her, pushed down into honesty by his trials and seeking no gain, to remind Celestia of honesty.

As soon as Stormblade made his report to Celestia, he did not return to his duty, or even meld back into the gala. Instead, he lingered, badgering the Princess to act sooner on his advice, or for him to be there when it happened. Even those without Celestia’s wisdom and experience could see him preening, priming himself for a victory. Despite all of his oaths to serve Canterlot and its citizens, the Second Captain’s actions spoke loudly of his service first and foremost to a ravenous ambition and ego.

“I regret his selection,” Celestia sighed. “But I wished for him to have a chance. Everypony should have the opportunity to prove themselves, no matter the way that ends up being.” Turning, the Princess gazed out over the wintry swirls of snow that settled over the city. “I suppose that is the risk I take by allowing others that chance. But in giving him the opportunity, I fear that Stormblade used my trust to pursue his selfish goals and left you as a victim of it.” Celestia’s head rotated, one pink eye meeting Devon’s orange pair, piercing even in such a passing glance. “When I pressed him for more information about what he accused you of, he simply told me that there was not enough time, and that I needed to act quickly and not to think about it.”

In a strange way, Devon empathized with his attacker. After all, were they not both pursuing the same goal in their own way? Could he blame him for doing anything it takes to make his dreams come true? Looking down, he gave voice to his thoughts. “I wasn’t really his ‘victim’, Princess,” he explained quietly. “To him, I was just a tool, something he could use to get what he was really after.” Celestia turned, her mouth opening in question, but he pressed on before she could speak. “If he had his way, he’d be dancing Hearth’s Warming away with Princess Luna, and she’d have no choice, and no way of knowing she even had a choice. Would have been just me handing her over to-”

“Devon?” Celestia interjected as she fully faced him. Behind her eyes, the unicorn watched as her thoughts rattled and finally starting to see the complete picture. “You...you feel more deeply for my sister than you let on, don’t you?” The Princesses’ expression mixed subtle amusement with a new sense of protectiveness.

Devon winced. In his mind, he had just avoided one kind of punishment for his deeds, but now the next dreadful judgment was coming straight his way. However, exhaustion worked into his very core, weakening his willpower and ability to obfuscate only honesty existed. Even if he wanted to play off his feelings as less than they were, his mind would no longer abide another falsehood, or another misleading trail. This road had gone on long enough, it’s time to make the risk.

For her.

“I do, Princess,” he confessed. “I really, really do think she’s the best mare in Equestria.” As before in the archive, the flowered prose from before was gone, all he had were his feelings, all he needed were his base feelings. “The stars they...” he hesitated at letting Celestia know such a truth, but he was too far in now to pull back. “The stars offered her to me, several times over the past few days. I’d get her if I just went with their plans. They even,” he shuddered at the memory of how much he bought into it, “had Luna bound to me for a while. It was like everything I thought was the only thing she wanted and nothing else mattered.” Bitter memories of the library, moments of bliss irrevocably tainted by the realization that they were never shared, and were the selfish fantasies of one unicorn. “It could have been everything I wanted.”

“And you refused? But she’s the mare of your dreams,” Celestia asked, taken aback both at the force of will on display, and the depraved angle with which the stars would attempt to manipulate a pony. “Like you said, there would have been no way for anypony, even me, to know about it, in fact I’d be just as affected as Luna. Everything I did would be to help it grow and blossom.”

Devon nodded. “Exactly, Princess. It wasn’t right to force it. It wasn’t right for Luna, it wasn’t right for you, it wasn’t right even for me.”

“But aren’t your own dreams what you want?”

“Oh goodness no!” Devon exclaimed. “Well, yes, but…” He hesitated, struggling to put it into proper words. “Imagine living in a world where you could have anything you wanted,” he couldn’t believe he was using this analogy for Princess Celestia, “and everypony was happy to give it to you. But what if you knew that the only reason you’re getting it is because you forced them into it. Forced them so subtly that they aren’t even aware of it. I couldn’t live with that kind of knowledge. I’d be the only one who knew it was not genuine.”

Closing her eyes, the alabaster alicorn tried to imagine the position. Even from her seat of power and leadership, Celestia always made every effort to earn the loyalty and affection of her subjects. She had a great responsibility to lead and teach them, but she would never force anypony to adore her. “I think I understand, Devon. That would be a nightmare. It is much better to earn your place then to have it given.”

The charcoal unicorn smiled. “Everything goes both ways. If you love somepony and they don’t love you back, it just won’t work. I want to be with Luna, Celestia, I want to be with her more than anything in the world. But I want her to want want me there as well, not just be forced into it by the stars, or fate or by thinking she owes me. Or even by this whole…” he flailed his foreleg in the direction of the gauntlet, “this whole adventure. Luna doesn’t owe me anything for any of it.” Turning, the unicorn looked down at the Palace beneath their perch, the lights of the dance hall leaking out through skylights and windows. “Whatever happens, I’ll be happy with it. Luna deserves it.”

Celestia was silent, contemplative for a long minute before she strode towards Devon, joining him in contemplating the gala beanth. “If that’s the case,” she mused. “This would have been a wonderfully storybook night for you.” Drawing in a deep breath of frosty winter air, she smiled down at the unicorn. “All it would need is ‘and they lived happily ever after’ and it’d be perfect.”

“Oh, definitely,” Devon agreed without hesitation. What he would give for a chance to stun Canterlot by escorting Luna onto the gala dance floor. “But there’s more to love than the climax. You miss all the good parts if you just rush to the big dramatic moments.” He let out a wistful sigh. “But you know, I’ve learned that it can’t always be the storybook ending because I don’t want this to be an ending...I want it to be a beginning with her. Big difference there. I suppose there’ll be another Hearth’s Warming, huh.”

“Perhaps, but…” The Princess turned to him and before he could speak again, closed the small gap between them in a series of stern, assertive steps. As she loomed over Devon, Celestia’s horn ignited to magical life.

Uh oh.

“Hey wha-”

With a single sweep of her horn, Celestia pressed down onto Devon’s forehead. To the dark unicorn, everything was lost in a blossom of light and warmth. He tensed, certain to feel the eternal casing of stone within moments, but just as suddenly as he was blinded by the light, his vision returned and Celestia was smiling at him, satisfied. Dazzled, he started to life one of his legs, mostly to see if he was turning into a statue, but to his surprise, it lifted smoothly. And without pain.

“It may be too late for the storybook ending,” Celestia said, “but if you are going to make any kind of beginning the gala, it’d be a shame if you were limping and worrying about your pelt and shoulder.” Blinking in confusion, Devon lifted a foreleg and rubbed it over where holes in his pelt used to be and found new fur. Likewise, the bruise was gone, and his shoulder felt strong and fresh again. Looking back to Celestia, all Devon found was a small, encouraging smile of unspoken approval and satisfaction. “This is your moment, Devon. I feel like you’ve been through enough and I’ll skip the big sister, I think you know that line.” Celestia giggled. Devon did not need to be told what the next move was and turned towards the gala doors.

“Devon!” Celestia’s voice brought him up short. “One last thing.”

Striding towards his frozen form, Celestia lit her horn again. “Please hold still.” The Princess dipped her head again, lightly touching first one side of his neck, and then the other. “Perfect,” she said with a growing smirk. No longer was she having to be the wise and regal leader, and for at least this moment, Celestia got to indulge in the joy of sisterhood. Confused, Devon could only stare for a moment before a scent lifted up into his nostrils.

“Apple cinnamon?” he asked, looking up to the Princess for guidance and explanation.

“It’s Luna’s favorite scent,” she said breezily. Seeing his deepening confusion, Celestia indulged in a giggle. “That’s my one favor to you. Though I think she’ll know it was from me. It isn’t very often I get to enjoy giving my sister a little jab.” Behind all of the royal countenance, the wise leadership, there was still an older sister, immensely protective of her sibling but not above a good-natured tease or slipping a small privacy to a stallion seeking her affection.

“Thank you, Princess,” Devon murmured, his astonished gratitude forcing his voice into nearly a whisper.

“Thank yourself, Devon,” Celestia corrected. “You have earned this opportunity, but like you said, it is a beginning. And…” she added, “it’s something you better hurry to get. The gala is nearly over.” Flaring her wings, the Princess lifted off from the balcony. “I’m going to go ahead and tie up a loose end, correct a mistake of mine.” In a rush of movement and displaced air, Celestia was gone, replaced by a descending white streak headed for the gala far below. After only a moment of reflection, Devon turned for the door, wasting no time as his hooves kicked into a full out gallop.

* * * * *

From his position, Private Jetstream never lost sight of Stormblade. While his ad hoc partner stuck near Princess Luna, her focus rapidly went to the plate of fried dough. Without a snack of his own, all the pegasus could do was watch and observe the earth stallion as he mingled and spoke with the royal guard. Even after attacking another pony and being chased down, the audacity of the Second Captain stunned Jetstream, easily milling from one guard to another, giving pep talks and making small talk as if nothing were wrong. Of course, as he managed to speak to Princess Celestia first and get his case made before anypony else could speak, what did he have to worry about?

At least it wasn’t the main ballroom of the gala anymore. The donut shop was much easier to keep track of, and the Second Captain paced and floated around the same door that Celestia disappeared behind with that unicorn, giddily anticipating his opportunity to enact his flavor of self-serving justice on Canterlot. Leaning back against a tall window, Private Jetstream shivered as winter cold transferred into his body. Ignoring it with a shrug, he allowed his attention to turn to Princess Luna, seated with two unicorn mares. Even from across the room, he could see just how much of a struggle it was for Luna to maintain a calm conversation, as well as not glare daggers at Stormblade.

With every passing minute, the plan he whipped together seemed weaker and weaker. Stuck waiting for Stormblade to make a move, or for Celestia to arrive allowed his mind to wander. And when a tense mind wanders, mostly into how a plan might go wrong. Depending on Stormblade’s talk with the Princess, Jetstream may have to worry about saving his own skin, and convincing her that his was the right side. And should it come to that, new worries arose as if he could count on the orange mare for help, and if Celestia would believe him given the situation. Stormblade was a decorated officer, this mare cackled wildly to a private madness and for him impulsive would be a gross understatement. Not exactly the most convincing team to make a case for supporting his cause.

The pegasus turned his attention back to that door, worry breeding impatience. Apparently, Stormblade had similar thoughts as his prancing parade around the room ended, and now he stood conspicuously in front of the door, staring at it with eager expectation of his triumph.

Jangle...jangle…

Over the din of conversations and merriment, the constant jingle of medals added a subtle, stealthy percussion, even though the room was loud, Jetstream’s ears focused on the steady, incessant jingle. Like the drum of a hoof in an empty room, or a drip from a broken faucet, there was something utterly maddening in the simple sound.

Jangle…

Evidently, the pegasus was not alone in the irritation as a blur of cobalt movement drew his eye. Perhaps capitalizing on the Second Captain’s turned back, or driven to desperation by the ceaseless jingle, Princess Luna swept past the crowds, moving rapidly before the stallion could turn again and track her down and corner her. The Princess said nothing, barely even acknowledged any other ponies in the room as she took an opportunity to disappear into the ballroom, the only sign of her passage being a small wake of new gossip amongst the partygoers. Jetstream allowed himself a sigh of relief for her sake, and a moment of jealousy. At least Luna could escape and get out of here, and he had to keep ready to make his move the instant Princess Celestia showed.

“Hey everypony!” a magically amplified voice called from the ballroom. “This is your most excellent mistress of music, the one, the only and the incomporable DJ Pon-3 here! Hope all of you enjoyed the few hours of mareiachi, or at least the pony who needed it to be happy, because you sure got a lot of it!” Scattered applause leaked into the room, far less enthusiastic than the sharp approving whistle from one of the mares at Luna’s table. “Now I know all ya ponies are achin for some more jams, but we got time for two more tonight. So here is what we’re gonna do!” Jetstream sighed, his attention turning away from the voice from the dance hall as the voice continued.

“First up is our last real dance. So all of ya ponies out there wantin’ to make a Hearth’s Warming memory with your special somepony, well, my dancefloor’s the last chance you got if you wanna make it a real awesome ending of it!” In the donut shop, Jetstream closed his eyes and counted backwards…

Three...jangle…

Two...jangle…

One…

“Where did Princess Luna get to?!”

Called it. He didn’t even need to open his eyes to know that Stormblade had abandoned his vigil in front of the door to brazenly demand a dance from the Princess, and to so loudly proclaim his outrage at the knowledge that she was no longer where he had left her. As his gaze returned to the table, Jetstream observed the black stallion sputtering in front of the remaining mares, the smaller, older one clearly confused at his outburst while the orange unicorn, Jetstream’s companion, had a face that unashamedly struggled to keep the hooves restrained.

“I know you did something with her! Out with it!”

This next exclamation was punctuated by a heavy hoof slamming down onto the table, scattering the plates and silverware with a mighty clattering tumult. A tumult so dramatic that it obscured the sound of a door opening behind Stormblade. Even Jetstream failed to notice as he moved, tensing as he strengthened his resolve, not allowing the officer to mistreat another Canterlot citizen and get away with it. All he could focus on was getting there to help out, and not the other ponies nearby, whose attention first went to the scattering plates, then to an alabaster figure striding purposefully towards the table.

“How dare you ruin this! Admit defeat and I’ll let the spirit of Hearth’s Warming allow you a moment of reprieve!” Gina’s face morphed from orange to red at this time, cheeks puffing as a verbal tirade to rival Luna’s best was held back by the most intense show of willpower in Equestria’s history. “I even gave you a chance to enjoy a final Hearth’s Warming before judgement for you and your whole outfit.” Suddenly, the mare’s face shifted again, paling to white. “I suppose that is the price I pay for being too merciful to criminals. I wish you well, because I’m certain that this outburst will only make Princess Celestia more than happy to-”

“To what?”

With mouth still open, Stormblade turned slowly.

“Please continue,” Celestia said with a low, irritated tone. “I’m all ears.”

“Ha...well..habba...I was…” The officer stammered, stumbling over words as he once again scrambled to pass the blame, to find a quick escape from responsibility, or at the very least, draw attention away from his actions. “Princess Celestia! Th-thank goodness you’ve shown up! The unicorn mare who aided the villain who tried to enslave Luna is right here!” Brushing his foreleg over his medals, Stormblade put on his most smug sneer. “Just as I warned you!”

“Oh fer…” Gina groaned.

“Quickly!” the Second Captain leapt back to stand alongside Celestia, dropping into a bizarre combat stance. “Between our powers, even this devious mare stands no chance!” The alabaster Princesses’ only move in time with the stallion was a backwards roll of her eyes. “I’m eager to see how I stack up to a Princess when facing one of Equestria’s most devilish-”

“That’s more than enough,” Celestia spoke firmly. While she never used the bombastic Royal Voice anymore, Celestia had found ways to apply soft words and the force and meaning behind them to even greater effect. With four simple words, everypony ground to a halt, shocked into obedience and observant listening. “This is the mare?” she asked evenly, her voice only showing a sharp irritation, but not leanings.

“Of course, m’lady,” Stormblade bumbled into the conversation. “We need t-”

“And the other one?”

“Well I imagine she is some sort of collaborator, a pony just as greedy for pow-”

“‘ey!” Sara, never one to let dire circumstances stifle her voice. “Jus’ what are you blabberin’ about?! Think he mighta had one or twelve too many ciders!”

“Don’t listen to her lies!” Stormblade wailed. “You were here! She is associated with that Bookmark and she’ll-”

“She is responsible for-” The Princess began, eyes closing in a soft, but obvious sign of taxing patience.

“I knew it! I kn-”

“-for the organization and planning of this gala.” With a brief shake of her mane, the Princess of the Sun turned to Sara. “My deepest apologies, Miss Bookmark, there’s been a matter of slight confusion in the guard and I had hoped to sort this out before it got out all over the donut shop, but at least now that we’re all calm,” Celestia glared down at Stormblade, “we’ll handle any misgivings and can finish the gala in peace.”

“But Princess,” the officer bleated before Celestia’s eye opened, a baleful gaze centered directly on the shaking guard captain.

“I have had enough of your stammered explanations, Stormblade,” she began, internally relieved to vent her frustrations at long last. “If I recall your warnings correctly, this mare would be throwing the worst kind of magic at us by now.”

“She-”

“Her horn is cracked.”

“Ah, well…”

“You also promised me that she would summon a great lava dragon to level Canterlot if we attempted to even speak with her before capturing her.”

“Wait!” Gina interjected. “What?! Really?!” Her tone was unusually excited at the very image of it. “Hey, what else can I do? This is pretty cool!” Nopony could tell if her laughter was at Stormblade’s expense, at the giddy thought of actually doing that or if it simply spawned from the ether within her mind. “But I think I could do better, hyeh, I mean, how about instead of a lava dragon, I summon some kind of...lava train? Yeah!” Gina’s words came to a sudden halt when the Princess cleared her throat. “Oh...heh. Sorry.”

“Lieutenant Stormblade,” Celestia continued, squarely addressing the officer now. “If your idea of protecting Canterlot from great threats is harassing citizens who are merely trying to enjoy a gala, then I believe that you may need to step back slightly from your narrow view on the issue.” While normally, the Second Captain always had a word to deflect blame or press his advantage, silence overtook him like a heavy blanket. “After interviewing the unicorn that you claimed to be conspiring against Canterlot, I have concluded that he, in fact, has had no ill intent, and indeed provided a great help in helping me prevent this from occurring again.”

“You can’t be serious!” he blurted. “He’s...he’s keeping me from my…” Indignation and terror fought for dominance in the earth pony.

“I, and Canterlot, thank you greatly for your service and enthusiasm stepping forward to assist when Captain Shining Armor was away, but this behavior cannot be tolerated.” Taking a long breath, Princess Celestia lowered her head to even with Stormblade. “However, we can discuss the nature of your reassignment in the morning. We all have a gala to enjoy, but I think it is well past your time here, Lieuten- no...”

In response, all the officer could do was muster a small whimper from the back of his throat.

“Sergean...hmm...no.”

A single medal fell from Stormblade’s coat, its jangle ending abruptly when it slapped down onto the linoleum tile of the donut shop. “Private Stormblade.”

“Privat-” Celestia began, then smiled. “Sergeant Jetstream. Please take a few of the guards here and make sure that the Private makes it back to the barracks safely, and that he is comfortable.” For a moment, the Princess could not tell who was more shocked, Stormblade or Jetstream, but eventually she realized that neither would leave that state without a little encouragement. “Hurry up now, Sergeant,” she cooed warmly, “you don’t want to miss enjoying the last part of the gala, do you?”

“Yes ma’am!” Jetstream barked, then blinked. “Er...no ma’am! I...yes ma’am we’ll go and no ma’am I don’t!” Finally, the cyan pegasus’ mind had caught up with the events, and to his relief, the movements and duty of his training helped keep his cool. He could handle this, especially as the royal guard who spoke with him before joined him on either flank. While his focus returned, Jetstream saw the trembling form of Stormblade, emotion barely contained as he looked down at his medals, his pride. “Actually, your Highness,” Jetstream added as he approached the earth pony. “I think it’ll be best if I make sure that Stormblade is well all night.” Even with all his now former superior’s misdeeds against him, the pegasus felt a twinge of sympathy. He knew that look in the stallion, and he should stick with him, if nothing else to allow him to vent. “I think he may need it.”

“That is most kind of you, Sergeant. Please let me know if you need anything.”

“I think we’re good, Highness,” Jetstream confirmed, joining Stormblade at his side and lowering his tone. A silent corridor of ponies opened up as the guards walked the officer out, a strange combination of sympathy and scorn in their movements, except for the cyan leader, whose focus shifted fully to the black stallion. “C’mon, sir, let’s get you out of here.”

* * * * *

Even when threatened by giant statues, even when he held Luna and Canterlot’s fate in his hooves, Devon had never run this fast before. His heart soared with new strength and clarity as he rounded the last flight of stairs and barreled through the donut shop towards the gala. He could hear music, slow and simple songs for the end of the night providing a somber contrast to the blaring theme he entered on, where the exhausting partying had given way to sentiment and deep meaning. Rounding a corner, Devon skidded into the main gala hall and started desperately scanning the crowd and throngs. There was one shape he was looking for, and he hoped deeply that she was still there.

Oh come on...come on...where are you…

The unicorn sought any kind of height. She had to be here! Carried by momentum and a newly invigorated body, Devon sprinted for the the far side of the dance hall. While his mind burned with intensity, all around the charcoal bookkeeper, ponies clung softly to one another, each one in their own world of affection and bonding. The music, a soft, romantic tune, did nothing to ease the seething beat in Devon’s chest.

Every slow step of the dance, every synchronized movement of the dancers added to the impenetrable wall blocking his sight. Certainly, he could simply barrel through the middle of the dance, but Devon knew that ruining the dance for everypony else would do him no favors, so he skirted around another edge, eyes scanning the crowds on the margins. A massive surge of emotional music added further to the distractions as Devon turned another corner.

Luna please tell me you stuck around…just be...ah-HA!

With the second bend, he spotted the telltale shimmering cobalt mane near a far table. Devon’s hooves clattered and stumbled as he began sprinting to meet her, but as he drew near, he slowed and slowed again as he got a clearer view of the Princess of the Night. While she sat on the margins of the dance, her attention was not on the dancers, or even the gala as a whole, but on the small silver quill around her neck. What further brought him to a halt was the heavy look in her eyes.

Princess Luna could not help but admire her wisdom. What better spot to avoid an unwanted invitation to dance than the dance itself? Though loud and noisy, and still prone to draw attention, at least Luna felt secure for now, secure and alone with her worry. Gina’s optimistic view helped, but the Princess could not fully shake the concern, at least until a figure sat down in the corner of her vision, peripheral to her downward gaze. “Please,” she spoke softly, concern forcing her into a polite, but dismissive voice “we do not wish to be disturbed, please speakth with a guard if tho-”

“Hey.”

Devon smiled as he fully entered her view. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Thou shouldn’t have gone alone,” Luna murmured, unable to hide her own growing smile. “Thou left me to deal with Gina AND Stormblade alone.” Her smile cracked into a soft laugh. “And I thought thou wished me to be safe!” Like a rolling tide, relief washed through Luna, all of her concerns unwinding to see the unicorn safe. “Is my sister…? What did she speak to thee of?” As she spoke, the Princess lit her horn, wrapping the silver quill in cobalt magic before a hoof pressed it back down.

“Just clearing up a few loose ends, is all,” Devon explained. “It’s not the best way to give a gift, but the pendant is yours.”

“Mine?” Luna tilted her head, dissipating the magic around the charm and letting it fall back against her neck. “This treasure belongs to thy family though, it is what thou needeth to speak with the stars, is it not?”

Devon nodded. “It is. And that’s why you have it. We decided that there may be times I should listen to them, in case they try to change things again. But if I do,” his hoof rested against the silvery feather, “it will only be with your say-so. You know what they can do to a pony, and,” he pursed his lips in a shrug, “you would stop me if I started to put myself or anypony else in jeopardy. Can I trust you to do that?” While the plan seemed so perfect up on the balcony, he never fully considered if Princess Luna refused.

She was silent for a long moment. “To be honest, Devon, I hadn’t expected that question from thee. In truth, I was braced for another question entirely.” Turning her head, Luna gave a brief nod. “So long as thou dost keep the consequences in thy mind, and that thou dost not get lost in it, I shall be happy to help thee.”

“I promise, Luna.” The charcoal unicorn felt the last concern melt away. At long last, the worries of the pendant, the gauntlet and his gift with the stars had, at the very least, fell into a state where they were no longer an immediate danger. Naturally, it could change as he taught himself to scry the stars’ voices in the future, but so long as he observed and gave the astral bodies no leverage, he was confident that he could manage. And with Princess Luna at his back, Devon felt a surge of courage. He wouldn’t just manage his gift, he’d master it, and turn any malfunctions of fate around. The stars would never take another destiny away. “What was the other question you expected out of me, anyway?”

Across the ballroom, the couples dance finally wound down, soft music giving way to the trotting applause of the dancers and those who were on the sides. It was a wonderful choice of romantic ballad for those with dates to end their nights on. It was given all the more poignancy with the memorable night. Not only was it Hearth’s Warming, but the Hearth’s Warming where Luna returned again. As dancers moved away, all closer than the other, both Princess and bookkeeper watched romance in different stages of bloom. From the outer edges were those most comfortable, and towards the center, the boldest and most youthful of risky attempts.

Their words spent from earlier, Devon and Luna had watched the whole dance in something of a companionable silence, recognizing that they did not need to speak every word for now.

"Well?" Devon asked, an ear perked as his attention settled back on her face. What he found was a playful smirk, something he'd expect to see moments before he lost a game of cards. Freedom and reprive from worrying about fate did wonders for Princess Luna, and for the first time in many nights, he saw the witty, but friendly smirk crossing her lips. “What was I going to ask you?”

"We were waiting for thee to inviteth us to dance." Luna's grin grew as Devon's ears flinched and his face crunched into bashful embarrassment.

"Really? I..." Wait a minute. He narrowed his eyes and returned a grin of his own. "You were waiting for me to ASK...not to actually dance, right?" Luna's grin broke into a laugh. "I think I'm starting to get this now..." Devon added, his relaxation growing. “You’re terrible!”

"Well, if thou asked...we MAY have considered it. Thou must admiteth that t'would be like one of the tomes we shared earlier." Clearing her throat, the Princess adopted a poetic tone. “And they did dance into the night, earning the admiration and jealousy of all other ponies until yonder crowd did realize that the Princess still hath powdered sugar ‘pon her muzzle.”

Devon laughed. "And the unicorn and Princess flew off into the night, happily ever after, only stopping to pick up more beignets because they are amazing.” As his mirth faded, he shrugged. “Oh I know I should have asked, it would have been great, but it’s just a dance after all. There’ll always be another chance to make a good start.”

Before Luna could speak again, the lightning-maned unicorn dominating the music booth seized her microphone. "Alright everypon-!" A moment's pause as her excited voice caused the microphone to squeal with ear-piercing shrillness. "Alright everypony, last song, and you all know the drill. Fillies and colts only! Grown ups had their fun, now you get to cleaning up, or getting your hats! Now git!"

Tradition held that the last dance of the Hearth’s Warming gala be for the foals and fillies, mostly born as a way for the adults to say their goodbyes and collect their things while their children were more playing than dancing. Whatever its origins, it never lost its appeal and soon, the fillies who had boredly watched their parents dance, or suffered through the mareiachi, had their chance to cut loose. As the dance hall filled with the sounds of dozens of small hooves crowding towards the center of the room, Devon threw Luna another look. It was his smirk’s turn.

"Thou wouldn't dare...we see thy grin..."

"Princess Luna," Devon said, summoning up all of the pomp and formality he could while still on the verge of laughter at the unadulterated ludicrosity of their situation. "May I have this dance?"

Tonight was going to be a memorable beginning.

"This childish dance wrought with fillies? Is THIS thy storybook image, Mister Bookmark?" Luna tried her best to match his artificial formality, playing her part of an offended noble who would never consider lowering herself to such a crass, immature thing.

Devon turned his head towards the dance floor, then back to Luna. And he smiled.

"Nah. But it'll do just fine."

"Thou doth realize, our mockery unto thee will hitherto be hefty and eternal,” Luna warned.

Devon paused for a second, seeing a small gap forming between the gathering fillies and colts to the center of the ballroom, a triage of blue, pink, and yellow light converging into an inviting orb of illuminated floor. No other words ever rang so true as he uttered them in dedicated confidence.

"Worth it. In fact, I was hoping that would happen."

He extended his hoof and Luna hesitated. After such a struggle, they had found safety from the stars by dividing Devon’s gift between them. The unicorn found freedom and purpose by releasing his destiny from astral overlords. Luna shook the last vestiges of a thousand year old mistake, and had no force able to enslave her again. For both of them this time, it was a choice, with no compulsion pushing her away from him, no pulling her towards him. For the first time in their lives, in a way, they were free of the ever present spectre of a bonding fate. Free from some other force that drove them from their choices. Free from the chains of self-imposed false destiny.

Luna made her choice.

Hoof-in-hoof, they strode towards the gap in the dancing fillies. Instantly, the room buzzed with electric chatter and gossip, with the fillies and colts squealing in delight that a Princess was dancing with them, and adults left gobsmacked that a Princess was dancing with them! If Luna’s re-entry to the gala by means of the donut shop caused a stir, this would easily make that stir a meager memory. Young ponies leapt and bound around them as the pair made a stately course for the center of the twinkling ballroom, Devon pausing to allow Luna to take her place across from him.

“Sorry,” the unicorn smiled, his hoof extending as Luna passed, turning her around to face him. “But I don’t think I know this dance.”

“We knoweth just the thing, Devon,” Luna whispered as she rounded on him. Even though they had only shared the dance in distant, dreamlike memories and magic, the movements were smooth and natural. Luna placed one foreleg around Devon’s healed shoulder, and drew her other to cradle his cheek, just as they had done in the depths of the tome. Devon’s breath came up short as he felt her hoof tracing delicate, lazy patterns across his cheek. It was out of a dream, but clear and pure both in sensation and in its spirit. He could feel his heart fluttering and his hooves tightening in a similar grasp around Luna. The unicorn never expected Luna to return to this, as the memory of the first dance was so irretrievably corrupted. Meeting her turquoise eyes, Devon fell into their warmth. The stars ruined the last time they did this, but the Princess would not let it stand.

Unlike their trip into book, Devon could not rely on the imbued knowledge and skill, his steps and turns nowhere near in time with the song or Luna’s movements. To his relief, the unicorn found that even Luna apparently was out of practice as well. She was clearly better than he was, but not by much. But their dance was not about precise skill, or hitting every step, but the tender closeness and shared support. Around them, young ponies pranced and played in only the vaguest sense of rhythm, further out the adults could only watch as their Princess shared a slow dance with some unknown unicorn, in the middle of those fillies.

Devon pressed forward, finding his pace at last, and stepping into the dance with Luna. As one, the two rose onto their hind legs, forelegs wrapping around another to support the other. Rolling his head to the side, he found Luna’s hoof turning to cradle his face. Reflexively, the unicorn turned into it, grinding his cheek across her hoof before returning to meet her eyes. Neither spoke, words would have simply been a waste as mere music and movement did all the speaking for them. The steps were clumsy, the music was unfitting…

And the dance was perfect.

Just as the dance rounded past its climax and began to slow again, Luna’s nostrils flared. Even though he only caught it out of the corner of his eye, Devon still found the small motion as charming and beguiling as the first time he saw it. To his surprise, the Princess sputtered in a very mild surprise.

“Apple...cina...Celestia! I shalt...she didest...ack!” Luna’s cheeks seared into a soft shade of red as her nostrils flared once more, confirming the scent, much to her rushing heat.

“Is it...a probem?” Devon asked, an eyebrow raised in competing amusement and concern.

“N-nay...mine sister believeth that yonder scent doth work strongly on me.” Suddenly, her eyes snapped wider and locked onto Devon’s. “Didest...did she put this on thee?!” The accusatory tone betrayed a sudden heat, and she continued before he could even answer. “She did! I cannot believe mine own sister would…” Luna sobered quickly, and her smile returned. “And thou willingly allowed her to do this!”

“What?!” Devon gawped in good-natured shock, turning the dance around as a physical expression of the banter. “I hardly had a say in it, I am an innocent bystander!”

“A most likely tale, Mister Bookmark,” Luna countered, and with a flip of her wings, overtook Devon’s position and dipped him in her forelegs. “But stand by that line if thou wish. I shall simply enact a suitable vengeance ‘pon you both in time.”

“And I look forward to it,” Devon smirked, making a mental note to remember to find some apple cinnamon cologne before then. Once again, music and movement replaced conversation. Both could sense the impending conclusion of the song, and as if on cue, Princess and bookkeeper pressed fully into one another in a powerful embrace. Even as the music ebbed away, and the roar of cheering colts and fillies superseded the melody, the pair only minded one another at that point. The stars found no purchase against their choices, and no pony could undo their bonds, whatever the future of that connection may be.Devon closed his eyes, and if he focused, he could feel Luna’s heartbeat through her chest, matching his own nervous, but excited rhythm.

It was a perfect beginning.

Epilogue

Sunset blazed across the hills, presenting the writer with a vista that could not be beat. Even after a thousand years, she couldn’t believe that this singular view only improved. To her left, the sky burned with the myriad colors of the sunset, careless oranges and deep bands of pure crimson as the last vestiges of day burned and melted away. To her right, the night steadily rolled in, the deep blues and silvery light chasing away the sun and locking Equestria in the few moments where both could be experienced at the same time. Winter still clung to the trees and hills with frosty cloaks of white, but the poet didn’t mind the cold, at least for awhile. Plains of snow and ice reflected the budding moonlight, amplifying the shine until the world glowed with a soft silver light.

And, right in the center of her view, still glittering with lingering frost, Canterlot stood proudly. White towers and ziggurats curled lazily into the air and, like the sky itself, the lights of day faded to be replaced by the twinkling hints of light at night. While this panorama had changed very little since she last took it in, those lights were different as the city, instead of settling to sleep, took on a new life of its own.

Looking down at the immediate task, the poet’s eyes danced over the older work, disjointedly trying to figure out the starting point. For a moment, it was difficult to believe that things had changed so much over a few days that a mere roll of paper with words presented a challenge. It was enough to cause the writer to laugh into the night sky for a long minute. Taking only long enough to ignite a small gas lamp, the writer took up a quill and began to scratch words anew, not allowing the fading light to stop her. With a dip of tip in a small inkpot, the poet began scribing and scrawling.

Millennium's dusk, history takes shape;
A dawn of events that turn the landscape.
Banished the day with night's eternal drape,
When the stars conspired in her escape.

Overwhelming spells, ferocious and loose;
Possessed, lucky, or just magic abuse?
And what of that mare, the falling caboose?
Glass ceiling shatters, and more to deduce.

Two souls collide at the end of the day,
Beneath the Archives, a secret betrayed,
Determined reprieve, they’re driven away,
Fugitives of life through an opened way.

Even though only a few weeks had passed since the first disturbance, the first state breaking free to begin the stars’ gambit, it felt even more distant to the writer. In its own way, the story didn’t begin there, but a thousand years before that night when Princess of the Night struck her fateful bargain with fate. A single decision that rippled outward and affected the lives of everypony in Equestria in some small way, and a smaller group of ponies in a far more profound way.

The author paused in the middle of a line to ruminate. It was funny to the writer how much of fate was built on the decisions of others, even those one might never meet or see. Every fate is bound to countless others, and tied in ways that could not be grasped by anypony’s mind, even the Princesses in all of their wisdom. One change leads to another, and those changes cascaded into further changes.

The author’s head hurt. Delving too deeply into this line of thinking always brought that about, though at the same time, the writer knew full well that those thoughts were not uncommon amongst those who experienced the full fury of the stars when their plans were disrupted. Some of them adapted and overcame better than others.

Devon Bookmark found strength not only in his ironclad willpower, but in his renewed purpose and desire to defend the world he found himself in.Princesses Celestia and Luna looked to their wisdom and experience. Even Sergeant Jetstream, ignorant of the greater devices of the stars, sprung from their manipulations to find purpose in duty. The poet? The poet coped as best as possible, but did not hide from the fact that some damage was deep, so deep that it might never truly be healed. Comfortingly, the knowledge was not angering or embittering, but it gave the writer a goal, a point to set their course to, a course of their choosing.

Everypony would heal, the poet finally concluded with a satisfied smile. Nothing ever broke so bad as to be completely lost. After all, to accept something as irreparable would be to surrender before knowing it was finally over, to give up a chance at victory. That would never fly with the author. More reminiscing threatened to completely derail the author’s quill. Taking the time to adjust the lamp, the writer brought the quill pen dancing to life once again.

Running, missing, not wanting found?
The Captain cannot locate the crowned.
Through darkened caverns, two ponies bound
In truth below, receding underground.

Two quickly seeking two others to find.
Two seeking their past, two close behind.
One pulls on the chain, one suffers blind.
All secrets can hide, but none stay confined.

Astray and jaded by a past they drink,
Focus pulled faded, moods falter and sink.
Yet when lost in blues, just laugh and blink,
Clarity imbues in a blast of pink.

Night had finally settled in by the time the author looked up from the scroll, taking only the time to work out a growing strain in the neck and regard the scene again. By this hour, the sunset had been completely chased off, and the stars filled the sky again, drawing Equestria into a cobalt blanket of twinkling silver. Canterlot stood all the more brightly now, pale moonlight accenting the ivory towers and spires. Dozens of lit windows spoke of the city still hard at work even this late into the night, all the way up to the balcony of the Palace where the Princess of Night watched out over the dreams of Equestria.

Mirroring the lights of the city, high above the stars twinkled. Were it not for the experience and knowledge, the poet might have been driven to inspiration by their sight. One cost to everypony involved, it seemed, was that the night sky no longer was a place of peace and wonder, but a window where an unreachable maliciousness stared back at them, a constant looming threat to the folly of reckless wishing and meddling with forces beyond one’s comprehension. Lifting eyes to the stars, the author scowled, angry at the impotence of anger at fate itself. But the toothless anger gave way to the satisfaction that the stars probably shared the same emotion. HIgh atop their astral mountain, the stars were just as powerless as the poet to directly influence or change the stalemate. Their pawn in Devon had been placed in such a way that they could only speak to him, and had no ability to direct him.

Even though the author could guess at their intentions, it was impossible to know what the stars truly thought of all of this. They certainly were not talking to anypony but the charcoal unicorn. Gazing up at the night sky hanging above Equestria, the writer tried to understand the voices were most certainly there, but silent and removed. Were they still trapped in the same rage? Had they moved on to some new scheme? Did they plot revenge? For all the author knew, everything leading up to this point could have been nothing more than their next plot coming together. It would not be beyond the scope of beings to whom the life of a single pony was nothing more than a passing moment that would barely be noticed.

The writer sucked the tip of the quill as the unsettling question sought roots in the unsettling corners of thought and imagination. However, where before that thought may have spread like wildfire and filled the heart with doubt, this time there was no fear or concern. Unlike before, they would no longer stumble blindly, they understood the astral machinations.

Swallowed in treasure, they hold their place
Challenged by humbleness and showing grace.
False images within the mirror’s face
Find reflection with the gifts of space.

Where wind can't weather, the stone birds sleep.
Head under feather, slumbering heap.
Cobalt awakens, greets him in peeps.
Imprint unshaken, she's fallen too deep.

Pulled face first under, to crystalline trance.
Regains his thunder, a second chance.
Memory’s eyes foretell, hold guarded stance,
They rest a spell, in ethereal dance.

And part of that understanding was in how they separated the power. Of all the pieces, only the gauntlet received the kind of heavy guard and reverence that ancient powerful relics were expected to get, enshrined in the deepest vaults of Canterlot’s treasury and under the same stern guardianship as other valuables. The pendant, by contrast, did not disappear into obscurity. Since the magic only affected the Bookmarks, Princess Luna wore it regularly, her own presence and strength providing more than adequate protection for the artifact. While the pendant was only merely under her supervision, the Princess of the Night insisted on keeping it with her, both as a reminder to maintain her vigil, and to remind of of what the journey brought her.

Finally, the catalyst between the two treasures, Devon Bookmark, was not watched at all. No guards shadowed his movements and he never had to keep in touch for the sake of keeping his gift hidden. The charcoal unicorn simply lived on, never losing the respect or understanding of the power that the stars granted the unwilling colt so long ago, yet never letting that weight dominate his path. Like his lack of magic, it simply was, and growing tunnel vision on that one trait did not matter to him, or those important to him.

Naturally, he could not fully ignore it either. The poet was not present at the time, but when Devon performed his first ‘listening’ with the stars, evidently they were still angry. While the experience shook the unicorn greatly, he was not surprised by it either, realizing that facing the astral rage was part of understanding how he interacted with fate and how he read destiny. Plus, as Devon quickly reminded those concerned for his power after the first time he listened to fate again, he weathered the stars’ force once, and even if his willpower were to break, the unicron was powerless to act on their behalf.

The author knew it was not cause for complete relaxation, though. Firsthoof experience taught that the stars, even if they did not understand how ponies thought or felt, they did understand the concept of frail mortality, and how infinitely small a pony’s lifespan was in their perspective. If the stars wanted revenge, it might come centuries from now, or it might come tomorrow hidden so well that nopony could even recognize the danger before they were all under enslavement again. All it would take is some shortsighted need for a wish, or a right-minded but misguided attempt to fix the world for the better, to build new deals with the stars. The poet shuddered at the thought that Devon might see impending disasters coming from far away, yet could only watch, lest they be new trap set by fate.

But they all had to move forward now, every last one of them had to continue on, otherwise the stars would win by breaking their spirits. Disasters may come, the astral overlords may attempt their revenge, but like Devon, they could never break them. Comforted by the thought, the poet lowered the quill into the ink before pressing it back into the scroll.

A remaining deed, give life that she chose.
Lost love guaranteed, in strife to repose.
An aurora gleams, brings night to a close.
Freedom only dreams, moonlight only grows.

Breathing freedom due, in failure’s confines,
Hope should stand true, yet undermines.
Lost to the moon’s light, he missed all signs,
Memory takes flight, the sunrise shines.

Whispered cries with empty gaze,
Witnessed by starlight’s blaze.
Foalhoods lost in rapid phase,
By steps beyond the platinum haze.

Setting the quill down, the poet allowed the magic keeping the writing pace a moment to rest and refresh itself. Casting a glance to the wider world, the author realized that breaking the stars’ scheme set many destinies on new paths. Just like manipulating the strands of fate rippled to touch more and more lives, undoing the past mistakes allowed many other fates to turn to new paths, perhaps the paths that they were always meant to go on.

In the days following the battle, the newly-titled Sergeant Jetstream had taken more than his fair piece of fame and attention. While the adulation from the population at large came not from his assistance to Devon, but his heroism when the statue garden attacked the city, Celestia understood the deeper significance of his involvement. Not all heroes need bedeck themselves in medals and honors, and Jetstream asked for none of the praise, it was all part of the job, both as a guardspony and as a citizen of Equestria. The author had not seen much of him since the gala, their lives diverting radically, though nopony near the city could escape the news of the rookie guard who stepped up in the face of insurmountable odds, and whose success translated into dozens of requests for new officers all across Equestria. The poet did not remember where, but with Shining Armor’s blessing, Sergeant Jetstream as well as Private Stormblade, embarked on an airship to Baltimare, eagerly expected by the nobility of Horseshoe Bay.

The earth pony officer’s path, too, twisted and wove. Despite his ravenous and destructive ambition, it was Jetstream who stepped forward to maintain his former commander’s ego. By that time, shame and discovery finally caught up with him, but stubborn pride did not allow him to break. But the cyan pegasus understood him better than anypony else, insisting that allowing him to accompany him to Baltimare would remove him from his disgrace and give the earth pony a new chance.

Far apart from the bombastic triumph of the guardspony, Ghasen Bookmark preferred a very different form of reflective isolation than what the poet decided on. Much like the author, there was a great span of years where even the notion of freedom was an exotic ideal, something to dream about. Yet, Ghasen did not shy away from culpability in the incident. Unlike the descendant Bookmark, he fell under the sway of the stars, a self-serving wish dooming him and his bloodline to an eternity of servitude. While his actions may have come as a result of blackmail and exploitation, he insisted on taking on as much responsibility as Celestia would allow him to take, he readily, maybe even happily, retreated into the dusty margins of Canterlot, only emerging from time to time to advise Devon and aid in the interpretation of the stars’ words. But the poet never saw Ghasen, and indeed, preferred it that way.

Thoughts of Ghasen caused a small rumble of discontent through the author. They did not burn or sting as badly as before, as knowledge of what happened to him granted a level of logical understanding. But it was not enough to undo the hurt of their shared past within the writer’s heart. Maybe someday, they might speak again, but both of them had many long beginnings and redemptions to face before that day came and despite never speaking, both understood that on some primordial level. Sometime, but not now.

Conflicts within, memories storm,
Icy kinship that once was warm.
A desperate gambit to perform,
Harmony sincerest lost to reform

Within his reach, his luck improves,
A window opens, mother approves.
Numbed in body, yet he still moves,
Dropping lifeless in cobalt hooves.

Subdued of thought, devoid in word.
The nocturne plays, but isn’t heard.
In silent comfort, world blurred,
The moonflower, and hummingbird.

A flash of movement drew the poet’s attention away from the parchment once again. Barely perceptible in the murky night sky, the sleek shape of Princess Luna’s chariot drew out from Canterlot Palace, a streak of cobalt against the black and star-studded sky. Pausing from writing, the author’s eyes followed the languid course of the cart as it cut through the skies. Even though it was impossible to tell from the distance, the author enjoyed guessing the purpose of the late-night ride. Business seemed unlikely at this hour, though from what the author understood, there was almost always a pony in the newly unearthed Archives, scraping enthusiastically for the latest bit of lost understanding or history.

Perhaps the nightly ride was for pleasure. Perhaps she wasn’t alone in the royal chariot, or as it drifted towards the Archive, perhaps the visit was to that historian was another one of their little escapes. Like everything else in the entire affair, the dance at Hearth’s Warming did not escape the public eye, and soon both Princess and Bookmark found themselves overwhelmed with inquisitive reporters, digging for meaning in the gesture between the two, and that any answer would only fuel more speculation and inquiry. Even though they were no longer being hounded by the stars, it seemed that neither of them were in a hurry to give up their little hideaways, their escapes.

In the times since that the author spoke to Devon, the unicorn had never shown such joy. It was more than just his newfound bonds. It was more than his position allowing his passions to thrive anew. The bliss came from the rare state of having one’s life on course for the first time in decades. The stars sought to take a colt and bend him, mold him into their agent of manipulation and division. Astral bodies chose a child with no sense of understanding to bear the weight of equal parts gift and curse. And they had nearly destroyed him and his world in pursuing that goal without understanding. But the unicorn triumphed and reclaimed not only his fate, but the fate of all those the stars would twist to their ends.

Likewise, Luna reported much of the same. It was as if a titanic weight had been lifted, but a weight that was so subtle and pervasive that its presence was only known by the weightlessness of its absence. Of course, little directly changed in Luna’s life. She still ruled the night with polished regality, still drifted into the dreams of her subjects to offer wisdom and guidance and still shared power with her sister. But, as the author smirked, her routine was not completely unchanged. As if by clockwork, a small gas lantern lit in the Archive’s window, barely perceptible by the poet, a small signal that spoke volumes.

The poet felt the same as well, though far more directly. While for Luna and Devon, freedom from contracts existed as a peripheral sensation, for others the loss of the stars provided relished freedom, but also an unusual emptiness. It was as if a sense was taken away from the poet, not one they would ever wish to return for a moment, but it existed in the ghostly corners of memory. For a pony for him slavery under first another pony, and then the stars, such freedom carried fear. There was no more need to get by on reactions or snap decisions, for the first time in more than a millennium, the poet had a future to plan for.

Breaking away from introspection, the writer shook the compulsion to linger on such thoughts. It was late and work still needed completion. Seizing the quill, the author gazed critically at the scroll. Very close now, and the inkpot was nearly dry.

Two hearts loosed from running.
Two souls freed, yet twinning.
Unbowed by threads of fate spinning,
From one story's end, a new beginning.

Finally, the author set the quill down. Lifting it in an aura of magic, eyes danced over the lines to check them for any last errors. The ink ran poorly in some places, and it certainly was not a perfect work. But, as the author saw the cobalt chariot skim across the sky again, the need for perfection seemed less and less important. All that mattered was a good start, and understanding that perfection did not come from one action. Perfection was made over time, perhaps impossible to achieve, but always a goal.

“If those two could make that kind of thing work, I suppose I can let a few bad lines pass.”

Magic rolled the scroll up and the author relaxed backwards towards the modest cabin. With a huff of breath, the gas light flickered out and darkness swallowed the author in the doorway. With a grateful heart, the writer turned indoors, thankful that such a small domicile could be found on such notice, a gift of appreciation from Canterlot for their actions during the entire star affair. The peace and distance helped immeasurably with her struggles. The damage from a thousand year old decision left its scars, and the isolation allowed for both reflection in peace, and for the harder days to lash out with less ripples. Luna and Celestia’s visits helped, even though their offers of more intensive care were always politely declined.

What the poet needed most of all was time and reflection. Nothing could change the reality that the stars’ voice was forever removed from her. That was an undeniable fact. What was needed now was to understand the knowledge. “How’d ya put it, Dev’s? You should never do something until ya understand it.” Drawing in a deep breath, the poet held that thought close. Plunging into means to fix the cracks in her mind would not help until she could cope unless she understood why the fact was what it was. But there was time.

What did help bring a measure of unexpected peace, was writing. The author never had such patience for it before, but measuring out lines of poetry, matching rhymes and retelling the stories that were fresh to their mind, but new to others helped the author sort jumbled thoughts. Devon encouraged it, felt that it was a way for the author to understand the effects of such a journey. And despite all of the pride and stubborn resolve, the writer could not deny that the poems helped far more than any doctor or spell could at this point, and while they were not perfect, there was plenty of time and it was a fine beginning. Maybe down the line, the poet could branch out, there was a very new world before them now. New magic, new ponies and an Equestria that had moved on a thousand years.

“Just look at me now, I used ta throw trains around and now I write poems,” Gina finally allowed a small laugh escape, involuntary and disjointed as always, but slightly more controlled then they had ever been before. “Dev’s, I ow ya for that one. First I owe ya a kick fer it...and then I owe ya a plate of those beignets. Not sure which one I’ll give ya first.” Lighting her horn, the unicorn winced as the healing cracks still stung with a light spell. “You got yer beginnin’s and I got mine, but you better not be a stranger.” The orange mare paused inside her cabin, taking only long enough to add the tightly rolled scroll to a pile in a saddlebag, and return her quill and ink to a simple cabinet.

“Not a bad start,” she said to the night,talking to herself with only small chuckles. With care to not disturb her horn, Gina pulled herself onto the small couch she found and claimed as a bed, despite nicer offers from royalty and friends alike. Another imperfect starting point that allowed a perfect night’s sleep. “We’ll make more of it in time,” Gina yawned broadly as sleep settled into her mind. “ There’s always ‘nother day fer a new story to begin.”

Fin

Author's Note

Curran here, marking the final chapter for Starstruck. And honestly, I'm a little emotional about this.

I went back to my old notes and emails as to when exactly this whole thing began. December of 2011 was the approximate birth date of Devon Bookmark and the point where we started talking about this whole thing. I don't recall any one project of mine taking this long, nor do I recall one being as completely fulfilling and successful. I am infinitely grateful not only to Vest, but also to everyone here who supported this pipe dream of mine, both for telling us what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong. I'm also thankful for all of the artists who helped bring Starstruck to visual life. A lot of inspiration came from those pictures.

Speaking of which! I am a bit of an idiot and I completely forgot a piece of art for you guys:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15093073/Dev_storm_large.png

Can't believe I let that one slip by, but at least I'm making up for it now. If anyone wants art, please drop a line to the Curran account, and I'll see what I can do to get you larger resolution copies of the art. :3

But the question now...is what's next? I've never written anything of this length before, and the amount of confidence that Starstruck gave me is immense. And I fully plan on keeping this going. I'm not sure what Vest has in store for this account, but for myself, I will be producing new stories at my account. I'd really appreciate anyone interested to pop over there and keep an eye on that, because I am no stopping now. :)

Finally, and again, THANK YOU ALL for this awesome experience. I could not ask for a better, more supportive community. And now I'm all weepy.

Chapter 1: Her Escape

By Vest and Curran
Cover Illustration by Arctic-Sekai
Pre-Reading Assistance by Dracon Pyrothayan

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_____

Millennium's dusk, history takes shape;

A dawn of events that turn the landscape.

Banished the day with night's eternal drape,

When the stars conspired in her escape.

_____

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Chapter 1

Her Escape

Wake up.

The vast gray aether rippled in the sudden disturbance of sound. Normally still, featureless, expansive and unchanging, the lingering cloak of gray reverberated and swayed with the familiar voice’s sudden intrusion.

The muffled ambiance of an existence segregated from a physical plane weighed upon her with a long-since familiar comfort, a comfort that lurched with the interloping command that permeated through. It was a sensation that resonated with booming clarity, yet hardly registered to her as the very sensation of sound itself was so forgotten into the alien recesses of time.

Time.

The very essence of time, the illusion that was days and nights, had fallen so far back into the musty alcoves of memory that the concept of a sunrise, the hypothetical allusions that danced around the whimsical fantasy of calendars, the word “annual,” had lain stashed in the abandoned cubbies of unconscious recollections that somewhere in the forgotten years been replaced by the dull droning hum of her own tranquil thoughts... thoughts that drifted aimlessly within, ultimately seeping out to be devoured by the encompassing gray dominion that provided her only company.

The gray. Not the best when it came to companionship. But it was all she had. It was her everything - the recipient of her frustrations, the ear to her worries, the object of her bottled dreams and adulations... she didn’t know whether it grew on her as a close friend, or if all the acquaintances of past shrunk into forgotten obscurity. Didn’t matter now. Didn’t even matter when the very concept of “mattering” still held a sliver of relevance.

The gray expanse that laid beyond her mental cogniscience should have been a fitting cellmate for the existence they were flung into together, an existence that neither really asked for, that neither even knew they’d be in some sort of kinship. They had not been on speaking terms for a while. Even when she’d try to reach out to the foggy expanse, her projected thoughts into it would dissipate and fade, returning nothing more than the usual dull hum of their igneous prison.

The sudden intrusion of a voice, very similar to her own... well... the voice she thought she had... pierced through the infinite horizonless expanse with an extropian novelty. Not something she’d even contemplated in the past, certainly not her own thoughts... as such would seem impossible at this point. Wake up? Waking? She was incapable to considering it; the concept of “sleep” was but a bygone concept of an irrelevant past. For the weighted time of featureless existence had forced all nuances of thought out, the gray’s own penchant for the silent treatment acted to pave clean her mind, the timeline of memories now a barren glass pane; transparent, desolate, and deprived of any hoofholds to latch onto.

Anything of life before had fallen so far back in her recollected chronology, it had diminished well past the point of any relevance to be worth reflecting upon. Even that moment when she called out to the gray, asking if she would be able to go home while her memory could still draw a progressively alien sketch of what home even was... had fallen past that boundary into irrelevance. Life had become the very opposite of itself, a straightforward means of passing time and having no choice but to find comfort in the embrace of the ambivalent arms of the stone encasing perpetually melding them together like a vice.

Without choice, finding comfort was easy.

And without much else to detract, the comfort came in abundance.

The comfort came in the gray.

So when the interloping voice shot through the comfort, she nearly shrieked from the raw shock to the system... if shrieking was still within her physical capacities. She wasn’t sure she could even react at all in this confined state. Despite all her efforts to interrogate the gray, asking when she would feel, or if she was even feeling anything, or if everypony she knew was gone, or if the concept of going was but a mere illusion, if she would never go, if she was immortal, if she was a goddess, if she could create worlds, destroy them, destroy their’s... her run-on gale of inquiries devolved. Her remaining interactions with the expansive aether diminished into a line of questioning that, without a tangible existence there to truly keep her in proper check, delved further beyond the realms of sanity into a particular breed of... well she just liked to call it “exuberance.” Of course, that was also back in a time when the actual meaning of words were relevant, a time that has also slipped past the fateful boundary of memories paved over by the merciful song of the gray’s low, unchanging note.

Something unexpected to her swirled in her mind, something that she never thought was even possible, something that the gray seemed to make clear was unachievable. The vestigial triggers that miraculously still held on in her mind fired to life for the first time since their own existence traversed past the boundary of irrelevance. The triggers detected the sound, and even maintained the integrity to identify it as speech, as very commanding speech, as speech that was decorated in a voice of, but not from herself. The mind rolled and churned, agonizing within its own reflexive sputters to ignite to life for the express sake of making sense of what the command was even saying.

Yet before the warm tingling sensation of consciousness could coarse in rapid enough circuits to even begin some semblance of comprehension, the gray replied to her.

For the first time.

Not with words, but with a gesture that fired all senses within her mind. Joy. Paranoia. Fear. Adulation. Defeat. A wave of automatic emotion splashed against her as the gray responded to the intruding words as well and spoke with a cryptic white symbol now jetting across the aether’s featureless visage. With a vocal crack of hollow shattering, a searing arc like a lightning bolt... or what she at least remembered to be something resembling lightning... burst in front of her, reaching with gnarled tendrils through the infinite stone-washed plane. The sound of a hollow cracking dashed around inside her head, and ricocheted together into a cacophonous melody of sporadic sound as another white lightning bolt fired and remained fixed in place against the gray, beaming a blinding white ray of light outward. More bolts jettisoned from existing ones, overlapping, filling in between the cracks, bathing her in the alien, unsettling, terrifying visage of her beloved, the gray, falling away. Surrendering to it. With a final roar of rushing noise cascading forth in augmenting volume, her closest friend, her only friend, perished before her eyes.

Her eyes.

She had eyes.

She’d forgotten she had eyes.

Before she could cast a baleful stare at the blinding white assailant, a reaction she forgot eyes could even be used for, the white gradually fell away, leaving her behind, leaving her alone to face what battered corpse it had made of the gray. But peering down, where she expected to see her old silent companion trampled and mauled, the gray had manifested into something else.

Something terrifying.

A wild bouquet of verdant colors bombarded her eyes, colors whose names came rushing forth from beyond the relevancy border, carrying with them monikers of shapes, plants, rocks, and hooves. Hooves. Someone’s hooves. Alien and unbeknownst to her, the orange coat poking through disjointed holes expanding from the receding rock coating them, the hooves were mysteriously close and reacting to her mental impulses as if with some telepathic connection.

She’d forgotten she had hooves.

Overwhelmed and downtrodden by the immense gravity of so many new colors and shapes assaulting her, she combined her reunited revelations on a whim, and pressed her orange hooves against her eyes, trembling against them, hoping in the darkness a familiar visage would appear. Familiar, though, in the limited sense. Yet the gray didn’t come back, nor did the particular comfort within its ambivalence. Dropping the hooves dejectedly, she felt the arrangement of surrounding colors start to spin lazily before her, drifting away. Reeling back to the sudden spell of nausea enveloping her, she breathed in deep.

She breathed.

Lungs. She’d forgotten about those, too.

She peered her head upwards, trying to make sense of the mysterious... yet somehow familiar world that had materialized suddenly before her. Every photon absorbed through her irises exploded inside her head with a turbulent miasma of deja vu. The puzzle before her pieced together in timid bits. She twisted with another breath as a vapor of dry ashen powder intruded into her nostrils, and she heaved, choking on the dust. Her eyes watered in irritation, and with a shake of her head and a careful wipe with an orange hoof, looked again into the world as it started to squeeze together with gradually sharpening clarity.

A looming pillar of brown formed before her, dozens of sharp ragged arms reaching menacingly above. Wrought in her own fears, she planted her hooves behind in an attempt to drag herself away from the horrifying brown creature, writhing furiously to flee, to roll into hiding, to at least pull away to some form of safety. Out of options, she turned to the towering beast, forehooves clutched together in a defensive hold, her disoriented sentience imagining the gigantic horror shambling toward her. She opened her eyes to face it, and without a nuance of effort, another vestigial trigger fired in her brain. The world blinked into a pinched singularity before her as a panging sensation racked up her face, and a searing hot punch of raw energy seared through a long forgotten adornment. Her horn illuminated into a vibrant glow of fiery orange, and with a force that nearly snapped her neck, a reverberating explosion of concentrated energy narrowed into a shimmering beam of lemon-hued magic that cast the tree instantly into a blackened inferno.

She’d forgotten... she was a unicorn.

She flopped onto her back, attempting to roll from the wave of twirling embers careening toward her. She felt a stony crack as a narrow piece of rock snapped free from one of her forehooves, carrying with it a long slab of stone off the bottom of her hoof. From the disintegrating chunk of rock, a vanilla-stained piece of parchment fluttered upwards, caught in the wafting shockwave of the fiery explosion. Granite scales cracked and peeled away from the parchment, revealing an assortment of images, diagrams, text, and arrows in front of it. The statue of a draconequus. The constellations of a winter night. The sacred hymns of spellcasters of old... no doubt much older now. In the center of it all, revealed with a final wisp of gray dust twisting in a wind-driven helix, a sketch of five jewels in a ring... A rapidly drawn circle and arrow over a sixth jewel embedded in the middle.

She’d forgotten... she had a job to finish.

* * * * *

Night held court over the Canterlot Sculpture Garden with its routine passage of constellations and a receding song of the city life diminished beyond the hedge walls. The touring groups from schools had long gone, the lovers in late-night strolls were all departed, the life that complemented the lively inertia of daylight made way for the somber kiss of the night’s grasp. The hollow silence descended in a thick sheet, only to be disturbed by the rustling movement of the occasional patrolling guard gracing too close to a hedge’s branches. Yet even their fatigued march was as slow and listless as the tightly trimmed leaves swaying lazily through the placid night air. High above, the stars twinkled and sparkled in the endless black firmament of the night sky, constantly vigilant with their weak light. A vacant hush enveloped the twisting and turning pathways weaving rigorously in a maze-like spread, the intricately landscaped labyrinth only emitting a fatigued coo of breeze sleepily dragging through the platoon of flags surrounding the garden overhead.

Deep within the twisting pathways, a mound of dusty rubble wafted thin trails of errant soot where there once presided a statue of a relatively simple unicorn. It was the least regarded piece in the entire collection, far less ornate than the other sculptures around it. Where many others stood in defiance, bearing artifacts and symbols of grandiose history, this one unicorn was composed, head bowed slightly, eyes tightly closed, appearing quite unprepared and hastily posed. The only significance was that it was the first time a statue was included in the garden since it received the unconventional addition of a stone-chiseled representation of a tightly guarded demigod of chaos.

Or so the public believed it to be simply a creation of hoof, hammer, and chisel.

In the distance, casting the demigod’s statue in a rim of orange light, a blast of embers erupted into the sky. The flare and shockwave from an exploding tree carried up in a violent plume angrily to the stars above.

The flickering hues of fire sharpened into legible shapes through the stinging dryness of the ashen air. The unicorn’s vision finally began to focus, and her disoriented mind finally awakened more fully. However, unlike her sight, which slowly blended into images and long-forgotten sights, her mind struggled to reach such clarity.

She studied the parchment again, trying to get her rusty irises to stop dithering in schizophrenic fits and keep the crossing arrangements of shapes and colors together into a legible singularity.

She leaned a hoof against the leafy wall, resting her weight against it while attempting to fill her lungs with deep, futile breaths. The fiery glow against the leafy hedges coalesced, and in the hazy light, orange fur began to emerge from the dusty embers coating her. As the face emerged from the powdered soot, she let out a sharp gasp. Air did not flow in or out of the musty veil of particulates that had intruded down her trachea. The awakening unicorn coughed repeatedly until enough of the stone’s vapor had vacated to allow her a true breath, taken with vigor and dry gasping heaves, like she emerged from the sea after hours without a breath. Her eyes danced around in unfathomable terror before the stone wisps stopped jetting out her nostrils, and her poise collapsed in a heap.

Her body slowly remembered all the functions that life required, and with a shake of her blond mane, took the first clean breath she’d taken in...

... How long had it been...

Her mind struggled again, seeking for some sense and clarity that eluded her. The voice in her head was clear, strangely familiar, one she believed to be her own... it was the first voice she had heard for a timeless eternity. As the voice spoke, images bombarded her mind from a source other than her own remembrances; each image so impressed on her mind that directions, places, sights, orders all burned into her thoughts, consuming every neuron of attention.

The parchment called out with a dry flutter in the night’s breeze. The drawings continued to ping her recollections with each glance; drawings of the black-coated mare adorned like a Princess. The draconequus. The constellations. The ring of five jewels around a sixth embedded in the middle. The hastily sketched circle and arrow pointing at that seemingly important sixth jewel. With an intense glance at the markings she had made on the parchment... or at least, that she assumed she made in some fevered rush... the echoing voices of her conflicted past self traversed back into the realm of relevance.

The circle. The arrow. Those weren’t just reminders. They were commands. Orders. Hoof-written perogatives from herself. An assertion that what she had sought out to accomplish was more than justified, it was an alternative, a wild plan to save the country. How rapidly the old voices buffeted against her, the blurry visage of pacing nervously and conflicted over the same parchment an eternity ago, now a sensation that cut through the expanse of the gray to feel like an impassioned determination born just a couple nights previous.

A couple nights previous... when she made her decision, committed to the plan, and signed her soul to her nefarious task with a heavy sigh and the heavy scratch of a quill circling and pointing an arrow to that sixth jewel. It must have been years, but how many? Take away the almost infinite expanse of the gray, and it had to be just a couple nights.

It all started coming back. With the muscle memory of a rhythmic chant still circulating like a mechanical device within her larynx, it all washed before her in scattered arrays of shape and color. The haunting prayer crept onto the root of her tongue, a chant she had penned and soothed her troubled soul with as she first carried the accursed parchment, the very burden of her awful goal, so many years ago.

My stars above reigning the night,
Our darkened eyes yearn for your light.
Hold virtues true to give me might...
The wrongs I do... to do what's right.

She breathed in deep again, the pure night air absorbing and diffusing through her body with a nurturing hold around her lungs. She could feel the warmth of blood circulating once more, and her mind panged in throbbing rhythm with the memory projecting behind her tightly clenched eyes. Through the wispy veil of a dream-like trance, she saw the blurred orange trot of a pony traveling briskly through a night long-descended through past history. Herself. Her parchment. Her prayer.

My stars above reigning the night.

She marched in cadence to her own words, repeated and hummed in the depths of her throat as to be audible only to herself, with each step to... to...

Our darkened eyes yearn for your light.

... Before her mind’s shattered vault could yield any more details, there was just one last message accompanying a hazy blur of wafting cobalt in the darkened distance.

Hold virtues true to give me might... Come on, you can do it...

And then, a sputtering of syllables that sparked a ringing click of unexpected familiarity.

... Orangina.

How long has it been since...

You can do this.

... Since... she last heard her own...

You can do this, Orangina.

The memory flickered, the cobalt in the vision’s distance pulsed away, a cylinder of opalescent energy swirled toward her in a cascading wave; washing over her in a churning surge of wrenching, paralyzing light...

... The wrongs I do...

... Her muscles stiffening, seizing in a cold sting of numbing resilience, her eyesight clouding into a fading encroachment of...

... To do what’s right...

... The gray.

* * * * *

Strange how she still called it freedom.

“Hyah-hah-hah!” She bounded, flicking her rear hooves high into the air, singing whatever words happened to pass through her mind as they awakened from the recovering plane of memories eroded flat by the millenium trapped away. “The air, the trees!” She sang wildly off key, probably still waiting for the very concept of melody to jostle loose in that orange unicorn’s mind. “The dirt, du-dirt, di-dirty dirt, dirt, diiiirt!” Ah, there it is. Melody. “And pebbles, pebbles, peh-buh-buh-buh-buh-bbles!” Concept of talent, unfortunately, still buried pretty deep down.

While she frolicked, kicking the errant flecks of stone that still clung to her orange coat, the unicorn’s eyes traversed across the line of moonlit objects around her. The bushes. A statue. A cobblestone pathway looping through a line of hedges that twisted through, between, and into one another. Yet standing in the night’s pale blue haze, both her eyes and memories happened to grace across a particular statue standing profoundly over the layered walls of hedges.

All her senses gripped as a flood of sporadic words, images, and exclamations for action flickered incoherently across her eyes. For even in her newfound freedom, she could giddily buck away all the stone dust and sore muscles she wanted, but... well...

... Strange how she still called it freedom.

“We-heh-hello... ” the orange unicorn crowed as she stepped into the clearing. Looming above her, washed in a basking spread of open moonlight, the statue of a draconequus caught in a desperate flinch stood above her. His multiple appendages wrenched and flailed in the way their unique musculature barely let them. The slithering dragon-like body coiled backwards, cowering away from the splayed palms sheltering with a lion’s paw and an eagle claw. His own legs seemed to be in a perpetual state of retreat, the goat’s haunch pressing back in a timid step with an alligator leg pivoting ready to sprint.

Certainly not the most dignified position to be caught in. The way his stone-glazed eyes locked firmly between wide brows, but the pupils contracted to pinpoints, it would seem his “moment” occurred while facing the relentless barrage of a hundred vengeful rainbows.

She flattened out the parchment against the pedestal at the draconequus’ statue’s feet. That’s odd. Very odd, she thought. With a tilted glance, she spotted the placard adorning the statue’s base.

Discord.

Yes, it was him. Definitely him. But still, so very odd. She distinctly remembered... well, “distinctly” in the matter of better than anything else coming back to her... she distinctly remembered that when she sketched his statue before, he looked quite a bit different. Before her was the terrified expression of a panicked draconequus trying to flee, while her sketch showed the same draconequus with outstretched arms as if in the middle of song.

Huh.

The things she missed.

“Didn’t expect you to be part of the plan!” Her words stopped for a wracking fit of giggles and suppressed hysterics. Gina looped her foreleg around the shocked neck of the petrified draconequus, unafraid of the stigma and history that he represented. “Buuut if they say yer part of the plan, who’m I to tell em no?”

The draconequus responded with the usual lack of words, his flabbergasted expression remained unchanged.

“Pfft, yeah!” Gina laughed, jabbing the draconequus statue with a sweeping arc of a hoof. “I know, right!”

Snickering, the unicorn graced her fetlock against Discord’s stone hair and beard, mocking him as a fiery glow rippled out of her horn. With a pulse of shimmering noise, a matching fiery glow snaked around Discord’s statue. “Shh... I gotcha! Now don’t you flinch... ” she scolded the statue as her magic warped and flowed across it, each wave of force moving it a little more off its foundation, straining against the moorings sunk into the garden to keep it in place. Each rocking motion tensed them more and more, and each new waft of enveloping magic allowed the draconequus’ statue to give way a little more. “Hnnnygh! Oh come on!” she huffed, twisting and wrenching more erratically and violently at the grounded draconequus.

With an angled shift, the draconequus rose upwards in the fiery aura surrounding him. His face remained fixed in the same look of abject panic, not budging in the slightest.

“That’s enough of your complaining!” Gina countered to the statue. She groaned heavily as a second ring of pulsing yellow magic surrounded her horn. “Gyeeegh... just... a... little... more... !”

With a shuddering crack, the statue pulled free from its bindings, threatening to fall over before it fell into the shimmering bed of orange magic ready to cradle its descent.

“Jeez... ” She blew a heavy breath through tight lips, flicking the disheveled threads of her mane out of her eyes. “You... think you’d help out... a little... c’mon, pull your weight!” With her unsteady cargo floating alongside, the unicorn trotted through the other statues, stopping at nearly every one with a giggle as errant memories flushed through her. Memories she couldn’t place a hoof on, but just felt some odd satisfaction in seeing the predicament of what her mind raced to pinpoint as familiar faces. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a capacity that could be handled... ”Hynnnk!” ... in conjunction with hoisting along a large slab of draconequus-shaped rock beside her. Yet in some part of her mind, well beyond her shattered logic, each face carried with it some semblance of familiarity; carried with the mounting weight of the levitating Discord. Was it from memory? Was it even her own memory?

She laughed at nothing. “Lookin’ good!” She proclaimed at nothing. Her face contorted in irritation, shooting a glance upward. “What’re you doing here? No no... I got a date, see?” She growled at her own feet, then her eyes shot open, quickly darting an offended visage over her shoulder. “Discord! Why’d ya go and say somethin’ like THAT?”

“Stop!” This voice was not her own. Blinking, Gina turned to the Discord statue.

“Did you say something, Discord?”

“Stop right there! Canterlot Royal Guard!”

Turning towards the voice, Gina beheld the sight of another pony. Some distant fragment of memory told her it was an earth pony, and another disjointed shard recognized the symbols on his coat and armor-plated legs as the heraldry of Canterlot, of Princess Celestia. With a wince, that shard of memory exploded into sharp pain. A deep betrayal. Terror. Something terrible associated with that symbol and what it represented.

“Put the statue down and identify yourself!”

A nibbling notion of emotion melted away under a new fit of disjointed laughter. With a roar that thundered across the garden, the guard flung his hooves in a rapid-fire sprint and charged at her! With fluttering coat and jangling armor, the guard lowered his head and bounded straight at the unicorn!

She took a short step back, glancing from her peripheral vision to the draconequus. “What do you think I should tell him?” The draconequus responded in usual stoicism. “Oh?” Entwined in orange telekinetic magic, the statue tilted inward, bobbing as if speaking to her ear. “You want to do it?” Gina laughed, the statue righting himself beside her. “You’re a peach, Discord.”

Moments before the guard’s sprint reached her, a tremendous impact occurred as the magic cradle supporting Discord’s statue swung around, cracking the guard with the full measure of stone. Airborne and lurching back in a cacophony of jangling adornments, the force tossed him flopping backwards like a rag pony doll.

Cackling like mad, the unicorn pounced on the downed guard officer, laying into him with a giddy fury of hooves. Even prone and pinned, the guard managed to find leverage against her and, with a wrenching buck, tried to throw her off.

“Second Captain Stormblade!” more voices joined the calamity as the ruckus and combat spread outward.

“Get... off of me!” the officer snarled, but before his powerful hind legs could send the unicorn reeling, she inexplicably rolled off of him, completely engrossed in conversation with the statue.

“Oh come on,” she whimpered to the draconequus. “I was... alright alright! We’ll go!”

Suddenly ambivalent to the guard’s existence, the unicorn strode away, hefting the statue in her telekinesis like she was taking a stroll through the garden with her best oversized stone-laden friend. Behind her, guards rushed to the officer, stooping to help him up even as he protested.

“Don’t... rrf... worry about me, get after her!” he snarled, throwing the last guard off of him and hobbling to his hooves. He dusted himself off, a refrain of jangling medals accompanying each irritated brush of dirt off his uniform. “She’s getting away!” With a battle cry, the officer shoved away from the hastily assembled unit of guards and set off in pursuit. His head swam from the granite hammer blow that she caught him with; his vision blurred, but summoning up an oath of perseverance, he pressed on.

Through the dark shadows of the royal statue garden, he charged down the long hedge clad walkway towards the silhouette of the orange unicorn and the statue of Discord bobbing weightlessly beside her. He could measure the distance between them as he closed the gap.

Just five haunches away...

He was wary of her telekinesis now. Everything boiled down to training and his own warrior’s instinct. Just like he practiced a thousand times before.

Four haunches...

Watch the horn, always watch the horn. It was the first rule guards were taught when subduing a unicorn. As soon as the eyes left the horn, the fight was over. Every spell known to modern Canterlot had a tell, and the Lieutenant prided himself on his his utter mastery of how to counter them.

Three haunches...

With a raised eyebrow, the unicorn turned to face the guard. A grin tugged her lips up into a maniacal cackle.

Two haunches...

This was his place, his time to show his superiors what he was capable of. Second Captain Stormblade saw the opportunity to be the first earth pony head captain of the guard, and his ambition only swelled. Another medal for his collection.

One last haunch...

The unicorn’s horn flickered to new life. But it wasn’t a spell he recognized. It had the elements of spells that were well known, but they were all simple and broad, concepts rather than focused intention. Stormblade had but a moment to ponder before the telekinetic shockwave hit and turned his world into darkness and ringing bells, his last conscious sight being that of the cackling orange unicorn slipping past the last gate, her draconequus statue dancing whimsically beside her.

* * * * *

Ponyville was restless. News travels quickly in Equestria, and when the news is the mysterious disappearance of Discord at the hooves of a lunatic unicorn mere days ago, the nerves only grew more jagged and frazzled. Every citizen remembered Discord’s attack, the whilring psychosis that gripped Equestria and drove so many of her citizens into fits of betrayal. Even the Elements of Harmony, pillars of ponykind’s finest virtues, nearly toppled within the first day of Discord’s return. But with no other news other than that he was missing, ponies still attempted to live their lives, hoping that by keeping busy, the worst of the worrisome thoughts and concerns could be banished away.

While the town center was busy with the energy of poorly-withheld fear, near the edges of town, the fear was far more tangible. A yellow pegasus rushed to and from a cottage built near the Everfree Forest. Each trip brought a new armload of animals from outdoor pens and enclosures. A kennel of forest rabbits, a bucket of pythons, three wheelbarrows full of noisome bullfrogs and one snarling grizzly bear all were hurriedly loaded into the cottage. Above the frantic activity, a blue pegasus with a rainbow mane lazily looped down towards the yellow one.

“Fluttershy?”

“Oh no! It’s just awful, Rainbow Dash!” the frantic mare wailed. Please help!” she squeaked, immediately loading chickens into the befuddled blue pegasus mare. “I heard the terrible news and D-D-D-D-Discord is going to-t-t-t-to... ”

“Ack! Hey! Relax!” Even as she tried to calm her friend, the blue mare felt the weight of a growing load of agitated woodland creatures dragging her towards the grass. “Rrfk... can you calm down... ?” she tried to complain as eagles and hawks were loaded on top of the unwieldy load. “I’ll help you out... but just... ” with a heave, Rainbow Dash hauled the tangle of avians into the cottage, where they immediately exploded into the highest nooks and perches of the interior. “Just take a minute and breathe, will ya!?”

Placing her forelegs on Fluttershy’s shoulders, Rainbow Dash had to squeeze tight to stop her from the wild flight back and forth. Panting and wheezing, the yellow mare squirmed back and forth before the strong grip on her shoulders finally brought her back to reality.

“I-I’m sorry Rainbow Dash,” she whispered, looking meekly up at the blue mare. “I just heard that Discord... ”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard. That’s why I’m here.” Glad to finally be able to get to explain herself. “Twilight asked me to bring everypony to the library. We stopped him once, and whatever he’s up to again, we’re gonna be better prepared and not let him get at us alone. I wanted to make sure I got to you first.” The blue mare smiled, protectively rubbing her friend’s shoulders a few times before speaking again. “Now let’s get going.”

“Wait! I just had one last animal to get out of the pen... ” Fluttershy protested. “I’m really sorry, but I want to make sure they are all safe in case everything gets all terrible again and I-”

“Alright! We’ll get it,” Rainbow Dash interrupted, heading off the impending panic attack with a quick jab of hooves into shoulders. “Where is it?”

“Oh it’s Petunia, my new hermit crab, she is awfully shy and hid when I started. Oh we must hurry, I’m so worried about her!” Taking wing, the two pegasi glided easily towards the small stream that ran alongside the cottage. “She has a spiky gray shell and she is probably hiding right by the water.” As a pair, the two began to scour the water and banks.

“Hey! Over here!” Rainbow Dash called. “I think I got her... ” grabbing onto a cone of gray with her teeth, she tugged up once, expecting the shell to simply lift clean out of the mud. But it didn’t budge. Growling, she tightened her grip and tugged again for no change. “Fluttershy! Give me some help over here!” Replacing her tooth grip with her hooves, the blue pegasus tugged again and the gray cone stubbornly refused to move.

“Oh don’t be too hard on her, Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy whispered, adding her own hooves, though with more delicate petting than pulling.

“What kinda... rrrgh... crab is she?!” Rainbow huffed. “Okay... on three we both pull, alright?”

“I-I don’t know... ”

“One... ”

“Wait Rainbow Dash... ”

“Two... ”

“I really don’t think this is a good-”

“THREE!”

Driven with a powerful blast from her wings, Rainbow Dash heaved backwards and the gray cone finally burst from the mud, dragging a massive trail of something heavy and encrusted in mud. So massive was the load that it toppled both pegasi over into the mud with a tumble and groan. At the far end of the mass skittered a small hermit crab.

“Petunia! You’re okay!” Fluttershy squealed in delight, catching the small crab in her hooves and hugging it tightly to her chest.

“Yeah, great... ” Rainbow Dash muttered. “But what was she hiding with?” With a foreleg, she started scraping mud away from the grey cone she pulled at first. As chunks of brown dirt fell away, the twisted gray cone was joined by a spindly gray structure running alongside it in a pair of disjointedly parallel lines. They both terminated at a larger structure. Fluttershy joined Rainbow Dash in uncovering the object until they both looked upon stone eyes, locked in a stupefied expression that both ponies recognized immediately.

“DISCORD!”

With a pair of shrieks, the pair of pegasi shot away from the cottage towards the center of Ponyville, the wing power nearly pulling the leaves from the trees.

As the two streaks of blue and yellow disappeared, another shape moved in the mud around the stream. An orange horn sprouted out, followed by a grinning face.

“Oh woooow! That was totally great! Did ya SEE the looks on their faces!?” Flopping back into the mud, an orange unicorn was seized by convulsions of laughter until it suddenly morphed into a squeak of pain as an irate hermit crab asserted her territory.

* * * * *

“Now ya’ll are jus’ bein’ crazy!” a thick drawl stood out as a stark contrast to the refined setting. “Ya’ll are bundlin’ up dresses at a time like this! It’ll wait, gal!”

“Oh no no no NO! I simply cannot let every little thing divert me. I have an enormous deadline and this is for a very important client, darling!” The white unicorn spoke on the move, swirling between closets full of fabrics and line of bare pony mannequins. Stopping at each, she placed a swatch of colored fabric on one, a loose example of a hat on another.

“Look, Ah respect ya’ll stickin’ to the work an’ whatnot, but Twilight said tha all of us gotta get to the library on the double. An’ I ain’t leavin’ without ya!”

Twirling away from her mannequins, the unicorn rounded on the orange earth pony. “How brash! You can wait just a moment longer, Applejack! I’m not going to rush into a panic just because everypony else is in a panic!” With a huff, the unicorn added another wave of colors and cloths to the models. “Honestly, dear, nothing bad has happened yet! If that Discord ruffian were actually back, we’d have known about it by now, don’t you think?”

“Ah don’t know what ta think, Rarity, but Twi’s bein’ awful insistent on gettin’ us down to the library fer some kind of plannin’. Ah think we oughta at least hear her out. Cuz if it is somethin’ bad... well, ya’ll know that we’re the only ones who kin stop it.”

With a dramatic sight, Rarity turned fully to the earth pony. “Oh that’s just Twilight, dear. You know how she can be a total drama queen... ”

“Yer one to talk... ” murmured the orange mare. The unicorn shot her a scowl, but immediately let it change into a more relaxed smile as she drew a foreleg around the other mare’s shoulder and walked her towards the window of Carosel Boutique.

“Just look outside, dear! Do you see any of the usual tricks he did last time? It’s a fabulous day, and everypony is just trying to deal with some criminal on the loose! It’s nothing to worry about, dear!”

“Ah dunno... ” Applejack mused, “Ah’m tryin’ to think like that, but I got a awful feelin’ in mah gut about this whole thing. Somethin’ jus’ feels off, ya know?”

“Those are just nerves, darling!” Rarity giggled, head still facing Applejack as she walked back to the mannequins. “You need to get a massage again, that’ll sort you right out! I think the winter has got you all cooped up without much farm work to do. I can only imagine how stir crazy you must be!” She lifted a hat onto a model, unaware of the distinct orange color it had and moved on to the next. “Tell you what, I’ll clock off early today and we’ll both go for a spa evening, my treat!” She drifted a hat onto the head of the next mannequin, much higher than the others.

“Aw heck, Rarity, ya’ll are just butterin’ me up. It’s werkin’ mind you, but Ah still gotta... ”

“Oh just tell Twilight that I’ll be around shortly.”

“Gotta... ”

“Oh she’ll be fine about it, darling!”

“G-g-g-g-gotta... ”

“Whatever are you stuck on, Applejack?” Slowly, the orange mare raised a hoof to the last mannequin.

“It’s just one of my dummies, dear! Do you think the pattern is off?” She laughed breezily as she turned to adjust the hat. “Trust me! This will work... out... just... j-j-j-just... ” The hat fluttered off the head of a statue, not a mannequin. Even though the color did add a bit of a festive note to its appearance, it did not draw attention away from the shocked expression and piercing eyes of Discord. For a painfully long few seconds, the boutique was locked in complete silence and stillness. Neither pony dared move a muscle or utter a word, and Discord certainly was not moving or speaking.

“Applejack?” Rarity swallowed hard, eyes locked on the statue. “Do you think... we could just have our meeting with Twilight now?”

“Y-yeah... good plan, right behind ya’ll.” The two ponies, eyes locked on the statue of Discord posing as a mannequin, backed slowly out of the door, colliding on the way out before an outright sprint overtook both of them once they cleared the door. As it closed, the orange mannequin finally fell forward into a barrage of giggles and laughs.

“Oh! Oooooh!” Gina wailed in delirious pleasure. “She just... she just kept walking after she put the hats on us!” Peals of laughter tore through the boutique.

* * * * *

The only sound that permeated the Ponyville Library was a steady, rhythmic tapping as a purple unicorn wore a new trench into the hardwood floor. At the edges of the pacing ring sat a baby dragon and a befuddled pink pony, watching in silence like it were a spectator sport and silence was necessary.

“So... ” the pony whispered to the dragon, respectfully quiet as if watching an artist at work. “How long has she been doing this?”

“Since this morning. And she started yesterday afternoon when she heard about the statue. I think she slept once for a couple hours.”

“Wowwwww... .” she responded with hushed silence. “New record?”

“New record. And climbing.”

“I can hear you two,” the unicorn huffed. “And you aren’t helping. This is really serious! You know that the Discord statue going missing can’t be anything good.” Worry rippled across her face as she set to pacing again. Even without words, the spectators could see dozens of questions running tight circles through her mind.

“I just don’t get it!” the unicorn bemoaned. “I have doubled checked everything. If Discord was actually back I should know! Celestia should know! But all we know is the statue is gone!” She paused a moment in her pacing to grind her hooves down into the floor. “If it isn’t Discord, then what is it? If it is Discord, why didn’t we know?” Worry gave way to frustration, as a deep instinct felt danger, but the kind of danger that existed only in shadow and supposition. Fear of both taking action and doing nothing fought for dominance.

“Twilight,” the baby dragon finally spoke up in an attempt to bend calming reason to the hurricane of worry. “You’re getting wound up over this. I know it’s nothing good, but is this really anything we can do something about?”

“But we’re the only ones who could do anything if it goes as bad as it can!” A new barrage of worry.

“Aw come on, Twilight!” The pink pony finally chimed in. “Spike’s right, if you get sick with worry, you are gonna be sick when the bad stuff does happen! And then we’ll be in no shape to stop anything!” She looked about to continue before the unicorn’s pout and sigh caught her expression. Changing tact, she approached the unicorn and presses her head against her neck in a show of support. “C’mon Twilight, you can’t get all sadsack on us! We need you! And hey, what are the odds that it is actually Discord?”

As if on cue, the door to the library burst open, revealing four stunned faces, all struggling to speak first.

“D-D-D-D-D-!”

* * * * *

“Everypony calm down!” a voice broke through the frantic words and hasty interruptions, buying a temporary silence as five pairs of pony eyes, and one pair of dragon’s, turned to the purple unicorn. “We all have been seeing a lot of weird stuff, but if we just start going crazy, nothing is going to get solved!”

“But Tw-Tw-Twilight!” a yellow pegasus mare whimpered through the silence. “We a-a-a-all saw that Discord statue. If he is ba-back... ”

“If he is back... ”

“Now c’mawn Twi, Ah saw that statue too! He’s up to somethin’ terrible!” The orange mare pressed forward, backing Twilight towards the far wall of the library.

“It is all very stra-”

“And he was doing something fiendish in my boutique!” Now the white unicorn lunged into the conversation, aggrieved fear adding a sharp whine to her voice that could slice through wood.

“Yes, but... ”

“And in Fluttershy’s pond!” The rainbow-maned pegasus leapt over the crowd of ponies and yelled down at Twilight, adding a ceiling to the closing wall of bodies and faces all clamoring for guidance.

“I-”

“And in my boutique!” Same sharp unicorn whine, just as grating to the ears as the first time. Possibly more so.

Panic began to sweep over the group again. With a deep breath, the unicorn slammed her hooves down, rattling the tables and stacks of books. “QUIET!” boomed out through the library, immediately silencing all other ponies, except for one pink earth pony.

“And then I said ‘no thank you, I already ate’ and they said... oh. Sorry.”

Closing her eyes, the purple unicorn started to explain. “I know we’ve been seeing really weird things, but this just doesn’t add up. If he was actually back, why is he just a statue? Why isn’t he going after Equestria like he did before. He’s chaos! This just doesn’t fit, unless all he wants to do is scare us... ” The logic twisted and warped around her mind. Like a mismatched set of pegs, the facts imperfectly fit with what she knew of Discord. Chaos was happening, but it was not in grand scale. It was impermanent, without teeth or weight. Twilight could feel her train of thought flying off the rails, diving into bizarre tangents and explanations, each one more dire and inconceivable as the last.

“Maybe it is some weird pony cult to Discord! Some group of ponies that want all this chaos, and want to bring him back! And... and... they stole the statue in some plan to bring him back with some long lost magic!”

Her friends had all fallen silent. Their own wild words from seconds ago seemingly composed and calm.

“And they... they’ll take Discord to Tartarus and mix him up with the monsters there to create... a... super Discord!”

Awkward silence now.

Before she could continue, a hacking cough harshly interrupted the unicorn. All eyes turned to a small dragon as he hacked and heaved before a fiery belch spit a rolled parchment out onto the central table. Snatching the rolled parchment in her magic before it even settled, the unicorn read it aloud.

Dear Twilight Sparkle,

You must return to Canterlot immediately. There was a disturbance in the sculpture garden and the statue of Discord has been stolen. We have not been able to locate the thief responsible for this act, but we do know that it is an orange female unicorn. She uses magic that none of the Royal Guard had ever seen before, and injured Lieutenant Stormblade, our acting Captain.

Please bring your friends to Canterlot as soon as possible. We must prepare the Elements of Harmony and prepare our defenses should the unicorn acting on Discord’s behalf be hostile. If we are prepared for his tricks and sorcery, the Elements of Harmony will stop him before all of Equestria is swallowed up.

Please arrive with all haste.

Princess Celestia

Putting the letter down, the purple unicorn cast a gaze to each of her friends. “Well girls, looks like we’re off to Canterlot. Celestia has summoned us. We’re on the next train.”

There was no argument or hesitation.

As the ponies strode from the library, the lanky figure of a unicorn kept an eye on every single one as they strode out. “Good... good... ” Restraining her giggles to keep quiet, she pulled the paper from her awakening and brought it to her eyes. Even though it was little more than sketches and drawings, she studied it with the depth of any deep and elaborate plan. “Walkin’ em right into it! Hee! I can’t believe this is so easy!” Turning to the statue of Discord poorly hidden amongst some shrubs, Gina nudged it with a foreleg. “They’re so predictable. And now they’re gonna walk me right to what I’m after. I owe ya one, Discord.”

Falling into a loose pattern behind the group, the unicorn darted from cover to cover, heavy statue in tow. Bundled in loose leaves and leftover cloth from the boutique, Discord’s statue stuck out, but was obscured enough to at least deflect attention away from that it was the fearful draconequus, and not just some bizarre arts and crafts project run amok. Gina was mere steps behind them as they arrived at Ponyville’s modest train station, a small office nestled next to the train tracks and an even smaller ticket booth. Gina watched as Twilight showed the letter and immediately entered the waiting train. Pausing long enough for the group to board, Gina strode casually up to the ticket window, the bundled and messy abomination alongside her at her side like a guest or friend..

“Two please, sleeper car.”

“Um... two ma’am?” the pony behind the ticket window asked, looking at the large and distinctly not pony shape next to her. “You don’t need to pay for a space for your lugg-”

“-Did I stutter?” Gina huffed. “Two to Canterlot, this train. Sleeper car! Jeez!” Pounding her hoof impatiently on the counter, she glared down the befuddled pony who frantically worked out the ticket for her just as the last call for boarding sounded.

“That’ll be twenty bi-”

“Pay ya back later, seeya!” With a flourish, Gina snapped the tickets away from the counter before the agent could take them back and with the same glee, swept aboard the train seconds before it heaved out of the station and onto the rail to Canterlot.

* * * * *

The train slowly lurched to a gradual halt. The sputtering of gears and steam spewed from underneath, and a pitched howl of the train's horn announced its arrival to the Canterlot station.

Pinkie pointed out the window, swinging a forearm around Applejack. "Guards," she gestured in an awestruck arc. "Guards everywhere."

To her credit, no more a precise observation could be made. No more astute words could suffice, for true to her declaration, a stringent line of royal armored pegasi descended upon the train. An aisle formed into the station, a regimented barricade of them standing firmly shoulder to shoulder that cordoned off their own walkway.

But in their designated walkway, they were not alone.

A garish earth pony stallion stood before them, a welcoming grin beaming upon them. “Miss Sparkle!” He curtsied forward, the line of his medals and ribbons jangled ostentatiously against his black coat with his approaching step. “Might I say, we have been expecting you!” He flicked his mane to the side, the dark black strands parting to reveal thin strands of brilliant yellow ribbons of hair that gleamed against its sibling black hairs like bolts of lightning.

The purple unicorn timidly stepped back as he swung up beside them. “Uh, I thought we... ”

“Didn’t need Canterlot’s finest for an escort? Look!” The stallion hooked a forearm around Twilight, the medals singing a cacophonous melody of metallic jangling with his weighted step. “Guards,” he gestured in an awestruck arc. “Guards ever-”

“-I know I know,” Twilight dipped low, shaking herself from his grasp and simultaneously nudging him away with an aggressive press of her shoulder. “Yet, what I don’t know is who-”

“-Stormblade!” The stallion interrupted with another volley of jangling, his blue and green eye proudly glistening in the sunlight. “Captain Stormblade!” He smiled, spinning into a righteous pose before them. “Now you know!” Jangle, jangle...

“Err, okay uhh... ” Not the question she was even going to ask. “I... ” Twilight glanced in slight desperation to the orange mare standing beside her. “I just... ” The orange mare twitched an awkward shrug in response. “I just don’t even know if we need an escort to the-”

“Nonsense!” He beat a hoof against his chest, sending a meaty thud through his medals. “A cataclysmic threat has been made against the whole of Equestria!” More jangling.

Cataclysmic? “I dunno, but... ” Twilight immediately caught the twinge of aggravated doubt surfacing. She cleared her throat, adjusting her tone to be more sincere. “I think that calling this cataclysmic is a bit much.” She stepped up to the stallion, leaning upon the tips of her hooves to raise her eyes to be level with his. “It’s... just that... it’s... ” She faltered on her balance. “We’ve... hyughh... ” It was tough even clearing the stallion’s shoulders with the haughty pride he elevated himself with. “We’ve handled this before.”

“Ah, Miss Sparkle,” Stormblade laughed, and with his own proud vanity, gave his black mane an awkward wind-swept flick to the side. “You still need me, though.” It’s easily assumed that the shake of his mane looked a lot cooler in his imagination than it did in reality, or so the snickering chortle of his demeanor lead the others to believe. “I am the acting Captain, you know.” It’s also assumed he thought his voice sounded a lot more cogent than it really was. “I can... truly get you places.” The way those words just rolled out like emptying a tin can of rusty nails on the corroded floor of an upside-down chalkboard factory. “I’m, eyyyy-ehh, what you’d call... the inner elite of the elite.” The only thing that drew forth Twilight’s irritated smirk even greater than his voice was the colorful similes her imagination conjured forth to describe it. “Cream of the elite, even.” Upside-down chalkboard factory. Really.

“We know how to get to the palace,” Twilight assured him, motioning to her friends. He stood in front of them, blocking her path. “And I’m very certain, sir, that we do not need y-”

“-But, do you know where you’re going? The Elements of Harmony? How to get them? Where they’re stored? Who gets which one?”

Uugh. “Yes!” Uugh! “We do!” She breathed in deep, rolling her eyes upward in exasperation. “Stored in Canterlot Tower. Celestia opens it. Divide among my friends. Spark. Rainbows. Necklace. Necklace. Big crown thingy!”

In the unregarded distance, an ear twitched through a blonde mane.

“Now if you’re quite done just standing there and wasting my time I really need to-” There was that impatient side of her seeping through again. “Hyuff... ” She sighed. There really had to be some way to kick these sudden losses of patience that has been cropping up within her. Twilight didn’t even know where it originated from. All signs around them were pointing towards the second arrival of Discord approaching. Or third? Were there more times than this?

Just how many times did Celestia even have to defeat the mischievous draconequus? Did she always use her star students to fight those battles for her. A part of Twilight always suspected the whole Discord thing was some sort of elaborate training exercise reserved exclusively for Celestia’s star students but... oh hayseed, why was she even letting her mind fall into such paranoid gibberish?

“Ah think th' what she means, darlin’,” the orange mare behind her spoke up. “We’re mighty plum honored y’all got such a number o' guards to show us th' way, but Ah reckon it's...a little bit ov’uh th’ top.”

Twilight unconsciously seethed through clenched teeth again. He made it too easy. Discord made it just too simple to be defeated. He always had a plan, he was always one step ahead of them. Twists and turns, a master plan. And back to Canterlot, where they began.

“Yeah,” agreed the cerulean blue pegasus behind her, “Applejack’s right.” She ascended to the air with her forelegs outstretched, her rainbow-striped tail curling in athletic grace behind her rapid motion. “We’re cool, we’re good, we can handle ourselves just fine.” She swooped down, resting an elbow against the head of a light yellow pegasus, her foreleg drooping into her flowing pink mane.

He even knew they were assembled. Like... he let them... Back to Canterlot, where they began.

“Though, um,” the yellow pegasus mumbled, passively drooping her head to the intruding elbow atop her cranium. “We don’t mind the attention, well... too much.”

He let them. Discord’s bided his time, and now striking again when they’ve grown vulnerable and more caught up in other matters.

“And if you’re all here,” the pink mare zipped up to the yellow pegasus. “We can just forego the invitations, and throw a flash party!” She hooked a foreleg around the pegasus’ neck. “Parties!” She gestured in an awestruck arc. “Parties everywh-”

“-Suga’cube!” The orange mare nickered. “Ah’m sorry,” she turned back to the garish black-coated stallion looming before them. “We can’ts uh’dilly dally long, Capt’n Sto’mblade.”

When they’ve grown more caught up in life matters. Friendship matters. Twists and turns. Twists and turns.

“But, Applejack! They’re all here!” The pink mare sprinted down the regimented line in a sporadic blur of pink hooves with an outstretched foreleg, clanging it against the picketed barricade of armored chestplates in a raining succession of reverberating bangs. “And they’re all in costume!” She shouted with a distant echo of the other side of the train station.

So why... what makes it so difficult, what is compelling such a denial to this being a continuation of Discord’s master plan. What compelled such-

“Stinkin’ thinkin’!” the orange mare exclaimed down to the pink pony dancing in the distance. “Tha’s wh’that is!” She breathed in deep for another vociferous volley, jabbing the garish stallion in the shoulder with a hefty thrust of a forehoof. Jangle. “They’re not’n costumes!” She jostled at his fabric heartily with a waving hoof, Stormblade’s neck tugging his head loosely behind. Jangle, jangle. “They’re in uniform!” She pushed the fabric back against the stallion, forcing him to stumble sideways into the line of assembled armored pegasi behind him.

“Well!” Echoed back a thunderous response from the end of the aisle. “Costumes are the uniform of the Pinkie Pie party armada!”

Why did the others not think similarly? Why be alone in even having doubts, when the others are depending the most upon-

“Twilight?” The orange mare’s voice suddenly descended into a soft tone, settling upon the purple unicorn. “Ah know’s that looks upon y’uh, no lie. Is uh’somethin’ worryin’ ya’?”

Yes.

“No,” Twilight shot up, focusing her eyes forward. “Sorry, I just... ” she righted herself with a faux laugh, tapping a forehoof against the train station floor. “I think Spike was right, I probably do need to watch my temper better.” She turned to Stormblade as he clamored back to his hooves. His flank peeled with a trembling rustle as it lifted and separated from the murderous scowl of the unfortunate pegasus guard it smacked into. “I apologize, sir, I’m just not used to... ” She glanced at the guards. Guards every-

“-No worries at all,” emptied another tin can of rusty nails. “Nopony can help but be overwhelmed by the superior might,” jangle. “Size,” jangle. “And overwhelming power,” jangle, jang-jangle. “Of Canterlot’s greatest!” He dusted off his shoulder, straightening out the red jacket’s sleeve. “And it is the honor, the pleasure of us all, to... ” He hung on the word, searching for a good not cliche expression to follow. “To walk hoof-to-hoof with you.” Well, good would have to suffice. “I am quite a fan of your exploits, Twilight Sparkle.”

There, now this would have been a much better way to start the conversation. Twilight suddenly propped up, her imagination upgrading his metaphorical representation from a tin can to a porcelain bowl of rusty nails. “You’ve heard of-f... you’re a fan... of m-me?” Despite her best attempts, a humbled quiver trailed with her voice.

“Of course!” He laughed. The upside-down chalkboard factory upgraded to a linoleum floor. “Celestia’s best student! Pivotal player in the defeat of Nightmare Moon and Discord! Bearer of the Element of Magic!”

In the unregarded distance, an orange ear twitched through a blonde mane again.

“Well,” she lowered her head, cheeks interloping from below into her eyes from atop a firmly embedded smile. “I do try to learn what I can.” She started walking down the aisle of armored pegasi, maintaining a synched pace with Stormblade as they headed for the station’s exit.

“Fastest learner out there!” He looked up to the train station’s skylight, sunlight illuminating his face in a proud stature. The nails were now a bit less rusty. “Look at me, just a humble ol’ earth pony. No horn, no wings, but I’ve always been inspired... ” He narrowed his eyes with a smile so sincere, his own muscle memory seemed to contort and revile at first from the genuity of his fascinated glance. “... Truly inspired by those who recognize the gifts bestowed upon them... and use them!” He faltered into a slight chuckle, and evened his eyes forward. “And use them, and use them, and use them!” He stomped a hoof repeatedly at the ground in delight. “Haha! You, Twilight, know what tremendous power you have, and you aren’t afraid to explore, utilize, and use it to its maximum potential!” His eyes peered down upon her from the sun-drenched glow of the skylights. “Such an inspiration!” The eyes lifted, then narrowed upon her with each green and blue pupil stricken with a peculiar blend of admiration and envy.

Twilight slowed her pace. The wavering paranoia struck her again, and this time, focused upon the ornately decorated Captain marching in stalwart posture before her.

“You’re a lot like me, you know that Twilight?”

Figures. Everything downgraded simultaneously in her imagination. Now his voice was an oxidized cauldron of prickly spiders dumping onto an eroded snare drum filled with ball bearings and snakes on fire.

“Magic,” Twilight quickly interjected, “isn’t quite like brute strength, sir.” She caught up to him briskly, and nudged a forehoof into his jangling medals. “We don’t learn to use it. We learn to control it. We don’t just start shooting spells around all crazy like, and we certainly don’t... ” the image of a deep blue showmare unicorn with white hair popped into her head, the ascending aura of fireworks and pride consuming the edges of her silhouette in an encompassing aura. Twilight extended her hoof, pointing to the line of guards standing before them. “... we certainly don’t make some show out of how much force we have.” She gestured in an awestruck arc. “Everywhere, force everywhere!”

The pink mare tilted her head in from the side. “That’s not how it goes-”

“-But Twilight, haw haw,” Stormblade laughed. “You’re such a great... inspiration, yes, to... ” He hesitated, seemingly to mask his sudden discomfort with the one he was tasked to escort. “To the likes of... ” Well, tasked to escort by...

“... Yourself?”

“Yes!” He beamed proudly, then caught her quizzical glance. “Oh! But, but also to all my men, like, like... ah!” He whirled to the side, standing next to a particularly extra-armored pegasus guard. “Take for example Second Private Jetlag here!”

“It’s Jetstream, sir-”

Stormblade laughed, nudging uncomfortably close to the pegasus guard. The other guards stepped away, looking timidly at eachother while attempting to back away with minimal notice. “Tried to help teach his nephew the Trichological Protuberance Augmentation matrix!”

“Sounds awesome!” The blue Pegasus suddenly whirred in beside Twilight. “The whuh’sa protubba’ ostentatious wha?”

“That moustache spell.” Twilight whispered loudly in response.

“Oh.” The pegasus wilted, dropping dejectedly to the ground. “Now it just sounds... ” She hunted for an alternate term for boring. “... Like your kind of thing.”

Twilight groaned, seeing right through the sugar coating. “Thanks Rainbow,” she quipped sarcastically.

“Show them,” Stormblade laughed to the armored pegasus, nudging him playfully in the shoulder. “You have to see this, because you see, this guy’s nephew is a unicorn and... oh come on, just show them, show them!”

“Sir, I’d rather not, sir.”

“Oh, haw haw haww, it’s an absolute scream, you must!”

“Sir,” the guard timidly replied. “I, well, sir with due respect Second Captain Stormblade I-”

“Second Captain!?” The laughter suddenly snipped from his voice. The line of pegasi took a large step back in a unified thud of armor that resonated in a single thumping note. “Private Jetlag, you will-”

“Sir, Jetstrea-”

“Private Jetlag you will honor my authority!” He stepped towards him, righting his neck to protrude his head high above him, the shadow from his menacing posture draped over the cowering pegasus. “While Captain Armor is away, I am now the Captain! And as Captain, I hereby issue upon my rank as Captain, that I, Captain Stormblade, order you, Jetlag, to show them your nephew’s screw-up that has been cast upon you!” He waved a caustic hoof towards the six mares behind him in the aisle. The black hoof cracked against the air with such velocity, they gasped and flinched towards the ground. “Show them!” His arm quivered precariously in the air, threatening to tear out of its own socket. “So that my esteemed six compatriots here may have a hearty laugh!” His face, though, remained locked and unmoving upon the private, the chiseled intensity of his heaving grimace fixated squarely upon him.

A pair of shivering hooves ascended, slowly leveling with an echoing shrill of metal as they graced the helmet with shivering trepidation. They slowly gripped, and hoisted the helmet upwards.

“Don’t take all day, kiddo!” Stormblade bellowed, and with a swift yank of a black foreleg blurring before the terrified pegasus, the helmet rocketed off his shoulders with such inertia it spun twice around Stormblade’s hoof. A voluminous poomf filled the air as a wafting ball of rainbow-striped hair reached and bounced atop the pegasus’ head. “See!?” Stormblade’s scowl instantly vaporized back into a jovial expression of unadulterated glee. “Rainbow! Fuzzball! This guy’s nephew did that, because he wanted to be like you Twilight!”

Twilight’s mind fired a schizophrenic volley of expression at her. Slight amusement, but lots of pity, a smidgen of fear, a tad bit of regret, and an unexplainable twinge of something that felt... otherworldly.

“Now, Jetlag, do that dance we made you do!”

An unexplainable twinge... it percolated like bubbles; an inexperienced emotion that felt completely alien, but particularly strong within her.

“Dance!” He smacked a hoof to the ground, the masoned walls of the train station wavered in response. “Captain’s orders!” And then, a mortifying chorus erupted with volcanic ferocity from the Captain’s diabolical larynx. “Da, da, da-da-da-da, da, da, circus!”

And Twilight watched in abject horror as, under the wild jurisdiction of this pompous new Captain that had taken over, the pegasus guard righted himself on two rear legs and hopped back and forth to the maniacal vociferating intended to berate him for their amusement. His body kept rhythm, but his face conveyed a sense that he wouldn’t even do that for one million bits.

“Da, da, da-da-da-da, da, da, afro!”

Twilight felt compelled to speak up, defend him, but couldn’t help but feel that she was witnessing a phenomenon far beyond her own realm. Her specialty was magic, after all. Studied magic. Applied magic. The kind of magic you learn not solely for the sake of learning, but understanding and controlling as well. She shuddered at that thought... if Stormblade was born as a unicorn instead. If he handled magic the way he handled authority... by the graces of Celestia, a morbid image of an Equestria covered in rainbow afro’s popped up in her head, and was immediately scrubbed away from her mind before the traumatizing visage emotionally scarred her.

Twilight searched the faces of her friends for any hint of guidance, but found five faces of equal discomfort looking back at her. She leveled back to Stormblade, and started a brisk trot for the train station door. “Hahaha!” She laughed lightly, attempting to feign delight at the unfortunate fate that had befallen the pegasus guard. “Yes, that’s... what did you say... a scream.” She rolled her head to him again to shoot another faux laugh. “Heh, heh, my, oh yes, heh.” She swiveled her shoulders towards the door. “Girls, if we may, Stormblade is going to get us to Canterlot Tower.” She tried to compose a pleasant smile to the gaudy stallion. “Post haste, good sir!”

Dear Princess Celestia, Twilight’s mind spoke out to her.

“At once!” Stormblade swiveled quickly, running to lead the six mares through the train station door.

Today I learned that no matter how hard it may be, you must do your best to smile, smile, smile.

“Let’s move out!” Jangle, jangle. “Captain Stormblade shall see to your safety!”

Especially when you just want to scream, scream, scream.

* * * * *

Before Stormblade’s jangling had driven Twilight completely mad, they arrived at the palace gates. A line of royal guards stood before them.

“She’s in the Canterlot tower.”

Where before were pleasantries, shared cakes and a one-pony-band-parade (an odd practice the Princess suddenly grew fond of), it was all business. The Second Captain led Twilight and her friends from the palace gates to the great Tower of Canterlot palace, sealed by Celestia’s own impenetrable barriers and protective magic. They all held their breath for a moment as Celestia unlocked the vault, remembering the last incident where the Elements were decidedly not in their resting place.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Celestia said, “I wish it was under better circumstances, but time is not something we can spare.”

“We got here as soon as we could, Princess,” Twilight took the lead, stitching a respectful bow before approaching closer. “What’s the situation?”

“The only pony who really knows anything is Second Captain Stormblade,” Celestia huffed subtly, inclining her head towards the guard. “If you please, Captain.”

“Of course, Princess,” he bowed and, with a slightly overwrought flourish of his mane and a jangling clatter, spoke. “All I know is that it was a unicorn who ran off with the statue, and she has some kind of weird magic with her.”

“Weird how?” Twilight interrupted with a burst of curiosity. Magic, while a powerful and mysterious force, was well-understood by unicorn scholars. The knowledge had trickled through society for years until it was universally recognized and studied categorically by the most astute minds of the nation for several millennia. For it to be weird was unsettling news.

“Hard to explain, really, it kinda looked like normal unicorn magic... but... ” the Second Captain rubbed a forehoof across his neck, struggling for diction. “I’d almost say that it was like it was almost controlling her. Lots of power, but just wild. Closest thing I could compare it to would be if a new pony was made a guard, he could kick really hard, or fly really fast, but doesn’t know any of the proper maneuvers.”

Twilight fell into a thoughtful silence. “No tactics,” she thought aloud, but her reverie was interrupted when the group came up short before the great doors of the tower vault. Celestia had stepped ahead, lowering her head to sink her horn into the keyhole. A moment of fear suffused through the silence - the last time they were here, the Elements were anything but in their proper place. As the doors swung open with a heavy groan of timbers and stone, the treasures and relics of Canterlot lay bare before all. Even Celestia, who had personally assembled such a collection of priceless artifacts, felt a frisson of exhilaration at the majesty of it all. But it only lasted a moment, for she headed straight for the literal and figurative crown jewels of the collection, a gemstone-encrusted case that held the Elements of Harmony. Where last time, Celestia had opened the box before the whole group, she snuck a peek in ahead of time and turned to the group in silence.

“The Elements of Harmony... ” she began, holding her stern tone before it melted away into a relieved smile. “... Are ready for you.” Swaddled in telekinesis, the case floated outward, and each individual Element floated from the box towards its owner. “I entrust you all to carry them with friendship in your hearts, and to face down whatever threatens Equestria with the unity and harmony that built our nation and saved it countless times.”

Each element drifted graceful over each of the six mares standing before the Princess. Stormblade took a cautious step back against the wall as a plume of light surrounded them, beams of stray iridescence stabbing out across the room with blinding power. A shimmering aura rippled around each jewel, the crystalline outlines of each necklace’s pendant radiated from a white silhouette matching the corresponding shape of the jewel, matching the corresponding shape of its wearer’s cutie mark.

“Honesty,” proclaimed Celestia, lowering the necklace onto the orange earth pony as she levitated gently, the tip of her hoof just barely clearing the marble floor. “Loyalty.” The cerulean blue pegasus held uncharacteristically still, then puffed her chest out upon contact with the necklace. “Generosity.” The white unicorn with a long curled mane and tail of purple drifted vertically with a ballerina’s poise, looping her neck with such airy grace that it seemed the element was going to pass right through her. “Kindness.” The yellow pegasus flinched slightly as the telekinetic aura of bright magic wrapped around her, but eased upon making eye contact with her own necklace as it draped around her head. “Laughter.” Celestia turned forward with the balloon-shaped pendant shimmering before her, but squinted in hesitant confusion.

“Hey!” Ah, there she is. “Up here!” Upside down, peering from the ceiling above. The Princess twisted her neck around to face the oblong pink pony, flipping the jeweled element vertically to ascend onto her collar.

“Laughter,” she insisted again, latching the dangling element into place around pink shoulders. Celestia smiled, chuckling softly as she passed a glance to the purple unicorn hovering before her. They nodded to one another. Another chance to save the country? Another great foe of the past to be defeated? Another adventure to test the limits of these six tried and proven friends once more?

All in a day’s work for her protege.

“And Magic!” A large crown hovered over the purple unicorn’s head, planting firmly upon her brow. With the adornment ritual complete, the pulsating multicolored light receded into the aether, and the consistent stream of sunlight pouring through the stained glass windows lining the wall resumed painting the room with prismatic hues.

As the doors closed with a shuttered thud, a magical ward of swirling lines and cryptic symbols projected over it with a rapidly spinning motion. Then, with an electric bang, the projection stopped firmly, dipping through the granulated wood of the door causing it to glow with a soft teal light.

With the vault of Canterlot Tower properly sealed, Celestia continued speaking. “I just hope that, when you come across Discord, he is stopped before much harm comes to pass.”

“I still don’t get it,” Twilight murmured, lifting a hoof to tweak the elaborate tiara into a semblance of balance on her head. “If it is Discord, why hasn’t he done something more, I dunno, chaotic? He doesn’t do subtlety, at least not like this. He’d be trying to drive us apart.” Twilight snuck a wayward glance at the ornate stained glass images around them; illustrations of past battles and victories of Equestria history. “He knows exactly what we do.” The image of the intrinsically limbed draconequus loomed along the top of one of the windows. “So why hasn’t he done something... more Discord?” The draconequus’ backlit grimace remained unchanged in the glass; the eyes remained in unshifting stillness.

Certainly, a rare instance of no news being bad news.

“Twilight Sparkle is correct.” Celestia nodded, concern furrowing her brow. “If Discord were to be freed again, we would have noticed something more at this point. That’s why I’m not going to take any risks.” She stepped towards them, and wrapped a wing around Twilight’s shoulder, slowly turning her to face her five friends. “You are being trusted with the Elements of Harmony again. And I, as well as all of Equestria, expect you to be ready if Discord or his minions have any plan against us, and to stop them. With these Elements, you are the only ones who can stop him, or any... disciples that may take on after him.” Celestia directed a light-hearted smirk to the pink pony in the front. “For some ponies think chocolate rain is a good thing.”

Each of the six mares accepted the gift with chests swollen with pride and solid determination in all of their eyes. Even the shy yellow pegasus wore a stern expression, unwilling to let the anarchy that invaded their lives before return and set more havoc loose against them and her friends.

Celestia strode alongside the group back to the Canterlot palace gates. “Until we get to the bottom of this, I expect you to all be ready to use the powers of the Elements at a moment’s notice. We cannot let ourselves fall into another one of Discord’s games again, and this time we will stop him before he can cause any damage.” She found herself struggling to put a positive and bright face on as the weight of their mission and quest hung over all of them like a shroud. “I just hope this is all over before next week’s Hearth’s Warming. I was so looking forward to enjoying it without any worries on my mind.” With a strain, the Princess summoned a smile as the six ponies stepped out into the frosty winter streets.

“Don’t sweat it, Princess!” the rainbow pegasus called as she bounded forward and looped once in the cold air before throwing a reckless smile back to her. “We’ll get Discord and whoever he’s working with licked in no time! We can get this good and beat in ten seconds fl-!”

“-I’m sure you will, Rainbow Dash. Good luck!” Celestia maintained the smile only for as long as it took for the group to round the first corner and fall out of sight before it fell away to the exhaustion she had been holding back for appearances.

She exhaled deeply, confident that the sound of her bottled up trepidation wouldn’t reach their ears.

Bitter winter cold did not bolster her mood. She recited a song she and her sister wrote long ago, one that she hummed to herself over the years when the rule of the Canterlot sisters became a one-pony show.

One more day ahead, many hooves to shake,
So many ponies’ demands still unfulfilled.
More meetings ahead, and more plans to make.
Preparations and contingencies to build.

The leader of Equestria felt the weight of her crown worst when it came to times like this - the details and minutiae of dealing with Canterlot’s heavy government. She knew that many organizations needed her guidance, especially in this time of crisis and bubbling public fear and worry. She had to be the face of peace and calm. I can only hope that those little ponies can stop this from being more than a public worry.

* * * * *

On the streets, the mood was rising and now that she was armed, the rainbow pegasus was none bashful and all boasting. Brushing a hoof over the Element of Loyalty, she smirked. “I figure once we save Equestria a third time, they oughta give us a whole room full of stained glass windows. And maybe just a whole monument to all of us!”

“Come on!” bemoaned the purple unicorn. “This is serious, we need to be thinking about what this all means. And what we’re going to have to do if it gets worse.” Increasing her pace to catch up with the boastful pegasus, she launched into a well-worn lecturing tone. “If we get distracted, that’ll just let Discord and these... minions of his to do something terrible! We need to be on our guard at all times, and if we mess up even once, just once, who knows? They could split us up, or take our Elements and do Celestia knows what with them?” She paused to take a heavy breath, winding up for another verbal barrage, only moving out of the way of an orange form that brushed by on the street.

“Speaking of which, Twilight,” the pegasus asked, tilting her head slightly to the side.

“There’s no time to get distracted with questions, Rainbow! We have to focus!”

“I just wanted-”

“No I don’t know where they’d put another stained glass window of us!”

“Alright! Alright! I just wanted to ask what you thought this was all about? What do you think Discord, or whoever, is trying to do?”

“I don’t know, Rainbow,” Twilight sighed as they reached the Canterlot train station. Usually awash in activity and a sense of busyness, the winter cold had driven all of it indoors, or at least away from here. Before they strode onto the train, Twilight lifted the Element of Magic off of her head and gingerly set it in her saddlebag. She’d never admit it to Celestia, but the tiara-slash-crown was immensely uncomfortable after a while.

“Twilight Sparkle?” A familiar voice approached her from behind. “We’ll be escorting you to Ponyville by order of Secon-” He coughed, catching his mistake. “Ahem, I mean, umm... ” The familiar voice wasn’t nearly as downtrodden or timid as before, but certainly as soft. He started again. “By order of Captain Stormblade of... ” He huffed tiredly, blowing a few strands of stray rainbow mane back against his helmet. “Of The Royal Pegasus Guard of Captain Stormblade.”

Twilight turned to the armored guard standing in front of her. “I see,” she grinned subtly to him. “He just named the whole guard after himself just now, too?”

The guard shifted back, rolling his chin upwards with annoyance. “Afraid so, Miss Sparkle.”

“Well then,” she stood beside the guard, and sauntered into the train’s passenger cabin in line with him and three other armored guards. “I guess the pleasure is all mine to let you take a much needed rest break in what is no doubt a chaos-strewn Ponyville wrought to the core with a mad draconequus demigod corrupting the landscape into a Salvador DaLivery painting.”

The guard raspberried with a minimal exhibition of cynicism. “I’m afraid your sarcasm is lost in its own bitterness of truth.”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” Twilight slowed, and directed an empathetic glance toward the guard, “Mister Jetstream.”

The guard halted, letting the alien notion of appreciation run its course in shivering down every muscle of his spine and legs with a tingling pang of relief. Thank Celestia, finally, a level-headed pony! And on top of that, from a pony whose own skills and accomplishments of the last year were yet to be matched by his own regiment’s lengthy career as Canterlot’s best.

Now he wasn’t so upset about his mane being haphazardly transformed into a rainbow ball of embarrassment. He adjusted his helmet, feeling the tightly wadded matting of multicolored mane rustle against his head, but knowing it was there because of the third-hoof influence of the purple unicorn mare standing before him...

“Aw, heh... ”

... He felt a new surge of pride making a most peculiar appearance.

He slouched tenuously, rubbing the back of his neck before shooting back up to a soldiered posture. “I mean, why yes, um, of course Miss Sparkle!” He caught up to her and lowered his voice. His face drifted above the unicorn, scanning the line of passengers behind her. A suppressed giggle cracked forth as he sighted one particular mare crossing the station platform. “And I think I can make this whole trip even better. Look.” He pointed a hoof to a gray pegasus with a blonde mane boarding the train at the front of the passenger car. “I know that mare, and she always brings extra treats when she takes this train. Treats for us, mostly. But... I can probably get you and your friends one, too.”

“Oh really?” Twilight peered at the gray pegasus who, in a stray turn of her head, peered back with nonchalantly drifting eyes that took turns focussing onto her. A large covered basket dangled from her mouth, swaying as she pulled her eyes forward while boarding the train.

“Absolutely.” Jetstream licked his lips, rapidly beating his front legs against the ground in tiny excited steps. “And I know what it is, too. Definitely. Definitely muffins.”

* * * * *

The six mares gathered together at the rear of the passenger car. While each proudly wore their respective Element of Harmony around their necks, the purple unicorn kept her profile low. Unlike her friends, she kept her Element stashed deep in her saddle bag, covered in all the books, scarves, and accessories she brought along with her. There was a certain aura about the train that she couldn’t shake, an unsettling tingle that resonated prominently in the back of her ears ever since she got on board.

It was too strong to be just mere paranoia, too particular to be a byproduct of whatever temper issues Spike insisted she had been suffering from. No. Even with the mission prerogatives clearly stated by Princess Celestia herself, the insistence that Discord must be stopped, that instinctive gut feeling within her cried out for attention with every leering glance away from the saddle bag cradling her element.

Biting into her daisy muffin, the warmth of the pastry would bring just a temporary break from the unsettling cold crawling up her spine. Like something, or somepony, was just a couple haunches away from her.

A giggle would snort from the pink pony as she flicked a metallic tune against the balloon-embroidered jewels in her own necklace. Twilight’s curiosity would pull her to see the others laughing along with her, but would immediately be yanked back down to the saddle bag. Even a curious wayward glance would spike a wave of imminent panic, forcing her to curl tightly around the untouched luggage and dig quickly to ensure the Element was still in place.

She couldn’t help but feel as if the crown was speaking to her, constantly demanding her attention as if in some long-lost language beyond her historical comprehension.

While arranging another pile of books and accessories to conceal the Element, a rapid clanging of shifting armor stirred her attention back up.

“Whew-ew!” Jetstream deeply exhaled as he stood over the six mares. He closed his eyes with a relaxed poise as he lifted a hoof to remove the cumbersome helmet from his head, but immediately realized his error upon feeling a few stray tufts of rainbow mane peek out from beneath the metal armor. “Eh-wew-uh!” He tugged the helmed down forcibly, “Pk-ow!” summoning a shrill clang through the passenger car.

Twilight caught her distracted glance moving to him, and immediately compensated with a jostling hitch back to the bag. She again shuffled through the contents, breathing a hefty sigh of relief to see the telltale gleam of violet metallic light creeping between the embedded gemstones.

“Finally,” Jetstream continued, sitting down beside the other half-dozen guards sent along with him. “Been looking forward to a day without... gah... ”

“Myeh-neh-mweh-neh neh nyeh-neh,” ridiculed another guard to the train’s ceiling, his tongue lapping crazily out of his mouth. “I’m Captain Stormblade, myeh-neh neh-nyeh.”

“Doopty-doop-eh-dwoo!” a third guard slunk back in his seat, waving an armored hoof before him. “I’m in charge, and you will bring me many ladies to fawn over my medals, dwoopie-doo!”

“Pfft, as if,” raspberried the other guard. Another commotion of books and scarves scurried from between the seats behind them. “It’s way worse than that, you guys seriously wouldn’t believe this.” He motioned his hooves in, gesturing the other guards to lean in closer. “I have it on pretty good word that Stormblade,” he cackled under his whisper, “thinks he’s got a straight shot to Luna.”

A hearty explosion of raucous guffaws erupted from the guards. Twilight jumped from the startling thud of heavily armored hooves smacking against the train’s floor and walls. She quickly wrapped her hooves around the saddle bag, and pulled it close against her chest.

“Myeh-neh-eh-meh, Princess Luna,” came more sarcastic imitations against the absent Captain. “Want to see a play tonight?”

“Oh, my,” crooned Jetstream in a high pitched voice, “we hath doth hither unto betwixt mine feathers, Captain!” A throaty crack broke through as his chuckles suffocated his own imitation of the Princess. “What doth ye olde’ play!?”

“Myeneh-neh, a riveting tale,” the guard pounded against his chest, displaying an imaginary assortment of decor on it. “The tale of getting my valiant medal of valor by my brave patrols of the stupid hedge maze!”

“Oooh, how doth yonder boring!” Jetstream quipped. “Thou hast defendeth mine fillies and gentlecolts from hither inanimate objects like statues, bushes, and-”

“-Muffins!” A screech tore down the train aisle. “Eeeeek!”

The guards simultaneously coughed heavily from the sudden commotion jumping up from the front of the passenger car. Lines of other passengers started getting up gradually in a line that obstructed the view, but their rapid shifting towards the aisle and clamoring back summoned a waft of enough panic to force the guards into a defensive stance. Their wings outstretched, they stepped back to cover the six mares under their assigned protection.

“Stay back!” Jetstream commanded.

Steadily, a chorus of panicked voices ascended into pandemonium. The gray pegasus mare shot into the train ceiling, and ricocheted while spinning backwards over the aisle screaming on spent breath. “Muffins! Muffins attacking!” She couldn’t spare a moment to gasp for air. “Muffins!” And with a twirl, collapsed onto the ground with flailing hooves attempting to drag herself back.

The guards charged forward to the front of the train. Twilight rose from between the seats, and through the gap in between the running armored pegasi, saw a darting swarm of small pastries swirling and assaulting the passengers.

A clamoring thud landed beside Twilight. “The muffins!” The blonde pegasus cried out to the purple unicorn. “My muffins are rebelling!”

“Discord!” The orange earth pony stamped her hoof. “Ah says Ponyville’s gonna have’ta wait, girls!” She leaned along the top of the passenger seat, propping herself high enough to see the sweeping chaos overtaking the train. “For Ah reckon our time’s now!”

“Ahh yeah!” gloated the cerulean pegasus. Like a rocket, she shot over the ruckus of fleeing ponies right into the buzzing cloud of angrily dive bombing muffins. “Let’s beat these pastries until they’re black and blueberry!” With an outstretched leg, she bucked one of the muffins squarely, torpedoing it like a bullet with a shrill splat of dough against metal. “Check out my... bran-d new moves!” She spun in place, and with a sudden downward thrust of her wings, she diced through another set of airborne muffins leaving nothing more than her trailing tail where they once floated. Three heavy whams cascaded down the passenger car’s aisle. “Yeah, enough doing things the nice way! Now I’m baking bad!” She spun underneath in a half forward flip, only to see a barrage of angry muffins spinning diabolically towards her. “Wuh-woah, hey!”

The orange earth pony leapt into the fray, and with surgical precision, landed a forehoof against the muffin onslaught. “Hyah!” A muffin propelled out of its trajectory, splatting heftily against its wingman. A chain reaction of crashing pastries broke up the incoming barrage, resulting in a rapid-fire succession of light splatters around the rainbow-maned pegasus. “Ah’d say ya’ owe me jus’ one,” the orange mare sarcastically groaned through heavy breaths, “if y’didn’t owe me fo’ all the awful puns yuh’ making now!” The pegasus suddenly rocketed toward her like a bullet, hind leg outstretched in a murderous kick. “Hyuh, what’n th’hay-!?”

The orange pony ducked suddenly, her dodge so fast her hat popped upward from the force. A thundering clang shot through her ears as a solidly planted hoof dug deep into the metal wall behind her. She first glared with betrayed ire, but immediately saw the telltale goop of blueberry trickling down from the base of the cyan hoof, her hat resting comfortably atop the leg still quivering from the tremendous force of impact.

“Now you just owe me for the muffin puns!” The pegasus laughed. “You can say we... tray-ded!”

“Hfff... Ah owe you llama spit.” Another wave of airborne muffins spun together into a deathly helix that drilled through the air with a deafening whine. “H’woah, okay! Ah owes ya’! Ah owes ya’!” She ducked down low to allow the rainbow-maned pegasus to take care of it... “Oh what’n tarna’shun!?” ... Only to see the pegasus also ducking away beside her.

“Girls!” A cry came from the back of the passenger car. A purple beam of energy glowed with tremendous intensity as Twilight fired a strong magic field around the cerulean pegasus and orange pony. The rampaging muffins around them suddenly wavered, and dropped to the floor lifelessly.

The purple unicorn’s eyes widened suddenly in abject panic.

“Thanks, Twi!” The orange pony gestured toward her.

Twilight breathed out heavily from the encompassing surge of magic she had cast. “My failsafe spell... ” A surge she had cast before, but this time... “Worked?”

The twitching sensation at the back of her ear bit with the intensity of a hundred wasps. A massive realization splashed against her as she looked out upon the guards and her two friends pacing back and forth at the front of the passenger car. Her failsafe spell worked. It worked! So why was a successful defeating of the great muffin menace such a dreadful feeling?

It was the final piece of proof that whatever chaos had been wrought upon Ponyville wasn’t at the claw and paw of Discord. They were now paired up with an unseen foe trying to distract them, toying with them.

“Twilight!” The cerulean pegasus cried out as a few muffins came back to life and ascended beside her. “Another!” The muffins shone with the telltale aura of unicorn magic.

A unicorn.

Twilight scanned the denizens of flailing passengers. Which one of them was the muffin marauder? Who was doing all of this? Not a single one of the unicorns up front even had their horns illuminated, but just where was the perpetrator even standing?

She then realized... ten seconds was all it took.

Realizing how long she had been distracted away from her own Element, Twilight spun around rapidly to check on her bag. With the dangling golden crown gripped firmly between her jaws, an orange unicorn looked back up to her with wide guilty eyes. Her horn shone brilliantly with the same hue around the attacking muffins.

“You!” Twilight called down to her. She reached out, but her eyes suddenly blacked out with a stinging slam of banana nut and bran. “Gyeh!” She twirled back, quickly rubbing the offending pastries out of her face.

“Woah there!” a rainbow mane swung past Twilight, landing with an outstretched cyan foreleg dusting crumbs off her cheek. “I’ll be sure to poppy you one!”

“Pinkie, Rarity!” Twilight called, summoning a commanding presence that she wasn’t even aware she had, “get to the front of the train and try to get them to stop.”

“My mane!” The white unicorn cried out. “Oats tangled up at the roots! It’ll take hours to get each one ou-”

“-Right away!” The pink earth pony jumped to the air, snapping to a stern salute, “Easy peazy fishy sea breezy!” Then promptly bounded down the aisle, dragging a complaining white unicorn alongside her with a foreleg.

“Rainbow! Fluttershy!” Twilight barked as the others split off down either corridor of the train. “Fly around outside and make sure she doesn’t try to jump out or anything!” The two nodded, moving on reflex simply in response to her words.

“Sounds like a plan!” The cerulean pegasus spun above the unicorn, hovering to a quick stop to nudge her horn with a hoof. “I’ll be the brawn, you’ll be the grai-”

“-And stop it with the muffin puns!” The purple unicorn waved a foreleg to the back of the train. “Go! Now!”

Before the yellow pegasus could stammer out a reply, her partner had swooped past, throwing her over her shoulder and out one of the car doors to spiral out into the blast chilled mountain air.

“Applejack, you’re with me.”

“Right behind ya’ll, Twi.” With a nod, the two set through the train, moving with speed and caution. Every car they passed through presented the same face of pony passengers; some looked at Twilight and Applejack with concern, and few others pointed further back towards the train. The same scene played out until they reached a door marked for luggage and restricting passengers from entry hanging loosely on its hinges. Twilight and Applejack shared a brief look into one another’s eyes before they pressed forward into the murky darkness of the unlit car.

“Oh Discord, you look smashing!” the voice cackled as Twilight and Applejack crept into the luggage car. At the far end, making no effort to conceal her appearance, the thief hunched over a large, obscure item at the very top of which rested the Element. The orange unicorn’s back faced away from Twilight and her friends, and she seemed completely lost in a single-sided conversation.

“Uh... Twi... ” Applejack murmured. “Am ah losin’ mah’ apples or is she talkin’ to nothin’?”

“Be careful,” Twilight hissed, the memories of how this erratic unicorn had completely dismantled their last attempt to stop her, leaving her friends scattered and beaten all set to the tune of her malignant laughter. “She’s not paying attention to us, let’s go around the racks and get her from both sides.” Just as the two began to advance, the orange unicorn turned her head and made brief eye contact with Twlight Sparkle.

“I told ya this would work just right, Discord!” she crooned, falling into another erratic fit of derisive laughter. “Amazed what you ponies do to get a statue and little decoration!”

It’s not just any statue.

“Put Discord down and return the Element of Magic!” Twilight’s voice quivered slightly as she made her demands and stance so clear. “You’re out of train cars and cornered.”

“Caaan’t do that!” came her reply, like this matter of such gravity was nothing more to her than a childish argument. “Besides, there’s ALWAYS another way outta spots. Wanna see me do it?” she asked with a gleeful smile. Just as her question sunk into Twilight and Applejack’s ears, the train whisked through a short tunnel, casting the cargo car entirely in darkness for no more than a blink of an eye. As light swept back into the rattling car, the orange unicorn and the Element of Magic were both gone.

“Shewt!” Applejack gasped. “She’s takin’ off again! Git back to the door!”

Both the purple unicorn and earth pony backed up towards the door, each of their eyes frantically scanning the room before them, desperately searching and hunting down the orange figure that just vanished. Even though they could not see her, both could hear the stuttering giggles in the shaking stacks of luggage. As it wound uncomfortably close, the serpent of unsettling laughter drew Twilight and Applejack closer and closer until they both were pressed as hard as possible against one another and the door. Even the slightest disturbance caused them to jump; the rattling thump as the train hit a bump caused Twilight to squeak and the heavy thud of a falling suitcase nearly caused Applejack to bolt.

Another sweeping tunnel, and another moment of blindness. Another few seconds of shuddering bumps and thumps. Both ponies had to grab onto shaking shelves and walls to keep from toppling completely over. Then the laughter stopped, its absence chilling Twilight more than its presence ever had. One more immense thump rocked the the train, spilling baggage from another shelf before light poured in through the small windows as the train left the tunnel and began crossing the span above the waterfalls near Canterlot.

“Applejack... ” she whispered. “We don’t need to chase her down here, just hold her here until we can get more help. All we need to do is keep an eye out for one another.”

“Good idea!” The voice didn’t belong to Applejack. “She won’t expect that.”

Turning with a gasp, Twilight found herself face to face with the orange unicorn, only barely holding a laugh back. At her hooves, Applejack lay sprawled out, groaning and rubbing her head and trying to push a fallen steamer trunk away from her. Judging by the knowing grin on the orange unicorn’s face, everything was going to plan, even the seemingly random steamer trunk from above.

How did she know?!

“It’s like I told ya, Discord!” the orange unicorn shouted back to the statue. “Everything they tell me works out just fine, long as I stick to the plan!” Turning her eyes back to Twilight, she grinned and spoke, certainly not to the purple unicorn. “So what’s the plan with this girl?” Swaying slightly in her step, the orange unicorn suddenly froze, clomping her hoof in irritation. “Whaddya mean by that?! How am I supposed to do THAT?!” It was as if her attention completely turned away from the unicorn as she lost herself in another argument. “W-wait! Okay! I’ll try!” she suddenly yelped, visible fear rippling through her features. “If it’ll get my gray back!”

Twilight faltered at her words, now a sense of curiosity emerging forth. “Gray?”

The orange unicorn’s ears twitched upon hearing the name of her beloved spoken by another. She growled, and her horn sparked into a fierce aura of rancorous illumination. For the first time, the orange unicorn’s red pupils glared upon Twilight, almost focusing through her.

The words came out with intense sincerity. “Don’t take this personally.” The orange unicorn’s growl rolled into a deep cackle. “But don’t hold back, either.” Yet caught up with issuing a challenge to the bearer of Magic, Gina didn’t see Twilight’s telekinesis coming until it had leashed around her midsection and pulled taut. “Oh, playing dirty too!?”

Digging all four hooves into the floor of the train, Twilight tried to wrench and wrestle the shocked unicorn down to the floor. Struggling and thrashing beneath the band of violet magic, her orange rival bucked and kicked savagely. As she struggled, sputtering bursts of magic fired from the orange unicorn’s horn in spontaneous fits of waving energy.

With a flick of her blonde mane, the orange unicorn laughed. “We’re a lot alike, you and I!”

The words of the ostentatious captain charged to the front of Twilight’s senses.

You’re a lot like me, you know that Twilight?

Not a chance.

There was no discipline or plan in any of those spells. Twilight wondered if they were even spells, they did not match any kind of planned spell that even came out of magic kindergarten. Undeniably powerful and effective, but completely without refinement or focus. Each directionless wave of energy was enough to knock her back a bit like from a sudden press of gale force wind, but Twilight contemplated just how one could even learn so much power without learning to control it first. As she closed in on the bound unicorn, Twilight considered her hours of training and study, and further remembered the poisonous words of Stormblade.

Truly inspired by those who recognize the gifts bestowed upon them... and use them!

Foalish words of impulsive power that, appropriately, befell the very tact of the orange unicorn flailing desperately before her.

And use them, and use them, and use them!

She just had to think it. She just had to contemplate if it could get worse. Always happens. Because if the frightening prospect of whether Stormblade being born as a unicorn instead of an earth pony was a reality...

You’re a lot like me, you know that Twilight?

The reality was facing right back at her.

I’ll show you, her mind projected to the orange assailant.

She was nothing like him. Nothing like Stormblade at all.

I’ll show you the power is in the control!

As the orange unicorn thrashed again, Twilight saw that fundamental principle in action. The bands restraining her were all tight, refined, and the orange shockwaves looked more like the wild magic that unicorn foals would exhibit, powerful but without contemplation. Careful to avoid wandering towards that erratic horn, Twilight tried to discern what kind of spells this orange mare was using.

The purple unicorn was close to encyclopedic in magic as anypony could be, but none of these spells before her made sense. They had no logic or method. No refinement. It was as if this orange unicorn had never learned modern spellcasting and magic. She used what magic she had well, and was doubtless powerful but it was infantile... immature... almost undeveloped and quaint in craftsmanship.

Before she could consider further, her focus took over and Twilight glared down at the snorting mare. “Where is the Element of Magic?!”

“Get... OFF OF ME!” the orange unicorn bellowed, a blast of fiery magic radiating out from her horn and throwing Twilight back against the far wall, her grip destroyed into shards of tattered purple energy swirling outward. For a moment, the orange unicorn looked like she might pounce upon Twilight as she recovered her wits. But just before she lunged, the orange unicorn froze, as if seized by an intense bout of indecision. With a flourish, she at last adjusted the Element of Magic on her head and burst from the train car door. Groaning, Twilight tried to rise to her feet to give chase, but every movement caused her head to swim and her vision to wobble queasily.

* * * * *

Rounding on another circuit around the train, the cyan pegasus spotted the telltale glint of purple gemstone as it scrambled up onto the roof of the rearmost baggage car. The distinct glitter told her everything she needed to know. Launching through a hair raising loop, the cyan pegasus ducked and swooped over low hanging branches and outcrops of mountainside. Cold winter air whipped through her ears and across her face as each turn and twist in her angle centered a small glitter of purple gemstone in her eyes.

As intense speed burned into tunnel vision, the shape of her target grew clearer and more defined. It was doubtless the Element of Magic, worn cockily, brazenly across a mane of blond and orange coat beneath. Extending her hooves, she braced her body, ready for the bone-jarring impact.

Waiting...

Bracing...

Wait... that impact should have happened by now.

Rainbow Dash blinked, something was terribly wrong. Turning her head, she spotted the unicorn still wearing the Element throwing her a casual wave, having stepped aside just enough for the devastating tackle to be nothing more than a whisper of a breeze. Throwing on all the brakes she could, the pegasus threw her hooves at the icy train roof. Finding no purchase or grip, she wailed in dismay as her hooves skidded and slipped, throwing her off balance and into a pirouetting tumble across the train and off the roof towards a stand of snow-cloaked trees that whipped near the tracks. Momentum only made the slide worse, careening her body over and over until it came to a sudden, shocking stop into the woody embrace of leaves, pine needles and dislodged pieces of snow.

Sputtering in fury, Rainbow Dash burst from the web while spitting out a pinecone, shaking her mane as her body immediately warmed the clinging flakes of snow into beads of water. Wheeling around, she found the unicorn staring at her with an infuriating look of confidence, the kind of grin that someone who was convinced of a victory had.

“Don’t give me that look!” the unicorn barked, throwing herself into another swooping tackle. Take it slow, she can’t fool me twice. As Rainbow Dash pumped new powerful wing beats into her charge, the unicorn’s horn lit up, throwing a shockwave of fiery orange telekinesis her way. With lightning reflexes, Rainbow spun away from the blast, only feeling a gust of wind as it passed her, missing by a hair and exploding another cloak of snow off of a tree. Another shockwave drew a similar hair-raising dodge.

That’s right, keep shooting that slow stuff at me, you couldn’t hit me if I was holding still! All you’re doing is cooling me off.

Rising high, Rainbow lined up a tackle.

Nowhere to run now.

With a loop, she fell into a charge, wings beating faster and faster as three more waves of wind washed over her soaking wet wings. A final blast hit her from the side, but it was not from this unicorn’s magic, it was snow and ice. Rainbow beat her wings to get the last sprint in to knock this unicorn off all four legs, but something was different. Despite utilizing all her might, her wings failed to respond. They didn’t move at all!

What the... my wings?!

With a gasp of horror, Rainbow saw from the corner of her eyes the little beads of water and snow from the trees, frozen all over her feathers by the constant barrage of wind and winter-chilled air. No! No! No! Straining and squirming, she couldn’t break her wings free and crashed headlong into the side of the train, only allowing her enough of a shift in direction to loop one foreleg against the roof before her inertia propelled her off and over the side. Her head crashed harshly against the side of the train and her senses were overwhelmed by shaky blobs and distorted sounds.

“Rainbow Dash!”

In the foggy corners of her hearing and muffled sight, she saw an indistinct yellow blob in the near distance. Straining, Rainbow tried to pull herself up onto the train, but with her wings still burdened with snow and her hind legs thinly coated in residual ice, every movement was labored. What made it worse was that the metal skin of the train was a perpetual slick of ice, and her one leg maintained a weak grip that struggled just to hang on. As the train rounded a corner, the perilous grip became an impossible one, and with a final yelp, the rainbow pegasus slipped from the side of the train. Closing her eyes, she braced for the unpleasant impact with rocky ground, hard rails and the wooden ties, but not the pair of foggy yellow blobs that shot beneath her, bearing her to the ground with laborious whimpers.

“Rainbow Dash!” a soft mumble sunk into her ear. “Rainbow Dash are you okay?!” Turning her rattled head, all she could see was an unusual yellow blob, topped by an equally strange pink blob. Whatever it was, at least it seemed worried about her.

“Mmnghnh... stop her... ” Rainbow muttered at the yellow pegasus hovering above her now, weakly struggling against the yellow forelegs that held her steady as they wobbled unsteadily to the ground.

* * * * *

Staggering to her hooves inside the baggage car, Twilight wasted no time giving chase. Expecting to find the door to the next car open, Twilight nearly crashed into it with a confused wail.

Where’d she go?!

Panic began to sweep across her before she noticed a small ladder and the snowy tracks of orange hind legs scrambling to the train’s roof.

Can’t let her get away!

Throwing herself at the ladder, Twilight shakily wobbled to the roof. A stinging barrage of wind and dust lapped into her face. She ducked down beneath the rim of the train car to readjust, blinking feverishly to clear the wayward particulates from her eyes. The world around her was a rapidly charging blur of snow and rock.

Then, with an whirring pop of snapping air, the rocks around them parted instantly, opening up to a grandiose expanse that overlooked all of Equestria. The stone bridge beneath them drooped in a lazy arc towards the ground hundreds of haunches below, disappearing into a tight pinnacle just peeking from the rim of the speeding train. At the foot of the grandiose stone bridge was a thick fog of churning white water, a deathly series of powerful rapids kicked up by the tremendous waterfall draping behind the other side of the tracks. Wind and cold droplets of water whipped feverishly through Twilight’s mane as she steadied herself on the wobbling train roof.

“C’mon up!” the orange unicorn taunted. “Don’t worry, if you fall, just tuck and roll!” She was just as unsteady as Twilight as the train jounced and wobbled over uneven planks on the track.

Twilight was beyond banter with this mare. The Element entrusted to her was still askew on her head with casual abandon, her friends were hurt and scattered, and Equestria itself was in danger. With a snort, Twilight threw her doubts aside and lunged towards her, violet magic erupting from her horn and sending new bands to try and snag her again. However, Gina was ready this time and with a violent flare of blaring energy, the bands were knocked aside, swinging wide around her.

With little room on the train roof, maneuvering was out of the question, with the length of the car between them, the two unicorns squared off to test their magic against one another. Gina started immediately with quivering shockwaves of unrefined light that blasted towards Twilight with reckless abandon.

Same spell as before.

Her analytical mind was hard at work, the first displays inside the baggage car had given her a small insight into how it worked. She saw the fundamental motions of flowing energy, even in such an unpolished form again when the orange mare had broken her attempt at binding her again. Moments before the shockwave hit her off the roof, Twilight lit her horn and applied the smallest bit of force to the oncoming barrage, and as she predicted, the wave spun itself apart into a harmless glittery breeze that delicately wafted past Twilight.

“Whaaat!?” Gina blubbered, dumbstruck that her magic was simply pulled apart. Snarling, she launched another barrage of magic at her, more of the same shockwaves that were pulled apart with equal ease. Swallowing hard, she poured more power into the magic bolts of energy, each one more violently erratic and unpredictable than the last. But for as wild as each bolt was, to Twilight, they were merely different twists on the same spell.

She doesn’t know any spells at all!

The power was unsettling, though, Twilight felt great relief that this unicorn didn’t have any control to her magic. If she did, she would be unstoppable, or near enough, but with only such rudimentary magic technique at her command, nothing she could throw at Twilight surprised her, it was all like she had studied and practiced for years. Now that she had her technique pegged, Twilight advanced, stepping closer and closer as she prepared her own spells. With a barked yell, Twilight unleashed a genuine counterspell, twisting the latest shockwave of force around on itself and flinging it right back at Gina, nearly bowling her over.

Gina yelped, stumbling backwards as her own magic was turned back against her. Her mind raced to explain how it was possible. To her, the purple unicorn was barely using any power at all, certainly not enough to overwhelm what she was throwing her way. Hesitating, she threw one final blast of magic in a wide arc as her mind pleaded with itself for guidance. “Gah... wh-what do I do?!” she stammered, laughter falling out of her lips even as raw panic overwhelmed her.

“What you can do,” Twilight growled, “is hand over the Element of Magic and surrender right now!” You don’t even understand the magic you are using.

“What do I do?!” Gina bleated again, ignoring Twilight completely even as she advanced with a threatening purple glow around her horn. The orange unicorn suddenly stiffened in sudden comprehension. “Oh... oooh. Yes!” With a renewed battlecry, Gina charged straight towards Twilight, firing her shockwaves of fiery orange magic with utter abandon. Even though each one was easily countered and unwoven before her eyes, Twilight’s attention turned to defence, eyes darting as each zephyr of unrestrained magic snapped around her. Moments before they collided physically, Gina planted her hooves and leapt, tumbling in an unsteady heap over Twilight and sprinting towards the ladder she had climbed up before. As she neared, Gina’s horn illuminated and, for the first time in her life, she turned her mind towards focusing her magic, drawing the amorphous pulse of energy into a tighter shape. Less explosive, more punch.

“Oh no you don’t!” Twilight gasped as she whirled, dispelling the last shock with a flick of her horn. A tight beam of insidious orange light propelled with vigorous intensity, rippling and burning away the air around it as a melted hole peeled away through the baggage car’s ceiling.

She could not let her get away again, if she got into the train, many ponies could be hurt. Closing her eyes, Twilight lashed a band of magic out, snapping it towards the orange mare’s back legs. The band cinched tightly around her legs just as Gina released a final blast of magic, no longer aimed at the unicorn, but aimed down at the coupling. With a guttural lurch, the rear baggage car wobbled as its connection to the rest of the train fell apart in a heap of twisted and mangled iron. A widening gap rapidly built between the car and its parent, draping scraps of clanging metal summoning a shower of sparks up against the dueling unicorns.

Acting on an instinct not her own, Gina reversed her tactics. Another shockwave of telekinesis, but stretched and extended, pulled out into a grasping net of magic that engulfed the car. Twilight nearly fell over as the car began to rumble, pulled in conflicting directions by immense forces of momentum and magic straining for dominance over the huge object. The gap continued to grow between baggage car and train, but now it grew vertically as the orange magic began to overwhelm the car’s weight and haul it upwards, away from the tracks.

What is she doing?!

“What’s..erf... it gonna be?” Gina smirked, not even looking at Twlight as her focus on the magic twisted the car into the air. “Gonna stop me or... ” Instead of finishing the sentence, Gina squeezed tightly on the magical aura enclosing the train car, shaking it wildly and bouncing the contents violently as it left the tracks and flew. “Gonna stop me or get out of here with your earth pony?”

“Applejack!” Twilight swallowed hard, torn between duty to Celestia and duty to her friends. But she had no time to think, no time to analyze and no time to do anything but follow her gut instinct, to follow her heart. She lunged past Gina and down the ladder. Shouldering past the door, she found Applejack wobbly and trying to find her feet. Without words, Twilight looped a foreleg around the orange shoulder and thrust her towards the door.

“Ah can get ‘er!” The orange mare cried out in protest, tightly clenching to a metal bar beside the car’s door. “If Ah can just get... up... ” She reached with her other foreleg for the rim of the luggage car, suggesting her desire to pull herself up against the powerful unicorn.

“Applejack, don’t!”

“Ah can do this!” She nudged the unicorn’s purple foreleg off her shoulder, only to have it latch back on with a firmer grip. “Ah said, Ah can do this!”

A sporadic thought crossed Twilight’s mind, as she eased her grip around the flailing orange pony. With an expression of stern honesty, she faced her squarely. “Let go.”

“What!?” The orange mare protested again.

Like it was straight from a memory, Twilight reiterated. “Just let go.”

The metal bar sang with a whine as the orange pony’s foreleg unclenched from it. The luggage car rocked with tremendous stress again, waving and pulling upward by the surrounding aura of telekinetic energy enveloping more tightly around it with augmenting intensity. Quickly lurching backward, Twilight pulled the orange pony off the baggage car as a final pulse of yellow and orange energy surged upward. Carried by nothing more than momentum, they fell across the widening gap onto the moving train moments before the baggage car completely left the track. Turning to watch, Twilight let out a shuddering gasp of horror as the orange unicorn stood, laughing to the spray of the grand waterfall the car now sped towards.

While the orange cloud of magic held the train car aloft, the impossible force of the waterfall instantly asserted itself on the car. The moment the water struck the baggage car, it listed unsettlingly, one end forced downward and dragging behind the rest of the bulk into the intense downward flow. Instead of trying to free the train car from the the torrent, the magic caressing the bulky car flopped it parallel to the falling water, letting the churning white torrent carry it down. In little more than a second, the baggage car had been pulled from ten lengths above the track to a torpedo fired downward beyond Twilight’s vision below the rail’s bridge.

Rushing to the edge of the railing, Twilight leaned far out to catch a new angle and continue pursuing the train car with her eyes. What she saw caused her jaw to nearly hit the rattling floor. Standing bipedal at the top edge of the plummeting car, the orange unicorn wore a face of wild excitement and laughter. With her rear hooves planted firmly on the metal roof, she weaved and steered the weightless train car with intense daring between overlapping plumes of churning water. Forelegs outstretched, she waved them to adjust her balance, and pump a hoof with magnanimous euphoria with each adrenal warcry she made.

Standing atop the upper deck of the vehicle, she was surfing the baggage car down the waterfall!

Her horn sparkled and surged as she made adjustments, keeping the train car grinding along with the flow of the deluge and never fully dragged into it nor completely thrown out of it into a tumbling wreck. Twilight could swear she heard whoops of excited joy over the roar of the waterfall and the rattling of the train as the laughing orange unicorn rode the luggage car down the waterfall like a surfboard.

Gina never even contemplated about this trick of magic, and binding the impossibly heavy train car to glide down with the waterfall’s force, carrying her the whole way, was a stroke of new insight never considered before. Whether the injected brilliance of a force beyond her own cognition, or a sporadic impulse of raw luck, she cared not about the driving cause of such an escape. All she cared about was the disappearing visage of the purple unicorn ascending further and further from her own vision through the thickening mist surrounding her.

But those insights only lived for mere moments when the exhilarating rush of water and wind overtook her senses and a peal of laughter rippled out. Coherency gave way to delight, and collected thoughts gave way to the erratic laughs.

To be alive.

Sliding and skimming across the edge of the waterfall, the baggage car moved under the combined force of magic and nature. Slicing past the torrent, Gina tried adjusting and twisting her magic, cutting daringly close to the rocky sides of the falls.

As the train car disappeared into the foamy mist hanging some distance above the water at the foot of the falls, the magic telekinesis adjusted and twisted the train car. While the car angled upward and speared towards the watery crash, Gina leapt across its roof to the edge before swinging around the lip and inside the car. Moments later, a heavy crash and bellowing ring of exploding water burst outward, lost instantly to the roar of the churning falls.

Inside the luggage car, the bags and strewn belongings surged in a swirling amalgam that blocked the flickering tendrils of murky light poking through. A roar of air permeated around the orange unicorn, a whirling sheet of glassy water ascended above her ears, and she sunk into an incoherent aether... blurred and featureless.

A muffled hum coalesced from the rampaging chaos around her through the water; a low single note. Unable to breathe, hear, smell, or see, she wore a contented grin as she gazed out into the sunken luggage car.

She gazed out into the gray.

* * * * *